The Bottom Line

When a student suffered a near-fatal fentanyl overdose in a high school bathroom, Englewood Schools (CO) knew their manual security checks were failing. Safety Director Mark Edson, a 27-year law enforcement veteran and first responder at both Columbine and the STEM School shootings, needed an automated solution.

As a one-person security department, Mark couldn't afford a system that required constant maintenance. After working with Halo Smart Sensors at two previous districts, he chose Triton for Englewood. The result: 150+ vapes confiscated in a single school year, 100% sensor uptime, and total visibility into previous campus blind spots.

The Catalyst: From "Head-in-the-Sand" to Radical Visibility

Before Triton, vape and substance detection at Englewood was entirely manual. Routine bathroom walks. Bag checks. Smell-based identification. The pace told the story: one or two catches every few weeks.

Then a student went down at Colorado's Finest High School. It was a fentanyl overdose. The student was administered Narcan, transported by ambulance, and survived. The illusion of what was happening behind closed bathroom doors did not.

Why Triton Won Over Legacy Sensors

Mark wasn't new to vape detection. At both of his previous districts, he had worked with Halo Smart Sensors and found they created massive operational overhead for a small team. Dashboards weren't user-friendly, installation wasn't easy, and the team was constantly tinkering to keep things working. For a one-person department at Englewood, that level of overhead wasn't viable.

When choosing what to deploy at Englewood, Mark's non-negotiables were clear:

• Zero-Tinker Reliability. A "set-and-forget" deployment, not a maintenance project.
• Plug-and-Play Dashboard. A clean interface his team could actually use. "Sensors are installed. Here's a link. Log in. Boom. I'm on the dashboard. I see all my sensors are online. Completely smooth the whole way through," Mark recalls.
• Intelligence Beyond Vaping. Occupancy, keyword detection, and disturbance alerts in one system.

The Transformation: Before vs. After

By embedding Triton data into a multi-pronged response system (including restorative justice and cessation classes), Englewood completely shifted its security posture:

Day One: Be Careful What You Ask For

Within hours of the first sensors going live, the alerts started. Mark's catch rate jumped from one or two vapes every few weeks to four or five per day. The deluge was almost too much to keep up with. As Mark puts it: "Be careful what you ask for. Not realizing how big of a problem we had, and being able to respond to that is key."

Over the school year, Englewood pulled roughly 150 vapes off campus. The volume eventually became its own logistical problem.

Beyond Vaping: Features That Mattered Most

Triton's multi-sensor capabilities let Englewood's lean team intercept escalating behaviors before they turned into crises:

• Occupancy & Crowd Alerts. Triggers an alert when multiple students crowd into a single stall, a primary indicator of vaping, drug use, or bullying.
• Disturbance Detection. Flags elevated noise and motion patterns to alert staff to a fight in progress.
• Keyword Detection. Pushes customizable trigger words directly to staff devices.
• Zero Tampering. Despite student pushback on new rules, not one student has touched a sensor across two years of operation. "The uptime has been almost 100%," Mark says. "It just works."

A Veteran's Advice to Other Districts

With nearly three decades of K-12 security experience, Mark's advice to other administrators is less about hardware and more about institutional readiness.