Campus Safety Podcast Series

NASRO Executive Director Mo Canady about the common misconceptions and benefits of school resource officers.When some people walk into a school and see a police officer, they assume he or she is there to make arrests. To clarify the role of school resource officers and talk about common misconceptions surrounding SROs, National Association of School Resource Officer Executive Director Mo Canady talks about his organization’s goals and the current state of the nation’s SROs. Canady also talks about the importance of SROs building relationships with the school community and the many benefits of having officers in schools. RELATED: Canadian School Resource Officer, Deputy Save Student’s Life “When we look at some of the disconnect between law enforcement and some of our communities, we’ve got to correct that somewhere along the way, so [officers in schools] are a great opportunity to connect law enforcement and youth in a very positive way,” Canady says. A former SRO himself, Canady bring great insights into the profession. Enjoy the podcast!

Physical Security Consultant Jim Grayson discusses ways to implement Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design.The Broken Window Theory was introduced in 1982 by the social scientists James Wilson and George Kellin. The theory states that if a window breaks and no one fixes it in a timely manner, vandals will be more likely to partake in further crime and anti-social behavior near that building. In a nutshell the idea is that if a building or campus gives the appearance that it’s cared for, it projects an atmosphere of lawfulness that deters people from committing crimes in that area. The theory goes a long way to describe the basic concepts behind Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design, or CPTED. Campus officials might not think a little graffiti is a big deal, but what impression does it give to the surrounding population? To talk more about this concept and other ideas behind CPTED, we spoke with CPTED expert Jim Grayson, who has more than 40 years of combined experience in law enforcement, private security and security consulting. In the podcast, Jim gives practical advice for healthcare and school administrators at hospital, K-12 and higher-ed institutions alike. Enjoy the podcast!

Here’s what should be in your event security plan so that everyone in and around your event is protected.There are many facets of event security, but none may be more important than crowd control. That said, security managers don’t always make the establishment of effective crowd management techniques their top priority. Crowd control also doesn’t get much attention in the media, probably because lockdowns and active shooter drills make for better stories. But crowd control during events is only getting more important as we head toward a polarizing presidential election and people seem to be finding excuses to protest everything in large group demonstrations. With football season around the corner, we figured now was as good a time as ever to sit down with Command Security Corporation’s Director of Corporate Operations Dane Dodd to talk crowd control. In the podcast, Dodd outlines some challenges schools and universities have managing crowds and gives some advice for developing a plan that truly protects everyone in and around your stadium. So enjoy the podcast, leave a comment and send us other topics you’d like to hear us talk about.

Campus Safety speaks with RETA Security President Paul Timm to get tips for upgrading door locks and executing effective lockdowns.These days, nearly every campus has a lockdown procedure in place and many have locking mechanisms on classroom doors. Having the equipment in place and flawlessly implementing a lockdown, however, are two very different things. The issues students had with door locks during the tragic shooting at UCLA last week have been widely reported, but publicizing those flaws is only useful if we can learn from them. To talk about common mistakes institutions make when upgrading door locks and implementing lockdown procedures, Campus Safety spoke with President of RETA Security Paul Timm. Timm has been a security consultant for nearly 20 years and is the author of School Security: How to Build and Strengthen a School Safety Program. In our interview, Timm gives some big picture lockdown advice and offers a nuanced view of the differences between classroom and front entrance security. We hope you get some takeaways that help you protect the people on your campus.

