Upcoming Webinar – Campus Aggression Prevention System (CAPS) Live Demonstration
Posted In Campus Safety, Emergency Management, Risk Management, School Safety, Workplace Violence on May 11th, 2011 Tags: Active Shooter, behavioral intervention team, Campus Aggression Prevention System, Campus Safety, student safety, threat assessment
Recently, a prominent University President shared that his biggest nightmare was waking up to hear there was an active-shooting on his campus. This, he said, is what kept him up late at night! We believe this is a nightmare shared by many school administrators, and can’t imagine what could possibly be worse.
Do you have a reliable method of “preventing” multiple threats of violence on your campus? Crisis (Emergency) Management is reacting to an incident that already took place, not preventing incidents from happening. Aberrant behavior, misconduct and mental illness do not provide reliable precursors to identify the next school shooter. Only when you can foresee the precursors to “emerging aggression” can you, with any reliability, get out in front of and prevent a school shooting, or any act of assaultive or violent behavior. For the first time, we will show you how your campus can reliably prevent aggressive, assaultive, and/or violent behavior. Imagine being able to empirically declare your institution safer before the next school year begins.
Lessons learned continue to demonstrate campuses must find better ways to deal with at-risk individuals, aggression, bullying, mental health challenges, violence, suicides and murders because the tragedies we continue to see are real…and almost all are PREVENTABLE.
Awareity and the Center for Aggression Management have partnered to bring you the CAPS (Campus Aggression Prevention System). Join John Byrnes from the Center for Aggression Management and Rick Shaw and Katie Johnson of Awareity as they demonstrate live how your campus can improve safety and security on campus and provide your students, parents, faculty and staff with peace of mind.
Live webinar: Campus Aggression Prevention System (CAPS) Demonstration
When: May 19, 2011, 12:00 PM EST
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When: May 24, 2011, 4:00 PM EST
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You will learn how to:
- Apply the Campus Aggression Prevention System in an effective and defensible manner
- Receive anonymous/confidential reports from students, faculty, staff, parents, etc.
- Identify behaviors, red flags and warning signs and take preventative actions
- Train your prevention/safety teams and faculty to measure aggression in at-risk individuals
- Determine the overall presumption of risk and what actions can be taken to maximize results
- Connect the dots to ensure at-risk individuals do not fall through the cracks
- Improve collaboration between counselors, administrators, law enforcement, teams, etc.
- Track and document all actions taken for legal due diligence and ongoing risk metrics
- Prevent lawsuits and maintain ongoing compliance with OCR, federal and state requirements
- Significantly reduce administrative, personnel costs and ongoing awareness and training costs
- Make your campus empirically safer and enhance student achievement/learning climate
This webinar has limited seating and will fill up quickly, so register early to ensure your seat.
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Lessons Learned: Tips Can Definitely Save Lives…
Posted In Emergency Management, Incident Reporting, Risk Management, School Safety, Workplace Violence on November 30th, 2010 Tags: Christmas Day Bomber, Incident Reporting, Lessons Learned, package bombs, School Safety, TIPS, Yemen
Tips prevent a lot of bad things from happening within organizations, but tips alone are not the answer based on recent lessons learned. The Christmas Day Bomber attack was prevented and lives saved thanks to tips, but also thanks to the FBI’s proactive efforts in confidentially sharing information with other key players, such as law enforcement and local government.
An anonymous tip from Saudi Arabian intelligence helped to locate package bombs that were sent from Yemen. No doubt these package bombs could have caused a lot of damage and loss of lives, had specialized prevention teams not taken proactive actions to locate and confiscate the packages before they arrived at their destinations.
Tips play a critical role in global security, as well as our communities. But just having the tips is not going to prevent unwanted incidents from happening. People – specialized teams with situational awareness, accountability, secure information sharing tools and the ability to connect the dots – are clearly the most effective way to proactively prevent unwanted incidents in schools, communities, private organizations, governments and where ever else bullies and terrorists may target.
While I am very thankful that the Christmas Day Bomber and the package bombs were prevented, every day I see or hear about stories involving bullying or terrorism or ethics or safety where red flags existed, but organizations did not take appropriate actions.
I hope organizational leaders realize it is their responsibility and obligation to take proactive steps in understanding how their organization receives tips, how their teams share information, how teams respond to tips and if their traditional tips system (see previous blog) is empowering their security and prevention teams to proactively prevent incidents.
