The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – The First Five Minutes: School Shooting Survival Guide For Administrators and Teachers by Daniel Dluzneski

Episode Date: November 28, 2022

The First Five Minutes: School Shooting Survival Guide For Administrators and Teachers by Daniel Dluzneski According to the FBI, an active school shooter event lasts an average of 3-5 minutes. What you do with that time can save lives. From Dan Dluzneski, school safety expert and retired Lieutenant of the US Secret Service comes The First FIVE Minutes, a proven guide to locking down effectively. In an event as stressful as a school shooting, the normal human response is to freeze. Imagine if instead of panicking, you knew exactly what to do. And even better, that your entire staff and student body could act quickly and seamlessly to secure your school? The First Five Minutes offers tested and proven critical advice that is both affordable and practical. After reading this book, you will: Learn why a lockdown is still the best way to keep safe in the event of a school shooting. Recognize how to drill properly to prepare for an active shooter event. Gain confidence that you know what to do in those critical first five minutes. Understand how implicit memory helps you react automatically in an emergency. Get Dan’s step-by-step framework, backed by 20 years of successful use in schools across America. When the adrenaline hits, make every minutecount. Lockdown. Survive. Save Lives.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. This is Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com.

Hope you're ready to go on a monster roller coaster ride with your brain. It doesn't quite come out the same as the dude who did the intro from Fiverr, but I'll try. I'll try. He did radio for like 30 years or 40 years when we got him to cut that, so he does a great job on it. I hope you guys appreciate how much love went into that. So anyway, guys, welcome to the big show. We certainly appreciate you guys being here. As always, you're just the most wonderful people we've ever met and i'm not i'm not just blowing

like uh just not like blowing wind at you we really do love you so in the meantime refer to your family friends about this go to the goodreads.com for test chris voss go to youtube.com for test chris voss go to all our great places across the Internet. All the stuff we do on LinkedIn, the big groups over there, the big newsletter, all that stuff is just, it grows like a weed. It's crazy how big it's growing. LinkedIn is kind of, I think people have kind of determined, if you're watching this 10 years from now, Elon Musk just bought Twitter, which means that you probably know that six months from now it went out of business.

I'm just kidding. I don't know. We'll see how it goes. But it seems like there's more activity going on LinkedIn, so check that out over there and check out our accounts on TikTok as well. So anyway, we have an amazing author on the show, and he's a bright mind who's got incredible experience. We're going to be talking about that.

He's written his new book that just came out November 2, 2022. It's called The First Five Minutes, School Shooting Survival Guide for Administrators and Teachers, probably something parents want to pick up and read as well. He's going to be talking to us about his amazing new book. Daniel DeLuz Nesky is on the show. He served with the show. He served with the U.S. Secret Service for over 24 years,

including as a canine technician with his dog, Korak. Do I have that right? Korak? Yes. Where did you get Korak from? That sounds like it's from that Star Trek group. He was Eastern European. We got him from Belgium. Korak. There you go. I'm going to name my next dog now. That sounds powerful. It also sounds like, what was that group on

Star Trek with the weird foreheads and stuff? Sounds like those guys. Anyway, somebody knows what I'm talking about. After retiring from the Secret Service, he was responsible for the safety of over 100,000 students in 140 schools as the coordinator of Emergency Management

Safety and Security at one of the largest school districts in Florida. It's going to be amazing to hear his insights students in 140 schools as the coordinator of emergency management, safety, and security at one of the largest school districts in Florida. It's going to be amazing to hear his insights on what he has to talk about. Welcome to the show, Daniel. How are you? Thank you. Very good. Again, thanks for having me on the show. Thanks for coming. We certainly appreciate it. Give us the dot coms or wherever you want people to get to know you better on the interwebs. LinkedIn.com. Again, as we mentioned, that's probably the best place with my last name, which again, you will, I'm sure, print out so people can see how it's spelled, which isn't that bad. But yeah, a lot on LinkedIn. And again, my book's already on Amazon.

And yeah, also the ebook is also available. And yeah, so far it's it's going good and now if you have kindle i guess you have kindle unlimited i had not heard of this i'm not real familiar with a lot of stuff that goes on amazon this was all new to me yeah look and going through the whole process and ads and blah blah blah anyway um i found out that if you have kindle unlimited uh you pay so much per month and then you can get books for free. Yeah. I'm okay with that because it's a good promotion, and I think I'm over like 200 people have downloaded it as an e-book for free. That's fine.

I'm not in for the money. I mean, I wrote the book for information to get out there and to hopefully help people gain confidence when something or if something happens like this. So it's an issue that is increasing, I guess not so much increasing in schools per se. Some people would say it is. Statistics don't really bear that out. But as we've seen with these shootings just in general, as we had the last one in Walmart, the UVA shooting, the one at the LGBTQ club, they become more common. So, but I strictly stuck with schools because that's my purview. That's what I work with. I work with, like I said, over a hundred thousand students in our schools,

140 schools alone, just down in this. And we're not the largest district in Florida. We're like, I want to say the fifth or sixth largest thing, Miami and Broward County is like the largest. But we're a very dense population here in this county. So what I really liked was the school system. I was the only one. I don't mean to laugh, but a lot of the school systems will have staff, will have a director, an assistant director. No, it was the only one. I don't mean to laugh, but a lot of the school systems will have staff, will have a director, an assistant director. No, it was just me. For security? You just had one guy?