Idaho School Safety and Security Act provides for assessments, as well as resources for training and first responder partnerships.Turn back the clock to 2013 when our nation was reeling from the December 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting that resulted in the deaths of 20 school children and six adults. Not since the 1999 Columbine High School attack had K-12 campus security been such a high priority for Americans, and lawmakers in the state of Idaho were no exception. RELATED: Newtown Panel Recommends Significant School Security Changes In 2013, the Idaho State Department of Education authorized the assessments of approximately 10 percent of its K-12 campuses. What was discovered during those assessments was disturbing. They showed that the average amount of time an assessor was inside each school before being contacted and asked to report to the office was just under 10 minutes. In 19 of the 74 schools that were visited, the assessment team member was not contacted at all. Additionally, only 29 of the 74 schools had classroom doors that could be locked from the inside with hardware meeting fire code. RELATED: Study Finds Major Gaps in School Safety and Security These findings prompted State Representative Wendy Horman (R) to introduce the Idaho School Safety and Security Act, which goes into effect July 1 and creates an office dedicated to K-12 and higher ed safety and security. The law stipulates that personnel from that office and other safety inspectors will regularly conduct safety and security assessments of schools and colleges around the state. Assessors will review things like visitor management practices and campus climate, in addition to things like faulty wiring. The intent is to develop a holistic view of the educational environment. The law will also encourage stakeholders, both on campus and off, to work together in emergency planning to develop common language and protocols to be used during responses to crises. In this podcast, I interview Rep. Horman about the specifics of the law, as well as the teacher and administrator training opportunities and funding streams that can help campuses improve their safety and security measures. The law takes effect July 1, but campuses can start now to obtain information on how to tap into these resources by contacting:  Ron Whitney, Deputy Administrator, Idaho Division of Building Safety, 1090 E Watertower St. Suite 150, Meridian, Idaho 83642, (208) 332-7150.

Here’s how your campus can use the 32NCSI assessment tool to make your campus public safety program more effective.Campus public safety departments come in all shapes and sizes. Some are on-campus with sworn police officers, others have nonsworn officers, while many have both types of personnel. Let’s also not forget the contracted, off-campus security and police agencies that sometimes are responsible for campus safety and security. According to Jason Friedberg, who is the former Bucknell University chief of public safety and current COO of EmergenSee, all of these types of departments can benefit greatly from using 32NCSI’s public safety self-assessment tool. This is a free, two-part, confidential and self-paced assessment program from the VTV Family Outreach Foundation that can help colleges identify their strengths and weaknesses so they can take the appropriate steps to make their institutions more safe and secure. This tool is one of nine assessment tools that are part of VTV’s 32 National Campus Safety Initiative (32 NCSI). All nine tools are designed around industry standards and best practices to help institutions reflect on their own policies and practices. In this exclusive interview with Campus Safety magazine, Friedberg discusses why campuses should take 32NCSI’s public safety assessment tool, what the program covers, who should be involved and how often this assessment tool should be applied. He also offers tips on how you can maximize the effectiveness and efficiency of the process. To access the public safety assessment tool, or any of the other assessment tools, visit 32NCSI.org.

In this podcast, we break down the ransomware threat and explore options for responding to an attack.As ransomware becomes more prevalent in the healthcare and education communities, Campus Safety has worked to teach our readers about the best ways to prevent and respond to an attack. One of the more educational ransomware reports we’ve covered came from the Institute for Critical Infrastructure Technology, or ICIT, which published a 40-page report on ransomware and predicted that 2016 would be “the year ransomware holds America hostage.” The report also gave the history of ransomware, explained the different types and targets of ransomware, gave methods that hackers have used and strategies that victims can adopt to minimize the disruption of ransomware. To get a more in-depth understanding of ransomware, Campus Safety’s Web Editor Zach Winn decided to talk with a cybersecurity expert about the growing threat. In the podcast below, Zach interviews ICIT Fellow and Chief Security Strategist at Securonix Brian Contos. Contos offers an experienced, knowledgeable perspective on ransomware. Enjoy!

Northern Virginia Community College Director of NOVACares Office Connie Kirkland describes how colleges and universities can use the 32 NCSI sexual violence self-assessment tool.With about one in five women experiencing rape or attempted rape at some point during their college careers, institutions of higher education should have appropriate sexual violence prevention and response programs in place. But how can you determine if your campus program will actually be effective? A free, new and confidential tool from the VTV Family Outreach Foundation is designed to help campuses assess the effectiveness of their sexual violence programs. This tool is one of nine assessment tools that are part of VTV’s 32 National Campus Safety Initiative (32 NCSI). All nine tools are designed around industry standards and best practices to help institutions reflect on their own policies and practices to identify institutional strengths and weaknesses. In my interview with Northern Virginia Community College Director of NOVACares Office Connie Kirkland, MA, NCC, she describes how colleges and universities can use the 32 NCSI sexual violence self-assessment tool to improve, or if necessary create, their sexual violence prevention and response programs. She also discusses some of the challenges of addressing sexual violence at community colleges. To access the Alcohol and Other Drugs assessment tool, or any of the other assessment tools, visit 32NCSI.org.

