The Need to do Something

Every time there is an incident that reaches national attention, school officials predictably receive numerous inquiries from a lot of people calling themselves experts or consultants. Often, these school officials are pressured by a moral or political need to do something. The immediacy of this pressure may cause normally responsible individuals to fall victim to predatory practices.

Reality—You Get What You Pay For

Truly independent consultants, who make a living solely on consulting, do so based on their subject matter expertise. They will promote their areas of expertise and have certifications or can offer proof of their relevance in the areas that your school needs to address. Generally, a team with complementary disciplines is required to provide a holistic solution. Typically, independent consultants can only afford to do a small amount of discounted work because they have hard overhead costs such as errors and omissions insurance, which protect both the consultant and the client.

By accepting and receiving free services, you may be leaving yourself open to liability if something should happen at your facility. Consider the potential liability for this scenario:

A salesperson wants to increase sales of his or her security cameras. He has sold security cameras for many years and offers to perform security assessments to schools as a loss leader (namely his or her time). Surprise! The report recommends installing security cameras, citing a potential reduction of criminal incidents (i.e., presence of cameras as a deterrent and availability of recorded video as prosecutor forensic evidence).

Subsequently, the school spends their entire security budget and borrows additional money through a bond to install the video system.

Sometime later, the school learns about undisclosed ongoing maintenance costs (such as camera failures, maintenance for video recording servers, and annual software license fees). The school is forced to scramble to shoehorn as much of these unexpected costs as possible into an already tight school budget. As a result, the system is not fully maintained and some cameras go offline for extended periods.

This creates a new liability for the school because staff, students, and parents now have a false expectation of security and safety in the affected areas.

Should the school inform the populace about the unprotected areas and subsequently alert would-be criminals? Should the school remove cameras from the affected areas? This would have the same result, in that criminals would know the area is unprotected. A more acceptable solution would be to provide security personnel in that area.

In another example, at the same school, a noncustodial parent enters the school and kidnaps their child. This scenario plays out at schools nationwide and sometimes results in life-threatening situations. However, the security camera salesperson’s security assessment report did not consider this situation because his primary expertise is myopic to a specific niche of the security industry.

To cover this scenario, the school needs to address how to help stop this type of incident from occurring and how to respond if it does. For example, one way to help prevent a noncustodial kidnapping could be to force all visitors through a single entry and confirm identity with a visitor management system tied to state and federal records system (CORI). Another facet may be to construct a secure entry where the visitor is not allowed to access any larger areas. Cameras can be a part of the check-in process and also be used in response to an incident if they are placed with both considerations in mind. Each of these areas requires specific expertise and disciplines. Schools need to build a team that covers a holistic approach to securing the school, its personnel, and students.

Liability

In the court cases we have reviewed, liability surrounding the expectation of safety was determined by answering “Was the criminal act sufficiently foreseeable to give rise to a duty?”¹

The term foreseeable is generally a major point of debate² in lawsuits and relies on a combination of criminal activity statistics for the type of facility, demographics for the location, incidents of local criminal activity,³ and other criteria. In a higher-education environment, the Clery Act helps to ensure that criminal incidents are accurately reported. K-12 institutions are not bound by the Clery Act, so criminal statistics are less accurate for those facilities and other sources are relied upon.

In a case tried in the District of Columbia in 1995 involving a teenage girl who was shot while trying to leave a cheerleading competition, the court found that the victim was entitled to a heightened duty of protection because she was a young child attending an event at a public school, over which the District of Columbia exercised custodial care; who was “particularly vulnerable to the conduct that befell her”; and was “taken from a place that we would expect to be a safe haven.”⁴

By using the wrong resources, schools often fail to address the wide range of known security and safety concerns and create more liabilities than they started with. In the example of the salesperson offering a free assessment, the security salesperson has little, if any, liability because the school relied on his myopic security assessment. The school and the decision maker who relied on this free assessment will be scrutinized and potentially held liable.

The Right Way

Truly effective security at our children’s schools requires a holistic approach that is not provided by the usual loss leader giveaway services. FEMA describes its five missions that make up a holistic approach: Prevention, Protection, Mitigation, Response, and Recovery. School security requires consideration of a broad range of security risks that are specific to the school, the environment, and demographics.

Still Considering So-Called Free Services?

No matter how well intentioned the individual offering a free service is, the old adages hold true: “You get what you pay for,” and “Nothing is truly free.”

Author’s Recommendations

A security program that achieves all of your objectives requires a team or partnership. In the educational environment, we suggest at minimum a team with at least one representative from:

• the district and/or school administration,

• local police authority,

• local fire authority and EMS,

• internal security, and

• the information technology (IT) department.

Notice we suggest a team, not a committee. If the group considers itself a committee, it is sometimes difficult to accomplish the required tasks to achieve the desired goals. However, a team conveys common, combined goals and strategies to effectively and decisively deal with this focused issue. It is essential that the team be selected with sufficient knowledge of the institution(s) and the issues so that they can aggressively pursue sources of information. Many of these team members should be the keepers or custodians of the finished product(s).

Your team will need to formulate a plan with the individual components required to implement an effective security and safety solution. Where your team may include some truly motivated individuals, team meetings should be the primary forum for far-reaching decisions regarding assessments, planning, equipment evaluation, preparation of offerings, and any other items dealing with the overall security and safety of the institution(s).

Managing all of the aspects of the security process can appear to be a daunting task. There are so many variables to understand and deal with to give definition, operational guidelines, and compliance to a well-developed security and safety program. This is amplified by all of the different and varying circumstances found within our schools.

There are many FEMA training programs with certifications. These FEMA programs identify standards for incident management and describe responsibilities that school officials should be aware of and plan for (see FEMA: NIMS and ICS⁶). Many of these FEMA programs are free and should be part of minimum credentials for someone to offer advice on school security.

Your team may initially need some professional help, but use it for areas of your team’s specific weaknesses, to supplement your team, or for specific tasks. Ultimately, your team remains to take ownership and responsibility for the results.

When hiring professional help, make sure that you hire for your specific area of need and check to ensure that the professional has the appropriate and necessary qualifications for the task you assign to them.

Sometimes schools need help in getting started with this task and need help to define goals and objectives; this is a valid reason to hire a professional security consultant. Another valid reason to hire a professional is to help with the constructs of a comprehensive and legally compliant and responsive plan; or conduct a full safety and security audit or assessment if it has not be done recently or your team does not possess the skills or knowledge.

Through our experience, we have found that a well-defined role or set of tasks performed by an outside professional will pay for the cost of the professional, sometimes many times over.

Please understand, we are not advocating turning this task over to an outsider; rather, utilizing qualified help where it is needed. In our experience, we have taken assignments to “correct” schools where free advice was taken or where a company or individual has offered incorrect, incomplete, or inadequate advice and information. In all cases, the cost to “correct” has far exceeded the cost to provide the right solutions or answers in the first place.

Therefore, we implore you to consider your actions when pressured by a moral or political need to do something. Please help to share that this is not just a task; rather, it is a task to be done right, well, and comprehensively. Take your time to lay the groundwork, select your internal team, and be highly selective of your professionals and the tasks they are assigned.