Safe Havens analysts have assisted with more school security assessments than any organization in the world.  The depth of experience gained in helping to perform school security assessments for more than 5,000 K12 schools across the nation, as well as in other countries, has revealed that a far more accurate written report can be produced when the client is afforded an opportunity to fact check a draft version of the document and to help the school security experts who prepare it ensure that the language used to describe opportunities for improvement are clear and understandable to the people who will read it.

Any firm with a solid reputation for integrity can provide an accurate and honest outside evaluation.  While school security experts who have questionable reputations may fear allegations of inappropriate influence by clients, reputable school security experts will not have any trouble handling these types of allegations.  As a case in point, many federal courts allow the hiring attorney to fact check a draft version of a written opinion rendered by a school security expert serving as an expert witness.  As this  approach is considered valid in a federal court of law where an expert witness faces intense scrutiny, we feel it is no less appropriate in a school security assessment where the need for accuracy is equally important and subject to later scrutiny. 

A school security expert with an established reputation for integrity will refuse to change findings that are accurate and properly phrased.  We have done so for a client that directly told us that we would lose several hundred thousand dollar’s worth of work on a future project if we did not eliminate an accurate finding from our report.  We politely informed the client that our integrity was worth far more than the fees for any project and the finding stayed in the report.

We have had many clients express to us that they have been stuck with an inaccurate report of findings because the report did not match what they were told in a brief exit interview by the consulting firm.  Inaccuracies and unclear writing can create significant practical hurdles and legal challenges in future safety-related litigation.  As a client, school officials should exert their right as customers to review and comment on a draft report before a final report is produced. 

I had the great pleasure of presenting on school security assessments for a general session yesterday at the 2013 Minnesota Symposium on Terrorism and Emergency Preparedness (M-STEP) conference.  I was a keynote speaker at the same conference in 2002 and felt honored to be asked to return.  Deputy Fire Chief Todd Seitz of the Brooklyn Park Fire Department wanted me to present the findings of our extensive research from writing our newest book Staying Alive – How to Act Fast and Survive Deadly Encounters to the group.  He especially wanted me to share with the audience what we have found during thousands of controlled one-on-one crisis simulations during school security assessments we have performed.  

One simple but powerful concept we covered is what Dr. Gary Klein refers to as a pre-mortem exercise.  While it is valuable to conduct post-mortem activities to learn what went wrong as well as what worked well in a school crisis, finding and correcting opportunities for improvement before an incident occurs is more proactive.  The school security assessment process is an excellent opportunity to do this. 

According to Klein, a pre-mortem activity involves an exercise which simulates that our prevention measures, crisis plans or other critical activities have failed in an incident.  Participants who have a deep understanding of the approaches involved are tasked with clear instructions.  They must accept the concept being tested has indeed failed no matter how confident we are in the approach.  They must also determine what would most likely cause such a failure.  Klein’s work has demonstrated that people who are closely attached to the concepts being tested often have an excellent ability to spot serious planning flaws even when they are emotionally attached to their plans.  We have found this to be true when our analysts use pre-mortem exercises during school security assessments and staff development sessions.

Consider using pre-mortem exercises as part of your school security assessments to more effectively vet plans, procedures and strategies.  Find and correct deadly assumptions now rather than during an event when lives are at risk.

Tom Satterly is the epitome of the best America has to offer.  Tom recently retired from a distinguished career with the United States Army.  Having served his country as a member of the 82^nd Airborne Division and as a Green Beret, Tom was selected for training with the Army’s elite Delta Force.  Selection for the year-long Delta Force Training requires physical fitness comparable to that of an Olympic athlete.  As with the Basic Underwater Demolition (BUDS) training for United States Navy SEALs, completion of the training requires an incredible degree of mental toughness and adaptability.  Tom was able to complete this training before being selected for an even more selective group of men who serve as Delta Force Special Operators.

Awarded six Bronze stars for his service to the United States Army, Tom survived 18 hours of intense combat in Mogadishu in a battle that was depicted in the movie BlackHawk Down.  I have met three men who survived that terrible battle and have the deepest respect and admiration for all of our service members who fought there.  In fact, awe would be a better description of how I feel about these men, the men who survived the Battle of the La Drang Valley in Vietnam, the assaults at Normandy, Tarawa, the Battle for Midway Island and other military actions where our troops have overcome incredible odds.  Staying Alive – How to Act Fast and Survive Deadly Encounters is designed to help distill knowledge and concepts from people who have been able to apply them to survive events that many do not.  While there are no guarantees in fast breaking life and death situations, there are possibilities and probabilities for dramatically improving human performance that we can learn and apply.

In his first public interview, Tom was kind enough to share what he could from his vast knowledge and experience for both the book and the video.  As with other special operators, he must abide by appropriate restrictions on what he can discuss but was able to share with us concepts for improving human performance that the average person can learn and apply.  I shared some of his insights with more than 600 educators and law enforcement officers in Connecticut last week and had feedback from a number of attendees who found his advice to be extremely helpful.  His contribution to Staying Alive – How to Act Fast and Survive Deadly Encounters is both valuable and appreciated.