Campus Safety magazine has partnered with Safe Havens International to provide campuses with five audios that briefly describe emergencies that can occur on any type of campus, including a university, hospital or K-12 school. The scenarios cover medical emergencies, weapons, lockdowns, emergency notification and more.There’s possibly no better way to improve your campus’ emergency preparedness than to use realistic scenarios to test how your staff, teachers, faculty, administrators and clinicians will respond. That’s why Campus Safety magazine has partnered with Safe Havens International to provide you with five free audios that describe emergencies that can occur on any type of campus, including a university, hospital or K-12 school. The scenarios cover medical emergencies, weapons, lockdowns, emergency notification and more. In this video, Safe Havens Executive Director Mike Dorn describes how campus public safety, emergency management and administrators can use these audios in their own teacher, faculty, staff and clinician training programs. They can also be used in discussions with top administrators and the C-suite to garner more support for campus public safety, emergency management, security and technology.

Here's how the University of Florida successfully applied 32NCSI’s Hazing Assessment Tool.With about half of college students in fraternities, clubs, teams and other campus organizations reporting they have been hazed, there is a huge need for institutions of higher education to address this issue. One free and confidential resource designed to help campuses address hazing has just been unveiled by the VTV Family Outreach Foundation. This tool is one of nine assessment tools that are part of VTV’s 32 National Campus Safety Initiative (32 NCSI). All nine tools are designed around industry standards and best practices to help institutions reflect on their own policies and practices to identify institutional strengths and weaknesses. RELATED: Putting an End to Hazing Deaths To help us get a better idea of how to implement 32 NCSI’s hazing assessment process, Campus Safety magazine interviewed University of Florida Division of Student Affairs Associate Vice President and Dean of Students Jen Day Shaw. In this podcast, Dr. Shaw discusses her university’s experience and lessons learned in applying 32NCSI’s Hazing Assessment Tool. She also suggests ways campuses can most effectively use this resource to improve their prevention and response programs. To access the hazing assessment tool, or any of the other assessment tools, visit 32NCSI.org.

Alison Kiss from the Clery Center provides recommendations on addressing the revised law that went into effect this past summer.Changes to the Clery Act via the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) went into effect this past July, but many colleges are still finding it challenging to comply with this updated law. To help security and safety stakeholders at U.S. institutions of higher education make sense of all of these changes, Campus Safety magazine interviewed Alison Kiss, who is the Clery Center for Security on Campus’ executive director. In this podcast interview, Alison describes some of the common issues her organization is seeing in universities’ attempts to comply with VAWA. She also provides recommendations on how campuses can overcome these challenges.

Here's how the University of Florida successfully applied 32NCSI’s Alcohol and Other Drugs Assessment Tool.A significant number of safety and security-related incidents that occur in college communities involve the use and/or abuse of alcohol and/or drugs. Historically, institutions across the nation have struggled to appropriately address this wide-spread problem. Fortunately, there is a free, new and confidential tool that’s just been unveiled by the VTV Family Outreach Foundation that is designed to help campuses assess the effectiveness of their alcohol and drug abuse prevention and response programs. This tool is one of nine assessment tools that are part of VTV’s 32 National Campus Safety Initiative (32 NCSI). All nine tools are designed around industry standards and best practices to help institutions reflect on their own policies and practices to identify institutional strengths and weaknesses. In my interview with University of Florida Division of Student Affairs Associate Vice President and Dean of Students Jen Day Shaw, Dr. Shaw discusses her university’s experience and lessons learned in applying 32NCSI’s Alcohol and Other Drugs Assessment Tool. She also suggests ways campuses can most effectively use this resource to improve their prevention and response programs. To access the Alcohol and Other Drugs assessment tool, or any of the other assessment tools, visit 32NCSI.org. Helpful links: Al-Anon Family Groups: www.al-anon.alateen.org Alcoholics Anonymous: www.aa.org

