The Benny Show - After His Daughter Died in a Shooting, This Father Devoted His Life to Securing America’s Schools

Episode Date: June 6, 2022

Parkland father Andrew Pollack joins The Benny Show to discuss school safety in America Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Truck Month is on at Chevrolet! Get 0% financing for up to 72 months on a 2025 Silverado 1500 Custom Blackout or Custom Trail Boss. With Custom Trail Bosses available, Class Exclusive, Duramax 3.0L Diesel Engine, and Z71 Off-Road Package with a 2-inch Factory Suspension Lift, you get both on-road confidence and off-road capability. Dirt road ahead? Let's go! Truck Month is awesome! Ask your Chevrolet dealer for details. Today is Monday, June 6th, 2022, D-Day. The day that American men stormed the beaches to deliver an entire continent from fascism. We, on our special today, wish to deliver a different set of people from a

different type of danger. That deadly danger is school shootings. Why do they happen? How do they continue to occur in this country? And what can we do to stop them? Much like the brave soldiers who stormed the beaches on D-Day, they wished to create a safer world and a world where children could grow up in peace. School shooters, the maniacs and mentally ill robbed children of that right. And we are going to discuss on our show today an exclusive interview with Andrew Pollack, the Parkland parent who has done more than any living American to make schools safe. We hope you'll join us. My name is Benny Johnson, and this is The Benny Show. The greatest horror that could become a parent, I am a father of two, is to get a phone call that there is a shooter rampaging through your son or daughter, in my case, school.

That is the phone call that, I mean, in the list of bad things that could potentially happen to you as a parent, that's got to be near the very, very top. The fear, the grief, the horror, the pain. I mean, it's got to break a person. Thankfully, there are very few on planet earth who has, who have to get phone calls like that in States that have good hardened schools and laws on the books to prevent school shootings like Florida. Well, it's become exceedingly rare that a call like that would have to happen. It had to happen in 2018 in the Parkland school shooting because of lax policies, Obama-era policies, because of horrific school superintendents who allowed a gunman to rampage through that school and kill 17 students. Does it remind you of anything? In Uvalde, Texas, the same similar horrifying event happened four years

later. A gunman was able to enter a school and was able to rampage through and end the lives of 21 Americans, many of them children. How do we stop these monsters? What do we do? The question on the mind of every single parent, I don't care where you send your kids to school. I don't care if your kids are grown. They could be 40 years old and you could be 60 and you could be saying, how do I protect my kids? It will never leave you. You will never ever spend a day as a parent. If you are a good and honorable parent saying, I don't care about my kids or I don't care about their safety. But so few of us actually stop and do something to make the world safer for our children and for other children. Luckily, in this country, we have dads like Andrew Pollack, who after losing his daughter Meadow in the Parkland shooting four years ago, has set aside

on his own a bulldog-like mentality to bite and to grip and to sink his teeth into the issue of school shootings and to make schools safer for all of us in this country, for every parent, for every child and for the teachers and administrators who work inside those schools. We want our children to be safe and there's no one in the country making schools safer than Andrew Pollack. This man lost his daughter, and it sent him on a mission to make sure that no one else ever again has to get that phone call. There's a shooter at your school. You need to come down to the property immediately. Joining us now, Andrew Scott Pollock, who's an American author, safety activist, and entrepreneur, whose daughter, Meadow, was one of the 17 deceased victims in the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in 2018, right here in Florida. Very few in this country

have fought more to protect our children. Nary, should I say, no one has done more than the one man wrecking crew, Andrew Pollack. He is truly the personification of what every parent should be for protecting children. Thank you for joining the program, Andrew. Well, thanks for that kind intro, Benny, and thanks for having me on. I guess the first opening salvo here has got to be what went wrong. You know, you become an expert on hardening schools and on school safety. And you have long that brought you to the White House, that brought you to multiple meetings with President Trump, that brought legislation here in Florida and nationally. And you are just a force of nature, but you still watch these moments like in Uvalde and you say, what the hell, man? Like, seriously,

what is your takeaway from Uvalde and has anything changed for the better? Well, one thing you mentioned President Trump, and I haven't praised him lately, but you mentioned him and I have to bring it up. So when President Trump and I met, he formed he put a commission, a safety commission together to look into best practices for school districts throughout the country. And he worked on it a year. He put some good people on it. They did lots of research and they came up with over a hundred recommendations that schools should be doing. And evidently, you know, he didn't get much credit like everything else he's been successful in. They didn't give him any credit. And in Texas and Ovalde, they didn't read it, I guess.

