How Fewer SROs and Police Officers Impact K-12 Security Strategies

Welcome to the Secured podcast. I'm your host, Mike Matranga. We're in the ASAP security studios with owner of ASAP Security, Mike Monsef. Today we want to talk about a couple of different topics of discussion that have been recently on the minds of a lot of people in the United States, specifically those within the law enforcement fields and those within the law enforcement fields within our schools. We want to talk about HB 13 here in the state of Texas that is being pushed through our legislation, which would essentially give teachers and educators a $25,000 stipend to become what is now going to be called a sentinel in the K-12 security space. And so I'll turn it over to Mike with the simple question of or just a reflection of some events that have happened over the last couple of years since Covid and during Covid And prior to Covid, we had an uprising of protests and demonstrations throughout the United States shortly after the George Floyd murder by some Minneapolis, Minnesota police officers. Rightfully so, not encouraging any type of violence or the behaviors that followed, but definitely the prosecution of bad actors and law enforcement. And so, you know, understanding the use of force continuum, being involved and being in the law enforcement field for such a long time, I definitely think that the outcome of that trial was was warranted. I definitely think that it was just and, you know, we can have our political differences and political opinions or differences of opinion, but at the end of the day, what I think that those officers lost was a sense of compassion for that individual, regardless of what he had done at that point, he was in a position of disadvantage and therefore should have been treated differently. So with that said, we want to talk about today HB 13 of arming teachers. We want to talk about responsible gun ownership, and we want to talk about this narrative that some within the political space has pushed to defund law enforcement throughout the United States. And now we're starting to see this backtrack of some of the policies and some of the procedures that they pushed out shortly after some of these demonstrations throughout the United States of disarming this defunding and removing law enforcement from schools. Right. Because we're mostly focused on the school security space. So what are your thoughts on that? I've got a lot of thoughts. That was a really long loaded question there. That was very. Long and it was a very loaded question. I wanted to make sure that you got all of it. All right. So I think it's important to start with law enforcement in general. So our company does a lot of work for law enforcement agencies, city governments, in looking at how to help secure, how to leverage technology to to help bridge the gap between the shortage of officers that they have. You know, when I first started working with law enforcement, you know, I thought that they had the financial resources or, you know, they could go and get the money that they needed. And now, you know, being intimately involved in that purchasing process and getting into the financials and looking at, you know, cities budgets and things like that, you know, we're based in Houston. It's been national news for a number of years, going back and forth with our negotiations with police and fire and pay and, you know, different types of negotiations between the unions and things like that. What we look at or what you miss, if you look at the city's budget, these numbers for police and fire are huge numbers, right? And sometimes people just focus on the number and not what makes that number up. When you get into some of these law enforcement agencies across the country that we've dealt with. Right. Where does that money go? A lot of these departments are running their entire operation on single digit percentages for the entire organization, and that includes technology, buildings, vehicles, training, weapons. Everything is in those single digit numbers. And the remaining 90 plus percent of that budget goes to payroll. Right. And so we have less officers today on the street than we used to have. And the the funding just set back the entire law enforcement world across the country. Right. Because as the states and cities went to go defund some of the funding from the federal level, also slowed down some of those grants. And so where we already had constrained law enforcement budgets and resources, they were constrained even more. And so then you add in things like civil unrest, protest, Covid, all of these things where now we need more officers. And they have less and they don't have the budget to go in there. Even if they were able to go through and train and find candidates and get them ready to put them out on the street. They don't have the money to pay the officers. And the rate of retention, they can't keep up. They're constantly trying to backfill well. And that narrative has got to change. So, you know, we started you talked a little bit about the George Floyd officers, right, in That was a situation where Absolutely. Those officers overstepped the lines. Right. But there's so many other times where an incident happens and immediately the media runs with it and they're found guilty. And the media before the facts are even out, before anybody's even seen a video, seen any of the body cam footage, knows the situation, all of the things that happened that goes over it instantly, you know, oh, this is police brutality. And it's it's no longer innocent and proven guilty for police officers. For police officers. Right. Right. So why. Would you want to be a police. Officer? It's directly impacting that. Right. And some of these people, even when they were found innocent, had to move over death threats and their family, you know, being threatened by physical violence. They've had to change their names. They've had to move, and they were found innocent. And there is no support for them and there is no lease. More and more people have less respect for them than ever before. And so as we you know, you look at that these impact those recruiting numbers, right? Like how do they come back and do that? And the defunding just amplified all of these already issues? Well, I mean, you know, speaking from the perspective of a school resource officer or someone who managed 19, you know, when and then being a former school board member, you know, and being on the Finance Committee, I knew how much money was allocated to, you know, whatever we had. Right. And so. You know, I understand that the goal of of an educational institution is to educate children. I certainly understand that. But if we can't provide a safe learning environment for them, then what is going to be our outcome? How do we measure success? If they can't go to school and feel safe there? And so. And a lot of times those SROs are actual law enforcement. Officers. A lot of them are. Yes. So if they already are short staffed at the police department and we don't have the people and we have less officers than ever, how do we now try to go and tap that same limited resource and say, oh, yeah, I need you to go work, you know, 8 to 5 or 7 to 4 at the school at the same time, we don't have the resources to actually protect the city. Well, my budget, you know, total budget, this was a total budget for SROs. All of our technology software, our paraprofessional staff that