SHARING

IDEAS & 

RESOURCES

to Keep Our Nation’s

Schools Safe!

VOLUME II
INTRODUCTION

By now you have read the headlines, watched the videos and 

heard the stories. Shootings and violent incidents are occurring 

in schools and communities across the country. While people 

compile, assess, verify and/or dispute statistics, the drumbeat 

of violence escalates and media reports show shocking details. 

Against this backdrop, it is easy to conclude that “Somebody 

needs to do something.” 

The National Institute of Justice (NIJ) and the National Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology Center (NLECTC) want 

you to know that many people are doing many positive things 

to address the problems. We want you to know who they are 

and what they are doing. 

Like the news media, we are sharing stories. But our stories have better outcomes. We are chronicling the success stories amid all the bad news. We are 

bringing you the technologies and strategies that have worked for real people 

across the country to prepare, respond and recover when violence occurs. 

These stories come straight from those who are making schools safer—the law 

enforcement officers and other first responders, school administrators, students 

and community members who can tell you what worked for them. The good 

news is we’ve got enough success stories to fill two published volumes and to 

continually update www.schoolsafetyinfo.org, NLECTC’s website dedicated to 

school safety news, information and technology. That’s a lot of good news to 

offset the bad. 

In this second edition of Sharing Ideas & Resources to Keep Our Nation’s School 

Safe!, you will read about school safety-related programs from federal agencies 

such as the FBI and the U.S. Department of Education; efforts at the state level; 

and cooperative efforts in local communities. New projects and ideas range 

from smartphone apps to shared camera systems, training classes to online 

videos, direct radio connections to devices that secure doors.

NIJ and NLECTC are proud to provide the resources you need to gather information to keep your communities safe. While we neither finance nor endorse 

specific products, we introduce you to people who have successfully used new 

tools to address growing problems. And, we encourage you to investigate and 

decide what is right for you and what has a place in your school setting. 

INTRODUCTION • i
While it is true that incidents are occurring with alarming frequency, it is also true 

that first responders, school staff, students, parents and community leaders are 

stepping up to the plate to work together to combat violence and provide safe 

and healthy learning environments. 

Continue to use NIJ, NLECTC and SchoolSafetyInfo.org as resources in your local efforts to combat violence and enhance school safety. We will keep reporting 

the good news that the good guys are generating through the innovative use of 

technology.

Keep Safe,

Michael K. O’Shea 

Senior Law Enforcement Program Manager 

National Institute of Justice 

michael.oshea@usdoj.gov

SchoolSafetyInfo.org received a 2014 Communicator 

Award of Distinction and a 2014 APEX Grand Award. 

ii • SHARING IDEAS & RESOURCES TO KEEP OUR NATION’S SCHOOLS SAFE! VOLUME 2
CONTENTS

CRASE Training Helps Schools Fill the Gaps in

School Safety Plans ..............................................................................................iv

School Safety Advocacy Council Helps Schools

Find Their Strengths............................................................................................. 4

The Immediate First Responder........................................................................... 8

FBI Promotes Partnership Approach to 

Planning for Active Shooter Incidents................................................................ 12

Office of Safe and Healthy Students Promotes

Holistic Anti-bullying Approach ......................................................................... 16

Providing a Bird’s-Eye View to Local Law Enforcement..................................... 20

Texas School Safety Center at Texas State University

Provides Assistance and Answers ...................................................................... 24

Free Tipline Lets Students Use the “Cyber in Their Pockets” ........................... 28

Baltimore County Police See “One View” of Local Schools .............................. 32

San Antonio School District “Stands Up” Increased Security............................ 36

Building “Bridges” That Enhance Communications .......................................... 38

Direct Line to Emergency Dispatch.................................................................... 42

Connecticut Town Adapts Technology for School Safety .................................. 44

Simple Device Secures Doors, Peace of Mind................................................... 48

Hero911 and School Guard Work Together for Safer Schools .......................... 50

KidsSafe Provides Parents With Free Tool and Training .................................... 54

“Panic Button” Radios Could Save the Seconds That Count............................ 58

App Promotes Partnerships With Campus Police.............................................. 60

Campus Video Shows “The Ways Out” of an Active 

Threat Situation.................................................................................................. 64

Wisconsin High School First in Nation to Use Tool to

Plan Sporting Event Drills................................................................................... 68

CONTENTS • iii
CHAPTER 1

CRASE TRAINING HELPS 

SCHOOLS FILL THE GAPS

IN SCHOOL SAFETY PLANS

By Becky Lewis

February 2014

Even above the noise of the day’s first lunch period, 

the sound of gunshots near the school’s office can 

be heard in the cafeteria. As the loudspeakers call a 

lockdown and classroom doors slam shut all over the 

building, the teachers on lunch duty quickly open 

the room’s emergency exits and send the students 

racing outside. Some may remember to gather at the 

designated meeting spot two blocks away, others may 

continue to run home, or go to another location in the 

neighborhood. 

iv • SHARING IDEAS & RESOURCES TO KEEP OUR NATION’S SCHOOLS SAFE! VOLUME 2
CRASE TRAINING HELPS SCHOOLS FILL THE GAPS IN SCHOOL SAFETY PLANS • 1

Regardless of where they run, all of them will reach safety, because their faculty 

and administrators took Civilian Response to Active Shooter Events (CRASE) 

training offered by their local law enforcement agency, and incorporated the 

principles of that training into the school’s safety plan.

In 2013, Texas State University added 

a third component (along with active 

shooter and medical assistance) to its 

training package for law enforcement 

officers. The CRASE module, offered 

free of charge through grant funding 

from the Bureau of Justice Assistance 

(a component of the Office of Justice 

Programs, U.S. Department of Justice), 

builds on the Avoid, Deny, Defend 

(ADD) strategy developed through Texas 

State’s Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training (ALERRT) Program 

in 2004. The one-day classroom-based 

training teaches law enforcement 

officers how to present strategies and 

guidance for surviving an active shooter 

event; this train-the-trainer course addresses topics to include the history and 

prevalence of active shooter events, the role of professional guardians, civilian 

response options, medical issues and drills. 

“When it comes to dealing with active shooter incidents, the focus has been on 

increasing the speed of the law enforcement response. However, even when 

officers reach the scene quickly, casualties have still been high, which shows the 

importance of training civilians to do what they can to delay the shooter and 

prevent casualties,” says Dr. Pete Blair, an associate professor of criminal justice 

at the university and one of the course’s developers. “The basis of the training is 

that while lockdown is a good option, it’s not the only thing administrators need 

to consider.”

In order of preference, the ADD strategy says to first run away and get out of the 

building (Avoid); if that is not possible, close and lock doors and put up barricades (Deny); and finally, if the shooter enters your space, fight back (Defend.)

Blair says CRASE does not teach specific hand-to-hand combat strategies, and 

it emphasizes that various state and local jurisdictions vary in their policies on 

fighting back, particularly when it comes to involving older high school students: 

“We do talk about positioning yourself in the room. Traditional advice during a 

lockdown is to stand as far away from the door as possible, but this leaves you 

vulnerable. We recommend that teachers position themselves near the door so 

they can engage the shooter, and to remember not to fight fair. This is not about 

who’s the toughest kid on the playground, this is about who gets to go home 

that day.”

Before beginning to teach law enforcement officers how to take the ADD 

approach back to their communities, staff from Texas State University took the 

training to some local school districts as part of course development. They then 

began providing on-site training at law enforcement agencies in Texas, and are 
expanding nationwide in 2014. Any agency interested in participating in the 

training only needs to provide a classroom that will hold up to 50 students, who 

will then be able to spread their knowledge throughout local school districts.

“It’s really designed to fill the gaps that exist around the standard lockdown 

response. Administrators find lockdown attractive because it includes accountability, but a responsibility for accountability doesn’t override the need to keep 

students safe. At Sandy Hook, they had planned as well as they possibly could, 

and they were still finding children scattered around the neighborhood a couple 

of hours later, because they had the chance to run away from the school, and 

they did,” Blair says. “This training will help administrators learn to plan for 

multiple eventualities.”

You can find also find articles about Level I and Level II ALERRT training classes 

(“Meeting an Active Threat Head-On” and “After the Shooting Stops,”) on the 

SchoolSafetyInfo.org website. For more information on the program as a whole, 

visit http://alerrt.org or contact Communications Director Diana Hendricks at 

(512) 245-1744, email hendricks@alerrt.com

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CRASE TRAINING HELPS SCHOOLS FILL THE GAPS IN SCHOOL SAFETY PLANS • 3
CHAPTER 2

SCHOOL SAFETY ADVOCACY 

COUNCIL HELPS SCHOOLS 

FIND THEIR STRENGTHS

By Becky Lewis

Updated February 2014

In addition to its ongoing training programs, the 

School Safety Advocacy Council (SSAC) increased 

its emphasis on school safety assessments in 2013, 

helping schools focus on strengths, not weaknesses. 

According to SSAC President Sean Burke, the organization performed approximately 70 assessments during 

the course of the year, ranging from the largest school 

district in the country (Los Angeles Unified) to oneroom schoolhouses. They join dozens of other schools 

that have used SSAC for school safety assessments in 

the past 15 years. 

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CH. 2: SCHOOL SAFETY ADVOCACY COUNCIL HELPS SCHOOLS FIND THEIR STRENGTHS • 5

“Unlike some for-profit businesses, we don’t play the ‘Gotcha Game.’ They really 

focus on the negatives and that does a school no good. We come in and do a 

thorough assessment using Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design 

[CPTED] principles. We review all their policies and their emergency plans, and 

we give the school a comprehensive report,” Burke says. “We highlight the 

things a school is doing right in addition to the things that need improvement. 

For the areas that need improvement, we give them several options, and if possible, they’re either low-cost or free. We know that budgets are tight.” 

For example, one school in 

Illinois asked for an assessment 

after getting an estimate of 

$130,000 to secure its front door; 

SSAC came up with a solution 

that secured the door just as 

well for $2,000. SSAC uses the 

services of a professional and 

does charge schools enough to 

cover expenses, but still far less 

than they would pay a for-profit 

business. 

In addition to the assessments, 

SSAC has increased its assistance 

to schools performing one-to-one 

technology rollouts of devices 

such as iPads and laptops during 2013: “There are so many aspects of safety 

that schools don’t even consider. We work with them to make sure they consider 

‘digital citizenship’ related to proper use of technology, and mobile device management that will track stolen devices and even wipe them clean from a central 

location. They also need a plan on how to safely store the devices during school 

vacations,” Burke says, adding that he believes SSAC is the only organization in 

the country providing this type of service. 

Another service provided by SSAC involves putting the organization on retainer 

to provide a specified number of hours of training annually to a school district, 

covering subjects such as emergency management, overall school safety and 

teacher concerns about being safe in the classroom. SSAC, which has trained 

more than 100,000 law enforcement officers and education professionals in the 

United States and abroad, also offers other specialized services and trainings on 

a regular basis:

Trainings

• Basic School Resource Officer Certification.

