Transcript of How Andrew Pollack Made Florida Schools Safer for Every Child

The first school shooting that I can remember, it may have happened before, was Columbine. Well, after Columbine, that should have been the last freaking one. All the lawmakers, every single state should have unified to save our children.

I've watched video of my daughter getting murdered. I don't get it. There's states that are taking the police out of the schools. They're thinking it's scary for kids to have police in the schools. You got to have some common sense. You want to send your kid to the school that has a no gun zone sign on it and no police? I don't want to do that.

All right, guys, I have a good one here today. I've got Andrew Pollack as an American activist. In 2018, on Valentine's Day, this man lived what I think all parents really, truly fear and dread in the United States of America. His daughter, Metta, was one of the victims at the Stomen Douglas shooting out here in Florida. This man is dedicated every second of his life to really push forward initiative so that no other parent has to deal with this. Unfortunately, we are still having these shootings at schools and now churches, et cetera, and it needs to stop. Without further ado, I welcome Andrew Pollack to the show. How are you doing, buddy?

All right. Thanks for having me. Yesterday would have been my daughter's 26th birthday. Every day since she's been killed, nothing Nothing really has changed the pain that I feel. I can't speak for every parent, but it's probably one of the worst things that could happen in life is to have a child murdered. I always correct people. A lot of people say loss When you lose something, you could find it. I tell people. My daughter, she was murdered. I can't find her. It's like, I don't know, just something that hits a nerve all the time when it's lost. If you lose It was something you could find it. But it's not a day that goes by that we all don't think about her and my family and her friends, and we miss a tremendous amount.

I did notice, and I was going to bring that up, I saw yesterday, I was doing some more research, and I saw that it was her birthday, and I was like, Man, I'm talking to this man tomorrow on a day after which his daughter would have turned 26.

Yeah, and she was the most like me out of my three kids. She was a real go-getter. She would have had anything in life that she put her effort into. There was nothing stopping her except nine bullets that day, and no one came to help her. You talk about these other shootings that are taking place. Florida, I could really speak from what we got accomplished in Florida under good leadership. It's a big difference when you compare to other states, what they're doing to what we've done in Florida. You always hear Florida leads the way. We were fortunate. We had Rick Scott at the time as the governor, and I sat with him and he put a commission in. He put the Marjorie Stoneman Douglas Commission in place. It was law enforcement, lawyers, mental health counselors, parents. Everyone sat on this commission and they dissected from when this thing was born that killed my daughter all the way to the day of the shooting and after the response. And they said, Where can we make a difference? And we looked at all that We went through it and we made changes in Florida, where other states really aren't making the changes.

Texas had a terrible shooting the same year in May, May 18th of 2018. Ten people were killed in the school in Santa Fe, Texas, and they didn't make the changes like we did in Florida. I'm not saying it can't happen in Florida, but we made a lot of changes from mental health, the threat assessments to police offices to army teachers and personnel in the schools, haven't plain closed offices in the schools, all this, the hardening of the schools. We accomplished single point of entries, fencing. They took it serious in Florida, and these other states, they just don't do it. I don't get it. It's 2025, and I look at it, and I really put it on the parents. A lot of the parents, you know better. You wouldn't go on a plane without walking through security. There's parents now that still are sending their kids to school with no security, no plan in place. I I call it, they're rolling the dice every day. You're rolling the dice. What happened a month ago in, I think it was, Minnesota at that church, they rolled the dice, those parents, and they lost. It's very slim chance of it happening.

But if you ask any parent that had this happen to them with a shooting, they all think it couldn't happen to them. So if you want to roll the dice or you I don't want to take it serious. It's really crazy, but that's the way I look at it.

I agree. I will tell you this, Andrew, and anybody who knows me very, very well, the hardest thing for me to do every single day is drop my kids off at school. I will say this, they're in a prep school that has bulletproof windows. They have three security guards that are armed, but still, you never know. My wife is in the back of the school in the portables. There's no security there. There's nothing for her. So again, it's tough when I see my wife and my children go to school every day, and it haunt me to a point where there's times when these things happen, in Minnesota or anything else, and I see these things, It puts me in a space. I'm like, damn, I have an emotional response to it because I don't think any parent in this nation should have to worry about their child going to school and coming home.

