SHARING IDEAS

& RESOURCES

to Keep Our Nation’s

Schools Safe!

VOLUME I, OCTOBER 2013
INTRODUCTION

Tragic events lead to new prevention and response strategies. 

We recognize that there are dangers in our communities and in 

our schools. These realities call for an enhanced focus on safety. 

The decades-old school fire drill has evolved to active shooter/

threat drills as threats have escalated and materialized, often 

with tragic outcomes. 

Our nation is seeking new and innovative ways to keep children 

and adults safe in school settings. Far from simply developing 

techniques to respond efficiently to an active incident, public 

safety officials are also exploring technologies to gauge and 

prevent potential crises. And they are sharing their ideas and 

results. 

Across the country, entire communities are rallying and dedicating themselves 

to being proactive in preventing school violence. There is much talk about how 

existing programs can be reinvigorated, what new technologies can be created 

and how training tools can be distributed to school resource officers (SROs), 

administrators and local law enforcement agencies. Modern threats are being 

addressed with modern technology, strategy and resolve.

The U.S. Department of Justice’s National Institute of Justice (NIJ) is a leader 

in identifying and sharing new training and technology with law enforcement 

and other first responders. Since Congress passed the Safe Schools Initiative 

15 years ago, NIJ has worked collaboratively with other federal agencies on 

behalf of our nation’s law enforcement to answer the call to develop tools and 

strategies to boost security in our schools. Front-line professionals are working 

more closely with teachers and administrators, students, parents and community 

leaders to create alliances that will transform our nation’s schools. NIJ, through 

the National Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology Center (NLECTC), 

is helping communities gather and share their success stories in this publication 

and at SchoolSafetyInfo.org. 

In this guide, you will read about new uses for familiar, standard-bearing 

technologies such as: 

• Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training (ALERRT).

• NIJ’s School Critical Incident Planning-Generator (SCIP-G) tool.

INTRODUCTION • i
• NLECTC System video “It Can Happen Here.”

• Free online training from International Association of Chiefs of Police.

• School Safety Audits.

In addition, you will read about new products and apps such as: 

• Anne Arundel County (Md.) Police Department’s Speak Out app.

• Tucson’s Mass Casualty Trauma Kits.

• SmartPhone app for students to communicate with police.

• See-Hear-Report text a tip program.

• Real Time Location Systems (RTLS).

This guide also reports on unique collaborative community efforts that are succeeding in cities and rural areas alike. 

It’s a new day in the effort to keep schools safe. Law enforcement and public 

safety officials now team with and count on students, school officials, parents 

and all concerned citizens to share the responsibility to keep schools safe. 

Please use us as a resource and let us know what you are doing to keep your 

communities safe so we can ‘pay it forward’ to other communities across our 

nation. 

Keep Safe,

Michael K. O’Shea

Senior Law Enforcement Program Manager 

michael.oshea@usdoj.gov

II • SHARING IDEAS & RESOURCES TO KEEP OUR NATION’S SCHOOLS SAFE! VOLUME 1
CONTENTS

Meeting An Active Threat Head-On................................................................... IV

Students Set the Pace in Learning About School Safety ..................................... 4

Course Teaches Officers How to Administer Aid, Improve Survival .................... 8

Finding Ways to Maximize Limited Resources................................................... 12

After the Shooting Stops ................................................................................... 16

School Safety Advocacy Council Expands Training Opportunities.................... 20

The Immediate First Responder......................................................................... 22

Preparing Today for Safety Tomorrow ............................................................... 24

Volunteers Come Together to Produce Free Training Video............................. 28

It Takes a Village... ............................................................................................. 30

Carroll County Involves Officers in School Patrols...and in Classrooms ............ 32

Police School Substations Enhance Safety and Communication....................... 36

Police Outfitted With Mass Casualty Trauma Kits.............................................. 38

In-depth Safety Audits Expand School Security ................................................ 42

School Critical Incident Planning – Generator (SCIP-G)

Helps Create Coordinated Response ................................................................ 46

Smartphone App Provides Alternative Way for Students to 

Communicate With Police.................................................................................. 48

Anonymous Reporting and Prevention Platform Helps 

Stop Trouble Before It Starts.............................................................................. 50

Tip Line Offers Students a Way to Share Information........................................ 54

“See-Hear-Report” Reaches Out to Somerset Students ................................... 58

Real-Time Location System Provides Enhanced Security in Idaho School......... 60

Providing a Direct Connection Between Schools and Law Enforcement .......... 64

Real-Time Communications Comes to Oregon School ..................................... 66

Municipal Workers Watch Over Neighborhood Streets .................................... 70

Video Enhances School Bus Driver Training....................................................... 74

CONTENTS • iii
CHAPTER 1

MEETING AN ACTIVE

THREAT HEAD-ON

By Becky Lewis

May 2013

Texas State University-San Marcos

The next Adam Lanza may not shoot his way through 

the door of an elementary school. He might get past 

a school’s “buzz for admittance” policy because he’s 

a known visitor, only this time he’s carrying a knife and 

looking for his partner for a deadly reason. Or he might 

be a student in a small rural school with a gun in his 

backpack. Or he may find some other way to get past a 

school’s well-thought-out, well-executed safety plan. 

Iv • SHARING IDEAS & RESOURCES TO KEEP OUR NATION’S SCHOOLS SAFE! VOLUME 1

Photo by NYPD
CH. 1: MEETING AN ACTIVE THREAT HEAD-ON • 1

However he gets in, if local law enforcement has taken advantage of the free 

Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training (ALERRT) Program offered 

through the Texas State University-San Marcos and funded at a national level by 

the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA), officers will know how to deal with this 

active threat. 

Since 2002, more than 40,000 law 

enforcement officers from across the nation have participated in scenario-based 

training through the university’s ALERRT 

Program, starting with Level I training 

focused on dealing with active threats. 

The university’s partners, the San Marcos 

Police Department and the Hays County 

Sheriff’s Office, helped develop the 

original training program, which has expanded to a national level through the 

use of state and federal grant funding.

Assistant Director Terry Nichols has 

been involved in the program since the 

beginning, when, as a sergeant with 

the San Marcos Police Department, 

he worked with Sgt. David Burns, a 

counterpart at the sheriff’s office, to train every officer from the two agencies 

on dealing with the active shooter threat. Nichols and Burns had received their 

initial active shooter instructor training from the Texas Tactical Police Officers 

Association, and after teaching the local officers in Hays County, they appealed 

to the university for assistance in developing a statewide program. The university 

then took ALERRT to the national level with the acquisition of BJA funding.

“We’ve slowly built the program, but Level I remains centered on the active 

threat,” says Nichols. ALERRT offers training sessions at San Marcos, takes them 

out to other jurisdictions on request and as funding allows, and offers train-thetrainer sessions that spread ALERRT’s reach even farther. 

“We receive a limited amount of funding from state and federal sources each 

year to deliver training to law enforcement personnel outside of Texas, and in 

addition, some states and regions use us to provide training in their areas,” 

Nichols says. To host Level I ALERRT training, the agency must provide a facility 

such as an unoccupied office or school building with wide hallways and multiple 

rooms off those hallways. On facility approval, ALERRT allows agencies to enroll 

between 25 and 30 students, and in return, provides four certified instructors 

and all the needed materials and equipment.

Photo by Diana Hendricks
It Can Happen in a Small Town 

Galax, Va., an independent city near the North Carolina border, has a population 

of just slightly more than 7,000 residents. Approximately 400 of them were shopping in a local Wal-Mart late one evening in May 2010 when a call came in about 

an active shooter in the store. Chief Rick Clark says that his ALERRT-trained officers correctly formed two contact teams, with one moving directly to the threat 

and the other, to the victim. The shooter, as it turned out, shot himself after 

shooting his wife, a store employee. He died, and she survived.

“There was no hesitation on the part of my officers. They knew their roles. I’ve 

been around a while and I learned the old school way of methodically clearing 

an area. ALERRT says you go straight to the heart of threat and they did that,” 

Galax Chief Rick Clark says. “We believe in the program. The acronym is ALERRT 

and I think it gives them more confidence and makes them more alert when they 

respond.”

The leader of the Galax tactical team took ALERRT train-the-trainer training in 

Lynchburg in 2008, and brought its concepts back to the rest of the agency. 

Officers can also take ALERRT training at the New River Valley Criminal Justice 

Academy, which offers in-service training throughout the year and includes 

ALERRT in its basic recruit training. Galax also hosted a statewide rural-specific 

training in 2012 that teaches officers how to operate in more wide-open spaces 

and in wooded areas. 

“I believe in training. I believe my folks should have every tool and function 

necessary to perform their jobs. Even though we’re a small agency (24 sworn 

officers), we face the same issues as they do in Roanoke and Richmond,” Clark 

says. 

It Can Happen Without a Gun

Given the proximity of the Lone Star College System in the Houston area to the 

ALERRT Training Center in San Marcos, it’s no surprise that Lone Star College 

System Police Department officers have been taking ALERRT training on an 

ongoing basis for a number of years. Officers at two different campuses put that 

training to use in 2013, the first a shooting incident on January 22 on the LSCNorth Harris campus, the second a multiple stabbing incident on April 9 at the 

LSC-CyFair campus. (Each campus has an enrollment that approaches 20,000 

students, with numerous faculty and support staff present at any given time.). 

“The time from when the stabbing call came in until the suspect was in custody 

was under five minutes. He had run through the hallways of two buildings and 

assaulted a total of 14 people,” says Chief Richard Gregory. “In addition to the 

ALERRT training our officers received, we had been doing a lot of training for 

faculty, staff and students on how to respond to an active threat. In fact, some 

of them had watched a training video earlier that same day, and officers had 

talked to them about what to do in an active threat situation. In this case, several 

students actually dragged him to the ground before the officers caught up with 

2 • SHARING IDEAS & RESOURCES TO KEEP OUR NATION’S SCHOOLS SAFE! VOLUME 1
him. When I looked at video of the incident, I saw the officers using the movements that I expected from individuals who had taken ALERRT training.”

During the shooting incident, Chief Gregory didn’t have to look at video: he was 

present on the LSC-North Harris campus and witnessed his officers putting their 

training to use: “The call came out that three people, two students and a facilities employee, were injured. The shooter ran into one of our buildings and the 

first officer on the scene, adhering to the ALERRT training, went into the building 

after him before any backup arrived. Two other officers arrived within minutes, 

and I followed them through the building and observed they were using the 

ALERRT formation. Officers from two other agencies who also had received 

ALERRT training arrived and joined right in the formation with no discussion 

needed. The training allowed officers from three different jurisdictions to search 

together as a team,” Gregory says. (The shooter fled to a wooded area, escaped 

and was ultimately apprehended a few days later near Dallas, Texas.)

“We initially trained our two firearms instructors to be trainers, because they said 

it was good active threat training, but also just good officer safety and survival 

training,” Gregory says. “It’s just good solid training that we were able to put to 

good use.”

Read about a Level II ALERRT training class in “After the Shooting Stops” on 

p.17. For more information on the program as a whole, visit http://alerrt.org

CH. 1: MEETING AN ACTIVE THREAT HEAD-ON • 3

Photo by NYPD
CHAPTER 2

STUDENTS SET THE PACE

IN LEARNING ABOUT

SCHOOL SAFETY

By Becky Lewis

April 2013

International Association of 

Chiefs of Police

That officer parked over there in his patrol car isn’t 

playing games on his smart phone. This school administrator sitting in her study after dinner isn’t updating 

her Facebook status. And the firefighter waiting for a 

call isn’t using his tablet computer to read the latest 

bestseller.

4 • SHARING IDEAS & RESOURCES TO KEEP OUR NATION’S SCHOOLS SAFE! VOLUME 1
CH. 2: STUDENTS SET THE PACE IN LEARNING ABOUT SCHOOL SAFETY • 5

They’re all taking free online School Safety training offered by the International 

Association of Chiefs of Police, progressing through their selected modules at 

their own pace.

IACP and the Office of Juvenile 

Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP), a program of 

the U.S. Department of Justice, 

Office of Justice Programs, 

recently launched a series of 

four introductory-level online 

school safety trainings. The 

modules – “Assessing School 

Safety,” “Forming Your Safe 

School Planning Team,” “Preparing for a School Crisis” and 

“Responding to a School Crisis” 

– provide guidance on creating

or enhancing school safety and 

crisis response plans. The selfpaced courses target law enforcement, school officials and allied stakeholders, 

and students can take one, all four or any other combination, in any order.

Kelly Burke, IACP’s Program Manager for Juvenile Justice and Child Protection, 

says the IACP began developing the program in early 2012 and did not create 

it as a specific response to the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary on Dec. 14, 

2012. Based on a two-day classroom training program called Partnerships for 

Safe Schools, IACP developed the online version in response to the ongoing 

financial struggle faced by many departments, particularly small and rural ones. 