• Advanced School Resource Officer Certification.

• School Safety Leadership & Supervision.

• Emergency Management Response in the Educational Setting.
• School Law & Liability.

• Understanding the Threat of Terrorism to Our Schools.

• Gangs 101: “What Every Educator Must Know.”

• PTA & Parent Education Programs.

• Conducting School Safety Surveys -Train the Trainer.

• Media Relations for the School Administrator.

• Customized In-Service Training Programs.

Specialized Anti-Bullying Training

• Bullycide in America.

• Bullying: “What Schools Need to Know.”

• Cyber & Electronic Bullying.

• School Bullying: “What Is Your Liability.”

• Customized PTA/Parent Trainings.

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CH. 2: SCHOOL SAFETY ADVOCACY COUNCIL HELPS SCHOOLS FIND THEIR STRENGTHS • 7

Professional Services

• School Safety Assessments.

• School Bullying Climate Assessment.

• Tabletop Crisis Scenarios.

• Full Emergency Drills.

• Emergency Policy/Procedure Development.

• School Safety & Bullying Expert Witness.

• Testimony & Legal Services.

In addition to providing training, SSAC holds 

two national conferences each year, one of 

them the largest conference on bullying in the 

United States (held every February). The agenda for the other 2014 event, set 

for July 28-August 1 in Orlando, focused on emergency management. Presentations included one by representatives of the Washoe County School District 

Police on the shooting at Sparks Middle School on Oct. 23, 2013; another by 

subject-matter expert Don Alwes on the use of tactical teams; and one by Burke 

on sensible ideas for school safety.

“Common sense, low-cost ways to keep your school safe is one of our focuses 

right now. Also, a 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.”

For more information, visit http://www.schoolsafety911.org/index.html; phone 

(888) 485-2440; or email admin@schoolsafety911.org.
CHAPTER 3

THE IMMEDIATE FIRST 

RESPONDER 

By Becky Lewis 

Updated February 2014

School resource officers (SROs) are more than just 

police officers assigned full time to a school: They are 

the immediate first responders to any incidents that 

happen on campus.

“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 

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CH. 3: THE IMMEDIATE FIRST RESPONDER • 9

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 1991, provides training and other resources to help SROs perform all of 

those roles better. With more 

than 3,000 members around 

the world, the association offers 

basic and advanced training for 

SROs and managers, as well 

as specialized training in legal 

issues affecting school safety. 

Quinn says that in 2013, the 

number of requests for training 

doubled compared to 2012, 

with 2,000 officers receiving 

training in 2013. 

“Right before the tragedy at Sandy Hook, we had launched a major revision to 

our advanced curriculum, and we rewrote the basic one in summer 2014,” says 

Quinn. Officers who have already taken the basic course would not necessarily 

benefit from repeating the revised session, but those who took advanced training several years ago might consider participating in the new iteration. 

“The previous version of the training often focused on the first-hand knowledge 

of a particular instructor, but the new version features an intense curriculum written by nationally recognized subject-matter experts,” Quinn says. “We added 

a lot of new and updated information on technology, put in new information on 

legal issues, threat assessment and incident command, and implemented an 

entirely new block on social media.” 

That new social media blocks focuses on remaining aware and up to date on the 

constantly evolving applications students use to communicate with each other 

while hiding that communication from parents and teachers. In addition to the 

new training, a social media block has been added to the agenda of presentations at the annual NASRO conference, and members can also learn about 

social media and other developing trends in the field through the association’s 

quarterly Journal of School Safety. And members and non-members alike can 

download the 2012 report To Protect and Educate: The School Resource Officer 

and the Prevention of Violence in Schools (http://www.nasro.org/sites/default/

files/pdf_files/NASRO_Protect_and_Educate.pdf) from the NASRO website. This 

report focuses on explaining the role that SROs play in supporting educational 

objectives while helping to keep schools safer, all as part of a team approach 

involving collaboration among law enforcement and school administration. 

“Our executive director, Mo Canady, spends a lot of time trying to get the 

school safety message out to the different states and in Washington, D.C. The 
COPS [Community Oriented Policing Services] Office funded a number of 

jurisdictions to hire SROs in 2013, and every officer funded under that grant will 

receive NASRO training paid for by the COPS Office,” Quinn says. “This guarantees that all of those officers receive proper training.” (The COPS Office awarded approximately $127 million in 266 grants as part of the FY 2013 COPS Hiring 

Program, with priority given to jurisdictions planning to hire SROs.)

“I wish the Sandy Hook shooting never happened and very few people knew 

that we existed,” says Quinn, who wrote an opinion piece for CNN as part 

of a special series on school safety that ran in mid-January 2013 (http://

schoolsofthought.blogs.cnn.com/2013/01/17/my-view-more-school-resourceofficers-more-safe-school-communities/?hpt=hp_bn1). “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.”

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.

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CH. 3: THE IMMEDIATE FIRST RESPONDER • 11
CHAPTER 4

FBI PROMOTES PARTNERSHIP 

APPROACH TO PLANNING

FOR ACTIVE SHOOTER 

INCIDENTS

By Becky Lewis

January 2014

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) offers 

extensive resources related to handling active shooter 

incidents on its website, resources from within the FBI 

itself and from a number of other federal and partner 

agencies. The Active Shooter/Mass Casualty Incidents 

page notes that “[t]he successful prevention of these 

active shooter incidents lies with a wide range of public 

and private entities all working together.” And the 

Bureau doesn’t merely dispense that as advice, it 

implements it as practice with co-authored products 

such as guides to developing emergency operations plans and ongoing 

assistance, on request, to college and university threat assessment teams.

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CH. 4: FBI PROMOTES PARTNERSHIP APPROACH TO PLANNING FOR ACTIVE SHOOTER INCIDENTS • 13

The FBI; the U.S. Departments of Education (ED), Homeland Security, and 

Health and Human Services (HHS); the U.S. Department of Justice’s Community 

Oriented Policing Services Office; and the Federal Emergency Management 

Agency (FEMA) teamed up to create Guide for Developing High-Quality School 

Emergency Operations Plans and Guide for Developing High-Quality Emergency Operations Plans for Institutions of Higher Education, both released in 2013. 

Special Agent Christopher Combs, Section Chief of the Strategic Information & 

Operations Center at FBI Headquarters, describes the content of the guides as 

“all-hazard planning at the macro level. They help schools make plans to deal 

with any crisis.”

The combined input from 

the various agencies helped 

ensure that the guides reach 

their target audience of school 

administrators instead of ending 

up with a law enforcement 

or emergency management 

agency or health care agency 

focus. Representatives from 

the different federal agencies 

provided different portions of 

the content, then reviewed and 

refined each other’s work. 

“I think the whole plan is great. 

FEMA, Education, everyone did 

a nice job with their sections. 

The FBI and Education working 

together on an important issue like this led to a great partnership. We learned a 

lot from them and I hope they learned something from us as well,” Combs said.

One section for which the FBI provided content focuses on handling an active 

shooter situation. Combs says it advocates the “Run Hide Fight” approach, 

which represents a switch in strategy for secondary and elementary schools and 

has caused some confusion.

“This strategy is aimed at the adults in a school, not at elementary school 

children. The first best thing to do is always to run. If you can’t run away, then 

hide,” Combs says. “Locking the doors, covering the windows, we support all of 

that, but if a shooter gets into the closet where you’re hiding with the children, 

you have to decide what to do. We’ve seen evidence that fighting is the best 

option.”

For example, he said, occupants of one classroom at Virginia Tech fought at 

the door to keep the shooter from coming in. Although those individuals who 

blocked the door were shot, the percentage of individuals in that room who 

were shot was much less than in the other classrooms: “That activity saved lives. 

It’s not a pretty plan but nothing in this scenario is pretty. Fighting back is your 

best last option.”
The whole issue of whether to fight 

back might be avoided by prevention, and Combs says that the guide 

for institutions of higher education 

places a great deal of emphasis on 

threat assessment teams. Made up 

of members from various disciplines 

such as campus police, the dean’s 

office, health care services and so 

on, the team members meet to talk 

about individuals whose behavior has 

caused concern. Through this type 

of assessment, patterns can emerge, 

sometimes indicating that a student’s 

problems have been noticed by professors, security and others. 

“This came out of the Virginia Tech after action report, when it came out that 

several people had noticed the shooter had issues, but no one connected the 

dots,” he says. “It’s really about getting help for troubled individuals. The vast 

majority of the time it can be handled within the school, but occasionally they 

call us or another outside law enforcement agency because they’re really 

concerned.”

If an institution requests FBI assistance, agents work with local and campus 

law enforcement to do an analysis and make recommendations, with a goal of 

putting all available resources toward stopping something before it happens. 

Combs says that the FBI did 150 consultations on people of concern in 2013, 

adding that figure does not mean the FBI stopped 150 active shooter incidents, 

but the Bureau did help troubled individuals receive assistance.

One resource that both schools and law enforcement can use to ensure that 

information that might help troubled individuals is shared appropriately is handouts on Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) and Health Insurance 

Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPPAA) regulations. The handouts, 

developed with ED and HHS, are available as PDFs on the FBI website, and 

provide easy-to-read summaries that clarify what schools can and cannot report 

under these confidentiality laws. 

“We did an initial print run and quickly ran out of stock, the demand was so 

great,” Combs says. “We are trying to find funding to print more, but we encourage agencies to print out copies to meet their needs.”

Visit the FBI’s Active Shooter/Mass Casualty Incidents page at http://

www.fbi.gov/about-us/cirg/active-shooter-and-mass-casualty-incidents

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CH. 4: FBI PROMOTES PARTNERSHIP APPROACH TO PLANNING FOR ACTIVE SHOOTER INCIDENTS • 15
CHAPTER 5

OFFICE OF SAFE AND HEALTHY 

STUDENTS PROMOTES HOLISTIC

ANTI-BULLYING APPROACH

By Becky Lewis

May 2014

If a problem persists at the same level for nearly 10 

years, it may not be getting any worse, but it’s also not 

getting any better. Without a change in approach, the 

status quo might go on indefinitely.

When it comes to preventing bullying in our nation’s 

schools, the U.S. Department of Education and its 

Office of Safe and Healthy Students is taking steps 

toward ensuring that status quo comes to an end.

In partnership with the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Juvenile Justice 

and Delinquency Prevention, the U.S. Department of Education released a 

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CH. 5: OFFICE OF SAFE AND HEALTHY STUDENTS PROMOTES HOLISTIC ANTI-BULLYING APPROACH • 17

School Discipline Guidance Package in January 2014 aimed at helping states, 

districts and schools develop practices and strategies to enhance school climate, 

and ensure that those policies and practices comply with federal law. In addition 

to a “Dear Colleague” letter from Education Secretary Arne Duncan, the package includes A Resource Guide for Improving School Climate and Discipline, 

Directory of Federal School Climate and Discipline Resources and Compendium 

of School Discipline Laws and Regulations, and can be downloaded from http://

www2.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/school-discipline/index.html.