Shouldn't have to. But It's just a sad case of what happened. The population has doubled. There's more meds, there's more crazy people, and you can't control society, and that's the way society went. It's our obligation to make it so they're safe in school, where they could go and they know no one could harm them in the schools. Florida did a great job doing it. We have one deputy per 500 students. That's the Florida. Like I said, we made so many changes. One of the best is... I work with a company, too. We do a bunch of security. But when it comes to security, it's all layers. It's not one fix all. You know what I mean? And you need to have a plan in place. You need to train. You can put all the technology in your school. But if you don't practice, if you don't drill with law enforcement, get them involved, then it's useless, really. Florida takes it seriously, but it took 17 people getting killed. Then you see these other places. They go to school, really, and there's no police at the school. You send them your kid. It doesn't even make sense.

I'm doing work in DC, getting things done in the country and working with different legislators and stuff. But I was at the DOE, Department of Education. I'm meeting with one of the top lawyers there about two months ago, and I asked him, So what's at your kid's school? Because he read my book and we're talking. He goes, I'm embarrassed to tell you, I don't even know if there's police at my daughter's school. Could you imagine? And I'm like, You're kidding me, right? I said, Well, I can't believe it. I go, Well, it's serious. You know what I'm saying? You're rolling a dice. That's it. You want to roll a dice every day with your kids? Then roll them. You got to know better now. I didn't know. In 2018, I didn't know the school board stuff. I lived in Parkland. It's the safest city. It's ranked in the state of Florida. But I didn't know anything. You know what I mean? And look what happened to me, son. But we've been preaching. It's happened. Parents can't say they don't know anymore about keeping their kids safe. You know what's going on at your kid's school.

Parents, if they get involved, there's nothing stronger than parents getting involved in putting in the right school board members or getting involved in going up to the school and saying, We want this. Parents have the power to make change.

Why do you think, and you alluded to it earlier about other states not putting in proper measures like Florida has, taking that action to protect the children. We can just assume why. But in your opinion, why would a certain state not see what's going on and want to insulate as much as they humanly can to protect these children?

I don't get it. A lot of them, listen, there are states that are taking the police out of the schools. That makes no sense. They think it's scary for kids to have police in the schools. But I put it on the parents. I don't care what party you belong to. You got to have some common sense, even if Democrats don't have that. But you got to think that, listen, you want your kid to go to school where there's police officers, right? It's on them. They send them. You want to send your kid to the school that has a no gun zone sign on it and no police? I don't want to do that. There's schools in Florida, I know, because I went to the training. They have the Guardian program in Florida, which is really good. Anyone who wants to volunteer, they'll put them through this program, and it's very vigorous. They're held to a high standard to pass this Guardian, and they're able to be plain clothes in the school. I don't think there's been a shooting at a school where teachers went through this program and there's unarmed. I mean, there's armed undercover in the school.

It makes a big Parents, when you put a sign there, we're going to defend our children with deadly force. When you put that sign there, we've read these manifestos from these shooters, these cowards. They write it. They picked a school that has no security. They picked a school. They went during the day because they were worried there could be a parent there that had concealed carry. It's what they write. They're cowards. They want to go to a place where no one's going to shoot back. And I don't get it, you know what I mean? But it's on the parents in these other states. You want to send your kids there. I can't beat my head against them. I can only beat my head against the wall so many times telling them what you need. I've watched video of my daughter getting murdered. I've watched videos or shootings. We try and make a difference and educate. I'm all over the country speaking at different security events. A lot of technology is going into the security. And my company, we try and take human error out of it with technology because I learned under the stress, you can't expect someone to go to their phone, swipe it, punch in a code, and do all these things when bullets, they're hearing bullets.

Most of them are shaking. I talk about things that can make a difference in life and with response, but it's up to the districts and the parents. You want to send your kid to a school like where you send your children. You don't want a school that's a no-gun zone.

I still worry. Andy, it still scares me daily to a point where I'm getting ready for this interview today and I'm thinking, I'm going to have this conversation. Meanwhile, my three children and my wife are going to school. I know what they have at the place that they're at. But to me, it still isn't enough. Listen, I'm one of those crazy people. I would love to see special offs at every interest and every exit. I would love that.