Feel free to share these lessons learned, because they help organizations and their leaders understand the need to replace status quo solutions sooner than later to meet safety obligations and escalating risks.
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TSA Lessons Learned…Is Anyone Learning?
Posted In Emergency Management, Risk Management on November 23rd, 2010
All of this TSA stuff on the news is getting a little crazy…it almost seems like the media is looking for passengers who are looking for attention.
But once again the lessons learned are clear…at least if we all agree on the primary goal.
Hopefully everyone agrees that our main goal is safety and national security, because I don’t know about you, but when I am flying through the clouds at 35,000 feet I do not want the plane to blow up.
So if we are all in agreement, then it comes down to human beings – pilots, passengers and security personnel – having situational awareness and accountability.
Pilots – We need to trust that the airline has tested the pilots to ensure they have situational awareness on how to fly the plane safely and deliver passengers from point A to point B. We also need to trust the airline’s pilots are accountable and they are not terrorists.
Passengers – We need passengers with situational awareness and accountability to understand that national security and airline security requires all passengers to be cleared as a safe passenger. No matter what religion, what clothes, what sex, what nationality or what other excuses a passenger comes up with, all passengers need to understand and be held accountable for airline safety and security rules…period. If a passenger does not like the rules they have the option to take a car, take a bus, take a train, take a ship or take a hike.
Security Personnel – We need security personnel and management of security personnel to be prepared with situational awareness and accountability. Simply put, if passengers trusted that TSA management and TSA personnel were not going to put our naked pictures online, then passengers would go through the x-ray scanner and be on their way. Unfortunately many passengers do not trust TSA management or TSA personnel. Why…because TSA management and TSA personnel have repeatedly revealed their lack of situational awareness and lack of accountability to those of us who spend much time in airports. This disconnect could very easily addressed and eliminated if TSA management was serious about ensuring ongoing preparedness, situational awareness and accountability at the individual level.
For those passengers who fail the x-ray scanner test, passengers and security personnel need situational awareness and accountability so the suspicious scan test can be addressed with additional questioning or with a body pat down or to take the suspicious passenger or terrorist off the flight.
Lessons learned are right in front of our eyes, but will TSA management, TSA personnel and passengers learn?
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Lessons Learned in Airline Security…
Posted In Emergency Management, Incident Reporting, Risk Management on November 22nd, 2010 Tags: airline security, Isaac Yeffet, Security Awareness, TSA
Airline security is a hot topic and it reminded me about my experiences flying to Israel earlier this year. Have you ever flown into or out of Israel? I flew in and out of Tel Aviv this past year and the differences between airline security in the USA and Israel were like night and day in so many ways.
Have you heard of Isaac Yeffet?
For those of you who do not know, Isaac Yeffet is the former head of security for El Al of Israel. In an interview I listened to last night, Yeffet said…”technology in general can never replace a qualified and well-trained human being.” Yeffet has been saying this over and over, but not sure anyone is listening?
Yeffet’s comments are based on successful security efforts and lessons learned from heading up El Al’s security in Israel. El Al’s security personnel are highly trained in proactively reading people’s physical actions as indicators of behavior and asking questions to see how passengers respond.
When I travel, I am constantly observing security and I really appreciate proactive security when I see it. And while I was standing in line at the Tel Aviv airport, I experienced proactive security by qualified and well-trained individuals. While standing in line, we were approached by two individuals that observed us as they asked us questions about our stay and where we were heading and how long we had been in Israel, what we had in our carry-on bags and etc.
After going through airline security in Tel Aviv, I can tell you I have never felt more secure getting on an airplane.
These security individuals in Israel knew what they were doing and they were prepared because of situational awareness – they knew what to look for to identify a risk and knew what to do once they identified a risk. You could easily tell these security individuals did not just go through some general training program on how to herd people through a security line. You could also tell that these individuals were focused, observant and proactive, not just getting people through a check point as quickly as possible and reacting to what technology might uncover.
So here is a question for organizational leaders…if qualified and well-trained human beings can prevent terrorist incidents on flights in and out of a target like Israel (Israel had their own security personnel in USA too), do you think qualified and well-trained human beings could help prevent:
- Bullying
- Suicides and Bullicides
- Deliberate Indifference Lawsuits
- Information Security Breaches
- Compliance Failures
- Workplace Violence Incidents
- And other incidents?
