The Human Behavior Podcast
Do you ever wonder why people act the way that they do? Join human behavior experts Brian Marren and Greg Williams as they discuss all things human behavior related. Their goal is to increase your Advanced Critical Thinking ability through a better understanding of HBPR&A (Human Behavior Pattern Recognition & Analysis.) What is HBPR&A? It's a scientific (and fun) way to understand and articulate human behavior cues so that you can predict likely outcomes and it works regardless of your race, religion, political ideology or culture!
The Human Behavior Podcast
School Safety and Security with Dr. Kenneth Trump
Join us this week us for an eye-opening conversation with Dr. Kenneth Trump, a renowned authority in school safety with a distinguished career spanning more than 40 years. Dr. Trump takes us on a compelling journey from his early days tackling gang issues in Cleveland schools to becoming a pivotal figure in school safety consulting. Learn how his academic background in social services and public administration laid the foundation for his relentless commitment to integrity and practical solutions in school security.
During the episode, Dr Trump shares some interesting insights into the world of school safety including the influence of private equity and aggressive lobbying by security vendors that often lead school administrators astray. Dr Trump also explains why flashy, high-tech security measures might not be the silver bullet they're marketed to be, and why fundamental practices often get neglected. He shares real-life examples and lessons learned from historical tragedies that underscore the importance of human factors, training, and communication over costly gadgets.
We also tackle the complexities of school safety funding, especially in a post-COVID world and we discuss the critical roles of various school staff, from bus drivers to custodians, in maintaining a secure environment.
Towards the end of the show we get into the rising trend of holding parents accountable for school shootings, with recent cases shedding light on this controversial issue. Through our dialogue with Dr. Trump, we emphasize the need for leadership, community involvement, and effective training to foster a balanced and sustainable approach to school safety. Don't miss this insightful episode packed with expert knowledge and practical advice.
Thank you so much for tuning in, we hope you enjoy the episode and please check out our Patreon channel where we have a lot more content, as well as subscriber only episodes of the show. If you enjoy the podcast, I will kindly ask that you leave us a review and more importantly, please share it with a friend. Thank you for your time and don’t forget that Training Changes Behavior!
Dr. Ken Trump: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kentrump/
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More about Greg and Brian: https://arcadiacognerati.com/arcadia-cognerati-leadership-team/
Hello everyone and welcome to the Human Behavior Podcast. Join us this week for an eye-opening conversation with Dr Kenneth Trump, a renowned authority in school safety with a distinguished career spanning more than 40 years. Dr Trump takes us on a compelling journey from his early days tackling gang issues in Cleveland schools to becoming a pivotal figure in school safety consulting. Learn how his academic background in social services and public administration laid the foundation for his relentless commitment to integrity and practical solutions in the school industry. During the episode, dr Trump shares some interesting insights into the world of school safety, including the influence of private equity and aggressive lobbying by security vendors that often lead school administrators astray. Dr Trump also explains why flashy high-tech security measures might not be the silver bullet they're marketed to be and why fundamental practices often get neglected. He shares real-life examples and lessons learned from historical tragedies that underscore the importance of human factors, training and communication over costly gadgets. We also tackle the complexities of school safety funding, especially in a post-COVID world, and we discuss the critical roles of various school staff, from bus drivers to custodians, in maintaining a secure environment. Towards the end of the show, we get into the rising trend of holding parents accountable for school shootings, with recent cases shedding light on this controversial issue. Through our dialogue with Dr Trump, we emphasize the need for leadership, community involvement and effective training to foster a balanced and sustainable approach to school safety. Don't miss this insightful episode packed with expert knowledge and practical advice.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for tuning in. We hope you enjoyed the episode and please check out our Patreon channel, where we have a lot more content, as well as subscriber only episodes of the show. Enjoy the podcast. We'll kindly ask that you leave this review and, more importantly, please share it with a friend. Thank you for your time and don't forget that training changes behavior. All right, hey everyone. Thanks for tuning into this week's show. We've got a very special guest by the name of Dr Kenneth Trump. But before I actually let him introduce himself, I do have to make a little note Montrose, colorado, where Greg is at right now, because, uh, to get new tires for his FJ for the pros you unfamiliar with where Greg lives high up in the Rocky mountains, he has to, like, go through a pass. Uh, ask a guy several questions, uh, or someone to ask him several questions. Then he gets on like a floating raft across a river.
Speaker 2:And it's like a Monty Python episode.
Speaker 1:It really really is so, um, so, uh, greg is, is is mobile today, but we have good connection, everything, so we're good. But, um, I know we got a little bit of an intro uh to our special guest today. First of all, dr ken trump, thank you so much for coming on the show.
Speaker 3:We're excited to talk to you today yeah, great being with you guys follow your work and uh seems like we have a lot of thoughts in common. Appreciate the invitation. Yeah, we do. We have a lot of thoughts in common.
Speaker 1:Appreciate the invitation. Yeah, we do. We had for those of us who had a great call a couple of weeks ago with some of our folks, our team, and talked to you because it's the same thing. We've been following you on LinkedIn especially, and reading a lot of your work, and so if you could, for our listeners, just to start out, give a little bit about your background in school safety and then kind of what you're doing right now, because it's important I want people to know that you've been in this for a while right, you're not a suddenly new subject matter expert on school shootings but so if you could give us a little bit of your background and what you're working on now.
Speaker 3:Yeah, appreciate it. And usually when I start presentations on conferences nationally, I say I'm going to start by answering the background question that everybody really wants to know. With 40 years of experience in school safety, a doctoral degree, decades of experience of working with school shootings, answer the number one question that's on people's mind, no relation.
Speaker 1:It's important to get that up front.
Speaker 3:The elephant in the room. Really, it's a great ice for prayer. It's not a political statement and, uh, everybody usually laughs because they're going yeah, that's really what we really wanted to know.
Speaker 3:Okay, now let's see now let's get into the material. Uh, so yeah, actually, uh, literally started in junior high school. Uh, and Cleveland schools they had at the time, late 1970s, they had court-ordered crosstown federal or court-ordered busing due to racial desegregation, order inequities in court over academics, crosstown busing, and part of that created a division of safety and security. So I was a Cleveland school student sitting in and for those of us who were, uh, mature enough not old mature enough to remember high school typing class or junior high typing class anybody actually, I guess it's keyboarding now I'm not even sure what it is now.
