This is our process
Following one standardized approach to identify and address assault scenarios
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Let’s take a simplified example to show our approach to school safety with this school layout as our reference.
After consulting with school administration to understand the institution’s unique safety challenges, a comprehensive facility walk-down is conducted. Using a dynamic, continuously updated checklist, potential vulnerabilities that could be exploited are identified and documented such as:
Occupancy schedules
Infiltration and uncontrolled or unmonitored points of entry
Hidden or restricted areas of the building
Building features that might restrict evacuations or impair visual observation
Areas too open to an active shooter's view
Exploitation of existing facility systems by an intruder — such as manipulating the fire alarm system
Intruder scenarios are subsequently developed from the identified vulnerabilities to systematically assess potential hazards.
Once all intruder scenarios have been determined, protective measures can be tailored to address each specific scenario. There are three perspectives and considerations for selecting a protective measure:
Intruder
What conditions enhance the shooter’s situational awareness? Select control(s) to lessen the shooter’s advantage.
What conditions lessen the shooter’s situational awareness? Select control(s) to enhance the shooter’s disadvantage.
Present Occupant
What conditions enhance the present occupant’s situational awareness? Select control(s) to enhance the present occupant’s advantage.
What conditions lessen the shooter’s situational awareness? Select control(s) to lessen the present occupant’s disadvantage.
Remote Occupant
What conditions enhance the remote occupant’s situational awareness? Select control(s) to enhance the remote occupant’s advantage.
What conditions lessen the shooter’s situational awareness? Select control(s) to lessen the remote occupant’s disadvantage.
There are three rules to follow when developing a protective measure:
A protective measure must either reduce the likelihood of an attack occurring or lessen the harm caused if an attack does occur.
Prioritize the most reliable protective measures that also require minimal care and maintenance.
Protective measures do not safeguard one group while putting others in harm’s way.
“Passive” protective measures require minimal care and maintenance, such as a protective barrier. “Active” measures require greater effort to ensure reliability and more care to prevent failures, such as a video surveillance system.
A school should always reinforce a positive academic environment, so protective measures must be implemented in a way that is the least disruptive and least distracting to a student’s day-to-day experience.
For each protective measure, functional requirements are established to specify how the control will achieve its intended safety objective. These requirements are then further detailed through performance criteria, which define measurable standards; and through the evaluation of performance, which verifies that the control meets those standards.
To illustrate, consider event 16 above where an assailant is able to open fire on the Athletic Field due to a wide field of view. To remove the shooter’s advantage, a protective measure could begin by installing vegetation and foliage in strategic locations to obstruct an shooter’s line of sight.
The functional requirement is to obstruct the view between vantage points and areas of concentration of individuals.
The performance criteria are that the plantings must be dense, restrict the field of view, and limit areas an assailant may take aim.
The performance evaluation requires regular monitoring of the school’s contouring of land, and layout of structures and/or vegetation.
Once protective measures have been identified and accounted for, they are regularly monitored and maintained. Each protective measure is maintained with the same process:
Define the operational conditions under which a safety system is considered usable or operable.
Identify the specific parameters to periodically monitor to ensure the wellness of the system.
Specify how often the protective measure must be monitored to prevent degradation or failure.
Preventive maintenance may be performed by local school resources, or the responsibility can be extended to a maintenance organization that serves many schools. Economies of scale are more likely to be realized within a Standardized approach where schools of similar design use common protective measures.
Our View of a Successful Outcome When Protective Measures are Placed Judiciously in an Active Shooter Scenario
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The following video shows one active shooter scenario, which has tragically occurred all too many times. The assailant enters the school and begins firing at occupants as the shooter moves through the school. Outcomes of both unprotected and protected scenarios are visualized. Note the significant emphasis on detection and duress notification systems, the use of passive barriers and methods of building escapes. Egress into corridors is averted to prevent a direct encounter with the shooter. Each control is assigned rigorous safety requirements following the proposed Standardized methodology presented in Before The Next Tragedy: Preventing Harm in School Shooting Scenarios.
Student
Harmed student
School Resource Officer
Active Shooter
Protective Measure
How Can We Help?
Use the form below to contact us with school safety comments, questions, or collaboration opportunities. We want to advance the discussion. You can also reach out to us at community@principledsafety.com