According to David Esquith, 

director of ED’s Office of Safe 

and Healthy Students, the most 

recent data issued jointly by the 

Departments of Education and 

Justice indicate that the number 

of students ages 12-18 who 

reported being bullied at 

school has not changed significantly since 2005: “Despite the 

fact that schools have been 

implementing an array of 

anti-bullying programs for a 

number of years and states have 

passed anti-bullying laws, our 

most recent data suggest that 

we’re not making significant 

progress in preventing bullying. 

As a result, we are encouraging a holistic approach to disruptive behaviors like 

bullying. Our new School Climate Transformation Grants will support school 

districts and state educational agencies in their efforts to improve school climate 

and enhance social and emotional competencies. Students who are better able 

to regulate their own emotions and behaviors, empathize with others, and respect their peers and teachers are less likely to bully.”

“While our first priority must be protecting students who are victims of bullying, 

efforts to prevent bullying using a punishment-based approach have not proven 

effective to date in reducing the incidence of bullying. The trend to criminalize 

some behaviors that occur in school can complicate our efforts to promote a 

positive school climate, respect and kindness,” Esquith says. 

And he believes that well-trained school resource officers (SROs) can contribute 

significantly to a positive approach to improving the school climate. Esquith 

spoke on that role and on school safety in general at the National Association 

of School Resource Officers conference in July 2014. Esquith says that adult 

mentors whom students can trust play a key role in improving students’ abilities 

to respect themselves and others, and SROs can prove extremely valuable in 

establishing those types of relationships.

This new approach and the new discipline guidance package are only two of a 

number of projects and programs related to school safety, security and discipline 

in which the Office of Safe and Healthy Students plays a role. These include 
several grant programs aimed at reducing violence and bullying; a multigovernment agency project to develop Guide for Developing High-Quality 

School Emergency Operations Plans (http://rems.ed.gov/docs/REMS_K-12_

Guide_508.pdf) and Guide for Developing High-Quality School Emergency 

Operations Plans for Institutions of Higher Education (http://rems.ed.gov/docs/

REMS_IHE_Guide_508.pdf); and promoting the Technical Assistance Center on 

Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS.org), a program of ED’s 

Office of Special Education Programs. PBIS promotes the idea that all teachers, students and staff are involved in all settings to clearly articulate, and give 

instruction on, expected behaviors.

“A number of SROs in schools where they use the PBIS framework feel very 

positively about it. An SRO can definitely be an important staff member when

it comes to implementing the PBIS framework,” Esquith says. 

David Esquith has been the director of the Office of Safe and Healthy Students, 

an agency formerly known as the Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools, since 

Jan. 30, 2012. The office reports to the assistant secretary for the Office 

of Elementary and Secondary Education. For more information, visit 

http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/oese/oshs/index.html?exp=2

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CH. 5: OFFICE OF SAFE AND HEALTHY STUDENTS PROMOTES HOLISTIC ANTI-BULLYING APPROACH • 19
CHAPTER 6

PROVIDING A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW 

TO LOCAL LAW ENFORCEMENT

By Becky Lewis

February 2014

The facts laid out in the Incident Command Post 

Briefing sound grim indeed: senior boy with a weapon 

and an unknown amount of ammunition, a teacher 

and 20 students held hostage in a second-floor 

classroom. Although the first responders and SWAT 

team members have some knowledge of the interior 

based on an active shooter drill held three months 

earlier, they don’t have to rely on their memories alone. 

Large-format maps provided by the New Hampshire 

Department of Safety, complete with floor plans and 

color-coding, fill in the details.

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“Following the events at Sandy Hook Elementary, Gov. Maggie Hassan met 

with senior staff and asked us what we could do to be proactive about school 

safety,” says Sean Goodwin, GIS administrator for the Department of Safety’s 

Division of Emergency Services. “Our agency operates with the philosophy that 

when the emergency or disaster occurs, you need to already have the data. So, 

we implemented a project to put printed images of all schools in the state into 

large-format maps and get them into law enforcement hands. We set a goal, we 

established a vision, we put everything into motion and we delivered it on time.” 

Delivering on time meant that 

by the end of 2013, each of the 

state’s 207 local law enforcement agencies, as well as all 

regional SWAT teams, had a 

map set for every school in their 

jurisdiction. The project rolled 

out in stages, first for the state’s 

78 public high schools, then the 

83 middle schools and finally 

the 315 elementary schools. 

The Department of Safety will 

include the state’s 197 private 

schools in the project as well. 

During 2014, the project will 

continue by providing each 

jurisdiction with electronic PDF 

files for all schools in their jurisdiction, which could then be accessed via email, smartphone and tablet, as well 

as shared with local fire departments and EMS. 

Using in-house data and equipment, the Department of Safety met with local 

law enforcement to design a geographic data and production model applicable 

to every jurisdiction in New Hampshire and thus provide a tangible resource 

for first responders to use in school emergencies, Goodwin says. Map sets cost 

approximately $45 each to prepare, and include: 

• Incident Command view (1 inch = 200 feet), a facility-centered orientation 

that provides location awareness and labels for surrounding roads.

• Campus View (1 inch = 100 feet), identifying campus-specific features (areas 

for staging, evacuation, traffic and access control, search and rescue) by using 

an approximate 1-acre reference grid.

• Tactical View (1 inch = 25 feet), with selected building areas labeled.

• Tactical Interior, similar to Tactical View with the addition of black-and-white 

floor plans, access points and other site-specific features. (This view is available only if the school system superintendent provided floor plans to the 

Department of Safety).

“One of the challenges going forward will be getting other people involved to 

ensure that the data is updated. We’ll need a big push to ensure that any changes in the buildings, in the floor plans, are provided to us,” Goodwin says. The 

CH. 6: PROVIDING A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW TO LOCAL LAW ENFORCEMENT • 21
aerial imagery behind the project came from a data collection project 

conducted jointly by the state Departments of Safety and Transportation in 

2010. An update to that project is scheduled to take place in 2015.

“We’ll update the Tactical Interior maps more frequently if a school wants to add 

more information. We can do a ground data collection and update their maps 

for them,” Goodwin says. “We knew we could provide everybody with a baseline level, and for those that want to invest and add to it, we’ll go forward. We 

do recognize that everybody may not have the resources to dedicate to it.”

Whether or not those local school system resources provided input for a Tactical 

Interior View, the response from the state’s law enforcement agencies has been 

positive: “It gives them a tool they’ve never had before. The maps are detailed 

and large enough to spread across a table – or the hood of a car!” 

For more information on the New Hampshire Department of Safety’s mapping 

project, contact Sean Goodwin at sgoodwin@e911.nh.gov.

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CH. 6: PROVIDING A BIRD’S-EYE VIEW TO LOCAL LAW ENFORCEMENT • 23
CHAPTER 7

TEXAS SCHOOL SAFETY 

CENTER AT TEXAS STATE 

UNIVERSITY PROVIDES 

ASSISTANCE AND ANSWERS

By Becky Lewis

October 2013

The principal’s voice comes over the loudspeakers: 

“This is a lockdown. This is a lockdown.” The students 

crowding the bleachers for the annual homecoming 

pep rally stare at each other, confused. A lockdown? 

But they’re outdoors. Do they return to the school 

building? Run for the nearby woods? Get under the 

bleachers? 

Fortunately for the safety of those students and their teachers, the lockdown 

was only a drill. A drill that showed a weakness in the school’s safety plan, and a 

need to address their confusion and make changes.

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CH. 7: TEXAS SCHOOL SAFETY CENTER AT TEXAS STATE UNIVERSITY PROVIDES ASSISTANCE AND ANSWERS • 25

“Lives may someday depend on everyone’s knowing what they need to do in 

the event of an emergency. If you have a plan, if you train to the plan and drill to 

the plan, you will see things that need to be tweaked. That’s the key to making 

certain it’s relevant and not just a checkmark you make on a list,” says Dr. Victoria Calder, director of the Texas School Safety Center at Texas State University 

(TxSSC). “We encourage schools to drill at times other than when students are 

sitting in their homerooms and they can take attendance. We’re also aware, and 

we respect, that schools have a job to do, and that is to educate students. We 

don’t want to burden them with something time-consuming and tedious that 

distracts them from that.” 

TxSSC, launched shortly after 

the school shooting at Columbine in 1999, serves as the 

state’s central location for the 

dissemination of safety and 

security information, including 

research, training and technical 

assistance for K-12 schools and 

junior colleges. The largest 

center of its type in the nation, 

TxSSC receives funding through 

a direct appropriation through 

Texas State University and also 

through grants. 

“After the terrible tragedy at 

Sandy Hook, we were contacted 

by several other states that wanted to know how we’re organized and what the 

Center does,” Calder says. “We’re ready and willing to answer any questions 

other states want to ask. We’ve gotten phone calls about using our materials 

and we want other states to know that all of the materials on our website are 

available for their use.”

The Center, located at Texas State University in San Marcos, recently redesigned 

and reorganized their website (http://txssc.txstate.edu/), adding more information and, at the same time, creating a cleaner look and presentation of training 

materials in context. Calder says because Texas includes approximately 1,025 

school districts, TxSSC looks to provide universal materials and services that local districts can adapt to meet their own needs. The Center also offers a number 

of regional training programs throughout the state and trains on school safety at 

numerous statewide conferences geared toward educators, first responders and 

stakeholders. 

In addition to being adaptable to local needs, Calder says all TxSSC materials 

must be “new, true and interesting;” that is, they need to be current, stem from 

a valid source and contain information that schools need and want to know.

“Everything we produce is based on a multi-hazard approach. We deal with all 

three types of hazards: natural hazards such as wildfires, floods, tornadoes or 

hurricanes; technological hazards such as the fertilizer plant explosion in West, 

pipeline explosions, train derailments and school bus accidents; and human 
hazards such as violence and bullying,” she says. That approach is evident in the 

wide range of publications, programs and tools available on the website, which 

address areas such as drug, tobacco and alcohol use; bullying; school emergency management; and digital safety. “Before You Text,” a free online course, can 

be, and is, accessed by youth around the country.

“They don’t understand that once you put something on the web, it’s there for 

all time. It can affect whether you get into college, it can affect your future job 

prospects. Many educators, including those in other states, are using all or part 

of the course in the classroom as well,” Calder says. “Also, Texas judges have 

the discretion to require youth to successfully complete the course in lieu of a 

much stiffer legal penalty.”