we're security officers or security monitors at the time was about 2 to 3% of total budget. Right. And so, you know, we know and experts will tell you in the education space that the kids have to be in a safe and secure learning environment. Well, if that's such an important component, and we were one of the better districts, our ours was only 2 to 3%. I can only imagine when you go to some of these districts, it's probably well below 1%. The total budget that goes towards keeping your kids or America's kids safe in schools. So, you know, we have to, I think, start looking at you know, we look at everything from architecture, right? In architecture, we're starting to see these beautiful buildings being designed, but they're not, you know, taking into consideration any type of security features. We've been in one of the most beautiful high schools I've ever seen in my life, well over $100 million. All of the classrooms are glass. Great for the learning environment, but not taking it into consideration. They can't learn if they don't feel safe. You know, if you look at the standard response protocol of, you know, lock, lockdown, secure, hold, evacuate and shelter in place. Let's just take, for example, a lockdown. Locks, lights out of sight. Where do you get out of sight? So what I'll tell you is, if you're an educator and you've passed a bond and you're building these schools, don't be convinced by these architects that you need to install all this glass in your classrooms because it's, you know, let's think about also, it has to be a healthy balance, right? Not only is. It not safe, it's also a distraction. Right. Let's not maybe, maybe not so much at the high school level. I'm sure it's still a distraction there. But you start getting into elementary and you have a wall of glass. Every kid that goes across there walks in front of their whole class, is going to look at it. And then you take the class clown, he's going to the bathroom. He can put on a show all the way around and completely trainwreck the learning process of all my wife's school. She's at a she's at a joint campus, elementary and middle school. Brand new school, probably, I don't know, three years old. Same thing. Architect firm comes in. They they build out this beautiful campus and it is beautiful. Classrooms are all windows, you know. So what did they do? What did the district do last week or last year? Oh, I think we might have made a mistake by going with this design of having classroom walls made out of windows and they put up mini blinds, right? So then now they're putting up mini blinds, which is an additional cost that they weren't factoring in. A mini blinds, you know, take damage. Right. You got kids. What are they going to do is like, hold on them. They bend them, they break them, They then you have them where they don't close. Right? And then some are open and some aren't. And, you know, years ago, the the school was always built to a different standard. Right? So if you think about even, you know, and we heard some of this from Brant Cooley the other day, right? Yep. And he was talking about Hurricane Ike or, you know, one of one of the hurricanes and how they had all of the city emergency service, fire, police, everything else had taken refuge in a school, in a school to ride the storm out for several reasons. A, how it was built, and, B, it was the highest point in the county. Right. And so when you when you think about that, those things used to be taken into consideration, elevation, the materials that they were built at. You used to be able to see a tornado like absolutely rip through a town. And there was typically one building that was still. Standing, usually a. School. It was usually a school, right? And it's because the hallways, all the classrooms were made out of cinderblock and concrete filled cinderblock. They had steel framed doors, solid wood doors. How many schools have we been in recently that had, you know, hollow core, like residential type doors? So you could just put a fist right through. Well, no more solid doors. Yeah, right. I mean, some of the some of the, some of the best campuses that we walk into are old schools. Yeah, I love them. I walk in there and I look and it's got cinderblock walls. It's like, great. They had lockers on the outside of it. You had a whole nother barrier. There, you know, a whole ballistic properties there that people don't think about. So if you've got an old school, think twice about tearing it down. You've got cinderblock walls. Don't listen to that nonsense about you don't need cinderblock walls anymore. And I'm not you know, listen, I'm advocating for a healthy, healthy educational environment. But like you said, it's got to be a healthy balance, right? I mean, we should be improving security and building materials, not coming back. Yeah. When you're when you're guiding principle is letting in natural light and you're building something out of that, then maybe there's there's a challenge there. Right? And we kind of got really off on it. We started out on defunding police, and now we're talking about building architecture and building structures and how we factor in that. I can get way into the deep woods about how we did that at my previous district, which I think is still pretty smart, how we did it. Let's save that for another day. We'll save that for another day. But let's get back to talking about defunding of the police. And I think, you know, one of the the things that we're starting to see. It's really like a pendulum swing, right? We talk about this, right? Like over and over again where, okay, hey, this event happened and somebody with a gun was able to neutralize the threat and saved all these lives. Okay. Guns are good, right? And responsible gun ownership is great and everybody should have a gun. And then there's a mass shooting somewhere and then it goes back over here. And then it's the same thing that you see on the other side. Okay, guns are bad. We need to get rid of them AR style rifles or need to go away. Then the pendulum swings back over. Hey, the incident happened with police. Police are bad. We're going to defund them. And then crime goes up through the roof. People are being robbed. Stores are being taken advantage of. You know, extremely liberal DA's that don't prosecute anybody. Then it swings back. People in there like, Oh, we need more police. The same ones are calling to defund the police and to remove SROs from school, or the same ones that when something happens to their child or to them and they've been victimized, they're the ones that are calling for the police. The same people that are talking about defunding. And so what we're seeing in the United States, not only with with law enforcement, is a lot of people don't want to be law enforcement officers anymore. We're seeing record rates of retirement. We're seeing, you know, low retention numbers. I mean, I'm sorry, high retention numbers. We're not able to retain people. We're starting to see people not wanting to go into the education space. My wife, 24 years, she's got five and a half years left to retire the day that she hits her retirement age and date, she's out, you know. Well, I've heard of a new something new now where the schools are actually, it was new to me. Let me say that. Hire former administrators to help with retention. And so they're now independent contractors that then go out and work with new teachers and try to explain that all of the