School Security Expert Tip – Assess, not Guess When it Comes to School Security Assessments

The more school security assessments we perform, the more we see how different actual school security practices often are in contrast to what school security policies and the expectations of school leaders are.   One purpose of a school security assessment is to see what the reality in schools is in contrast to what we think is taking place.  This is important because effective school security involves creating a reasonable degree of consistency in the application of school security policies and practices so school security incidents will not occur. 

Our team of school security experts has regularly helped school and public safety officials to identify and correct these deadly school security gaps during school security assessment projects.  School security assessments are an excellent opportunity to find and fix gaps in school security that can result in tragedy.  While school security experts and school security assessments can help to identify these types of gaps, there are other ways that school and public safety officials can try to identify and correct potentially dangerous gaps in school security before someone gets hurt.  By developing a mindset that constantly asks if the way schools operate matches what written plans and procedures spell out, people who have responsibilities can often spot and then correct situations where the written guidelines do not match actual practices.

School Security Expert Tip – Disturbing New Trends in School Security Assessments

Safe Havens analysts are currently working on 20 school security assessment projects covering several hundred public school and non-public school facilities.  Our analysts are all reporting some very unique trends in contrast to the school security assessments we assisted our clients with prior to the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in December.  These trends should be of considerable concern to school and public safety officials. 

With a base of comparison from school security assessment projects covering  more than 2,000 public and non-public schools in the forty-eight months prior to the shooting and several hundred public and non-public schools since then, our team of school security experts are observing some very noticeable and troublesome trends across the country.  In fact, in many instances, the results of the school security assessments show an apparent decrease in performance of many staff in these simulations and recent actions that have degraded rather than improved physical security in many schools.

For example, we are encountering numerous school employees who respond that they would immediately “attack” people when they are posed with video clips depicting school crisis scenarios with aggressors and even individuals who are depicted as simply non-compliant.  Evaluation participants routinely make comments to us that this is how they are now supposed to protect students by putting themselves in danger and physically confronting potentially violent people.  This is a very disturbing trend as the scenarios we are asking them to respond to include a variety of situations where attacking the person depicted would be a very ineffective and dangerous response.  Scenarios where we are getting this response include:

  • An angry parent who pulls a knife and threatens staff from a stationary position
  • A student who pulls a handgun, places it on his temple and threatens to kill himself
  • A man who is not wearing a visitor badge and refuses to stop for staff as he walks down a school hallway

Having conducted and scored many of these scenarios under controlled conditions in recent years, we are often seeing less effective responses after the Sandy Hook incident than we saw before the incident.  Our school security experts have been using these custom video scenarios and our scoring tools when we conduct school security assessments for some time now and are seeing these trends in different regions of the country. 

Further interviews with the test subjects that provide these responses reveal that the media coverage of Sandy Hook incident combined in some cases with staff having viewed videos on the web that teach people to attack an active shooter as a last resort has influenced their decision-making.  These are not the only problems we are noting in our assessments.  We are seeing a significant increase in school employees who cover up windows because they are afraid of gunman. This can actually increase the risk of death at a school because it can result in missed opportunities to identify a dangerous person before then enter a school or after they have done so.  Blocking classroom windows can also cause a host of other problems for school officials and can increase exposure to civil liability.

School officials should provide guidance for staff on deviating from carefully and properly developed school crisis plans by adopting strategies that are often theoretical, unproven and in some instances are outright dangerous.  For example, one popular video instructs people to immediately evacuate if they hear gunshots in the building.  In a high school of 2,000 students, this would flood the building with potential victims.  If you have ever seen the crowding of hallways in the typical high school at class change, the jamming of people that will occur with this approach could easily prove the be catastrophic in the event of an active shooter.

We anticipate that over time this trend will likely result in preventable fatalities and successful litigation against school organizations where these situations occur as well as for the organizations disseminating this type of information.   The findings of these school security assessments are clear, school and public safety officials should exercise caution before adopting these types of approaches.  Controlled testing has demonstrated that they may increase rather than decrease the risk of death as staff and students misapply the concepts even under the mild stress of a simulation.  Now is the time for thoughtful, analytical and assessment-based approaches to school crisis planning rather than fear-based approaches.

School Security Expert Tip – Speed of Decision Making in Perspective

It can be difficult to unwind when working long days seven days a week as our analyst often have to do right now.  Our dedicated school security experts are working on more than 20 school security assessment projects covering hundreds of schools while also keynoting more than a dozen statewide school security conferences in the next 90 days. 

One thing that helps me to relax after a long day of assessment work is to read.  I particularly like to read history books and most especially enjoy reading military history works.  I like to read these to be reminded of the incredible efforts of military personnel from around the world and throughout history to protect their nations.  I also learn a great deal about crisis preparedness and response from these books.  This weekend, I began reading The Last Battle – The Mayaguez Incident and the End of the Vietnam WarThough I have read dozens of books on the Vietnam War, I did not know much about this incident. 

So far, the author has been focusing a great deal on the speed and quality of decision-making at different levels ranging from the troops on the ground all the way to the White House.  By this point, President Gerald Ford could talk directly to a combat pilot across the globe.  But as the author points out, such amazing communications capabilities do not always ensure good communications and decision-making.

In one chapter, the author uses what I think is an excellent quote from Lee Iacocca to put these types of decisions as well as those in school crisis situations in perspective “Even the right decision is wrong if it is made too late”.

Practitioners who work to improve school security should consider this sage advice.  Whether the decision must be made by a teacher faced with a child who stops breathing due to an allergic reaction, a principal who receives a report of an intruder or a school superintendent who must make the decision to implement off-site family reunification before concerned parents block all access roads to a school, the quality and speed of decision-making is an area of focus worthy of our attention.