11 - From Protecting Presidents to Protecting the Next Generation: School Safety with Daniel Dluzneski - Revelizations

Episode Transcript
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Privacy Curtains from the makers of Privacy Shrubs.
Hi everyone and welcome to another episode of Revelizations.

(02:02):
I'm your host, Brian James, and I'm honored to have a truly remarkable guest on today's
episode.
Daniel Dluzneski.
He is a retired lieutenant from the United States Secret Service with over 24 years of
service.
His career highlights include working in the canine bomb detection unit with his dog Korak,
protecting the president, vice president, their families, and serving as a certified

(02:26):
crime scene search technician.
He was also the public affairs spokesperson and a special operation officer for White
House historical tours.
After his distinguished service in the Secret Service, Daniel transitioned into a key role
as the coordinator of emergency management, safety, and security for the Pinellas County
Schools in Florida.

(02:48):
In this position, he oversaw safety and emergency protocols for over 140 schools and 104,000
students.
His work included implementing standardized school emergency plans, running active shooter
drills, and training educators and administrators on how to respond to emergencies.

(03:08):
He holds certifications in crime prevention through environmental design and as a fire
inspector for the state of Florida.
Daniel is also the author of The First Five Minutes School Shooting Survival Guide for
Administrators and Teachers, a book that provides essential guidance for those in charge of
school safety.

(03:29):
His mission is to equip educators, administrators, and students with the knowledge and confidence
they need to respond effectively in critical moments.
By focusing on proactive preparation and training, Daniel is helping to create safer school environments,
ultimately giving schools the tools they need to protect lives in the event of a crisis.

(03:50):
He's passionate about speaking out against the complacency that often surrounds emergency
preparedness in schools, particularly the over-reliance on ineffective technology and
the strain of limited school budgets.
Through his work, he's advocating for more effective, realistic, and impactful strategies
that can truly make a difference when it matters most.

(04:11):
I'm thrilled to learn from and share his extensive experience and expertise today.
Thanks for listening, everyone.
Hi, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Revelizations.
I'm your host, Brian James.
And with me today, I have school safety expert Daniel Dluzneski.
He's author of the book The First Five Minutes School Shooting Survival Guide for Administrators and Teachers.

(04:33):
Thanks for being here, Daniel. I'm very excited to talk to you.
Thank you, Brian. Thanks so much for having me on. Appreciate it.
Tell us a little about yourself and your background and kind of what attracted you to write this book and safety.
Well, if we want to go back to the Secret Service, obviously a long time ago,

(04:56):
I started there actually at the end of Reagan's term in 1988 and then finished up with Obama's term when he was at the White House.
And when I left there and had a great career, I mean, I wouldn't have to go into details of everything I did.
But fortunately, one of the nice things I was able to spend in Washington, D.C., my entire career,

(05:17):
I didn't have to move to other cities or get, you know, assigned to other stations because I was with a division called the Uniform Division.
And the reason for that is we actually wear a uniform.
And this was incorporated years and years ago.
They were called the White House police when it first started.

(05:37):
And then as the Secret Service got protection of the president in 1902 after the assassination attempt on McKinley,
they just said, well, this doesn't make any sense. Why would you have two different divisions?
Why don't we incorporate the Uniform Division within the Secret Service?
So that's how that all started. And the nice thing, again, about the Uniform Division, we had all the specialized units.

(05:58):
We had canine. We had the counter snipers. We had the SWAT teams.
We had the motorcycle units. I mean, that's what I enjoyed.
I wanted to get into one of these specialized units.
So that's where I stayed with the Uniform Division.
I was fortunate enough to get into canine only three years into my career, which was unheard of.
Probably who knows, maybe because I was older.

(06:19):
I got on. I was 10 years older than most of the other people that came on with me.
So I had supervisors that were my age.
So I got along with them better. It just it was just more of a connection.
Plus, I had my education.
You got to remember, back in the 80s, most people didn't go to college.
I mean, it was mostly right out of high school.
I know you needed college degree to be an agent, but you didn't need to be one when you're in Uniform Division.

(06:42):
So it was unusual that at the time, maybe 25%, 30% of the people that applied had college degrees.
Now it's obviously, you know, 70, 85% that have, excuse me, percent that have degrees.
So that was an unusual part also that kind of moved me up the ladder.
And throughout my career, it was just something that, again, I mean, you know, everyone kind of can relate.

(07:06):
Sometimes it's luck. Sometimes it's timing that things happen.
You get promoted or you get a certain position or you have a certain supervisor.
It's just the way life goes.
And yeah, there were times where I had a great supervisor and I was able to get promoted to a certain position
or I was able to get into something I was really aspiring for.

(07:26):
Other times, not so much.
So it just, you know, after 20 years, which again, a 20-year career now is really unusual, especially with today's youth.
I mean, you know, most of your jobs are on there four or five years and you're on to another one.
So I was glad I stayed there that amount of time, even though all the trials and tribulations that we went through,
you know, with 9-11, because I was there at the White House for 9-11.

(07:50):
And after that, you had a lot of our people that went over to air marshals because they were scrambling for them.
So we had a big division between people that had senior people and then your junior people.
There was a huge gap in between where we didn't have those mid-level people.
So that was a bit of a struggle for a while.

(08:10):
And we could talk about what's going on with the Secret Service, you know, nowadays a little bit.
But anyway, after I retired, I moved down here to Florida, which I always loved the hot weather.
And I'm going to retire, sit on the beach, have a beer. That's it. I'm good.
Well, as you know, alpha personality, that took about three months.
You're driving yourself crazy and driving my wife crazy.

(08:34):
And so you got to do something. And it just happened.
I was looking through some job opportunities.
And in the county I was in, they had this job for an emergency manager with the school system.
And I thought, wow, I looked at that. It fit my resume.
And I thought, I'll give it a shot. You know, it wasn't something again that it was like, oh, my God, I have to get this in order to pay the mortgage.

(08:57):
That was something to fit my resume. I thought maybe I could do some good.
So I was hired. And same kind of, well, not the same kind, a little bit different bureaucracy when you're dealing with county or state government than the federal government.
But I still was running into roadblocks. However, the nice thing about it is I was given free reign.

(09:18):
Now, we did not did not have autonomy, which became an issue as time went on.
I could not go. One thing that frustrated me, I could not go into a school and say, put a lock on that door or change that or that gate needs to be this.
I wasn't allowed to do that. I had to go through a level through my boss,

(09:38):
who was an assistant superintendent up to a superintendent up to the school board, whatever.
So it was slow. It was that frustrated me because someone who is in that space,
your whole mindset is I want to save kids. I want to save the teachers. This should be done now.

(09:59):
It was something that to me was immediate. But you know, there was no immediacy within the school system and within the county system.
So things. Yes. Did they get done? Yeah, absolutely. Took time. And I pushed and pushed and pushed.
Now, I was there for four years. We lead up to Marjory Stoneman Douglas in Florida.

(10:23):
That terrible shooting there. And right after that happened, I want to say chaotic,
but it was kind of chaotic because now they're like, oh, my God, now what do we do?
Because literally we're right here in Florida and it was just over on the east side.
We're on the west side and went through a bunch of our superintendents and basically telling me.

(10:44):
You're it. You're good to go. We're going to get you staff. We're going to get you assistance.
We're going to get you this and that because I was just on my own. I had nobody.
I had I had one hundred and forty schools with one hundred and four thousand students that I was in charge of.
Just me. I didn't have any staff. I had no secretary, nothing.
Here you go. You got it. You're on your own. Do what you can do.

(11:07):
So this was like one hundred and four thousand, one hundred and forty schools.
One of the things I did dedicate myself to, I wanted to meet every principal.
Everyone knows one hundred and forty schools face to face, know who I was, know what the deal was.
Took me a year, but I did it. I met with every one of those principals.
So that was a nice goal. But again, it was just me. So I was scrambling all the time.

(11:28):
Finally, after this, the Marty Stoneman Douglas, you know, it's kind of like.
You know, the one thing about this industry, like with law enforcement.
The more incidents that happen, the busier you are and the more people you get and the more money you're going to get.
So it's kind of like I want to say ambulance chasing because you have this tragedy, yet everyone now complains.

(11:50):
Oh, my gosh, we have this tragedy. What are we going to do? Well, we need more money.
You need more staff. You need this.
So it's kind of a backwards way of looking at it.
But yeah, that's the reality of it.
When something bad like this happens, like a Marty Stoneman Douglas, also the red flags go up.
It's front page news. What are you going to do about it?

(12:10):
Well, the first thing you're going to say is need more money.
OK, we'll give you a whole bunch of money. We'll give you a whole bunch of this and a whole bunch of that.
That didn't happen in this particular instance because Florida decided, no, we're not going to have civilians do this anymore.
We are going to have local law enforcement take care of school security.
Now, being former law enforcement, I completely disagreed because law enforcement's got enough problems.

(12:35):
I say problems, got enough issues dealing with, you know, what they need to deal with, being reactive.
Law enforcement's reactive, not proactive. You can try to be proactive.
You just don't have the time to do that.
So I said, no, no, that's not the right idea. I'm out of here.
So I left and started a consulting group and did some consulting for a while.

(12:59):
And then as time went on, obviously, we had some major school shootings and a new valdee happened in Texas, which just was a part of my language was just a blank show.
Now, I know the focus was on law enforcement, what they didn't do.
However, there were problems with that school beforehand where some doors were popped open, where the locks weren't properly done, where the security guard was there.

(13:27):
It was just a cascade of the worst possible events ever.
So that bothered me so much. My wife said, look, you've got to do so.
You've got to get this down on paper. That's when I decided to write the book.
I wanted the book. We already talked about this, Brian.
I wanted the book not only because of my experience with the Secret Service, but with what should be going on with people when they deal with this kind of stuff.

(13:50):
You know, everybody talks about situational awareness.
And there's this famous picture of you've probably seen it of a hunter out in the woods.
And he's there with this huge elk or this deer with his rifle standing there for the picture.
And right behind him is this cougar that's in the picture kind of looking at, you know, like, OK, you need to be aware of your surroundings there.

(14:13):
That was the message of this of this photograph.
I don't know if it was it was real or not.
This is way before AI, so I'm pretty sure it was probably true.
But within the book, I wanted that along with implicit memory and what we talked about, meaning you go into action.
I wanted teachers and students, administrators, when there's an active shooter situation, this is what you do automatically.

(14:38):
Don't even without even thinking there's there's a very few things you have to do.
I know we can talk a little bit about technology, but basically in a lockdown for an active shooter situation, the light, the lights you turn off, the door should already be locked during class time.
You sit quietly on the floor, silence your phone.
Everybody's quiet. You don't open that door for any reason at all.

(15:01):
You do not listen to any announcements.
The good guys are coming. That's it.
Now, playing devil's advocate, the issue I get with a lot of this marketed training out there is that, well, they're sitting ducks that they're sitting ducks.
No, they're not.
They're not sitting ducks because no shooter of all the shootings we've had going back way before Columbine, there's been school shootings.

(15:30):
They've never breached a locked door.
No, they're not going to do that.
It takes too long.
The only way that would happen if somebody was targeted and the school shooter is not targeting people, they're just targeting everybody.
They're not targeting specific individuals.
So this idea that they're not that they're sitting ducks is wrong.
The idea that even if I tell the story of, look, hypothetically, if I was a teacher, if I was even armed as a teacher and I've got an active shooter somewhere on campus, I don't know exactly where they are.