Many law enforcement agencies are doing more with less and are not able to 

release staff to attend classroom trainings – even IACP/OJJDP’s no-cost training. 

“We wanted to present the training in a way that really engaged the user, so we 

partnered with a specialist in developing training and online curricula for law 

enforcement. It’s not a static PowerPoint webinar, it uses an interactive selfpaced design,” Burke says. “It’s designed so it can be used at work, in the car, 

on smartphones and tablets as well as computers. We’ve been hearing about 

e-learning for a while, now we’re moving into ‘m[mobile]-learning.’ Instead of 

having to take eight hours of training in one sitting, this lets them break it down 

into what’s feasible with their schedules. However, they do have to complete 

all activities before they can advance to the next step and then finally get their 

certificate.”

One of those activities focuses on dealing with an active threat in a school, but 

the training also addresses other situations that might require establishment of 

an incident command post, such as an explosion in the chemistry lab, a student 

threatening to commit suicide, an abduction on school grounds or a vehicular 

accident on a nearby street.

“It covers all different types of school crises. Both the classroom and online trainings are based on the Federal Emergency Management Agency crisis model,” 

Burke notes. 
6 • SHARING IDEAS & RESOURCES TO KEEP OUR NATION’S SCHOOLS SAFE! VOLUME 1
Partnerships for Safe Schools has been delivered 

39 times in the past 13 years to more than 1,700 law 

enforcement and school personnel from 32 states, 

the District of Columbia and the Bahamas. Based on 

the initial positive reaction, Burke feels the online 

component has been, and will continue to be, as 

worthwhile in terms of bringing school safety to 

many more practitioners. 

The training also targets school administrators, 

other public safety professionals and community 

leaders who are involved in school emergency 

response, with one module specifically focusing on 

developing a safe school planning team: “We need 

to recognize who the stakeholders are. It takes more 

than law enforcement and emergency responders 

such as fire and EMS. It’s administrators, it’s teachers, it’s mental and behavioral health professionals, 

it’s faith-based leaders in the community, it’s neighbors who live near the school and more. They’re all 

stakeholders and the training can benefit all 

of them.”

For more information and to register, visit: 

http://elearning-courses.net/iacp.

CH. 2: STUDENTS SET THE PACE IN LEARNING ABOUT SCHOOL SAFETY • 7
CHAPTER 3

COURSE TEACHES OFFICERS 

HOW TO ADMINISTER AID, 

IMPROVE SURVIVAL

By Becky Lewis

August 2013

National Association of Emergency 

Medical Technicians

Evaluation forms filled with column after column of 

circled “5s” for “Excellent.” Those are the marks being 

earned by the Law Enforcement and First Response 

(LEFR) Tactical Casualty Care course, a new training program that teaches law enforcement officers and other 

first responders about basic interventions that could help save someone’s life in 

the precious minutes before emergency medical services practitioners can safely 

enter a trauma scene. 

8 • SHARING IDEAS & RESOURCES TO KEEP OUR NATION’S SCHOOLS SAFE! VOLUME 1
CH. 3: COURSE TEACHES OFFICERS HOW TO ADMINISTER AID, IMPROVE SURVIVAL • 9

Developed with the Denver Health Department of Emergency Medical Services 

Education and the Denver Police Department Metro SWAT unit, and offered 

through the National Association of Emergency Medical Technicians (NAEMT) 

(http://www.naemt.org/education/CourseDirectory.aspx), LEFR uses elements of 

training provided to U.S. military medics combined with other principles developed by NAEMT’s Prehospital Trauma Life Support (PHTLS) Committee. It meets 

the recommendations of “Improving Survival from Active Shooter Events: The 

Hartford Consensus Joint Committee to Create a National Policy to Enhance 

Survivability From Mass Casualty Shooting Events,” released by NAEMT on April 

2, 2013 (http://www.naemt.org/Libraries/Trauma%20Resources/Hartford%20

Consensus%20Document%20Final%204-8-13.sflb)

“We’ve seen so many incidents nationally – and internationally – in which a 

large number of casualties have occurred. If you look at many of these incidents, 

police reach the scene rapidly but EMS entry is delayed until the scene is secure. 

What we wanted to do is give the police officers who are first on the scene of 

an active shooter or other mass trauma incident the necessary medical training 

to perform the very basics of lifesaving care,” says Dr. Peter Pons, associate 

medical director for Pre-Hospital Trauma Life Support at Denver Health Medical Center and an emergency physician. “The military has a two-day advanced 

level training course and we thought a lot of the principles they teach also 

made sense for police officers. However, we’ve adapted it into a one-day civilian 

course.”

Pons already an existing relationship with PHTLS, and 

worked out an agreement for the Denver agencies 

to develop the training and field test it on a local 

level, at which point NAEMT would begin to host 

and offer the program on a national level. Work 

started on the project in early 2013, and as of 

mid-August, the pilot portion of the project had 

ended successfully and more than 50 LEFR sessions had been scheduled nationwide. Training 

at the medical center in Denver costs only $10 

per participant to cover certificate printing 

costs, thanks to a combination of Urban Area 

Security Initiative and local funding. Costs at 

other locations around the country will vary; 

find out more by visiting the NAEMT website listed above, by emailing education@

naemt.org or by calling (800) 346-2368. 

For more information on training specific 

to Colorado, visit https://www.co.train.

org/DesktopShell.aspx.

Pons says there are no pre-qualifications needed to take the 

course, which is “really designed for the lay provider. We recognize that 

police officers frankly have had very little medical training. And the evaluations 

on the part of the officers who have taken it have been phenomenal.”
In addition to those columns filled with the number 5, those 

phenomenal evaluations have included the following comments: 

“Amazing training, especially the way it was taught for 

non-medical [trainees]. I feel comfortable at this time to be 

able to get involved with an injury...and at least do what is 

possible to save someone’s life.”

“Very informative and helpful scenarios force you to think on 

your feet.”

“Great class. Excellent practicals. Thanks for caring for your 

brothers in blue!”

“Material was presented in such a fashion that a person with 

no EMS background such as myself was able to understand.”

“Glad to see us being taught to administer aid instead of 

waiting for rescue.” 

The aid that participants learn to administer includes the following:

• Immediate steps for hemorrhage control, including external hemorrhage control, direct pressure and wound packing, early use of tourniquets for severe

hemorrhage, internal hemorrhage control by rapid evacuation, and transportation to major hospital/trauma center.

• Appropriate application of a tourniquet to an arm or leg.

• Airway control techniques and devices.

• Application of a topical hemostatic dressing (combat gauze).

• Tactically relevant indicators of shock.

Pons says the morning session consists of a combination of classroom lecture 

and practice at skill stations, while in the afternoon, participants get a chance to 

apply the skills they’ve learned in several scenarios: “Some of them use actors, 

some use mannequins that bleed. They all replicate scenarios officers could 

possibly face in the field. We focus on medical care issues, not on tactics. Every 

police department has its own approach to tactics, and we’re not trying to teach 

them tactics to use in an active shooter or hostage situation. We’re teaching 

them what to do medically if that situation ends with a casualty.” 

10 • SHARING IDEAS & RESOURCES TO KEEP OUR NATION’S SCHOOLS SAFE! VOLUME 1
CH. 3: COURSE TEACHES OFFICERS HOW TO ADMINISTER AID, IMPROVE SURVIVAL • 11
CHAPTER 4

FINDING WAYS TO MAXIMIZE 

LIMITED RESOURCES

By Becky Lewis

May 2013

Rural Domestic Preparedness 

Consortium

In a school safety training session in a metropolitan 

area, the police chief, the tactical team leader and the 

bomb squad commander all would likely participate 

in the class and learn valuable lessons about working 

together. In a rural area, those three jobs may very well 

belong to the same person. 

12 • SHARING IDEAS & RESOURCES TO KEEP OUR NATION’S SCHOOLS SAFE! VOLUME 1
CH. 4: FINDING WAYS TO MAXIMIZE LIMITED RESOURCES • 13

“Crisis Management for School-Based Incidents: Partnering Rural Law Enforcement, First Responders, and Local School Systems,” a free training offered by 

the Rural Domestic Preparedness Consortium (RDPC) and funded by the U.S. 

Department of Homeland Security, focuses on how to handle school crisis 

events, including an active shooter situation in a rural K-12 school environment 

where resources are limited and interagency assistance is many miles away. Instructor Scott Lowry says the most important goal of the training is to teach participants – including school personnel, law enforcement and other first responders such as EMS and fire – to recognize the limits they have as a community and 

to find ways to mitigate the lack of resources: “People have to take on multiple 

responsibilities in a moment of crisis and it’s important for the community to 

identify the gaps ahead of time.”

One community that recently 

hosted such a training is the 

small western Montana town of 

Libby (population approximately 

2,700), located in the Kootenai 

National Forest between the 

Cabinet Mountains to the south 

and the Purcell Mountains to 

the north. Lisa Oedewaldt, who 

wears three hats herself (deputy 

director of emergency management, public health emergency 

preparedness coordinator and 

flood plain manager), heard 

about the training through a 

local school administrator and 

first participated in a session 

in the reservation community 

of Browning. Oedewaldt was so impressed she then worked with the Montana 

Department of Disaster and Emergency Services and RDPC to bring a session to 

Libby on April 1, 2013.

“Scott took our high school (560 students, grades 7-12) and developed a scenario focusing on dealing with an active shooter there. I told him what our area 

was like, who coordinated with whom and how the agencies worked together. 

Scott incorporated all of it into our scenario, including how remote we are and 

how if we had to close the one major highway, we’d be completely cut off,” 

Oedewaldt says. “He made the principal decide to change the way the school 

does lockdown drills and the local police decide to go from waiting for backup 

to the first person on the scene goes in. They really changed the way they plan 

to handle things because of the training.”

She adds, “We went through pictures of each school and looked at things like 

placement of bushes, and he encouraged them to think about ways to improve 

safety. It was just so interactive and everybody got involved.”

“Everybody” included officers from the six-person Libby Police Department, the 

Lincoln County Sheriff’s office, the Montana Highway Patrol and the U.S. Forest 
Service police. The latter three agencies have a total of 32 officers for the entire 

county, which includes two other school districts that have not yet participated in 

the training.

“In dealing with extreme rural areas like Libby, a lot of the conversation during 

the day focuses on what they need to do and how to do it with limited resources. In metropolitan areas, where they can pull from the adjoining jurisdictions, 

the demand on the community is not as great,” Lowry says.

In the eight hours of instruction time, Lowry works with rural areas on developing 

emergency plans that they maintain as living documents, performing a school 

vulnerability assessment, looking at available assets and developing a strategy 

for threat assessment management. 

“Our philosophy is if we prepare for the worst case scenario, everyone will still 

respond appropriately to any lesser incidents. We talk about making appropriate 

decisions, such as when to stay in the classroom and when to go out the window,” Lowry says. “We want to educate our teachers to make rational decisions 

during irrational times so they can further ensure the safety of the children in the 

classroom.”

14 • SHARING IDEAS & RESOURCES TO KEEP OUR NATION’S SCHOOLS SAFE! VOLUME 1
CH. 4: FINDING WAYS TO MAXIMIZE LIMITED RESOURCES • 15

For law enforcement participants, the objective is to teach them to train in the 

way they expect to respond, because in an emergency, they will instinctively 

respond the way they were trained. One of the main objectives of this training 

is to get law enforcement and school personnel on the same page to ensure 

collaborative strategies are in place for effective crisis prevention, response and 

recovery in the K-12 environment.

The training also emphasizes the recovery phase, because, Lowry says, many 

jurisdictions do a good job with emergency operation plans and lockdown drills, 

but “what escapes a lot of people is post-incident recovery. When children have 

experienced a traumatic event, the mental health aspect needs to be engaged 

immediately thereafter. The ultimate goal is to get back to normalcy as a community, and the mental health portion is critical to that. Chardon High School in 

Ohio immediately implemented a mental health and recovery phase that should 

become a model of how to recover from a school shooting.” 

About the Course

RDPC offered AWR 148 “Crisis Management for School-Based 

Incidents: Partnering Rural Law Enforcement, First Responders, and Local School Systems” 316 times and trained 8,925 

individuals from May 2009 through May 2013. Requesting 

agencies must be vetted and, if approved, need only provide 

a classroom equipped with audio/visual equipment large 

enough to accommodate between 20 and 40 participants. 

Interested persons who cannot attend a training session may 

take a web-based version. More than 900 individuals have 

taken advantage of the web-based option as of May 2013.