Another tool frequently used outside the state is “When Seconds Count,” a 

20-minute video on dealing with an active shooter situation that can be viewed 

at http://vimeo.com/14621179. Officers from other states, and even other countries, have attended the annual Texas School-Based Law Enforcement (TxSBLE) 

Conference. In 2013, Calder says more than 650 individuals, mainly from Texas 

but also from other states, participated in training on the unique challenges experienced by law enforcement officers that work with students. And the Center’s 

development of a youth preparedness summer camp that includes Community 

Emergency Response Team (CERT) training, community-specific emergency 

action planning and leadership development has been hailed as a model and 

won a national award from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) 

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CH. 7: TEXAS SCHOOL SAFETY CENTER AT TEXAS STATE UNIVERSITY PROVIDES ASSISTANCE AND ANSWERS • 27

(http://www.fema.gov/news-release/2013/09/19/femahonors-achievements-communitypreparedness)

“Maybe that’s how some of these 

other states knew to reach out to us, 

because of our connection with FEMA 

and our contributions to national 

publications. Or maybe it’s just word 

of mouth,” Calder says. “But whatever 

the reason, when it comes to school 

safety, we are here to help.”

For more information, contact Dr. Victoria Calder at (512) 245-8082, email 

vc16@txstate.edu.
CHAPTER 8

FREE TIPLINE LETS 

STUDENTS USE THE 

“CYBER IN THEIR POCKETS”

By Becky Lewis

January 2014

The forms come into the school’s Tipline portal on a 

steady basis, two one day, three the next. Similar in 

content, but different enough to tell they come from 

different children. They all report the same problem: 

bullying. Bullying in the third grade. No wrongdoer is 

named, but the tips provide enough information to let 

administrators know there’s a problem they need to 

address. A problem that could have gone unnoticed 

without the help of the Kentucky Center for School 

Safety’s STOP! tipline.

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CH. 8: FREE TIPLINE LETS STUDENTS USE THE “CYBER IN THEIR POCKETS” • 29

Implemented as a pilot project in late 2013, the free tipline service will continue 

rolling out to schools across the state throughout 2014. The Kentucky Center 

for School Safety (KCSS) provides STOP! (Safety Tipline, Online Prevention) 

through a portal on its website that serves as a central “post office,” with tips 

going directly to designated individuals at participating schools. KCSS received 

no additional funding nor hired any additional staff to use in implementing the 

project. 

“We are not going to be the Cyber Tipline Police. We’re just the 

conduit,” says Karen McCuiston, 

director of the KCSS Resource 

Center. “We’ve been working on 

this for several years, because 

schools wanted to implement 

something like this but they had 

no funding for it. If they funded this, they would have to cut 

something else. We already pay 

a small hosting fee to run the 

website, and we worked hard to 

find a way to make STOP! work 

through that portal.”

KCSS originally considered 

creating a database, but decided 

against it due to concerns about hacking. Additional concerns about confidentiality led to the development of forms that send the information straight to 

designated individuals at the school. (Some school districts are also working 

on partnerships with their local 911 dispatch to implement 24/7 monitoring.) 

McCuiston emphasizes this is a tipline, not a suicide hotline nor a replacement 

for 911.

“I love that our children have grown up with ‘cyber in their pocket,’ but they’ve 

gotten to the point where they don’t know how to communicate face to face. 

Since that’s how they are, we have to meet them there. Some schools have 

tip boxes in the cafeteria or the library, but we know that kids like to use their 

phones, their tablets, their computers. Now they can leave tips 24/7 and they 

don’t have to worry about whether someone will recognize their handwriting or 

try to figure out what to say to a counselor,” she says. “We feel this could be 

game-changing. They can tell about their problem or try to help someone else.”

Although the tipline can be accessed through the KCSS website (http://www.

kycss.org/stop/index.php), which leads to links for each participating school district, the main entry to the portal occurs through a replication of the STOP! logo 

on each school district’s website. McCuiston says a lot of effort went into making 

the portal easy to navigate, with separate forms for tips on bullying, violence 

and other issues; these forms include both drop-down menus and free form text 

fields. Although built mainly for the use of students at all grade levels, school 

staff and the community at large also can access STOP! through a school district 

website. KCSS also provides a number of supplemental resources to participating schools, including both black-and-white and color versions of a brochure, 
posters, a PowerPoint presentation, a video, a routing list and more. Feedback 

from the seven pilot project districts – which range from larger districts with multiple high schools to one of the smallest districts in the state, from an affluent 

district to one where nearly all of the students receive free lunch – helped finetune STOP! prior to its more general release. No school district can come online 

without first going through training, and McCuiston says KCSS has a 

waiting list of schools that want to take the training and start using STOP! 

“We’re excited that we’re giving schools one more piece of a comprehensive 

school safety program, but it is just one small piece. If you put this up and think 

that’s all it takes, you are missing the mark so widely,” says McCuiston, who 

had just started a position as Public Relations/Grant Writer with the McCracken County School District when the Heath High School shooting took place in 

1997. A young man there killed three students and injured five others. 

“We did have a lot of people tell us that you’re just asking for problems,” she 

says, adding that KCSS carefully vetted STOP! through its lawyers before launching the project. “At the end of the day, I just keep seeing a child who couldn’t 

report something. If this makes one child feel that somebody did something to 

help them, we’ve succeeded. We feel it can be revolutionary if kids use it. Maybe some of them will be able to say that it really made a difference.”

For more information on the project, contact Karen McCuiston at (270) 809-5091 

or email kmccuiston@murraystate.edu.

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CH. 8: FREE TIPLINE LETS STUDENTS USE THE “CYBER IN THEIR POCKETS” • 31
CHAPTER 9

BALTIMORE COUNTY 

POLICE SEE “ONE VIEW” 

OF LOCAL SCHOOLS

By Becky Lewis

May 2014

The call goes out from dispatch: Armed intruder at 

“ABC Elementary School.” Nearby officers quickly 

move toward the school, accessing the view from 

security cameras on their mobile devices, calling up 

floor plans and scanning the school’s layout while in 

route. Thanks to this instant access, they don’t have 

to go in blind; instead, they come prepared with vital 

information.

While school system administrators and the Baltimore 

County Police hope the above scenario never happens in their area, thanks to 

the One View System installed in the county’s elementary schools prior to the 

32 • SHARING IDEAS & RESOURCES TO KEEP OUR NATION’S SCHOOLS SAFE! VOLUME 2
CH. 9: BALTIMORE COUNTY POLICE SEE “ONE VIEW” OF LOCAL SCHOOLS • 33

start of the 2013-2014 school year, officers would indeed be able to access 

camera feeds and floor plans should such an incident occur. At the same time, 

administrators at both county police headquarters and the school administration 

offices would also be able to access the same information in real time. 

In the immediate aftermath of the tragedy in Newtown, Conn., on Dec. 14, 

2012, and also following up on a shooting at Baltimore County’s Perry Hall High 

School on Aug. 27, 2012, the school system and the police department began 

making short- and long-term plans to improve school safety in early 2013. The 

county’s middle and high schools already had older, analog camera systems in 

place; however, the county’s 105 elementary schools and four special schools 

had no video capabilities at all, thus the decision to start One View installation at 

that level.

“After Sandy Hook, we kept 

hearing ‘What are you doing 

for the elementary schools?’ ” 

says Dale Rauenzahn, executive 

director of the Baltimore County Public Schools Department 

of School Safety and Security. 

“Conventional policy from the 

past might have dictated starting 

at the secondary school level, 

but Sandy Hook changed all 

that. Right now, we have multiple camera views in each school 

located in public access areas, 

with the potential to upgrade to 

additional cameras, depending 

on a school’s size and floor plan.” 

Click here for interview with Mr. Rauenzahn

And plans do call for updating the middle and high school camera systems to 

a digital format compatible with integration into the One View system. In the 

meantime, although the school system cannot provide access to those cameras 

to the police department, it can burn surveillance footage needed for investigations to DVD for sharing with local law enforcement.

Baltimore County called on several sources to fund the new video hardware, 

but another key piece of the school system’s strategy carried no additional 

cost: maintaining and nurturing the ongoing strong relationship between the 

school system and the police department. The department’s school resource 

officer (SRO) program began in 1998 with officers at Pikesville and Franklin high 

schools, and has since grown to 63 full-time officers assigned to secondary 

schools, in addition to a sergeant and a captain. (Those totals make the Baltimore County SRO division larger than 80 percent of all local police departments 

in the United States.) Also, Rauenzahn meets with Baltimore County Police Chief 

Jim Johnson and School Superintendent Dallas Dance on a quarterly basis, further strengthening the relationship between police and schools. 

“That strong relationship plays a key role in why this works. There’s ongoing 

trust, and the county and the IT department are on board with us,” he says. “We 
made the signal available and let them set it up in the way that works best for 

them. We went live within the schools on the first day of school, and then the 

police department established its access in March.”

And that access is “definitely state of the art,” according to Corporal John 

Wachter of the department’s Public Information Office. “Baltimore County likes 

to leverage technology to better the safety of its citizens, and this is a good example of that. This program is all about the safety of our kids, in fact the safety 

of everyone in the school system, from students, to teachers, to staff, and to 

visitors. It’s all about their safety.” Click here for interview with Corporal Wachter.

In the first two months of use, safety issues uncovered by One View have been 

minor, mostly relating to parents who picked up children without following 

sign-out procedures, or children intent on wandering off on their own. However, Corporal Wachter says that should a truly dangerous situation arise, the fact 

that an officer can quickly pull up information on a particular school could prove 

invaluable. 

Officers also have access to the results of a spring 2013 tactical assessment, 

wherein 12 officers from the department’s community outreach section performed a comprehensive safety walkthrough of all of the county’s 168 schools. 

Rauenzahn says that each school’s principal, SRO (if applicable) and chief custodian will do follow-up reviews on an annual basis. 

34 • SHARING IDEAS & RESOURCES TO KEEP OUR NATION’S SCHOOLS SAFE! VOLUME 2
CH. 9: BALTIMORE COUNTY POLICE SEE “ONE VIEW” OF LOCAL SCHOOLS • 35

“It really is a combination of many 

things that keep our kids safe. Officers 

check in with the elementary schools 

on a daily basis. We have buzzer 

systems in addition to the cameras, all 

of our teachers are trained according 

to their school’s individual plan,” he 

says. “And the community has really 

accepted this program and supported 

it wholeheartedly. Parents are telling 

us at community meetings and in 

other public venues how supportive 

they feel. They understand that all of 

our cameras are there to protect the 

public and their children.”

That view of support prevails at all of the county’s elementary schools, including 

Cromwell Elementary School, where Principal Darlene Morrison definitely realizes the value of the One View system at her facility: Click here to an interview 

with Ms. Morrison. “The secretary and I can see who is coming in and out of the 

building. That gives us a great advantage. “

For more information on Baltimore County’s use of the One View System, 

contact Executive Director of School Safety and Security Dale Rauenzahn at 

(410) 887-4300, email drauenzahn@bcps.org, or Corporal John Wachter at 

jbwachter@baltimorecountymd.gov, phone (410) 887-2210.
CHAPTER 10

SAN ANTONIO SCHOOL 

DISTRICT “STANDS UP” 

INCREASED SECURITY

By Becky Lewis

April 2014

In the past four years, the U.S. Department of 

Homeland Security’s campaign slogan “If You See 

Something, Say Something,” has become part of 

our national vocabulary. In San Antonio’s Edgewood 

Independent School District (EISD), that slogan could 

also be re-interpreted as if you’re concerned about any 

activity around a school, “Take A Stand.”

