I had a “Thought Leader” session at the Texas School Administrators Winter Conference in Austin the week before last.  I was impressed, however, with the caliber of people who attended the session.

I was particularly glad to see Chief Alan Bragg from the Cypress-Fairbanks Police Department in attendance.  Chief Bragg had brought me in to present about 15 years ago when he was the Chief of Police in another school district.  As with his current assignment, Chief Bragg was brought in to build a new school district police department from the ground up.  Chief Bragg is particularly skilled at blending excellent security technologies with great human practices.

It was great to have the opportunity to shake the hand of a dedicated advocate for the children who has built not just one, but two stellar school district police departments from the ground up.

Safe Havens International has been selected to perform comprehensive school security assessments for the Washington D.C. Public School System after through a competitive bid process. Our diverse team of experienced school safety experts will conduct a comprehensive school safety, security, climate, culture and emergency preparedness for the District through the U.S. General Services Administration.  Safe Havens has been selected for five school security assessment projects in the past week and our more than thirty analysts have been working tirelessly to keep the more than fifty school security assessment projects we have been working on time and within budget while consistently exceeding client expectations.  We feel blessed to have been able to attract so many talented subject matter experts to perform robust school security assessments for two of the nation’s top ten largest school districts, the Maine Department of Education, many of the nation’s finest independent schools as well as several schools in Nigeria and Kenya this year.  While conducting school security assessments for clients with more than 1,000 schools in one year has been a real challenge, the hard work and dedication of the world’s largest school safety center has made such a formidable task possible.

Our staff feels truly honored to be selected to perform the security assessments to protect staff and students in our nation’s capital.   We feel truly blessed to have so many tireless advocates for the children on our team. 

Two highly trained FBI agents were killed and five more wounded by two bank robbery suspects in a shootout in Miami in 1986.  During the post-mortem investigation, investigators learned that some agents lost their service pistols during a crash which resulted from a car chase.  The investigation revealed that a concept that had sounded like a solid idea in the theoretical realm, had not fared so well when tested by a high-stakes and dynamic event. 

Agents had been trained to draw their service weapons and put them under their thigh during car chases so they could bring them into play faster should a gunfight occur.  This seemed like a logical idea at the time.  However, under the chaotic conditions of a high speed chase followed by a multi-vehicle crash, two agents found themselves without service pistols because they were lost during the crash.  The horrific gunfight with two highly trained and practiced criminals armed with semi-automatic rifles was a disaster even though the agents outnumbered the suspects four-to-one.  The consequences of this reliance on an improperly tested theoretical tactical concept were nothing short of catastrophic.  While a number of other factors contributed to seven of the eight agents being shot by two perpetrators, loss of primary service weapons at the start of a devastating gunfight was far from helpful.  Though the concept sounded like a good idea to a number of bright and competent FBI personnel, it was not properly tested before being implemented in the field. 

In recent years, a number of experts have been asserting that lockdown is a failed concept for active shooter incidents and that new approaches are needed.  The new approaches often rely on techniques that have proven to be effective when applied by highly trained military special operators and law enforcement tactical personnel.  While based on concepts like distraction technique which have often worked well for experienced tactical personnel who typically apply them after careful planning and repetitious training simulations, a valid question to ask is whether or not the average person can apply these same concepts without the benefit of the extensive training, mental conditioning and practice that elite law enforcement and military personnel get.  To my knowledge, none of these has yet been validated with controlled testing.   

In an interview for Staying Alive – how to act Fast and Survive Deadly Encounters, former Delta Force Special Operator and tactical instructor Tom Satterly was highly skeptical that the average person can learn and apply such techniques by watching a ten minute video or attending a two-day training session.  Satterly was awarded six Bronze Stars for his service to our country and has seen extensive combat.  Having actually applied unarmed combat skills in the field, Satterly feels that most people who are capable of applying these types of advanced and complex techniques under life and death conditions would likely be able to do so without training.  Several instances of unarmed students and staff disarming active shooters lend support to this.  Satterly also feels that most people would need much more intensive and realistic training to be able to reliably do so under the toxic conditions of a life and death struggle. 

We feel that people can and should be taught proven and easy to apply strategies before covering highly advanced concepts that require considerable practice to apply under the actual stress of a life and death encounter.  We also feel that such concepts should be carefully tested before being taught to millions of people.  If highly trained FBI personnel can encounter difficulty applying theoretical concepts, how much difficulty can the average person who lacks such a highly developed professional background encounter when faced with a dire situation?

Working with architects, engineers, and school facilities personnel on hundreds of school construction projects, our school security experts have often find that local public safety officials are often not asked to assist with the design phase for new school construction and renovation projects.  Our school security experts feel this is a missed opportunity to improve the safety, security and emergency preparedness for schools and support facilities.

About fifteen years ago, I conducted a school security assessment that included an eight story school district office building in a high crime urban environment.  A municipal police sergeant was assigned to show me around the facilities we assessed.  Over the course of the assessment, I learned that this particular officer had a truly astounding base of knowledge of physical security systems, crime prevention through environmental design (CPTED) and other areas relevant to school security.  When I asked the sergeant how he knew so much about these topics, I learned that he had been assigned to lead the protective detail for the mayor of the city which has a population above one million people.  The officer had completed months of intensive training on physical security technologies, CPTED as well as advanced training on dignitary protection by the United States Secret Service.  It turns out that this officer had far more formal training and field experience than many full-time school security experts who serve as school safety consultants on a full-time basis.

I asked the sergeant if they had allowed him to assist in the design of the building.  He told me that the response from the school district’s facility director was that there was nothing a police officer could teach an architect.  As a result of this poor decision, the district would now have to spend more than $500,000 in corrective construction and security technology upgrades because of serious design flaws.  In each case, this sergeant had tried to tell school officials would be problematic when he was finally allowed look at the final building plan.  They brushed his suggestions aside, built the facility, and then brought me in after a series of security incidents took place at the facility.  Had they allowed this sergeant in to assist the architects and listed to him, they would likely have not needed to bring me in to help them identify and fix the problems he could have helped them prevent.

I have seen many examples of schools that are superbly designed because local police, fire and emergency managers have been brought to the table early in the design process.  This approach not only results in safer and more effective schools, but can reduce exposure to civil liability as well.  While our school security experts love this type of work, we always ask our clients to involve their local public safety experts in the design process.  This is a typical topic in our school safety design conference keynote presentations.

Consider taking advantage of the dedicated and talented school safety experts in your community for school construction projects.