To request this or any other RDPC course, visit http://www.

ruraltraining.org, select the link for “Request a Course” and 

complete the online form. You will be contacted to complete 

the verification process, and receive a date and an instructor. 

Requests can also be made by calling toll free to (877) 855-

RDPC.
CHAPTER 5

AFTER THE 

SHOOTING STOPS

By Becky Lewis

May 2013

University of Texas-San Marcos

The gunshots that filled the halls a few minutes earlier 

have ended, but the all-clear to bring in the EMS 

personnel won’t come until after the shooter has been 

taken from the scene and after a final check to make 

sure he acted alone. While minutes tick away – sometimes just a few, sometimes a couple of hours – blood 

continues to flow. Blood from wounds that could be life-threatening if not treated right now, by someone already on the scene. Treated by a law enforcement 

officer who has completed Level II ALERRT training. 

16 • SHARING IDEAS & RESOURCES TO KEEP OUR NATION’S SCHOOLS SAFE! VOLUME 1
CH. 5: AFTER THE SHOOTING STOPS • 17

“Terrorism Response Tactics,” the second level of the Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training Program offered by the ALERRT Training Center 

at Texas State University - San Marcos, takes officers to the next step to take 

after an active threat has been neutralized. “About two years ago, we realized 

that officers are getting really good at learning how to deal with an active threat 

and stop the killing, but they didn’t know how to stop the dying after they put 

the bad guy down. We want to give them the tools to save as many lives as we 

can,” says ALERRT Assistant Director Terry Nichols.

The techniques taught in the 

course derive from tactical 

combat casualty care methods 

developed by the U.S. Army 

over the past 10 years, and 

the Army’s Dr. Robert Mabry 

serves as medical adviser to the 

training: “The chief preventable reason why people die in 

combat is external hemorrhage 

from injuries to limbs. We’ve 

trained soldiers to deal with 

life-threatening loss of blood, 

and ALERRT is now teaching 

police officers how to pack 

wounds with hemostatic gauze, 

how to apply tourniquets, how 

to position people so they can 

breathe and not drown in their own blood. ALERRT teaches these techniques 

at an appropriate level for law enforcement use. We don’t need to make law 

enforcement officers into trauma surgeons, but we can give them effective tools 

so they can do what a trauma surgeon would do in the same circumstances. If 

you kill the bad guy, but three kids bleed to death before EMS gets there, the 

mission has still failed.”

Nichols says the training – which can take place in either a scheduled class at 

San Marcos or “on the road” at the request of a local jurisdiction – works best if 

firefighters and EMS personnel from the same jurisdiction all participate. The first 

day of the class provides instruction for students on basic medical skills including 

the use of tourniquets, improvising tourniquets, wound packing, bandaging and 

lifts/drags/carries. On the second day, students learn triage and link-up procedures, and review tactical considerations for responding to an active shooter. 

The class includes multiple force-on-force scenarios where officers must first stop 

an ongoing threat and then experience several ways of dealing with numerous 

injured victims, including taking the wounded out to fire and EMS as well as 

providing security for fire and EMS to enter a crisis site.

“The primary concept we want to enforce is what we can do immediately on the 

scene to save lives, which is mainly hemorrhage control. Officers also have to 

learn there are some injuries they can’t work on, such as a penetrating gunshot 

wound to the abdomen. That requires an operating room and a trauma team. 

Photo by Diana Hendricks
They learn how to prioritize which injuries 

need immediate attention and which ones 

can wait,” Nichols says. “Active threat training is great, but this class is what happens 

after the shooting stops. It focuses on saving 

lives and integrating those efforts with fire 

and EMS.”

Nichols says that integration requires philosophical and policy changes, because traditionally, fire and EMS won’t enter a scene 

until it has been secured: “They will have to 

learn to let law enforcement define what is 

secure, to trust law enforcement to provide 

cover and keep them safe. It starts with having a discussion about working together and 

talking together. If they’ve trained together, 

it’s going to help build that needed trust.”

Applying Training in Real Life

Law enforcement officers in the state of Texas who complete “Terrorism Response Tactics-Active Shooter Level II” receive a medical kit to carry in their 

patrol cars that includes a tourniquet, shears, hemostatic gauze, field dressings 

and sterile gloves. (Students from outside the state receive instructions on how 

to set up their own kits). One student who has already put his kit to good use 

is Officer John Mahoney of the New Braunfels Police Department, who found 

himself called to the scene of major vehicle accident in summer 2012.

Mahoney said he arrived on the scene ahead of the paramedics and found a 

woman who had her right leg caught between her motorcycle and the pickup 

truck that struck her. The victim lay on the ground bleeding from a severed major artery, and a bystander exclaimed “she’s bleeding out.”

Mahoney retrieved his medical kit and applied a tourniquet to what paramedics 

later termed a life-threatening injury. He received a departmental award for his 

efforts.

“My department has encouraged everybody to take Level I Active Shooter 

training. After going, I learned about other classes and started taking them on 

my own,” Mahoney says.

“Normally at that type of accident we would just provide traffic control, but it 

had been only a couple of months since I took the training, and after thinking 

about it for just a moment, I realized that I had the training, I had the equipment 

and I could help her,” he adds.

To read about active threat training, see “Meeting an Active Threat Head-On” 

on p. IV. To learn more about all of the ALERRT training programs at Texas University-San Marcos, visit http:/alerrt.org/.

18 • SHARING IDEAS & RESOURCES TO KEEP OUR NATION’S SCHOOLS SAFE! VOLUME 1
CH. 5: AFTER THE SHOOTING STOPS • 19

Photo by Diana Hendricks
CHAPTER 6

SCHOOL SAFETY ADVOCACY 

COUNCIL EXPANDS TRAINING 

OPPORTUNITIES

By Becky Lewis

February 2013

School Safety Advocacy Council

The officer parks her squad car in front of the local high 

school and enters the front door. The students walking 

the halls between classes aren’t alarmed to see her: 

She drops by often to do some administrative work at 

her desk in the school office, and students expect to 

see her mingling with them almost every day.

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CH. 6: SCHOOL SAFETY ADVOCACY COUNCIL EXPANDS TRAINING OPPORTUNITIES • 21

In addition to its ongoing training programs, the School Safety Advocacy Council (SSAC) has introduced Law Enforcement Educational Presence (LEEP), a twoday School Safety Certification Course for Patrol and Reserve Officers.

“As a result of the recent tragedy at Sandy Hook, we worked with law enforcement and school administrators from around the country who are subjectmatter experts to create this program,” says SSAC President Sean Burke. “If law 

enforcement agencies nationwide stationed an officer in every school, it would 

take one-third of the sworn officers in the country. 

“The basic idea behind LEEP is to get local law enforcement more involved with 

the schools in their jurisdiction. LEEP promotes the idea that schools can have a 

satellite office in their buildings where officers on patrol, officers from specialized 

units, can set up a schedule to work out of that office part time. That way, they 

get to know the administrators, they get to know the students, they get to know 

the layout of the building. If an emergency response is needed, there is an officer who knows the school and has a relationship with the students and staff. The 

majority of the potential school shootings in this country that have been averted 

were stopped because students provided information to an officer with whom 

they had developed a relationship.”

To learn more about the available training on how to establish a LEEP program 

in your area, visit http://www.schoolsafety911.org/index.html, the SSAC website. The site also offers information on other specialized services and trainings 

offered by SSAC, which has trained more than 100,000 law enforcement officers 

and education professionals in the United States and abroad. SSAC also offers 

the following on a regular basis:

• Basic School Resource Officer Certification Course.

• Advanced School Resource Officer Certification Course.

• Emergency Management Response in the Educational Setting.

• Gangs 101: What Every Educator and SRO Should Know.

• School Law & Liability.

• School Safety Leadership & Supervision.

• When Terror Goes to School – Understanding the Threat of Terrorism in

Today’s Schools.

In addition to several specialized trainings on bullying, SSAC holds two national 

conferences each year, one of them the largest conference on bullying in the 

United States. The agenda for the other 2013 event focuses on emergency 

response and school shootings. Details on upcoming conferences can also be 

found on the SSAC website.

“The unique thing about SSAC is that all of the instructors we employ are 

subject-matter experts who remain active in the field. That’s what sets us apart,” 

Burke says. “There are training programs out there that just focus on school 

staff, and trainings that just focus on law enforcement, but we bring together the 

community, the schools and local law enforcement to address school safety and 

bullying. We see school safety as a community-wide responsibility.”
CHAPTER 7

THE IMMEDIATE 

FIRST RESPONDER 

By Becky Lewis

February 2013

National Association of 

School Resource Officers

School resource officers (SROs) are more than just 

police officers assigned full time to a school: They are 

the immediate first responders to any incident that 

happen on campus.

22 • SHARING IDEAS & RESOURCES TO KEEP OUR NATION’S SCHOOLS SAFE! VOLUME 1
CH. 7: THE IMMEDIATE FIRST RESPONDER • 23

“The SRO is always the immediate first responder to any and all incidents that 

happen on campus,” says Kevin Quinn, president of the National Association 

of School Resource Officers (NASRO). “That’s a very critical aspect of the job. 

There’s no response time, because we’re already here. In the time it would take 

somebody in the office to pick up a phone, call 911 and tell a dispatcher, who 

would then relay that information to an officer who isn’t familiar with the campus, 

I would have already walked down the hall and been on the scene.” 

SROs play two other key roles in addition to covering 

their beats at the school. They visit classrooms and 

make presentations on school safety, traffic laws, 

general law and crime prevention; and they confer 

with students, parents and family members on legal 

problems and crime prevention. 

NASRO, founded in 1989, provides training and other 

resources to help SROs perform all of those roles 

better. The organization offers basic and advanced 

training for SROs and managers, as well as specialized training in legal issues affecting school safety. 

Quinn says that requests for training have “exploded” in the wake of the Dec. 14, 2012, shootings in 

Newtown, Conn., with NASRO scheduling approximately 50 training classes in the first eight months of 

2013. For more information on NASRO, its trainings 

and its annual conference, visit the NASRO website at 

http://www.nasro.org or call (888) 316–2776. 

“I wish the Sandy Hook shooting never happened 

and very few people knew that we existed,” says 

Quinn, whose organization saw both its membership 

and attendance at its annual conference decline 

sharply during the economic downturn that started in 

2008. 

“Since it did happen, we want SROs and law enforcement agencies everywhere 

to know what we are all about and that we’re here to help.”

Kevin Quinn wrote an opinion piece for CNN as part of a special series on 

school safety that ran in mid-January 2013. You can read it at http://

schoolsofthought.blogs.cnn.com/2013/01/17/my-view-more-schoolresource-officers-more-safe-school-communities/?hpt=hp_bn1. 
CHAPTER 8

PREPARING TODAY FOR 

SAFETY TOMORROW

By Becky Lewis

September 2013

New Jersey

The school’s schedule looks like one for a pretty runof-the-mill Wednesday: No assemblies or pep rallies, 

soccer games after classes (boys at home, girls away), 

stuffed shells for lunch.

The visitors walking toward the office are about to 

change all that. They’ve come from the New Jersey 

Department of Education’s Office of School Preparedness and Emergency 

Planning, and in a very short time, students and staff will be called on to run an 

unscheduled active shooter drill. 

24 • SHARING IDEAS & RESOURCES TO KEEP OUR NATION’S SCHOOLS SAFE! VOLUME 1
CH. 8: PREPARING TODAY FOR SAFETY TOMORROW • 25

One of several components of a 2012 state initiative titled “Safe Schools for a 

Better Tomorrow (SSBT),” New Jersey’s requirement for schools to participate 

in unannounced security drills began in January 2013. Anthony Bland, the State 

Coordinator and head of the Office, says that whereas many states don’t require 

school safety drills at all, New Jersey mandates active shooter, bomb threat, 

non-fire evacuation and lockdown school security drills, and provides checklists 

and guidance on how to set up and execute them.

“Via the M.O.S.S. process, my 

staff also schedules visits to 

designated M.O.S.S. school 

districts to observe drills from 

an outsider’s perspective, one 

drill each at elementary, middle 

school and secondary school 

levels,” Bland says. “We meet 

with stakeholders and provide 

written feedback, diagnosing and prescribing just like a 

doctor.” 

Bland and his staff also provide 

much more to schools than just 

oversight to drills. The New 

Jersey SSBT Initiative provides 

direct technical assistance to 

schools, coordinates with local law enforcement and facilitates increased communication between school administrators and the public safety community: 

“We want people to know that in New Jersey we are progressive and we are 

doing good things.”

The “good things” that make up the SSBT Initiative include, in addition to 

the Statewide School Security Drill Audit, Making Our Schools Safe (M.O.S.S.) 