trials and tribulations that they're going to is is normal. It's like a motivational speaker for try to keep them engaged. Because what they're finding is, is that even though they're struggling to get teachers, when they do get new teachers and they get into a situation that maybe the administration is not supporting them or their kid, that first major conflict with parents and teachers, that those new teachers are like, I'm out. Well, I think what people are not understanding and I had this conversation last night with a really close friend of mine at Texas City ISD. He's our, you know, head football coach and a man that I tremendously admire for his work in mentoring kids and trying to make men, men, you know, the old school tactics of holding kids accountable, you know, honoring your word. Your handshake is as good as a contract, presenting yourself to people in a very approachable manner, speaking with respect. And that's Sean Evans over at Texas City ISD. And we were talking about this last night, and one of the things that we were discussing was that people are tired, teachers are tired, staff is tired, SROs, they are tired because it's it's so easy for people that are disconnected from the education space to include some of our elected officials in one of the common things I hear them say is, well, it starts at home. People always say it starts at home. But like with Sean and I were talking about last night, is that these people that say that haven't been in a school in a very long time. Right. They haven't seen the amount of abuse verbally and physically that our staff takes on. They don't see the pain in some of these kids eyes because they don't have food in their stomach. They don't have a roof over their head or a consistent roof over their head. Their mother or their father is not there. The breakdown of American society and the traditional family unit has completely all but been destroyed from, you know, the mid 1980s until current day. And so it's easy to say it starts at home, but people think, oh, well, you know, educators educate kids. No, they're doing way more than that. They're educating your kid. They're teaching him and her about respect and honor and dignity and compassion and all of the things that a parent should be teaching them because they're not getting it at home. They're not. And so teachers of today are not just educating your kids. They are. I mean, listen, if I had it my way, I would propose that each teachers make $100,000 a year because that's the amount of work they're putting in. They deserve it. And I don't even know if that's enough. You know, they're being called to be way more than they ever have been. Correct. And so, you know, when I sit before Senate panels and, you know, I had a senator here, I don't know, a couple of years ago, we were talking about the behaviors in schools that are being so out of control. And they're you know, some of these kids are being diagnosed at record rates into the 504 special education programs, which is causing havoc upon the general population of the school, because some of these kids, you know, and some of them rightfully so, need additional care from an intellectual standpoint. Some of these kids are being diagnosed into behavioral or being diagnosed with. Behavioral disabilities that are causing havoc on the staff and on the students. And that is not creating a safe and secure environment that these people who make these laws for us like to preach. Right. And so then you have a shortage of staff. You have a defunded police department, which gives us less officers to use for SROs. It also increases the level of violence at the school. Right? Because as they have these limited resources, they're dealing with all these struggles. They're not getting what they need as far as honor and discipline and even a meal or a roof over their head, basic necessities. They become more aggressive. In many cases, they become a disruption to the class. And then that ultimately spills over to now an SRO or an administrator having to deal with that as well as the teacher. And there's frustrations all the way along, along the way. And so, yes, you know, some of this does start at home as far as providing the respect to honor the, you know, the basic care. And and the other part of it is just in general respect for people. And I remember vividly when my kids were young and they would just talk to adults and look them in the eye and that it started with public speaking. Right? They they got involved with public speaking and had to had to go out and present at a very, very early age and talk in front of a group of people. And they learned how to look at people in the eyes when they talked and how even today that doesn't happen. Right. Like it's just not a lot of times you talk to a kid and they're they're over here looking wherever. They're never looking at the person individually in the eyes. And and it has it has so much to do with respect. And and so as we continue to have less resources and we pull funding from these things, it just further and further sends us into a decline. I mean, you know, even even in my personal experiences, we had 19 officers at the former district that I was at, great group of men and women. They really were really good guys and gals there. I really respect them. They they did everything that I ever asked them to do and then some. But I will tell you, it's not always the same everywhere else. We had a little bit different approach to school security than most. You know, admittedly, when I first got there, we came in kind of hard with an ask to make policy, ask them to stop, tell them to stop, then make them stop. And then once we establish that, you know, hey, listen, we had to gain some type of control and understanding of what the what the boundaries were, then things became a lot easier by us establishing these more this more therapeutic mentoring type approach. So what we do know is through the National Threat Assessment Center, what they've stated is if a child that's on a pathway to violence, whether it be, you know, self harm or harm to others, has at least 1 to 2 trusted individual grown ups in their life. They are more than 90% likely to become or to get off that pathway to violence. And so, you know, we always talk about, you know, in society when I was growing up, I mean, I'm a I'm a kid of the 70s. So are you. You know, it was kind of Well, you're 80, right? You're 80, right? Yeah. Dang. Okay. Well, I was 77, but, you know, when we were growing up, it was kind of a, you know, your parents were your parents. But if an adult saw you doing something that you shouldn't have been doing, then they corrected that. It goes back to the saying of it takes a village, right? To a certain standpoint, when everybody had that same, same ideology. Right. That you were messing up in public or something like that, there would be an adult there. And I think we started seeing some of that decline. When you started hearing about people publicly shaming a parent for disciplining their kid and they they may not believe in some type of punishment and then somebody else did. And when we started getting into individuals business. Yeah. And then criticizing the parent instead of the kid's behavior. And listen, I'm not advocating for for any type of abuse or anything like that, but there there are definitely situations in your life where there was some type of consequence for your action that got you to