Well, all those kids would be alive if they just followed any of those suggestions. So that's one thing. But it sickens me, Benny, how easily it happened. People forget. I don't forget because I made friends with people that I keep in touch with. In Santa Fe, Texas, May 18th, 2018, a few months after my daughter was murdered, there was a school shooting where 10 people were murdered.

And same exact thing, Benny. Side door was open and the shooter went in and killed these people with a shotgun. So the media didn't go all on board because it wasn't a scary looking rifle. So he killed my people that I know, they killed his son with a shotgun. And here you go again, you fast forward and the doors are open. You know, that door's open. And then people aren't talking about the interior door to the classroom.

So they heard the shots outside. And I wonder even if the principal called the code red and put the school on lockdown. I don't know. All this is going to come out. We're currently in the month of June 2022. June 6th, 1944 was the infamous D-Day landing, something that changed the history of the world. Do you know that not since that landing has the S&P 500 had a worse start to their year? Not since World War II have stocks been hammered so hard in this nation. We were at global war before we had such a plunge in the stock market. Amazon down 37%, Tesla down 40%, and crypto just decimated. Now is the time, ladies and gentlemen, to start thinking about protecting what you own, what you have earned. And my recommendation is to consider precious metals. And the only company to do that with

is Birch Gold. They're the only people that I trust. They can help you convert your IRA or 401k into a gold and silver backed IRA and 401k. A precious metal is something that has retained its value for all time. So it doesn't matter if it's world wars or if it's Joe Biden as president, this is a commodity that retains its value. I recommend Birch Gold because my family personally uses them to help diversify our finances, and I could not be happier with the service we received. Text Benny to 989898 to get a free zero-obligation info kit on holding gold in a tax sheltered account. Ladies and gentlemen, make your finances Joe Biden proof. Text Benny to 989898 and go gold. Yeah, you're starting to see some very depressing and very alarming, disturbing things like the stand down order that was issued and them thinking

that he was a barricaded shooter when he was an active shooter, the police officers restraining parents who were hysterical outside. It does seem like a catastrophic failure on every single front. What in that Donald Trump commission, what are some of the top line items that you would like to surface now for our audience as to how you would recommend hardening a school? Well, it starts before the hardening of the school. It also starts with these things, I call them, you know, that are just evil, mentally sick. You know, they need to be dealt with in the right way. You know, not coddled. You're going to hear, it's all going to come out.

The police were at this person's place probably multiple times without an arrest ever. You know, the same thing with my daughter's shooter, 45 times the Broward Sheriff's Office went to his house and never arrested. So kids need accountability like adults. That's one thing that was in there. He ended these Obama leniency policies, President Trump, which these schools, I guess, in that district didn't do it because this kid, you know, we're going to find out that it wasn't his first time ever getting into trouble. You know, kids don't just wake up one day and say, I want to shoot my grandmother and shoot people out of school. So one of the most important things, like any one of your listeners that are listening, I like to tell parents, my first advice is if you can afford it, send your children to private school. That's the easiest fix right there. You know what I mean? But if that's added a question for a lot of people in america uh sending your child to private school you don't hear about shootings you could go back i never hear about a shooting at a private school that would be the best fix right there if

you can do that but if you can't what you do you got to do you got to get involved with your school district locally parents need to wake up and find out what's going on locally at their school because it boils down to the district. It's more important who's running your school board than who's sitting in the White House. So getting involved at the schools, fencing around the school. There should be a good perimeter around the school of a fence that someone just can't jump over, like a four-foot fence that was in Texas. And the gates need to be locked when school is in possession. All the doors need to be locked, and you need a single point of entry. I tell parents, drop your children off, go back to the school, go get a coffee, go back to the school, see if you can get into the school.

