Tactical Thinking in Non-Tactical Environments

Tactical Thinking

This July, I will be presenting at the Campus Safety National Forum in Chicago (Follow them on Twitter @CampusSafetyEvents).  I will be presenting on Tactical Thinking in Non-Tactical Environments.  This presentation is anyone who works in a place of business that is not normally involved in making tactical decision.

Tactics refers to things people do in a crisis.  It's a way of doing things.  For example, when driving in snow and your car begins to slide, many drivers use the tactic of steering into the slide with the goal of preventing a crash.  This concept can be extended into non-crisis situations, but for the moment we'll stick to crisis situations.

There may be much discussion about tactics in schools, and often these discussions lose sight of the big picture.  Before Columbine, the tactics used by many police agencies involved establishing a perimeter and waiting for SWAT teams.  After Columbine police tactics shifted to a more aggressive role for police, using a team entry approach to active shooters.  Since the Sandy Hook massacre, there is more of an emphasis on single man entry, as experience has shown us that shooters will continue to shoot until they meet resistance.  At that point they often kill themselves, ending the incident.

Around the country, law enforcement officers are training schools in responding to Active Shooters.  I have much respect for law enforcement, and I count many of them among my friends.  However, I think they have lost sight of the big picture, which involves their target audience.  This is the people who work in in non-tactical environments.

Harris and Klebold in the Columbine cafeteria

 

 

 

 

 

Non-Tactical Environments

Non-tactical environments refers to work or living spaces that do not, as their primary focus, utilize combat tactics.  This specifically refers to K-12 facilities, institutes of higher learning, hospitals, and mundane work places.

As an Indiana School Safety Specialist, I focus on K-12 institutions, but the ideas here apply to any non-tactical environment, with adaptations specific to that work space. 

Educators, as a group, are different from other people.  They tend to be nurturing, supportive people to whom the idea of personal violence is abhorrent.  As such, they want to feel safe as much as the kids do.

Into this type of argument comes law enforcement officers with training that shocks and frightens educators.  They listen as the tactics are presented, and train in using them, but that training does not fundamentally alter who they are.  They will say, "This was really good training!  Everyone needs this!"  Yet when they go back to their classrooms, the daily demands of their non-tactical world soon overtake, then replace the tactical thinking with less terrifying, comfortable non-tactical thinking.

LTC Dave Grossman, in his On Sheep, Wolves and Sheepdogs analogy, describes the interaction between Sheep and Sheepdogs.  "The sheep generally do not like the sheepdog. He looks a lot like the wolf. He has fangs and the capacity for violence."  Yet we still go into schools and try to treat them like Sheepdogs, hoping they will become Sheepdogs.

Grossman writes, "They do not want to believe that there is evil in the world....The idea of someone coming to kill or harm their children is just too hard, so they choose the path of denial."

If we are to train educators correctly, we have to train them where they are.  We have to know our target audience and adjust to them.   We need to find a way to teach them to think tactically in non-tactical environments. 
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School Safety is a Community Effort

In my last blog, I wrote about "see something, say something", as I saw a drug deal and called the police.  This concept is at the heart of today's blog post.

Community Effort

Keeping a school safe in today's world is not the job of law enforcement, or the fire department, or of people trained in school safety.  It's the job of everyone in the community, including those who do not have children in school.  The massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary showed us the damage that cane be done to a community when children are killed.  Therefore each and every member of the community has a stake in school safety.

Everyone does not need to do the same thing.  Fire fighters are different from police officers.  They do different types of jobs.  Along those lines, people can do different things.  The least that people can do is "see something, say something".

See Something, Say Something

People see things everyday that should be brought to the attention of someone.  However, for numerous reasons, they don't think to say anything.  Gavin de Becker wrote an excellent book, The Gift of Fear.  In it he explores the power of intuition in keeping people safe.  Too often people dismiss their intuition, leading to bad things.