One guy. One guy who dealt with 140 schools, 100,000 students. I mean, at least a secretary or an assistant. Right, exactly. I did have help from the other guys that were in the offices that dealt with the structure and the maintenance of the schools. I did help with them, and I had some help with our fire marshal.

But, no, it was just me. So I decided, luckily with my background, to just take charge. And I promised each of these schools, all 140 at the time. I think it's more than 140. I wanted to visit with every principal. Every principal I wanted to visit with face-to-face and have them tell me how they dealt with school security. It took a year, but I did it. And I was proud of that fact. And I tell you what, this is now, we're talking, let's see, I was there for four years. So we're talking five or six years

ago. And I ran into stuff that as common sense, it didn't make a lot of sense to me. And I'll give you an example. I have some of the examples in the book, but this is just some of the things I ran into and why I push for drills to be run properly, to be run repetitively, and to be run correctly, obviously. I had an elementary school, and this is a little funny, but an elementary school.

When they would go into a lockdown, they made the announcement over the loudspeaker, and the announcement was, the pony is being delivered today. And they said that to me with a straight face. And I was like, okay, that sounds great for the kids to be nice and calm. But what about that maintenance worker that's here? What about the parents that's visiting? You know, it's like when you go in a hospital and they run off a code blue. You're like, well, what the heck is that? So I said to them, well, you know, not only are you confusing things, I said, but just speak plain language.

It's OK. Even elementary school kids are they're not naive. I mean, they know what's going on. Just say the word lockdown. It's OK. Everybody's going to be OK. It's not a bad word. And it took a long time, months for me to go to these schools and say why are you saying it that why are you using codes code red code whatever just use plain language and that took a while so i finally got that settled they didn't talk about ponies going into a lockdown um and but there were you know a lot of other issues that that I hope by now have been straightened out. One thing I would like to mention right off the bat, Chris, most of your schools, I'd say,

most of your schools should have really good locks on their doors and the door should open in. The door should open in. Okay. The other thing is lock your doors during class time. Now, I get a lot of pushback on that because, oh, they have to go to the bathroom. They have to go here. No, I don't care. Lock the door.

Does it work with fire code? Yes. I know some fire codes are kind of. You can lock the door. It's okay to lock the door. The one thing about fire code, especially because also I didn't mention this. I'm a fire inspector. But as long as you have what's called one step in order to get out.

So the one step is unlock the door and you go out where we want. I don't know if we want to go to the conversation that way, where we're where we're going with the conversation is during a lockdown, you have a lot of companies out there that want to sell you wedges and doorstops and automatic things that block the door as basically a barricade for an active shooter event. Well, now you've got what's called a two-step process in order to exit the building. You would have to take away that doorstop. You would have to unlock the door and then get out. Fire code, that's not going to work because now if, God forbid, there is a fire during something like that, they can't get in because now you've got this wedge there that they can't get in. However, there are some school systems that are using them. And look, that's up to the fire marshal. That's up to the state fire

code if you can use these wedges. They're great. They are. They're great. You can't get in. You cannot get in. But there's smoke in that room or something happens. Now you're searching for this other wedge thing you've got there in order to get out. Now you're in big trouble.

So anyway, that's neither here nor there. Interesting. That's something that we need to focus on. Go ahead. I'm sorry. Let me lay a foundation because we need to focus on. Go ahead. I'm sorry. Let me lay a foundation because we need to go through a pathway here. Let's talk about your background and you and what got you interested in this sort of stuff. You did a lot with the Secret Service. What made you want to enter service in the Secret Service?

What led you down kind of your path roads of life wanting to get into some of this background it's not a long story but when i was a kid and i didn't find out actually till just a few years back i've got i'm an empath and you don't realize that kind of stuff do you go through therapy but anyway um as a kid i uh you know you play cops and robbers play this and play that and i wanted when, when I got, once I got to high school, I wanted to be a radio broadcaster, not television so much. When I was a kid, I loved sports, still love sports. And I lived in up North. So we listened to the Knicks, even though I was a Laker fan. How do you figure that one out? And listen to the Knicks broadcast. I don't know if it was Mara Ballard at the time or who was the radio announcer,

but my gosh, I wanted to be that person. I wanted to be on radio and call basketball games. And I got to do it at my high school and I got the fever. So I went to college out in Southern Illinois and they had their own local TV broadcast and radio broadcast. And I got into that and it got kind of cliquish

and it was who you were and it wasn't your talent or anything like that. So I had a minor as criminal justice and I switched over to that. And once I got out, I tried for a few police agencies and that didn't sort of work out. So I just kind of knocked around for a while. And this is kind of a strange story, but I did apply for the Secret Service back in early 80 and went through the whole process, went down to Washington, D.C., and went through the whole process and came back home. And I got a pamphlet. And remember, Chris, this is before the Internet, before cell phones,

all this stuff. I get this paperwork back and it's all these big red letters on there, like a teacher, you know, grading your paper. And it says your height must be in proportion to your weight. And I'm thinking, what the hell? They must think I'm like 300 pounds. And I was the same height I am now, 6'4", but I only weighed about 160 pounds soaking wet. So somehow I got a phone number and called them back and they said, no, no, you're underweight. You're underweight by eight pounds. You need to gain eight pounds. I said, good God, hire me. You're underweight? I said, good God, I'll eat bananas and milkshakes.