(16:00):
Even if I knew exactly where they were, I'm not leaving that room.
There's absolutely no reason to put yourself and those children, 25, 30 kids, to take them out of that room to go somewhere else.
Probably going to see bad stuff.
They're going to hear bad stuff.
They're already traumatized.
And now you're going to drag them through to an exit, which more than likely, if everybody else is leaving, you're piling up there like a cone and you can't even get out.

(16:29):
So why would you possibly do that?
Yet, there's training out there, too, right off the bat.
One is called Run, Hide, Fight, which is brought in from the corporate world.
The other one is called Alice, and it's an acronym for whatever we could talk about that.
However, so many schools do that because they want to feel empowered and because if you're locked down in a classroom, that's very passive, completely passive.

(16:55):
They want to be more reactive.
We want to do something.
We have to we have to do something.
And what's happened?
Look what happened at Sandy Hook.
That teacher went out there and tried to confront the individual, shot dead.
Marjorie Stoneman Douglas, you had an individual on the second floor, teacher, tried to stop the individual, shot dead.

(17:16):
Iowa principal, shot dead.
I mean, it just goes on and on.
They've had dozens of individuals try to confront these shooters unarmed.
They don't know they're not arms.
They're trying to talk them down or something.
I have no idea what they're thinking.
And I tell people, look, you've got this hero slash villain mindset, whatever.

(17:37):
I'm going to be the hero.
I'm going to go out there and stop this.
How are you going to stop them?
These individuals, Brian, as you know, this is not something they woke up in the morning and said, I'm going to grab a gun and go up to shoot a school.
This is months, sometimes years in the planning in their head.
And then they go and they've already got their beyond discussion.

(18:02):
They're beyond all that.
They've got an end game, whether it's suicide by cop, they shoot themselves, they might give up.
I don't know. The kid at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas gave up.
That was a little odd.
But you're not going to talk them down.
This is not something because everyone talks about when the shooters are in there, their mind is blank.
It's just a stair.
It's just a thousand yard stair.

(18:23):
That's it. There's no conversation.
I mean, they may say something to you, but you're not there's no two way.
It's not happening.
So this idea that I want these teachers or administrative to get away from even the kids, get away from this.
I'm going to be the brave one and go out there and be a hero and stop this whole thing.
No, that mindset has to stop.

(18:44):
It has to end. That has been going on way too much.
But that's just one part of this whole idea of school shooters.
I know I got a little bit off about we're just going to talk about my background of the book.
But anyways, that's just something that I'm very passionate about and is happening way too often in this type of situation.

(19:05):
No, it's great. And it's great that like your passion is so easy to see and and found it because obviously it's like this is.
Unfortunately, it's a reality that we live in and this is just something that we are living with right now.
And I think an interesting conversation would be this is a symptom of something that we're doing.

(19:34):
Why since I believe Columbine was ninety nine, why since then when that that literally shook the nation, shook the world.
But now there's so many shootings that you can't even remember all the names except for the ones that are are extremely gruesome.
Those ones stick out. But there's so many that just get lost.
And so what do you think that we could do to even prevent something like this from even needing to have a conversation like this?

(20:02):
Like from your safety background standpoint, what could be used to deter this increasingly common, horrific subject?
It is a great question, Brian. That's not my lane.
I have opinions about it again. I'm talking it is my opinion.

(20:24):
This is not from my background and everyone has an opinion about this kind of thing.
But, you know, you go back to when I was in school, you know, oh, when I was in school, this and when I was in school, that.
Yeah, when I was in school. Yeah. Did you have a rifle rack in the back of your pickup truck?
Yep. Yeah. No one ever thought of you taking that thing out and going to school.

(20:44):
You'd handle it with your fists. So it just as time goes on, the culture has changed.
Now you got the phones, the social media, the bullying, the cyber bullying.
I mean, I talk about on these podcasts where everyone's been bullied in school.
I was bullied in school. But when you left school, that was it.

(21:06):
You went home. You know, the next day. Yeah, you might worry about it now.
Twenty four hours a day because of the Internet and social media.
So the cyber it's constant and you get these kids that get into this loop that they can't get out of.
And as teenagers, as you know, it's very hard for them to trust their parents.
They need a mentor or someone in the school they can talk to.

(21:28):
So it's just the idea that we're going to solve this by either taking away the guns or we're going to,
you know, do this or do that, which is kind of drastic.
But if the community is not involved with this to get these kids help,

(21:48):
because, as you know, mental health is probably the number one thing now.
Now you went through the pandemic.
They lost two years, all the social interactions.
My son now is first year in college. His last two years in high school.
Forget it. It was just it was horrible because you're already behind.
Teachers have pressure on that to get them through school.
When you add on, now we've got to deal with, you know,

(22:10):
an active shooter event or the training or the drilling or whatever it is.
Yeah. Is it ingrained now? Yeah.
I mean, I went through it when I was a kid because we were worried about the Cuban Missile Crisis.
We were afraid nuclear war was going to happen.
So you'd go out in the hallway, you'd duck and cover, get through the drill.
OK, move on. Nowadays, it's just it's kind of rote that the kids are kind of used to this.

(22:32):
Does it cause anxiety? Some. I don't think a lot.
It's just part of what you do now in this drilling.
You know, you don't I don't want the mindset where you say, I will never happen here.
And I had a lot of that happen when I was with the county system.
I'll never happen here. We don't need to do these drills.

(22:53):
I don't care. You know, I never when I was at the White House,
well, you would never say anything like that.
You know, I'll never happen here.
So you drill, you drill and you drill, you know, hoping for the best outcomes.
And when something does happen.
You're ready for it.
So that's all I ask for these teachers and administrators.
You know, let's drill the right way.

(23:14):
We don't over drill because at that point, then you're like, you know, it just.
It is boring. You want it enough to where they say, I got it.
I'm confident I know what to do. That's it now.
We can talk a little bit about, you know, what's going on with what's called these threat

(23:35):
assessment teams. Good idea.
These threat assessment teams for these schools, you'll have usually a nurse
or a mental health specialist, social worker, someone within that group,
including the principal, including the assistant principal, one of the teachers
who is assigned to it and more than likely, especially when you get up to middle

(23:55):
or high school, a student in these threat assessment meetings.
What that does is you're going to have problem kids.
Every school has problem kids.
You're going to have a file on that child and you bring it up.
All right. Johnny, last week, said something about
he'd like to buy a gun or said something about a threat or said whatever.

(24:17):
And you're going to sit down and you're going to be OK, is this a joke?
Is this something they're serious about? What do we do?
They're they're great in if they've got something really serious,
if they've got really you can pinpoint, you know, OK, you know, yeah,
we heard Johnny more than once do this.
The security officers said, yeah, Johnny, you know, was acting kind of weird.

(24:40):
You know, he's dressing differently.
Things have changed. I've talked to him about about you talk to the parents.
Whatever. What happens is
it gets to a point where you're there's a real thin line
on the civil rights of these kids.
How far do you take it?
You start looking their lockers every time they come in.

(25:01):
You can look through their bag.
Are you going to start getting on their, you know, websites into their,
you know, their email?
Where does how far do you go in order to prevent if you're you're talking about
if now if this individual is really thinking about doing harm at the school?
Yeah, you can look into the parents to see if they have any weapons.

(25:24):
You're going to ask. But I don't know.
In reality, and again, we could talk a little bit about the most recent news
of the two parents being sent to jail because their son,
they gave their son a weapon and they thought everything was fine.
And he goes to school, you know, shoots up to school.
So now they're going after the parents. Is that a good idea?

(25:48):
I don't know. I don't know. We'll see.
It's just something recently that just happened that, you know,
it's the parents fault for giving this the child a gun
and claiming that everything is fine and, oh, no, he doesn't have the weapon.
When come to find out he did have the weapon.
I think that's just a special case.
I don't think it's something that down the road,

(26:09):
they're going to start blaming parents for this kind of thing.
We'll see how that works out.
Yeah. When there's
because, like you said, that is a special case. That is,
you could definitely see some negligence in there from the behavior
of what he said, some texts going back and forth.
There was definitely signs that the parents avoided, but

(26:34):
there there is a mindset that you were touching on is like,
oh, it's not going to happen.
And so parents are going to think, of course, this this child, this baby
that I love, that I know like he would never hurt anyone.
And so but when he's saying these things
and I believe it was the mother that said, like, hey, like.

(26:55):
Something like it's OK, but you need to
be more basically covert about it or something like that.
There was something very bad in her text was like,
you really got to intervene sooner.
And this is a very interesting parallel because the.
And this is a very big conversation,

(27:17):
but the the drug epidemic in America,
you're kind of doing a similar thing.
So when someone ODs, they go after the person who gave them the drug.
They'll go after the drug.
I know certain states or counties
are testing out that kind of legislation.
And I think the process, the thought process

(27:40):
to bring this back to gun violence is very interesting
because you have an extra level of accountability.
So like if you do have a child who.
And I want to say for for most cases, this does seem to be a case
of mental health issue because someone who is.
I'm going to just say normal for for lack of better words.

(28:02):
That's not your average level of thinking.
You're not really thinking, well, I'm hurting.
I'm going to make other people hurt
and I'm going to make people feel the pain that I feel all the time.
It's just not a very common way to think.
And so if a parent knows about behavior like that

(28:22):
and they know that there's consequences, if the child does something rash,
it's not only the child who is going to have to deal
with the consequences of that, it's the parents.
So there's an extra level of deterrent.
And you were touching on this when you first started talking about this.

(28:43):
You wanted to implement certain deterrents.
You want to change certain doors, certain locks, certain gates.
And so I believe like that is a good line of thinking as well of
we need to implement deterrents to make this OK, like
there's there's a child out there who is is thinking horrible thoughts

(29:06):
and they want to do as much destruction as possible.
But there's so many deterrents in the way to that now.
So you can say there's school safety guards, there's metal detectors, there's
doors where you have to be buzzed in.
And I know you have opinions about that.
So what would be good deterrents that are effective that could really?

(29:29):
You know, hopefully there would be some sort of intervention
before anything happened like that.
But what what could we implement before that?
Let's say the child just made up his mind to to really deter
someone from from not doing that, though.
Good question. It's basic school safety.
The basics. When I first came in,

(29:51):
we still had schools that had an open door policy.
We still had schools with like three foot fencing.
We had schools that didn't have a lobby area at all.
I mean, when I was a kid, you just walk right in.
A lot of that has changed.
I was allowed to make some changes.
But basic school security, six foot fencing on the outside.
You start with that because with what they called a multi layered approach,

(30:13):
you want to slow the shooter down as much as possible
to give your law enforcement time to get there.
That's the whole idea behind this.
So six foot fencing, number one.
Number two, only one entrance into that school during school time.
That's it. Every other door around that school is locked and shut down.
One entrance.
So and you have a secure lobby area when you do come into the school.

(30:36):
Now, there was talk about when it was there.
Oh, we should have a camera on the door when they first come in.
It's like you're wasting your time.
I mean, unless somebody's out there in a camouflage suit carrying an AR-15,
you're going to let everybody in, you know,
or they could sneak in behind somebody.
What's the big deal?
As long as you have a secure lobby area, there's only one way in and one way out.
There's not two or three other ways for them to get in.

(30:56):
So they come in.
Let's say they come into a lobby area, just a normal person coming in.
You're going to be checked out.
They usually have a system that will check.
Down here in Florida was a system that checked their backgrounds.
You get your ID, you go through that system, being you're good to go.
You have an appointment. Yes. OK.
Then they go down the counter.
They're either buzzed in, escorted in.

(31:19):
Or they're, you know, let in with a swiper card.
So if they're not, they have one way out.
That's it. You go back out. That's it.
You're not you're not allowed in once.
All right. Then once you have an individual in
all the classroom doors, like I said, should be locked during class time.
And this is something recently that's just come out.
I've been advocating that for years right before I left.