You know, go through a gate, knock on the door. You're entitled. You want to make sure your children are safe. Okay? So knock on the door. You know, I tell parents, just because there's a single point of entry doesn't mean the principal is reiterating rules of do not open a door if someone knocks on it. What's the shooter going to do? He's going to knock on a door, and most likely one of the students or the faculty might open the door.

So do that test. Make sure there's a single point of entry at the school, you know, where there's a door, and then you walk into a lobby, and then there's another set of doors. They can check your ID. And it's 2022. and then there's a, you walk into a lobby and then there's another set of doors they can check your ID. And it's 2022. There's no reason why a school shouldn't have a police officer, armed, plainclothes police in the school.

I wouldn't send, you know, there's no chance in hell if ever my sons have some kids that they're going to go to a school where there's not policemen or guardians. There was you came down like a ton of bricks in Parkland, the administration and also the school resource officer who behaved like a jackass and a coward and somebody who really should just be a black Sabbath on the entire profession of police as it pertained to the shooting at Stoneman Douglas. You even got the Senate Bill 7026, the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act passed that reinforced that policing. Your thoughts on sort of the lackadaisical, very seemingly botched police effort in Uvalde?

And how can we be sure that these police officers will behave bravely, even if they are on site? Well, good thing about Florida is they learned and they put it, Governor Scott at the time formed the Marjory Stoneman Douglas Public Safety Commission. He put experts on this commission and they dissected every single failure that happened. It's been years they've been working on it. Friends of mine are on it. They meet periodically throughout the year and they go over the failures and they make changes to school districts. One of the changes that I'm very proud of that

every school in the state of Florida has a police officer or a guardian per 500 students in every school. So you're not relying on just one officer to be a coward. And it could happen, you know, at any point, someone could not go in, someone could hide behind a wall. So it's one per 500. In the state of Florida, depending on the district, school teachers, if they volunteer, could go through this guardian program, which is very intense, and they can be allowed to carry in the school. I think it's a great idea to go through. If a teacher wants to go through this training, okay, they're held to a higher standard of accuracy when they take their shooting

test, they're held to a higher standard of accuracy than a regular deputy that goes and goes through the academy. Wow. So those changes. Yeah. And that's in my friend, good friend, Grady Jordan, Polk County, that sheriff, he wrote the curriculum for that.

But there's certain districts, you know, depending on the district, how serious they take school safety. It depends if they have that program. So, you know, it all depends. So that's why I say parents need to get involved. It's the most important thing, Benny, that any parent can do. If you can't send them to private school, get involved locally with your school board. Because you have such a unique experience as somebody who has lost a child in one of these shootings, it must have been horrifying for you to see some of this footage of parents being held

back while there was an active shooter in the school rampaging for 40 to 70 minutes. We're still waiting on the complete tick tock timeline of what happened, but I mean, this must've been gut wrenching. Well, first when it comes to safety in schools, it's not a one fix for all. There needs to be multiple factors, you know, like at my house, you heard my dog barking. That's my first, first I have a perimeter fence, right? Then I have my Belgian Malinois.

And then I have, I'm armed to the teeth out here. You know what I mean? When it comes to my safety, because I'm damaged from what happened to my daughter, how she was a victim. You know, just sitting there and they let her get shot nine times, Benny. I'm never, I go everywhere armed to the tilt. I will never be a victim and let someone that I love just curl like that in a ball and get shot. You know, I just can't do it. And I got PTSD from it, from my daughter being a victim. So I, my friends, I never want them to be a victim. And if I'm there, I'm going to help them and do as much as I can to prevent it.

