Episodes
Wednesday Jan 22, 2020
Morgan Ballis Interview | Preparing for an Active Assailant on Campus
Wednesday Jan 22, 2020
Wednesday Jan 22, 2020
As a school crisis develops, more time means more options. This episode’s guest works to put seconds back on the clock by teaching people steps to improve their chances for survival during a chaotic situation. ABOUT MORGAN BALLIS. Morgan Ballis is the Director of Strategic Planning & Training with Campus Safety Alliance which is a network of emergency management professionals, law enforcement trainers, and educational leaders providing evidence-based safety solutions for PreK-12 facilities and faith-based organizations. He is a firearms instructor, United States Marine Corps veteran, and is currently completing a doctoral degree in Emergency Management. ACTIVE SHOOTER DATA is CONFUSING. The number of school shootings over the past 20 years depends upon the source of the data. Morgan advocates for using data curated by the FBI which includes: number of attacks, locations of attacks, relationship of the shooter, timelines, and casualties. WHAT’S THE ORIGIN OF THE TERM LOCKDOWN? Lockdowns have become commonplace in today’s schools. Morgan shares that the origin of lockdown drills is rooted to 1970s Southern California when the threat was that someone driving by would shoot at a school. Imagine getting beneath window-level and pulling thick curtains on exterior windows. He noted that early lockdown drills where informally known as “Drive-By Drills” as the threat was external to the school. DIFFERENCES BETWEEN LOCKDOWNS IN THE 1970s and TODAY. Unlike the drive-by threats of the 1970s, contemporary active assailant threats are manifesting within the school. Morgan shares data that these incidents are shorter in duration (3-5 minutes) and more often completing before the arrival of law enforcement – especially in rural areas. These changes in the profile of an active assailant event are rationale for Morgan’s support of an options-based response. SITE-SPECIFIC TRAINING. The school is the unit of measure. Morgan stresses the importance of addressing each school setting within a school district and going beyond quantitative data to interview students, staff, and stakeholders. He revealed that some prominent school safety firms deploy architectural engineers who assess the school environment from a design, hardware and software approach. This creates a conflicted interest as the company conducting the safety assessment will subsequently market solutions that it will sell and install, such as cameras – despite other priorities of defining safety terminology, equipping staff with reliable 2-way radios and teaching standard communication protocols. A TEAM OF EXPERTS. Morgan embraces building a team of content experts to work with him – a group that is matched to the needs of the location. This is known as small group theory and is similar to how the CDC operates when faced with a potential pandemic. IF MORGAN HAD JUST ONE HOUR IN A SCHOOL. Schools seldom have more than ten days of contracted non-student time during a school year. This time is quickly carved into bits for developing curriculum, mandated training on blood borne pathogens, grading, setting up classrooms, ... School safety has secured its place at the table of professional development, but there’s never enough time, right? Morgan advises schools to identify how much time they will allocate to staff training for school safety. The first priority is defining terminology and establishing inter-rater reliability. The second priority is a reliable communication system with 2-way radios for all staff. Morgan’s emphasis on communications aligns to this 2013 interview with communications expert Fred Varian: https://tinyurl.com/Varian-Interview-ComSec LEARNING OBJECTIVES. Threaded throughout this interview was the need to cultivate learning objectives for school safety activities. Are we testing the school’s 2-way radios? Are we measuring the mass communication system that alerts parents? How might a few learning objectives completely change the tone of a school district and outside agencies conducting oft-controversial intruder exercises? And, what do most schools overlook? FOLLOW DR. PERRODIN: Twitter @SafetyPhD and subscribe to The Safety Doc YouTube channel & Apple Podcasts. SAFETY DOC WEBSITE & BLOG: www.safetyphd.com. The Safety Doc Podcast is hosted & produced by David Perrodin, PhD. ENDORSEMENTS. Opinions are those of the host & guests. The show adheres to nondiscrimination principles while seeking to bring forward productive discourse & debate on topics relevant to personal or institutional safety. LOOKING FOR DR. TIMOTHY LUDWIG, PHD? Dr. Perrodin’s “Safety Doc Podcast” negotiates school and community safety. To be informed about industrial safety, please contact Appalachian State University Professor Dr. Timothy Ludwig, PhD, at www.safety-doc.com. This is episode 117.
