school shooting

I spent this morning in a training room with members of Maine's ASIS chapter (Security Director News is based in Yarmouth, Maine), where officers from the Saco Police Department were giving a presentation on planning & preparation for an active-shooter scenario.

The turnout was good. Approximately 27 security professionals from around southern Maine were able to attend, including security personnel from L.L. Bean, Fairchild Semiconductor and Southern Maine Medical Center.

Any discussion about active-shooter situations inevitably includes the Columbine tragedy of April 20, 1999. The event has informed all the preparation and training law enforcement and private security professionals now undertake to handle future active shooters.

Saco PD Deputy Chief Ray Demers offered one example of how Columbine changed law enforcement training. On the morning of the Columbine shooting, the high school's School Resource Officer, Neil Gardner, briefly exchanged gunfire with shooter Eric Harris outside the school. It was 11:24 a.m. At the time, Harris and Dylan Klebold had killed two people. After entering his clip at Gardner, Harris was able to enter the school. However, rather than pursue Harris, Gardner had been trained to disengage and wait for the SWAT team to show up. The first SWAT team didn't enter the school until 11:46 a.m., 22 minutes after Gardner's interaction with Harris. By that time, 13 people were dead.

Today, Gardner would not have disengaged. "That's the difference," Demers said. "He would have chased him to hell and back." Training now dictates that the primary goal in any active-shooter scenario is to eliminate the threat as quickly as possible.

This morning's seminar touched on many of the basic best practices for preparing an active-shooter response plan. Obviously, cooperating with local law enforcement beforehand is key, including sharing building plans, doing walk-throughs, discussing response plans, etc.

I asked Aarin Miles, a project manager for Securitas who handles security for a major Maine bank, as well as secretary of the Maine ASIS chapter, what he thought of the seminar. "The seminar reminded me how strange it is that in our current era of near immediate access to media stories relating to public shooting sprees as they occur and with the frequency that we hear of them, that so few businesses have yet to implement formal emergency plans," he said. "With the exception of some academic and health-related institutions, which either have seen these sort of events firsthand or have a responsibility for the safety of their patrons, the greater community seems to still suffer from the old assumption that something random or violent couldn't occur at their own facility."

One key point the Saco PD officers made was that shooters like Columbine's Harris and Klebold and Virginia Tech shooter Seung-Hui Cho are unpredictable, rarely have an exit strategy and are focused primarily on killing as many people as possible.

In the event that an active shooter ever did enter your workplace, Sgt. Scott Sicard warned attendees to expect chaos. "You're going to be scared, it's loud and you don't know where the shooting is coming from," Sicard said.

In those situations, the best laid plans can fall apart. Though you can never be completely prepared for the tragedies that befell Columbine and Virginia Tech, preparation is still essential. "While no one can plan for every eventuality, being aware and putting some thought into how to mitigate the risk to your staff/students/visitors could be the difference between lives saved and lives lost," Miles said.

Thanks to the officers of the Saco Police Department for offering this free event that benefited the Maine chapter of ASIS International. Thanks, as well, to Lou McAuliffe, VP of security and facilities for Saco & Biddeford Savings Institute, for getting the ball rolling on the seminar and Jim Fraser, a fire fighter and EMT with the Cape Elizabeth Fire Department, for his help organizing the event.

Edmonton police say they are looking for Travis Brandon Baumgartner as a "person of interest" in last night's attempted armored-car robbery at the University of Alberta that left three G4S security officers dead and a fourth wounded. Here's a photo of Baumgartner from his Facebook page. Judging by his profile picture, the attempted robbery looks premeditated rather than a crime of convenience gone terribly wrong.

Here's a photo of Travis B. Baumgartner that the Edmonton police released at a press conference this morning.

It was only a few weeks ago that U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood was making his rounds on all the networks talking about the slew of incompetent air traffic controllers. The topic made headline news for days (too many, in my opinion) and ranged from napping air traffic controllers to ones trying to catch a flick in between landing planes. It was certainly enough to keep the man busy.

Today, I saw a story on Huffington Post that caught my eye and made me laugh and thought I should share since I'm probably not the only one out there who needs a chuckle today. LaHood's most recent mission for his department is looking into measures to encourage automobile drivers to observe better safety standards when it came to bicyclists on the roadways. First of all, I'm an avid biker and one of my biggest complaints about the State of Maine is that they were too cheap to pave decent-size shoulders on their roads, making it dangerous for bikers to enjoy some of the most beautiful roads in the country. Every time I choose the scenic route, I know I'm taking my life in my hands and it just takes one inattentive motorist to ruin a beautiful bike ride (and perhaps my life).

First of all, I think it's interesting this is a topic LaHood is passionate about and something he thinks the Transportation Department needs to take the lead on.

“I’m concerned that people that are driving cars have a level of respect for bikers, and that’s the reason that we have these bike lanes,” said LaHood, in the article. “Bikers have as much right to the streets as anybody driving a car and I am concerned about [their safety]."

Perhaps it's the rise in gas prices that's prompting him to get out in front of what could be a rapid rise in bikers on the road (that's a big reason I started riding to work more).

The amusing part of the story, is that the reporter also expressed surprise at LaHood's passion:

Told that his heartfelt defense of bikers came off like the musings of a run-of-the-mill hipster, LaHood professed genuine confusion.

“I don’t even know what that term means,” he said.

Upon second reading, I guess it's not really all that funny (must be the cold medicine), but when I first read it I thought it was amusing that LaHood didn't know what a hipster was. Then I realized there's probably a large percentage of SDN readers who also do not know what a hipster is. So here, check out this link. Don't say you didn't learn anything from reading this blog.

