The ambitious $7 million technology program was supposed to make Hawaiʻi schools safer by equipping teachers and principals with panic buttons and mobile apps to alert law enforcement about emergencies on campus. 

Two years after launching the effort, only one school in the state has panic buttons on its campus — and it’s not using them. Meanwhile, SaferWatch, the company contracted to provide software and monitoring services for the program, is facing federal scrutiny after its former chief executive officer was charged with bribing a New York Police Department officer to pressure local officials to spend millions of dollars on panic buttons in schools. 

Hawaiʻi Department of Law Enforcement Director Mike Lambert said the state went through the proper procurement process to secure its three contracts with SaferWatch to provide services to the education department and several other agencies. A separate company holds the contracts for the panic buttons, and the state has spent at least $1.5 million so far to purchase buttons for schools. 

While the federal government has requested Hawaiʻi’s procurement documents for the SaferWatch technology, Lambert said, the department hasn’t been accused of any wrongdoing.

The contracts were executed under Lambert’s predecessor, Jordan Lowe. Lowe resigned from the Department of Law Enforcement last year as several staffers were under investigation for misconduct and harassment. 

While school leaders said the Department of Education was in the process of piloting the panic buttons in early 2025, they now predict launching the program at a single school in August. They expect it to take a few more years for all campuses to have access to the technology.

The delay stems from the education department’s prolonged negotiations with school employee unions and SaferWatch to determine how the technology, including cameras and GPS tracking, will be used. DOE is also still finalizing its agreement with the Department of Law Enforcement.

The total costs of the program have yet to be determined, since the state still needs to purchase more panic buttons and some schools will need to install cameras that will eventually use SaferWatch’s monitoring system. 

“This should be a priority,” Sen. Donovan Dela Cruz said in a budget hearing with education department officials in January 2025. “Coconut wireless is not a good option, you’ve got to get this kind of stuff up.” 

Other Hawaiʻi agencies have successfully adopted the company’s technology and tip lines. The tip lines, which allow residents to share reports of illegal fireworks, agriculture crime and gun-related violence, have garnered thousands of reports since 2024, current SaferWatch CEO Rob Flippo said in an emailed statement. In the last two days of 2025, the illegal fireworks tip line received more than 500 reports alone. 

“I can’t disagree with the product,” Lambert said. “Even though it has this dark cloud over it, the product itself serves its purpose.” 

Millions Spent On Technology

The state’s partnership with SaferWatch began in 2023, when the Department of Law Enforcement entered into a $97,000 contract to use the company’s software to receive tips and monitor potential threats against the governor and lieutenant governor, Lambert said. 

The department was impressed with the company and how its products were used in some of the largest school districts in the nation, Lambert said. In December 2023, he said, the department entered into a second, larger contract with SaferWatch: a $7 million agreement to provide safety monitoring in public schools over five years. 

Once teachers and principals receive panic buttons, SaferWatch will be responsible for reviewing calls from the buttons from its 24/7 monitoring center on the mainland and communicating with local law enforcement about campus emergencies, Lambert said. The monitoring center will eventually be able to see live video footage from school cameras as well, although DOE is still working on the details of the agreement with SaferWatch to protect student privacy and ensure operators aren’t monitoring campus activity unless they’re receiving alerts from the panic buttons, said Assistant Superintendent Sean Tajima. 

A third contract in spring 2024 awarded the company $1.85 million across five years to monitor Hawaiʻi tip lines, which allow residents to anonymously submit crime reports through an app or online form. 

The Department of Law Enforcement purchased the SaferWatch technology through a cooperative purchasing agreement with the National Association of State Procurement Officials, Lambert said. While the multi-state agreement is intended to vet products and give agencies discounted prices, departments are still required to solicit two price quotes from other vendors before entering into major software contracts like SaferWatch, according to the State Procurement Office. 

“In Hawaiʻi, there’s so many checks and balances on large procurement,” Lambert said. “We have to follow all state procurement rules.” 