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Not in this context. I'm not a biologist. Why is it so difficult for hardened leftists to answer that question? What is a woman? Can a man get pregnant? Do ladies have beards? Well, I know someone with a beard who's not a lady. He's a man, and that man's name is Matt Walsh. He works for the Daily Wire, and he has a brand

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backslash Benny to watch this bombshell documentary asking the greatest question of our generation. What is a woman? So like schools, like I said, schools need multiple things in place to be safe. Fencing, single point of entry. They need to hold kids accountable that commit crimes. They need a police officer, guardian, as many as possible in the school that go through training. And getting back to your question about the parents and the entry into the school, it's too early. I want to see the video. You know, I know from talking to some Navy SEALs

that I'm friends with who do active shooter, I don't know what happened with that door. You know what I mean? That door that was, you know, that he went into, it could take, he told me, Andy, that door could take 30 to 40 minutes to breach. If they don't, I don't, but I don't know if they had the key. I don't know everything. Could they have went in with the key? Did they have shotguns, have breaching shells to breach a door? I don't think that it's realistic to think that the police would just shoot at the door lock when there's children on the other side. So all these things are going to come out with the body cameras and with the footage at the school.

And I'm not privy to everything what happened at that school. You know, but I'd like to say in Broward, you know, like you said, I was a wrecking ball in Broward to hold people accountable for my daughter. And I like to tell people that with Governor DeSantis, we were able to get a lot of accountability in the state of Florida. First, well, I'll say Governor Scott put in that safety commission to look into all the failures. That was number one. I reached out to Governor Abbott in Texas. I should probably be speaking with him in the next week. I want him.

You can't just look into the failures of that day. You got to look into prior failures of that shooter. How many times they went there? Why wasn't he arrested? Did he have any mental health counseling? Who dropped the ball? You got to see all this stuff to move, you know, to fix things. You know, like I said, you got to fix it. You got to see what happened, you know. So that was Governor Scott. Then comes along Governor DeSantis, who's, I call him a savage. He's great. I'm friendly with him. He's a great guy. I met with him when he was running for office. And he told me he's going to hold public officials accountable. And that's exactly

what he did. I said, you know what? If you're telling me you're going to do that, I'm going to get behind you in this election. And I gave it my all, Benny, to get DeSantis elected. And it was close. Remember, they were counting votes for like weeks. We almost had that crackhead that was in Miami with male prostitutes. Remember that guy? He was laid out in a hotel. My family would not be living in Florida right now, Andrew, if that was the case. So thank you.

Yeah, no, you could. So first month in office, DeSantis removed that failed sheriff for being a failure. And he held him accountable and he lost his job. That was number one. Number two, he put in a grand jury investigation into the school district at what happened. There was some arrest, but the biggest arrest was the superintendent from Chicago, Robert Ronci, a piece of garbage. He was arrested on perjury, felony perjury charges and lost his position at the district. And another thing that that's going on is the deputy that didn't go in that hid behind the wall for 40 minutes, the one was arrested on felony

child endangerment, and his trial will be in September. So I've been working endlessly on accountability and and I'm going to get it for my daughter. You know, there's nothing that can stop me. Good. And God bless you. More parents be like Andrew. If somebody comes for your family, make them pay. He's like a real life Liam Neeson. He's like, he's like taken. He's like Liam Neeson out of taken. Like I will hunt you down. It is incredible to speak with Andrew. You've

written this incredible book. I do want to talk about it for just a moment. In 2019, you published Why Meadow Died, People, Policies That Created the Parkland Shooter and Endanger America's Students. I'd like to sort of zoom in on that book. It's a remarkable book. I will never be sending my kid to public school because of your book, but there is a specific chapter where you talk about Obama era policies for youth leniency as it pertains to arrests. And I'd like for you, I don't want to, I don't want to get particularly political here necessarily, but I'd like for you to go maybe extrapolate that. I don't think many people understand how hard it was made to be able to arrest a young person who's clearly a danger to themselves and those around them. I wasn't political, Benny, until this hell happened. And then I dissected

it. And I learned for myself how evil these policies were and who ran the county of Broward, how I made such a mistake living there. And I'm paying the ultimate sacrifice i'm paying for moving there so the policies might i got so unlucky that so the superintendent that i spoke about robert runcie he came from chicago this guy and they hired him in broward county he had ties to then the education commissioner was arnie duncan uh for the country with ties. He was there when President Obama was there. So he came to Broward County and put these policies into place that he said that African Americans were getting suspended more than Caucasians. So there must be racism within the school. Okay. And, and the policing, which isn't the case. It was just, you know, African-Americans were committing more,