- Purchase Dr. Perrodin’s Book: School of Errors – Rethinking School Safety in America. www.schooloferrors.com
- Learn more about this show’s guest at www.campus-safety.us
Tuesday Jan 14, 2020
Building Your Legacy | Interview with Rob Says
Tuesday Jan 14, 2020
Tuesday Jan 14, 2020
What is legacy? What isn't legacy? Is a Danish a donut with no hole? Listen to guest Rob Says from Robsays.net as this episode of The Safety Doc Podcast addresses agency, purpose and legacy. YOUR ANCESTORS ARE NOT YOUR LEGACY. Defining your legacy by either your ancestry or by your children is a faulted scheme. First, lineage is certainly meaningful as it offers a sense of the family crest and greater tribe, but your pedigree affords you no bragging rights. Don’t waste your time on a mail-in DNA test in hopes that you’ll discover you’re faintly related to someone famous and by some transient properties that instantly makes you a “somebody.” You’re the great, great, great, great cousin of J.D. Rockefeller – that’s handy for trivia and useless for helping anyone to learn who you are and how you are making your mark on the world. YOUR CHILDREN ARE NOT YOUR LEGACY. As for children, they are frequently tagged as one’s legacy. I Googled “Children” + “My Legacy” and surfaced 838,000 results. The first was an article by Forbes titled, “Your Children Are Not Your Legacy” and the second was an article by Huffpost titled, “My Children are My Legacy.” People are autonomous and everyone has the right to a unique agency and purpose. Affixing the legacy saddle to offspring robs them of agency and purpose. I could go on, but instead, listen to the episode. MORE REASONS YOUR KIDS ARE NOT YOUR LEGACY. As written by Rob on Robsays.net, “I've seen "legacies" end up behind bars. I've seen them drink themselves to death or overdose on heroin. I've seen them join gangs. Your legacy can't be your family as far as I'm concerned because they don't owe you anything and they aren't obligated to you. They can walk out of your life legally the moment they hit the age of majority and never look back. They are autonomous beings with thoughts, feelings, and desires of their own. Give them the space to explore that without the pressure of trying to live up to your legacy.” YOUR JOB IS NOT YOUR LEGACY. A job is a means to an end. All employers and employees are interchangeable and organizations have short memories – especially for good things. As Rob notes, this isn’t an excuse to be a responsible, diligent worker. But, be cognizant of the influence your job has over what you do, how you act, what you think – that pause before you say something or do something as although it might fuel you legacy, it might not blend in with the vanilla profile embraced by the folks over in human resources. As the Internet never forgets, people, especially younger career-driven people, are measuring their expression and probably repressing their expression. Is this compatible with building your legacy? ARE WE PAYING TOO MUCH OR TOO LITTLE ATTENTION TO OUR LEGACY? There are two ways to look at this question. When we are addicted to extrinsic feedback in the form of likes, thumbs up and digital high fives, then yes, we are paying too much attention to our legacy. It’s like we are opening the oven door every 3 minutes to check on the cake. So, as we confuse social media attention with authentic content creation, then yes, we are paying too little attention to value-added content creation such as blogs, podcasts and articles and instead snapping photos of ourselves and our possessions – all of which are the building blocks of your legacy. You are the composite of what you do, not the aggregate of what you possess. FOLLOW DR. PERRODIN: Twitter @SafetyPhD and subscribe to The Safety Doc YouTube channel & Apple Podcasts. SAFETY DOC WEBSITE & BLOG: www.safetyphd.com. The Safety Doc Podcast is hosted & produced by David Perrodin, PhD. ENDORSEMENTS. Opinions are those of the host & guests. The show adheres to nondiscrimination principles while seeking to bring forward productive discourse & debate on topics relevant to personal or institutional safety. LOOKING FOR DR. TIMOTHY LUDWIG, PHD? Dr. Perrodin’s “Safety Doc Podcast” negotiates school and community safety. To be informed about industrial safety, please contact Appalachian State University Professor Dr. Timothy Ludwig, PhD, at www.safety-doc.com. This is episode 116.