Launched at a community meeting in February 2014, 

“Take A Stand” is a curriculum that spans all EISD students, from kindergarten through 12th grade, as well as their parents and other 

community members. And a key part of that effort is a new school safety app 

36 • SHARING IDEAS & RESOURCES TO KEEP OUR NATION’S SCHOOLS SAFE! VOLUME 2
CH.10: SAN ANTONIO SCHOOL DISTRICT “STANDS UP” INCREASED SECURITY • 37

called Edgewood Alert, available on the EISD website and via the Apple Store 

and Google Play.

EISD Public Relations Officer Rolando Martinez says that students, faculty, staff 

and community members all can access Edgewood Alert’s pulldown menus to 

report concerns about bullying, drugs, personal crises, threats and more. Edgewood Alert is confidential, although not anonymous: the school district will not 

publicize the names of those who submit tips, but a user needs an email address 

to make a report. Whenever someone reaches out via the website, notifications 

go to the school’s counselors and to Chief Kenneth Jacobs of the EISD Police 

Department for followup. (Due its internal development, the school district 

incurred no additional expenses in putting Edgewood Alert into place.)

“We had a big kickoff for the curriculum and the app that included a community meeting and a push on our website. The school’s counselors continue to 

promote Edgewood Alert, and it’s been heavily used already,” Martinez says. 

“Of course Edgewood is about education, but first and foremost is the safety of 

everyone who comes to our schools. This is just a continuation of the ongoing 

safety and security measures we’ve implemented in the past two years.”

Those other improvements include:

• Increasing the number of security cameras in the district’s 20 schools (12,000

students and 1,800 employees) from 40 to 300. These include parking lot

cameras that record license plate information.

• “Entry buzzers” at every school; visitors must present photo ID.

• Unannounced canine searches for contraband at middle and high schools.

• Photo IDs for students and staff and a “swipe card” entry system; student IDs

also can be scanned to determine if students are in their assigned area.

• Additional officers and patrols for the EISD Police Department. Under Chief

Jacobs, the department includes two school resource officers (SROs) at each

high school, one at each middle school and at the alternative learning and

fine arts academies, and approximately 12 patrol officers who monitor school

zones to ensure pedestrian safety, respond to alarms at EISD buildings and

randomly check all district facilities. Patrol officers also investigate traffic

accidents occurring on district property and assist other law enforcement

agencies in the investigation of crimes on EISD property, as necessary.

“By increasing our manpower and patrol coverage, we can more effectively cover all of our schools and facilities,” Jacobs says. “We’re able to respond faster 

and we’ve shortened our response times because of that. 

“We’re constantly looking for training, free or otherwise, that would help us with 

crisis intervention or with an active shooter situation,” he adds. “If that type of 

situation ever does arrive, we would be the ones making the initial contact and 

dealing with it. If a situation ever does come up, I want my officers to have the 

knowledge and training to handle it in a timely manner and put an end to it as 

quickly as we can.”

For more information on Take a Stand and the Edgewood Alert, contact Rolando 

Martinez at roland.martinez@eisd.net.
CHAPTER 11

BUILDING “BRIDGES” THAT 

ENHANCE COMMUNICATIONS 

By Becky Lewis

March 2014

Go ahead, sir, you’re talking to EMS now.

We’ve got a girl, here, a first-grader, and she’s turned 

her ankle. She can’t stand on it, but there’s no sign of a 

bad break or blood or anything. Can I move her? Carry 

her inside? It’s hot, and she’s on blacktop.

Sure, go ahead and carry her inside. Tell us where 

you’re taking her so we can come straight to you. 

We’ll be waiting in the infirmary.

I’m not familiar with the layout of that school, can you tell me which entrance to 

use? How to find the infirmary? 

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CH.11: BUILDING “BRIDGES” THAT ENHANCE COMMUNICATIONS • 39

First responders to the Chardon (Ohio) School District in situations like the hypothetical one described above, or more serious events, can have similar conversations with school personnel as part of a project with SchoolSAFE Communications, a Web-enabled two-way radio-based product that allows 911 dispatchers 

to establish a radio bridge between school radio systems and public safety radio 

systems. In early March, approximately 250 school staff received, and began 

training on, these radio units. The system replaces “walkie talkies” with limited 

capability that involved relaying messages from one place to another within the 

school, and did not allow for direct communication with public safety agencies. 

Chardon School District Superintendent Michael Hanlon says the project significantly expedites communication and could potentially put resources in place 

much more quickly.

“We allocated radios to our 

incident control and operations 

people, to our principals, to our 

custodians and to our school 

resource officers. These are folks 

who are available and move around 

the buildings. We also placed them 

with teachers in strategically identified classrooms to create a logical 

perimeter around each of our six 

school buildings. They’re located 

near exits and down main hallways, 

and they create a communications 

net,” Hanlon says.

Personnel use a primary channel on a regular basis for day-to-day school operations; a secondary channel comes into play in the event of an emergency 

incident. Hanlon says he has a link on his desktop and school administrators can 

use it to create bridges between buildings if, for example, students need to be 

shifted from one building to another due to an incident that wouldn’t involve 

public safety, such as a broken water pipe. 

“We went through two training sessions, starting with operability training 

because our staff just doesn’t spend a lot of time on radios. We also had joint 

interoperability training with our public safety resource agencies,” Hanlon says. 

“We used a scenario that included an intruder in the building, a lockdown drill 

and use of the bridge. Every time we run a drill like that in the future, we will 

become more effectively ready to respond if an emergency situation occurs.”

Geauga County Sheriff Dan McClelland echoes Hanlon’s position, saying: “I 

think any time you can enhance communications, you greatly improve the opportunity to coordinate response. That’s exactly what this project will do for us.”

Hanlon says that the Chardon School District has always had an excellent relationship with the community’s first responders, planning, drilling and taking a 

proactive approach, and using the radio system will serve to make that relationship even stronger.
“Every school district in the country is looking for ways to improve safety, security and incident response. Implementing this technology seemed like the next 

logical step for us in promoting safety and security on our campuses,” Hanlon 

says.

The need to keep improving incident response is something the district knows 

about firsthand. On Feb. 27, 2012, Thomas Lane, a Chardon student, entered 

the school cafeteria at approximately 7:30 a.m. and fired10 rounds from a .22 

handgun; three students ultimately died and three others who were wounded 

survived, one of them permanently paralyzed. 

“The cellular phone system infrastructure became overloaded with the amount 

of calls being placed by 1,100 students, staff and faculty, and that slowed down 

the updates we received,” McClelland says. “We were able to apprehend the 

suspect in spite of the information lag, but if this system had been in place then, 

communication would have been better. With the school system using these radios for day-to-day communications, it will just be second nature for school staff 

to use the radios if they need to talk to us.”

Chardon Police Chief Tim McKenna agrees on the importance of day-to-day use 

of the system and the school district’s ability to communicate directly with public 

safety during minor incidents: “It’s another tool in our tool belt. There are a 

number of school safety initiatives taking place in Ohio and around the country. 

I think we were probably approached to try this system out because of the 2012 

shooting, and in light of that event, I wanted to make sure that everyone was in 

favor of it and involved in the planning and implementation.”

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Numerous schools in the western part of the United 

States already have implemented use of the radios, 

and the provider’s desire to launch a project that 

encompassed an entire school district east of the 

Mississippi led to Chardon’s being approached. 

Representatives of the school district and a number 

of public safety agencies came together to work 

out the details of the project, prior to launching 

it in the six public schools and two nearby private 

school campuses. All of those agencies participated in the initial training drill as well.

To learn more about planning, implementation 

and the SchoolSAFE Communications project as a 

whole, contact Chardon School District Superintendent Dr. Michael Hanlon at (440) 285-4052.

CH.11: BUILDING “BRIDGES” THAT ENHANCE COMMUNICATIONS • 41
CHAPTER 12

DIRECT LINE TO

EMERGENCY DISPATCH

By Becky Lewis

February 2014

After several days of inclement weather that curtailed 

outdoor recess, the children racing around the 

playground seem supercharged with energy from all 

the sunshine. Then a shriek cuts through the bright 

scene: “Help, help, he’s having a seizure!” As the 

playground aide races toward the cries, she makes 

one click on her portable radio, and immediately alerts 

emergency dispatch to respond to the school.

The Northmont School District in Englewood, Ohio, 

has many uses for the 260 portable radios in use throughout the school system, 

and in January 2014 , the district implemented a new one: For a mere $350 in 

programming costs, staff acquired a direct line to emergency dispatch via an 

unused frequency offered by the Englewood Police Department. 

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CH.12: DIRECT LINE TO EMERGENCY DISPATCH • 43

“We had a frequency we had been using primarily as a backup, so we held a 

meeting with the district’s support people and offered to let the schools use it,” 

says Sgt. Mike Lang, coordinator of daytime operations and communications for 

the police department that serves this Dayton suburb. “Our elementary school 

resource officer (Corey Follick) was looking for ways to improve our response to 

the schools, and I suggested that we give them access to this frequency. It was 

kind of a no-brainer, because it uses a tool they already had in their hands and 

felt comfortable in using.”

Jenny Wood, public information officer for the 5,400-student Northmont School 

District, explains that the school system uses the radios to communicate day-today information within buildings. Teachers, administrators, playground supervisors and others all carry the portables and use them for intraschool communication: “From what I understand not many school districts have this kind of direct 

link to law enforcement. We’re excited about it, and at the same time, we hope 

we never have to use it in an active shooter situation. However, just knowing we 

have it gives us peace of mind.”

The programming that brought about that peace of mind took place during the 

2013-2014 winter break for the district’s six elementary schools, middle school 

and high school. Training on the use of the “new” frequency complemented an 

extensive active shooter drill. Wood says the drill involved the entire staff, from 

teachers to bus drivers to food service personnel, and that participants rotated 

roles, giving individuals the opportunity to play a student, a teacher, an observer 

and so on.

“We wanted them to get an idea of what law enforcement response would be 

like in the event of an active shooter. We wanted them to hear gunshots and 

screaming, to hit all of their senses. You can practice 10 times with ‘This is a lockdown,’ and going through the steps, but when you hear gunshots, your reaction 

and the way you feel is very different,” Wood says. “We do regular fire drills and 

tornado drills, and we figured if we do that, we should be doing this also.”