change your behavior and outlook and that may have been with your own friends running around. You said something, you got instant feedback. You're like, okay, there's a consequence for what I say, right? So those types of things, we see less and less and we've seen this this decline just increase more. Well, I don't know about you, but I mean, for me, I never experienced that because I was an angel. Right. My parents will tell you that. Sure. I know better than that. I'm just kidding. I was I was pretty, pretty rowdy. I got some weapons occasionally, and that was all right. You know, but I really didn't have to catch many weapons from my dad because I always knew that, you know, everything that he taught us was about honor and respect and, you know, our family name and representing the family. Representing the family. You know, we're old school, Italian, Sicilian family. You you do something to degrade the name. Yeah, it's going to be a problem, you know, And so but but, you know, what I'm getting at is that a lot of these kids don't have that at home. And so it's responsible. It's the responsibility of all of us to provide some guidance. If you see a kid falling off, you know, you can tell when a kid is having issues. It is our responsibility to at least assist, have compassion for that kid. But I know. Your house is oftentimes similar to mine, that there's always people around, the kids are coming over and you get to visibly see the kids that are that are interacting with your kids and you can witness change and even engage or, you know, just just engage them in general. Right. And whatever the thought process may be or in conversation and challenge them. Right. And while they're there, you know, they're in your house. There's going to be manners and they're going to say that. And if they're out of line, you're going to call them out on it. Right. And it's no different at our house. You know, there's going to be in there and. Well, you know, I think, you know, everybody does things different and everybody's situations are different, you know, But we've got to get back to that. We've got to get back to having these open and honest conversations about, you know, helping each other because, you know, in reference to teachers, I mean, they're more than just educating your kids nowadays. It's a completely different I mean, teachers have always been an integral part of American society in the development of our children. But I think that the pressure is even on them harder now or more to to be more than just an educator, to be that that ear that they need to bend to. You know, I can remember when my wife and I were 22 years old, brand new, she just started working at was then Lamarque ISD. I don't know how many kids that we bought track shoes for. I mean, we were, we were kind of broke college, you know, recently married ourself. We didn't have a whole lot of money. I mean we, we mowed grass on Friday evening and Saturday just to make our bills. And we were helping out kids that we knew needed it. And a lot of times they never knew where the money came from or where the shoes came from. Because it's not about you. It's not about me. It's about getting. That kid taken care of. You know, getting back to, like s-r-o's, you know, SROs. I think there's this misunderstanding with me in particular. I've said on multiple occasions that SROs are not the the sole solution to resolving violence. I've taken heat for that. I've taken a lot of heat for that. I've said that multiple times is that SROs are a component of a holistic plan, right? They are not the sole solution. Right. They cannot be everything to everybody all at one time. Right. You know, and so do I think that we need an SRO on every school campus? Yes, I do. I 100% support that. But I also need people to understand that we put so much pressure on these guys and these girls or men and women in uniform to be more than what they're capable to be. Right. And so in that school resource officers position, they're a defender, they're an ear. When a kid is having a problem, they're, you know, a provider and they're present. They engage. Yes, they're supposed to engage and establish relationships and understand the security plan and, you know, have a good grasp of how to deploy an emergency operations plan and to delegate assets and to communicate on the radio and to possibly have to take one of these children's life. And that's what I don't think. Our legislature is is considering when they're talking about arming teachers. Teachers by nature are nurturing, giving. Yes. They're all of those things, nurturing, loving, giving, supportive. And now you want to put a weapon in the hand of the person who potentially has established a relationship with this child and think that they're going to be able to shoot him or her in the event of a crisis. And I'm not saying that they couldn't. I'm just saying that I think that you're it's almost like these folks that are pushing this narrative to consistently arm teachers is overlooking the fact that the data and research shows that arming teachers is not the solution. The solution is providing resources to these kids and identifying their behaviors and patterns of behavior. It's like we've skipped over all of that because it smells like work, right? Right. So let's just give a teacher a gun. And make it their. Problem. Yes. So now you have to educate them. You have to teach them to have respect for you and hold them accountable. And oh, yeah, you might have to take their life if they're threatening. And yeah. Like I said, like I said the other day when we did the other podcast on HB 13, HB 13, about the Sentinel program, I understand in some cases you have to arm teachers because of response time, right? But this this nonsense of just anybody who wants to carry a gun going through a, you know, a training program and then in the. Training program, like proposes, what, six, 16 hours? No, that's the Guardian program. This is different. So it would be upwards to 80, I believe. But still, that's it's still not enough. Two weeks worth of work time. I'm former presidential counter assault team operator. I can't tell you how many rounds we put downrange, you know, in training scenarios. But that was in full blown training scenarios, not just putting rounds down range. Right. Right. It was actually going through situations. Well, it was stress inoculation. Absolutely right. So I would ask those that are proposing this, are you having a stress inoculation course? Well, there's so much other. To think about. Like, you know, what's your backstop? Right. I mean, you're in a room full. You're in a hallway. Yeah, you're in a hallway. This is going on like what is your backstop? One of the largest schools. We've been in. Right. 