Districts (which provide technical assistance), Securing Our Schools (law enforcement training), half-day school security conferences in each county, Surf’s 

Up (Internet Safety training), symposia for nonpublic schools, ways to improve 

communication and surveillance infrastructure, and a upcoming model template 

for the state’s required district-wide safety and security plan.

Bland says his office supports the initiative by providing statewide, regional 

and local training, and offering checklists and other supporting materials. The 

strength of New Jersey’s efforts has impressed many, including several state representatives from Pennsylvania who have looked at possibly modeling programs 

on their neighbor’s. 

“Our state has been very aggressive in making sure that our school districts have 

strong guidance, and we have the potential to provide training and technical 

assistance to other states across the nation related to school security drills, best 

practices and planning,” Bland says, adding it has taken New Jersey a number 

of years to develop and fine-tune its programs. Although the SSBT Initiative 

launched in early 2012, New Jersey intensified its focus on school security following the West Nickel Mines/Amish Schoolhouse shooting in 2006. 
That incident, Bland says, became the 

impetus for convening a K-12 School 

Security Task Force that includes 

county and state officials, school administrators, school resource officers 

and police chiefs, and community 

stakeholders in developing a safe culture, all-hazards approach to address 

events varying from earthquakes and 

hurricanes to active shooter threats. 

Bland says that New Jersey schools 

and communities have responded in a 

very positive way to the state’s initiatives and requirements, taking pride 

in the knowledge they have practiced 

and they are prepared, but he adds: 

“There’s no magic that will eliminate 

all senseless acts of violence. People don’t like to hear that, but it’s true. We 

have great plans and great guidance, but there’s no way to stop everything.

“If another state needs help with similar initiatives, we are here to help. We 

travel along this road together and we are a nation of one.”

You can visit the following links to learn more:

• Office of School Preparedness and Emergency Planning:

http://www.state.nj.us/education/schools/security/

• Safer Schools for a Better Tomorrow:

http://www.state.nj.us/education/schools/security/task/

• Checklists:

http://www.state.nj.us/education/schools/security/task/audits/

• Safety Plan requirements:

http://www.state.nj.us/education/schools/security/req/req.pdf

Or contact Anthony Bland at (609) 584-4297 or (609) 633-6681 or email anthony.

bland@doe.state.nj.us.

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CH. 8: PREPARING TODAY FOR SAFETY TOMORROW • 27
CHAPTER 9

VOLUNTEERS COME 

TOGETHER TO PRODUCE

FREE TRAINING VIDEO

By Becky Lewis

April 2013

Woodland District No. 50

Gurnee, Ill.

Brothers ask each other for opinions on their work 

all the time, starting with homework and continuing 

into adult life. Little did Tom Agos, Crime Prevention 

Technician with the Gurnee (Ill.) Police Department, 

know that a request to his brother for an opinion would 

begin the process of turning a small project for one school district into a free 

school safety video with a national audience.

28 • SHARING IDEAS & RESOURCES TO KEEP OUR NATION’S SCHOOLS SAFE! VOLUME 1
CH. 9: VOLUNTEERS COME TOGETHER TO PRODUCE FREE TRAINING VIDEO • 29

“Attention Students and Staff,” a 15-minute training video, can be obtained via 

secure download by schools and law enforcement agencies nationwide, and 

Agos says the Gurnee Police Department and Woodland District No. 50 are 

very excited about sharing the product with other agencies – although that possibility was far from their minds when the project started. Three days after the 

Dec. 14, 2013, tragedy in Newtown, Conn., Agos and Gurnee School Resource 

Officer Jim McDermott met with Woodland’s school safety team, which included 

district superintendent Dr. Joy Swoboda; Lori Casey, associate superintendent 

of education; and principals from each school building about the district’s safety 

plan. Out of that meeting came the goal of creating a training video for substitute teachers and other support staff brought into the school system after the 

annual August lockdown training. Agos drafted a script and asked his brother, 

Chicago-area professional actor Chris Agos, for input. Chris Agos not only 

provided feedback on the script, he offered his services as narrator and creative 

consultant. Free of charge. 

Another piece of the project fell into place when Agos 

asked Matt Till, a fellow church member and instructor 

for the Television Department at Columbia College 

Chicago (one of the largest art colleges in the United 

States) about the possibility of borrowing a camera to 

shoot the video. Through Till’s efforts, Columbia College responded with donated equipment, a camera 

and lighting crew, student volunteers to edit video 

footage and compose music, and assistance, along 

with Chris Agos, with a casting call for officer/actors.

Tom Agos said once word got around about the project, a local salon donated hair and makeup services, 

a nearby restaurant provided food for the day of the 

shooting and “it turned from a little idea into a gigantic project with more than 60 volunteers involved. It 

really took off and all of the donations were a huge 

blessing. The result was a very professionally constructed piece that cost zero dollars to produce.”

And with that came that realization that “this is just too good not to share. It’s 

too well done and involved too much of a huge community effort to keep it to 

ourselves. I wrote the script so that any school district could use it if they felt 

it fit into their program. Other schools may have the same problem we have 

with hires brought in after the annual training, or for a small school district just 

beginning to look at school safety, it might be something they could use to build 

a program.”

The video is not appropriate for a student or general audience, and Agos will vet 

all requests to ensure they come from school districts or law enforcement agencies. Qualifying entities will receive a secure link to download the video; just one 

week after its release, he had fielded more than 100 qualified requests. 

A trailer for Attention Students and Staff can be viewed at http://www.youtube.

com/watch?v=IluudUhr1DA&feature=youtu.be. To request a copy of the video, 

contact Tom Agos at safetyvideo@police.gurnee.il.us or call (847) 599-7080.
CHAPTER 10

IT TAKES A VILLAGE...

By Becky Lewis

February 2013

New Jersey Association of 

School Resource Officers

The 1996 publication of It Takes a Village by thenfirst lady Hillary Rodham Clinton brought the African 

proverb “It takes a village to raise a child” into public 

consciousness. Lt. Patrick Kissane of the Ft. Lee (N.J.) 

Police Department says it also takes a village to keep 

a child safe. Law enforcement needs to partner with other stakeholders such 

as school administrators, teachers and parents on school safety efforts. Kissane 

30 • SHARING IDEAS & RESOURCES TO KEEP OUR NATION’S SCHOOLS SAFE! VOLUME 1
CH.10: IT TAKES A VILLAGE... • 31

uses “It Can Happen Here,” a 2010 video produced by the Weapons and Protective Systems Technology Center of Excellence (WPSTC), as one tool to help 

promote that message.

“If you look at the SRO [school resource officer] program, it’s just one piece of 

the pie. There are other stakeholders who need to be involved in changing the 

culture of a school, in preparing practice drills, in encouraging reporting,” Kissane says. “The video helps bring the message to everyone that they need to be 

prepared.” 

He uses “It Can Happen Here” 

in presentations to principals and 

community leaders, and all newly 

hired SROs in New Jersey receive a 

copy to take back to their schools. 

(Kissane also serves as the president 

of the New Jersey Association of 

School Resource Officers and as a 

member of the New Jersey Governor’s School Safety Task Force.)

According to Drs. Timothy Brungart 

and John Leathers, co-producers of 

“It Can Happen Here,” the documentary is designed to put a face 

on school safety by informing and 

encouraging school safety stakeholders to prepare for emergencies. Released in 2009, the video focuses on the 

Columbine and Platte Canyon school shootings in Colorado and the valuable 

lessons that communities can learn from these tragedies. 

Produced by the WPSTC for the National Institute of Justice (NIJ), the 60-minute 

video includes interviews with victims’ parents, school administrators and local 

law enforcement. It also examines shootings at the West Nickel Mines Amish 

School, other U.S. schools and schools in other countries, and discusses technology solutions that can help law enforcement, including less-lethal technologies, 

metal detectors and enhanced use of surveillance cameras. In addition, the 

video offers a list of resources such as websites, reference materials and contacts 

for help with writing and implementing school safety plans. 

Since its release, “It Can Happen Here” has been used as supplemental material in New Jersey’s mandatory 40-hour training for SROs and their chiefs, says 

Kissane, who served as a member of the NIJ School Safety Technology Working 

Group that provided subject-matter expertise during video development.

“The beauty of this tape is that the message is just as powerful and strong now, 

perhaps even more so, than it was when it was initially produced,” Kissane 

says. “Around the country, everyone is consumed with school safety and they’re 

talking about the need for more police or more armed guards, but it takes a lot 

more than that. It really does take a village.”

For information on how to obtain copies of “It Can Happen Here,” go to 

https://www.justnet.org/school_safety.html
CHAPTER 11

CARROLL COUNTY 

INVOLVES OFFICERS IN 

SCHOOL PATROLS...AND IN 

CLASSROOMS

By Becky Lewis

September 2013

Carroll County, Md.

The deputy leads the jury back to their seats. The 

judge calls on the foreman to stand and read the verdict: Not guilty. The judge then asks the jury members 

to tell why they voted not guilty, and whether they 

thought the defendant was not guilty when they left to 

begin deliberations.

32 • SHARING IDEAS & RESOURCES TO KEEP OUR NATION’S SCHOOLS SAFE! VOLUME 1
CH.11: CARROLL COUNTY INVOLVES OFFICERS IN SCHOOL PATROLS...AND IN CLASSROOMS • 33

Say what? A judge questioning jurors about how they arrived at their verdict, 

asking them to tell what influenced them in an open courtroom?

No, not a courtroom. A classroom. A classroom at Winters Mill High School in 

Maryland’s Carroll County, where students just participated in a mock trial of a 

classmate charged with possession of marijuana. A mock trial orchestrated and 

led by two Carroll County sheriff’s master deputies, co-teaching this Health I 

class as part of the county’s new “Adopt a School Program.”

Launched with the start of the 

school year in August 2013, 

the classroom component adds 

another dimension to the Adopt 

A School program, which started 

with a patrol presence in the 

county’s 44 schools following 

the events of December 2012 in 

Newtown, Conn. Officers from 

the county’s five municipal police 

departments and the Maryland 

State Police joined sheriff’s deputies in doing patrol checks and 

unscheduled daily visits to every 

school, getting to know students 

and teachers and offering an increased level of security. 

Larry Faries, the school system’s coordinator of security, explains that despite its 

nearness to the Washington-Baltimore metropolitan area, Carroll County remains 

relatively rural, with just more than 100 patrol officers (out of 214 sworn officers). 

“We didn’t have the resources to hire school resource officers, and we think 

we came up with something unique that gives us a lot of ‘bang for our buck,’ ” 

Faries says. “Every patrol officer is involved in security instead of just a few. They 

stop in and eat their lunches, they take in their laptops and file reports, they walk 

through the school and get to know everyone there.”

Although the patrol component started almost immediately after the shootings 

at Sandy Hook Elementary, working out the teaching component took some 

brainstorming and planning over the course of several months. Dawn Rathgeber, 

assistant supervisor of Curriculum and Instructional Resources, and Chief Deputy 

Phil Kasten led the team that developed the teaching component.

“We agreed that DARE had been a good thing for the county, and we didn’t 

want to lose that instructional component but we wanted to build on the DARE 

experience. We came up with this idea to include foot patrols and being visible 

around the campus, yet still getting to know the kids and develop relationships 

with them in the classrooms,” Rathgeber says. “I’m so pleased the classroom 

interaction will continue. Police officers are people too and we didn’t want to 

lose the foundation we already laid.”

Whereas DARE presents a structured 10-day, in-and-out of the classroom component, the Adopt a School curriculum features officers co-teaching several dif-
ferent units with a certified health teacher, including the dynamics of emergency, 

bike safety, “stranger danger,” the legal consequences of underage alcohol use 

and drug use, strategies for dealing with peer pressure, cyber-bullying and online safety. Collaborative instruction takes place throughout the school system, 

as students in the second, fifth, seventh and eighth grades participate along with 

students enrolled in secondary school Health I. Carroll County has trained 20 

officers from the various law enforcement agencies, with those from municipal 

agencies teaching in their towns, and sheriff’s deputies and state troopers teaching at the other schools.

“We did an interview process and selected people based on their ability to give 

a presentation as well as their written and oral communication skills. They went 

through a one-day training before the school year, working with instructional 

staff from the schools,” says Kasten. “We think that adding the officer to the 

teaching team gives them the chance to enhance the lessons based on their 

experience.”

Two of the officers selected, Master Deputy Worthington Washington and 

Master Deputy Jeremy Holland, worked with health teacher Salvatore Picataggi 

to create the mock trial that drew avid participation from Winters Mill students. 

Washington, a veteran of the DARE program, calls Adopt a School a good partnership that gets students used to seeing officers in class and “lets them get to 

know us as people and not just officers. By interacting with them, they can feel 

comfortable coming to us if they need our help as officers. The teachers like us 

coming in too.”