Here are some best practices to consider, as well as common mistakes to avoid, when deploying duress systems.Whether you work for a hospital or school, panic alarms are a great way to call for help during a crisis. Now, more than ever, healthcare facilities and K-12 campuses are deploying these systems so that staff can appropriately respond to everything from a medical emergency to a campus shooting to a patient or student who is acting out. The challenge for campuses is to select the right solution and then support it with the correct technology, training and policies so that it will be optimized. To help us learn more about this technology is RF Technologies’ Marina Willis, who is the president of the company’s PinPoint and Sensatec business unit. In this podcast, she describes some best practices your campus should consider when selecting and deploying panic alarms. Willis also discusses common errors campuses and districts make when buying and using these systems.

Best practices to protect patients or students who may wander off campus and put themselves in danger. With the American population aging and more children being diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), hospitals and even K-12 campuses are increasingly being faced with the challenge of protecting patients and students who may wander off campus and put themselves in danger. With hospitals, those individuals may have Alzheimer’s or some other form of dimentia. They could also be patients who aren’t necessarily elderly but have had a traumatic brain injury or are dealing with memory loss. For schools, those students could have autism. It’s wise then for healthcare institutions, including hospitals and long-term care facilities, and school districts, to invest in systems and adopt practices designed to prevent elopement by these individuals. However, what systems are currently available, and which ones should be adopted? Should there be a different approach to managing patients with Alzheimer’s and brain injuries compared to students with ASD? Don’t forget to check out the slideshow!

The VTV Family Outreach Foundation is offering a series of free, confidential, online self-assessment tools for colleges. Dr. Gene Deisinger of SIGMA Threat Management and formerly of Virginia Tech describes how to use VTV's threat assessment tool, as well as some best practices your campus should adopt.Learning about a threat and then assessing it can be a huge challenge for institutions of higher education. Currently, colleges across the nation have adopted a broad range of approaches to addressing concerns about targeted violence. Many are proactive, collaborative and systematic, which are considered to be attributes of effective threat management programs. That said, according to Dr. Gene Deisinger, who is a managing partner with SIGMA Threat Management Associates and formerly the deputy police chief at Virginia Tech, other programs continue to be fragmented, reactive and dated, so their effectiveness is limited. RELATED: You’ve Suspended a Potential Aggressor … Now What? To address this challenge, the VTV Family Outreach Foundation (VTV) has created a new threat assessment tool, which is part of the 32 National Campus Safety Initiative (32NCSI) that will be launched Aug. 13. 32NCSI is a series of free, confidential, online self-assessment tools, covering alcohol and drug prevention and intervention, campus public safety, emergency management, hazing, mental health, missing students, physical security, sexual violence and threat assessments. Dr. Deisinger helped develop 32NCSI’s threat assessment tool. In this podcast, he describes some of the best practices colleges should adopt so their threat management programs are effective. He also describes how campuses can use the 32NCSI threat assessment tool to address individuals exhibiting concerning behavior. RELATED: Enhancing Campus Safety with a Threat Assessment Program Image Dynamiccio

The Cook County, Ill., Sheriff’s Office is offering training and resources to help colleges address sexual assault on campus. Here's how you can get involved.Anyone involved in the American higher education community is keenly aware of the spotlight that’s now on campus sexual violence. With the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights (OCR)  and state governments paying much closer attention to the issue, colleges and universities are being forced to reassess how well they respond and investigate claims of sexual assault. According to many experts, as well as reviews conducted by OCR, institutions of higher learning need to improve how they handle these very challenging cases. One organization that is working to help campuses on this issue is the Cook County, Ill., Sheriff’s Office. Jan Russell, who is an attorney with the department, as well as its policy counsel on violence against women and coordinator for its prison rape elimination program, heads up the effort to provide training and resources to local colleges and universities who need help handling claims of sexual assault.