No, no, no. The process stops until you gain the weight. Okay. Honest Dan, instead of going back to my doctor saying, can you wipe this out and just add on eight pounds? What the hell? Nope. I go on a weight training program and it must've taken me a month to gain the weight because my metabolism, it would just, I just couldn't gain the weight. So finally I gained the weight. Oh my, okay. Send the paperwork back. I'm ready to go. They send it back and I called them again and they, oh, oh, you just missed the class by a few days. Oh God. Okay. When's the next class? Oh, we're not gonna have another class for another year. Oh, okay. I'm not waiting. So I knocked around again. I worked in security. I worked for DHL, the express company.

I worked for a manufacturing company. I mean, I could always find work, but you know, at that point here, I'm getting close to 30. I'm like, you gotta get a career. So I found out that the secret service at that time, I think the maximum age, you know, to hire was 34, I believe. And I was 32 years old. I was in fairly good shape. So I said, what the hell, I'll try again. So I tried again, got in this time, everything went smoothly. I get on the job and I go to the training and here are these kids, they're 10 years younger than me, you know, and they're looking at me like, what the hell are you doing here? You know, it was like something on Apocalypse Now with Marlon Brando going through jump training

and stuff like, what the heck? But I tell you what, I went through the training and I did well. And once I got on the job, I was able to get some positions that I probably wouldn't have gotten if I was younger because now most of the supervisors are my age. I related to them. They related to me. So I was given some positions. I was the earliest, I guess, or youngest person, youngest on the job in order to get a canine. Because at the time you had to have 10 or 15 years in a job in order to get a dog, because not only did they pay you stipends for the dog, but you've got your own vehicle. You got all these benefits. Oh, wow. That's pretty handy. Yeah. And there was blood in the streets because who the hell is this young punk getting this dog? So I did that.

And at the time, my dog was not only a bomb sniffing dog. He was also what they call handler training. So in attack dog, you put the sleeve on and they do bite work. They don't do that anymore. Now it's strictly bomb dogs. And then we have a separate division of our emergency response team that has the attack dogs on the White House grounds. And he didn't work out. And it was panic city because the government was saying, look, that dog's property. We're either going to kill him or we're going to send him somewhere

else. Now here, this dog's part of my family for four years, and I don't know if you've talked to other police canine officers, but that dog is part of your family. You're with it 24 hours a day. I mean, it's more intense than having a family pet because this dog is constantly, not only working with you but living with you. And it was a long process, and it was a precedent set in order to give that dog to me as a pet. Because again, the government's like, look, we spent all this money on the dog in your training. We're not going to give the dog to

you. So it was a long fight. And I finally did get to keep him. He lived, he was 13. He was a great dog at home. Loved him. So the nice thing I loved about the Secret Service, and I was not an agent. I was with the uniform division. There is a uniform division that I found out when I applied for it. And the uniform division has police powers. We have local police powers, Metropolitan Police powers. We also have federal police powers. And the nice thing about the uniform division was they had the specialized units, canine, the counter snipers, emergency response team, motorcade support with the motorcycles.

So they had all the specialized units. And the other thing was nice. I got to stay in D.C. for my career the entire time. So I was able to do public affairs. I was able to do tours of the White House because I'm a history buff. It was just a great experience. I started right at the end of Reagan's term, and I finished with Obama. And I left there, and I moved down to Florida. Once I left there, I moved down to Florida with my son, came down here, started up. I said, okay, time to retire, sit on a beach and a course with an alpha personality that works out in about a couple weeks.

So my wife at the time, ex-wife now, she said, look, you've got to get out of the house. You've got to do something. And this job appeared at the local county for this emergency manager. And I said, wow, I think my resume would fit that. And I joined there, and that's how I got started with the county, dealing with the school security. And how long were you with those guys down there at the school district?

Four years until Parkland. Like I said, once Parkland happened, the state board decided to have the police take over security of schools. So that really put me out of the picture. And I thought, okay, I disagreed with that decision because I was a law enforcement officer and look, law enforcement is reactive. That's trained to be reactive. We're not trained to be preventive. And I thought, no, I, that's, that's not what I wanted to do. And if we want to talk a little bit about that, the reasons they've come up with some stuff. They do lockdowns. They still will do lockdowns in most schools. And as they know, a lockdown is when you have the doors locked,

you will shut the lights off, you'll close the blinds, you'll sit on the floor away from the windows, probably in the corner. You'll silence your cell phone, turn your computers off and be quiet and you will wait. And Chris, as we know, the hardest thing I've gone through, I went through 9-11 at the White House. The hardest thing to do is to sit and wait. If you're a teacher or a principal, you are absolutely going nuts because you want to do something. You feel like you have to do something. I have to save my kids. I have to do something. No, you're just going to sit there and wait till the police arrive because that's the best thing you can do to keep yourself alive. And I don't want you to panic. I want you to be very calm because that's going to keep your kids calm. And as long

as you do that, help is on the way. They're going to come and get you. Now, yes, can it happen that that shooter may come to the door and try to break it down? It's rarely happened. I mean, really, one or two percent maybe have tried to break down a locked door. But you can barricade it. Grab that desk, file, cabinet, chairs, whatever, and barricade that door if that shooter tries to break in the door. It rarely happens, again, because it just takes too much time. As you know, shooters want the easy victims. Yeah, they're just going to go down a line of, you know, if they're going down a hallway of locked doors, they're just going to go try and find one that's open, right? Exactly.