34 • SHARING IDEAS & RESOURCES TO KEEP OUR NATION’S SCHOOLS SAFE! VOLUME 1
And Holland, who became interested in working in a school system due to a 

positive relationship as a student with the SRO at Franklin High in suburban 

Baltimore (Reisterstown), says he feels very optimistic about what’s going on in 

Carroll County: “I feel very optimistic about the program. I hope that each of 

these kids, from my being here, will make the right choices when they’re faced 

with them.”

Sheriff Ken Tregoning shares Holland’s optimism, and in addition, calls the 

Adopt a School program a very innovative one: “We’re applying more resources into the schools and we’re improving physical security inside and outside 

the schools. We’re using more deputies and police officers to make sure our 

schools are secure. There’s a visibility and a presence, and they also interact 

with the students on a personal basis. It brings law enforcement, school administrators and students closer together.”

Carroll County Superintendent of Schools 

Stephen H. Guthrie echoes his sentiments 

about providing visibility along with the 

educational components, “and the administrators know a familiar face, and they 

know they have a person to call who knows 

the history of the school and knows the 

students. I also don’t want another school 

district that might want to do the same 

thing to think this all came together out 

of the blue. It was fostered in more than 

a decade of good relationships between 

Larry [Faries] and local law enforcement, 

that’s why it came together so easily and 

quickly. To replicate it would require a lot 

of groundwork.”

For more information on Carroll County’s 

Adopt A School program, contact Larry 

Faries at (410) 751-3171 or email lefarie@

carrollk12.org, or Dawn Rathgeber at (410) 

386-1687 or email gdrathg@carrollk12.org. 

Also, a more detailed article and accompanying video can be found on 

JUSTNET, the website of the National Law Enforcement and Corrections 

Technology Center system. 

CH.11: CARROLL COUNTY INVOLVES OFFICERS IN SCHOOL PATROLS...AND IN CLASSROOMS • 35
CHAPTER 12

POLICE SCHOOL SUBSTATIONS 

ENHANCE SAFETY AND 

COMMUNICATION 

By Michele Coppola

March 2013

Elementary Schools

Goodyear, Ariz.

Young students were thrilled to have lunch with a 

police officer the other day. But then, that’s become 

an almost routine occurrence at several elementary 

schools in Goodyear, Ariz. 

36 • SHARING IDEAS & RESOURCES TO KEEP OUR NATION’S SCHOOLS SAFE! VOLUME 1
CH.12: POLICE SCHOOL SUBSTATIONS ENHANCE SAFETY AND COMMUNICATION • 37

Police and school officials in Goodyear, Ariz., have set up police substations in 

three elementary schools, increasing police visibility and fostering communication 

between law enforcement and the school community.

Under the program, officers stop by the schools during the day and use office space 

provided by the schools to do paperwork or make phone calls during their shifts. 

Officers are not assigned to a school or required to go to a school. Their schedules 

and duties on any given day determine when they can drop in and use the office. 

“It’s a great opportunity to have police visibility on campus,” says Lisa Kutis, police 

public information officer. “Having police officers on campus acts as a deterrent to 

crime. It also paints officers as positive role models, and some officers enjoy stopping in during lunch time and interacting with students. The program is also fiscally 

responsible because there are no out-of-pocket costs to the school district or the 

police department.”

Gina DeCoste, principal of Mabel Padgett Elementary School (825 students), proposed that police set up a substation at her school following the school shootings in 

Newtown, Conn., in December 2012. The program began in early January at Mabel 

Padgett, and expanded to two more elementary schools, Westar Elementary and 

Centerra Mirage School, later in winter 2013.

“The kids love it, they think it’s really cool having a police officer on campus,” 

DeCoste says. “Usually the officers take a walk around and see the kids because the 

kids get so excited, and the parent feedback has been extremely positive. 

“Having officers on campus provides a positive role model for students and peace 

of mind for parents and staff. In addition, the police car parked outside adds a visual 

deterrent to someone wanting to commit a crime.”

The school already had a working relationship with the police department, and the 

substation has furthered that bond. Police participate on the school’s safety 

committee.

“We are building relationships, and when issues come up where we want law enforcement advice, it’s nice that I can walk down the hall and say ‘can I run this by you 

real quick?’ ” DeCoste says. “We had the foundation for a good working relationship 

with Goodyear PD, and I believe that has helped make the substation successful.”

The Goodyear Police Department, with 94 sworn officers, serves a population of 

about 66,000 residents and is a suburb of Phoenix. The substations are located in 

three separate geographic areas of the city — the north, south and central areas of 

Goodyear — and encompass three separate school districts, all located in Goodyear. 

Full-time school resource officers serve the city’s high schools and are available to 

respond to other schools if needed. 

“The substations foster better communication with school staff and the student 

body, and a fully marked police car outside increases visibility and awareness of 

police in the community,” says Lt. Scott Benson of the Goodyear Police Department. 

“The students are great and we get very positive feedback. They find us approachable and it gives them a better understanding of police. It gives them an opportunity to see us in a different light.” 

For more information, contact Lisa Kutis at (623) 882-7663 or 

lkutis@goodyearaz.gov.
CHAPTER 13

POLICE OUTFITTED WITH

MASS CASUALTY TRAUMA KITS

By Michele Coppola

February 2013

Tucson Police Department

Tucson, Ariz. 

Kneeling at the side of the gunshot victim, his co-worker calls out to the responding police officer that “he 

needs help right away, where’s EMS?” The officer 

knows just what to do: get the emergency kit from his 

vehicle and do what he can to stabilize the victim until 

emergency medical services can safely enter the scene.

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CH.13: POLICE OUTFITTED WITH MASS CASUALTY TRAUMA KITS • 39

The Tucson Police Department can use its advanced emergency medical kits to 

provide first aid to victims of a mass casualty incident before emergency medical 

personnel arrive. The kits are designed to effectively allow police officers to 

render first aid and life support on the scene of a mass casualty incident similar 

to what occurred at Sandy Hook Elementary School or the attack on Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, her staff and community members. They compress 

the time it takes to stabilize injuries before paramedics arrive, according to Capt. 

David Azuelo, Commander, Emergency Management and Homeland Security 

Division, Tucson Police Department.

An interim solution for patient care 

is necessary because paramedics 

will not typically enter a scene until 

police have located and stopped 

the threat(s), actions that often 

can take a considerable amount of 

time given the complexity of these 

incidents as well as the varying and 

contrasting information that is often 

prevalent at the onset of an active 

shooter type of situation.

“Many times fire agencies will not 

come into a ‘hot zone’ so it is up to 

law enforcement to not only deal 

with the threat, but also provide 

stabilizing first aid to survivors until 

they can be transitioned to paramedics,” Azuelo says. “The mass casualty trauma kits allow officers to bridge 

the gap by providing immediate first aid during what is often referred to as ‘the 

golden hour,’ the timeframe that is most critical to patients suffering from traumatic penetrating injuries. It gives a police officer without a tremendous amount 

of training in advanced medicine the ability to save lives.” 

“We recognize that a mass casualty shooting event is likely going to be one of 

the most difficult calls a police officer ever responds to, not just in terms of dealing with the threat, as that is something most officers are well prepared for,” he 

adds. “Rendering aid in a timely manner to numerous severely injured victims is 

not something most officers deal with on a regular basis, therefore we recognized from a management perspective that we needed to ensure these kits were 

useful, relevant and not overly complicated for police officers to use. We wanted 

a patrol-ready, easy-to-use, mass casualty trauma kit that would meet the needs 

of all of the primary injuries you would find in a mass casualty situation.”

Recognizing the need to bridge the gap of time it takes for police officers to 

transition patients to advanced life support care during an active shooter event, 

Paramedic Capt. Kristopher Blume, also a tactical medic and the manager of the 

Metropolitan Medical Response System in Tucson, collaborated with the TSSi 

company to develop the mass casualty trauma kits for the police department. 
40 • SHARING IDEAS & RESOURCES TO KEEP OUR NATION’S SCHOOLS SAFE! VOLUME 1
The packs, which fit in the trunk of 

a police sedan, consist of a large 

nylon case that contains six individual 

advanced first aid kits, along with additional splints, bandages and trauma 

blankets. Tucson has eight packs, 

which cost approximately $3,000 each 

and were purchased with funds from 

the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Metropolitan Medical Response 

System grant program (now defunded). The packs have been distributed 

to each of the department’s five patrol 

divisions and to members of the fulltime Special Weapons and Tactics 

Team. Every officer is certified in basic 

first aid but the police department is 

working with the fire department to further refine training specific to the mass 

casualty trauma kits.

“The packs are the result of awareness of the totality of what was occurring 

around the nation,” Azuelo says. “Mass casualty incidents are nothing new. 

These types of situations have occurred for decades. Law enforcement has a 

different mission than fire and paramedics, but we have recognized that we have 

to come together better because in certain situations, unless we can provide 

aid to those victims, the likelihood of their surviving long enough to get them 

to paramedics is slim. We need to respond as quickly as we can to get them to 

paramedics and ultimately to the hospitals.”

For more information, contact Capt. David Azuelo at (520) 837-7378 or 

david.azuelo@tucsonaz.gov.

CH.13: POLICE OUTFITTED WITH MASS CASUALTY TRAUMA KITS • 41
CHAPTER 14

IN-DEPTH SAFETY AUDITS 

EXPAND SCHOOL SECURITY

By Michele Coppola

July 2013

Albemarle County

Virginia

Landscaping. Check. Lighting. Check. Points of entry. 

Check. Parking areas. Check.

All those areas and more come under review during a Crime Prevention Through 

Environmental Design (CPTED) audit. 

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CH.14: IN-DEPTH SAFETY AUDITS EXPAND SCHOOL SECURITY • 43

Police in Virginia’s Albemarle County are performing extensive safety audits on 

all public schools as part of an effort to expand school security. Officer Steve 

Watson, a crime prevention specialist with the police department, explains that 

the county’s school resource officers periodically performed safety audits in the 

past, but the county wanted a more in-depth process. 

Three officers from the Albemarle County Police Department attended a course 

in spring 2013 based on Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) principles. On completion of the three-day course, which is offered through 

the National Association of School Resource Officers (NASRO), participants are 

certified as NASRO school CPTED practitioners. 

“The schools worked with us to try and get the schools a little safer. It was an 

evolved, concerted effort,” Watson says.

The class the Albemarle officers 

attended in Kansas was the first 

NASRO school CPTED certification 

class held. According to the course 

description, CPTED “uses design, 

management and activity strategies 

to reduce opportunities for crime 

to occur, to reduce fear and to 

improve overall safety of schools. 

The CPTED concept emphasizes 

the relationship of the physical 

environment, the productive use of 

space and the behavior of people.” 

The course includes a hands-on 

evaluation of a school and provides 

attendees with tools to use on their 

school campus. 

As part of their school inspections, Albemarle officers use a lengthy survey form 

provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to review the 

interior and exterior of the building and examine numerous aspects of school security. The audit looks at organizational structure, mechanical aspects and crime 

prevention techniques such as locks and surveillance cameras.

“We use the CDC form every time we do a school audit. Basically we are looking 

at the interior and exterior of the school,” Watson says. “CPTED is about how 

to use the natural environment to create a safer school — proper landscaping, 

proper lighting, how to bring people into the entrance without problems and 

creating areas that discourage potential criminal activity. We are looking at how 

to manipulate the environment to make it safer.”

Officers consider numerous security issues when evaluating a school. 

“My main thing is to look at access, who has access and who is it controlled by,” 

Watson says. “When people are inside are they identified with visitor badges? 

Can people get in without going through the main entrance?”
“Basically we take an initial impression 

when we arrive,” he adds. “We look 

at the perimeter and how boundaries are defined, is the school easily 

seen, points of entry, main entrances, 

exterior of the building, and drop-off 

and pick-up areas. We look at parking 

areas, whether visitor parking and staff 

parking areas are separate and are 

they monitored by cameras. We look 

at pedestrian flow through the school 

property, whether it is monitored and 

can it be monitored better. We consider all learning buildings, including 

trailers and whether they are safe, 

locked, and well-lit, and whether the building doors get propped open during 

the day.” 

Police also look at the cafeteria and the interior office and whether there is good 

surveillance of the lobby area. They look at restrooms and the overall picture of 

how students can stay safe with other students.

“The review is pretty extensive. It’s a little bit of everything,” Watson says.

The county has 26 public schools. Police began their school audits in June 2013 

and planned to complete most elementary school audits in 2013 and begin 

reviewing middle and high schools in 2014. The following year they would like 

to begin doing reviews of the schools they have already completed. 