275 yards. The longest hallway was 275 yards. How many people can that round go through? Tons. It's crazy. So these are things that people don't think about at all when they talk about this and the the training. I mean, it is, I believe, for law enforcement, it is one of the most challenging environments that they can go into, is that is a school and not only having to take care of themselves, go into a facility not knowing necessarily where things are coming, where somebody is at, how many people are involved, and they have to engage somebody and at the same time, they're engaging it. They're looking at everything that's around that target. Right. What else is around it? What is what is If I miss Well, what does this what does what happens? I'll even take it a step further. I was in a school or a school here a while back. This was a private school. Very, very respectable private school. Did a lot of really good things. One of the things that I felt, you know, through our process at M6 Global is identifying their vulnerabilities. One of the vulnerabilities and risks that we identified was priority number one, is that you have. Three individuals or four individuals on your campus that are all carrying a weapon. None of them know who they are, who each other is. They don't train together. They don't they don't know who the other one is. So what deconfliction policy do you have in place? How does the responding person who's carrying a weapon is not the bad guy who's causing harm? I mean, the the possibility in that scenario for one of the staff members to actually kill or injure another staff member just by increased just dramatically, dramatically increased. And so, you know, for me, I was I was kind of taken back that, you know, I asked the question, well, what have you done? You know, what policy sits in place that has authorized these people to carry a weapon? And it was well, it was at the administrator's discretion. Okay, great. But what about liability? What about deconfliction? And they're looking at me like, oh, what's deconfliction? Like, what other responding agencies are possibly going to respond here? And they gave rattled out a bunch. I said, Have you communicated with those responding agencies that you have armed staff because there's nothing displayed that says you have armed staff. And I'm not saying that you shouldn't do it. I'm just saying that if you're going to do it because it's your right to choose to do it, you've got to do it right. You've got to inform, You've got to inform people. You got to they have to be informed of who the others are. There's got to be a deconfliction policy. You know, there has to be a substantial amount of training involved. And so I was shocked to hear that they just kind of were winging it. It's like, oh, you have a license to carry issue through the state of Texas and I think you're okay. Well, I mean, my question would be, what makes them qualified to determine if someone is able to carry a weapon on campus? Well, and we've talked so much about mental health. What did they go through to see that this person isn't having some other stressors in life and could be potentially a workplace violence person versus someone? Oh, he seems okay. Well. This particular school has has SROs, right. And SROs don't even know and the. Sros don't even know who these individuals are. Right. So, you know, it's a very it's a very serious issue. And I think. This is what makes makes a lot of sense for what it is that you and I do. Right. Is that we are able to go in there, let them tell us what they've got going on, look at past histories, do an assessment, do an analysis of everything that they've got going on these a walk through these decisions that they've made and challenge them and then help them to fix these issues. Right. So we then are now able to say, okay, here's a here's a better way to do this. Here are all the reasons why you should do it. And we do this for not just schools, but for businesses, for organizations of all sizes and shapes, not just schools. And so the same problems exist in some corporate and even government facilities and governments got. It all figured out. Where, you know, they've have increased response times and they need to have a level of protection based off of whatever that facility is. You know, we've seen organizations go through and try to like build their own force, right? That's in their of employees. Right. And in some cases, that may very well be warranted. But there has to be a lot that goes into that. I have a client coming to my head right now as you're speaking about that, right. You know what I'm talking about. I do. And so the thing is, is that it it may very well make sense, Right? But it is that training. It is that execution. It is that communication. And when we talk about like defunding some of the things you start talking about, not just just within police or fire, but other systems that they use as well. So one of the challenges that we have in Texas specifically, but it's not unique to Texas, is when you get to an incident and we saw this in Santa Fe, when you saw this in Uvalde, there's no there's no comms, right? One agency can't talk to another agency. Right. Everybody is out on their own. And if you started to keep a repository within 911 dispatch, right. To say, pop up on there and say, hey, there are armed staff members at this facility, that technology is not there like it could be, but it takes money to implement those new technologies. I mean, you look at some of these major cities, some of these cities are still running on, you know, 15, 20, 20 year old, 30 year old dispatching software. And they don't have the money to upgrade. And there's no funds for it. And so we have a limited information. We have limited to no comms. And then you add this component of people potentially being armed and people not knowing who it is. It is an absolute recipe for disaster. You add into that, hey, any teacher that wants to sign up, you can go through that, Hey, we'll even pay you to do it. Like this just escalates this problem that already exists today to a whole nother level. So imagine now you've got these staff members you don't know. And oh, by the way, any one of the 200 teachers in this building armed could be armed. And we don't know who they are. We don't know. Who's the good guy and who's the bad guy. Right. You know, law enforcement has a whole lot of things that they use. Obviously, we're not going to talk about it, but to identify each other. Right. Different things that they say they have passwords, passwords, different things. Okay. That doesn't exist if you don't train that, you know. And. Well, I mean, if. You look historically, what we have seen is even those that have plans like Uvalde, they were one of the only districts that had a compliant plan. Right. They didn't use it. Right. Even if you have a plan, that doesn't mean that all of the other responding agencies who decide to self dispatch know the plan, know who's even in charge. And so what I will tell you and what I'll say directly to our law enforcement agencies is police yourself. You know, if you can respond within a certain period of time and you have an agreement with that entity, that school district, then then by all means, do what you've been designated to do. But if you do not, then go to the staging area. If they have a staging area, if they don't have a staging area, let us figure out and let us plan out that plan for you and designate that. And so don't just self dispatch just because you got a badge and a gun. It complicates things. You don't don't take my word for it. Look at historical data. Columbine. Parkland. Sandy. Sandy Hook. Uvalde. Santa Fe. They were all the same. Everyone was dispatching, self dispatching. It caused more problems. You know, one of the things that I think that this most recent shooting in the Allen Texas outlet malls put into perspective is something that I've heard you say over and over again because you know, you know, let's say Santa Fe, there was 300 over 300 officers on site, something like that. It was a lot. It was a lot, right? It was a lot. When we look