Safety in Large Gatherings

Given the recent school/church shooting many are asking how we can keep our large gatherings safe. We are joined by Jason Russell with Security Environment Consultants who gives us tips and best practices for keeping our large gatherings safe. 

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Well, we have heard from a lot of the families, kids,
and principal from the school in Minnesota that they had
been practicing for such a thing. This is West Michigan's
Morning News. Steve Kelly and Brett Makeita. Though the shooting
happened in the church, let's talk a little bit about
what we need to know to stay safe with Security

(00:21):
Environment consultants. Jason Russell is back with us this morning. Jason,
thanks for doing this today.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
Yeah, thanks for having me. We don't know.

Speaker 1 (00:30):
Everything obviously that we may never but we do know
that this troubled person was prepared for this thing, multiple weapons.
We hear he barricaded the door as well. Talk to
us a little bit about how what you've heard about,
what went right and what could have been done better

(00:51):
so that we can learn from it.

Speaker 2 (00:53):
Yeah, and this one, you know, obviously the attacker having
such knowledge of the environment, right, so they have huge
advantage the ability to know where people are going to be,
when they're going to be there, the layout, you know,
the weaknesses and then to be able to exploit those.
So having gone to that school and actually been in
that church gave him a massive advantage to be able

(01:16):
to plan the attack, and I think what they did
right was they responded quickly. You know, they minimized the damage. Obviously,
any any life lost is one too many, But to
be able to minimize the impact that the shooting had,
I think the staff did a pretty good job. And
obviously these are younger kids too, right, So the ability

(01:37):
for those kids to be able to respond quickly is
just pretty amazing that in that circumstance. And if you
saw some of the interviews of the kids, it sounded
like they you know, they had practiced, they hadn't practiced
in that church. So that's another thing for schools to
think about, is are we really preparing for every all
the different places that we operate in Jason.

Speaker 3 (01:58):
The other thing that I think of too is and
you know, every school district deals with this, older buildings,
newer buildings, What are the security provisions? What do they
need to add? But every one of those you can't assume,
you know, that everyone knows every exit point and so forth.
I think schools are doing a better job of running

(02:19):
through drills like we heard these kids went through, right,
But I mean, you know, look at like for instance,
I'll use Rockford as example, they have so many schools,
so many different buildings to be aware of, right.

Speaker 2 (02:29):
Yeah, I mean I think we can't assume that we
can just continue to layer physical security over and over
and over again and chase the last emergency. In this case, Brett, obviously,
this is a church, right, So we're not going to
go around all of our churches and cover this beautiful
stained glass with ballistic you know glass. So I think

(02:50):
the idea that we're going to be able to solve
this issue with physical security and just continuing to layer
it on, especially when schools, as you said, some are older,
and we still want to schools to look like schools.
You know, I don't want to send my kid to
a school that looks like a maximum security prison and
exchange their ability to have kind of these nice open
learning environments for essentially going into you know, a building

(03:13):
with no windows and you know they've slide their lunch
through a slot in the door. You know, we got
to we have to have some balance here.

Speaker 1 (03:20):
Yeah, but Jason, you've talked to us before specific to
something like a church where this latest shooting happened. It
can be as simple as everybody's looking in one direction.
So the you know potential shooter knows that somebody needs
to be looking in the opposite direction.

Speaker 2 (03:37):
Yeah, and I think that's the you know, if you're
to say, what is the one saying in this case
that could have been done differently? I think it's is
there anybody who's sole purpose is safety and security? And
I think the answer, unfortunately, and a lot of our
schools is no, because of whatever reasons, because the budget.
You know, we do obviously security in schools, so we
have personnel in schools all around the state of Michigan

(03:58):
about two hundred, both armed and unarmed, and a lot
of schools just don't have the budget to be able
to afford that luxury of having a person who's solely
dedicated to protecting the kids. So when you know, I've
been asked many times about this one, what's the thing
they could have done differently? I think it's to have
a person who's able to respond quickly and address the threat.

(04:18):
And fortunately, a lot of schools just don't have the
ability to do that, or in some cases don't want that.

Speaker 1 (04:25):
Secure Environment Consultants sec protects dot com to find out
more information. Jason Russell, thank you so much for your
time again today thank you guys,