Lang says his department has planned some beginning drills and plans to add 

use of the radios in the active shooter drills in the future: “If they become accustomed to using them in drills and in routine situations, then if they need to use 

them in situations that aren’t routine, it just becomes a natural process. They’re 

already used to having the radios, and having the channel available just adds 

another strength to the mix. If they need to use it in an emergency, all they have 

to do is click over to the correct channel and notify the communications center.”

Once notified, the communications center has the ability to dispatch the fire 

department and EMS as well as the police department, if needed, and communications center staff can patch the school’s radios directly into the law enforcement channel, setting up a direct connection between police and someone on 

the scene. 

“Having someone on the inside who is in direct communication with the first 

responders, with the command post, that makes it a great tool,” Lang says. 

For more information on the partnership between the Englewood Police 

Department and the Northmont School District, contact Sgt. Mike Lang at 

Lang@englewood.oh.us or Jenny Wood at jwood@northmontschools.net.
CHAPTER 13

CONNECTICUT TOWN

ADAPTS TECHNOLOGY

FOR SCHOOL SAFETY

By Becky Lewis

November 2013

“Code Red. West Vine Street School. Police are on 

their way.” 

As the message goes out across the school’s public 

address system and alert lights begin to flash, 

simultaneous dispatches go out to the local police 

department, to fire and rescue, and to a neighboring 

law enforcement agency for mutual aid. Fire doors 

close and lock throughout the school building, 

confining the intruder to a small space. An officer in the department’s command 

center activates access to the school’s surveillance cameras, ready to direct the 

first responders who are already pulling into the parking lot to the spot where 

they are needed. 

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CH.13: CONNECTICUT TOWN ADAPTS TECHNOLOGY FOR SCHOOL SAFETY • 45

“Our estimation is it cuts our response time down by one to two minutes,” 

Stonington (Conn.) Police Chief Darren Stewart says of the Code Red button 

pilot program launched at West Vine earlier in 2013. “Every second that goes 

by is another opportunity for an intruder, and every second we can shave off our 

response moves up the time when the police arrive and his focus shifts away 

from the students to the officers.” 

Stonington, a town of 18,000 fulltime residents located near the 

Rhode Island line, has six public 

and two private schools totaling 

approximately 3,000 students. A 

task force selected the West Vine 

school for the pilot project for two 

reasons: it is near a highway and 

also is a fairly small school (235 

students). The group began meeting just weeks after the incident at 

Sandy Hook Elementary in December 2012, and it included Police 

Capt. Jerry Desmond, Board of 

Police Commissioners and School 

Department support staff, and representatives of the school system 

(such as Superintendent of Public 

Schools Van Riley, Headmaster Stephen Bennhoff of Pine Point School and 

Principal Doris Messina of St. Michael School). The members’ review of existing 

school safety measures and brainstorming new ideas led to the project to adapt 

burglar and fire alarm technology, with help from Assistant Chief Kevin Burns of 

the Pawcatuck Fire Department, into the Code Red button. The devices, one 

per classroom, use a protective plastic cover to prevent accidental alerts, and 

the community’s public safety agencies worked together to develop response 

protocols that include how to handle apparent false alarms. 

“We took existing technology and adapted it to fit school safety. I really must 

say that the committee was incredible in determining what would work and what 

would not work. This didn’t come from me, it came from them, and they did an 

outstanding job putting this together,” Stewart says.

In addition, Stonington’s police officers drop in to visit at all of the local schools 

on a regular basis; all schools have a radio tuned to local dispatch in their 

offices; and their card reader systems give automatic 24/7 access to law 

enforcement officers. 

“Schools can reach us immediately by hitting the microphone on the radio, and 

the other schools in the district also can hear the call and decide whether to go 

to Code Yellow and implement precautionary measures. This allows the schools 

to work as a team and not be in the dark about something happening nearby,” 

Stewart says. “It doesn’t take away calling 911, it’s just another means of communication.” 

In addition to the safeguards already in place, plans for the future include adding the Code Red button system to one school each year until all of the town’s 
schools have the system (pending funding availability; the system cost approximately $10,000 to install). The Stonington Police Department also is looking into 

the possibility of establishing police substations in local schools, where officers 

could spend some time during the school day filing reports and making telephone calls, and the school system has independently installed protective film 

on some windows. 

“What we have is a partnership with our schools. Several times during the school 

year, I sit down with the superintendent, the headmaster and the principal for a 

status meeting. I give them a lot of credit for being in tune with everything that’s 

going on in the world,” Stewart says. “We share a goal of making our community as safe as possible for the kids, the teachers and the schools, and we hope we 

never have to use any of these safeguards.”

For more information on Stonington’s Code Red button and overall school 

safety program, contact Chief Darren Stewart at (860) 599-7501 or email 

DStewart@Stonington-ct.gov.

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CH.13: CONNECTICUT TOWN ADAPTS TECHNOLOGY FOR SCHOOL SAFETY • 47
CHAPTER 14

SIMPLE DEVICE SECURES 

DOORS, PEACE OF MIND

By Becky Lewis

November 2013

The words crackle over the loudspeaker: “Attention. 

We have a lockdown situation. Repeat, we have a 

lockdown situation.” Just as they have in drills, the 

students quickly move to the rear of the classroom. The 

teacher follows, but not before she lifts a horseshoeshaped object from its bracket next to the classroom 

door and drops it into place, securing the door more 

surely than any dead bolt can do.

Created by a local entrepreneur, first to secure his 

daughter’s dorm room and then marketed to Michigan schools in the aftermath 

of the Sandy Hook Elementary tragedy, the horseshoe-shaped rebar slides into 

two pre-drilled holes and secures the door against brute force attacks, ensuring 

that a threatening individual will either move on, or frustrate himself by 

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CH.14: SIMPLE DEVICE SECURES DOORS, PEACE OF MIND • 49

continuing to try to break down the door until law enforcement arrives. Some 

12 school districts in Michigan have installed the device since September 2013, 

including Horizon Elementary School in Holt, a Lansing bedroom community of 

23,000 residents located in Ingham County.

“To me, this is the simplest 

device I’ve ever seen, but the 

ramifications are huge,” says 

Ingham County Sheriff Gene 

Wriggelsworth. “It gives parents 

and teachers peace of mind. 

No one is going to get through 

that door without beating on it 

for a long time with something 

like a sledgehammer. I’m not 

saying it would be impossible, 

but it could take something like 

10 to 15 minutes, which would 

buy time for the first responders 

to get there and mitigate the 

situation.”

To come up with the funding to purchase devices for all doors in the school 

building, the school and the sheriff’s office came up with an “Adopt A Door” 

program, asking concerned citizens and civic groups to donate funding. Wriggelsworth hopes that campaign can become an example for other schools in his 

jurisdiction. 

“My wife and I personally adopted two doors. We said ‘We’ve got two grandkids in the building, we’re in,’ ” he says.

Inventor Rob Couturier of nearby Williamston came up with the “prototype” 

device several years ago when his daughter, after being assaulted during a 

Thanksgiving Day run at her local high school track, became afraid to stay in 

an unlocked dorm room at the University of Michigan. His original intent was 

only to provide a safe environment for his daughter while she attended college, 

but within days of the Newtown shootings, she called him and said: “Dad, this 

would help schools. They need it.”

“It looks pretty simple, but a ton of work and a ton of research went into developing it,” Couturier says, explaining that he consulted with local law enforcement and fire inspectors and worked on refining the concept, right down 

to achieving the right weight and balance to be handled quickly and easily in 

a stressful situation. He put the device on the market in May 2013 and thus far 

has installed the device only in Michigan schools, but has traveled to Ohio for 

discussions with schools there, and is working on plans for expansion.

“I personally don’t care about the money. I only want to make enough money to 

keep people working on making more of them. My drive comes from thinking 

about the safety of the faculty and the students,” Couturier says. “I am so moved 

when I walk into a school and the teachers and staff thank me for creating this.”

To learn more about this device, contact Rob Couturier at (517) 202-4602 or 

email robcouturier@msn.com. 
CHAPTER 15

HERO911 AND SCHOOL 

GUARD WORK TOGETHER 

FOR SAFER SCHOOLS

By Becky Lewis

January 2013

The question being asked by the app is at once simple 

and terrifying: Confirm armed intruder? With one stab 

of a finger indicating yes, a 911 call goes out and 

a burst message goes to all the other smartphones 

carried by teachers in the school.

And to the smartphones of every participating law 

enforcement officer within a 10-mile radius, whether on 

duty or off.

The app in question is School Guard, a for-fee service that works in conjunction 

with the Hero911 app (free to law enforcement.) The school district in Columbia, 

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CH.15: HERO911 AND SCHOOL GUARD WORK TOGETHER FOR SAFER SCHOOLS • 51

Ill., began serving as the test site for School Guard on Jan. 14, 2014, with the 

app fully operational in all four of its schools by the end of February. The app 

also includes an option to call for help in the event of another type of emergency, such as a medical emergency in a classroom; an option for an administrator 

to send an emergency-related message to all teachers; and the capability to 

upload a school’s security plan.

“When I attend school safety conferences, 

I feel we are ahead of the curve because 

we already have many things in place such 

as tools to facilitate a quick lockdown and 

buzzer systems at school entrances, and 

we are in the process of installing shatterproof film on the glass. We have been 

conducting active shooter and hostage 

drills with the students and staff in our 

schools since the 2005-2006 school year, 

years before the Illinois state legislature 

required them,” says Assistant Superintendent of Schools Dr. Beth Horner. “If there 

is ever an opportunity to increase safety for 

our students and staff, we take it, so when 

the SchoolGuard developers asked us to 

be the test site, we were really excited.”

Because two of the app’s four developers have children in the Columbia schools, 

it seemed a natural fit as a test site. A St. Louis bedroom community of approximately 10,000 residents, the school district enrolls some 2,000 students in pre-K 

through 12th grade, and has a strong working relationship with the Columbia 

Police Department and Chief Joe Edwards. 

“In today’s world, if a police department doesn’t work with the local schools to 

do active shooter training, the department isn’t serving the community as well as 

it should,” Edwards says. “I think working with school districts should be one of 

the highest priorities around the country right now.”

As part of working with the school district, Edwards has ensured that Hero911 

will be downloaded to all of the new smartphones his officers receive. On the 

day of the January 14 demo, Edwards looked at his own smartphone and saw 

that it indicated 56 officer members of the Hero911 network could be found 

within a 10-mile radius of the school, and “knowing that we have only two working cars on the street at any time, it’s good to know we would have an immediate response from that many officers in the event that an active shooter event 

takes place.”

Getting the word out quickly to that number of officers is the goal that technical expert Nate McVicker had in mind when he came up with the idea in spring 

2013. McVicker and three other partners, another technical expert and two 

retired officers, worked together to refine the idea and make it a reality. 