at the Allen Outlet mall shooting, that was a single officer armed with a with a pistol and he shot a person that was armored. He had on bulletproof vest in the face. And and he had an AR 15 style rifle. And one officer was able to neutralize that threat. And so it didn't take 300, 400, however many hundreds of officers to do it. Now, could it have gone another way? Absolutely. But it puts into perspective that you don't need all of these people and how the the increase for potential miscommunication, identification between agencies, incident command all come into play. And historically, if you look at any of those school shootings that you were at in any of the analysis afterwards, there was never incident command established. Yeah, right. And so in theory, it's all great, right? But you have to practice well. You have to have those conversations prior to true memorandums of understanding. Like I said, when I when I started at Texas City, you know, I really, really made a couple of people, angry agencies, angry when I said, okay, if you can respond within five minutes, raise your hand. If you can't you know, if you're if you can respond within that five minutes, you've raised your hand. You're a primary responder, meaning we are allowing you inside. If you're a secondary responder, meaning you haven't or you can't respond within five minutes, you're a secondary responder. Stay outside of the building. Right. You know, engage in crowd control, establish a perimeter, start relaying information, establish a command center, direct media, start setting up the reunification that you're just as much a hero to do that than you are just standing inside of a hallway with, you know, 50 other guys looking in the direction of a shooter. Right. It doesn't take 50 people. It doesn't take ten people to isolate an individual shooter. Right. You know, don't get me wrong. You know, there's no incident that I don't think in a school, whether it be Parkland, Sandy Hook, Santa Fe, Uvalde or Columbine, that I don't think that, you know, a dozen officers could not have controlled. Right. And can kept contained. You know that comes down to. Money to have officers. Money to do training. Right. And having those resources available. Well, having the plan beforehand and then having those hard conversations with those entities. You know, what I'll tell you is if you're a superintendent or if you're a safety and security director at a school, have the hard conversations now so that it saves you heartache later, have the hard conversations with those entities. And a lot of these districts, you know, there's one south of us big district. They do a very good job. They're very well respected. They've got 13 entities within their jurisdiction. It's a mess. You know, it's an absolute mess from, you know, even. Let's look at Hisd. Oh, my God. You know, your your incident commander or your responding agency may vary from campus to campus, correct? Oh, based upon jurisdiction. And so those are what we can't just say, you know, one entity is going to have incident command. Well, that entity may not be able to respond to every location within 5 or 10 minutes. It has to go by campus. So, you know, when you look at the greater picture here is like, you know, the all the buzzwords that legislators are talking about, you know, emergency operations plan because it sounds cool because they're 22 year old recent college graduate staffer told them, you know, about an emergency operations plan, that that's what they're pushing and that's what they're saying. They don't even they probably never reviewed one. Right. Or been. Through the planning process. Or been through the planning process. Well, and let's let's talk about that for just a second. Right. How many people have we seen pop up here that are offering those services who've never done it before? Right. Or they've learned something in a textbook They've never actually. Those are and. Those are what we would say are PowerPoint warriors. But but we've seen that, right? Yeah. When you look at the planning capabilities of your team and specifically the team that comes from the Secret Service, how many Just remember, I know it differs, but how many different facilities did you plan trips for and all that stuff between all of the protectees under Secret Service? I don't even know. It's a crazy amount, right? Hundreds. I don't know. I mean. And you didn't have one plan, right? No, Every every. Plan was different. Every plan. That's why I always tell people is like, listen, stop focusing on the overall op, Right? I know that that's a state requirement. You've got to do that. Right? But what I'll tell you is you need to look at the molecular level and the campus level, start focusing on an emergency action plan specific to each campus. That is where the bread and butter is. That's where you win. The EOP is for a generalized conversation, right? Multidisciplinary, I get that. Or multi-hazard, I guess I should say. But the EAP is going to be what sets you in motion for when and for success. And even goes as far as spelling out stakeholder responsibilities. Because as we have identified and through the planning process that we've done for all of these schools that we've done so far, the the response for our teacher is totally different than an administrator, totally different than facilities, totally different than, you know, all of those things come into play. So we've gone we've run the gamut from the funding to teacher morale to EPS, EPS. I think it just goes to show how many things that we offer real world common sense experience, right when we go into a district. And I think that's one of the reasons why we have the passionate customers that we do and are excited that we're on site and and they're helping. Because when we get into these meetings, get into these planning scenarios, we are able to guide them through the entire holistic approach of securing your facility. Right? It's not just, hey, we're going to give you an assessment that's required. We're going to check the box. I have this template and we're going to hand this to. You a check and. We're gone. We're gone. That's not what we do. We're going to do it from beginning to end. And I think that's what separates us from anybody else in the space, is, yes, we have the M6 global team from a consulting standpoint. We've got 29 consultants and 15 states. We're approaching 600 years of experience. We're bringing on new talent every single week. It seems like, you know, covering every component of that holistic approach that we know works that the Secret Service National Threat Assessment Center has said works. We do that. We go and do the assessment, provide the solution, and then your team comes in and completely just, you know, puts it all into place, turnkey and for sustained management even afterwards while taking into consideration budget. Because that's important. It is you know I can. Tell you right now, we have had a couple clients that have given us one of them in particular, $15 million budget to just essentially treat them as if they had absolutely nothing. We went in, it took us about 60 days. Completely built out a custom plan for them. And we came in at 13.4. Right. Well below budget. Most people, you know, you give them a 15 million budget, they're going to come in at 16 million and then get you down to 15 million. We're not that way. No. You know. And I think that the one of the biggest things that we