There is no doubt in my mind that individuals with situational awareness could prevent these and many other types of incidents…but not until organizational leaders realize general training methodologies are not working. Stay tuned for more to come…
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Is Your Incident Reporting System Putting Your Organization At Risk?
Posted In Emergency Management, Human Resources, Incident Reporting, Legal, Regulatory Compliance, Risk Management, School Safety, Workplace Violence on November 11th, 2010 Tags: bullying, Cyberbullying, deliberate indifference, incident reporting system, Red Flags, threat assessment
How is your incident reporting system working for you?
Or perhaps the question should be – Is your incident reporting system working against you?
Lessons learned continue to show that organizations find themselves in ‘reaction mode’ more than they are in ‘prevention mode’. How can this be when most every organization claims to have an incident reporting system in place?
Are traditional incident reporting systems obsolete?
Multiple surveys reveal that 90% of bystanders who witness a bullying incident DO NOT report the incident. So why aren’t bystanders not reporting incidents?
Perhaps bystanders are not reporting because of one or more of the following reasons:
- Scared to get involved
- Not sure how to report incidents
- Not comfortable with incident reporting options such as paper, in person, phone or text
- Lack of anonymity when reporting incidents
- Bystander does not trust the incident reporting system will work
- Bystander does not trust the organization will take action
- And many others…
Victims are also reluctant to use traditional incident reporting systems. Victims want to be heard, but many victims do not trust traditional incident reporting systems due to:
- They tried using the traditional incident reporting system and nothing happened
- No anonymous option to report incidents
- Not knowing who was on the other end of the incident reporting system
- Afraid their information would not be kept confidential
- And many others…
Like bullying and cyber bullying, workplace violence incidents seem to be increasing too. Mounting stress related to economic challenges, job layoffs and mortgage foreclosures continue to affect millions of individuals and families. And some individuals have taken out their frustration on their bosses, their co-workers or their family members where they work….and many of the incidents could have been prevented based on red flags that were discovered after the incident.
Suicides and bullycides seem to be increasing too. According to statistics from support organizations, 5,000 teenagers commit suicide a year and perhaps as many as 500,000 or more teenagers contemplate suicide or attempt suicide each year. What if these 5,000 teenagers had a trusted incident reporting option they could have reached out to for help?
So is your traditional incident reporting system really working for you if bystanders are not reporting incidents and victims are not reaching out for help?
Red Flags and Prevention
Without red flags, it is nearly impossible for security teams and threat assessment and intervention teams to prevent incidents from happening. Yet after almost every bullycide or workplace violence incident, people come forward and say they were aware of multiple suspicious incidents and red flags, but did not report the suspicious incidents because they did not know how to or did not understand what suspicious activities should be reported. In some cases, people DID report the incidents and unfortunately the organization did not connect the dots.
Legal Defensibility
In our highly regulated and litigious society, victims and their families are taking organizations to court when they fail to respond as mandated. Many lawsuits brought against organizations cite “deliberate indifference” or the conscious or reckless disregard of the consequences of one’s acts or omissions.
Deliberate indifference is often the result of:
- Lack of Awareness – meaning people did not know what to do in different situations even though previous incidents, legal obligations and regulatory mandates exist
- Lack of Follow Through – meaning people knew about the issues, but did not take immediate actions to end the issue and did not take appropriate actions to eliminate the hostile environment and prevent future incidents
- Failed efforts based on the situation, state mandates or organizational obligations
Experts seem to be in agreement that reacting to incidents is much more expensive (and embarrassing) than preventing the incidents from happening, but prevention requires a more comprehensive suite of incident reporting tools to ensure:
- Anonymous or non-anonymous incident reporting tools
- Threat Assessment and Security Team collaboration tools
- Secure and confidential information sharing tools
- Situational awareness tools for all appropriate individuals and team members
- Accessibility options for anytime access to suite of tools
- Documentation / Reporting tools of entire process for compliance and legal defensibility
- And adaptability options as needs and situations continue to change
Is your traditional incident reporting system helping you or working against you?
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Two Men with Assault Rifles….How is your Situational Awareness?
Posted In Emergency Management, Incident Reporting, School Safety, Workplace Violence on September 28th, 2010 Tags: san jose international airport, Security, Situational Awareness
Did you see the story from the San Jose International Airport this past weekend?