(31:39):
They finally decided, OK, that is the policy now.
Classroom doors locked during school time.
And I know teachers complain about it because you're going to have kids
who want to go to the bathroom, they want to go here.
And you got to get up and open the door for them.
Tough. It's just the reality of it.
You're going to get interrupted.
But keep the classroom door locked.
Then that means you're already one step ahead if you do have to go into a lockdown.

(32:02):
Other than that, again, as long as you have some kind of multi layered approach
where it slows the shooter down before they can get to do any kind of damage
to let law enforcement get there.
So I advocate that.
And the second thing advocate is armed school security guards.
The nice thing about how down here in Florida, they did pass legislation
and got enough money.

(32:24):
So every school has a school resource officer and excuse me,
an armed school resource officer in every school, elementary all the way up through.
And once it got to high school, it was by population.
So if you've got a thousand kids, you're going to get two school resource officers
and then exponentially would go up from there if you had bigger schools.

(32:44):
There's a lot of area to cover.
Nowadays, high schools are like college campuses.
I mean, these guys have to be in golf courts because they're so widespread
and so huge, most of these high schools.
So again, that became a complaint.
Also, just a little bit off topic where when we went through the pandemic,
when we started to go through a Black Lives Matter,

(33:05):
we started to go through this idea that the police were the criminals.
They started pushing back on have any school resource officers.
Oh, no, we don't need them.
They're they're terrorizing the kids.
They feel bad about it.
My cousin was arrested.
The uniform. Oh, my God, I need a safe space.
Well, that lasted maybe a year, year and a half.

(33:26):
And finally, the parents were the ones who came back and said,
Oh, no, no, no, no.
I want those school resource officers back in that school.
I don't care what these kids are saying, because the school resource
officers are there for one reason and one only to stop anything bad
from happening to those children and that staff.
They are an advocate.

(33:46):
They are well trained.
They are basically almost up to police training, but they don't have arrest powers.
Some do to take away from that.
Some are off duty police officers that will come in
or from an agency, a county, a state, whatever to be there.
Down here in Florida, they absolutely they don't have arrest powers.

(34:07):
They're there specifically for the school as citizens.
Don't we have like citizens, arrestors and everyone kind of have that authority?
So what's the what's the distinction there?
Something like that, but I want to stay away from that.
You don't want to start arresting kids
for something that happens.
And a lot of times what you get into a conflict

(34:29):
where the school will say, hey, I got a fight happening over there.
You handle it. I got to go back and teach in class.
No, no, no, that's not their job.
That is not their job to go in and deal with disciplinary issues,
to deal with fights and that kind of stuff.
Now, they're going to be there if something escalates.
But a lot of times what happens is teachers say, hey, I got this kid over here

(34:51):
that's acting like a jerk.
He hit this other kid over here. You take care of it.
I got I got class.
No, no, no. That's not what they're there for.
And that's spelled out in their memorandum of understanding
of what, why they are there and what their duties are.
And most schools understand that, that, you know, they're not there
to discipline these kids.
They're there to keep these kids safe. They're an advocate.

(35:13):
And actually, a lot of the school resource officers become mentors.
When I talk to them, kids love them.
I mean, it just makes these kids feel safe.
They have a very good rapport with these children.
They know these kids.
And that's the main thing of knowing these kids.
Some of them by first name, even if you've got a thousand kids,
you see these kids all, you know, all the time.

(35:35):
And it just it just makes it really.
Really a great atmosphere, because that's one thing
I love with the Secret Service.
I worked up in the northwest area of Washington, D.C.
when I was there and I was in on his assignment as a foot beat
for about a year.
And you got to know that the people you saw them every day

(35:58):
because you worked the same shift.
You saw them, you know where they lived.
You know what time they worked.
They they wouldn't.
It was just it just it was called community policing.
And it just it just made you feel so much better
because you were part of the community and they trusted you
and they would talk to you.
So that's what I feel that these school resource officers
are the best thing that you can do budget wise

(36:21):
for a school to have them incorporated in the system.
So their threshold is if it escalates to like gun violence.
Yeah, I mean, the thing of it is what's happening today,
I know we focus on active shooters, the focus is on that.
To tell you the truth, the majority of what happens in schools

(36:42):
is with other weapons, knives, clubs, bats,
something like that that happens in these schools,
especially inner city schools.
You know, when you get gangs involved, it's mostly knife attacks.
So that's what you're more focused on, because again,
I'm not a big believer in metal detectors.
It's just a waste of money.
But, you know, those things, because you can avoid them.

(37:05):
You're going to get a weapon in no matter what around a metal detector.
It's pretty easy.
But yeah, that's what they're going to concentrate on.
Most of your your knife edge weapons, the bat clubs, that kind of thing
when they get involved in that.
So for them to step in again,
there is going to be a memorandum that they've got of when they are supposed
to step in and when they're allowed to step in to take care of certain things

(37:27):
that, you know, should be on the school.
So that's already that's already spelled out.
But just for me, just having them there, not only as a parent,
but even even if if if I was a child,
they're there to protect you.
I mean, that's their main job.
They're not there to harass you, arrest you, take you down.

(37:48):
No, that's not their job.
That's not what they're there for.
So I advocate for that.
No, that makes sense.
I was just wondering, because you said they don't have the authority to arrest.
But that does make sense of.
Like. I don't know, just keep keeping them out of it and like
the liabilities and all that, but just like it would be

(38:11):
like if you have someone that's going to step in, if there's someone
brandishing a weapon like that can give you a lot of peace of mind
and it can keep them.
If someone, you know, kids get in scuffles all the time,
it's it's such a silly thing.
Like if you ever see little kids fight, it's so sad because like you're

(38:32):
you're a child, you really have nothing to prove to anyone.
But for some reason, like you feel you do, because I don't know
if you remember when you were a kid, but like I know like certain times
like my ego, it's like I never been in a fight,
but I got like to the point where I would want to fight someone.
But, you know, you're a child, you don't have anything to prove.
So it's sad that it does get to that point.

(38:53):
But having someone trained to respond to certain situations
because children do fight sometimes you wouldn't want.
And this could be a strategy that, you know, a group of children
could come up with is, OK, you guys are going to get in a really big hoo ha
and then I'm going to go do some damage on the other side of the school

(39:16):
while the person who's in charge is responding to you guys.
And so it's good that there is
some thought there to like, no, this isn't just
across the board disciplinary person, this is
very specific to the role to these types of violent encounters
is when this person will step in.

(39:37):
And this is why you want him in this situation,
because I can see a lot of people being very dismissive.
Or like you said, teachers are understaffed, overworked.
It's a shame what they have to deal with when they're just trying to
educate this population.
And and a little bit of, you know, I was a kid, I was very thankless.

(39:58):
I was very I had some some things to say to teachers sometimes,
you know, just like just backtalk, nothing like crazy or anything like that.
But just that's part of the job description when it shouldn't be.
I should be teaching you your alphabet.
I don't want to teach you your alphabet so you can string it together
and tell me why this dress doesn't look good on me.

(40:20):
You know, we talked about deterrence.
What happened?
Because you've already did have an officer
or like a security guard on campus.
And so I can see a lot of people, especially people who don't want to invest
more into, you know, public debt or whatever would push back to this.

(40:42):
We'll say, hey, we have this case study and it's a case study
for all the wrong reasons of what not to do, basically in a situation like that.
But we have this case study of this security guard who was on campus,
who I believe actually came in contact with the shooter.
Yeah, in the parking lot. Yeah.
And then the the catastrophe still happened.

(41:03):
So what what happened there and how if we implement
if we implement having more security in different schools,
would that situation be any different than what we experienced in Uvalde?
Yeah, I don't know the exact details of where he went or what happened after that.
And the same thing, I say the same thing, almost the same thing

(41:24):
happened in Marjah Stone Douglas, where you had the security guard
that stayed outside the entire time.
There are going to be situations like that where the media
obviously is going to explode over that.
But you've got just as many or 10 times more
where you've had a security guards that have stopped shootings before they've happened,
have stopped, you know, an individual before they've happened.

(41:47):
So that doesn't get as much media coverage.
You know, of course, the media, you know, they're looking for,
you know, bad news cells.
But for something like that,
I would obviously go back and just say, look,
you're not it's not it's not something where it's perfect.

(42:08):
Nobody's going to be perfect in this kind of situation.
It's all about the individuals you get, the individuals who are passionate
about it, that want to go through the training,
that had the background to go through the training to be put in there.
This is not your for school resource officers, not your typical security guard.
This is not someone who's just standing by the jewelry store,

(42:29):
you know, for hours doing this.
This is someone who has to be passionate about it.
And every situation is different.
I'm sure every state is different.
We're fortunate here in Florida that these people are passionate about it.
I was a little concerned, obviously, when it first started up,
because I wasn't sure it was going to work, what kind of training it went through.
But at the time, my son was going to a charter school,

(42:52):
which also get the same coverage.
And they had an individual there, a young woman.
And just, you know, got along really great with the kids, just love what they did.
I said, how is, you know, because I'm thinking back on, you know, I stood post.
I said, you're there at the school for eight hours.
It's going to be boring, especially at elementary school.
What are you doing? I mean, you're just kind of.

(43:13):
And she said, no, no, no, it's great.
I mean, the interaction with the teachers, the kids,
it's just something that they really care about deep down.
So these incidents, yes, they're going to probably continue to happen
where you're going to have a security individual that didn't respond
or didn't do the right thing.
I mean, it's happened in law enforcement, too.

(43:35):
However, the majority of cases,
I would say 99 percent of the time, they're going in there.
They're going to take care of business.
They're going to make everybody safe.
And that's what's important to remember is is the training.
And that's something that you're you were very passionate
about why you were in charge of all those schools, was training

(43:56):
and doing all these things.
And training is.
If you're a school safety officer, I would say very necessary
that the bar should be high.
But like you say, for for teachers, it's an inconvenience.
And so how do we like move past that or just

(44:19):
bulldoze through that?
Because, again, it is in the training
that you learn what to do when the situation happens, because
we have our bodies, they they go into fight or flight.
But there's also freeze.
That's for some reason neglected a lot, like where people just go white.

(44:42):
They freeze, they stay in place because they don't know what to do.
And that's what we want to avoid.
So what kind of training can teachers do?
Can students do to if, you know, a worst case scenario,
an active shooter, a threat is on campus?
What are you doing so that they are protected

(45:05):
as well as possible and are more likely to survive the event?
Good question.
One thing I do want to mention, there is a book out there.
It's called The Unthinkable, and it's done by Amanda Ripley.
And she was an author.
She used to work with the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal.
Excellent book.
It's not something specifically for law enforcement.

(45:25):
It's actually for individuals.
And she talks about she goes way back to incidents that have happened,
catastrophic incidents that have happened in the United States and other countries
and talk to those individuals that have been through it.
She actually talked to an individual that was through
two bombings at the World Trade Center, the first one.
And then obviously the second one during 9-11, the Oklahoma City bombing.

(45:47):
She talked to an individual that was kidnapped.
She talked to an individual at the NYPD that has been through multiple shootings.
And it was just something that the reactions.
So it basically comes down to.
When you have something happen like that, something catastrophic,
something that is beyond where you should be thinking,

(46:08):
let's say it is something like a shooting and or at 9-11,
because your mind is telling you you're going to be in denial.
That's the first thing you hear shots.
It's like, oh, firecrackers.
Somebody dropped the book at the because unless you're here,
I've gone to a gun range and hear shots, you're still going to deny what that is.