bring to the table is just like you're willing to call, you know, a call somebody out for whatever they're saying or a nonsense that's going on. We do the same thing as it relates to products, because there are a ton of people, you know, and we just went through another we went through it in Covid, right, with the detection cameras that were completely, you know, about all those. Iron air cleanser things that everybody was selling. We just went through this again with the the silent panic alarm technology where people came up and said, oh, I just saw a district just advertising how they just rolled out this app for teachers. A teacher needs another app on their phone, apparently. And so in this app, the only thing it does is there's a button on it that then calls 911. So apparently, you know, the district needed to invest in money to put a button in there so that they could press twice to open up the phone. Open up. They already have that on there. They already have that because they could have hit phone and hit 911 right phone 911. But but they spent that money on technology for an app with a single button on it that calls 911 and they got grant money for it and they spent their funding on it. And that was the solution deployed. And there's all these people who have come out with all of these products, wireless pendants, all this kind of stuff that all these schools went through and deployed. And it's a disaster. And we're going to find all of that stuff within a very short time, buried in some desk out of batteries, not working apps, not on the phone. Teacher got a new phone. It's not there. There's no there's no testing. I can tell you. No compliance. There's no nothing. Right. And so the next question is going to be, well, why didn't you use your your app to call 911? Because because I was being shot at because sorry. I opened up the phone and I called 911. Right. I didn't press the button. I think some technology's good. I mean, we've got some we've got some folks. That's where it comes. That's where our expertise comes in is, is bringing all this nonsense down into common sense with reliable solutions that actually work from legitimate companies that have real research and development are actually moving the needle moving forward. Proactive, developing stuff. Yeah. You know, publicly traded on the stock exchange type companies that are real legitimate, not in some Santa Barbara guy's basement. Right. And that was outsourced to India. You know, not not knock in India great folks, but outsourced wherever. And it was just something wherever. Right. It's it's that type of stuff that just comes out and fills the marketplace and schools get overwhelmed. And I need to do something. So they do something. And again, it's a knee jerk reaction. It clouds. The judgment. And this is what's sad is, you know, what I tell people all the time is, listen, maybe we're not for everybody from a price point. Sure. And I certainly understand that. But I also say and I like to say that we won't let price get in the way of us preserving life and helping you if there's something that we need to work through, let's negotiate and let's work through it. But I want you to get what we believe with our experience. Your team, my team and our network is vetted products that we know, work that we know are going to be around in five, ten, 15, 20 years. Right. Rather than being a predatory individual or company like some of the people that we know and that we've seen that go out and they prey on the vulnerabilities of educators not knowing the difference between what's good and what's not. I would take. It a whole nother step further. We've seen predatory reps who work for a company go out, sell all of these things to somebody, turn around, quit, go to another company, go back to that same base and sell it all again. The first one failed, and for some reason they think the second one, they think they go through and buy from this person again and then they come back over. And what's interesting about that whole deal is that when we see through that, that these people are there and we call them out on it, they get mad and they get mad. They get their feelings hurt that we call them out and that we would be able to say, Yeah, that guy already did that over at this company and it was a disaster. He's now at this company and it's a disaster. He's trying to do the same thing. Yeah. And so we're pretty much product agnostic. I mean, you know, we have our. Preferences, don't get me wrong, but our preferences are based upon data and research and things that work. That's why we're reliable. Our preferences. Right. And they actually back it up their products with warranty and are responsive and training programs and made in America. You know, just all these little things that, you know, really make a difference at the end of the day. It's. You know, the the industry itself is it's a it's an unregulated industry. And it's a shame that we do have people that, you know, listen, I'll be the first one to tell you I'm not I am a for profit business. So is Mike. We have families to feed also. But at the end of the day, what you are going to get is, is what you're seeing right here, this very honest and raw response. We're going to tell you we're not going to sugarcoat. We're going to tell you exactly what you need and why you need it. We're going to factor in your budget. We're going to factor in long term sustainability and management of that product or of this service. Whereas, you know, you have to be able to decipher and differentiate who's just trying to sell you on a product and who's trying to provide you a solution. Because take a. Step further is that we're actively engaged in our businesses. Right? If somebody calls, they're talking to you and. Me, right? Or, you know, and no matter what the situation, you're always available or I'm always available. So even if one of your team members, one of my team members is out representing the organization, if they have a concern, if they have a question, if they just want to talk to us, like we make ourselves available so that we can answer any of those questions. And and so that's a big difference. What gets lost in in some of these companies that try to consider themselves nationwide? Let's just cut right through that. There is no nationwide integrator, right? There's just they don't. Talk about their. Subcontractors because that's exactly they they subcontract out. Right. I mean, you got a little exposure to that in the past. Right? And so they said, oh, I've got this, you know, we have the team and have a team. Even their subcontractors are coming from another city. So, yeah, there is no such thing, right? And so they use these subcontractors and end up just being a number and then they get customers get stuck in the, Oh, well, I need to talk to my manager, I'm going to see if I can get this approval and get the runaround. Right. And and so we cut through all of that. You know, the buck stops here, right? And and we say what we mean. We do what we say. Yeah. And I think that any organization we come in and it's a refreshing experience compared to what they had. In the past because you're going to get us just the way we are right now. Right. You know, and you know, it's just when you said that a couple of things popped into my brain. I can recall ordering something online and it's supposed to be shipped by Fedex and then some some dude pulls up and, you know, a 1993 Kia