Just before 3pm on Saturday, an SUV pulled up to the arrival curb outside Terminal A at Mineta San Jose International Airport. Two men dressed in black got out of the SUV and approached the information desk to inquire about flight 1205 from Dallas. Both men carried assault rifles that were strapped across their chests and they had handguns in their holsters.
One of the volunteers politely asked if they were one of those people on planes that look for terrorists…one of the men simply answered no.
The volunteers commented that they did not know if it was proper for people to walk into an airport with assault rifles and just stand there to wait for a passenger.
The volunteers were unsure what to do and commented after the incident that they had received no training on how to handle heavily armed visitors.
A parking control officer at the airport asked his supervisor what he should do and according to one of the volunteers the supervisor said: “Next time that happens, have one of them sit in the care while the other once comes in” because the airport prohibits unattended cars at the curb, especially under the current orange alert level.
Does your organization have volunteers? Does your organization have parking control officers or security guards?
Do you provide ongoing situational awareness training for all individuals?
What if this happened at your organization? How would your employees or volunteers react? Does your organization provide ongoing situational awareness training?
General training is usually a one-off event that is inadequate and ineffective in helping individuals deal with new and changing situations, new and changing regulations, new and changing risks and new and changing procedures.
Lessons learned like this are great for ongoing situational awareness training…are you using them?
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If I Knew Then What I Know Now…
Posted In Business Continuity, Emergency Management, Incident Reporting, Pandemic Flu, Risk Management, School Safety, Workplace Violence on September 15th, 2010 Tags: 9-11, columbine, Compliance, Incident Reporting, Katrina, preparedness, Red Flags, Security, Virginia Tech
Most everyone has heard or muttered these words at some time or another:
If I Knew Then What I Know Now…
The saying is most often used when we look back at our life and we realize that if I knew then (when I was younger) what I know now (with more experience and wisdom), I may have made some different decisions.
The saying also came to mind recently as we were reminded of the 9 year anniversary of September 11th and the 5 year anniversary of Katrina and numerous other incidents that have provided experience and wisdom that we could have used before these events took place.
As I was reflecting on these and numerous other events I started thinking about how so many of the incidents and unwanted results could have been prevented from ever happening had certain people known what others knew….and perhaps how this saying should be updated to:
If I knew now what you know now.
We now know that there were multiple people who noticed red flags or knew about 9-11 before the attack. We now know that multiple people at Virginia Tech and Columbine noticed red flags or knew about these attacks before the attacks we launched. In numerous other incidents, we now know other people besides the aggressor(s) knew about red flags, suspicious actions and misguided plans before the tragic incidents actually occurred.
Unfortunately these other people who noticed red flags or knew about what was coming did not provide their information to people who could have intervened and prevented the incidents and could have saved millions of dollars and saved the lives of many.
How are you getting people to report red flags or suspicious behavior or ethics violations or safety improvements?
Lessons learned clearly show that lack of awareness and not connecting the dots will lead to gaps and disconnects that lead to expensive, embarrassing and tragic incidents.
So if you are responsible or accountable for security, safety, preparedness, compliance, legal due diligence, finances, customers, patients, etc….do you know now what others know now??
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Are Your Security Cameras Mobile, Capable of Making Incident Reports?
Posted In Emergency Management, Incident Reporting, School Safety, Workplace Violence on August 17th, 2010 Tags: Incident Reporting, NASRO, school resource officer, School Safety, School Security, security cameras, threat assessment, TIPS
I met some really outstanding people this month while presenting at the NASRO national conference and I deeply appreciate how school resource officers (SROs) and school security officers (SSOs) are striving to make a difference with students and with schools.
Before and after my presentations I had some interesting conversations with several SROs from schools all across the U.S. One of the SROs I spoke brought up an ongoing challenge with cameras. He would like to replace outdated analog cameras that do not give him the clarity he needs to recognize and identify people. He also wants to add more cameras for better coverage in problem areas. He went on to say that he was having a difficult time getting school Administrators to understand his concerns and he also cited budget limitations too.
So I suggested a new and different approach. What if you “connected” hundreds or even thousands of existing “security cameras” that are mobile and capable of reporting incidents too?
The SRO looked at me a little funny and said what do you mean?
What if the eyes of every student and every teacher became your security cameras?