I would give the crossing guards. I'd let them go through that. If they could go through that Guardian class, I'd arm them also. Anyone who could go... If they're held to a higher standard of accuracy at the end of the class when they're shooting, then to the deputies that are on patrol, they have to hit targets at a tighter group than a deputy taking the class. So I'm all for it, and I went through it. My friend, everyone in Florida heard him. I'm good friends with Sheriff Grady Judd. He wrote the curriculum for the Guardian program, and it's implemented in a lot of schools. Not all of them. They're all lorry, Oh, we're going to arm the teachers. But you're not arming teachers. You're army people that want to go through the program. If you're not making anyone go through it, you don't want to go through it, don't do it. But if you want to go through this program that's intense, I think they should get a little more money from me, if you ask me from the state, but if you want to go through this program, we're going to make it available for you.

When you get out of that program, you're going to be ready. That's only one part of it, Sean. What happened Florida, it was a total failure that we saw, and we made a lot of the changes. We did it on the security side with making changes, and then we did it on the policy. In Broward, we had that superintendent that came from Chicago, and he brought these leniency policies to Florida, into Broward County, where he was saying that African-American children were getting arrested and expelled and suspended more than any of the other students. So he brought programs in to not hold kids accountable. Rather than trying to help these kids and set them up for success, he said, There must be racism in Broward County, so let's change all these policies. And they stopped holding kids accountable. No suspensions, no arrests. They weren't getting expelled. They put them through a program. What we learned when my daughter was in school, the kids were allowed three misdemeanors per school year without ever getting introduced to law enforcement. They could sell weed, they could assault a teacher, assault a student, steal an iPhone, and then it would reset every year.

They could do another three misdemeanors the next year and never get introduced to law enforcement.

That's not even real life. Hold on, that's not even real life. You go to the street, you I'm on the street. I'm an adult. I have a misdemeanor. I'm going to jail.

Not in Broward, not when he came there. We changed it, but this created a very unsafe environment of teachers getting assaulted, kids getting assaulted. The teachers didn't even report anything because it was useless because it would go up the chain and the kids would be back in school. They're back in class the next day. So he brought those policies into Broward. So think about it. So When a superintendent comes in, he can say the first year, he reduced suspensions and arrests by 70%, it was a miracle. It's just this fake liberal mentality of saying, Oh, yeah, I'm doing a great job. But they just stopped reporting it. Then you get the sheriff, Sean, the sheriff signs on because he's an elected official. He could say he reduced crime in minors by 50% because they just stopped arrest They're putting them through this program. So he's a hero to the people. Oh, wow, look at this sheriff. He reduced crime by 50% and the superintendent, he reduced suspensions and kids getting expelled by 70%. He must be doing something right. But we uncovered all this and we made... That sheriff was removed from office from the governor DeSantis.

People don't read about these things. They heard about the sheriff, but the superintendent was arrested on felony perjury charges. I held a lot of these people accountable after my daughter, she wanted me to do that. I held them all accountable, and I pretty much wrecked that whole county. We dissected them. Four school board members were removed from office also. The media doesn't ever want to report on that stuff.

It just doesn't make any sense to me, Andy. To be I'm at a loss right now because to me, the first school shooting that I can remember, it may have happened before, was Columbine. I was in college and that happened. Then shortly after that, it was a movie theater incident. That was in my conscious mind, that was the start of it. But I could go back and say, Well, after Columbine, that should have been the last one. That should have been the last freaking one. There shouldn't even be one. But the fact that it happened, that should have been it. All the lawmakers, every single state should have unified to save our children, to save innocent children. They're going to school for an education, and they have to worry. It fires me up to a point where it makes me lose respect for the states and the policymakers that aren't doing enough to save kids.

Then they'll say they don't have the funds, which is baloney. You know what I mean as well? But yes, they have the funds. They just don't put it in the right place. They got money to have a brand new football stadium, right? But then they won't have nothing that has no security. Then you talk, even at that private school, it really irked me. They didn't have any security there. You're telling me the parents can afford another couple of hundred dollars tuition so they could They could have a police officer. Then you look at the school, where's the parents going to send their children to school? Do they want to see them safe with police? You charge a little more money. What's the parent going to say? I don't want to have a police officer there. Most of them are going to go with it, but they don't take it serious in these other states. My temple in Florida, there's no way anyone's going there. You know what I mean? I know as a fact what I gave them in the training and how serious they take it that they're going to go down the street to the liberal temple, because where they don't have all the guards and the police and the rifles.

