ASK THE EXPERT May/June 2008 – Eyes & Ears

Randazzo

Marisa Randazzo is president of Threat Assessment Resources International, a private company that provides threat assessment training, consultation and research services to schools, businesses, security companies and law enforcement agencies.

Randazzo was co-director of a landmark federal study of school shootings and is co-author of the U.S. Secret Service/U.S. Department of Education model of school threat assessment.

She is also an accomplished presenter and instructor on threat assessment investigations, having trained over 10,000 law enforcement, intelligence, and security professionals throughout the United States, Canada and the European Union. Her research is used in the federal, state, and local law enforcement communities and has been credited with preventing planned attacks.

Q: What techniques do you recommend to control access at an elementary school campus?

A: Where schools can afford it, automated card access systems can be both effective in controlling access and informative for tracking student and staff in the event of an emergency.

Automated card access can be used for limiting visitor access to certain parts of the school, as well as keeping track of a visitor’s arrival and departure at a campus. In cases of an emergency where students and staff may be required to evacuate and relocate, automated card access can provide information regarding which students and staff were on campus and the times and locations of their access to the facility.

Like all access control issues, automated card systems require training for the students, faculty and staff who use the system so that they understand the importance of following procedures for their use such as not holding a door open for someone they do not know or who does not have an access card.

If automated card access systems are not feasible, officials can still rely on the eyes and ears of the entire school population to enhance access control. In the hostage situation and shooting at Platte Canyon High School in Bailey, Colo., the shooter — who was a stranger to the school — was on the grounds for 20 minutes, approaching the school entrance multiple times and then milling around several classrooms inside the school before he took a class hostage.

Numerous people saw the shooter and thought he seemed odd (e.g., he had a hood pulled up over his head and was yelling to no one in an empty classroom), yet no one notified anyone in a position of authority. Students, faculty and staff can be encouraged to report anyone who is not known to them and does not have a visitor’s pass. Doing so can help alert school officials to detect a potential intruder early on.

Q: What are the most important considerations when embarking on a threat assessment for a public high school campus?

A: When talking about a physical threat assessment, any school or campus should actually consider a threat and vulnerability assessment. This includes examining threats to a facility and its students, faculty, and staff and determining how vulnerable a facility is to such threats and how likely it is that those threats may occur.

The International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators recently released the report “Blueprints for Safer Campuses,” which offers guidance for higher educational institutions on a range of safety and threat assessment concerns. Many of the recommendations in the report can also be applied to K-12 schools. IACLEA recommends that a threat and vulnerability assessment should be part of an institution’s overall risk management strategy. The assessment should take into consideration the full range of potential threats — including criminal and terrorist acts, natural disasters, accidents, etc. — that the institution could reasonably face.

The results should shape the development of protective measures for the school, as well as the creation or update of the school’s emergency management plan. Periodic updates to the assessment and ongoing revisions to the school’s emergency plan are also recommended.

Q: What is the best way to keep guns and other weapons off a school campus?

A: While it is customary to think of metal detectors as a means of keeping guns and other weapons off a school campus, open campuses at many colleges and universities make such a solution impractical and undesirable for a number of reasons, including the cost, manpower and logistics involved.

Some secondary schools have found that increasing the connections that students have with the faculty and staff in their schools has helped them find out who has guns and weapons as well as other concerning information about their students. When students feel there are adults at school they can trust, they are far more likely to share information. Colleges and universities may be able to benefit from similar efforts. One school asked every teacher, administrator and staff member to talk to one student every time the bell rang for students to change class. Every member of the school staff spoke to five to eight students each day. The school simply wanted to make sure their students knew that the adults in the school cared about them, but after a few weeks students started volunteering information to them that the school had been unaware of previously.

The teachers and staff started to hear reports of weapons at school, drug deals, abuse at home and student pregnancies. This particular school found a no-cost solution that helped them develop a much better understanding of their students’ behavior and an improved ability to address those problems.

Q: What is the most effective method for notifying the student population of an emergency at a college or university?

A: The “Blueprints for Safer Campuses” report recommends that higher education institutions use an array of means and methods to disseminate information to the campus community during emergencies.

IACLEA recommends that institutions’ mass notification systems should meet the following minimum criteria:

• The system should be capable of reaching the entire campus community through multiple channels such as voice messages, e-mail and text/SMS messaging.
  
• The system should be able to deliver all messages quickly and reliably.
  
• The system should limit access to private student and employee data to authorized personnel when using a third-party vendor. The system must have redundant capabilities in all the power interconnects.
  
• The system vendor should provide 24/7 client care including training, customer service and technical support.
  
• The system vendor should have significant experience delivering calls at institutions of various sizes throughout the United States.
  
• The system should have reporting capabilities that allow the institution to monitor, manage and measure the system’s effectiveness.

IACLEA also recommends that campus public safety officials and other appropriate administrators should have the authority and capability to send emergency messages from anywhere around the world.

View the “Blueprints for Safer Campuses” report at the International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators: www.iaclea.org

Threat Assessment Resources International: www.threatreasources.com/schools