“My goal is to have a yearly process and meet with administrators and see if 

there are additional safety concerns. Our main goal is to make it a continual 

process,” Watson says.

Each audit takes between 30 and 60 hours to complete. Officers present their 

findings and security recommendations to school administrators, including guidance on how to understand the 30-page CDC form ratings and photographs of 

the schools to understand safety redesign recommendations. 

“The goal of the training is to have officers get those tools to take them back 

to schools and communities and evaluate their campuses through the CPTED 

principles to try to make the schools a safer place,” says NASRO president 

Kevin Quinn, who is a school resource officer in Arizona. For more information 

on NASRO, see “The Immediate First Responder” on p. 22.

For more information, contact Officer Steve Watson of the Albemarle County 

Police at watsons@albemarle.org. To learn more about the NASRO school 

CPTED course, go to http://www.nasro.org/content/school-cptedpractitioner-certification.

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CH.14: SCHOOL SAFETY AUDITS • 45
CHAPTER 15

SCHOOL CRITICAL INCIDENT 

PLANNING – GENERATOR 

(SCIP-G) HELPS CREATE 

COORDINATED RESPONSE 

By Becky Lewis

February 2013

Sumter County Police Department

South Carolina

 Although the administrators at the Sumter (S.C.) Police 

Department fervently hope they never have to deal 

with an active shooter situation, they want to have 

Incident Command System (ICS) plans in place for 

every one of the county’s 30-plus schools in case such 

an event does occur. Emergency Management Coordinator Gary Fowler has 

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CH.15: SCHOOL CRITICAL INCIDENT PLANNING – GENERATOR (SCIP-G) HELPS CREATE COORDINATED RESPONSE • 47

found that the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) School Critical Incident Planning 

– Generator (SCIP-G) is the right tool to help with that process.

“We wanted to establish an ICS plan that will work so that we don’t have to 

come up with one on the fly in the event of an emergency,” Fowler says. “We 

know which specific people need to be in specific positions. We know exactly 

what we need to do. I’ve been working a lot with SCIP-G so that we don’t have 

to reinvent the wheel. I’m able to use it to look at each school at the incident 

command level and determine what we need to do to coordinate our response 

with school administrators.” 

SCIP-G provides step-by-step guidance 

for creating a plan, using the most widely 

accepted law enforcement practices and 

procedures as the foundation. It can be 

found on NIJ’s Triple Play School Safety Combo CD, which also includes “A 

Critical Incident: What to Do in the First 20 

Minutes” and “School Crime Operations 

Package (School COP).” 

“My chief asked me to work up our intended response protocol in dealing with an active shooter,” Fowler says. “We’re looking 

at the immediate armed response, and we 

train on different aspects of that, such as 

whether it’s a hostage situation or whether 

there is an active shooter inside a school. And we could extrapolate from this 

training as needed to apply to a workplace violence incident at a business.” 

Sumter PD plans to involve the other law enforcement agencies in the county 

— the Sumter County Sheriff’s Office, South Carolina Law Enforcement Division 

and Department of Natural Resources Police — in the planning and training. In 

addition to using SCIP-G, Sumter PD is in the process of conducting site surveys 

and taking pictures of every school. Computerized floor plans will designate 

command posts and which officers will be stationed where. 

Fowler says he is also sending letters to every school, asking administrators to 

designate a point of contact who will work with law enforcement on developing 

the plan and then be accessible in the event of an emergency. The agency is 

reaching out to the county’s public and private schools, which range from small 

rural schools to larger ones in the more urban Sumter city area (population 

42,000 of the county’s 108,000 residents), and include a University of South 

Carolina branch campus.

“We’ve been working on this for several years. We’ve had training in the past, 

and every year we go through refresher courses,” Fowler says. “However, this 

is the first time we are undertaking an effort to put everything on record so that 

the appropriate people know exactly what their specific duties are.” 

You can download the Triple Play combo from http://srtbrc.org/downloads/ or 

order it by mail at http://srtbrc.org/form/view.php?id=9. 
CHAPTER 16

SMARTPHONE APP PROVIDES 

ALTERNATIVE WAY FOR 

STUDENTS TO COMMUNICATE 

WITH POLICE

By Michele Coppola

February 2013

Anne Arundel County 

Police Department

Maryland

Students in Anne Arundel County, Md., schools can 

now use a familiar, comfortable way of reporting bullying or other problems to police: an app.

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CH.16: SMARTPHONE APP PROVIDES ALTERNATIVE WAY FOR STUDENTS TO COMMUNICATE WITH POLICE • 49

The Anne Arundel County Police Department released the free AACo PD Speak 

Out app in fall 2012. The School Resource Unit designed the app to provide 

students with a way to communicate in a secure, private fashion. Students can 

walk into the office of a school resource officer (SRO) or use a phone tip line to 

report a problem, but police wanted to ensure students had another option to 

encourage communication.

“We are trying to put more tools in kids’ hands in an environment they are used 

to working with,” explains Lt. Doyle Batten, school safety section commander for 

the department. “We wanted to give kids as much anonymity as possible to let 

us know what is going on.”

The county’s 125 schools serve approximately 78,000 students. SROs 

are present in all 12 of the county’s 

high schools and are authorized 

for 11 of the county’s 19 middle 

schools. 

The app is available through the 

Internet at http://aacopdspeakout.

myapp.name or through the Google Playstore for Android products 

or via iTunes for iPhone users. 

Although the app is designed 

for public school students in the 

county, a parent or a private school 

student can use it as well. Police 

forward the email message content 

to where it needs to go, such as a 

specific school or SRO.

“Through all of our research, we can’t find any other police SRO agency that has 

tried this,” Batten says. “We are interested in seeing what direction this takes. 

We don’t know how it might morph over time. We definitely see it as an avenue 

for identifying bullying and gang activity.”

There have been several successful uses of the app thus far, according to Batten, 

involving students in emotional distress and bullying. 

“None of these were major incidents, which is exactly how we hoped it would 

go — intervention at an early level,” Batten says. “Information is the key to 

prevention.”

For more information, contact Lt. Doyle Batten at dbatten@aacounty.org, (410) 

222-0040. 
CHAPTER 17

ANONYMOUS REPORTING

AND PREVENTION PLATFORM 

HELPS STOP TROUBLE

BEFORE IT STARTS

By Becky Lewis

August 2013

Thomas Nelson Community College, Va.

Tulsa (Okla.) Public Schools

The accounts show a disturbing similarity: three separate reports over a period of 24 hours have come 

through the anonymous “hot button” on the school’s 

website, all expressing concern about suicidal tendencies by the same student. Reports that will lead to a 

successful intervention and possibly, a life saved.

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CH.17: ANONYMOUS REPORTING AND PREVENTION PLATFORM HELPS STOP TROUBLE BEFORE IT STARTS • 51

The Safe School Initiative, a project of the U.S. Secret Service and the U.S. 

Department of Education (http://www.secretservice.gov/ntac_ssi.shtml), encourages schools to emphasize focusing on possible warning signs in student 

behavior, and to encourage students and faculty to pass along concerns instead 

of dismissing them as “it’s probably nothing.” However, particularly among 

students, there is fear that reporting their concerns may make them a target, or 

they may get into trouble themselves if their suspicions prove unfounded. One 

answer may be an anonymous reporting system, one that allows students – and 

also faculty, staff and others – to confidentially express those concerns. 

As part of an existing Virginia state 

contract, Thomas Nelson Community 

College (TNCC) recently took the lead 

among 20 schools in the Virginia Community College System and began 

using an anonymous reporting and 

prevention platform, joining secondary schools and institutions of higher 

learning across 13 U.S. states and Canada as innovators looking to improve 

student safety. And halfway across 

the country in Tulsa, the public school 

system has used the same prevention 

tool for nearly two full school years. 

Both campuses have already achieved positive results and used the innovative 

web-based platform to prevent potential incidents. 

Garth MacDonald, Emergency Management/Campus Safety Manager at TNCC, 

says when he took that job in March 2011, it was with the understanding that 

looking at how the college of 16,000-plus students captured reports of potential 

issues and problems was a top priority. He determined that the existing in-house 

reporting system seemed cumbersome and difficult to access from devices such 

as tablets and smartphones; also, only the individual who first looked at a report 

had access to the information.

“I did some research and realized the company that did our online training for 

computer security also offered a software program for reporting activity and 

threats. We decided that was the right route to follow, and it has proven itself a 

very versatile tool. When a report comes in, all team members receive a simultaneous notification, and any comments made are shared with all team members,” 

he says. “The system allows the person making the report to upload pictures, so 

individuals can use their phones to back up their statements with photos.”

Tenna Whitsel, student services coordinator with Tulsa Public Schools, described 

a similar research process, this one driven by a steering committee looking at 

how to address ongoing issues with bullying: “We learned that best practices 

recommended anonymous reporting, and we knew that students already have a 

problem with trust and don’t want to tell anyway. We knew we needed something more than a shoebox with the words “Anonymous Reporting Here.”
Her research led her to a webinar promoting a software package that she instantly knew was the right product for Tulsa, and the “hot button” to the reporting form went up on the district’s website in January 2011. Gary Rudick, campus 

police chief, says that although Tulsa initially focused on bullying, reports to the 

system cover a number of other issues, including students bringing firearms to 

school, threatened assault and dealing drugs. Those reports can prove a great 

asset to a 23-member police department charged with oversight of more than 

40,000 students and 7,000 employees at more than 100 different sites. Rudick 

says the campus police review every report to determine if a criminal act has 

been committed rather than waiting for someone to come forward to file a 

formal complaint.

Whitsel adds that the system also provides oversight response to handling of 

allegations, holding administrators, employees and law enforcement accountable for followup: “One thing students really like is they get to enter a complaint 

through our website just like an adult, instead of having to come in and tell 

someone ‘They’re picking on me.’ It empowers them and makes them feel like 

they did something about it, which is a benefit that I didn’t anticipate.”

Just like in Tulsa, the nine-member TNCC team has also received a wide range 

of report types, covering everything from assault to suicidal gestures. If the 

emergency management team perceives an immediate danger, the information 

is passed on to campus police. Otherwise, team members do some legwork to 

ensure the allegation is valid and determine the best course of mitigating action: 

52 • SHARING IDEAS & RESOURCES TO KEEP OUR NATION’S SCHOOLS SAFE! VOLUME 1
“That’s the basic goal, to prevent someone from becoming a casualty at their 

own hands, or, God forbid, coming onto the campus as an active shooter.”

Rudick says that “basic goal” has already been reached in Tulsa, where a tip led 

police to prevent a potential active shooter incident. Other tips have helped 

officers stop fights before they happen and intervene in drug deals. And the 

system has cross-checking capability that links reports about the same individual, 

even if they take place weeks or months apart, which allows schools to reopen 

cases if needed. Those cross checks, along with reporting features, help lead 

to the accountability that Whitsel emphasized as important, and is important to 

MacDonald as well.

“There are skeptics when it 

comes to anonymous reporting 

and anonymous complaints. 

With this system, just because someone files a report, 

it doesn’t trigger immediate 

action. It must go through a 

validation process and we must 

determine there is a valid need 

for an intervention. We don’t 

just take everything at face 

value,” he says.

For more information on how 

these schools use their anonymous reporting software, 

contact Chief Gary Rudick, 

Tulsa Public Schools by email 

at RudicGa@tulsaschools.org or by phone at (918) 746-6450; Garth MacDonald 

at Thomas Nelson Community College, email macdonaldg@tncc.edu or phone 

(757) 825-3450. A video on Tulsa’s use of the software can be viewed at http://

www.youtube.com/watch?v=48kMkOZNa7o

CH.17: ANONYMOUS REPORTING AND PREVENTION PLATFORM HELPS STOP TROUBLE BEFORE IT STARTS • 53
CHAPTER 18

TIP LINE OFFERS STUDENTS A 

WAY TO SHARE INFORMATION 

By Becky Lewis

September 2013

Various schools

Amherst, Ohio

Should he tell someone what he’s seen? 

Can he make himself tell what he’s seen?

Those thoughts chase themselves around in his head 

while he walks from class to class. Then he spots the gold and red and blue and 

black of a poster on the wall: Amherst Police Tip Line. 

He can tell. Without getting up the nerve to speak to someone he knows. 

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CH.18: TIP LINE OFFERS STUDENTS A WAY TO SHARE INFORMATION • 55

Launched on Aug. 19, 2013, the day before classes began at Marion L. Steele 

High School, Amherst Junior High School and Walter G. Nord Middle School, 

the Amherst Police Tip Line accepts text messages from students and community residents, then converts them into written messages appearing on dispatch 

center computers. Dispatchers may be busy with emergency calls, but will read 

and respond to non-emergency tips and questions as soon as workload permits, 

usually within a few minutes. 