I made sure that my temple is secure. But if there's anyone listening from these temples and churches? This last week was a couple of Jewish holidays. I went and I was on the road. I had to be somewhere, but I went to the schools. The first one I went to was in Spokane, Washington. I get it. These rabbis, they don't know security. They're hiring details, right? The guy's sitting in his car the whole time, out in the driveway. I told the rabbi, I go, Listen, you're paying these guys. Don't leave him. He's sitting in his car. What is he going to do sitting in his car? He's just going to take the first few shots. That's it. Make sure they're at front. They want to sit, get a stool by the front door. The next place I went to was Where the hell was I? Trying to think. I'm all over the place all the time. I went to another one, right? I can't believe I can't think where the hell I was. Oh, New Orleans. There you go. I was in New Orleans for a security conference, and The guy sitting in the lobby on his phone.

You know what I mean? If anyone's listening and they work at these places or they have a detail, speak up. You're paying for the detail. There's nothing more that irks me than a guy in a uniform or sitting there on his phone when he's supposed to be doing security. You got to speak up. That's something I'm going to be working on the next month to get the word out to these places of worship. They think that they could trust this security. Sitting on his phone, I couldn't believe it, on his phone, on the chair in the lobby. What are you going to do? You can have these details, but you got to speak up everybody and make sure they're doing the right thing. Don't take it in. I carry. I go wherever I go anywhere, I'm carrying just for my own protection and to be able to save people. You know what I mean? I don't want to sit there and have people just cringing. I want to be able to... If someone's coming in there, we're shooting back. So everyone should... Concealed carry is a great thing, but speak up at these churches in details.

If you see guys sit and go talk to the pastor, go talk to the rabbi and make sure they're doing their job properly. Not like what I saw over the last couple of weeks.

Yeah, that's just blatant complacency.

I don't like it when I see you talk through that.

That's scary.

And the pastors and the rabbis, they think they're professionals. They know what they're doing, but they're getting lazy. So you got to speak up. And that's something I'm going to address in the next with my company and being Being in some religious groups that I'm at, having them speak up for their congregation.

I mean, now's the time. I mean, you look at a month ago in Minneapolis at the Catholic school. And then what was it last week at a moment?

Michigan. Can you believe it? The moments, really? My friend's a moment. I love the guy, Ryan Petty. He carries everywhere. He can't figure out somebody's moments that they don't take the security. That's serious. They don't even want him carrying when he goes to temple, I think they call it the moments. God takes care of those who take care of themselves. That's what I tell him. You owe it to yourself and your congregation to take your security. I go to a place out here, and when I go to Oregon, we got security, and they're not sitting on their ass either. You got to have your head on a swivel and speak up. The listening?

That brings up a good question. I have a great question for you, and I'm not coming at anybody. I have just things that I've observed. When my children were in public school, they would have one deputy, and the deputy just seemed like they weren't really around doing much. It was like, if there's a little event in the auditorium, they're in the auditorium, why aren't they manning the front? I mean, My question is, it's not just enough to have someone on campus, is it? They have to be- Not one.

You know what I mean? One is not good. You know what I mean? It should be one in Florida, one for 500. But that's why I preach that you need on the plain clothes, too. You don't want someone coming into the school or anyone, your church, a building. He's a sitting target. If you just have one, he's dead first. If they really want to do damage, they're going to take out the deputy in uniform. Or if it's someone that knows the school or the church, they could come right behind him. They know where he is all the time. He's an easy target. That's why undercover with our Garnian program, not knowing, that's a big deterrent. People think, Oh, it's not the proper security. But a deterrent, we'll never know how many people, how many lives we save in Florida just because they're not going to go to these schools where we have guardians or where we have one deputy for 500 and we have protocols in place. So we're saving lives, but we don't know how many because it's just a deterrent. And like I said before, You could read it in the manifesto when these cowards pick where they pick.

They pick it because it's a no-gun zone. We know, I don't know, the percentages. It's a high percentage of mass shootings that take place in no gun zones.

Let's dive into that, because most parents in your situation would lean to the side of gun control. You don't. You believe in concealed carry. You believe in protecting You believe in having the Guardian program. What would you say to those people that are so against guns, but then kids are dying, and even to a point where it doesn't matter, gun control, right? How do you speak to somebody like that? Because everybody wants to talk about it. Gun control this, gun control that. I don't know the answer. I'm not in this space. I'm just a parent that has three beautiful children. But I want guns on my campus. You know what I'm saying? I want that.