The five-year SaferWatch contracts also required the approval of the state Project Advisory Council, which reviews the procurement of certain information technology agreements and evaluates their value. 

Civil Beat filed a public records request for the state’s contracts with SaferWatch but has not yet received the documents. 

In spring 2024, SaferWatch set its sights on expanding the state’s investment in panic buttons and safety software. The company paid lawyer and former Honolulu council member Ernie Martin $20,000 to lobby the Legislature, according to its report to the State Ethics Commission. 

In an emailed statement, Martin said he was successful in securing an additional $5 million appropriation for school security in DOE’s budget. The $5 million went toward purchasing panic buttons and improving security camera infrastructure at elementary schools, Tajima said. Despite SaferWatch’s lobbying, the state chose another vendor — Centegix — to provide panic buttons in schools. 

While the state initially purchased some panic buttons from SaferWatch, the education department realized it would be too expensive to purchase the product for every school in the state, Tajima said. The Centegix buttons were a cheaper, more feasible option, he said.  

“To scale that from a pilot to going statewide just wasn’t fiscally responsible on our part,” Tajima said.

SaferWatch remains responsible for monitoring the threats schools report through the panic buttons, Lambert said.

A Slow Start

Initially, DOE aimed to pilot the panic buttons in 2025 and have them in every school by the 2026-27 academic year. 

Now, Tajima said, the timeline has been pushed back by a few years, since the pilot involving the first Oʻahu school won’t start until August. The education department is still in the process of negotiating with staff unions about how school workers will use the buttons and finalizing agreements with the Department of Law Enforcement about how the technology will be used in schools, he said. 

The five-year license providing the SaferWatch monitoring software to the DOE won’t start until all schools have access to the technology, Assistant Superintendent Amy Peckinpaugh said. 

Unions representing school staff have also raised concerns about how the buttons might track employees and monitor their movement on campus, Lambert said. Certain panic buttons could track the location of employees, since the technology needs to have real-time estimates of where emergencies take place on campus, he said. 

School staff will not be required to use the buttons, Tajima said, adding he expects the DOE and unions to reach an agreement soon.

The total costs of rolling out panic buttons to all schools has yet to be determined. The state bought an initial batch of panic buttons for 100 schools for $1.5 million, Tajima said, but it will need to purchase more to cover all 258 schools run by the education department. 

The program will likely face additional costs in the future, since some schools will need new cameras installed in order to send video feeds to SaferWatch’s monitoring center on the mainland, Peckinpaugh said. The pilot starting in August will not involve SaferWatch’s camera monitoring features.

“It’s going to be quite pricey,” she said, adding that the department doesn’t have the full cost estimates yet.

In the meantime, the state is making use of SaferWatch’s products by distributing panic buttons and software previously purchased for the DOE to other state agencies, including the Department of Human Services and lawmakers at the Capitol, Lambert said. As of fall 2024, four lawmakers carried panic buttons in the Capitol, but Lambert said his department intends to make the technology available to all legislators. 

Earlier this year, law enforcement officers were alerted of a threat against the executive branch and were able to locate the suspect using SaferWatch technology, Flippo said. The suspect had made threats to kill the governor and lieutenant governor and attack the Capitol, he said in an emailed statement.

Sen. Karl Rhoads was involved in the early rollout of the SaferWatch technology at the Capitol in fall 2024 and carried a panic button after receiving death threats. But Rhoads said he never needed to use the button and stopped carrying it months ago after threats against him subsided. 

Even still, he said, DOE campuses should take precautions and make use of available technology that can improve law enforcement’s abilities to quickly respond to emergencies like school shootings. In the 2022-23 school year — the most recent year data is publicly available — 26 DOE students were dismissed for bringing a firearm to campus. 

“It goes without saying that we should keep our kids as safe as we can, without completely turning schools into prisons,” Rhoads said. “I’m all in favor of doing what we can to take prudent precautions.”

Civil Beat’s education reporting is supported by a grant from Chamberlin Family Philanthropy.