Speaker 3:I don't think they even do that now so guy walks in the room with the two-way radio, goes back to the teacher and I get called back and I'm going wait a minute. What did I do? You know? She said Mr Conner wants you to type his duty report. She says you're the fastest typer and do the best job. I'm like who is this guy? What's this about? Well, that led to free pizza because they owned a pizza shop on the side and did his reports. Went on to high school, used to hang out in the security office there, do their investigation, the duty reports, more pizza, a little pay under the table at that time, a few bucks for a high school kid, and the rest turned out to be history. The day I graduated, the deputy principal said you're not going anywhere.
Speaker 3:Hang over here while you're going to work on your bachelor's degree at Cleveland State. I got a bachelor's in social service, criminal justice concentration. I went on while I was still working in Cleveland District to get a master's in public administration and while I was in the schools it developed, especially with gangs. We had rival youth gangs. One of the unintended consequences of mixing kid rival neighborhoods with the crosstown busing wasn't academics, it was they mixed rival gangs so we'd have gang riots in schools. Developed a specialty doing that. Really got into working with the gangs. Ended up creating a five-person team with 127 schools, 73,000 kids strictly working on gangs for the school district anywhere from talking to second graders on why they shouldn't join gangs and dealing with parents to mediating disputes that were leading up to a drive-by shooting, threats at dismissal to actually the street enforcement investigations in cooperation with Cleveland police. So caught a lot of attention to that. Got a little side business doing training.
Speaker 3:Worked in a suburban school district for three years as a director of security for the school district there, assistant director of a federal funded anti-gang task force, and then just went out on my own.
Speaker 3:Got a little fed up with the corruption in school politics at the point in time and decided to maintain my integrity and my freedom of life and not mixing in the politics at the point in time, and decided to maintain my integrity and my freedom of life and not mixing in the politics of some of the dynamics that were going on, took a part-time gig into a full-time business and now, 40 years of doctoral degree later, here we are doing school security. It's a lot more complex than what it's been, so I had a great opportunity to work from the Aleutian Islands of Alaska with one school, 125 kids, the Miami-Dade Chicago Public, some of the largest districts, and enjoyed doing security assessments, emergency planning, training and then, as we'll talk about, I'm sure, a little bit more, expert witness work, civil litigation. I've worked on the mass shootings, on the lawsuits, rape, other sexual assaults, gang violence and that type of stuff. So really weird background, weird mix, but that's where I was meant to be.
Speaker 2:Brian, I just wanted to add one thing Cleveland's only a couple hours directly south of Detroit and I spent a lot of my formative years, first of all in the mid-60s, with busing in Detroit, so I understand that reference. And then, second part is Cleveland hosted the Apple Pit, a-p-p-l-e Pit, which was the Police Institute for Tactical Training. So I bet during some of those years that we probably passed each other going back and forth. That's amazing to me.
Speaker 3:In the same room we used to do a lot of law enforcement conferences. In the same room we used to do a lot of law enforcement conferences. Actually one of the Cleveland PD guys and I formed the Ohio chapter of the Midwest Gang Investigators Association, dealt with McLaughlin and all that. Yeah, just that whole network. I got involved with the suburbs with some federal grants so I got on the speaking circuit with those different federal conferences, speaking circuit with those different federal conferences. So interesting mix of public safety, law enforcement and education, which is not necessarily an easy blend.
Speaker 2:No, but it's excellent this work.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I would say I appreciate you sharing that experience and to add my opinion to that, is probably why you have the perspective that you do not just a long history of being in the schools but dealing with things like that, with different you know gang issues and you know just the normal crime that schools, especially larger school systems and larger major metropolitan areas, have to have to deal with. And so, when the reason why I wanted for our lessons, why I want you to cover all that stuff too, is because you know, now, because of this epidemic of school shootings that continues to occur, we've got all these experts coming out, got people trying to sell different technologies and you know it's all very well intentioned for the most part, for most people involved in it. There's a lot of people just trying to make a buck, which which I get. Most people involved in it. There's a lot of people just trying to make a buck, which which I get.
Speaker 1:But, um, you know, having a good foundational understanding of what schools really face is important, because that's what people forget in all this. It's like we're going after these low frequency but highly impactful events, but there's all of these other problems too that most teachers typically have to deal with and what all schools have to deal with. That kind of all fit into this process, that you can't leave that on the table, meaning we can't focus on just one thing without having some sort of comprehensive plan of how we're dealing with everything. So a lot of folks just don't have that background knowledge. They're not aware of what teachers are facing on a daily basis really most of the time and how that impacts you know their ability to keep kids safe.
Speaker 3:It's such a unique environment. You've got to understand school climate, school culture, school community relations and, most of all, school politics, or politics politics as I call it. Second, first books of politics, of school safety, because you know you can get the most decorated person with the background in the military and law enforcement. You know captains, chiefs, deputy chiefs come into a job as director of school security and figure, you know what. I dealt with a lot of this at the. You know, at the local or county level or wherever they work, they dealt with bureaucracy and politics. And they come into a school district like, okay, this is a whole different world. It's organizational structure uh, not paramilitary pair. You know highly structured. Uh chief says do this, you do it. No, we do collaboration here. We're going to form teams, we're going to have consensus or not, and and you know I used to joke the process sometimes becomes more important than product Over the long end. It's like so it's a whole. You have to be able to manage that.
Speaker 3:And working with schools, I always say I'm a three-part consultant. One is security and emergency planning. That's really the easiest part. We know what the best practices are, we know what needs to be done. Second part's communications. It's highly ambiguous, uncertain at times, a lot of anxiety the worst that I've seen, highest level I've seen with parents about school safety in 40 years and there's a huge communication component too. So that's the second piece and the third part is political. It's a political issue Image maintenance denial, for in many cases over the years of problems we didn't have gangs. In Cleveland schools I had a superintendent who said we had organized youth student group misconduct.
Speaker 2:So I'm going OK that don't have drug dealers here we have pharmaceutical distribution specialists in the educational setting.
Speaker 3:Now that the BS, let's, let's get down to dealing with the problem. But that's the environment you have to work in. Right, it's two thirds of this dynamic is dealing with the communications and the political context.