We feel truly blessed that this amazing human being has been so generous of his time with us so that others can learn from him how to make themselves and those they care about safer.  He is currently serving as a trainer and consultant with law enforcement agencies and military groups, both overseas and here at home. His site can be found at www.worldthreatreduction.com.

I had an absolute blast doing school safety presentations for four groups last week.  I met nearly 1,000 school and law enforcement officials in Connecticut and Tennessee.  I was so fired up when I finished presenting in Connecticut that I drove all the way to my next night’s hotel after forgetting something and had to drive through Hartford traffic two more times that afternoon.  I was so inspired, this hardly seemed a bother.

My next presentation was in Jefferson County, Tennessee and I was equally inspired by the school safety advocates I encountered there.  I had the good fortune to meet a high school administrator with a stellar record not only as an effective and contentious school official but as a United States Navy SEAL.  I was deeply impressed with the Jefferson County Sherriff’s Department as well.  Every school in the county has a full-time sheriff’s deputy serving as a school resource officer.  While I was pleased that every SRO attended the training, I was most impressed that the sheriff, chief deputy, supervisors, and the fire chief made time for the school safety training as well.  School safety is clearly a priority with the public safety agencies in Jefferson County.

The enthusiastic hugs from deputies and educators were much appreciated at the end of the presentations.  While interacting with the deputies, I was as deeply impressed with them as I was with the high caliber of educators, mental health personnel, and support staff.  I was so excited at the end of the day, I left my computer in the church where I presented!  Thankfully, my client caught the oversight and another 90-minute drive corrected my error. Though I once forgot a power cord for my laptop, I have never made this type of error once, let alone twice!  This was simply an exhilarating week working with many true professionals who care deeply about school safety.  I really feel so deeply blessed to be allowed to work with so many awesome people.

I was honored to be asked the next day to present on school safety in Jefferson County again in 2014 and look forward to returning to this wonderful and beautiful community, as well as the people who make is such a special place to live and attend school.

While delivering a conference keynote at a state emergency management conference recently, I ran a simulation of a student holding a gun to his temple with his finger on the trigger and threatening to commit suicide.  The volunteer who had to verbalize what she would do as 400 people observed was a university administrator.  After she described for me and the audience what she would do to try to address the situation, we discussed her responses as a group.  When I asked if anyone in the audience would do anything differently, an attendee stated that she should have attempted to take the gun away from the student.  When I asked if he felt that she was capable of doing so, he told me that she would be if she had been properly trained.  As an instructor who teaches a sixteen hour program which includes techniques to attack an active shooter as a last resort, he felt that she would be able to reliably do so if she had completed this two-day training program utilized by many K12 schools and institutions of higher learning.  When I polled the other 400 public safety officials in the room, not one agreed that it would be a proper course of action to attempt to disarm the student. 

During the discussion, the attendee stated that 16-hours of training on disarming an armed aggressor is more than a police officer gets.  I received two weeks of this type of training in the first police academy program I attended and additional training over my two decade law enforcement career.  I would not consider it an appropriate response to use a disarming technique for the situation depicted in the video scenario.  I later learned that the gentleman asking the question is a highly motivated and dedicated campus security director at an institution of higher learning.   During a discussion following my keynote session, a group of attendees expressed concern that a caring and intelligent professional who had completed a nationally recognized instructor program would so attempt to apply techniques that are clearly designed to be applied as a last resort for active shooter situations to a situation where a student was holding a gun to his head threatening suicide.  Another higher education campus security director, who is also an instructor for the same program, expressed concern that such misapplications are likely under field conditions.

Campus safety experts, law enforcement officials, insurance carriers, and campus administrators remain heavily divided on this hotly debated concept.  People on both sides of this discussion can easily become defensive to their respective stances because they are so passionate about their responsibility to protect staff and students.  To be clear, I have never advocated that students and staff remain passive if they are trapped in a room with an armed aggressor who is actively attacking the group with a firearm or other weapon.  At the same time, extensive review of research on how the human brain works under life and death stress, personally working seven active shooter incidents in K12 schools, and hundreds of more typical school and university shootings, stabbings and other weapons assaults combined with what our analysts have found in conducting more than 3,500 controlled one-on-one campus crisis simulations, leaves me deeply troubled about current concepts being used to train people to attack and active shooter as a last resort.

Four of my colleagues and I have been conducting extensive research on this topic for a chapter dedicated to this approach in our new book Staying Alive – How to Act Fast and Survive Deadly Encounters.  We have interviewed numerous subject matter experts ranging from Delta Force Special Operators, Researchers, and leading campus safety experts. We have also interviewed victims and witnesses of dozens of campus shootings including those at Virginia Tech and Sandy Hook Elementary School.  We also ran simulations with campus employees who have completed training programs on attacking an active shooter as a last resort while also conducting simulations with employees from the same organizations who have not participated in this type of training.

Our conclusion is that the current active shooter training programs can result in the type of misapplication described earlier.  We respectfully caution that training of this type must be significantly improved to reduce the significant danger of these unintended and deadly consequences.