Optima or something, smoking a cigaret, you know, with his pants hanging off his rear end and he's delivering my Fedex package. I'm like, I don't feel like I got my money's worth. This is not Fedex, you know, it's subcontractor. It's just like, you know, residential cameras. You know, you go to ADT. I'm just I'm not throwing it out there. Well, I said ADT, but I'm not. This is just using ADT as a reference. I'm not badmouthing ADT. I'm just saying some of these some of these residential companies, you you hire them out and then the installer comes out and it's some dude in an old beat up van. Right? You know, and I get that, right. I understand that. But people want a professional service, right? They want to talk to the person who's going to make it happen. Yeah. And they want people who are trained, you know, factory trained professionals know what they're doing and show up in uniform, represent the company and know and have experience doing the work that you're hiring them to do. Yeah. So, you know, all of those things, it's no different than planning and what we talked about getting plans from someone who's actually done it and done it over and over and over again in facilities across the country and across the world. Well, no plan have I ever done. Was the same plan, right? You know, I mean, should it be? No, it can't be, because you have different things. You have to take into consideration the people, the environment, the terrain, the you know, all of these things that you have to take into consideration. One of the things I think is really interesting and it I wish that we could show more, Right. But for security purposes, we can't. I know. But when we get the actual buy in from a school district or a private school and we get all of their stakeholders, which is which is often very difficult to do for them to clear their calendars and get them all in the same room, whether they've got police departments, whether it's administration, superintendents facilities. And we get them around the room and we sit at a table and you start working through their facilities and like, let's take the first one and we start going through planning that out and talking about it and all of the things that we start walking through and get them to think about and come back in their they're completely blown away like they I've never thought about. This, right. And some of the stuff you would think that they would need to know. I mean, how many facilities have we been into where we ask where the gas cut off is and there's not a single person nobody knows that knows. Or how to turn off the Hvac system because there's been some type of leak outside. Now, obviously, Texas City knew that pretty well because you guys had to that all surrounded by, you know, refineries. Right. You all knew how to do that, Right. But you go to other places. They may not have ever been through that. How where is this disconnect? Where is this? And you start going through and there's there are facilities that they have no idea. And it's like, this is why this needs to be documented. This is why we step through this process right. The first time publicly shared any of my plans. You know, obviously, we, you know, redacted some things, but the first time I ever shared any of my plans on a on a on a grand scale, to me, it was normal to everyone in the room. I think it was frightening. Right. You know, we have we have a friend of ours who's in the mass communication space, who we've become friends with, Eric Andres, Love Eric and with 911. But he he was sitting in the front row and I remember presenting and showing kind of some of my maps and my planning and it showed everything, you know, roof access, Hvac, shutdown, gas, you know, triage areas where the weapons were stored perimeters a compass tactical 12:00 surrounding areas and others. Yeah. Door numbers all on and on. And he thought I was crazy. I mean, I remember looking at him. I didn't know him at the time. In fact, he introduced himself afterwards and was like, Holy cow, man, I never thought about. Any of this stuff that you just talked about. I said, Well, yeah. I mean, everything should be for quick reference, right? When you're in the middle of a battle or in a crisis, you don't have time to flip through a 614 page op, right? You know, and you know, the reason why we do this at the Secret Service level for for visual images so that we can remember it. Right. I don't necessarily need to know, you know, every little detail, but I know where our LS is. I know where, you know, our overwatch would be. I know where our tactical elements are. I know how they've been split up into, you know, into different zones or hours. I know where the entry gates are. Primary and secondary entry gates are where the EMS is going to be staged, all the hasty triage areas. And he was like, Oh my God, man. Like, I never thought about this, you know? And and if we can. Ever get to a true unified command, imagine being able to show a response and be able to show which doors were sending what teams in, and then being able to go and look up at a door that's properly tagged with an actual number. I mean, how many how many facilities have we been into that have no door numbers? Tons. Tons. Right. None. And they've never. And that's part of that's part of the state law. But is it on there? But no one's enforcing it and no one's being held accountable. There you go. Right. There's no consequence. There's nobody being held accountable and their job being on the line. But at the end of the day, it's our kids that are suffering. And that's what's complete trash. Right? Right. And complete garbage is, you know, a lot of these people that are writing these laws and legislation, their kids are not going to public schools. Some of them not all of them, you know, maybe 5050. But I don't recall any, you know, politicians, kids that are being, you know, victims in these things. Right. You know why? Because they choose their schools or they choose where they live based upon socioeconomic status. Not everybody has that opportunity to do that. And I'm not advocating for school choice because I think it would absolutely destroy public education. Right? It absolutely would destroy public education. What I will tell you is the greatest threat to the safety and security of our kids is politics. That's the truth. It's politics. And nobody's going to talk to you direct like that. But it's the truth. You want to know why we're seeing the Sentinel plan being pushed into the state of Texas? It's because it's being pushed by the far right. You want to see or you want to know why the defunding movement took off right after the George Floyd murder? It's because it was being pushed by the left. And the problem is, is that both parties are pushing agendas that are affecting your kids and my kids. And so the power truly lies in the parents. And if we really want to make some serious change here, the parents and the general population have got to put aside political differences and hold your elected official officials accountable and tell them to stop putting politics over the safety and security of our kids. So I'm happy with ending it with that. Yeah, that's strong. Are you good with that? Yeah, it's 100%. It's the parents. We've got to get them involved. Yeah. Parents where the trains is going to where the change is going to happen. Yeah. Good deal. Well, thank you all for joining us. We appreciate it. Have a good one.