Three Things a Mass Murderer Looks For In a Security Team
Though mass murderers commit savage acts of violence that are often referred to as inhuman, the truth is, they are still very human with all the trappings of humanity. It’s sad that we all have the capacity to do terrible things, but the fact that humans are still humans opens a window into our understanding and ability to predict behavior. As humans, we have more in common than not, which is exactly what makes us predictable.
One thing about us humans is that we tend to take the path of least resistance. (Note that I said “tend to,” because there are always exceptions). This is also known as being lazy. Mass murderers don’t want resistance — it’s just too much work and not enough return on investment. According to research done on active shooter events in the U.S., the two main determining factors in how many people will be killed or injured in a single event are:
Accessibility of victims
Response time of police
Soft Targets
What mass murderers want — what they look for — are what we refer to in the industry as “soft targets.” Soft targets are those places without security measures like walls, gates, cameras, armed guards, and secure access points. These are places like cafes, malls, schools, churches, and office buildings. They are places with lots of people and little to no security, which equals a lot less work for the attacker.
A mass murderer is going to look for soft targets, a place that is:
Easy to get into
Target rich
Offers little to no resistance
So let’s not be that kind of place.
In order to be less soft, and therefore less desirable a target, we need to proactively harden our defenses. With the above data points in mind, what can we do to either A) deter an attack altogether, or B) limit the number of casualties? Since we can’t control the response time of the police, we’ll focus on what we can control.
First Steps
The first step to hardening your school, work, or church is, in my opinion, forming a security team. Not necessarily guards at the outset, but at least a team of security-minded individuals who have taken steps to deter a crime or act of violence from ever occurring. After all, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Taking steps to ensure you have locked doors, cameras, and secure points of access are all good places to start because they make your building harder to get into, thereby preventing access to potential targets.
That said, it’s difficult to articulate or quantify the benefit of having a well-trained, professional, physical presence on site to deter violence. Technology and locked doors alone will only get us so far.
Maybe you have a security team. Maybe it’s one that you outsourced to a security company, or maybe it’s a group of volunteers from inside your organization. But how well-trained are they? Are they overweight, out of shape, or just plain ancient? Do you know what their capabilities are? Do you think you could take them in a fight? “Oh, I don’t know about that,” you argue. Yes you do. Just look at them. Size them up. You know.
When you go to the beach and see a 400-pound lifeguard plopped atop the lifeguard chair spilling over the edges like a scoop of melting ice cream on a cone, does that image give you any sense of confidence that if you or your kids start drowning 50 yards from shore, they’d be able to do anything about it? Of course not because of course they couldn’t. How do you know if you’ve never seen them swim? You just know. Your security team is no different.
Three Things To Look For
If you have a security team, congratulations, you are one step ahead of all those other places who don’t. But having one is only half the battle. Here are three things your security team needs that a mass murderer is going to look for when deciding whether or not to attack or to just move on:
Presence
Is your security team hidden in an office somewhere or out where they can readily be seen by staff, students, and visitors? They need to be visible because their presence is the first level of deterrence. They should be out and about wearing some sort of identifiable uniform that stands out in color or composition from everyone else so they can easily be identified by the bad guy, the police, and everyone in between. The uniform should be clean and neat, worn with pride, and well-fitting. They don’t have to be a Mr. or Mrs. Universe, but they should have a physique and a demeanor that shows they maintain a level of fitness and possess self-confidence. If your team is either absent or looks tired, out of shape, and sloppy, then they are only a false-sense-of-security team.
Attention
Is your security team not just physically present, but mentally present as well? Are they aware of their surroundings or are they aloof with their faces buried in a screen or book — or worse — asleep? You wouldn’t tolerate an employee who you pay good money to to spend their shift on social media or watching Netflix, so why would you tolerate that in a security team paid to keep you safe? A would-be attacker will pick up on their attentiveness, or lack thereof, in a nanosecond, so be sure your team is always alert and ready. An attacker will be more than willing to exploit their apathy.
Competence
Is your security team well-trained, trained at all, or just a warm body in an ill-fitting uniform? If you outsource your security, do you know what level of training they actually have or what their capabilities are? If you have your own in-house team, whether paid or a group of volunteers, have you given them the tools and the training they need to do the job entrusted to them? Sure, they may have a passion to protect others, but a passion does not equal an ability. You can be sure that when it counts they will not rise to the level of your expectations, they will fall to the level of their training. To deter or stop an attacker, your team must be competent.
Red Team Your Team
The Red Team concept was born in the military to test operation orders to find weaknesses, exploit them, and turn them into a losing proposition. The purpose of the Red Team is not to put down or denigrate, it is to make the final version of the plan less susceptible to failure.
Generally speaking, it involves taking a group of people, dividing them in half, giving one team the objective of creating a mission plan or operations order, and taking the other team — the Red Team — and tasking them with finding ways to disrupt it.
Red-teaming a plan is a way of bringing pie-in-the-sky ideas back down to terra firma. Sometimes when you only see one side of a plan you automatically think it’s foolproof and failsafe. That’s where the Red Team comes in; to bring reality back to the table. Red-teaming also has found its way into the corporate world and is a proven method of field-testing ideas and plans before going through the expense and pain of launching what would turn out to be a bad plan.
Take the Red Team concept and go look at your site through the eyes of a bad guy to see whether or not the security measures you have in place — including your security team — are what you think they are. If you’re too invested, don’t have the time, or fear it might be a blind spot for you, just give us a call, we’ll do it for you.