(46:31):
Same thing happened with 9-11.
She talks about the people there in denial.
Oh, that plane went into the building over there.
OK, yeah, that's tragic.
That's horrible.
Obviously, we didn't know when the second plane hit and you're like, oh,
but it's still you're in a denial mode.
The next thing you got to do is there's some kind of determination.

(46:52):
And usually what happens is and again, everybody's different.
Brian, no one knows even myself in certain situations.
No one knows how you're going to react in an emergency.
You don't know.
You can say to yourself and play games with your head.
OK, if I'm in a plane crash, I'll do this.
If there's a shooter, I'll do that.
If there's something, I'll do that.
But when it actually happens, no one knows.

(47:15):
You just don't know.
So when they talk to the people at 9-11, denial was the first thing.
Then they had to make a determination once that second plane hit.
And you did have people that froze.
Finally, you would have two or three individuals.
And this happens across the board that will say, hey,
we got to get out of here.
We got to take the stairs. Come this way.

(47:36):
Let's go. We got to get out of here.
And usually what happens is and it happens more towards females.
You got to grab something personal.
Your phone, your purse, a picture off your desk, something you have to take with you
to take with you, because in this situation, your mind is just telling you that.
So you go through the denial determination and finally a decision of, OK, we're going.

(48:01):
And that happens across the board and all of these kind of situations,
whether it's a plane crash, a shooting, you know, a bomb going off, whatever,
because the human body is not set up for that.
You're not set up for something happening all the time,
otherwise you'd be in this freeze of flight or flight constantly.
So I have one incident that happened in a bunch of stories.

(48:23):
But this one on this subject, there was a school up in North County.
Wasn't wasn't my county.
The only way I found out about it is because I had a co-worker
whose wife was the assistant principal at the school.
It was a middle school.
She had done a bunch of drills.
She had her people ready to go.

(48:43):
I mean, they know what to do in the drill.
I mean, everything was set.
She was very
positive and affirmative about doing these types of drills.
So what happened was across the street from them,
there was an individual there who really didn't like his mom's new boyfriend.
So he decided to grab a weapon and he was going to shoot up the house.
And we don't know what happened with whether he was actually going to shoot

(49:05):
the guy or his mom or whatever, but he started shooting up the neighborhood.
So and he's spraying and praying.
And some of the bullets hit the school across the street.
Now, he wasn't targeting the school, obviously, but, you know, he was just crazy.
Well, school obviously goes into a lockdown, which is what they should have done.
Now, they're in a lockdown during a live event.

(49:26):
The individual was caught.
Everything was fine.
Every time you have a lockdown, whether it's a real one or a drill,
you have what's called an after action event.
You get together with your staff in a committee room and talk about what happened.
Well, again, she had gone through these drills a number of times,
went to the after action after this incident, after everything was OK,

(49:47):
everything settled, we're back to normal.
They got into the meeting.
They found out that one third of her teachers froze.
They're nothing.
And these were people that went through the drills and were fine with it
and were confident in it.
So you don't know.
And you have to take that into account when something like this happens,

(50:08):
that you may have people that just freeze and there's nothing you can do about it.
You can't train for that.
You want to give them the confidence that it's, you know, what to do.
But it's going to happen.
Now, in my book, and this isn't a bit of an aside,

(50:28):
I made one of these credit card size, but they're called the Crip Reference Cards.
And I got the idea.
I had a doctor friend who uses this kind of thing in the emergency room.
Like, oh, yeah, they'll come up with a code purple.
And like, I haven't heard that color in months.
So I look at the card of all these colors and what purple means.
So I said, OK, can we use this for teachers?

(50:51):
Because every teacher has got a lanyard with either their ID on it
or their copy card on it, something.
They're wearing this lanyard as some kind of identification.
So this would be great because you look at it quickly and say, oh, wait, oh, lockdown.
OK, I did this, this, this. Oh, I forgot this.
Because I'm telling you, Brian, something like that in an emergency,
your mind is going to go blank.

(51:11):
You're going to forget what day it is.
I mean, you're not going to know.
I mean, you're you know, everything's going to start happening.
You're going to start sweating.
Your stomach is going to start rumbling.
I mean, you're in panic mode.
So I just did this just to they could have
something they could quickly reference, you know, when they're in that kind of situation.
It's just an added advice

(51:32):
for that that will help them, you know, if they get stuck in something.
So that was the other thing that we talked about.
When you have something like this, when you go through the fight or flight,
when there's possibly you're going to freeze.
OK, that's why I went and drilled
because now a day, but I'm sorry, I'm some I don't know what they do nowadays.
Back when I was working with the county, we would have active shooter

(51:56):
drilling once a year, just one time.
But every month had to have a fire drill.
So every month you're doing a fire drill.
You're going outside. OK, back in.
I mean, you could do a blindfold.
And we've been doing it since we were little.
It just was it became.
I hated it because I'm like, are you kidding me?
Every school now that's built has got sprinkler systems.

(52:17):
They got walls that protect you for four hours.
Doors that will, you know, six hours fire extinguishers everywhere.
It's like, oh, my God, when's the last time a kid died in a fire?
Hundreds of years ago.
Why can't we just do active shooter drills
every three months, every quarter, something like that?
So that has changed a bit.

(52:38):
I would like at least every quarter for to go through the drill.
Now, I know it becomes.
It cuts into school time.
The best you can do at a high school, thousands of kids, the best I've ever done.
I'm sorry. Before we know, you're good.
But before we go into this,
because I think we've only brushed next to it,

(52:59):
I don't think we've actually said, what do we do?
Because you keep saying this takes a lot of time.
And but like, what does what is the school's?
Protocol when there's an active shooter, what are they supposed to do?
All right. What they're supposed to do, if you've got an active shooter on campus,

(53:20):
obviously, the first thing is communication.
You got to make the announcement.
I mean, I don't care whether you hit the key like that
to get the announcement out or whatever.
Say it twice.
You got to say it twice, because the first time people like, wait,
what was that?
Because you're doing your teaching or whatever it is you do.
You got to say it twice.
So you get the communication out that, hey, we're in a lockdown.

(53:42):
This is not a drill.
Everyone goes into lockdown.
Now, again, classroom doors are already locked.
They already should be locked.
So what do they else have to do?
Close the blinds, turn the light off, sit on the floor,
silence your phone, don't listen to any announcements.
Don't open that door.
Good guys are coming. That's it.
It's pretty basic.
It's just it's and it's very simple.

(54:02):
Now, what you get is, oh, what if we're caught in a hallway?
What if we're outside during recess?
You're going to get the what ifs coming. OK.
So every time this happens when you've caught in a hallway,
it always becomes kind of an argument. OK.
Technically, what you're supposed to do, what it's hard to do

(54:22):
because your door is already locked.
I still like the idea of teachers opening the door,
especially if there's kids in a hallway.
This is not something where everybody's already in the classroom.
This could be class change, could be something like that.
You just stick your head out.
10, 15 seconds, anybody in the hallway.
You check it back in, close the door.
Now we're good because there's anybody in that hallway.
I don't care what classroom you pull them in.

(54:44):
Come on, you're coming in. We're locking the door.
That's it. And I tell kids and is the only other option they've got.
If you're sitting in the hallway, the doors are locked.
You can't get in. Go to the bathroom.
Stand up on the toilet, just close the door there and be quiet.
That's it. They're not going to see you're in there.
If you're very quiet, you're good to go.
Recess. That's again up to the gym teacher.

(55:05):
If you're outside, they'll have an area to go.
And I've asked them, OK, boom, we're in a lockdown.
You got to actually where do you go?
They've got two things to go.
We've got a secondary location across the street
or we've got a storage building over there.
I've got the keys to we go there.
So you plan that out ahead of time of where they need to go if that happens.

(55:27):
So at that point, you're basically pretty assured that if something happens.
And I know we talked about all the drills have been on.
Obviously, every school is different all the way from elementary on up
because they're different configurations, just different.
It's just weird that it actually was good training, though,
because all these schools were different of how they would run these drills.

(55:49):
And you would have a different situation every time.
That's why I loved unannounced drills.
You get pushback because in on the positive side, unannounced drill,
you're going to find out what's going on.
You're going to find out right away the things that are wrong.
However, when you do unannounced drills on a negative side,

(56:11):
everyone complains because, oh, I was doing a test.
Oh, the parents need to be notified.
Oh, we should tell this one.
Oh, we should tell the police.
So we should tell like, oh, my God.
OK. All right.
I said, look, let's do this.
I still like the idea of unannounced drills.
How about we put out the announcement that during this week,

(56:33):
one of the days this week, we're going to have an active shooter drill.
I'm not going to tell you the day.
I'm not going to tell you the time.
I just want you to be aware that sometime this week we're going to run a drill.
And you put that out to the parents because a lot of parents
that hear unannounced and the kid comes home and says, hey, we had a drill today.
What do you mean you had a drill?
Nobody told me.
And then it just goes up the ladder.

(56:54):
So if you notify them ahead of time, you could try to do as close
to unannounced as possible.
Brian, what happens?
Everybody's human.
The day of the drill, somehow that word gets out.
Again, everyone's human.
So what will the teachers do?
You pre set up your doors already locked.
They'll go in and close the blinds.

(57:14):
I'll turn the lights off before the drill.
So you're saying, what the hell?
So what do you mean?
So it just ruins the whole process because you want to see how they react.
But I can understand from the teachers point of it.
Look, this and we started talking about this high school.

(57:35):
It's a minimum.
The best I've ever done is an hour.
You're talking over an hour where you can't teach nothing.
You're sitting in this lockdown.
So because I understand the pressure on teachers.
Come on. After we went through the pandemic,
they're already under pressure to get these kids grades up.
They're already under pressure to get the school itself grade up.

(57:55):
So they're getting pressure from the school board, superintendent,
principal all the way down like, hey, we got to get these grades up for these kids.
So you talk about an act of shooter.
Oh, no. Now we got to take time out for that.
Right. I used to go to these conferences every year.
They'd have a teachers conference for three days,
three solid days of stuff they would put up there for these teachers.

(58:19):
OK. You know how much time I got? 45 minutes.
That's it. That's the best they could give me.
It was 45 minutes to talk about school safety.
It's it's something that it from your end, from my end, it was like,
you got to kid me. I got two hours of stuff here.
But from their end, it's like, look, more than likely is this is going to happen.

(58:41):
Train them the best you can.
And we're just going to have to deal with it.
Because there's so much pressure from parents,
from obviously the legislature,
because they hear things from the Department of Education that, oh, my God,
these kids, their grades have dropped.
I mean, we've seen across the country, math and English.
Forget it. We just keep dropping.

(59:02):
I mean, I don't know where we're at now, like in the 50s or 60s of foreign countries.
It's just something that the dynamic is safety and or teaching.
And as you know, any time an active shooter
situation happens, that's when the red flags go up.
OK, now we need to concentrate on that.

(59:22):
What's the easiest way to get the parents off my back and everybody off my back?
Technology. Yeah, we'll put in metal detectors.
We'll do this. We paid the money for that.
We're good parents. OK, on to the next thing.
Because that's always the problem.
It's on to the next thing.
We're safe. OK, we're done. All right.

(59:44):
No, this is something that has to be constant, has to constantly go on.
Now, I belong to an organization called Zero Now.
I'm not on here to advocate for them or advertise for them.
I just belong to them.
But their mission is to get a school safety district,
a school safety person in every single district of the nation.

(01:00:05):
And that person needs autonomy, their own budget,
their own staff, everything.
And that person needs to be able to say, yes, that I need a lock on that door.
Yeah, we need cameras here.
That's what they need to do.
Now it's just this mishmash of every state,
county and city doing whatever they want with their school safety person.