Although not exclusively for use 

by the nearly 3,000 students enrolled at the three schools, the 

Amherst (Ohio) Police Department has promoted the Tip Line 

extensively in the town’s three 

secondary schools, with a poster campaign and messages on 

the schools’ Facebook pages. 

The posters encourage students 

to text the Tip Line if they have 

information on drug activity, 

alcohol activity, known underage drinking parties, planned 

fights, recent crimes, bullying, 

concealed weapons or concerns 

about others.

Police Chief Joseph Kucirek, a veteran of the detective bureau where he often 

reviewed cell phones as evidence, says “it just seems like kids and society in 

general text a lot of things they would never say. To give a juvenile, a student, 

the ability to text someone who can do something about a problem while the 

student remains in the background, can be a powerful thing. We want students 

to feel comfortable with telling us “Johnny’s selling drugs, Bobby brought a 

knife to school.” 

And in the first few weeks of Tip Line use, Kucirek says his department already 

received one tip related to drug dealing that led to an arrest by a neighboring 

jurisdiction.

“We were looking at this way before Sandy Hook, and we worked on it through 

trial and error over the course of about two years,” Kucirek says. “We knew we 

wanted a system where the dispatcher did not have to answer the phone to 

reply, because that could take them away from handling an emergency call. We 

looked at a lot of different options before we found one that let us do what we 

wanted.”

What Amherst wanted to do was use a cellular phone line to receive the text 

messages, which the dispatchers could then answer using their terminal and 

keyboard rather than needing to answer the cellular phone and use it to respond 

to the text. If emergency calls prohibit an immediate response to pending text 

messages, the dispatchers get reminders every sixty seconds until text messages 

are answered. 
“There are a lot of anonymous pay-for 

services out there where you have to 

text a five-digit number, which seemed 

very confusing. We also didn’t want 

to have to deal with prank calls made 

by students who know they’re anonymous. With this, just like when texting 

another cell phone, the numbers do 

show up. We can go back and find 

out who sent in the tip if we need to, 

but we would refrain from disclosing 

that information to other students,” 

Kucirek says. “We did want to make 

it clear to the school, to the students, 

that pranksters or practical jokers 

could easily lose their cell phones as 

evidence. But even with the number showing up, I still think the students will tell 

us things that they normally wouldn’t.”

Kucirek says some of the 41 Amherst staff members helped with internal testing 

on the software for several months before the public launch, which included 

press releases on the department’s website and Facebook page, Facebook publicity from the schools and elected officials, and extensive local media coverage. 

“We launched it the day before school started to give students and their parents 

advance knowledge,” Kucirek says. “Then, in addition to putting up the posters 

in the high school and junior high, we also spread the word to the elementary 

school staff, because they have cell phones even though most of the children 

don’t.” 

Although the Amherst Police Tip Line generally should not be used in emergency situations, it could be used by hearing/speech impaired persons or by 

someone who is in a situation where talking could present a danger. Adults as 

well as students can use it provide tips, and the Tip Line can also be used to 

ask non-emergency questions such as “What night is trick or treat night?” Also, 

in this town of about 13,000 residents located some 30 miles from Cleveland, 

dispatch handles after-hours calls about problems with utilities, which can tie 

up phone lines. Residents sending a text message about an outage instead of 

calling could help alleviate that problem, Kucirek says. 

For more information on the Amherst Tip Line project, visit https://

www.facebook.com/AmherstPoliceDepartment, http://www.amherstpolice.net/

or email amherstpolice@amherstpolice.net.

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CH.18: TIP LINE OFFERS STUDENTS A WAY TO SHARE INFORMATION • 57
CHAPTER 19

“SEE-HEAR-REPORT” REACHES 

OUT TO SOMERSET STUDENTS

By Becky Lewis

February 2013

Various schools

Somerset, Ky.

Like many other law enforcement agencies around the 

country, the one in Somerset, Ky., periodically holds 

training for active shooter scenarios, with administrators hoping at the same time the training never needs 

to be put to use. 

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CH.19: “SEE-HEAR-REPORT” REACHES OUT TO SOMERSET STUDENTS • 59

In late January 2013, the department took a step aimed at preventing that type 

of situation with the introduction of “See-Hear-Report,” an anonymous text-a-tip 

program aimed at students in the county’s 20-plus rural and small town schools.

“Our department has been very progressive over the years in a number of different programs. Our acting chief, Doug Nelson, saw a Colorado program that 

targeted bullying via an anonymous text-a-tip program, and he wanted to start 

the same type of program here because students and young adults are so very 

comfortable with sending text messages,” says Lt. Shannon Smith. 

After exploring several possible 

options, the Somerset Police Department settled on a service used 

by a number of agencies across the 

nation, and targeted efforts toward 

students in the county’s three high 

schools. 

Smith says the service provides students with an assurance of anonymity and confidentiality, but at the 

same time allows the department 

to track the information through 

its system to ensure that all tips 

receive appropriate followup.

“Reports indicate that in a number 

of the situations involving active 

shooters in schools in this country, 

other students knew about it beforehand and didn’t tell anyone, maybe because 

they were fearful, or embarrassed, or didn’t think it was their place to tell,” Smith 

says. “With See-Hear-Report, they will be guaranteed confidentiality without fear 

of retaliation. We do a lot of things in our department geared toward response 

and handling these types of situations, such as for a number of years we’ve sent 

our officers to active shooter training and conducted in-house training on active 

shooter response. We want to market this toward the prevention end of things 

and give the students an opportunity to stop an event before it takes place.”

The 40-officer department also plans to keep up with the active shooter training, 

including a refresher course that took place over the December 2012 holiday 

break at one of the local high schools in Somerset itself (population 11,300; the 

county’s population is 60,000).

“It was pretty well set up when news of Sandy Hook came down,” Smith says. “It 

hit us hard like anything does that to has to do with kids being injured or killed, 

but there was a sense of satisfaction that we were not in the same situation as 

many other departments watching this on the news, because most of them 

were not just days away from sending the entire department through a refresher 

course in a actual school building. We always try to be progressive and we’ve 

trained and prepared in the event anything ever takes place, but we also want to 

do whatever we can to prevent something from happening.” 

For more information, visit https://www.facebook.com/SomersetPolice.
CHAPTER 20

REAL-TIME LOCATION SYSTEM 

PROVIDES ENHANCED 

SECURITY IN IDAHO SCHOOL

By Becky Lewis 

August 2013

Skyview High School 

Nampa, Idaho

The student races from the back patio of the school to 

the office, running through the door at top speed on a 

mission to have the school secretary call a lockdown. 

Time elapsed from the teacher’s sending him on his 

mission: 40 seconds, with the secretary still needing to 

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CH. 20: REAL-TIME LOCATION SYSTEM PROVIDES ENHANCED SECURITY IN IDAHO SCHOOL • 61

call the lockdown on the PA system, make sure the school resource officer receives the alert and call 911. Actions that would have taken even more precious 

seconds had this not been a drill.

A teacher pulls down on the emergency tab on her alert tag, automatically 

putting the school on lockdown, bringing the SRO on the run and alerting 911 

dispatch to send more officers to the SRO’s location. Time elapsed until the SRO 

arrives in her classroom: 3.9 seconds.

Skyview High School in Nampa, 

Idaho, became the first school 

in the United States to implement use of a real-time location 

system (RTLS) that uses radio 

frequency identification (RFID) 

technology and the school’s 

existing Wi-Fi network in April 

2013. Installation of the system 

came as the result of concerns 

felt by Officer Brad Ford, 

Skyview’s SRO, after the Sandy 

Hook Elementary shooting in 

December 2012.

“We protect our banks and our 

houses better than we do our 

children, and our children are 

the most valuable resource we have. It’s my job to ensure that when parents 

drop their kids off, I’m providing the best security I can, and I believe with this 

system, that’s what we’re doing,” Ford says. 

Ford says in the course of his research into automated ways to call a lockdown, 

he considered pull-station alarms, “panic buttons” on walls and various types of 

computer software, but ultimately recommended this system to the administration at Skyview High and his superiors at the Nampa Police Department because 

the wearable device travels with the school’s 100 teachers and staff wherever 

they go: classrooms, the gym, the cafeteria, the outside patio. The vendor had 

previously marketed this system to medical facilities such as hospitals, nursing 

homes and mental health centers, but proved readily receptive to adapting it 

for use in a school. A pull on the emergency tab activates lockdown procedures 

and sends device location information to the school’s computer network, the 

SRO and the 911 dispatch center. The device also includes two programmable 

buttons that summon lesser tiers of help in the event of a medical situation or 

a student who is disruptive, but not perceived as a threat to the entire school. 

Although the school has not needed to use the system to call a lockdown – and 

both Ford and Nampa Police Chief Craig Kingsbury hope a lockdown never 

happens – several calls using the two buttons have already proved the system’s 

worth.
“We all have to deal with medical issues and unruly students 

too, and that’s how the device 

has already proven beneficial 

to us,” Ford says. “We didn’t 

want a device that just does one 

thing, we wanted one that can 

do multiple things. We selected 

this system, the vendor brought 

in two people to map out the 

school and the next day all the 

staff had tags.”

An anonymous funding donation from the community also 

contributed to the speed with 

which Skyview implemented 

the system. Kingsbury said the 

quick installation would not have happened without that donation: “It’s not an 

inexpensive system, but it works very well. The school staff is very receptive. The 

other schools in the area want to know when they can get it. It is something that 

gives our school staff, our parents and our community a sense of security.” 

The other schools in Nampa (population 80,000-plus) include 12 public elementary schools, three middle schools and three high schools, plus a number of 

private schools, all falling under the jurisdiction of a police department with 112 

full-time sworn officers and more than 100 other staff and volunteers. It will take 

more than donations to fund expansion of the system, but Kingsbury says there 

have been discussions with the Governor’s Task Force on School Safety and with 

state legislators about funding sources, and the system has been demonstrated 

for the Idaho Chiefs of Police, the Idaho Sheriffs Association and other school 

districts.

“Top-level administrators across the state have seen demonstrations and everyone who has seen it is excited about it. Cost is always a concern, of course, as 

is making adjustments to meet the needs of schools in rural areas,” Kingsbury 

says. “I want to emphasize this is not a catch-all. It’s a way to deal with quick 

lockdown/rapid response situations. Schools and law enforcement still need to 

be cognizant about the physical structure and know which doors are locked, the 

procedures for entry and so on. This is just a component of a school safety plan, 

one to use if there is a catastrophic event. You can’t forget the need to maintain 

and prevent.”

For more information on Skyview High School’s use of real-time location 

system technology, contact Officer Brad Ford at (208) 340-0603 or by email at 

fordb@cityofnampa.us. 

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CH. 20: REAL-TIME LOCATION SYSTEM PROVIDES ENHANCED SECURITY IN IDAHO SCHOOL • 63
CHAPTER 21

PROVIDING A DIRECT 

CONNECTION BETWEEN 

SCHOOLS AND LAW 

ENFORCEMENT

By Becky Lewis

June 2013

Sweetwater Independent School District

Sweetwater, Texas

When the boy wouldn’t return to his seat, when he 

began walking toward the front of the classroom, aggression showing in every nuance of his body language, 

the teacher knew she needed help. She also knew that 

verbalizing that call for help might provoke the enraged teen even further, so, 

while still trying to talk to him in a calm voice, she casually walked behind her 

computer and past it again, reaching out to flick the mouse over an icon on the 

desktop. Seconds later, help was on the way.

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CH. 21: PROVIDING A DIRECT CONNECTION BETWEEN SCHOOLS AND LAW ENFORCEMENT • 65

A new emergency alert software released in spring 2013 allows teachers and 

other school staff to instantaneously, silently send emergency alerts directly to 

local law enforcement officers in their patrol cars, the local dispatch office and 

to the registered cell phones of other teachers and administrators in the same 

school building and to the computers in all the other classrooms. The town of 

Sweetwater, Texas (population approximately 12,000), and the local sheriff’s 

office became the first municipality and county in the nation to go live with the 

service on May 1, following a month of setup and training.

“I hope and I pray every day that we won’t ever need it, but we’re ready if we 

do,” says Sweetwater Police Chief Brian Frieda. “Once the school district heard 

about it, they pounced on it. There’s no sense in hesitating to use some good 

technology that helps with security of our kids.”

The emergency alert creates a chat room among the computer sending the 

alert, the responding officers and the local dispatch center, which permits them 

to communicate information about the emergency in real-time. Responding 

officers can also click a link and view a diagram of the school and a map showing 

the school’s location. 