I know exactly what you're saying. You can preach so much. It's like a mental illness. Really, you think that if you You put a no guns on sign at the fence leading into the school that the criminal is not going to go in there. They're going there on purpose because there's no one that's going to shoot back. It makes it worse. It's an invitation to evil to come into this building. It's an invitation. I watch videos of it. The guy that killed the thing that killed my daughter reloaded seven times inside the building, and there was no one there to shoot The one deputy hid 40 minutes. He was in front of the building, never went in. There was another five or six of them that took a perimeter around the building and didn't go in while kids were getting killed. I I'm not opposed to the no-gun zones. It's the biggest... It doesn't even make sense to me. It's not even a discussion because they're going to go in. That's where they pick it. I was in New Orleans. It was It was interesting. I went to the World War II Museum, which is a pretty cool place, and they had metal detectors.

I'm like, Oh, shit. I have my concealed carry. But I sent my wife did a recon first. She went in. She said, No problem. All you got to do is show your ID and your concealed carry license. I went in, and that was it right through the metal detector. It just shows, if you look at statistics, people that I have concealed carry a law abiding citizens. You want those people in your place of business. They're not committing crimes. I don't want to ever commit a crime. I don't want to lose my permit. Everyone's the same way. We're law abiding citizens. You want people with the license. Instances. I thought that was a nice surprise. I was like, these guys aren't going to let me in the museum. No problem. I went in, I showed them my ID, and that was that. It's a safer place.

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The bullets went through my daughter and killed the girl underneath. And this guy is with a bulletproof vest. He would have had a clear shot at him on the second floor. Because on the second floor, everyone shut their doors and the blinds. So the killer walked right through the second floor. Who knows? Most of these guys are cowards. They either surrender or kill themselves. They don't even get into a firefight. You You rarely see a firefight. They're always killing themselves or running away, or they just put their hands up. So we'll never know. He retired. I think he gets about $110,000 a year pension, Peterson, Deputy Peterson. He was brought up on charges, but the state barely didn't do a good job in his case, I feel.

Do you believe he should still get that pension?

Yeah, he gets his pension. If we got him- No, my question is, though, do you believe he should? No. Because I don't think so.

I don't think so.

He should be in prison. You know what I mean? I don't know how he didn't just hang himself, the guy, after he did what he did. But you know what? He repeated this lie over and over, I You lie to yourself over and over again. You lie to yourself over and over again, you start to believe it. So he believed there was a sniper on the roof. There was no sniper on the roof. We have recordings. He's telling people not to go in the building. He's worried about traffic He was worried about traffic, why kids were getting killed inside the building. He was never going in that building, this guy. When we deposed him in my case, because we have a wrong awful death case going on, he showed up with a Bible to the deposition. I go, Dude, that Bible isn't going to help you for not coming clean. And are you allowing my daughter and all those other kids to get killed? Why you sat there and saved yourself by a brick wall. So, yeah, he was there with his Bible. I don't really care for the guy that much. I don't like him.

There was another bunch of deputies. They lost their jobs. The Sheriff got removed. It was a lot of work getting everything done. But a lot of it I couldn't have got done if I didn't help get Governor DeSantis elected. He was a real pitbull in my corner, and he helped. He put that grand jury into effect to look into all the failures in Broward. He removed the Sheriff from his duties, put in another guy that's doing a fantastic job at Broward right now, Sheriff Tony. He's doing a great job at Broward. It It's a tough county. It's a tough county to be a sheriff in. But he's doing a great job. Like I said, we removed a bunch of people from offices. We changed policy. We held everybody accountable. That's all I could have done, really, for my daughter is hold those people accountable that failed that day.

It's just heartbreaking to hear that there were seven trained professionals not entering the building while Meadow was the one being heroic.