“We brainstormed and realized that there is no other app that notifies officers 

directly on their smartphones,” says one of those partners, Col. Michael Snyders 
(ret.) of the Illinois State Police. “The more we talked to people about this need, 

the more we became excited that we could fill a niche and save seconds in 

response time. We’re trying not to overplay the concept that seconds count, but 

it’s true. With the app, all officers in the area – on and off duty, retired and active 

– will find out sooner and be able to respond quickly. We’re trying to dramatically increase the pool of officers who may be in a position to neutralize the threat 

quickly.” 

The Hero911 app launched in November 2013 and after the first month, 

some 4,000 officers had signed on, approximately half in Illinois and the 

rest scattered around the country. To download the app, an individual must 

visit the Apple ITunes store (https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/hero911/

id724001857?ls=1&mt=8_ or Google Play (https://play.google.com/store/

apps/details?id=com.guard911.heronetwork), and after downloading, fill out 

a registration form that goes to a vetting team to ensure the individual meets 

qualifications before the app is activated. Officers receive notification of 

approval with 48 hours. 

To learn more about the SchoolGuard demo project, contact Dr. Beth Horner at 

horner.beth@columbia4.org.

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CH.15: HERO911 AND SCHOOL GUARD WORK TOGETHER FOR SAFER SCHOOLS • 53
CHAPTER 16

KIDSSAFE PROVIDES 

PARENTS WITH FREE 

TOOL AND TRAINING

By Becky Lewis

April 2014

Glancing in the rearview mirror, she catches sight of her 

12-year-old daughter, earbuds in place, head down, 

smartphone beeping as texts fly out and are answered. 

She smiles to herself and turns back to the road, 

unaware the exchange is not with one of her daughter’s 

classmates, but with a 18-year-old boy intent on 

persuading much younger girls to “sext” with him. 

However, after dropping her daughter at a friend’s 

for the evening and going on to a free cyber-safety 

seminar at her daughter’s school, she will gain access to a free tool that will help 

her find out – in time – how wrong she was.

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CH.16: KIDSSAFE PROVIDES PARENTS WITH FREE TOOL AND TRAINING • 55

Launched in March 2014 and sponsored by a multi-corporation foundation, 

the KidsSafe campaign uses off-duty and retired police officers to present free 

cyber-safety seminars for parents. Parents who attend these trainings receive 

free access to My Mobile Watchdog, a monitoring application designed to target cyber bullying and harassment, sexting and sextortion. My Mobile Watchdog allows parents to establish a list of approved callers, and sends an alert to 

parents if an unknown party attempts to contact a child. It also allows parents 

to view their child’s location and monitor text messages and phone calls. The 

Android-based application stores forensic information in a certified data center 

in the Cloud from which parents can download reports and potentially share 

them with school administrators and law enforcement. 

“Parents can set up rules such 

as ‘no texts after 9 p.m.’ They 

can allow or disallow any app, 

the camera or access to the 

web, and they can set up filters 

if they do allow Internet usage. 

It gives parents a broad range 

of tools,” says Bob Lotter, CEO 

of the company that produces 

MyMobileWatchdog. The company produces a similar tool 

called Radar, which is free to 

sworn law enforcement officers 

on request and has resulted in 

hundreds of child predators being arrested and convicted over 

the past 10-plus years.

“We are trying to get parents to use technology to stem the tide. Education 

alone is not enough: we can’t just bring them to a meeting and teach them 

about the danger without also giving them the technology to effectively manage 

what their kids are being exposed to,” he says.

In order to provide free technology to parents, the developer began seeking out 

corporate funding partners and experienced Internet Crimes Against Children 

(ICAC) investigators, as well as developing affiliations with school districts. The 

program originally launched in California; Jefferson County, Colo.; and the 

Chicago suburb of Naperville. KidsSafe will work with any interested law enforcement agency to provide localized training, and train-the-trainer instruction 

offered through the National Association of School Resource Officers (NASRO) 

will also help spread KidsSafe more widely across the country.

Lotter made a presentation on KidsSafe, and Det. Rich Wistocki of the Naperville 

Police Department offered an overview of the train-the-trainer instruction 

at the NASRO Annual Conference July 13-15, 2014, in Palm Springs, Calif. 

School resource officers interested in becoming trained to present KidsSafe in 

their communities can make arrangements through the NASRO website 

(www.nasro.org). 

“I think it will be a fantastic union of all three parties. It’s just what SROs need, 

because many of them don’t understand what Internet crimes entail,” Wistocki 
says. “We’ll be teaching them to investigate computer crimes and to empower 

the parents to work with them.”

Wistocki, who has worked in cybercrime investigations since 1997, says the field 

has evolved from going on AOL in the early years with a fake persona to dealing 

with the present-day bewildering abundance of technology. 

“First it was instant messages on the computer, now predators contact children 

over their phones,” Wistocki says. “I’ve been using Radar since 2005. Prior to 

adopting it, I had to take screen shots of a ‘conversation with a bad guy.’ The 

tool carves the entire conversation into a neat report. The amount of time it 

saves and the strength of the admissible evidence it provides is incredible.”

MyMobileWatchdog also can provide an incredible amount of information to 

parents – if they can be persuaded to use it. Wistocki says there are times that 

law enforcement plans a big event, and only a few parents show up: “The reason 

they give for not showing up is ‘my kid would never do that.” What they really 

mean is ‘I hope my kid would never do that.’ They don’t realize that predators 

are not only 40-year-old creepy guys anymore. They may be 18, 16, 14. I’ve had 

children as young as eighth grade collecting images of child pornography and 

threatening other kids.”

Wistocki says he has found that working together with school administrators 

to attach the training to an already scheduled event results in a higher attendance, helping him achieve his “calling to teach parents. Within 30 days of every 

parent presentation I do, a parent calls me and says he’s found something. I’ve 

had them call me as quickly as three hours later – at 1 in the morning! It only 

works on Androids and Blackberrys, and parents are turning in their iPhones and 

switching to Android so they can monitor their kids. 

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“The parents who take the training tell other parents, and they want to attend training and get the 

tool too,” he adds. “That way, the nets get bigger 

and wider, and we catch more predators and save 

more kids.”

Saving more kids is Lotter’s goal as well, as he says 

he encourages other providers of similar technologies to also provide free product to parents: “I’m 

not doing this to promote my product. I’m doing it 

to promote child safety.”

Law enforcement agencies interested in presenting 

KidsSafe training in their local schools may visit 

www.MyMobileWatchdog.com for information on 

how to qualify for subsidized training.

CH.16: KIDSSAFE PROVIDES PARENTS WITH FREE TOOL AND TRAINING • 57
CHAPTER 17

“PANIC BUTTON” RADIOS 

COULD SAVE THE SECONDS 

THAT COUNT

By Becky Lewis

June 2014

Recycling has taken on a whole new meaning in Salem, 

N.H.: It could save lives as well as resources.

Not long after the incident at Sandy Hook Elementary 

School in December 2012, the police department in 

Salem (pop. 28,776) began replacing its radios, and 

Officer Matt Norcross, the department’s roving school 

resource officer for the town’s six elementary schools, 

came up with a suggestion for repurposing the old 

units: “There was a lot of talk in the media and locally 

about schools installing panic buttons, but some panic buttons have to go a 

relay at an alarm company and that adds time to our response. In the event of a 

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CH.17: “PANIC BUTTON” RADIOS COULD SAVE THE SECONDS THAT COUNT • 59

situation like what happened at Sandy Hook, someone who truly wants to get in 

doesn’t wait for someone to open the door, they smash their way in. Response 

time is critical.”

To speed up response time, Norcross suggested placing one of the older radios 

in each school, with every function disabled except the panic button that connects a user directly to 911 dispatch. The radios are located in each principal’s 

office and authorized users are instructed to hit the button only in the event 

of a life-threatening emergency. Each radio is programmed with the name of 

the originating school, which will show on the dispatch screen and on terminals in the department’s cruisers, so they immediately know the location of the 

emergency.

“If there’s an accident on school grounds, 

or a parent yelling in the lobby, they know 

to call 911, because if this button is activated, it will immediately initiate an all-out 

response. The individual who pushed it will 

be able to have a brief conversation with 

the dispatcher and describe the emergency, but our procedures also instruct them 

to keep the channel clear for police use as 

much as possible,” Norcross says. “I think 

for us that ability to gather information is 

key. It’s not just a static alarm.”

Salem PD placed one radio in each of the 

town’s six elementary schools, and two in 

the high school and middle school due to 

the buildings’ size. The SROs – Norcross 

and two other officers assigned specifically to the middle school and high school 

– regularly test the radios and ensure that office staff who have access are wellversed in the written procedures for use. Although schools can only call out on 

the panic button frequency, they can hear other frequencies.

“If they hear sirens go by their school, they can listen to see if something is 

going on that they need to be aware of. We do alert them about incidents in the 

neighborhood, but this is a fallback for them,” Norcross says.

He has shared the idea at several events, including the Massachusetts Juvenile 

Police Officers Association annual school safety conference in early 2014. There, 

its simplicity drew attention from Michelle Gay, one of the founders of Safe 

and Sound: A Sandy Hook Initiative (http://www.safeandsoundschools.org/ourteam-safe-and-sound-schools/), who began promoting it on the organization’s 

website. 

“We want all agencies and school districts to hear about what we’re doing here 

in Salem,” Norcross says. “We were fortunate in that we were in the process of 

replacing our radios, so the idea cost us nothing. There would be an expense 

involved for an agency that is not in the same situation, but we believe there’s 

no way to initiate a response faster. And in today’s world, every second counts.”

For more information on Salem’s “panic button” radio project, contact Officer 

Matt Norcross at MNorcross@sau57.org.
CHAPTER 18

APP PROMOTES 

PARTNERSHIPS WITH 

CAMPUS POLICE 

By Becky Lewis

June 2014

The chimes and the warning voice on the intercom tell 

her that the library will close in five minutes. Gathering 

up her books and telling herself that if she doesn’t know 

the material by now, she never will, she heads for the 

door and the long cross-campus walk to her room. But 

before she heads out into the late evening darkness, 

she pulls out her smartphone, activates the LiveSafe 

security app offered by campus police and accesses the 

SafeWalk function. Through a real-time safety map and 

in-app messaging system, SafeWalk enables her to designate friends and family 

members to watch her as she walks home, so while she may walk by herself, she 

doesn’t walk alone. 

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CH.18: APP PROMOTES PARTNERSHIPS WITH CAMPUS POLICE • 61

Free to users in both Android and iOS versions, the app developed from the 

desire of co-founder Kristina Anderson to make college campuses safer places 

to live and study. Anderson, who survived three bullet wounds suffered during 

the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting, returned to the university to finish her degree 

and in the process, realized that campus safety remained a nationwide issue: 

“Instead of our tragedy remaining an isolated incident, more violence continues 

to happen on campuses, in the form of sexual assaults, bullying and shootings. 