Speaker 1:And to get to be able to do what you need to get done on the security and emergency planning and the best practices need to get done on the security and emergency planning and the best practices, so on that, what are the biggest problems that you see in when it comes to school safety? I know that obviously everyone's talking about school shootings and we just had another one recently, but what are the big problems? What are the things that bother you about? Because it's an industry, now right, I mean, there's lobbyists, there's big companies doing stuff, there's, you know, uh, school administrators who kind of had weren't used to dealing with this kind of stuff a while ago and then are just going, okay, well, you guys must be the experts, you know, you tell us. So I'm just I want to get your perspective on what you think the biggest problems are.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's a long list, so I'll try to you know, as we were talking about, let's try to narrow it down to the top three.
Speaker 1:Top three if you got them.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that could take an hour or two on its own. Yeah, the biggest, most current problem is the whole issue of the security vendor. Hardware product technology Marketing is on steroids. It's fueled by private equity in many cases and it's driven in some cases by lobbyists these firms are hiring, they're going to state legislatures lobbying on behalf of their product, trying to get funding shaken loose for what they sell, of funding shaken loose for what they sell. No coincidence, two governors actually vetoed line items for one particular bill because it was so narrowly written it only fit the description of the one vendor whose lobbyists were doing the lobbying.
Speaker 3:So that has taken over in the last, I'd say, three to five years. It's had a dramatic impact. School administrators are saying I can't cut through the noise. That same phrase that we hear over and over again, which I know you guys can relate to, is cannot cut through the noise. They're bombarded with vendors.
Speaker 3:There are four groups of people that I say generally speaking, broadly speaking, giving advice. Number one there are activists, some who may take a gun control versus gun rights type social or political agenda. That's one group and school safety is being used as a peg for that. Second part are advocates. We have a number of parents who've lost kids, former school administrators, people who have a particular single incident experience, and I respect that and respect their advocacy, and many will tell you that they're doing what they do and now giving speeches and tours is for their part of their grieving process. But the question becomes where does grieving and advocacy stop and where does policy and funding begin? Advocacy stop and where does policy and funding begin? And that line's getting really blurred, and not necessarily for the best interest, because there's money comes a place in some role, directly or indirectly with that.
Speaker 3:The third area is is, uh, you know, experts and experts, you know, if you're looking at a court perspective, it's uh, qualified in court, and it's education, training and experience constitute experts. And that could be many people from many different perspectives. And then the fourth part is sort of opportunist. It's the last bucket People who, see, you know, are trying to put the round peg into the square hole or vice versa, however you want to call it, and it just doesn't fit. But they're trying to jump in, see some opportunities or what they believe to. So you've got all this noise going on and principals and superintendents are telling us we can't figure, you know, we can't cut through the noise. And that's the impact Either they're acting and making decisions, going down the wrong route for things, or what I'm increasingly seeing is they're freezing and saying I'm just, I'm done, I can't do anything. So that's the number one problem, most recent trend the second part of that is related to our conversations is, if you look at the civil litigation, the expert witness work and I was talking with a reporter about this earlier I said well, when you talk about that, people think automatically well, people are worried about getting sued. Well, nobody wants to get sued, but if somebody's sued, it means somebody has been hurt or killed. And if somebody's hurt or killed, then my field, what we're talking about, is we're talking about kids, or maybe teachers and staff members. So what do we learn from that? And having worked on some of the highest profile mass shootings in schools, single incident, wrongful deaths, rape, other sexual assault While the facts and merits vary, the common fact is that the allegations of failures are failures of human factors, people, policies, procedures, training, communications systems gaps.
Speaker 3:They're not failures of hardware, products and technology. So we're spending all this effort with target hardening. There's a political piece to that. Target hardening is being used by elected officials now to counter calls for gun control. There's a huge agenda here in framing these issues. So people come out after a school shooting politically and say, oh, we need gun control, though the counter to that is now we need target hardening. So there's a ploy here, there's money involved and all of these dynamics going on, but the key is it goes back to people. And if we're skewing our funding and our lobbyists and our legislated mandates to target hardening and we're doing less and less on the human factors and the people end, and then we wonder why we're still having problems.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that that leads to so many different issues and you know, we always refer to it too is like sort of this diffusion of responsibility. It's like, ok, well, we've got this thing that we've got. Now, we've got these panic buttons, we've got this, you know, up armored, whatever. We got bulletproof this. And it's like, OK, but that that doesn't necessarily one that's not going to prevent and stop anything. It may. It's that what we call at bang thinking. Right, it's when, when.
Speaker 1:So what you're doing is you're saying this is if this happens, or we're assuming this is going to happen. Here's how we, too, is like, yeah, like you said, you nailed it with different administrators. Like, okay, I don't know, all these people are pounding on my door, they're showing up saying this they have impressive resumes, you know, or at least I think they do. I mean, that's always the thing I always tell people too, because I can, you know, being prior military myself. It's like, hey, just because you have some tier one guy coming in here to train you and like, yeah, they're amazing at what they do and they had an incredible career. But that doesn't apply here, like in the least bit, and so. But we sort of attribute these sort of skills or knowledge to people that don't really have it.
Speaker 1:And you know, here you're saying, even with the data shows that these are, these are sort of human centric or human problems and those things can be fixed, meaning I don't have to build a better mousetrap, I don't have to have a better technological response. You know we can use the resources that we have and the people that we have, and I mean cause I was talking to recently to to someone who's safety in school as well as like well, you have a population here that works here that I'm pretty sure they didn't become a teacher or an educator or involved in education because they wanted to make a ton of money or they want to do something, like they're here, because they care, like their hearts in the right place. So why wouldn't you want to capitalize on that and use those folks who are already caring about what they do and the students that they have to build this sort of network? So I know, greg, you probably had something to add too.
Speaker 2:And Ken, quickly from my side. Here's the thing Both of us have spoken to Congress. Both of us have spoken to congressional subcommittees I can go all the way up to Department of Defense leaders and everything. And when you come in as a subject matter expert, they want to know what the problems are and how to address them as solutions. And the problem is that sometimes lobbyists have much more power over us, and I talked to Brian yesterday with the client.
Speaker 2:If you take a look at hockey gear over the years, when I started playing hockey, there were no helmets. You were lucky if you had a mouthpiece. When we look at the cop work, when I started, bullet-resistant vests weren't issued. Nobody wore them until much later. And then Kevlar came out and did the test and people started wearing them and then they were worn under your uniform shirt. Now they're worn outside like a body bunker.