People do this out of fear.  Fear of being wrong, fear of looking "silly", or any number of other fears.  These fears often prevent us from taking actions that we know, deep down, to be the right ones.  As a community, we have to identify these fears, face them, and do whatever needs to be done to keep our children safe.

Children are, indeed, our future.

Situational Awareness in Action

Situational Awareness

It is not often I can call upon the skills described in the book I co-authored titled Staying Alive: How to Act Fast and Survive Deadly Encounters.  Life is like that.  One minute you're talking to your wife, then next you see something that causes you to call the police, leading to an arrest for drug dealing.

I took my daughter to a hair appointment, where we met my wife.  While my daughter was getting her hair cut, my wife and I chit-chatted about various things.  She happened to look out the window, and she said, "Look at that!"

I looked out the window to see what she was talking about.  Across the street from where we were is a pizza place, next door to a building that had a sign that read, "Barber and Salon".  Standing at the corner of the Salon was a man in a striking black and red track suit.

I had just registered this was to what my wife referred when I saw a car pull up with a woman at the wheel.  He leaned through the passenger side window and handed her something.  She handed him something then drove off.

I looked at my wife and asked, "Did that seem odd to you?"  She had a puzzled look on her face as she answered, "Yeah.  It did."

I dialed the dispatch number for the Speedway Police Department and relayed what I had seen.  I then hung up and went back to talking to my wife.  Even so, I continued to keep an eye across the street.  The man in the track suit had gone inside the salon.

In a few minutes, he came back outside and almost instantly an SPD cruiser pulled up.  An SPD officer got out and approached him.  He spoke to the man for a couple of minutes, then the man removed the hat he was wearing and gave it to the officer.  As this was going on, several men came out of the salon, all were dressed in predominately black.  I was getting concerned that this could turn ugly when a second SPD officer pulled up, then a third.

By that time the officer had something in an evidence bag, and I knew I hadn't been seeing things.  We left at that point.

See Something Say Something

I was called later by the arresting officer, who got my information for his report.  He told me that salon was a "hot spot", but they had never been able to make an arrest until today.  He thanked me for calling, and told me he appreciated the assist.

Like he told me, police officers can't be everywhere at once, so they often rely on citizen reports to tell them where law enforcement needs to be.  My wife told me that she wouldn't have called.  She didn't want to be wrong, and didn't want to cause a fuss.  This is common.

Police officers are paid to make such calls, and have been given training on making such calls.  They would love nothing better than to get a call like mine, go check it out, and have it be nothing.  Or, a situation like this one occurs, and a bad man selling poison on the streets is removed and put in jail.

Situational awareness is not only being aware of what is going on around you and being able to recognize when something is amiss, it's the starting point for a string of decisions that can mean the difference between catching a criminal or allowing the crime to continue, or in some instance, life or death.

If you see something say something.

Crimes against Children Digest 3-12-15

St. Louis Man Pleads Guilty to Sex Trafficking Charge 

Seattle Man Pleads Guilty to International Parental Kidnapping  

Philadelphia Woman Admits She Exploited 6-Year-Old and Infant 

Plymouth Man Pleads Guilty to Child Pornography Charges 

Lake City Man Pleads Guilty to Federal Charge of Receiving Child Pornography Over the Internet 

New York City Public School Teacher Charged with Producing, Receiving, and Possessing Child Pornography 

Chinese National Convicted of Attempted International Parental Kidnapping 

Convicted Sex Offender Sentenced to 20 Years for Possession of Child Pornography 

FBI and Robeson County Sheriff’s Office Search for Missing Girl

Union County, New Jersey Youth Organization Leader Charged with Possessing Images of Child Sexual Abuse         

New York Man Charged with Production of Child Pornography and Interstate Travel to Engage in Illicit Sexual Conduct 

Former Truck Driver Found Guilty on Charges of Transporting and Sexually Abusing Minors 

   

School Safety Committees

School Safety Committee

This week has been a blur.  Spring Break begins next week, and I am ready!  On Tuesday I had a meeting scheduled with the district's school safety specialists. This meeting was the first for this school safety committee in quite some time, and we had a full agenda.  Unfortunately, the meeting had to be rescheduled due to a miscommunication.  Sometimes that's how the cookie crumbles.