Yes. I think there's times where, I mean, what teachers can do. Basically, an instruction manual on how to survive these things the best, not only from a prevention standpoint, but when it happens standpoint. Is that correct? Yes.

That was the main goal of the book because most books out there are going to talk about either the prevention part of it with behavioral assessments of possible shooters to preparing for it where you make these certain announcement or drills. And there are a lot of private companies out there. You've probably heard of the ALICE training that deal with and run, hide, fight that we deal with.

But those processes are for businesses. Department of Homeland Security are the ones that came up with Run, Hide, Fight. They're not specifically mentioned for schools. They are used in some schools, but they're not specifically, they weren't made for that. So, yeah, I wanted the process to be, look, as a teacher, I've been to plenty of SAC meetings with teachers and PTA meetings with teachers. And these people are scared. They didn't sign up for this, Chris.

Yeah, they didn't. Hey, I want the school to teach kids and nurture them and make them adults that are going to live in this world and make a contribution. I didn't sign up to be shot at. But in today's reality, look, I mentioned this to a lot of other people that have talked about this, and they ask what's the biggest weakness in any kind of school security, and it's complacency. You cannot be complacent and think it's never going to happen here.

I lived in Connecticut. My sister is in Newtown, which is that subsidiary of Sandy Hook. She's been up there for 20 years. In fact, she taught as a substitute in that school. And I tell you what, Chris, to get to that school, Sandy Hook's elementary school, to get to that school, you're talking a quaint New England, you know, basic something out of a St. Ives picture kind of location, just a beautiful location.

To get to that school, it's a very narrow road to go past the fire department. You take another road that leads you back behind. You can't see it from the road. You have to get to it. So it's not something that it's like they come off the highway and they're going to shoot up a school and escape. I mean, it was this crazy thing. And Parkland, again, well, it was directly because it directly affected my job. Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. Again, these high schools, again, are like college campuses. And most of these shooters, I don't know percentage wise, but most are either

former students or current students. So they know the location of the school. They know what happens there. They know the ins and outs. I mean, they could sit and observe what happens, what gate's going to be open, what time it's going to be open, how they can get in. So, you know, it's it's just really there has to be a layer. You can't be constantly. I'm not on here telling you, look, you can make a school 100 percent prevented from be a layer. You can't be constantly. I'm not on here telling you, look, you can make a school 100 percent prevented from getting a shooter. If someone is hell bent on getting into that school, they're going to get in.

OK, you just want a layer process to slow them down in order for the good guys to get there. Now, one thing we can discuss about, which you get kind of pushed back on, is special resource officers. We have them in Florida. We have them in every school, elementary, middle, and high school. And it all depends on student population. I think the number they put out is

once you're up to a thousand, that means you get two special resource officers once you get up to that number. And highly trained, very motivated, the kids love them. However, I've been reading some stuff on LinkedIn and some of the other school,

uh, security experts that are saying that they're getting some pushback from students about having the police in the schools. And I think this goes back to the George Floyd thing. Uh, they just don't do not trust the police. Oh, wow. What's happening is a lot of the parents are saying,

wait a minute, these parents want those officers. I'd rather have the police there than, you know, I don't mean to disparage anybody, but I'd rather have the cops than rent a cop. That's just how I am. Plus, I think the police officers now most of them have like they have automatic weapons and stuff i remember there's the big shooting in la it was like the heat movie 20 or 30 years ago and you know they were outgunned and

after that you know i think most police departments you know got got you know the same sort of weapons they can fire back at these automatic uh these automatic weapons these criminals will get a hold of um so yeah i'd rather have the police there but i i can see the other side of it i mean there's some there's some issues there so let's talk about this you've got a step-by-step framework that you put into the book uh covering uh 20 years of successful use in school so you give them a blueprint to work with. In fact, tell us about the bonuses that come with this because I thought that was pretty unique.

What I did, Chris, was, and I get a little bit of pushback because you don't want to call it a plan and a can, but it is a short, I think it's what, 12 pages, of a generic basic emergency plan. Because most schools, and they should have this, they should have the 50, 60 page school safety resource guide on the principal's shelf. Because if something happens, the media is going to say, hey, you have a school plan? Oh yeah, it's right over here. I'll pull it off the shelf and you'll look through it. Well, it's like 50, 60 pages. That's something you can't put in each classroom. What I have is,

it's just 12 pages. And I mean, it's just your basic common sense, practical flip through. You know, a lot of schools also have flip charts for their teachers. Something the teacher can post on the board, something they can look through quickly, you know, if they forget something or just go through it. And I also have, that's included. You can download that and use it for your school. It's again, it's generic. You can make a specific for your school. What I also did was I made these credit card size. I mean, you can see it, Chris, but I made these credit size card cards, credit card size cards. How many times can I say that? And what I did was you can put them on your lanyard for your ID

or put them on your lanyard for your copier card. And it's just a quick reference. And I found out, I only found this out recently, doctors use these because they're in the hospital and they say, hey, we got a code white. They're like, wait, what the heck? What's a code white? And they got to look on the card because God knows how many color codes they have.

