School security expert on Texas shooting: Smaller communities ‘challenged’ by new tactical training
School security expert Kenneth Trump on Texas Department of Public Safety reporting the Robbs Elementary School door was unlocked.
A safety expert and president of the National School Safety and Security Services on Thursday outlined a series of steps for schools to implement nationwide in the wake of Tuesday's mass shooting that left 19 students and two teachers dead at Robb Elementary School in Texas.
The Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District (UCISD) in Texas had security measures in place before Tuesday's deadly shooting, with its website stating that the district has "proponents to curb and/or eliminate" elements of" violence, vandalism, disruptions and fear" in its schools to "provide a safe and secure environment for all." But the school was not locked down at the time of the shooting, proving that safety protocols are only as good as the "human factor behind it," Kenneth Trump said on "The Story."
"The best practices certainly are focusing now on access control. It just proves you can put the equipment on the building but there’s the human factor behind it," he told host Martha MacCallum. "Any security technology is only good as the weakest human link behind it. We’re constantly working to have situational awareness."
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Flowers are placed on a makeshift memorial in front of Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, on May 25, 2022. (CHANDAN KHANNA/AFP via Getty Images)
Trump said that schools should focus on shifting their situational awareness, which includes "looking for pattern recognition, [knowing] what is normal, what is not, making sure that we have the warning signs on not just see something, say something, but do something. "
"It’s troubling to people to think that some of the best practices still need to be worked on, that we really learned a couple of decades ago," he added.
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Still, Trump said, "There are some things that schools can do to make these schools easier for the good guys to get in and harder for the bad guys to get in."
People leave the Uvalde Civic Center following a shooting earlier in the day at Robb Elementary School, Tuesday, May 24, 2022, in Uvalde, Texas. (William Luther/The San Antonio Express-News via AP)
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Trump said schools should install security locks and provide local law enforcement a spare key so they can get in in the event of a lockdown. Additionally, schools should provide law enforcement and first responders with "floor plans and blueprints given ahead of time so they have the layouts digitally or hard copied so they know the layout of the school," Trump said.
Schools with modernized surveillance cameras should have arrangements in place so that police can access real-time surveillance footage "to see what is going on in the hallway," Trump said.
"Those three examples of things you can do to help get dynamic entry in faster at planning with this," he added.