Yeah, a couple went in. There was a couple of guys that worked at the school that went in. Just to show you that, they went in with radios. If any of them went in the building, not many people talk about it, but I'll talk about it. They got killed. But if they would have just said code red on their radio, my daughter would be alive on the third floor. They had radios. One guy hit in the closet on the second floor. They called them monitors back then. That's what they were. Security guard/monitor. So one guy saw the guy... He pulled up in an Uber, the shooter, and got out with a rifle bag. The guy doesn't call code red. And his nickname's Crazy Boy. He sees the rifle bag. He doesn't call code red and lock the school down. Kids would have been a different ending to the story if he would have done that. The deputy who hit at the wall doesn't call code red. Two guys that go in the building that got killed, they could have called code red. They didn't call it. It's just a total failure. Sure, they went in unalved, got killed.

I have a company. We have a You know an access card that people have? They swipe. We have an access card, and it has a panic button built into it. All you have to do a teacher in a church or in a church, a temple, a building, if something goes down, you could just press the button and it'll notify police. It has your fingerprint on it, so it knows it's coming from where you're at. It'll map first responders It'll go right to the person who hit that button, and it'll let the whole building know that there's an emergency and put it into a lockdown mode. So we developed that. Yeah, we developed that after I've seen all these failures where people have apps. There's no shot someone's going to go to their phone and open up their phone and go to an app and do all that. We just made it where there's a button and it'll do mapping for them, and it'll push video to first responders on their way to the building. They can see it on their cell phones or on their computer in the car. They could see what's going on.

Then after, Yivaldi, Yivaldi pissed me the hell off when they didn't go in the building. They let them kids get killed. The door wasn't even locked. It was all bullshit. They said it was locked. It wasn't locked. Now we came up with something that goes in the classroom, and when there's an emergency, it has a shutter. The teachers union, they're They don't want cameras in the classroom. They don't want to show you what's going on in classrooms. All right, so we got around that. I have a device that goes in a classroom and it has a shutter on it. So only in an emergency, the shutter will open and it'll give first respond as access and eyes into the classroom. So we're always working on stuff after we dissect things, where we can make a difference and save lives. And that's what we do with my company.

It's great to hear because a couple of years, I don't know if it was last year or the year before, there was a lockdown at the public school my kids were at. It was a scary freaking moment, man. As a father, I'm sitting there, I get the email and I get the text message, and I'm like, Oh, my God. I started walking out to my truck. I'm like, I don't know who I am or what I'm going to do, but I got to go save my kids. It was a false alarm. Apparently, one of the teachers hit the button on their ID card. So that's your company.

Yeah, when we have it, we program it different. So really, it's got to be like you could program it twice for the nurse, three times for police, We have this button, and I know it's going to work because people won't react the way you think they're going to react. You got to make it as simple as possible for a lockdown. And then at your school, if they have this stuff and they're not bringing in law enforcement to train with them, then it's a waste of money. You know what I mean? In a panic, no one's going to know what to do. But if you train for it, like athletes, police, they're always training on a monthly basis or daily basis. You got to bring in the police and train with law enforcement. And I tell people, so on the third floor, when my daughter was killed, there was one teacher that participated in training with law enforcement. They went to the school and they did a lockdown. They did what to do. They did like, she heard noise. They had blanks. They were banging, yelling. So this teacher did training with Carl Spring's PD. So when she heard what was going on, she was familiar.

She goes, Wow. She locked down her classroom, shut the blinds. They put all the kids on that one wall. That's a safe zone. No one could see into the room or shoot through the door. She saved the whole classroom. My daughter's teacher heard the fire alarms, ignored the 90 rounds that went off. If you ever heard an AR, it's a loud round. 90 rounds go off. She decides that there's a fire in a cement building and puts my daughter into the hallway because she heard the fire alarm where she got shot nine times. But she locked her out, too. After she heard more shots, she shut the door and locked it so no one could get back in and she got shot in the hallway.

What the hell? What happened to that teacher after that incident?

She got a graze on her arm. She ended up getting a million dollars in a lawsuit, that teacher that put those kids out into the classroom. But I don't know, could you blame... She didn't have all the training. She wasn't that bright because my daughter, in her text, she had a couple of texts to her boyfriend, and she said she heard gunshots. But the teacher put out into the hallway because of the fire alarm. I don't think there hasn't been anyone that died in a school from a fire since maybe the '60s.

That's wild to me. How do you ignore 90 rounds and send a child out there in the hallway?

My daughter heard the rounds. You know what I mean? The teacher had to hear it, but she let the kids out into the hallway where she got killed. Then she couldn't even get back in. It was just a big cluster of What a scary moment.