And she goes, yeah, it's a good idea because even doctors have reference cards. So it's something because Chris, you and I know if something happened, something bad happened, really bad, you just go into another mode. You're either going to freeze, you're going to forget what day it is, you're going to forget all kinds of stuff. And you're going to go, okay, I did two, three and four, but I know I forgot something. And it's nice to have the card to look, oh, that's it. I forgot to shut the lights off, or I forgot to pull the blinds. And it's just something that's quick in an emergency in order to just reference. And that's all. And that's my main thing is just to have teachers have that confidence that, look, if something bad happens,

and we'll get into the drills here in a minute, something bad happens, you want that muscle memory to kick in. You want it to kick in. And I could talk a little bit of the Secret Service. I mean, as far as I know, we're the only agency that has to qualify with our weapons once a month. Every month we had to qualify with our weapon. And you go through the route.

I mean, pull your gun out, straighten your arm, focus on the front side. I mean, it just comes natural. When we talk about implicit memory, what's that? It's like putting on a seatbelt, buttoning a shirt, all kinds of things you do without thinking. And that's what I would like to get across to the school systems and administrators, that if you run repetitive drills, that's a repetitive drill. Once a month. Once a month to me is not a lot.

Is it, you know, something that takes up a lot of time? Yeah. I mean, a fire drill takes what? A fire drill takes you 10 minutes. It's taking a lot. I mean, you get everybody out. You wait outside. Okay.

The bell goes off. Okay. Everybody back in. Lockdown drill, you're talking, if you're on a high school campus, I mean, if you can do it in 30 minutes, that's good. You're talking probably closer to 45 minutes. By the time you lock everything down, you get everybody set, you start to go through the unlocking process with the amount of people that can unlock the doors for you because you're not going to make an announcement to say the lockdown is over. You do not want to do that because the bad guy could be holding somebody hostage, has to be unlocked by keys, by the police or the administrator. So that takes time. As long as you have enough people to go and unlock the doors, 30, 45 minutes tops.

However, you're taken away from school time. And that was one of the biggest struggles I had down here in Florida because it's on a grading system. So certain schools would have a D grade or even an F grade. And they needed to get up, you know, those grades to an A or a B because now you're going to lose funding. The school goes down, whatever. Now you're going to take 30, 45 minutes away from my teaching. Now, boy, I tell you, I would run into, and it's not really a complaint because I'm sure it's across the country like this. I would go to these teachers' conferences that they would have, and they would take two

days to have this conference. And Chris, I was lucky to get 20 minutes out of those two days. And I was saying something. So I had to rush through this stuff to try to tell them what would happen. And the rest of the time was all, you know, education stuff, which I understand. But Chris, if the kids aren't safe,

they're not going to learn. And it's just these, it has, they have to be done. And, you know, it's hard to push for that because most law enforcement and education is kind of oil and water. But, and I understand what they need to go through.

But, you know, I just try to, I would just keep begging. Look, can you give me 30 minutes? Can you give me another 10 minutes to get this stuff through? People probably aren't, you know, excited to talk about this sort of thing, I guess, I imagine. No. Where they're just like, it's not a fun topic to talk about. It's not a – No, it's not going to happen.

It's kind of like talking to people about, hey, you should plan your funeral or stuff like that. Yeah. And again, the complacency is it's never going to happen here. We don't have any issues here. We're okay. But, you know, you can go into the thing of, okay, well, why do you have auto insurance? Why do you have life insurance? You're probably never going to use it, you know.

But this kind of training is not that hard. It's not that hard to learn. It's just something that innate in you as a person, especially teachers. They care for their students. They nurture them just like family. So it's something that it's an innate in your nature and you just have to go into fight mode. I mean, you just have to go into a different mode, which you can do, whether it's with your students or whether it's your own family. And just get into that mode and figure out, hey, I'm going to keep myself safe. I got one story.

I got plenty of stories. I would go to these elementary schools. And I'm talking about elementary schools because we had more elementary schools than middle or high schools, so I had to visit them more often. And I would ask principals how they would handle their lockdown. And I'd say, okay, we make an announcement. We go into lockdown. And she goes, then, we make an announcement. We go into lockdown. And she goes, then I go with my assistant principal and my HBO,

and we travel the campus to make sure all the doors are closed. Okay, so what would happen during a real event? And she goes, well, I would do the same thing. I said, well, are you armed? No, I have to save my kids. I said, no, you're not saving anybody. I said, you go in your office and lock yourself down. I can't do that.