Frieda and the Sweetwater Police Department heard about the software from 

Nolan County Sheriff David Warren, who played an instrumental role in helping introduce the concept to the Sweetwater Independent School District. The 

district serves approximately 2,300 students from pre-kindergarten through 12 

on six campuses: one high school, one middle school, three schools each housing two elementary grades and a pre-K center. The police department and the 

school system have already held several drills with the software, and Frieda says 

his department will incorporate it into its active shooter training this summer, 

when his 22 sworn officers and two reserve officers will use one of the school 

buildings for scenario training. 

“Once the school year starts, we will have a series of scenario drills where 

teachers launch the system and get comfortable with it. We’ve already heard 

from other nearby school districts that they’re interested in implementing it as 

well,” Frieda says. Drills will involve both the use of the silent alarm and the chat 

room function, wherein the teacher, or a student designated by the teacher, uses 

the computer to send instant messages with additional information to school 

personnel, responding patrol vehicles and dispatch. 

Frieda explains that if the initial activation isn’t aborted within seconds, officers 

immediately respond in a manner similar to the way they would to a 911 hangup call. Receiving an alert, even with no further information, provides the agency 

with the exact location of the alarm and gives officers access to a diagram of the 

campus and GPS directions to the location: “This gives us more of a tactical advantage. As officers arrive on the scene, they can take a quick look and increase 

their situational awareness.”

“I have it set up to come across my desktop at work, the laptop in my car and 

on my smartphone. That lets me keep up with everything that’s going to the 

officers,” he adds.

For more information, contact Sweetwater Police Chief Brian Frieda at 

bfrieda@cityofsweetwatertx.com. 
CHAPTER 22

REAL-TIME COMMUNICATIONS 

COMES TO OREGON SCHOOL

By Becky Lewis

July 2013

Shady Cove Middle School

Jackson County, Ore.

The alert comes into the sheriff’s office command center: Someone pushed the alarm button in Classroom 

10. All over the school, doors automatically close and

the building goes into immediate lockdown. Live video 

feed comes into the command center, and an officer 

starts two-way communication with the teacher who hit the button. The teacher 

who heard gunshots echoing from down the hall.

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CH. 22: REAL-TIME COMMUNICATIONS COMES TO OREGON SCHOOL • 67

Thanks to the efforts of the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office, Shady Cove Middle 

School in Jackson County, Ore., became the first school in the nation to use a 

new technology that provides a real-time direct link between law enforcement, 

first responders and the school in the event of an emergency – be it medical, fire 

or criminal in nature. The sheriff’s office used drug seizure money to purchase 

the system, and local businesses Precision Electric and Adroit Construction donated installation labor over the Memorial Day Weekend. 

When a teacher (or a student 

in the event the teacher is 

incapacitated) pushes the alarm 

button, cameras located in the 

classroom and elsewhere in the 

building begin providing livetime video feed to the sheriff’s 

office command center and to 

school administrative offices. 

According to Sheriff Mike Winters, the ability to see what is 

going on inside the building in 

real-time could prove invaluable 

in the amount of time – and 

potentially lives – saved in the 

event of an emergency. That’s 

why when he was offered the 

opportunity to pilot the system, 

he was quick to move on the project, selecting Shady Cove because “I wanted a school that had great teachers with an absolutely ‘can do’ attitude. The 

administrators of School District 9 are the same way. They really care about their 

students’ safety. They were really amazed at what the technology could do and 

they wanted to be part of it.”

With the system in place, the sheriff’s office and the school district worked 

together to run drills and come up with policies and procedures before Jackson 

County (population 206,000, some 75,000-plus in the county seat, Medford) 

formalizes plans to implement the system in additional schools.

“I’ve never seen a better system for implementing real-time communication. It 

really gets the job done,” Winters says. “The beauty of this system is when the 

alarm is pushed and the cameras come up, we’re looking at real-time info and 

we can brief officers. From the sheriff’s office in Medford, we can open doors 

and change the status lights. We can visually search the school while the first 

responders are in route and if there is a shooter in a classroom, we can put that 

light to red and the others on green to direct the first arriving officers to the 

crisis spot. With the pending addition of an app for officers’ smartphones, they 

will be able to look at the same information as well as receiving direction from 

headquarters. “

And if the doors go into lockdown with the shooter outside the classrooms, he 

might spend time going from door to door, looking for entry, while officers get 

closer: “Time saved equals lives saved. Activating this system might not save 

everyone in a shooting incident, but it might substantially reduce the number of 
68 • SHARING IDEAS & RESOURCES TO KEEP OUR NATION’S SCHOOLS SAFE! VOLUME 1
fatalities. We might even be able to 

use the two-way communication channel to engage the shooter and distract 

him with the information that police 

are nearly there.” 

And while Winters, like every other 

law enforcement officer in the country, hopes that Jackson County never 

needs to use the system during a 

school shooting, he’s glad it’s in place, 

and he notes it could also be used to 

call for medical help or report a fire 

and improve outcomes in those types 

of situations: “If fire services could see 

immediately that one wing of a school 

is fully involved, they’d know to go to more alarms immediately. EMS could go 

into situations better prepared. This is asset management at its best.” 

To learn more about the system and its implementation at Shady Cove Middle 

School, contact Public Information Officer Andrea Carlson at (541) 864-8801, 

email carlsoak@jacksoncounty.org. To watch a video about the implementation 

of the technology, visit http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=XapKQsbX5u8.

CH. 22: REAL-TIME COMMUNICATIONS COMES TO OREGON SCHOOL • 69
CHAPTER 23

MUNICIPAL WORKERS 

WATCH OVER 

NEIGHBORHOOD STREETS

By Becky Lewis

May 2013

My Community on Patrol

New Jersey

There’s a lockdown situation at the local high school. 

Police, firefighters and EMS personnel know where 

to go, what to do. As do the sanitation workers in the 

vicinity of the campus.

Most communities are well aware of the roles that public safety professionals can 

play in such an event, but sanitation workers? Well, if they participate in a New 

70 • SHARING IDEAS & RESOURCES TO KEEP OUR NATION’S SCHOOLS SAFE! VOLUME 1
CH.23: MUNICIPAL WORKERS WATCH OVER NEIGHBORHOOD STREETS • 71

Jersey project called My Community on Patrol (M.C.O.P.), those workers know 

their trucks can make excellent roadblocks that can help keep the public away 

from the danger and free up law enforcement officers from routine traffic control 

duties.

Freeholder* James Polos, chair of the Middlesex County Department of Public 

Safety and Health, introduced the Middlesex Community on Patrol program 

in 2003 as a way of using county employees as “extra eyes and ears” in the 

community to help local law enforcement. The successful program expanded 

statewide in 2007 and changed 

its name to one that reflected 

that expansion, but retained the 

M.C.O.P. acronym and branding. 

“The idea behind it is simple: in 

many communities, particularly 

small ones, there’s a limit to the 

number of police personnel patrolling the streets. At any given 

time during the day or even 

during the evening, there can 

be significantly more municipal 

employees on the streets that 

there are police officers,” Polos 

says. “I’m talking about sanitation workers, housing inspectors, fire inspectors, bus drivers, 

senior citizens transport drivers. 

They’re all out on the street, day in and day out. They have a keen knowledge 

of what the community is about. If they travel the same route regularly, they may 

have a keen awareness of what looks out of place, such as a suspicious vehicle in 

driveway or a garage door that’s open when it shouldn’t be.”

Participation in M.C.O.P is voluntary; employees who choose to become involved take a two-hour training program about what to watch for and how to report it, using the two-way radio and frequencies already in use in their vehicles. 

The Middlesex County Prosecutors Office and the Middlesex County Chiefs of 

Police Association helped develop the training, which has reached approximately 2,000 employees in Middlesex County alone in the past 10 years.

“We’ve really instructed them to become more keenly aware of their surroundings. If they think something doesn’t seem right or look right, they should report 

it,” Polos says. 

And implementing M.C.O.P. has given rise to a more holistic response to a 

potential incident in a school: “Across the country, there’s been an enormous 

amount of focus on the public safety response to situations in schools, but not 

much emphasis on the community response. As an example, we looked at other 

resources we could use in establishing inner and outer perimeters that don’t tax 

the limited emergency personnel available and decided there’s no better barrier 

than a trash truck!”
Polos says M.C.O.P. has created a 

“small army of volunteers” in communities throughout New Jersey. Middlesex County participants who call in reports receive recognition, which helps 

maintain worker interest in continuing 

with the program. 

“The resources they can provide are 

limitless. If we’re looking for someone 

involved in a school violence incident, 

for a missing child, for a hit-and-run 

driver, it puts more eyes on the street. 

We’ve recently expanded the program 

so that in certain instances, they may 

receive a communication through 

their radios to be on the lookout, for example, for a particular individual or car,” 

he says.

“We do stress that they are not to pursue anyone or try to apprehend anyone. 

They’re simply acting as eyes and ears,” Polos adds.

If you’re interested in establishing a program in your community based on 

M.C.O.P., please contact James Polos at freeholder@mpm-nj.com. 

*The Board of Chosen Freeholders is the county legislature for New Jersey counties. 

72 • SHARING IDEAS & RESOURCES TO KEEP OUR NATION’S SCHOOLS SAFE! VOLUME 1
CH.23: MUNICIPAL WORKERS WATCH OVER NEIGHBORHOOD STREETS • 73
CHAPTER 24

VIDEO ENHANCES SCHOOL 

BUS DRIVER TRAINING

By Michele Coppola

May 2013

Anne Arundel County Public Schools

Maryland

Glancing in her rearview mirror, the bus driver doesn’t 

see any kids who are acting up. What she does see is 

an older student standing right behind her with a gun 

in his hand. 

Victoria Williams, safety and training manager for the Transportation Division 

of the Anne Arundel County (Md.) Public Schools, says the division uses a 

25-minute video simulating the hijacking of a school bus to augment its preparedness, safety and awareness training for bus drivers, bus attendants and cab 

74 • SHARING IDEAS & RESOURCES TO KEEP OUR NATION’S SCHOOLS SAFE! VOLUME 1
CH. 24: VIDEO ENHANCES SCHOOL BUS DRIVER TRAINING • 75

drivers. Cab drivers sometimes transport students with special needs to schools 

inside and outside Anne Arundel County. Bus attendants ride on buses transporting special needs students.

To date, the division has trained approximately 1,059 drivers and attendants using the School Transportation Security Awareness DVD, produced several years 

ago through the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Transportation Security 

Administration. The division holds refresher training sessions periodically.

The Anne Arundel training program incorporates discussion on safety and security awareness, including the purpose behind pre-trip bus inspections and the 

importance of driver awareness of any activity that may be suspicious. 

The video depicts the hijacking 

of a school bus that ends with 

the safe release of the students. 

It emphasizes preparedness, 

teamwork, actions by the bus 

mechanic and the bus driver, 

and good communication 

throughout the event based on 

a security plan.

Williams says drivers appreciate 

the video as part of their training and she would recommend 

it to other school districts.

“Their eyes are really opened 

up by it, and there are always 

a lot of follow-up questions,” 

Williams says. “It’s a teamwork situation between the mechanics, the schools 

and the bus drivers. Communication is extremely important. When we showed it 

the very first time, the drivers were sitting on the edge of their seats. You could 

hear a pin drop. It totally had their attention 100 percent.”

“The drivers are our eyes and ears,” she adds. “When they see something of a 

suspicious nature, suspicious activity of any kind, they should call it in. We are 

out there every day and we know our neighborhoods, we know our roads. We 

even had a bus driver call in because a car was following the bus. It turned out 

to be one of our area specialists, but it was a good thing to do. Drivers need to 

use common sense and good judgment.” 

For more information on the Anne Arundel County program, contact 

Victoria Williams at vlwilliams@aacps.org. To view the TSA video, visit 

http://www.tsa.gov/stakeholders/school-transportation-security-awareness.
CONTACT 

INFORMATION

Michael O’Shea, Senior Law Enforcement Program Manager

National Institute of Justice

U.S. Department of Justice

810 Seventh St., NW., Rm.7204

Washington, DC 20531

(202) 305-7954 

michael.oshea@usdoj.gov

Lance Miller, Director

National Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology Center-National

700 N. Frederick Ave.

Bldg. 181, Rm. 1L30

Gaithersburg, MD 20879

(800) 248-2742

(301) 240-6731

lmiller@justnet.org

Visit http://www.schoolsafetyinfo.org for access to up-to-date 

publication and website resources. New success stories similar to the ones in this publication are added on an ongoing 

basis. To suggest a success story topic, contact Senior Writer 

Becky Lewis at rebecca.l.lewis@lmco.com

Free school safety resources can be downloaded from http://

srtbrc.org/2012/12/free-school-safety-resources/, the website of the NLECTC System’s Small, Rural, Tribal and Border 

Regional Center.