Director of the Year finalist William Adcox describes how his police department was able to triple early intervention reporting in only two years.Note: William Adcox will be a presenter at the Campus Safety Conferences in Chicago (July 13-14) and Los Angeles (July 23-24). He will be presenting on Establishing Threat Assessment Teams in a Medical Facility and Threat Assessment Teams in Preventing School Violence. Identifying individuals who may act out and then managing those individuals after they have been identified is a challenge that plagues virtually every hospital, school and university public safety executive. How do you encourage members of your campus community to report a person or group of people exhibiting troubling behavior? Once these threats have been reported and identified, how do you manage them so they don’t escalate into actual violence? One campus protection professional who has addressed this issue is Director of the Year Finalist William Adcox. He is the police chief and chief security officer for the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and the University of Texas Health Science Center. He and his team have created a threat management unit whose actions have resulted in a 300% increase in early intervention reporting in only two years. Local Player and Download Link Listen to the podcast through your computers media player, or right-click to download MAKE YOUR CAMPUS SAFERJoin the Nation’s safety and security leaders at the Campus Safety Conference in Chicago as we work to create safer schools, universities and hospitals. Learn from expert speakers, make new connections, and return home with the knowledge you need to keep your campus safe!LEARN MORE

Campus Safety Director of the Year finalist and Trinity University Police Chief Paul Chapa requires his officers to receive additional training on how to appropriately respond to campus sexual assaults. As a result, his officers are more engaged with the community, and more victims are willing to share information on incidents.With there now being greater awareness about the prevalence of sexual assault in campus communities, many victim advocates believe that police officers responding to these cases must receive specialized training so they will respond appropriately. This philosophy has been embraced by CS Director of the Year Finalist and Trinity University Police Chief Paul Chapa. RELATED: Come Celebrate the Director of the Year and BEST Awards at the National Forum! A number of the officers in his department serve as sexual assault victim advocates. In addition to receiving traditional law enforcement training on things like firearms, several Trinity police officers have learned the special skills needed to respond to sexual assault claims, including empathy, compassion and understanding. They have also learned to ask the right questions and provide the right information during these highly sensitive investigations. Chapa believes the results of this approach have been better officer engagement with the community and greater willingness of victims to share information about incidents. In this podcast, the chief explains some of the specifics of his department’s program. The winner of the Campus Safety Director of the Year program will be announced at the National Forum being held at the Hyatt Regency Crystal City (Washington, D.C.) on Wednesday, June 24, To register for this event, click here.