I have to go save my kids. And that mentality was more than half my principals that I talked to about this because they were so concerned about saving their students. I said, you're not saving anyone. I said, you have to save yourself. I said, you're not saving anyone. I said, you have to save yourself. I said, you're not going to come out of this if you're going to travel to campus and expect to save your kids and see if doors are locked. I said, you got to trust your teachers. And that took a while. Boy, I tell you, because the emotions, and they would look at me with these eyes like, I can't do that. I can't sit in that office while

my kids are getting killed. No, you're going to have to. Finally, when we would do these drills, I tell you, they would struggle. I mean, you talk about anxiety. They would do them properly. I said, okay, now we've done however much time we took to keep everybody locked down. I'll travel the campus. I would just go and be a ghost and bang on doors and yell and scream and try to get in the rooms and stuff. And I tell you the truth, the nicest thing is when you go through a campus and you hear dead silence, I mean, nothing, just nothing. And I was like, perfect. I said, this is perfect. I said, some shooter would be like, hell, there's nobody here. I can't, I can't shoot anybody today. Go back. And of course you always want to do an after action event no matter

what kind of drills you run because there's always going to be issues um but i tell you what when you go to unlock these doors and i'm talking about preschool actually you go to unlock these doors and usually uh i was lucky in some of our elementary schools we would also have either closets or other areas they could hide in. So it was doubly effective. And you'd open those doors up. And what usually the teacher would have one child as a leader, and you'd go in and they'd open the doors and these kids would come out beaming. They wanted to know how they did. And I'd say, you guys did great. I say, you get five stars. I mean, whatever it was, I mean, whatever, I mean, they almost want to give them toys and stuff for this. And they would be beaming that they did this great job of hiding from the bad guy. And it just, I mean, you talk about feeling proud.

And the other thing I wanted to mention that again, we talked about the naivety of young children. I had a school that was a two floor school. One of you go up the stairs and it was like a, not a cubicle, but it was a rounded area that had five classrooms. Well, once you went through the double doors into the classrooms, I asked what happened during the lockdown drill, and one of the teachers said, well, one of the teachers is designated to go outside into that open area and lock those outer doors,

and then everyone else would come in and lock their inner doors. I said, okay, well, what happens if you're not here that day? Well, someone else would have to do it. I said, well, do you have a plan B of someone else would do it? Well, not really. So we figured that out. We had a plan B while we're talking about this. These were fifth grade students. One of the kids goes, I know where the key is. I know where the key is. I said, what are you talking about? Oh, they have the key out by the fire extinguisher in the hallway. Okay. I said, so if your teacher was to faint or she couldn't do it or she had difficulty getting the key, could you guys lock the doors? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I had all the kids in that classroom come out and everyone took that key and locked that door and

went back inside. And you see these kids beaming. They were able to accomplish this. I said, I am so proud of you guys. In case your teacher fainted or something happened, you could go out and lock those doors. So it's just the little things. Yeah, yeah. It's just the little things. So I've got questions that are coming up on the show from people watching live. Oh, perfect.

Let's see if we can do some feedback here uh uh and the the question is and i'm giving you this is it's coming across curious why we practice fire drills monthly but lockdowns aren't as often i believe this is coming from a teacher yeah uh that's was the main thing uh one of the main things that i discussed with our school board because they're the ones who have put out the policy, and I said, look, there hasn't been a fire in a school in I don't know how many years. And nowadays, newly built schools, I'm just talking about Florida, I don't know how other states, have to have sprinkler systems. They have to have fireproof doors, walls, I mean, three foot walls. I mean, fire would have to go for over an hour to get through the door. So yeah, my main complaint, and I discussed this with a fire marshal a lot of times. And I said, look, I said once a month,

why? I mean, this is crazy. It should be opposite that. It should be five drill maybe every six months and the lockdown drill should be every month. And she would just shake her head, go, look, it's not up to me. And I just complained about that a lot of times. But, yes, that's a good question. I encourage that person or anyone else listening to go to school board or the state education department and say, look, can we change things around? I understand fire code is one thing, but I'm sure it's legislatively driven about having a fire drill once a month. But in today's day and age, I just don't see a fire, you know, as much as something that a lot of active shooter incident, you know.

And, you know, buy the book, the first five minutes, Daniel's book, and, you know, give it to them and share it with the boards and the Board of Education and everything else. You know, my mom was a teacher for 20, 25 years. She never dealt with any of this. I think maybe at the very end. I had another thing. I think this is more of a comment than a question. Teachers want to talk about this and are often cut off.

I guess there are some teachers, and I imagine that's in a genre of people who want to talk about it, maybe with their managing body, the board of educations or their local thing or whoever oversees their district, I guess. When I meet with these teachers at a lot of these early meetings before school, that comes up a lot, how scared they are. What are you going to do about it? You know, how can we help? I think one thing, excuse me, is the special resource officers in the schools. We didn't have that a couple years ago.

There were no special resource officers in our schools. So I would encourage that, number one. And number two, we can talk about the drills. Now, the drills, obviously, I would like to have them once a month. If that's too much cutting into your teaching, well, at least every other month, you know, get your drills going. And you have to drill properly. Now, when I, again, we bring this up, and I'm sorry to laugh. When we first started, they would make an announcement, hey, we bring this up and I'm sorry to laugh. When we first started,

they would make an announcement, Hey, we're having a lockdown drill. And what they would do is, and we're going to, and then there's this argument between announced drills and unannounced drills. My background with the secret service unannounced works much better. You're going to, you're going to catch things that you probably wouldn't catch. You make an announced drill and Chris, it's human nature. They're going to pre prepare. Okay probably wouldn't catch. You make an announced drill, and Chris, it's human nature. They're going to pre-prepare, okay, because they don't want to cut into teaching. All right, we've already locked that door. I am already going to close the blinds.