Speaker 2:Then we take a look at football helmets. They've never been a better generation of football helmets and you know what? It didn't solve any of the issues. Now. It may have made less severe traumatic brain injuries, but cops are still getting shot in the head whether they're wearing a vest or not, and I'm looking at that, like the paintbrush and the old Tom Sawyer. You know, hey look, we're whitewashing the fence, we're doing something, but at the end of the day and you said it last time we talked, ken you said we've got to shake up this industry because people are no longer listening. They think they're pointing at the problem, they think that they've proposed a solution and in reality all we're doing is marking time until the next shooting. So I throw that out there as a deterrent, the punch bowl, so to speak.
Speaker 3:Well, it is, and you know if you hit, if you're hitting the panic button and that's your answer to everything. Well, if you're panicking, you're too late.
Speaker 3:You hit the panic button when you're panicking and you know, and again, follow the money, the golden rule. Yes, sir, who's behind the drive for the panic buttons? You know more to be seen, but you can rest assured, there's an industry, the cottage industry, and profit there as well. And then what happens is, you know, you have people who are well-intended and grieving and they're advocating that states mandate that every school, as a parent Well, you know, politically nobody's got. Everybody wants to listen to this person that's lost their kid's life, and I agree. And but is that the best use of limited resources to mandate if schools want to buy it? And they've got the funds to go for it. But are we for what are we forcing people to do? And the same with emergency plans. I really think we're over legislating school safety. Now to the point where you're putting principals and superintendents more in an office where they're checking the box and going through routines and saying that they're in compliance yeah filling out 20 85 page templates.
Speaker 3:I mean you guys will appreciate this more than perhaps most uh will. You know some of these emergency plans were reviewing 85 to 125 pages. Now nobody from the custodian to the superintendent knows what's in there. And there's one superintendent who had a shooting in his school Now retired superintendent said it best.
Speaker 3:He says you know, when the bullets start flying, we're not grabbing the crisis plan, he says. He says it's if we looked at it, talk through it. Uh got, went through it as teams process this, get some, as we would say, shared mental models on this stuff beforehand. He said that part helps, he goes, but when the stuff hits the fan, that's we're not going to the, to the plan. And the problem is we're going through the motions of doing something just like. Just like you say, greg, it's, it's doing, you know, going through the motions of doing something. Just like you say, greg, it's going through the motions of painting that fence. I've got a plan and State approved it and it's sent it to them and it's like 85 pages and it took good sense yeah and it's a good one.
Speaker 3:It used to be before the digital world. It's a red binder. It's not only a binder, it's a red binder up on the shelf and we have one binder. It's a red binder up on the shelf and we have one and it's pretty and yeah that. And then you start opening it up as we actually look at what's in there and even when you have it, we're going why did you put that in there? That doesn't make sense or it's contradictory. And who does it turn out to be good for? It's good for plaintiff's attorneys when they're suing you because they will you?
Speaker 3:know, on page 74, dr So-and-so, I'm a superintendent it says that you shall do this. And now we've got one other thing We've got. You know, there's an effort by largely driven by consultants and security vendors that are trying to create an industry standard. Asis International now create a safety, now creates a school security committee and it's a standard and they're going to put this out there. It's over 100 pages and by one word count had more than 200 shells. Well, anybody that's done litigation work knows the difference between should and shall. It puts you in some real tight.
Speaker 3:I'm not giving legal advice, but it puts you in a real tight spot in a different position and who's for people from outside the industry forcing things in under the industry without the industry's input. And what I respect, you know, is like in our conversations is there are transferable skills and ideas and behavior, stuff that you guys are the experts in. That's totally. And Dr John Joe Johnson we talked with at length just on her research. I mean there's stuff out there that's transferable, that's new, that's shifting it up a little bit and it's not coming in a shining object for $10 million that you can put at your front entrance way that still doesn't catch the weapons that you claim it does.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's the thinkvice-thing attitude and you know that we all share that, and Joan is a wonderful resource for that, with decades of experience conducting studies and research. And you know, in this field it's the least amount of study and research because there's such a small control group to measure and every incident is so varied and different. And then you talk about the psychographic and the dynamics and all these other things. Yet I've never seen a proliferation of more so-called subject matter experts and I think we need to say so-called, because the idea is, you know, I stay in my lane, I'm the best in the world at one skill and I can back that up with all my bona fides, but I don't comment on CNN on fishing. You know what I'm saying. I don't go out there and purport myself to be an expert in other places and you truly are the standard for what an expert needs to be in this field and you're still competing for time with people that have no bona fides whatsoever. How did that make you feel?
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, I appreciate that and it's. You know there's room for different voices and I'm certainly not the only one out here, but it's got to be there, it's, it's, it's unbelievable. You know the explosion of what I always say and I've seen this all the way back. One of the advantages of being mature, not getting old, is over four decades and starting young in this. Decades and starting young in this. I've been here before Columbine, jonesboro, arkansas.
Speaker 1:Paducah, kentucky, pearl.
Speaker 3:Mississippi, ones that people don't even know about. Now we have people that are in schools, that weren't even born, that are working in schools, weren't even born at Columbine, that are starting into teaching and stuff or weren't even I shouldn't say weren't born, weren't graduated from high school at the time, right, and they're entering, you know, they're entering the field. So a lot of people really didn't live through these experiences. It's like 9-11, right, you know, I went to the 9-11 Memorial Museum with my daughter, who's a college junior, and two different experiences we're going through. It had the same emotional impact on us. We spent hours there, we were emotionally drained and we sat down over at the pub down the street for lunch and I said man, I said I can remember exactly where I was sitting. I literally described it here. I was in my office, I named the two anchors who were on cable when it was happening, exactly moment by moment, and she looked up and she says I'm emotionally drained.
Speaker 3:She says, and to think I wasn't even born at this time you know and it's I said this made me think of the school arena right, there are people who haven't didn't live through columbine, uh, in the state, at least professionally, in these positions. Um, and it's like starting, you know, trying to reinvent the wheel. Put the round peg in the square hole. It's like starting, you know, trying to reinvent the wheel, put the round peg in the square hole. It's just focus on the fundamentals. The things that we go into schools and ask on the consulting end are a couple of things. Number one are you focusing on the fundamentals Because you're looking for a PhD solution and you haven't passed kindergarten doing the basic things? You're talking about the AI weapons detection system, but your staff member has got a propped open door in the back and does that every day and has a sign on the door.