(01:00:27):
Look, in Pinellas County, where I used to work, they just took a teacher
after I left my position.
Yeah, I go over there. You're going to be the safety person now.
OK, yeah, you got it. All right. See you later.
So unless you ask and I don't want the feds involved,
this is not a federal situation.
If the states should be deciding what happens with this.
But you need someone in authority that I would say at least assistant

(01:00:49):
superintendent, you know, billing or, you know, position
to have that kind of power to make moves on school safety.
That's the only way that I see that this is going to be resolved.
Yeah, you could talk about, you know, cameras, metal detectors,

(01:01:09):
A.I., all this stuff still in the in the stages of, you know, maybe
there's one there's a company, a bunch of companies out there,
obviously a little bit over in the technology bit of gun
technician, the gun detection, excuse me, if the gun is brandished,
meaning they have to have it out in their hand outside of their clothes,

(01:01:33):
whether it's a pistol or a rifle.
OK, fine.
I mean, it does work.
I've seen it work where, boom, it zooms right in on that weapon.
The alert goes out and obviously they're doing outside of the school
too late once they're inside.
You want them to be detected outside of the school before they even get to the school.
Now, how far out?

(01:01:54):
Ah, probably about the human eye, unless you've got cameras with zooms.
They're very expensive and movement.
Most cameras are stationary. They do not zoom in.
Some do, but now you're talking, you know, the cost exponentially goes up.
So you've got them.
They can detect a weapon outside the school. Terrific.
All right. So as time goes on, Brian,

(01:02:16):
it's kind of common sense, these shooters, eventually they're not stupid.
They may be insane, but they're going to be all right.
Well, I'll just conceal it.
I'll put it in a bag or put it under my coat, whatever.
You know, maybe I look suspicious, but I'll make it into the school.
So there's always a defeatist way to defeat whatever technology they've got out there.
So there is no perfect situation.

(01:02:39):
Now, just going back to the idea of technology versus the schools.
We can't make schools prisons.
And that's the dynamic I also had to deal with.
We had lobby areas that were old school.
I mean, you have a countertop that was what, five feet, four feet high.
And they had swinging half door gates to get in.

(01:03:02):
That was it. Just a swinging gate.
So one day and again, unless something happens, you don't.
You're not going to change anything.
One day we had this individual come into the school.
It was elementary school. It was a dad.
I'm here to pick up my son.
And they looked through the index cards.
Sorry, sir, you're not authorized.
It's your wife because there was a divorce.
Your wife is the only one that's allowed to pick up the child.

(01:03:23):
And he got so angry that with jumped over the counter.
Boom, he's in the school.
So now you're like, holy crap.
Now, luckily, he didn't hurt anybody.
I mean, he was doing to pushing and shoving.
But he didn't have a weapon like that.
But of course, not a red flag goes up like, oh, my God.
So now we had to do it.
Now you had to close those lobby areas.

(01:03:43):
We had to make, you know, six foot high desks.
We had to have glass just like banks come all the way down.
So you just got a little slot at the bottom where you can pass paper back and forth.
Had to secure the doors instead of half doors, have actual doors.
So you're spending money on that.
But you have to because now it's like and we told people
because I tell you, Brian, when it happened, I felt the same way.

(01:04:05):
As soon as you walk in, because most of these lobby areas are
they're claustrophobic, they're tiny.
They're not this huge expanse.
They don't have the money for that.
These schools have been built back in the 20s.
So you walk in and it's like, oh, my God, you just felt like you were enclosed
in this capsule because of all the windows coming down.
And it just was not an open feeling, however.

(01:04:28):
And the parents were the same.
They're like, oh, my God, I can't believe this.
I feel like I'm enclosed in this thing.
But once I explained to them, look, this is there for the safety of your children
and and definitely the safety of the staff.
No one can reach over.
No one can jump over.
You know, it's a done deal.
I mean, you have to do this.

(01:04:49):
And we see it, obviously, and now government buildings.
I mean, you go to the DMV.
No, it's not. There's no way.
You know, you're not going to you're not going to get to them.
I mean, because there's a lot of anger that happens in this stuff.
And with schools, you do get sometimes a lot of anger.
I want my child now.
You know, I want this now. I have to do this.
So it's something that has to be done.
And I understand, again, back to the point of not making schools into prisons.

(01:05:15):
There's there's a fine line there.
You want to make it as safe as possible.
You want to make it so it's still welcoming.
But you have to keep it where you can't let the bad guy in.
And when I try to explain that to parents.
And that's exactly what we were talking about earlier with deterrents.
So there's deterrents there like it might not be,

(01:05:37):
you know, you're not going to see the inside of a school in a home design,
interior design magazine, because it's just going to it's going to be functional.
And I think it should be functional.
It should be a deterrent.
You were saying something interesting earlier.
So that I have a little bit of experience with and a different capacity.
There was a brief moment in time,

(01:05:59):
about a year where I was studying to be an EMT paramedic.
And I noticed and learning that there is no standard from county to county,
city to city, state to state of what can an EMT do?
What can the next level up?
We had advanced EMT to where you could push some medications,

(01:06:23):
you could place IVs, but that's not standardized across.
And so there is a little bit of like confusion that that
inevitably will bring up in certain situations, especially
because I I was an advanced EMT.
And let's say I went to a different place like I wouldn't be able
if they didn't have that level.
Well, then I can no longer intervene in a way that I'm trained to to help,

(01:06:46):
hopefully, maintain a person's life so they can get to the hospital
and the doctors can do what they can do to intervene and save the person's life.
You said something interesting about you.
It shouldn't be federally regulated,
but there should be standardized among states, counties,
and it should be their individual decision.

(01:07:09):
And so that inevitably brings up the issue of what I was talking about
because there was no national standardized.
What can an EMT do?
What can a paramedic do?
Medications, protocols, those will vary a little bit.
It's evidence based, but there's still variations.
And so what because I think just hearing this

(01:07:29):
and you obviously have a lot more training to me so you can push back to this point.
The government is definitely broad strokes.
They're very.
I want to I'll just say like they try to be efficient,
but there's a lot that gets that slips through the cracks.
And but we can look at regulators like the FAA.

(01:07:51):
So every time that there is an accident in a plane, whether it's in the sky,
on the ground, there is a huge, huge protocol that goes into place to,
hey, let's make sure that this thing that happened, it never happens again.
That's why flying is safer than cars, because they took it serious.
And so my point, my contention would be there should be some sort of federally

(01:08:16):
regulated position office that would look into every situation,
every school shooting and look at, OK, I mean, just really dissected,
dive deep into it, because when a plane goes down, you don't get the report for,
I think, years. I think they really look into this.
And then once they they make their recommendations and then they implement

(01:08:38):
them, this is standardized. It has to happen.
This is federally regulated.
And now, obviously, there's human error.
And these situations that happened with Boeing consecutively were very alarming.
But there is that's Boeing's failure, more so than the government.
And I'm definitely not apologist for the government and their efficiency.

(01:09:00):
I'm to the contrary, typically.
But I do believe that looking at something so thoroughly.
OK, so this person went into school and they committed it.
They commit a heinous act.
So let's look at the person. What led to this?
Let's really dissect this person.
Let's figure out the symptom is the school shooting.

(01:09:21):
But what is the root cause?
What made this person do that?
And then look from there.
OK, this is how this person commit this act.
What interventions can we do to stop this?
And like you said, there are some that are being implemented,
but they're not standardized.
We get into these situations or like we can try to avoid them.

(01:09:43):
And like this is the the point that you're really stressing.
And the point that I feel should be stressed is we need to do training.
And obviously, it's very inconvenient.
And the reason why I asked you, what do we do in that situation?
We lock down.
I would like to go back and to say, what are the other recommendations?

(01:10:03):
Because you you mentioned run, hide, fight and fight.
And then you mentioned Alice, which I want to circle back to
and why that's not necessarily what you want to do in a school situation.
So to go back to what I was saying, to why I had that tangent
about what happened to me and the disbelief of it is you have individual people

(01:10:24):
who are in charge of their school and their school safety.
You have budgetary restrictions.
You have federal mandates of how schools need to have a certain
percentage of people passing.
They need to be getting certain percentage of grades.
So they have this expectation on them to where do I think there's going to be

(01:10:45):
a school shooting or do I think that the end of the year is coming
and the grades aren't up to snuff?
And so where do I want to spend my time, my resource?
Where do I want to have this intervention?
So to outsource this to again, what I would argue would be more beneficial,
some sort of oversight to where there is a standardized and not leaving it

(01:11:10):
to the individuals in that way.
And again, this is going back to people who take it very serious.
This is their livelihood.
They have, they care, they're trained and they are really looking at,
OK, this is what happens.
This is you have the FBI who developed like when serial killers commit their acts.

(01:11:35):
They have people who can analyze their behavior and say, hey, this person
is more than likely a white guy.
They're more than likely 50.
And so they've been able to analyze and break down human personality traits.
And so, like, let's do that with these shooters.
Let's find the red flags before like, hey, this kid, like he's a normal kid,
but he's he's given me red flags for some reason.

(01:11:56):
So let's go ahead and figure out or intervene with them
and just spend a little bit more time with them.
We're not saying he's going to be a school shooter, but there's some red flags.
And that can come up from people who are who are really dissecting
these kinds of behaviors.
And so this was very long winded.
So what do you think about my pushback to not so much

(01:12:21):
it being at the state or being
like from county to county superintendent, superintendent, but having a more
focused higher body that's in charge of school safety?
Well, I disagree to have that.
We should have a national organization that you have to answer to.

(01:12:44):
I don't like that. However, you probably already know
the Secret Service has done a study on this.
And it was a I say long winded, but it was a very good study
on active shooters themselves.
And they did break down by gender, you know, by age, by all this stuff.
They broke it down.
And even though I work for them, it was to me kind of long winded

(01:13:07):
because at the end, you're looking for the results.
OK, what is the result of this?
What is your conclusion?
Are we looking for only white males?
Are we only looking for this?
And it was inconclusive because they're like, look, yeah,
there are certain parameters that it's usually white males.
That's usually between this age group.
However, it came down to, you know, we can't give you a definitive answer

(01:13:32):
that to look for this particular individual to to to target or to profile
that that's going to happen in shooting.
The FBI is keeping statistics on this stuff.
There's a gentleman on LinkedIn.
His name is David Reedman.
I think it's pronounced
that has a lot of the statistics about school shootings.
So there is government organizations out.

(01:13:53):
There's another organization within the government.
It's the acronym is like CSIS, something like that, cyber security.
And they have they'll have some,
what I say, podcasts every six months or so bring it up.
But it's mostly very generic stuff that they bring up anyway.

(01:14:13):
Back to your point, I would rather have it stay with the state
because, you know, every school district is different.
You can't have a federal standard going from inner city to suburban to rule.
You've got schools, sometimes a police response,
maybe 20 minutes at best in rural areas.

(01:14:34):
Other areas, inner city, they're already there.
I mean, within five minutes, it just is that kind of dynamic.
And it's kind of like you say,
where the states are left up to their own devices,
which is fine because they know their own people.
Now we go back to I do want to mention what we said about other training

(01:14:55):
besides going into a lockdown, because lockdowns been used,
obviously, for many, many years.
So the first thing we'll talk about is run, hide, fight, run, hide, fight.
There's a video out there done by the Houston Police Department,
along with Department of Homeland Security.
It's good video. I mean, you know, it's kind of old now, but it's good.