I'm already going to tell those kids to shut up and go over there and sit down. I'm going to silence my phone. I'm going to get pre-prepared so this thing is over as fast as possible because I've got a stinking test coming up, or I've got to do this homework, or whatever. I understand. It's human nature to do that. So that's why I argued against making announced drills. But here's the other, the devil's advocate. If you make unannounced drills, you're going to get pushback from the parents because that kid's going to go home and say,

hey, we had a drill today. apparently what you you did what you you had a lockdown drill that school didn't tell me i'm going to complain about this and then this ball starts rolling where you have to tell me because i may want to pull my child from the school it's traumatic they don't want to go through this i'm like oh god okay wait this is why these parents man what the hell oh i'm telling you, Chris. I had to go through drills, and they weren't as severe as this, so I don't want to minimize it.

We went through the Russian nuclear thing hiding under a desk. That was terrifying. I'm not trying to do competitive victimhood here or say I think it's worse now, but it was still traumatizing to me like i i remember thinking you know nuclear bombs might be flying in from russia and geez why they hate us i mean it wasn't when you're a kid you know everything is amplified yeah and um you know it

was terrorizing so i you know i i'm glad we did it i felt felt it gave you a little bit of empowerment. But some parents nowadays, these days, they really need to regulate breeding. That's my opinion. Anyway. That's a whole other show right there. The drills. When you go through these drills, and and again i like the idea of repeating them the same over and over you do a lockdown drill okay and we discussed the lockdown drill is a

door should already be locked you close the blinds you shut off your computer turn off the lights sit down in a corner quietly and you wait to be unlocked okay and there's things that happen in between there that you don't, you know, don't listen to any announcements, ignore the fire alarm, you know, all this kind of stuff that, you know, the, the shooter could try to get you out to, you know, uh, make a bad scene. However, what's happening in, and this is one reason why I left the job is they're coming up with what's called options-based drill or options-based training and what it is is you will have as a teacher okay we're going to put

the the onus on the teacher as a teacher you're going to have the option of whether going to a lockdown or whether to run out of the school okay when this first came out and this was, um, oh, it wasn't DHS. It was department of education that decided to do this. They have this option. Okay. So we're going to have the option. Let's say there's a shooter on campus. Okay. Well, I don't care if it's elementary, middle or high school and the shooter is over by the gym. All right. Well, you've got the option of staying in your classroom and locking down or taking those kids and running outside the nearest exit and away from the shooter. Okay. Well, how do I know for sure that this person's in the gym? Do you have like a camera on him? I mean, how do I know he's there? I don't know where the hell he's going.

I'm going to take those kids. Again, I stay on the elementary school kids. I'm going to take these kids, 25 or 30 kids. It's a lot of kids. And I've got to get all of them together at once and take them through hallways and stairs and whatever else to get them out of the school thinking that they'll be safe. All right. Number one, 25 to 30 kids. Don't you think some of those kids, at least their parents are telling them, look, if something happens, you sit down on that floor and you wait till the police arrive. Because my daddy said, I'm not going anywhere. I mean, I'm not leaving this classroom. So you've got to gather these, you know, like to say a herd of cats and try to get them out.

And guess what? There's a possibility they're going to hear some bad stuff. They're going to hear gunshots. They're going to hear screaming. They may see dead bodies. They may have to step over classmates that are dead in order to get to that exit. Why in the heck? I could use stronger language.

Would you put a teacher in that position to have that kind of decision to make to take those kids out of that classroom just because they told you you can. So it just is beyond me that you would give a teacher something like that with even more pressure on them as there is instead of staying in the classroom and locking down. I understand there's actually no data out there because everybody talks about that what's the data saying it's safer to stay in the classroom they haven't done any data on something like that they may they may one day but so far lockdowns work you stay in the classroom you're safe quiet wait till they unlock the door and and every expert out there, and there's not a lot of experts because there's no school of thought, there's no school you go to to become an expert in this.

But every expert out there is saying, look, lockdowns work. Even the National Association of Psychologists say it. The National Association of School Resource Officers say it. Lockdowns work. Now, with that being said, middle and high school, middle school, that's a toss up. OK, high school again, high schools now are more like college campuses. And look, these kids are adults. I mean, they can think for themselves. If there is a possibility because these campuses are so huge of you running and getting to a safe area. OK, I I would I would accept that. However, I could take Parkland, Marjory Stoneman Douglas as an example. Now, Marjory Stoneman Douglas is a huge campus. I mean, we're talking

thousands of students and it's different floor levels and they've got three floors there. And when their incident happened, okay, the fire alarm went off by accident. It wasn't on purpose. It went off by accident. They went into lockdown first, and they started a lockdown. Then the fire alarm goes off. They had not trained. They did not drill on when the fire alarm goes off. There was a lot of confusion.

Now they hear the fire alarm, like, what the hell? We got to get out. We need to go out. The killer probably pulled the fire alarm. No. We need to go out. And the killer probably pulled the fire alarm. No, it was, I think one of the shots went off accidentally and it hit the, one of the sprinklers or something. As far as I know, he didn't do it on purpose anyway, but it still worked because he got people and kids out into the hallways to leave.

Well, what happened was again, mass confusion. So a couple of the teachers had gone through the drill the previous month, and they said, hey, let's get out of here. I don't trust staying in the classroom because they heard the shots down away from them. Well, what they were hearing was the echo. So they actually were running towards the gunman. Oh, Jesus.