In 80 percent of school shootings, one or two people had information that might 

have prevented the incident if someone had intervened.” 

Anderson went on to launch the Koshka Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving campus 

safety, and continues to work to raise 

awareness on the importance of 

school safety and violence prevention 

by sharing her story with audiences 

nationwide. The app, the brainchild of 

entrepreneur Shy Pahlevani, is a separate venture that grew from a desire 

to expand the potential of a traditional 

“text a tip” service to include two-way 

communication, the ability to send pictures and video, receive crime reports 

and more. 

“The app embodies the vision and movement that students are facing now on 

college campuses. LiveSafe is helping them navigate ways to keep themselves 

safer, more informed and aware by facilitating communication with police departments,” Anderson says.

One campus police department that partners with its constituents is Virginia 

Commonwealth University (VCU), where VCU Police Chief John Venuti replaced 

the university’s former text-tip program with the app. Adopting the app has 

allowed VCU to increase its community policing efforts, a huge plus for a school 

its size (more than 32,000 students, faculty and staff on campus). 

“It’s much more user-friendly and we’ve found the students really like the 

product. You hardly ever see them without their phones in their hands, and 

when they submit something, they expect a response. A lot of times we just say 

something like ‘thank you for contacting us, we’re dispatching a unit,’ and they 

appreciate the two-way dialog,” Venuti says. “For this demographic, calling 911 

is not something they do on a regular basis. We have a lot of dialog with students and we’re constantly trying to understand how they think. We encourage 

them to let us know if they see something, because we can’t address things we 

don’t know about.”

VCU became the first institution to launch use of the app at the start of the 

2013-2014 academic year, and had nearly 5,000 registered users by the end 

of the second semester. The police department receives around 10 tips from 

the app every day, which go to a console in the communications center. An 

incoming tip generates an audible alert, and 24/7, the dispatch staff provides an 
immediate, appropriate response. In addition to the one-on-one, two-way communication the app offers, it also can push messages to users in targeted areas, 

allowing police to, for example, alert only specific users about nearby towing.

“We get tips about suspicious people, about unauthorized vehicles parked in 

handicapped spots, and just a lot of questions about whether something should 

be happening,” Venuti says. “Recently we had a report of an individual engaging in lewd behavior in a vehicle, and we were able to quickly resolve that situation. We received tips about a power outage in an area near campus, and based 

on those tips, deployed extra officers until power was restored.”

VCU has also taken advantage of the robust analytics the app offers to determine which outreach strategies have effectively increased the number of users, 

and also to determine reporting patterns. Some 60 percent of reports received 

by VCU come in anonymously, and many involve disturbances, suspicious activity, assault and harassment. Venuti says that in addition to providing the useful 

analytics, the app’s developers are very responsive to feedback: “As with any 

new technology, the good stuff evolves every day. The stuff that is new today is 

outdated tomorrow, and this app is really focused on evaluation based on user 

demand and feedback.”

With 90 sworn officers and more than 200 security personnel, VCU has the 

largest university police department in Virginia. To learn more about the university’s use of the LiveSafe app, contact Public Information Officer Corey Byers at 

(804) 828-3907, email byersc@vcu.edu

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CH.18: APP PROMOTES PARTNERSHIPS WITH CAMPUS POLICE • 63
CHAPTER 19

CAMPUS VIDEO SHOWS “THE 

WAYS OUT” OF AN ACTIVE 

THREAT SITUATION

By Becky Lewis

March 2014

In baseball, there are three outs in an inning. According 

to a video produced by the University of WisconsinMadison Police Department, in an active threat 

situation, there are five.

“Preventing Mass Casualty Shooting in a Campus 

Setting,” originally produced in 2008 and updated in 

2013, emphasizes five strategies students, faculty and 

staff should remember if they ever find themselves 

faced with an active threat: 

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CH.19: CAMPUS VIDEO SHOWS “THE WAYS OUT” OF AN ACTIVE THREAT SITUATION • 65

• Get Out.

• Call Out.

• Hide Out.

• Keep Out.

• Take Out.

Chief Susan Riseling explains 

the strategies grew out of 

post-event analysis of the 2007 

Virginia Tech shooting, which 

indicated far lower rates of 

casualties in classrooms where 

students took some kind of action rather than simply staying 

in place and waiting for help to 

arrive. The department coupled that analysis with a look at the reactions of the 

passengers on United Airlines Flight 93 on Sept. 11, 2001, and developed the 

strategies outlined in the video. 

“We start with ‘Escape:’ Evacuate if you can, that’s the first and most important 

thing to do. Summon help, call 911, and then don’t call/tweet/text a whole 

bunch of other people and fill up the circuits,” Chief Riseling says. “If you can’t 

get out, then hide anywhere you can conceal yourself. If getting into a closet 

won’t, or doesn’t, work, then prevent entry by blocking the door with whatever 

is nearby, even if it’s only a notebook. A pile of tables and chairs could slow a 

person down enough for law enforcement to get there in time.”

The fifth and final message is that if all else fails, fight back: “After Columbine, 

the nation’s schools started running drills where they taught elementary school 

students to turn out the lights, huddle in a corner and listen to the teacher, and 

hope that danger passes by. When they reached high school and college, all 

they’d been taught was to be quiet and listen to the teacher. We want them to 

understand that they’re now able to think and take action for themselves.”

The strategies outlined in the video came to national attention through several 

avenues after the Aurora theater shooting, Chief Riseling says, and since that 

time she has given numerous presentations across the country on strategies for 

dealing with active threats. Several universities have produced their own videos 

modeled on “Preventing Mass Casualty Shooting in a Campus Setting,” while 

others have asked for a copy of the University of Wisconsin-Madison video. For 

those who ask, Riseling says, the department will provide a copy and charge 

only reproduction costs: “There are other videos out there made by for-profit 

companies, but that’s not for us. As long as it helps, that’s all I care about.” 

The university uses the video as part of an hour-long training program that first 

and foremost emphasizes prevention through being alert to warning signs. 

Showing the video is the last step in the training. (Both the original sevenminute version and the five-minute update were shot on and around the 

936-acre Madison campus, where Riseling and her staff of 70 sworn officers, 
54 security officers and 25 administrative personnel have responsibility for 

66,000 students, faculty and staff.)

“The university has lots of strategies for getting troubled individuals off a path 

that can led to violence. Lots of work goes on in that area every day in hope that 

our students never have to use the strategies from the video,” Chief Riseling 

says.

Chief Riseling has led the University of Wisconsin-Madison Police Department 

since 1991. She is a nationally recognized subject-matter expert in date and 

acquaintance rape, crowd management and active shooter prevention. For more 

information or to request a copy of the video, email uwpolice@mhub.uwpd.

wisc.edu. Requests will be vetted; the video is available to police departments, 

universities and school districts.

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CHAPTER 20

WISCONSIN HIGH SCHOOL 

FIRST IN NATION TO

USE TOOL TO PLAN

SPORTING EVENT DRILLS

By Becky Lewis

June 2014

Safety drills, they’ve become just another part of 

the school routine. Follow the teacher’s directions, 

leave the classroom quickly and safely, and head for a 

designated meeting place outside. But disaster doesn’t 

always strike during classtime. It can strike during an 

assembly, a pep rally, the big soccer game. What then?

At Wisconsin’s Menomonee Falls High School, 

spectators will know what to do then too, thanks to 

a planning tool implemented during the 2013-2014 

school year.

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Developed through the National Center for Spectator Sports Safety and Security (NCS4) at the University of Southern Mississippi, SportEvac is a low-cost 

planning and drilling tool that creates site-specific 3-D simulations of sporting 

venues to assist schools with developing evacuation plans and creating drills 

that implement those plans. The high school in Menomonee Falls, a village of 

more than 35,000 people that is part of the greater Milwaukee area, is the first 

secondary school in the United States to use the software. (A number of colleges 

and universities already use it.) The school has plans in place for the 3,500-seat 

football stadium, the 1,200-seat soccer stadium, and the 1,600-seat gymnasium, 

and plans for the remainder of the school’s sporting venues and the auditorium will be in place by the start of the 2014-2015 academic year. Discussions 

about implementing the tool in the district’s middle school and four elementary 

schools are ongoing.

“SportEvac takes our Autocad drawings 

and creates 3-D models. It looks at exits, 

accessibility and traffic patterns. When 

we run a drill, it times how long it takes to 

evacuate,” says Menomonee Falls Athletic Director Ryan Anderson. “I travelled 

to Mississippi for program training, and 

the developers worked with my team and 

showed us how to add features and to 

refine the plans as necessary. We’ll use it 

to run drills on an ongoing basis, and every 

event worker has to sign off that they’ve 

watched our training video on how to 

evacuate.”

At a recent all-school assembly, in honor of the volleyball team’s winning the 

state championship, Menomonee Falls ran a drill. It took less than two minutes 

to evacuate 1,600 persons from the gym, Anderson says, although he expects 

it would take somewhat longer at a sporting event where the spectators included parents and other non-students who will have to take their cues from event 

workers.

“Whenever the school does an evacuation drill, we notify the fire department, 

and the chief was certainly surprised we were doing an evacuation from the gym 

because we’d never done one before. He was also surprised by how smoothly 

it went,” Anderson says. The athletic director works closely with the fire department and with Menomonee Falls’ school resource officer when planning the 

drills, and he will make a full report on the tool’s effectiveness at this summer’s 

annual planning meeting that includes the school leadership team, the school 

district superintendent, the fire chief and the Menomonee Falls police chief. This 

same group tasked him with coming up with an evacuation plan a year ago.

“I had just finished my first year as athletic director, and at this meeting, we 

were discussing evacuations and the group asked me to come up with a formal 

plan for sporting events. At the same time, I was involved in leadership training 

where all the participants were challenged to come up with a way to save the 

school district $15,000,” Anderson says. (For example, a soft savings for potential injury can exceed more than $100,000 per person injured.) “I talked to the 
other schools in our athletic conference and found that not one of them had a 

written plan for sporting events. I researched our options and learned about this 

simulation model, and I was just floored to find out we were the first high school 

in the country to use it.”

Because of its status as the inaugural high school to use the tool, the district has 

been selected by NCS4 for the National High School Sport Safety and Security 

Facility of Merit Award, “when I report back to the planning group this summer 

on what I did, I think they will be pleased.”

Although the service is not free, the cost is relatively low, and Menomonee Falls 

is using beverage vendor proceeds that traditionally have gone to the athletic 

programs to finance the project: “This purchase will serve the school well for a 

long time.” 

For more information on Menomonee Falls High School’s use of SportEvac, 

contact Ryan Anderson at AndeRya@sdmfschools.org.

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CH.20: WISCONSIN HIGH SCHOOL FIRST IN NATION • 71
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

To join in online discussions about school safety with other 

professionals in the field, send an email to asknlectc@justlink.

org and ask to become a member of JUST-Link, an online 

community for public safety professionals.

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.