(01:15:17):
They've got the movie narrator voice coming over.
You've got a guy all dressed in black and he's coming in, you know,
I think he had a shotgun or something.
And they go through this scenario of what steps to take
when you have someone that comes in with a threat like this.
It's going to shoot people.
And the first option, obviously, is run.
If you can run, then you should run.
Run out of the building, get away, go to a safe place, dial 911,

(01:15:42):
whatever it is you got to do.
The second, if you can't run at that point, the individual is will see you
or will target you.
Now you've got to hide in an office under a desk somewhere where you're out of sight.
The third option, if it comes to it, is if that person tries to breach a door
to try to get to you, now you've got to fight.

(01:16:04):
Grab a fire extinguisher, chair, anything to just at that point,
it's like it's your life.
You got to do something.
It was made for businesses.
It was made for adults.
Somehow this got transferred over to schools.
I have no idea why this happened, how it happened, but it did.

(01:16:24):
And you do have some schools that incorporate this run, hide, fight.
Now, they'll tell you, oh,
yeah, it's usually age base will go from middle school level to high school.
You know, if we're going to fight, I'm like, what?
I'm not, you know, and the run part is what I'm worried about also.
Look, once again, I'm not going to have anyone run out of a perfectly safe

(01:16:49):
classroom, it's not never going to be breached ever.
And now you're going to run to where?
Where are you going?
And you're going to take hundreds of kids to do this, to run out of a building.
You know, and the fight part, again,
I'm not going to have I don't even care if you're in high school.
I'm not going to have anybody because you've seen there's videos out there.

(01:17:10):
Easy enough to look up on the Internet where you have this drill,
where you'll have this individual somehow got into the classroom.
That would be my first point.
How did they get into the classroom?
Did they break down the door?
Was the door unlocked?
How did they even get in there?
Well, now they're in there.
So now they're like, OK, we're going to throw things at them.
We're going to tackle them.

(01:17:31):
We're going to do whatever the hell we're going to do.
All right. To me, it's unrealistic, impossible.
Never should have happened.
But it's a scare factor.
So now you've got principals and administrators going, whoa.
Yeah, we could have that happen.
You know, we better prepare for something like that.
So here come the marketing people.

(01:17:52):
The other company is called Alice, and it's an acronym.
It stands for alert, lockdown, inform.
I think it's confront and evacuate.
OK, the alert I agree with.
Yeah, you got to put out a message to communicate.
There is an active shooter on our campus.
Second lockdown. Perfect.
Now you're into a lockdown. No problem.

(01:18:14):
The third one is informed.
The way they word it is that an individual, someone needs to be on
the communication system talking over the PA
and telling people where the shooter is.
Brian, there's no cameras in existence in any schools that I know of
that can follow some one individual through all these different floors and stuff.

(01:18:38):
You may be able to say, yeah, the last time I saw him was on the second floor.
I don't know where he is now.
Also, he pops up on the fourth floor.
No, it's impossible.
The confront part is even worse.
The way they word it in there is, again, they try to make it now age base.
But if an individual gets into the classroom, they want children.

(01:18:58):
I don't care what age you're at.
You could be elementary up to high school.
They want children during the most traumatic event they're ever going to be
involved in to grab an object.
I don't care what it is.
Could be a thermos, a book, something and throw it precisely
at the same time with everyone else at this individual with a weapon.

(01:19:19):
And I'm like, what happened to common sense?
If I'm a parent, I am not going to have my child throw something at a gunman.
I don't care if they're in the classroom, because here's the deal.
You take a child who's never probably thrown anything in his life, not an athlete.

(01:19:41):
And you tell them, here's take this basketball.
And I want you to shoot at that basket and I want you to put it in.
OK, six months from now, let's keep practicing.
Practice for like an hour. Go ahead.
Six months from now, I'm going to want to give you that basketball again.
And now see if you can hit that basket within five minutes.

(01:20:02):
Meanwhile, while there's a gunman in front of you
and you're absolutely in panic mode,
now you're supposed to throw something exactly at this.
For what reason? To distract them?
To me, it's just going to piss them off even more.
They're going to start shooting everybody.
So this is their idea.
And they market this because it's reactive.

(01:20:22):
It makes you feel like you're doing something.
Same thing on the teacher end.
That's why you have teachers going to these individuals and confronting them.
The hero villain deal. I'm going to be a hero.
I'm going to go out and stop this individual just by talking them down.
Not happening.
So the other thing is there are no mental health organizations.
There are no psychologists, psychiatrists, child development people, social workers.

(01:20:44):
No one agrees with this idea of taking a child
and having them throw something at a gunman.
It's just it's ludicrous.
And again, I tell parents, if you hear anything like that,
you better throw up a red flag and start talking to your school board saying,
no way am I going to have my child do something like that.
And they used to have it stopped, at least now.

(01:21:06):
But a few years back, they would tell kids, hey, bring a soup can in.
Everybody bring a soup can in so we can throw it like what?
And they would actually there's actually videos out there of them
drilling with this with these kids throwing stuff at it.
I'm like, oh, my God, what happened?
It's it's a bizarre world.
So it just doesn't make any sense.

(01:21:27):
However, there are a lot of school districts out there
that have bought into the marketing, have purchased the training,
have gone through it.
And guess what?
It's ended up with all kinds of little liability suits.
I have an email here from an individual.
The company is called Safe Havens International.
They've been in in the school safety space for 30, 40 years.

(01:21:49):
The head of the individual, Michael Dorn,
was a former Georgia state police officer.
I mean, the guy is just the expert.
Those two are my mentors.
Michael Dorn, the other one's Kenneth Trump.
Both these guys are above and beyond anything
you'd ever want to find out about school safety.
And they say, look, they're both

(01:22:09):
subject experts.
They're both called in front of juries.
And the liability is unbelievable.
Millions and millions of dollars for this type of training that has gone wrong.
And that's just during the training.
They've had actual events that have happened
where the teachers, administrators and even the police have lied

(01:22:30):
and said, oh, yeah, we use the ALICE training to subdue this individual.
Well, once they looked at the video, they found out the individual
just dropped the gun, gave up, whatever.
But they put it out that this training helped them with this.
It didn't. So you have to really watch out
the way it's marketed for this kind of stuff, because Brian, they in there
in the back of their minds, these people in the companies are probably saying,

(01:22:52):
yeah, we're saving kids, but it's still about money.
It's all about the money for these businesses.
And I tell you, if you look at any of these videos,
you just kind of shake your head because I've done a bunch of podcasts
and I've done a bunch of stuff on LinkedIn where I put these videos up
and saying, are you kidding me?
Where, you know, you've had people doing it.
There's one I'm sorry, at the lab.

(01:23:14):
There's one in there where you've got it's all adults, obviously.
And they're training for this video and they're inside a classroom
and they're going to barricade the door, the classroom door.
So they're getting chairs and desks and they're going to barricade
and they're building this barricade up.
And right at the end of the video, the individual on the outside
opens the door out.

(01:23:36):
So it's like, what?
You just wasted all that time because he opened the door.
He's going to get it anyways, because the door didn't swing in.
So you got to keep that in mind.
Well, which way is the door swing?
What's the sense of barricade if they can open the door and they're right there?
So it just it's laughable.
And there was other stuff where they had an individual come in
and they're all, you know, they're wearing their vests and stuff

(01:23:58):
that, you know, beep because they had a fake gun.
And he's screaming. He's got this gun.
He goes, you were bullying me.
You were yelling at me.
And he's running up and down inside the classroom, yelling and stuff.
And like, I'm completely unrealistic.
And I don't know what the third one was, where it was a bunch of kids
in elementary school and the teacher said, OK, there's an active shooter

(01:24:19):
in the school. We got to evacuate.
Not like, well, the gunman's way over there.
We don't have to worry. No, we're going to evacuate.
We just heard as an active shooter, we're out of here.
And you see the kids and they get up and they start running.
And it's not even led by the teacher.
You see a little girl who is leading them and the teachers at the tail end,
obviously, to make sure all the kids get out.
But still, and these kids come out into the hallway to face what?

(01:24:42):
I don't know.
There could be a gunman stared at them.
They don't know where the shooter is.
So it just it just makes absolutely no sense.
Along with not only the liability of the idea of going with these other
types of training, run, hide, fight or Alice, but
it's the idea that, look, lockdowns work.

(01:25:02):
They've always worked.
Department of Education still backs them up.
School resource officers back it up.
Psychologists back it up. Lockdowns work.
So they said, OK, just a little bit off that.
They said, well, wait a minute.
Some of these drills could create anxiety in children.
It's sometimes it may be traumatic.

(01:25:22):
So guess what? They did a study.
They went to these kids' school.
They went to these kids' school.
It was in Syracuse, New York, and some of these children
had been involved in violence outside of the home.
I'm sorry, outside of the classroom, outside of the school.
So they said, can we see how this works?

(01:25:43):
We'll do a survey afterwards.
So they went through and they did the drills for active shooter,
did the survey afterwards, and they and these asked these kids,
do you feel safer once we've done these drills?
Seventy, eighty percent of the kids, yeah, I feel much safer
now that we've done these drills.
And these are kids that had some violence in their background.
So the idea that these drills create trauma or create anxiety,

(01:26:06):
I'm sorry, it's a bunch of BS because these kids know better.
And I go all the way down to elementary school.
One of the story.
It's a little bit off topic.
I had a school that was what they call an open school.
In the middle, there'd be an open area out there.
Open area outdoors.
And the school basically was surrounded by this open area.

(01:26:28):
So I had a teacher. I'm sorry.
I had a principal there who liked to just change things up.
So we go and he goes into an active shooter drill.
Now, again, he had trained his people, all his teachers,
and he takes a bullhorn and about halfway through the drill,
he goes out into this area and he says, the drills over.
We're all set. Go back to teaching drills over.

(01:26:49):
Everything's OK.
The teachers that had been through this before were like, uh-uh, no, no, no.
You don't listen to any announcements to substitute teachers.
Hear this. They're like, good, we're back to class.
Here we go. The children.
They were the ones who immediately stood up and said, no, no, it's a trick.
It's a trick. We don't listen to any announcements.

(01:27:10):
So these kids know, don't think that they're naive, that they don't know what's going on.
I had children in the same elementary school.
When I went to afterwards, it was a second floor and on the second floor,
it was in the round. They had five classrooms.
Now they had glass doors on the outer part where it had to be locked up.
Then you had the classrooms that were locked.

(01:27:32):
So anytime there was an active shooter incident, some one teacher had to go out
and lock those glass doors.
And if they were sick, they did have a plan B.
So I said, all right, look, and I said to the kids, I said, um, do you guys know
where the key is to those outer doors?
Yeah, yeah, it's out at the fire extinguisher and the fire extinguisher said, oh my God.

(01:27:52):
I said, let's go. And they were like fifth grade.
I had every one of those kids go out and take those keys and lock those outer doors.
I said, you guys are the heroes because what if your teacher passes out?
What if something happens where they can't get to that key
and you've got to lock those outer doors?
One of you kids is going to step up and grab that key and go out.
And it was like, bang, like this light bulb went off in their heads.
They're like, oh my gosh.

(01:28:13):
And to make those kids feel so good like that, that they could do that.
Brian, I've had kids in elementary schools and we were fortunate
with some of our elementary schools had their own bathrooms in the classroom.
These teachers would stuff 25 kids into this tiny bathroom.
I mean, just crammed in there.

(01:28:34):
And I said, it's a good idea because now you got double coverage.
Now, not only the classroom door, now you're in the bathroom.
And luckily you're in a bathroom because you could be in there for a couple hours.
And at the end, we would always do an after action and come out
and take them out of the bathroom.
And these kids would be beaming of the job they did.
And I would say, you guys get a gold star, every one of you.