And what if the students and teachers were also able to provide details about suspicious activities that are taking place at school, even in the places at school where cameras aren’t allowed and away from school where you will never have cameras?
Lessons learned clearly show that if we want different results…we have to start trying different solutions.
For example, new and different tools like TIPS (Threat Assessment, Incident Management and Prevention Services) empower students, teachers, faculty, counselors, janitors, bus drivers, parents and others to become your mobile cameras that also report incidents…but only if you have the tools to “connect” them.
Are you ready for different and better results?
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Building A Preparedness Program…like Building a Skyscraper?
Posted In Business Continuity, Emergency Management, Human Resources, Regulatory Compliance, School Safety, Workplace Violence on August 9th, 2010 Tags: campus preparedness conference, Compliance, Ethics, safety, Security
I attended the Virginia Governor’s Campus Preparedness conference last week and had an interesting discussion with one of the attendees. We were talking about how building preparedness across an organization or an entire campus is becoming more complex and more difficult due to escalating challenges, regulations, obligations, liabilities and much more.
As our discussion continued, we started talking about how important tools can be when building campus-wide preparedness programs. In reference to whether tools can make a difference, I offered the following analogy:
Could a skyscraper be built using a hammer, a saw and some nails?
The attendee responded quickly, yes the skyscraper could be built but she wouldn’t go inside it!
Next we discussed how building a skyscraper and building a campus-wide or organization-wide preparedness program have a lot in common:
- Both require blueprints
- Both are complex and require planning
- Both require specialized tools to build
- Both have a lot of parts or “dots to connect”
- Both require specialized tools to maintain
- People will not trust poorly built skyscrapers or preparedness programs
Are you building your __________ program [preparedness, compliance, business continuity, safety, security, ethics, etc.] with old outdated tools such as binders, intranets, shared drives and general training?
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Perceptions of Campus Safety – Are You Helping Your Students Feel Safe?
Posted In Emergency Management, Incident Reporting, School Safety on August 3rd, 2010 Tags: Active Shooter, Campus Safety, Campus Security, columbine, incident prevention, Incident Reporting, public safety training, Virginia Tech
While tragic incidents like Columbine and Virginia Tech have created an increased awareness of campus safety and security, most college students reveal they still feel fairly safe on campus. A recent study by three Southern Illinois University scholars has revealed most students are not particularly worried about encountering an active shooter on campus.
The survey of more than 5000 students discusses attitudes towards on-campus crime, perceptions of risk and safety, personal experiences and understanding of campus safety measures.
What was perhaps most interesting 
about the report was the recommendations by the students to reinforce public safety training and communicate emergency procedures with students, faculty and third-parties. One safety director revealed that although students may understand their school has safety plans in place, they don’t really know what the plans are. It is critical for colleges and universities to implement and communicate emergency response plans, safety policies, evacuation routes, call lists, etc. to all appropriate personnel and students.
Several other recommendations include:
- Educating students on public safety components during orientation
- Making public safety training ongoing (not just annually)
It is critical for administrators to ensure all individuals (faculty, administration, staff, students, parents, first responders, mental health, campus law enforcement, etc.) understand and have acknowledged their individual roles and responsibilities. Many colleges have emergency plans tucked away in binders on dusty shelves or posted to an intranet site, but how can administrators ensure these plans have been read, understood, or updated as risks, threats, regulations, etc. change? Colleges must utilize effective tools for sharing, communicating, implementing and updating plans, policies and procedures on an ongoing basis. Once-a-year general training is not enough and students agree.
The study also suggests students are in favor of campus counseling staff sharing concerns about specific students with campus public safety personnel, and indicated that students believe both they and faculty have “a responsibility to report dangerous students.”
Schools must provide students and faculty with the tools needed to report suspicious incidents, threats, bullying harassment, violence, etc. so red flags do not continue to fall through the gaps. By documenting incidents across all campus departments (HR, IT, Mental Health, Campus Safety, etc.) campus administrators can connect the dots and take actions to prevent violent, expensive, embarrassing and tragic incidents from occurring.
As students are voicing their concerns…how is your campus planning to respond?
“Perceptions of Campus Safety Initiatives: Assessing Views of Critical Incident Prevention and Response” is available online at: http://www.icjia.state.il.us/public/index.cfm?metaSection=Publications&metapage=campuscrimehome
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