Yeah, that did not turn out well. But, again, they didn't train for that. were running towards the gunman oh jesus yeah that did not turn out well and but again they didn't train for that so a lot of them did uh do a reverse evacuation went back into the classrooms and locked the doors but that was just yeah it just didn't work out so this idea of options and run hide fight okay it may work on a high school campus, definitely not elementary, and middle school, that's a 50-50 shot there. There you go. There you go. Very interesting.

What else do we want to tease out and touch on the book as we round out the show? There's so much good stuff. It's good for parents as well, I would imagine, to read this book. Yes. It's good for parents because they can let their school board know their concerns, let their state legislature, their Department of Education know their concerns that, look, can't we keep it simple? Just keep it simple that we want to go into a lockdown.

And, again, it's not just Florida. This is a nationwide thing. Please get the correct doors that open in and have locks on them that they could lock from the inside. And, uh, they're called down here floor. They were called ND 95 doors.

I mean, I'm sure it's different size doors you can get, but, uh, you definitely want the small window on the door. So someone can have to stick their hand through and get in. And, uh,

you want layers of protection. And a lot of schools have that, but you want layers of protection there you go a lot of schools have that but you want layers of protection so you slow down prevent that shooter from getting in this is kind of interesting i believe this is coming from uh some of the teachers too uh the murderers uh murderers have now been raised uh practicing lockdown drills this is chilling so they know the process uh the key being accessible to kids or anyone seems a bit concerning i don't know uh what you what your thoughts are on that yeah like i think i mentioned that um most of these school shooters are former students or current students so they

know the drills they know the drills yes, luckily, they don't have time to breach the locked door. For them, in order to get to that point where they have easy victims, it's going to take time. And you stop them with your SROs. You stop them with a lobby area that is secure. You have one entrance, one entrance into that school. This idea of multiple entrances, no. You have one entrance. Watch out for your other doors that are wedged open. That's what happened in New Valley. That's what happened in a couple of the schools that you have kids that are late, you have teachers going to smoke break, whatever, and they're going to wedge that door open so they can get back in easily. Now, I encourage not only one thing I brought up that years ago,

we had what was called a student safety council. They've gone away. But if students have buy-in to their school, have a student safety meeting. And traverse the school. If you don't have SROs, even if you do, so what? Take a walk around the school. See which doors are wedged open see what's what's going on and mention it to the um principal and administrators i mean what if especially high school and middle school come on it's it's no embarrassment to walk around your school because during study hall whatever or even have a council

of that and say hey i'll go around the school for a couple minutes. SROs, they can't be everywhere. I mean, most of them have ATVs on these big campuses to get around, but it would help. And plus it would give you some kind of, again, you know, involvement in the school and have pride in your school that you want to keep it safe. Definitely, definitely. I mean, that's really important. Well, this has been pretty insightful. I think it's good that there's a manual or something that's readily available.

People don't have to spend a lot of money for it or hire consultants. They can order your book, read your book. It can be shared with administrators, teachers. And the teacher was providing comments. Thank you. You know, it sounds like some teachers want to talk about this, and this gives them the opportunity where they can get ahold of the book and share the knowledge. And sometimes having that where you can be like, hey, here's something we should look at is something that can make a difference.

Absolutely. And you can go on my LinkedIn page and you can find out my contact information, but I'd be glad to be an advocate if you've got any questions or any concerns or if you need me just as an advocate to mention that, hey, this is what I've done, and this is what works, and this is what I recommend. Definitely, definitely. Well, thank you very much, Daniel, for coming on the show. We really appreciate it. Thank you.

It was nice being on here. Thank you so much. There you go. Give us any.coms you want people to find you on the interwebs. LinkedIn.com with my name. And obviously, if you go to the Amazon site where my book is, you can click down where it says follow me, and it will show you how to get a hold of me. And, yeah, LinkedIn.com is probably the best place to try and contact me.

There you go. There you go. There you go. Well, definitely super important data for our age and what we're living through right now. It might be a good book for, I mean, let's say these poor people just got shot barely at Walmart. It was by another employee in an employee meeting. But there was, I think, another shooting before that. You lose track of it after a while.

I mean, would this be a good book to pick up, even if you're not in school? Or maybe what would I do? I don't know what I would do if I was at a Walmart or some sort of public place. Even if it's not a school, but you would look for, obviously, when they talk about situational awareness, when you go into locations like that, whether it's a restaurant, movie theater, Walmart, you look for the exits. Not the main thing you walk through.

You're looking for other exits in order to get out. And if something does happen, you look for those other exits. If they do have a room where you can get into, and I think, luckily, some of these people did have a room that they got into. But being an employee, the guy was able to get in there. But yeah, it would also work if someplace like that went into a lockdown. But there's other information here just besides schools that would benefit people. There you go. Well, it was wonderful to have you on. Thank you, Daniel. Thanks for tuning in. Go to all of our sites across the Chris Voss Show and see us wherever we're on the Internet.

Order it up wherever fine books are sold. The first five minutes, School Shooting Survival Guide for administrators and teachers and probably just anybody who would like to know how to handle these situations better because they seem to be occurring quite often. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe. And we'll see you guys next time.