getting suspended more because they did more at school to get suspended. So instead of looking into the problems and working with these kids, they just said, well, let's not suspend them and let's not suspend anybody. So it even got worse than suspensions. They weren't even arresting. So when my daughter went to school, kids were allowed four felonies per school year without ever getting arrested or getting introduced to law enforcement, so they could sell weed, rob a cell phone, assault the teacher, you know, in one school year, right? And then the next following year would reset. But I suppose that I met with President Trump, he ended the policies, but just because he does it at a federal level, you're going to get these real liberal law school districts that still participate in this type of junk. And it doesn't help kids by not regardless of color. Kids need accountability. And by not showing them accountability, you set children up for failure. When does fast grocery delivery through Instacart matter most?

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Remember this last month when Elon Musk announced that he would be turning Twitter into a free speech company and that speech would be legal on the platform once more? Remember the demon screams from the left as they writhed and ripped their garments because there would be a place where conservatives might speak freely. Well, that's because the left knows that censorship and destroying conservative thoughts and ripping conservative websites down from the internet is one of their most powerful tools.

It always is for the communist. That's why we host Benny Johnson.com and this show through right forge, right? Forge is the only internet server company that allows for free speech and will protect American virtues like freedom of association and thought right. Forge is the internet server company that protects the American internet, and they are building their new internet right now. I totally recommend that you take your company and your products online over to RightForge at RightForge.com. RightForge.com, the real American internet. Up to four felonies. Misdemeanors. Did I hear that right?

Four misdemeanors. Four misdemeanors. Four misdemeanors for a school year without getting ever introduced into law enforcement. And so the teachers are getting assaulted. Kids are getting assaulted. They're smoking weed in the bathrooms. But when you look at the records,

this guy, the superintendent, looked like he was the Messiah. You know, he fixed everything. No one's getting suspended. Wow. Suspensions are down 70% since the superintendent took over. So it's just false numbers and a false narrative. And you're really hurting kids by not pointing them in the right direction at an early age. That's right. Society in decay and allowing the children who all a young man wants is to have somebody who sets rules for him

and cares about him enough to hold him accountable. And they don't get that. And the rest of us suffer. Somebody who's never held his son accountable is the current president of the United States. And you see the results of having a son like Hunter Biden. Joe Biden, clearly kind of a bad dad. I mean, you got to say, you got to look at the results. But as a president and a comforter in chief, he's found the time to go to Buffalo. He's found the time to go to Uvalde. Every time

he's there, he demonizes, he attacks his political opponents, and he goes after scoring political points, making political hay out of tragedy while the blood is still drying on the sidewalk half the time. We could do this for a couple of days on this guy. But my thoughts is, you know, he picked a terrible time. He signed an executive order a few days ago about police reform, you know, which is ridiculous. You know, I support law enforcement, even though, you know, some of them failed me and my daughter that day. I have good friends that are in law enforcement. We need to give them the right tools to work with,

not to defund them and sign executive orders showing that we don't support them. You know, that's what he did, I think, the day after the Evaldi shooting. What about one of the guys that did go in, you know, that shot this guy, you know, and killed him? And like I said, we don't know how many times the police go towards the gunfire or who are you going to call when there is an issue? You know, most people are going to call 911 and you're going to have law enforcement come and help you. So I don't get this guy. There's so many things. The money going to Ukraine really crushed me because a lot of the Republicans still voted for it. These rhinos that we have in the Senate, it's really horrible. We could use how much,

what 40 billion, what could you have done in this country for school safety and for these children that are having issues? What kind of trade schools could we have built with $40 billion to teach children how to make a living in this country with all the changing that's been going on in careers? And we sent $40 billion. Now they want to send more. We don't have, you know, the foreign policy. It's just a wreck. And what kills me is Republicans voted with these Democrats to send that money while Americans are suffering. You know, how many police officers could we have paid with that money to send that money while Americans are suffering? You know, how many police officers could we have paid with that money

to be at these schools protecting our kids? I mean, somebody did the math, but you could absolutely hire a veteran per school in America with that money and then another one per school with that money. And we've already trained them and we've already made them lethal at our tax dollars. Last question, Andrew.