Below is the audio of an interview with the Chief of District Security for the Val Verde Unified School District Chris Wynn. The entire transcribed interview is also available below and in the proceeding pages. 1) What is your background? How did you get into security systems? I actually come from a long background in public safety, primarily in law enforcement. I was a firefighter paramedic for about six years, and then I did a 19-year career in law enforcement and was promoted up through the ranks of law enforcement. When I retired from law enforcement, I came to work for the Val Verde Unified School district as their Chief of Security. As far as my job here as the Chief of Security, not only do I oversee the department of security, which is security officers, I play a big role in researching and helping implement various types of security plans and protocols and technologies that are out and available. 2) What kinds of security systems are available for schools? There are a lot of different things, starting from your most basic alarm systems that are out there. Just the act of having a system in place that secures the site when nobody’s there, I think that’s one that’s often overlooked, but is important. I think what we focus on most of the time is how we are protecting schools while students are here. One of the most basic features is camera systems. There’s been a significant improvement in the ability to utilize camera systems, the quality of camera systems that are out there, as well as the ease of watching. It used to be camera systems would all dump into a single recorder and you had to have someone in front of it watching it. Now, we have cameras that record to servers, you can go back in time and look at them. With the system we have in place, I can actually monitor from my desktop, I can monitor from my iPad, I can monitor from my iPhone. I have the ability to look at my campuses, all 21 of my sites, at any given time by literally pulling my phone out of my pocket. [One] system that we’re utilizing is a lobby management system where we’re registering and controlling access to our sites by requiring visitors who are going to enter into our secure portion of our sites to present a valid identification. It is scanned into a system that runs against the sex registrant database as well as an internal database that we create, meaning if we have court orders that are in place or they’ve been banned from our site for one reason or another. It will check their ID against that type of stuff to make sure that the only people coming into school are people we want to allow into our school. The system also prints a universal identification badge. Previously, every site was responsible for making their own ID badges, and we had everything from stickers to plastic badges on yarn necklaces. Now, we have a single, universal ID badge that is recognized across the entire district as a person who is a visitor that is approved to be on campus. Those are kind of some of the bigger systems that are in use. 3) What are some steps a school should take when deciding on which security system to go with? I think the Raptor system, which is our lobby management system, is probably the most recent one that we’ve taken from concept to full implementation. I think the first thing you have to do is figure out what you’re trying to accomplish. It can be relatively fool-hardy to sit down at a single vendor presentation and say oh, this is what we want, without really thinking about it or involving your staff, involving the cabinet level positions and finding out what you want this particular system to do. Once you have an idea of what you want it to do, then I suggest finding out if schools in the area have something similar that you can do and look at. We actually went out and looked at a couple of different systems in the local area just to see if there was something we missed, are there other things that are possible, or does this system not meet what we’re looking for to begin with? Once we had those ideas, then we started contacting vendors. 4) How does a school manage a security system, and who should be involved with managing it? The biggest pitfall schools can find themselves in is that they let somebody silo all the information in one place. When you’re looking at either the management or implementation process of it, you have to get people involved. I can tell you that I don’t know how the lobby of an elementary school works, so I have to go out to talk to people, the receptionists, the principal, and find out how that system works. They all have to be involved in the conceptual part of the process. I think that converts a little bit once you get into the implementation phase. Obviously, in 2015, there’s technology tied into almost everything, so you really do need to get your information systems departments involved at a very early stage. Every IT department has different standards of their own IT security features. Whether something that’s web-based required servers, how it’s going to be protected, who’s going to have access to it, you have to get your IT folks on board with that quickly because what looks like a great idea to me may not be able to tie into our current technology system. Finally, I think once you figure out who all these people are, you just need to make sure that you have policies put in place that talk about how they’ll be used. With any new technology and new idea, if it’s not used universally at all of your sites, you will find that it’s stopped being used. 5) What are some tips you would offer schools that need help with their security system? If I could give any advice at all, it would be not to settle on the first vendor. Vendors do a good job of coming in and marketing their product. I think we looked at four or five different lobby management systems before we settled on Raptor, and it was solely because Raptor met our objectives. The other systems were all good, I don’t bad mouth any of them. They may work great on other sites, but they didn’t do what we wanted them to do. The last thing that you really need to be reasonable about is prices. Security is not cheap. Every time I come up with a plan or a new idea, the first question that’s asked is money, and my response is almost always, “security is not free.” There’s nothing out there that makes security cheap. You have to be realistic because there are a lot of products that can price themselves right out of the market, but at the same time, you can’t put a dollar amount on security. Jessica Kennedy is an editor at TechDecisions Media, targeting the higher education market. Jessica joined the TechDecisions team in 2014 and covers technologies that improve teaching and learning.

New International Association for Healthcare Security and Safety (IAHSS) Executive Director Colleen Kucera says the association will soon be unveiling its redesigned website. She also plans to expand support for members and provide additional educational opportunities.The International Association for Healthcare Security and Safety (IAHSS) recently selected Colleen Kucera as its new executive director. The IAHSS search committee interviewed numerous candidates, and Kucera was selected for her long history of association leadership focused on the executive search and IT industries. Previously, she served as executive director and corporate secretary of the board of Chicago-based Signium International, a network of independently owned executive search firms. While there, Kucera drove substantial membership initiatives, increased financial resources, planned and executed numerous successful global conferences, and represented the membership on issues affecting them regionally, nationally and internationally. Prior to that, Kucera spent four years as an association executive with SmithBucklin, an association management firm that serves more than 450 trade associations, professional societies, government agencies and other non-profit organizations.