5th Anniversary of Virginia Tech: Cost of Reaction vs. Prevention Is Not Even Close
Posted In Campus Safety, Education, Emergency Management, Incident Reporting, Risk Management, School Safety on April 16th, 2012 Tags: Awareity, Campus Safety, Center for American Progress, Prevention, threat assessment, TIPS, Virginia Tech
Did you see the recent report from the Center for American Progress? The report estimates that the Virginia Tech tragedy cost the university and taxpayers $ 48.2 million. And this cost does not include the “costs” associated with the loss of lives and lives that were changed forever.
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, and I hope all school and university administrators are paying close attention to this wisdom and this new report.
According to the report, the university was responsible for most of the costs – $ 38.77 million – and the state of Virginia paid around $ 8.87 million and rest was covered by local government and the federal government in the form of grants.
How the $48.2 million breaks down is shown in this Campus Safety article.
Today is the 5th anniversary of the Virginia Tech massacre that resulted in 32 deaths and another 25 wounded. According to the Virginia Tech Review Panel report (which cost $ 465,000), this tragedy could have been prevented and the report provided nearly 100 recommendations for university leaders to implement.
So why do we continue to see incidents, headlines and tragedies in schools and universities?
The facts are pretty clear that most schools and universities are still very “reaction focused”. Most schools and universities have Crisis Plans and Emergency Response Plans, but few have a Prevention Plan. Most schools and universities rushed out to purchase Mass Notification Systems after the VT tragedy, but few schools and universities invested in Prevention platforms to equip their students, faculty, staff, Safety Teams, law enforcement, legal, compliance and community resources with tools to “connect-the-dots, silos, red flags and suspicious actions” or the tools to get the right information to the right people in the right place at the right time so the right people can do the right things, which is the most efficient and cost effective way to intervene and prevent expensive and embarrassing tragedies.
To learn more about Awareity’s innovative and proven Prevention platforms and tools, click here.
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Va. Tech Gets Max $55K Fine for Late Warning
Posted In Campus Safety, Emergency Management, Incident Reporting, Legal, Regulatory Compliance, Risk Management, School Safety on April 19th, 2011 Tags: Clery Act, Clery Act Violation, Virginia Tech
Virginia Tech was fined the maximum fine allowed under the Clery Act of $55,000 for waiting almost two hours before warning students, faculty and staff of an active shooter on campus.
Lessons Learned: Colleges and Universities must develop, implement and follow clearly defined policies and procedures for notifying students and staff in emergency situations. School Administrators may want to create customizable, organizational and situational specific templates prior to an incident so the warning messages are already defined and the appropriate processes are understood by all appropriate personnel. Organizations must also have customized emergency and crisis management plans and ensure all individuals (students, faculty, staff, administration, law enforcement, etc.) understand their roles and responsibilities before, during and after an incident occurs. Lastly, lessons learned clearly teach schools that proactive and prepared prevention efforts are much less expensive than the incidents, fines, lawsuits and reputational damages.
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Dept. of Education Releases Handbook to Help Higher-Ed Campuses Meet Safety Reporting Standards
Posted In Campus Safety, Emergency Management, Incident Reporting, Legal, Regulatory Compliance, Risk Management, School Safety on April 19th, 2011 Tags: Clery Act, FERPA, Handbook for Campus Safety and Security Reporting, HIPAA, OCR "Dear Colleague" Letter, School Safety
The U.S. Department of Education released the Handbook for Campus Safety and Security Reporting providing step-by-step procedures, examples, and references for higher education institutions to follow in meeting campus safety and security requirements.
Lessons Learned: College and University administrators are overwhelmed with responsibilities for HEOA, FERPA, HIPAA, Clery Act, OCR ‘Dear Colleague’ Letters, and much more and therefore guidance from the Federal Government can be helpful. It is critical for School Administrators to utilize resources and develop comprehensive campus safety programs and create a culture of compliance and preparedness that is ongoing. Traditional methodologies are clearly not working based on new handbooks, new regulations and mounting obligations and traditional tools are not capable of keeping up with all the new changes, so School Administrators must be open to new tools and new ideas to ensure better safety in schools.
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In Brazil – Bullied Student to Cold-Blooded Killer
Posted In Campus Safety, Education, Emergency Management, School Safety on April 19th, 2011 Tags: brazilian school shooting, bullying, school shootings, school violence
The Brazilian whose shooting spree left 12 school children dead was a loner who spent his days surfing the Web, and had been victim of schoolyard bullying and taunts. His classmates and former teachers said he was routinely bullied at school, rejected and taunted by girls in class, and forced to endure “constant humiliation”.
Lessons Learned: There are several lessons learned from this tragedy. Number One: Bullying can have a devastating effect on a child and can lead to severe violence. Number Two: Multiple red flags were given prior to this attack: recent clothing changes, change in mental state, researching weapons online, withdrawing from society, removal from family, losing job, etc. Number Three: It is critical that people are aware of tools to anonymously and non-anonymously report suspicious incidents or aggressive behaviors.