Speaker 3:There was one school we were in high school, a second visit several years later. Great administration, great district leadership, but human behavior. Right, they put a buzzer camera intercom on the custodial dock and the assistant superintendent here. I want to show you where we beefed this up based on your last recommendations. We walk back. There's a sign by the door. It says no one. You should never, ever, not, just never, never, ever prop open this door.
Speaker 3:There's a door propped open with some towels that have been laundered in a cart next to it propped open, and I said, you know, it's still human behavior. You're only upside doors. You put AI weapons detection systems, spends millions of dollars on these questionable AI systems and what they catch and what they don't catch and how they're marketed. And here, low hanging fruit, you run them between 7 am and 3 pm and then schools are open till 10 o'clock at night for athletic events, performing arts, community use of the school. It's like low hanging fruit, guys. You can come in here at five o'clock, six o'clock and stash something if you wanted to come through clean tomorrow. It's security theater, it's smoke and mirrors, it's emotional security blanket and it's done to pander to school to solve political and community relations problems, to appease parents, to give them a shiny object, to say that we've done something and you spend more then. But, as we've talked about, you create unintended consequences, right?
Speaker 2:And how are you going to implement?
Speaker 3:this Fidelity of implementation is a joke. You're pulling staff members from other areas of the building and they're not monitoring hallways, classrooms, stairwells, where you've got bullying, sexual assault, harassment, fights going on. It's critical thinking, I tell people. When we go and start a presentation, the first slide I have is, unlike many other speakers that are kind of pay to play to get on these conferences, I said I only have one thing to sell you that I'm selling you Critical, the concept of critical thinking.
Speaker 1:Right, yep, and you've got to make critical thinking and and um, and this goes to, you're bringing up some excellent points and I think, um, one of the problems is we, the the problem. A lot of people don't understand this problem. They don't understand school shooters, they don't understand some of the stuff that happens. So it's like we're coming up with solutions to problems that don't exist or won't help, and I don't think that that problem has been clearly defined. On how to do this, and you brought up even even to the point of, when it comes to these, you know, emergency manuals or different training manuals or threat management, things that we're going to do. Or you know, we want to develop a case on someone. Ok, you have to document certain things. Even the people that put that out, the experts, so to speak, the, the, the researchers who've done all the work on this stuff, putting it together, they even state in this stuff, like look, this is not a, this is not a checklist to find a school shooter, this, there's no such thing as a profile of a school shoot Like. They even state it right up front in their writing. They're going like like here's some things you need to take into consideration and it becomes again. Now, it becomes like this is a paperweight Like I. I open this, I read through it 80 pages and I'm like what am I supposed to do with this something? I'm not an investigator, I don't have law enforcement background. I'm a school administrator and I've got three other jobs that I do for the school because I'm a coach and I do this, and that's what which makes it more difficult. But anywhere I've gone, you have we kind of forget that there's a whole community behind that school. Whether some parents are going to be more involved than others, whether some teachers are going to be more involved, less, it's like you go back to like why aren't we engaging these folks and then them telling us here's what we need?
Speaker 1:Because even even the Department of Defense has sort of done a different course with how they procure stuff and how they get new technologies, where before it was everyone just you know, especially during the global war on terror and like unlimited funding people just coming up with stuff, with the solutions, and then going, oh, that's cool, let's buy that, let's buy that. Now they're like hey, wait a minute, we got all this stuff. Like let's just define what our requirements are, what our needs are. There's going to be companies that can solve the problem right. They're going to come in and go. We want that DOD money, we'll figure it out. So I don't think it's starting with that Like it's not coming from the school, it's not coming from in there, and then that's kind of one of the big things that I see occurring. And then now it goes to those parents and administrators going like well, I don't know, or I got a buddy who was in the military and he works for this company and they've got this cool thing and it's pretty badass.
Speaker 2:So, Ken, let me throw a part B in there before you answer. So it'll be two sides of same coin. So you have an AED to help defibrillate when a person is down. How many for a school, and should they be on each floor of the school and how many per student? Well, they come out and CNN or some other talking head said about the Georgia shooting Well, they only had one school resource officer. Every school should have three. Okay. Well, where does that funding come from? And where does the training? What is the standard? And are they armed? Or what happens is these pundits suggest things and they've done zero research whatsoever. You've been in the field for four decades, so I would hope that some of them are coming to you and going. Hey, you know, because I hate the term best practices, I think we all do, but the idea is that they at least come to you and go what's a good plan, what's a what's a fidelity filled plan for the future?
Speaker 3:yeah, and, and that's it. I mean. Part of the dynamics is well, there's so many pieces to this is right, you know, best practices is is an education phrase and really, um, what works? Uh, and the problem it is is now they're trying to take these, create this industry standard and then take it through so they can have an ANSI standard and then take it to what it is is so that the lobbyists can take it to the state legislatures. And then they say there's this quote unquote national or international standard and you need to codify this into law and mandate it. So now they're, you know it's basically shoving it down school's throats. So you're, and it's driven by hardware product and technology and security consultants and no matter what they say, you'll be some good people in the committee. I'm sure that it were well-intended I already know of a few that were on there.
Speaker 3:But the underlying push here there's a bigger agenda. Right, it's's a big. Why now? And why not 10 years? Well, why now? Is because their private equity, there's money, or there's a perception that there's money. Well, here's a little inside secret for anybody who's listening. Don't tell anybody, it's just going to be the three of us and everybody who's who's watching.
Speaker 3:Uh, guess what? The covid pandemic funds money that the schools have been using to buy the shiny objects is done next year. It runs out in the next for the school fiscal year. So that little bucket of money that people have been dipping in and saying, hey, it's not coming from our operating budget, but I got 17 million over here. I can spend 3 million, buy some weapons detection system and some panic buttons, calm the parents and, hey you, you know what, kick it down the road and hopefully it gets quiet. That's going out. And then the one-time shot in the arms state grant. You look at the Georgia school shooting. One report said that the system for the panic buttons cost a million dollars for the school district where the incident occurred. According to the story, 800,000 of that was provided by a state grant and 200,000 was from the sheriff's drunken driving ticket fund. So you've got. The school didn't pay a dime on that.