What a scary moment.

Multiple failures. God could have intervened a lot of times, and my daughter could have been alive. From the person at the gate. There's a school next door to it, too. There's a middle school right there on the same property a little bit, I don't know, a few hundred yards to the west. There's a middle school. That day, that deputy was at training that would have been there. He goes to training three times a year. Could you imagine my luck, even that deputy, who was a solid guy, was at training on the other side of town, he couldn't even be at the school. They didn't fill him in with another guy. There was no one at the school that day that was right next door that could have been there. Once he heard him on the radio, he said, he told me, Andy, I can't even believe I think he retired after that just because he was so upset he wasn't at the school that day. He was at some bullshit training. There's a lot of things that happened and failures that my daughter, it was like a domino's effect of failures that she could have been saved at any time, but it didn't happen that day.

That's really difficult. Just even hearing that, I can't imagine the things that you and your family may have gone through just playing that over and over. My daughter would be here, Metta would be here if, if, if. Something so easy as if that Jackass teacher didn't send her out into the hallway.

Yeah, but that was already the 10th. If she couldn't. There was 10 before that with the Uber driver. Really, you pick up a kid with a rifle bag in the middle of the day and you drive them to the school. The Uber driver with a rifle. K It said Cabellus on it, a rifle bag. Then the monitor seeing Crazy Boy was his nickname. We have it. They're speaking like they said. They had a meeting to security a year prior, and they said, If anyone was going to shoot the school up? It's going to be this kid. We have them all talking about it, and he doesn't call a code red. The deputy that don't call the code red hides at the building, doesn't go in. Then there's a guy, too, on the second floor. He Sees the shooter on the first floor. You're talking now a 40, 50-year-old grown man sees the shooter on the first floor, runs back up the second floor and hides in a closet. He has his radio, doesn't say code red or call the principal or anything, saves himself in a closet when the shoot is on the first floor.

Then the guys that go in that don't call the code red, and then the deputies that don't go in. There's just so many failures. The school, not even... The school, they frisked this guy every morning before school. That's how bad this kid was. They didn't tell the parents, Really? You're sending a kid to the school. You're so worried about him being dangerous that you got to frisk him. You think if my daughter's safe in the school and all these other kids, with a kid, you got to frisk.

Given that situation with the deputies and everything that you're talking about, is There are certain psychological tests that Florida is putting them through to know that if this happens, you're not going to freeze up?

Well, they put them through tests, and it's leadership, too. You know what I mean? Lead by example. My friend who is the sheriff in Florida, it's not going to be on his watch again. He won't tolerate it. It's leadership, what you expect of these guys, and the training. You give them the tools, but you want the right guy. Sheriff Grady Judd, I was there when he was doing the Guardian program training, and he came and he spoke to the cadets. There was probably like 20, 30 people there. He goes, When you're in that school and someone comes to hurt one of our kids or children, I want you to shoot them graveyard dead. That's what he tells me. If you can't shoot them graveyard dead, there's the door right there. This job is not for you. And that's what he told them. And giving them the right tools. I have another friend in Bradford that was training these guardians, and they do it right in the school. Right in the school, they're training. There's a lunch lady, there's a custodian. It's amazing. They go through this training and they're there. And the shooter is not going to go to one of those schools knowing that, You know what?

I don't know who's in there carrying.

Yeah. I feel like Carmine, Marciano has done a good job in Lee County with this. There's metal detectors at the public schools. He's in a lot of the private schools. This specific school that my kids go to, it's a private security. But I think there's three people.

My temple, just to show you, there was one. They could get one police officer or two security guards. We opted for the two security guards that are trained rather than just having one police officer. It could be the same at your school. You're better off. Like I said, one is not enough to have at a Wolf. It's just he could shit the bed. You never know in a situation, or he'd get killed first. He's a sitting target when you're in a uniform. One is definitely not enough. Plane close is better.

Given everything that's going on, it seems that they're not so few and far between anymore. Andy, it seems like every time I open up my Instagram app or look at the news, there's another incident at a campus. Just even on, what was it? I think September 11th, there was an open. Wasn't there a shooter on the Naval Academy? There's an active shooter at the Naval Academy.

What about the building in Manhattan, too? They didn't know it was going to go.