(01:28:55):
You want to give them positive feedback for doing something
because they could be in there for two hours.
And it's happened.
During the drill, I've had it happen where there was police activity.
Schools goes into a lockdown.
Well, the police aren't in contact with the school.
I get calls from the school going, hey, we've been there for two hours
in this lockdown, what the hell's going on?
And this would have been something they arrested, they're gone.
I mean, come on, their priority is not to call the school back.

(01:29:18):
And they'd say, oh my God, we've been in this for two hours.
This is horrible.
I said, okay, you can finally come out.
But these kids would come out of the bathroom being stuffed in there
and just beaming and tell them how good a job they did.
So these kids, again, they're not naive.
They know what's going on.
They are not scared.
They almost have as much confidence as the teachers in knowing what to do.

(01:29:41):
So in fact, that's the other thing.
Just one other point.
I know you want to get in because I'm talking a lot of these kids when you tell them,
when you say we've got an active shooter and you do have a teacher that says,
okay, I've been trained in run, hide, fight.
I've been trained in Alice.
We're going to evacuate.
And I guarantee you there's going to be at least five or six kids go,

(01:30:05):
whoa, my daddy is a military law informant.
He said, we do not leave this classroom.
I'm not going anywhere.
And you're going to get that.
So now what do you do?
So now is it like herding cats?
No, you're coming with me anyways.
I was a parent.
I told my son something like that happens.
You're going to lockdown.

(01:30:25):
If they're going to pull you out and evacuate, you say, no, I'm staying here.
Lock the door.
Go ahead.
Good luck.
I'm staying here in the classroom where it's safe.
So you're going to run into that also.
And what's happening at a lot of schools and it's happening in my own district here,
they're giving teachers options.
Now, can you imagine, Brian, you're a teacher.
And they come to you and say, Brian, when we have an after shooter situation,

(01:30:47):
you'll hear the announcement.
It's going to be up to you if you want to stay into a lockdown or you're going to evacuate.
Now, do you want that liability on your head?
Why are they putting that on the teacher?
Can you imagine a teacher standing there and you've got to make a life or death
situate, you know, you've got to make a life or death decision, excuse me,

(01:31:07):
within seconds because you've got an after shooter on campus.
Do I leave or do I stay?
Why would you put that liability on a teacher?
I mean, even more pressure than they've already got.
You go into a lockdown.
You stay there.
You're safe.
It's OK.
There's no reason to evacuate.
So I try to put that out not only to teachers, but especially the parents to tell them you

(01:31:30):
need to know what's going on.
And a lot of parents today, just like when I was a parent and when my
parents took me to school, I got work to do.
I'm going to drop you off.
See you later.
Schools got it.
We're good.
Not anymore.
You've got to find out.
You talk to your children.
I heard you had an emergency drill today.
What are they doing?
Are they making you evacuate?

(01:31:51):
Are they making you lock down?
What are they doing?
Are they making you throw things at an individual?
Find out.
You have to find out because schools circle the wagons.
It's a bureaucracy just like anywhere else.
The only resource you have is to go in front of that school board.
Now, you're only going to get three minutes.
You get a page and a half in three minutes.

(01:32:12):
You can talk fast.
You get it in there.
If you don't get no satisfaction that way, now you've got to start talking to your state
legislatures going, this is not right.
Or in some instances, I'm sorry, you've got to pull the kid out.
Pull them out.
Private school, charter school, whatever.
Find out how they run their drills to make your kids safe.
Run, hide, fight.
And Alice, that's not making your kids safe.
You hear any of those words, you've got to start complaining or get your kid out.

(01:32:38):
Yeah, there's so many interesting things there.
The one where the principal said, hey, the drill's over and the kids say, no.
And that's the point of training.
The training needs to be there because the kids know, hey, no.
The risk in reality that this is just a trap, we need to be made aware of this.

(01:33:00):
And plus little kids, their whole lives are just dictated by
older people telling them what to do.
So when they get the opportunity to say, hey, no, actually, you're wrong.
And they get to do that because they've been trained.
And this kind of goes to your point and just the difference of

(01:33:21):
at what level does it need to be.
But there needs to be training.
There needs to be a standardized training that everyone needs to know.
The one thing about this, Brian, if I can interrupt, there is no
certification.
There is no diploma.
There's nothing out there that says, OK, now you're a school safety expert.

(01:33:46):
Anyone could step up and say that.
Now, yes, people that have background in law enforcement, military, and education,
they can go back and say, hey, I've worked in this area for a number of years.
But there's no certification, national standard, or diploma that you get.
Hey, got my bachelor's, got my master's in this.
Some schools are starting it with some classes.

(01:34:08):
Some are getting to that point where you can get a bachelor's or master's in that world.
But no, the only certifications that are out there are run by private businesses that are
looking for a quick buck.
They'll say, oh, you can be part of this organization that's got 50 years of school
safety experience.
It cost you $500 to take this test, and now you're certified.

(01:34:30):
So now you get those letters past your name, which means absolutely nothing.
So that's one other problem that's out there, that there is not a standardization where
you say, OK, what's your training?
What do you got?
So I can trust you as a school safety person coming in and telling my school that we need
to do this.

(01:34:52):
There isn't.
So basically what's happening is that it's just a trust that you're either former law
enforcement, former military, former in the education world, that you know what you're
talking about.
So I was just fortunate that because of my background, I got in and I learned a lot of
stuff I didn't know.
And once you got in there, you see stuff.

(01:35:13):
A lot of it's common sense, yes.
But a lot of it is that something that you see and you start talking to other people,
the only way you can get it, and the only way you get that experience is being involved
in the school system itself and being in the schools.
So I don't like this idea, again, of having the federal involved.

(01:35:36):
The states, I think, still should have to do something where you say, it's going to
come to that.
Because you've got a bunch of organizations out there now that are fighting against each
other.
You've got certain organizations that, OK, we want a school safety district person.
You've got other agencies that say, OK, well, that's fine.
But we'd rather have legislation that says this, this, and this.
And a lot of time, legislatures listen to the wrong things.

(01:35:58):
And they'll put in money.
OK, we'll give you money, but we want metal detectors.
We'll give you money, but we want cameras.
To me, it's like, no, you're spending too much money on that stuff.
It's all about the people.
It's the human factor.
And like we said, drilling.
That's what helps more than anything else besides technology or all this other stuff.
As long as you've got a staff that is confident in their drilling, you're going to be safe.

(01:36:23):
I mean, it's happened over and over again.
I got a perfect example of Nashville.
I don't know if you've seen the video of Nashville.
The individual went in and they had glass doors there and busted through the doors,
which wasn't really that big of a deal.
But they went in and you see on the video, as they're going along, they're checking the
doors.
Locked, not going.
Locked, no.
Open, I'm going in.
And they went through.

(01:36:43):
And the police response was spot on.
They had a great video of the guy who went in there very calmly, parked the vehicle,
talked to the individuals that were there and said, yes, we've seen the shooter.
This is the last place we saw them.
Police officer says, make yourself safe.
I got it.
Goes in.
They do their search.
They pinhole him and trap them on the second floor and take them out.

(01:37:08):
I mean, it was just a perfect situation.
And this happens a lot of times that the media doesn't pick up on,
that the police do that response and make that perfect response.
But back to this thing of just going into a lockdown and the drilling, that school did
it perfectly.
And there are schools out there that still do it very well.

(01:37:29):
So I want to stay away from personally, myself personally, any kind of other type of training.
You're still going to get pushback from these other businesses that want to do something
different and schools that want to do something different because they want to be reactive.
My whole thing is there's just two things that I constantly talk about on these podcasts.

(01:37:49):
And the number one thing is you keep yourself safe.
And Brian, I'll just go back a little bit.
I had elementary school principals and this happened more than once when we were doing
the drill.
And I said to them, I'm the ghost.
I'm the guy that's just not even supposed to be here.
I'm just here to observe.
You're going to do the drill and then we're going to do an after action.

(01:38:09):
And the principals are like, OK, I've got three or four other people that are going
to walk around the campus during the drill.
I'm like, no.
I said, what would you do during a real event?
It's like, oh, we would go and check that the teacher's doors are locked.
I'm like, then you're not going home.
I said, you drill for real.
I said, you as a principal, you're in that room with the door locked and you wait till

(01:38:33):
the good guys come.
And when I explained this to them, because they had done this for years where they've
walked the campus during a drill, you would see just the emotions, the tears.
These are my children.
They're my family.
I need to protect them.
I said, yes, you do.
And you need to keep yourself safe.
Otherwise, you're not helping anybody.

(01:38:54):
And this would take five or 10 minutes for me to explain to them, no, that is wrong.
You are not going anywhere during a drill or during an active event.
You keep yourself safe.
Then you're going to be able to help others.
And this took a while because it was very emotional for them because elementary,
especially, you want to protect these kids and these principals are emotionally involved

(01:39:17):
with what they should be with these children.
But sometimes the mind, it just doesn't work properly.
They're going to go out and make sure the kids are safe by making sure the teacher's
doors are locked.
So that took a while.
So that my main thing, you keep yourself safe in any situation.
I don't care what it is.
Then you can help others.
Don't be a hero and think you're going to save somebody by tackling that guy over there.

(01:39:40):
I don't care if it's a school or whether you're in a mall or in a movie theater.
You keep yourself safe first.
I try to say the metaphor when the oxygen drops from the plane.
What do they tell you?
They tell you if you've got a child or an elderly adult there, you put your mask on first.
Then you can help the child or the elderly individual.

(01:40:01):
So that's important.
You keep yourself safe first.
Secondly is armed school resource officers.
I always mention that those two things, you keep yourself safe first.
Secondly, make sure you have armed school resource officers in the school.
Yeah.
And it's really important.
And that falls back to education.
Because instinctually, it's great that the principal wants to intervene.

(01:40:25):
That's just, it's selfless.
You almost feel like that should be a qualification that you're going to have a servant person
who's going to put the needs and safety well-being of others before themselves first.
But when you look at it, and I'm sure what you explained to them is,
if you're not safe, you become another liability.

(01:40:48):
So it was the same thing with first responders, with firefighters.
If the scene is not safe, and there are people dying, but the scene is not safe,
and you yourself will become a victim, then you're just creating more of a mess.
You're literally not helping at all.
What you could have provided later after the situation has deescalated,

(01:41:09):
you can't do anymore because either you're wounded or you're dead, unfortunately.
And it's just, it's the reality.
It's counterintuitive.
You think like, no, I need to go.
That makes perfect sense because in that book, The Unthinkable that I talked about,

(01:41:30):
she talked about people that respond to their jobs.
If you have an incident happen like that, firemen, policemen,
doctors, nurses, they're going to go.
It's in their DNA.
They're going to that event, to that person, to whatever's going on.
So yeah, it makes perfect sense what you're talking about.

(01:41:50):
Yeah, and it's just, that's part of the education.
That would be part of a standardized.
Again, I know it seems like I'm more for the federally.
Regulated thing.
I'm just, I'm not, but because I worked for a multi-international delivery company
and I worked at a more rural, small station.
So when the big corporate company would come out with,

(01:42:12):
hey, these are our new policies.
We'll be like, well, you've just completely tied our hands behind our back.
We are so much less efficient now because of what you're mandating.
And so that's what I was talking about earlier in the conversation.
When I was saying a lot of things will fall through the cracks.
So there, there should be at, to whatever level, some sort of standardization.

(01:42:35):
That's a tricky word for me, for some reason.
Cause otherwise we're not pre-Columbine.
We are, we are to where it is now irresponsible of us as caretakers, as these,
these, these stewards of the next generation to not take their safety.