Speaker 3:Well, what's going to happen for maintenance, repair, replacement, upgrade. We see this with everything, whether it's cameras, whether it's this type that that one-time shot in the arm funding is gone. That's coming out of operating budgets in school districts that are cutting funds. It's not going to be there. So you're going to see I have this vision of the deal with like weapons the AI weapons detection screening at the front doors that the hardware is leased, the software is subscribed. So what are you going to do when you can't afford both? I'm looking at a repo truck coming in hauling the hardware out, right, because you can't pay your subscription and you haven't done it.
Speaker 3:So then what do you tell parents? You've given them a false sense of security. Now you have to explain why you're undoing or not doing what you sold them in the first place, which was a bill of emotional security, blanket security theater. And it comes down, as we know and agree on. It comes down to behaviors. Yes, whatever it is, it comes down to behaviors. Whether that's left to bang, during bang or after bang, you're dealing with behaviors. It's not a perfect science, but it's certainly there's information out there where we know a lot of science behind it that's not being tapped into and we know that in the schools, the number one way you find out about weapons plots and kids that are going to cause harm to themselves and others is from when a kid comes forward, tells an adult that they trust.
Speaker 3:It's a relationship recognizing abnormalities in behavior and what I say, not only you know the see something, say something. I have a third one and train people to do something, because if you're seeing it and saying it. Nobody knows what to do. Your first two aren't doing you that much good, because you've got to know what to do.
Speaker 2:Brian famously brings that up every class that we have this, you know, if you see something, say something. But what am I looking for and who do I tell? And that's the problem is, we don't put any emphasis whatsoever on the human behavior, that predictive analysis, the things like that. We recently wrote about the parking lot. Look, those are as good as these multi-million dollar programs, or better, and nobody's taking a look at them. So you know, that's our fight every day.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and we're in the same. We're fighting the same fight. Different battlefield is that although I think the two could come together is that you know the best the phrase I use, as you know, when you do media. You've got to talk in a soundbite because you only get 20 seconds. Right, it's really the best. Security and safety for kids is less visible and invisible, but more impactful, right? If you're focusing on behavior, I can't dangle a relationship or a training or a behavior out in front of parents at a PTA meeting or in front of a news camera at a press conference and say, see, we've got something new, we dealt with it. But I can do that with a weapons detection, more cameras, fortified front entranceway. But it's what's beyond that fortified entranceway, that people behind it that'll make it or break it. I mean your bus driver, who's the first and last person to see a kid during a school day, who's going to tell if something's off there. Your teachers, your secretaries in the office that are dealing front office staff that are dealing with irate parents and people coming in and problems strangers coming up to try to get to the building. Your custodial, your facilities personnel. Who knows the building better than the principal? Your facilities, personnel, your custodial knows it. And then, as we know and I talked with Joan a little bit even longer about the research just get a little wonky once you start getting into the academic world. So we like to talk more about it and and learn about it. You know I had to laugh. You know she said like, uh, you know one, one foot in in academia, one foot in practice. We were talking about the you know um, just the people like gary dr, gary klein, who we've looked to for a lot of things. But if you can't put it in practice, what good is it? That's why I got an EDD applied doctorate, because I want something to.
Speaker 3:You know, I looked at school administrators, strategic school safety, leadership and communicating safety and highly ambiguous at certain times. So long thing, but how do you deal with it? How do you lead on it? And then how do you communicate about it? And it still comes down to people. I mean you hit on an interesting point. You talk about defining it there. You know, by definition, five years finishing through in a doctoral program dissertation. There is no standard definition of what a safe school is. There are many commonalities on the agreements, on the things that make up a safe school the components. But you can't just blurt out a line of say this is what a safe school is. As a matter of fact, we've gone through that on what's a mass shooting right? What's a school shooting? There's debates on that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh, if it was on you know the, it was during the football game on Friday night. Does that count? Like, yeah, you're getting into all these areas and you know you're tying it back to what I think it is. Is you know what? What can these administrators and community members and parents do? Because I believe in starting at the local level. I'm never going to change national policy, but I can affect my neighborhood, I can affect my school district that my kids go to, and that's the biggest thing.
Speaker 1:And what I talk to different school administrators about is that typically what happens is there's a school shooting or something. Everyone reaches out. A lot of people will reach out and say is there something I can do or I'm concerned about this? So people are there. We've had, we've worked with folks who are trying to stand up like, you know, parent led, you know, almost like a neighborhood kind of watch for the school where they all volunteer their time.
Speaker 1:But then you get into just the pure bureaucracy of it about what you can and can't do at a school, just the pure bureaucracy of it about what you can and can't do at a school. And now we got to do background checks on people because now we're opening it up to people outside who've been vet, who haven't been vetted. So it's like there's a lot of different, these barriers that come in the way. And so what can those schools do to say you know what this is, this is how we're going to do things, or we want to do it this way because I think their voice is sort of more powerful in a sense, because they know their community better. So it's like what are they supposed to do? I'm a dad, I'm a teacher, I'm whatever. What can I do right there in my district?
Speaker 3:Well, we talk about that expertise that you develop by being there every day and that whole idea that I try to get across to educators as much as I do what I do. You're the expert at your school. You know what. You know that pattern recognition and abnormalities right Right up your alley. Here, what you know starts, you know right. Kid getting on a bus what's you know kids, something's off. This is not the same kid I see every day in terms of behavior, arrival and dismissal being out, greeting kids, observing, calling kids by name, engaging with them in the hallway. The people piece of it is extremely important. The challenge is the only thing school administrators have less of the money is time no-transcript. Year before or the year after, it wasn't eight.
Speaker 3:It wasn't eight I've had eight calls from attorneys on lawsuits during that time period, but not for training. But he says how much time do you need? And I said and he'd seen me speak when he was assistant superintendent somewhere. And I said well, truth is I, I need at least a day to lay foundation and really get to where to plant some seeds and give something people go with. And I said but I know you're not going to give that to me and I said so I'd like at least a half a day. And in my mind I'm thinking I really hope to get two hours out of this. And he says I'll pay you for the full day. You've got 40 minutes and it's a three-day leadership team leadership retreat, rather, with building administrators, central office administrators, your board members. So he's a good guy and we talked for a while.