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EKU at “Vanguard of Campus Safety” with Campus Aggression Prevention System
Posted In Campus Safety, Emergency Management, Risk Management, School Safety on April 19th, 2011 Tags: Campus Aggression Prevention System, Campus Safety, Campus Violence, Red Flags
Eastern Kentucky University has implemented the Campus Aggression Prevention System (CAPS) in order to track both primal and cognitive aggression, identify acts of emerging aggression based on an objective scale and then record those acts in a software-based tracking system. Responders are trained to intervene appropriately to stop the aggressor before serious harm can be done.
Lessons Learned: In response to recent tragedies, many schools and colleges nation-wide are reviewing their programs for identifying, assessing, and intervening with students who show signs of distress and evaluating their policies and procedures for reporting red flags, suspicious or aggressive behaviors, violence, risks, etc. Lessons learned have clearly revealed that school/college leaders must let go of status quo approaches and look at new ways for improving situational awareness and connecting the dots to identify red flags, improve prevention, protect communities and save lives. One of the most concerning things is that students are not reporting acts of violence, bullying, harassment, etc. It is critical for schools to implement safe and non-retaliatory reporting procedures, policies, plans, and training for faculty to identity warning signs of violence.
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Preventing the Next School Tragedy
Posted In Emergency Management, Risk Management, School Safety on April 13th, 2011 Tags: brazilian gunman, bullying, bullying prevention, School Safety, school shooter, school violence, southern union community college
Brazilian gunman fatally shot 11 children and wounded 18 others at a Rio de Janeiro public school…
One person dead and three others hurt in a shooting at Southern Union Community College…
Student Planned to Shoot “As Many as He Could”…
If you followed the headlines last week, we saw multiple tragedies at schools and colleges around the globe. However, one high school in Missouri was able to prevent what could have been a potentially devastating attack.
An 18 year old student was arrested with conspiring to shoot other students at his school. There were multiple warning signs identified and fortunately two brave students came forward with information prior to his attack.
The student revealed several red flags during his planning phase:
- Tried to recruit students to help him execute shooting
- Internet research on how to make guns and other weapons
- Note on computer with statement, “I hate everything and everyone, I wanted everyone to die.”
A second student was arrested the next day after posting a Facebook message, claiming “he wasn’t going to kill anybody because he’d told police about his plan and couldn’t pull it off now.”
It is critical for schools to look for new and innovative methods for identifying red flags and warning signs so they can prevent incidents like the tragedies above. If those students had not come forward, the attacker’s plan may have been executed.
The Department of Education and Secret Service School Safety report revealed that at least one other person had some type of knowledge of the attacker’s plan in 81% of school shooting incidents.
However, one of the most concerning things is that students are not reporting suspicious comments, acts of violence, bullying, harassment, etc. out of fear of peer abuse or retaliation, they don’t feel their reports will be kept anonymous or they don’t trust the administration to act on their reports.
It is critical for schools to implement safe, anonymous and non-retaliatory reporting procedures, policies, plans, and training for students and faculty to identity warning signs of violence. At the recent White House Conference on Bullying, experts agreed listening to students is critical and it is important to develop simple and effective incident reporting processes.
How are your schools working to improve prevention, encourage students to come forward with information, protect communities and save lives?
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Lessons Learned: Tips Can Definitely Save Lives…
Posted In Emergency 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 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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Does Information Equal Awareness?
Posted In Business Continuity, Emergency Management, Human Resources, Incident Reporting, Information Security, Regulatory Compliance on November 18th, 2010
General Information
Personally Identifiable Information
Intelligence Information
Industry Information
Regulatory Information
Legal Information
Risk Information
Customer Information
Emergency Information
Competitive Information
Etc….
Most people and their organizations would agree they are overwhelmed by information that is spread all over in e-mails, web sites, binders, intranets, etc.
BUT, most people and their organizations would also agree they are not overwhelmed by awareness, and more specifically they are not overwhelmed by Situational Awareness.
Lessons learned continue to reveal that just having information is not enough. Most of the highly publicized tragedies and incidents reveal that information in the form of red flags or intelligence or risk assessments actually existed BEFORE the incident occurred.
And many incidents could have been prevented had the information been translated into Situational Awareness and shared with the right individuals in the right place at the right time so they could have taken appropriate actions to prevent or intervene or respond more proactively.
For the next week or month or longer, when you become aware of an incident or a mistake in your organization or another organization ask yourself these questions:
- Did information exist that could have helped prevent the incident or mistake?
- Does my organization have a good way to turn information into situational awareness?
- Do all appropriate individuals have the ability to access confidential situational awareness?
- Does our incident reporting system just pass along information?
- Do our threat assessment and security teams have access to situational awareness?
- Do our decision makers and leaders have on-demand access to updated situational awareness?
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