- Purchase Dr. Perrodin’s Book: School of Errors – Rethinking School Safety in America. www.schooloferrors.com
- Learn more about this show’s guest at www.Robsays.net
Tuesday Jan 07, 2020
True Threats - What Every Parent Must Know
Tuesday Jan 07, 2020
Tuesday Jan 07, 2020
The First Amendment protects so much of what is going on (although the public after a mass attack do not like to hear that). One thing is certain - the days are over of law enforcement issuing warnings to people making threats that might be made with the intent to intimidate others. TRUE THREATS AND STUDENTS - ACT OF TERRORISM. It is absolutely critical that schools overtly and bluntly make students aware that a threat to bring harm to their schools might result in arrest and prosecution as a Federal act of terrorism. Yes, the courts would need to consider the mental state and cognitive capacity of the student, but that’s likely done after the student has been taken into custody. TRUE THREATS PROSECUTIONS. “There has definitely been an increase in the visibility of true-threats prosecutions,” says Jennifer Kinsley, a law professor at Northern Kentucky University who litigates First Amendment cases. She explains that many of these arise from social media posts and from the domestic arena, where divorce parties make angry statements. These individuals may claim that their spoken words are protected by the First Amendment, that their offensive expressions were merely crude political opinions, jokes or rants not meant to be taken seriously—or misguided attempts to blow off steam. But in an age beset with mass shootings and fear of terrorism, government officials likely will contend that such utterings or mutterings fall into the category of true threats—a type of unprotected speech.” (Hudson, 2018, ABA Journal). FIRST AMENDMENT PROTECTION. The First Amendment to the United States Constitution is a part of the United States Bill of Rights that protects freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly, freedom of the press, and right to petition. WHAT COUNTS AS SPEECH? Think far beyond the spoken word or written notes. Courts have identified speech as expression in: online posts; theater and dance, art, political yard signs, handing out flyers, and clothing. At least one federal appeals court has found that liking something on Facebook qualifies as speech! Some types of computer code may be considered speech, but the limits of that is still an open question. DEFINITION OF A TRUE THREAT. In legal parlance a true threat is a statement that is meant to frighten or intimidate one or more specified persons into believing that they will be seriously harmed by the speaker or by someone acting at the speaker’s behest. (Yelling “fire” in a theater is not protected public expression) True threats constitute a category of speech that is not protected by the First Amendment (O’ Neill, K. F., (2017) True Threats. MTSU.Edu). CONFUSION IN THE COURTS. The Supreme Court’s true-threat jurisprudence is less than clear. A review of lower court decisions indicates a hodgepodge of different results: (A) The Supreme Court of South Dakota recently upheld the conviction of a man for threatening a judicial officer by stating: “Well, that deserves 180 pounds of lead between the eyes,” and “Now I see why people shoot up courthouses.” State v. Draskovich (Nov. 21, 2017); (B) The Connecticut Supreme Court ruled that a man’s statement to his brother—“If you go into the attic, I will hurt you”—could be considered a true threat and denied the defendant’s motion to dismiss. State v. Pelella (Oct. 10, 2017); (C) An Illinois appeals court reversed the threat conviction of a man who left the following voicemail on a public defender’s phone: “There is not a day that goes by since I was sentenced at that courthouse that I have not dreamed about revenge and the utter hate I feel for the judge. There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t pray for the death and destruction upon the judge and upon every single person who sentenced me.” People v. Wood (Nov. 20, 2017). FOLLOW DR. PERRODIN: Twitter @SafetyPhD and subscribe to The Safety Doc YouTube channel & Apple Podcasts. SAFETY DOC WEBSITE & BLOG: www.safetyphd.com. The Safety Doc Podcast is hosted & produced by David Perrodin, PhD. ENDORSEMENTS. Opinions are those of the host & guests. The show adheres to nondiscrimination principles while seeking to bring forward productive discourse & debate on topics relevant to personal or institutional safety. LOOKING FOR DR. TIMOTHY LUDWIG, PHD? Dr. Perrodin’s “Safety Doc Podcast” negotiates school and community safety. To be informed about industrial safety, please contact Appalachian State University Professor Dr. Timothy Ludwig, PhD, at www.safety-doc.com. This is episode 115.
- Purchase Dr. Perrodin’s Book: School of Errors – Rethinking School Safety in America. www.schooloferrors.com