(01:42:57):
And again, this is a big conversation.
Legislators, they need to be looking at why is this happening?
What interventions before can we put into place?
And it's, it's a tightrope because what you said, we have civil liberties,
we have constitutional rights and there, there's a balance to be struck,

(01:43:18):
but that's why you're there.
You are a legislator because you need to be thinking about these nuanced interventions.
That's why you're there.
You are a public servant.
And I was going to say, and you, you said earlier how like very, you said,

(01:43:39):
you said never will break into the classroom and odds are like you're saying, like that's,
that's very true because this is like so many other crimes.
This is a crime of opportunity.
And if the opportunity isn't there, you're not going to do it.
So if you provide any resistance, like the door is locked, like then no,

(01:44:00):
and this is the same thing for people who get kidnapped when they say,
when they pull out a weapon and say, Hey, come into my car.
You don't do that.
You do everything the opposite of what they tell you to do,
because that is how you maintain your safety.
You make a big scene, you shout, you fight.
And so I can see Alice coming into place after you've implemented,

(01:44:22):
you are locked down.
You, you have barricaded, you have turned the lights off.
You've done everything.
Okay.
Now, unfortunately, maybe there's a particular student that this
active shooter is going after and you happen to be in the room with them.
Well, now don't comply.
Now you need to fight and to whatever extent, like the teacher needs to intervene

(01:44:47):
because when you don't, then you're just, you're asking for mercy for,
from a person who isn't there to provide you mercy.
You have such an interesting skillset and we, we've really hyper focused
and with very good reason on school safety, on student safety.

(01:45:10):
But these, these crimes aren't just in schools.
These, the shootings, public students can happen everywhere.
So what can we do as citizens living in a world where, and there's arguments
we made about the second amendment, but one of the most captivating succinct

(01:45:32):
arguments I've heard about why citizens should be armed from an authoritarian
government is you had the Taliban who were able to fend off the U S forces
because they were armed where you can look at the case study of Iraq.
Well, how fast Iraq fell compared to Afghanistan.
Cause I, I was thinking the same thing.

(01:45:52):
Well, if a tank comes through, it's kind of game over.
And so, but it's, but then you see like, oh, resistance is just this.
Protection.
And so like, you have that protection.
So I, I could see both sides of the argument, but at the end of the day, I think I rather
have a handgun against a tank than, you know, like a fist full of sand.

(01:46:16):
Talking just a little bit about that.
That one of the things that I usually always bring up in these situations is I don't
really talk about, you know, gun control, but let's say you're a burglar and you've
been doing this for a number of years.
And you go to one of the houses, you got two houses next to each other and one of the
houses has got a sign and it says so-and-so security, or it says this security, or we

(01:46:40):
have cameras or whatever the sign says, you know, next householders all dark does have
any signs.
Well, unless you're an idiot, where are you going to go?
If you're going to burglar how you're going to burgle that one over there.
It doesn't have any signs.
Now, maybe those signs are even fake.
Maybe just put them up there to, you know, to fool you.
Maybe the cameras look fake also.
You don't know.
You don't know.
Why take the chance?

(01:47:00):
It's the same thing as the neighborhoods or whatever with the school system, because
we did talk a little bit about arming teachers, but if you've got a county that has already
broadcast and said, yes, we're going to arm our teachers, we've let you know any of the
schools in our county, you may run into a teacher that's armed.
And the other county over said, oh, no, no, no, no, we're not going to arm our teachers.

(01:47:23):
So where do you think that shooter is going to go?
They're going to go to someplace just like when anything that has a no gun free zone,
whatever it is, because they will be unchallenged and they will be able to have free rein to
shoot whoever they want.
So for me, that's part of the issue of this idea of whether you arm teachers or not.

(01:47:45):
I'm still an offense about that.
I went back and forth.
I'm still going back and forth about this.
There are states, Texas, Utah, and a couple others that allow teachers to be armed.
What their training is, I don't know.
I've gone back with Michael Dorn and Kenneth Trump talking about this.
And they're still also on the fence about how this works.

(01:48:06):
We actually need studies done on how this actually works because there's just too much
stuff on the outside when you think about this, not about protecting the kids, but about
what happens if the child gets ahold of this gun?
What happens if the teacher leaves it in the bathroom?
What happens if they put it in the drawer?

(01:48:27):
I don't know.
I don't know their training.
It was talked about in my county also.
It kind of fizzled out that it didn't happen.
But back to this idea of guns for protection.
When you're out at the mall, you're out at the grocery store, you're out wherever,

(01:48:48):
I still like to leave it up to the individual
to be able to have that ability, especially for women, with what's happening now, with
so many incidents of them being attacked by men, obviously.
And they should have that ability to have a weapon.
Home protection, absolutely.

(01:49:08):
Anybody that is going to come in and possibly invade your home, your family, your children,
yeah, you should have something that's going to protect you when they enter your house.
When they enter your house.
So on that end, yeah, we don't have to.
It's a nuanced conversation.
And that's the thing.
You need to have the nuanced conversation.

(01:49:29):
You need the case studies.
You need the evidence to move forward with confidence.
Say, hey, this isn't perfect.
We will never find perfection because perfection is not having to deal with this issue in the
first place.
So let's do the best we can.
Let's protect the children.
Let's protect ourselves the best we can moving forward in this imperfect world.
That we live in.
So often we want to find perfection.

(01:49:51):
And if it's not perfection, we stay put.
And it's just very flawed thinking to where, no, we do something, even if it's in the wrong
direction at first.
Well, now you've learned something and now you are more confident moving forward in the
other direction.
But so, yeah.
So being mindful of your time and wrapping this up, I just want to you have such a unique

(01:50:16):
skill set.
I imagine you see the world much differently than everyone else.
Like being in the Secret Service for as long as you have, you've had to be very mindful
of not only your personal safety and safeguarding yourself, but also whoever you are responsible
for their protection as well.
So as we're just out there living our lives, what are some things that we can do to make

(01:50:39):
sure that we don't find ourselves like victims of a violent crime?
We've talked about this before, and I'm sure most people have heard about this stuff.
We talked about situational awareness.
It's just basically where you're at when you go into a store, when you go to a movie theater,
when you go to a restaurant, where are the exits?
And don't think because your mind and your body are going to react if there's a situation.

(01:51:03):
I got to go back to where I came in.
And a lot of the times this has happened during fires where people will go to the entrance
that they came from.
Well, it's blocked.
You've got to find the other.
So when you go in, where are the other exits?
Again, this is not something paranoid.
This is not something you need to constantly think about.
But just at the top of your head, when you go in, go, OK, we're sitting over here.

(01:51:27):
I know the entrance where I came in.
Where are the other exits?
That's all.
Because if you've got to get out of a fire, somebody comes in, some individual wants to
tear up the place.
Same thing with grocery stores or movie theaters.
Where are the other exits so I know to get out?
A lot of times, you've heard this.
I'm sure you've read stories about law enforcement.
You want to sit so you're facing the door.

(01:51:48):
Yeah, that's what I do.
I don't want my back turned to someone that may come in that entrance and create havoc.
I want to see.
I want to be able to see if something happens so I can protect myself and protect my family.
So that's another thing.
If you're in a mall, walking around a mall, again, it's hard because some of these malls
are like mazes.
I mean, I'm looking for a certain store.
I can't get there for half an hour because I have no idea.

(01:52:10):
I've got to look for the map.
So okay, when you get to the map, find out where the store is.
Just see where the other exits are if I need to run into somewhere.
But the other thing is most of these stores, well, how are they getting their goods?
They've got to have back doors.
So if you've got anything that happens, dive into a store.
They're going to have a back door.
They've got to take delivery somehow.

(01:52:31):
So they're going to have a back door to something.
So again, in the back of your mind, just think again.
Your first thought again is you keep yourself safe.
I understand your first thought is going to be I've got to protect my kids and stuff.
But don't, again, be a hero and go towards whatever the action is when something like
that, when you're out and about in the world.
Protect your kids.

(01:52:52):
Find some place for them to be safe.
Keep yourself safe.
And if you can, yeah, you want to get away from it.
Get out of there.
Get on the phone.
9-1-1, whatever it is to get out.
It does come into this kind of run, hide, fight thing when you're out and about in big
areas like that where, obviously, your first thought is just to get away, just to run out
of there.
If not, you're trying to hide.

(01:53:14):
Never seen a situation.
Well, there was one.
It was in Indianapolis, I think, in the mall where that kid had a weapon.
He took out that shooter that was starting to take people out.
I mean, he turned out to be a hero.
He did the right thing.
Everybody analyzes this stuff, but he did.
He kept his family safe.
And he watched his shooter.
And he made the decision, which eventually turned out to be a good decision.

(01:53:35):
He had the ability to stop the shooter.
He's like, well, I'm not going to run out of here.
I have a weapon because the shooter kept taking people out.
And he's like, after a while, it's like, OK, enough is enough.
I can do something.
And he did.
So it worked.
In that situation, it worked.
So again, it's hard to think about because you've got so many other things going on.

(01:53:57):
The kids are screaming.
Your wife is this.
I want to go eat here.
I'm doing that.
But just when you first get in, that's the whole thing.
When you first get in, OK, I'm in.
Should be a good day.
Just want to make sure where the exits are.
That's all.
I just want to make sure that I know where I'm at and how to get out of it, something bad happens.

(01:54:18):
It's pretty much common sense, Brian.
Yeah, until you're in the situation, you're like, oh, my gosh, my common sense is a blank chalkboard.
You're taking all this out the window.
You're like, what the hell?
What was that?
I just heard.
So yeah, it could happen.
I mean, it has happened to a bunch of people that have been through this stuff.
And I'm glad, again, I recommend the book, The Unthinkable.

(01:54:41):
Obviously, I recommend my own book.
It's on Amazon called The First Five Minutes.
If you plug it in, you'll be able to find it.
I'm on LinkedIn.
I have a Facebook page for The First Five Minutes.
Obviously, you can go on there.
All my podcasts are on there.
And again, my information, if you want to email me, I can answer questions.
Always available.

(01:55:02):
I say I love this kind of format because it's wide open.
You could talk about whatever.
But now I started with teachers, found out that most of my teachers said, look,
I agree with you on some of these points, but I'm getting pushback from principals,
superintendents.
I'm not allowed to do that.
I said, fine.
So now I speak out to parents.

(01:55:23):
Talk to your children.
Find out what's going on.
If you feel uncomfortable, talk to the school board and administration.
And get it figured out.
Or you're going to move your kid out.
Well, this was an absolutely fascinating conversation.
And I'm glad that we have minds like yours thinking about this problem
and a solution to it as well.

(01:55:44):
Daniel Dluzneski, this was an absolute thrill.
Thank you so much.
Brian, thank you.
Appreciate it.
And appreciate your time also.
Ever since my parole officer came and installed privacy curtains, I have noticed the frequency

(01:56:21):
in which I see him has dramatically declined.
Whether I'm working remotely or practicing my naked yoga,
my neighbors are left unaware.
Unlike other knockoff brands, privacy curtains come in a single or double ply.
So when it's time to show off my mastery of the downward dog pose,

(01:56:41):
I can change my double ply privacy curtains to single ply and give my neighbors
a tasteful silhouette and show them all of my hard work.
All of this, of course, within the confines of my house arrest terms.
Thanks, privacy curtains.
Privacy curtains from the makers of Privacy Shrub.

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11 - From Protecting Presidents to Protecting the Next Generation: School Safety with Daniel Dluzneski

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}11 - From Protecting Presidents to Protecting the Next Generation: School Safety with Daniel Dluzneski