Sure. Speaking of lethality and our tax dollars and Americans rights, the second amendment of course, is something that you care personally about you and I know each other and we've become friends over the, the, the working on projects over the last couple of years. But the Second Amendment NRA members always come under attack in times like this. Your personal thoughts on gun confiscation and gun control in the wake of a shooting like this. I'm not going to go for it the thing that bothers me

when they talk about guns after this it takes away from solving real solutions looking into the failures they're looking at guns why was the door open all us gun owners

that follow the laws why should we be affected by it when When you got this, they left the door open. They left the school door open. We don't know how many times law enforcement was to this guy's house without ever getting arrested. So I'll have to move back to Florida full time if that starts happening. But it just takes away from real solutions, Benny. They did it in Parkland. Those kids didn't accomplish anything. The ones that were going on a march, they're going to do another march now. Anyone that's listening, don't get that march for our lives are dying.

Okay. They didn't do anything in Parkland. They just want to raise money off the dead children in Texas. It's a horrible situation. It's horrible what they do. And they never even look into solutions that that will make a difference. OK, gun control is not the solution. I, you know, look, this I hate to say this. It's kind of nasty, but this kid could have went in with a hatchet,

through the door, right? Right through the door with a hatchet, went into the classroom with the door open. Right. And he could have hatcheted these kids and the teacher. No one was going to stop him. He walked right into the classroom. He could have had a baseball bat. He could have had a knife. He could have had anything. And he could have done the same damage what he did.

Why is it? No one's talking about that. You know, I know it because it was the same thing in my daughter's school. The shooter reloaded five times while he was in my daughter's school without anyone trying to stop it. Horrifying. You have a backpack. I did want to end with this because of all of the incredible solutions. This is an amazing one. Do you have it within hand? Can you show our audience? Yeah, I'm sending you, what did you say? You have three, right? I'm sending you three. I'll get your address. These things, it's real versatile for parents. This could go in your backpack, in your computer bag. It's bullet resistant up to certain calibers, and it weighs less than a pound. It's just something extra a parent could do or an adult, you know what I mean? But you're working where we used to go. Remember, I met you in D.C. This is the perfect place when everywhere you go in any of these cities to have something like this. At least you have a fighting chance a little bit to my website. It's Byrna, B-Y-R-N-A, Byrna.com forward slash school safety, and it lays out all the recommendations. I will come personally to schools throughout the country with my law enforcement colleagues and put a plan in place for any school in the country that wants us. Incredible. An actual patriot and somebody who

does something and makes the world better around him, a wrecking ball and a force for good. Andrew Pollack, thank you for being on the program. Thanks, Benny. We'll talk soon. All right. Tough conversation there with our true friend of the show, somebody who's making the country safer for your kids and mine, Andrew Pollack. If only American parents had the same type of passion and drive and grit as that man, we would live in a safer, better, truer country. And we must strive for that. Take a dose of devotion for your child's safety and upbringing the way that Andrew Pollack does for his children. God bless that man. And God bless you for watching. We, of course, have our priorities right on the show. God, family,

country. We were born free men and women, and we're going to stay that way. Thanks to Andrew Pollack, we may be a little bit safer. God bless you. My name is Benny Johnson. Thank you for watching The Benny Show. Former MLB All-Star Sean Casey, a.k.a. The Mayor, keeps hitting it out of the park. Take my 30 years of experience. Take the wisdom and knowledge I've learned from the failures

when I got sent down my rookie year. All the injuries I had to overcome. Your mind is the most important tool you have in life. Be relentless. Keep charging. It matters how you talk to yourself, how you look at the world. That matters. We talk about that. I don't know.

I'm fired up. Baseball's back, and it's going to be incredible. I love it. The Mayor's Office with Sean Casey from Believe. Follow and listen on your favorite platform.