Speaker 3:And it happened to talk. I was sitting out in the school parking lot, my daughter was attending a Sunday play performance and I'm eating a Philly cheesesteak waiting for her. I'm talking with the super. We had enough time on that Sunday to talk. We went back and forth for about an hour just talking about the focus of things he gave me in that fight and he said all right, I'll give you an hour and a half. And when it was done they said and I mean, you know how it is, you make it work, right. And when it was done, he says you know, it's the best thing that we did. He says you never would have made it 40 minutes. So the point is it's a leadership issue, it's not a money issue. If it comes from the board, it comes from your building principal, it becomes a priority, right. So you have to make it a leadership issue, to say this is a priority and to keep it up on the agenda and and those who do, those who get it, get it. And and I think we're working on it, but it's small wins.
Speaker 3:Look, I was in a county school district in west virginia month and the superintendent said I know it's a big ask, but can you do six 50-minute back-to-back presentation, 50-minute, 10-minute break, 50, 10-minute break, lunch, dinner, drink. And I said yes, not realizing that I'm not 40 anymore and my legs may have had it, and I got a three-hour drive home. I may have had a different opinion on the situation but knocked it out. But the cool thing about it was it was everybody from custodial facility people, bus drivers, all the way up to assistant superintendents, superintendents and everybody in between. They were rotating all their employees through a series of six different back to school training options.
Speaker 3:So everybody got through and it's the most you know, it's the most impactful thing you do. You get people. You do the best you can. I knocked it out in 50 minutes. You hit the core of things. Tell them look, I know you've got to have your manual, but let's talk about, you know, situational awareness stuff, pattern recognition and then the big one, cognitive decision-making. Under stress because educators are good at recognizing the abnormalities and patterns.
Speaker 3:Yes, we're struggling with getting people to be fully present and engaging and supervised. I had a superintendent tell me I need you to come in and do a training. I'm going. What do you want me to hit? What do you want out of this so I can see how to make sure I blend it in in terms of focus. He said I really need you to tell three teachers that standing in the corner of the playground with 60 kids and them looking at their phones, talking to each other, is not active supervision, and they're not fully aware of what's going on around them.
Speaker 3:So that piece needs work, pattern recognition and abnormalities. I think you know again, you know the research and experience. They're good at it because they live it every day. They recognize what's normal. They're the experts. And then we get to the cognitive decision making under stress and we're stuck again, so that those two end pieces that you know they're the ones that are the struggle. There I think we can nurture and support the pattern piece because they've got it there, they get it. I mean, how many times I've had people oh, there's a stranger in the hallway. I knew something was up, or that car didn't belong to pick up an arrival. Hey, there's something, that car in the back parking lot. They lean. They can always get better through training, but they lean better in that direction. It's those other pieces that we're working on and none of those things have to do with the 85-page emergency plan. Yeah, you're exactly right.
Speaker 2:It's a human-to human breakdown and failure that has been around since Plato and that's why they used to sit on the steps and look face to face and solve these problems. And the thing is, it's okay to have an advocate in Congress, it's okay to have somebody write a law, but that doesn't mean it's enforceable.
Speaker 2:That doesn't mean it's the most prudent decision when education and training are available all around you. And I like Brian as well, I like starting at the grassroots level and I start like regional training level and I think everybody needs to be included, not just a supervisor or superintendent.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, he's still there.
Speaker 2:You got it, am I?
Speaker 1:back. Yeah, you're good, I can, I can hear you. Can you still hear us, ken?
Speaker 3:Yeah, sorry about that, hey if it's any better, it happens with CNN and Fox.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I know I gotcha so had a little. Yeah, all good, I'll, I'll edit that out. But we we had some some audio issues there folks, and then Greg has a hard stop, but he, he had to, he had to kind of jump off. But you know, the kind of one of the thing I wanted to ask you about was sort of this legal precedent that's been set with parents being held criminally negligent for the school shootings that were conducted by their kids. So it already happened with a father in Georgia, the most recent one.
Speaker 1:And then we know Ethan Crumbly and his parents in Oxford High School in Michigan. So I kind of wanted to get your thoughts on that, because that obviously opens a whole legal door, and what you think in general when it comes to negligence, on who's responsible, because a lot of people are just to say, well, it's, the school is responsible for the safety of the children, but they're also not given, like we talked about, a lot of the resources or things to deal with these situations. So I just kind of want to get your thoughts on that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, I've seen this creep creeping up and it's intensifying and it's really hit a head here in the last. This incident, and certainly with Uvalde and other things that have happened that haven't captured the extent of national attention, is like people are desperate for and look, people are desperate and fed up.
Speaker 3:People are desperate and fed up, they're searching for accountability, they're demanding accountability, they're looking for somebody to blame and in some cases there are legitimate places to blame, depending on the facts of each case, and we've seen that with the uptick in civil litigation and on school safety in general. As I say, I often get more calls in a month from attorneys than I do from superintendents Lawsuits versus proactive stuff Anecdotally, I think there's a correlation there. If you're not doing the training and you're not doing the proactive stuff, anecdotally I would think that you're probably higher risk or having some liability. But so we've seen the uptick in the school security litigation piece of it, and not just shootings, but rape, other sexual assaults, gang violence, aggravated assault, so all kinds of other cases in addition to the shootings. It's not just limited to that. So that's the call and the point to the schools. And now and that still hasn't solved it right People are looking for it to solve to end to drop, and it's a wicked problem. We know from research and literature on wicked problems there are no five things you could do and just stop and solve it. And if you do one thing on one side to address one piece, it affects the other end. So you have all these tentacles of the problem.
Speaker 3:So now the move is okay, hold parents accountable. And hey, I am totally supportive of parental accountability. I think there's some huge gaps there in terms of why we see the things that we're seeing. The focus on the home, the parenting, the family structure, the family function or dysfunction all are elements. But the parents now let's bring them into play, and typically it's around access to the firearms. So that's the peg, the hole to get them in.