A Great Idea

There are numerous Indiana Codes concerning school safety.  Each school district must have a School Safety Specialist.  That person must attend the county's School Safety Commission, if there is one (Hancock County has one!), and each school should have a Safe School Committee.

In my district, we have nearly 15 certified School Safety Specialists.  The meeting that was cancelled was to coordinate our efforts, and to provide them with the resources they need to assess our school's safety plans to the standards given to us by the Indiana Department of Education.

The meeting has been rescheduled, and in the meantime, we will use phones and emails to coordinate our efforts.  Where there is a will, there is a way!

Critical Incident Stress Management

Critical Incident Stress Management

The last two days, I was trained in Critical Incident Stress Management (CISM).  This is a program that provides psychological first aid to people who have experienced a critical incident.  A critical incident is a traumatic incident that causes high levels of stress in those exposed to that incident.  Examples of these are deaths, accidents, suicides, and other traumatic events.

I received instruction in group interventions, learning how to conduct large group Critical Stress Briefings, small group Critical Stress Briefings, de-fusings and de-briefings.  It is important to know that these are not psycho-therapy, nor are they meant to replace true mental health care. The purpose of CISM is to help those involved in critical incidents process what has happened, and get their lives back on track.  It also helps identify those who may need more professional care.

The instructor's name was Fuzzy Lake.  Yes, that's his real name.  He is a chaplain, a minister, and a CISM instructor.  He is as nice as he is knowledgeable.  He guided us through reams of information, as well as role-playing practice sessions until we felt like we could take our place on a debriefing team.  It was a pleasure and an honor to have him teach me.

My Vision

My vision is to have a county-wide school CISM team, in conjunction with the county's CISM team.  That way, when a critical incident happens in a school, there will be educators who can help other educators.

We educators do a good job watching out for our children, but we often do not do such a good job of taking care of ourselves.  Yet if we cannot take care of ourselves, who will be there to care for the children?  So if we want to take care of them, we have to also take care of us.

Thanks to Fuzzy, we can get started on that.

The Eyes and Ears of the Community

Bad Weather

On Sunday morning, Mother Nature howled a bit and dumped eight inches of snow on the ground.  For awhile Marion County was under a Department of Homeland Security travel warning.  However, at the end of the storm, warmer air moved in.

Still, overnight the temperatures fell, leading to re-freezing on the roadways.  This led to another two-hour delay for Monday morning.  It's nice to get the day off slowly, but it does compress the rest of the day, making it feel hectic.

Eyes and Ears

One thing school bus drivers do for which they rarely get credit is to serve as spotters for first responders. On several occasions Monday, it was our school bus drivers who saw cars slide off the road on icy patches.  They would radio me, and I would then call the 911 Call Center to report it.

Our drivers are really good about knowing their territory, and they do not hesitate to let us know if they see something out of the ordinary.  Along these lines, the drivers have done something which has made me very proud, while at the same time taking a giant step forward in keeping our children, and our community, safe.

Several weeks back, I informed the drivers of The First Observer Program, through the Transportation Security Administration (TSA).  The First Observer™ Program provides knowledge to transportation professionals that allow them to observe, assess and report suspicious individuals, vehicles, packages, and objects.  It also teaches them to share security-related information with the proper authorities; andgives them the basics of terrorism planning and preparedness.

 

After watching three short videos, totaling 45 minutes, the driver receives a certificate of completion.  This is done entirely on the driver's own time, with no compensation.  When drivers let me know they had completed the training, I printed them a certificate which I then posted on the wall by the time clock.  As of Monday, well over half of my personnel had completed the training, including substitute drivers and bus aides.  To say I am proud would be an understatement!

I rest easier knowing that my fleet is crewed by alert, caring professionals.