Oh, yeah. They had that a few months ago, too. It's wild to me. Given everything going on, is Florida doing any more to revamp some of these systems and processes and adding? Because I love the fact that My children are safer in Florida. Florida doesn't take anything for granted. They double down when they have to. They got that Wild West mentality about them, which I absolutely adore, to be quite honest with you.

Are they We got the best governor in the country. You know what I mean? Ron is a friend of mine, and he's doing a great job for Florida. A lot of people don't notice because it just came up again because it is Charlie Kirk getting assassinated. So with the death penalty in Utah, it has to be unanimous to get the death penalty. So Florida, here's my daughter's case. It was unanimous. He He killed 17 people on video, and he didn't get the death penalty because one person felt sorry for him or two. Florida changed the law after my daughter's trial to a majority. It's something you That's what I should have been thinking about. But even I could talk a lot about the death penalty. It's really the death penalty isn't a deterrent for these evil people because it could be 20 something years Until you could get killed in the death penalty. If it even happened and appeal it, it could be over 20 years. You get put in a certain cell when you're on death row. I looked into all this. Death row, you get a cell, you get your own security, your computer, your TV.

You don't have to work in the penitentiary. You don't have to work. They bring you your medication. It's almost like the warden was telling me, it's almost like a hotel room they're getting when they were on death row. I didn't really, with my daughter's case, I really didn't get involved with that trial. I didn't even attend one day. I didn't even take any interest in it because I knew they weren't going to get it. I'd rather them get life without parole. It's torturous being there. Hopefully, he gets put into general population and he gets dealt with one day. But that death row is not terrible. You know what I mean? If the death penalty was okay, we got the death penalty, and then you kill him within six months, that would be like a deterrent. You put it on TV, just like they put Charlie Kirk's murder getting on TV. It was brutal watching that. You want a deterrent? Put these killers on. Let Let them beg for mercy and put them on the internet. It'll be a deterrent. I know it sounds barbaric, but it wasn't... How many times did you see Charlie get killed?

And what about the girl on the train? Was That was horrible, right? The girl on the train. So take these evil people and put them on the internet. Show them begging for their lives. I think things could change a little bit. I think it would be a deterrent. Right now, it's no determent, the death penalty to these evil people.

Yeah, they're pretty much already dead, man. There's nothing behind their eyes. Their soul's gone.

They get triggered. I'm telling you, I researched before my daughter's case, I wanted to know what was worse, the death penalty, getting the death penalty, or life without parole. I spoke to two or three wardens, and they told me, Andy, life without parole is worse for these people. They're begging for death after a certain amount of years. They wanted to put to death. Like I said, they got their own hotel room when they were on death row.

Unbelievable, man. Well, look, I appreciate you coming on and sharing your story, Meadow's story. It's comforting to that you spend time in a state and you're heavily invested in my children's safety, so I don't have to live with the unfortunate tragedy that you have to live with every day, along with 17 other sets of parents. It's heartbreaking, man, and I just appreciate you.

Thanks, man. I could tell you my good friend Ryan Petty, who's daughter was killed, Elaina, he sits on the Florida State School Board, and he's the chair for the school board right now. So they're doing everything possible. They still meet the Commission on School Safety for Marjorie Stoneman Douglas. They still get together, and they're always looking for ways to make our kids safer and holding counties accountable that don't do it. That's the thing. You got to hold people accountable or things don't change.

Agreed. For the audience, I want you guys to share this episode with someone you know, love and trust that could get value you out of it. If you are not in Florida and you have children in public school without law enforcement, let me ask you a question. Is it scarier to have people with armed people on your campus or someone armed coming into the campus and potentially killing one of your children. I hate to say it like that, guys, but we live in a world where you just can't trust what's happening out there in society. Our job as parents is to protect our children. So please think about it. If you don't want to be a part of a headline or see another child or children shot and killed, then we have to do what's right and put safety measures in every single school across the United States of America. It's not about budget. It's not about resources. We have it. It's about what you spend the money on, just like anything in life. You could sit there, you say, I can't afford a new car, but you're spending $350 a month at Starbucks. Your money goes where your focus is and what you hold value towards.

Parents, this is a call to action to protect the children. I thank you guys so much for listening. Again, Andy, thank you so much for coming on and sharing with me and your audience and for the audience. Until next time. Stay determined.