Speaker 3:But then and I'm not saying we shouldn't have schools held accountable, I'm not saying we shouldn't have parents held accountable. What I am saying is, when we continue to see school shootings, in spite of those two things, we're still going to be grasping for accountability. Right, the reality is we work and I've worked 40 years and you've worked in your field. Everybody's working for risk elimination. The reality is what we can achieve at best is risk reduction and we try to tighten that hole. And the good news is let's shine a little light here is the good thing is schools are much better at threat assessment and preventing and security than they were 10, 20, 30 years ago. The bad news is we're dealing with human behavior. Here we go again right Behavior. And when you're dealing with human behavior, you're going to slip through the cracks, whether that's alleged failures in human factors, or whether that's not recognizing the warning signs, whether that's not responding to what expectations and appropriately when an incident occurs. It still comes back to human behavior. We can't solve a behavior problem with a technology solution.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's a good way to look at it. And, um, you know the again, um, you're never gonna. You can't, you can't prevent everything, right, you can't have a completely secure well, I'm not in living. You can't. You can't have a completely secure world and live in a free society at the same time. So so you, you, you, but you don't. You know, my thing is like you don't need to, meaning you can.
Speaker 1:You can greatly reduce some of these issues and some of the things that you see by getting people more involved and focusing on some of the things that matter and how you can control things within your own community. What are the foundational elements? What is this? What are we building this on? What is, what is the overall thing we're trying to achieve? Because there there are a lot of different solutions for that or different ways that are going to work, depending on the type of school, in the environment. I mean, it's just like any type of any other type of threat. It's going to be different everywhere you go and in trying to over legislate, something kind of ends up putting people in a box. Now they're forced to do something. Now it's like, well, I don't really have control, I have to do this and now we're relying on these technological solutions and you brought up all the different drawbacks to that and it's just where we're creating a massive industry and process and system without addressing those key factors.
Speaker 3:Well, schools aren't factories, they're not city hall.
Speaker 3:They're not federal office buildings, they're not military installations, they're not your major corporation and plant and factory. They are community centers. And they're community centers not only for kids who come in and represent a microcosm of the broader community and the good, the bad and the challenges that come with that, but they're also community centers after school evenings. I mean, they're the heart of many small communities, many mid-sized communities, many big communities where that's the heart of activities for after school performing arts, athletics, community use of schools, recreation centers, senior meetings, whatever it is. You talk to a school custodian and I say you have an alarm system on your. What time do you typically turn it off? They say Sunday night for four hours because the building's open and you've got cleaning people in.
Speaker 1:He said the buildings's open and you've got cleaning people in.
Speaker 3:He said the buildings are open 10 o'clock at night six to seven days a week. In a high school, on average that's what we hear 10 o'clock at night, so somebody is using that beyond the academic day. So it's not a sterile environment.
Speaker 3:It's not a TSA in the airport and you have to look at that context, the purpose, the function, what fits reasonable technology support. But it's a supplement to, but not a substitute for, the human factors. Again, um and until we, you know, we button that up and and and recognize that and have and say what. Parents want to know two things, or should want to know two things. Parents want to know two things. Number one what'd you have in place to reduce the risks? And number two, how well prepared are you to manage something you can't prevent?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's a that's a great starting point too, and engaging those people in the community as well to to get on board with this. And I always tell people and no matter where I'm at, whether we're working with a private company, law enforcement, schools it's like look, you have a lot more saying this than you, than you're recognizing Like you you are. If you're in charge here, then be in charge and say this is what we're going to do. And there's obviously a lot of fear with that because people don't want to think, think you know, they don't want to make the wrong decision. It's like, okay, but you know, making a decision and articulating why you did it and saying these are our policies. You have, you have one, you have a legal leg to stand on if it fits in line with what, what are common accepted practices, and you can. You can make it, you know, uh, local to your community. You can. You can modify what you need to, given the resources and and tools that you have.
Speaker 3:So um, that's why they say there's saying if you've seen one school, if you've done assessment on one school, you've seen one school, you one school, if you've done assessment on one school, you've seen one school, you've seen one school. And it's kind of like that, with one school shootings you've seen one school shooting, you've seen one. Because the fact patterns are different. But it comes down with bottom line is when security works, it's because of people, when it fails, it's because of people, and people it equates to behaviors yep, well, I I obviously completely agree, agree with that, because that's our, our whole approach.
Speaker 1:But, um, I'm going to have a bunch of bunch of links in the episode details. So people can, you know, get in touch with you and go to your website and everything. But, um, you know, what's the best way for folks that that want to reach out and get ahold of you or have you at their school or find out more, what's the best way to do that?
Speaker 3:have you at their school or find out more. What's the best way to do that? Yeah, easiest way to reach out to the website schoolsecurityorg and kennett schoolsecurityorg to get back to everybody. Also on linkedin I do a lot of posts doing a lot more in-depth as far as the social platforms on linkedin.
Speaker 1:You can find me there, connect, try to put some more detailed things to stimulate thoughts and fuel that almost daily yeah, and I'll put that link in the details as well, because that's where we kind of first came across you a while back and I've been following your, what you're posting, because I think it's great. There's a ton of information in there and even just a way to look at some of these things. You're giving some really good thinking points for parents, administrators, anyone in the industry to think about and and getting in. You're backing it up with data and what we actually know, not what the news story is out there or what someone's story of being involved with that with their children, which is heartbreaking, but at the same time, like I get it, but that might you know that that might not be the right thing to do in this, in this situation.
Speaker 3:Critical thinking, absolutely Critical thinking. Can Critical thinking?
Speaker 1:Absolutely Critical thinking, can't say it enough. We got to learn how to do that, though, so that's obviously where we come into play and what we love doing.
Speaker 3:But I really we're singing it from the same sheet of music. I enjoy talking with you guys.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, ken. I really appreciate it, appreciate your time. We'll follow up with you and keep the conversation going. We kind of actually wanted to have a follow-on discussion with Joan Johnson too on the podcast. We've had her on a while back to get into some of this with the decision-making and her area of expertise, because she's brilliant, and hopefully have her on as well.
Speaker 3:She is. We spent about an hour and a half for what we thought would be a very short conversation and realized we need more. So we're continuing that conversation. So I think we're all in the singing from the same sheet of music and we just need to build a bigger choir.
Speaker 1:Yep, well, that's great. Well, thanks so much for for coming on, ken, I know you're a busy guy and and the schedule is just a suggestion. So, as you, as you, you told us, which I agree with, so we thank you, thank you for your time and keep up the work and we'll, we'll be.