Wow. It's not very often I read about security breaches this atrocious. According to an ABC News story, a contract security officer apparently spotted a package outside the McNamara Federal Building in Detroit, but instead of treating it with caution, he picked it up and brought it inside the building:

"Against all security protocols -- an unattended package should be treated with extreme caution -- he picked up that package and took it inside basically on the premise of 'lost and found' property. And apparently stored it. That was on Feb. 26. On March 18th, last Friday, someone got the idea to x-ray the package. At that point wires were seen... and it turned out to be a bomb."

And this isn't just any commercial building, the McNamara Federal Building houses the FBI, IRS and offices for Sen. Carl Levin. Yes, you read that correctly: The FBI!

According to the article, the bag contained a pipe bomb.

The response? Well, that particular officer was suspended and a special training team will be deployed to Detroit to re-train the building's security personnel on proper protocol. Yeah, I would say that would be a good idea. While this officer certainly broke protocol, I can't imagine he didn't mention this to another officer, right? I'm guessing there's more than one officer protecting this very important federal building and he likely said something to someone else about finding the bag.

There's plenty of finger pointing to do, but I'm just happy I can write a blog about the idiocy of this situation instead of the tragedy.

I was just talking the other day about the poor public perception of security officers. Movies like Paul Blart: Mall Cop or Observe and Report continue to depict security officers as slovenly, lazy, incompetent folks (although I'm just deriving this from hearsay and the movie trailers, because I've never actually seen either of these movies). But frankly, security officers are often our first line of defense. And unfortunately, they get neither the respect, recognition nor often pay that they may deserve. And they rarely get anything but bad press.

The incident at the Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel got a lot of media attention, including from me. Here, here and here are the stories I wrote, although more about the effectiveness of observe and reporting and not arming guards more than the particular incident.

Sadly these incidents reinforce the public perception of the guarding industry. One of the most common images of security officers are of them asleep on the job in guard shacks or in front of a slew of TV screens, obviously not doing a whole lot of protecting.

Well, when this email popped into my inbox I had to laugh. This company is doing its part to make sure that its officers never fall asleep on the job by marketing an energy drink. It's called THOR Tactical Energy drink. Who knows? It couldn't hurt the image of the security officer, right?

Here I thought April 15 was just tax day. Little did I know, it's also being promoted as "Steal from Work Day." There's even a Web site devoted to it.

My favorite part of this site, which I'm assuming is suppose to be humorous, is the FAQ section. Since it's Friday, I thought I would share some of the better ones:

Is STEALING SOMETHING FROM WORK illegal?
Technically, it may be. Slavery, on the other hand, was legal until December 1865.

And everybody knows that stealing from your boss is less damaging than slavery.

Is STEAL SOMETHING FROM WORK DAY anti-employer?
Hate to break it to you, boss, but your employees steal from you every day. By encouraging them to cut it down to one day a year, we’re looking out for you! Consider it a harm reduction approach to loss prevention.

See loss prevention people, this isn't such a bad thing. It's just like taking off a Bandaid. Would you prefer it to be slowly ripped off or done all at once? I think we all know the answer to that cliche.

What if I STEAL SOMETHING FROM WORK and my company goes out of business? Is this biting the hand that feeds me?
Corporations plan workplace "shrinkage" into the budget well in advance. They’re practically counting on you to steal something! If that surplus goes unclaimed, it’ll just stay their coffers as more unearned profits.

So, I'm assuming this is a tongue-in-cheek kind of thing, but one never knows. And since employee theft accounted for approximately $15.5 billion of loss in 2008, it's not exactly a joking matter for loss prevention folks.

Wow, there has been some serious security lapses in the news lately and enough, frankly, to keep me up at night. In case you missed our Newswire today, we covered everything from the courthouse shooting in Las Vegas that left one security officer dead and a US marshal wounded to a story about whether or not arena security directors need to step up screening of players after two Washington Wizards players drew guns in the locker room.

And, of course, who can possibly forget all the attention on aviation security? From the Christmas Day terrorist attempt to the security lapse at Newark Airport that allowed a man to enter through an unauthorized exit and caused thousands of passengers to be re-screened - it's more than enough to keep me on task.

So, I thought it was time for a little relief.

My colleague Dan Gelinas at our sister publication, Security Systems News, was doing some story research when he happened across this article with the headline Women only parking.

This story is about the opening of a parking lot at a mall in China that is dedicated to female patrons only. Sounds like there would certainly be some security-related news here - maybe along the lines of improved lighting or enhanced security measures to protect women shoppers, right? Well, not exactly.

The lot offers wider parking spaces especially designed for female drivers, who tend to cause twice as many collisions in parking lots than in other places, according to insurance company data.

And there is some better lighting, too. But not exactly for security reasons:
The shopping center parking lot also provides three lights in every parking space to improve visibility for female drivers.

Not only do they have wider, brighter parking spots, but they also provide assistance for drivers:
Female parking guides have been specially trained to direct the drivers when they park their vehicles.

Here's how the article ends:
Such public facilities for women only are no longer an exceptional phenomenon worldwide. For example, Japanese women enjoy women only subway cars and Russian women take pink taxis specifically for them.

Yeah, but I bet the women-only subway cars are designed to reduce the number of women who are groped on their way to work and the pink taxis...well, I can't explain that one either.

Maybe instead of investing in these ridiculous parking lots, the Chinese government needs to improve its driver's ed courses?

DISCLAIMER: Apologies ahead of time for being extremely juvenile, but this is really funny and I just can't help myself.

During ASIS International I had a chance to attend a Flir event that was a great introduction for me about the world of thermal camera technology. I had a chance to demo some of their products and saw for myself the advantages of using thermal imaging in a video surveillance installation. Check out Sam's blog for more details about the event.

And, apparently they're using thermal cameras in airports, too. So be aware.