Time to Place Teeth Back into Security.

By definition, security represents the lack of uncertainty within any endeavor. For instance, job security means that an individual can confidently show up at his or her place of employment and trust that he or she will likely bear that job for quite some time in the future. That they can plan for both vacations and medical emergencies without fear of not possessing enough money to cover for these contingencies beyond the daily costs of living. In other words, job security eliminates consideration outside that particular individual’s concerns for the issues of keeping that job intact largely fall upon another’s responsibility – namely the management and executives of that employer. The worker simply must show up and conduct themselves within an expected behavior, performing his or her duties as required by his or her position.

Corporate security and protective services in general does not deviate from this narrative. Its function is to ensure that staff and visitors for a particular facility may move about freely and conduct themselves in a manner befitting their presence at that location. That is, for instance, employees can move unimpeded within their establishment without concern over injury or violence. The same holds true for shoppers. Each person, vendor or client, would not need to worry about obstructions, faulty equipment, or assailants. Security for them, represents a topic far removed from his or her consciousness because its responsibility falls upon “someone else’s” plate. Security, therefore, remains largely a passive discipline.

Or is it? Yes, when we dial up on our cell phones, we expect to bear four or five bar service wherever we are located., yet when we are confronted with an armed thug, we want the S.O.B. shot right there on the spot. And this, folks, leads to the dichotomy between “security” and “protection” within our minds. Security merely becomes an active issue when we are threatened. For everyone else’s safety and survival, we prefer to keep matters on a passive keel. And, folks, politicians remain notorious in this regard. Consider the recent shooting down in Parkland, Florida; our local and national leaders have offered everything possible to place limitations on everyone but the perpetrators of such massacres. They propose to raise the age limit to purchase rifles and ammunition, suggest numbers of personnel to protect our schools and colleges, and even expect to banish certain types of firearms altogether. All fail miserably to address the underlying threat.

Contrary to popular opinion, school shooters are not reenacting what they witness within barbarous video games or what they learn from Hollywood movies. What they do, however, is create the level of mayhem that they wish to inflict upon whomever (or whatever) they hold a grievance against. Remove the firearm from their presence and they will undoubtedly resolve to use some other ‘tool’ of malice in its place (as much as how Islamists in Europe have resorted to vehicles and machetes). This represents the human element in “inhuman” actions.

In order to realistically move security from strictly passive measures into more appropriate active response, we must address the following considerations:

The threat is evolving, but not supernatural. Given the hyperbole and spread of social media, it seems understandable to attribute some supernatural element to recent crimes, such as the shooting in Florida, but this simply makes a mockery of the crises. The worst school massacre in U.S. history happened over ninety years ago, despite the media and politicians portraying the involvement of firearms during the present. If the intensity of these crimes may not be increasing, the frequency may. This could be attributed to either “copycat” crimes or perhaps just a reflection upon the increase in population. Neither of these considerations should lead professionals to embark upon hysteria or reactive measures. People kill – and, yes, even kids do. Nevertheless, the influence upon these assailants remains a natural force, whether one ascribes demonic or psychiatric motivators. To provide security against these threats, we must first isolate the perpetrator from the hysteria, the prime mover away from the tools employed. Neither bombs, guns, nor machetes influence people to kill or cause injury; death comes from the influence of ideas, situations, and hatred upon another’s mind. History records that the worst atrocities (Fall of Rome, the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, rampant drug trafficking, etc.) occur during periods of societal breakdown. If we reflect upon this, then we can assume that “societal” issues factor into, say, school shooting more than the availability of firearms, etc. That is, any crime remains an idea formulated within the mind of an individual criminal. To combat this, we must employ ideas of our own. For security and protective services professionals as well as those responsible for the safety of others, we must fight the idea of death with the notion of the extreme value of human life. This is not an easy task within our present “Culture of Death”.

Solutions must be Intelligence-centric. Because threats evolve – drug traffickers, for instance, are notorious for their competitive adaptation, learning from and competing with one another for effect – practitioners of security must address issues from an Intelligence-centric perspective. That is, he or she must employ actionable information to gain both strategic and tactical advantage over individuals seeking to target that professional’s facility. That “red flags” were repeatedly missed in the Parkland, Florida situation underscores that few public officials utilize intelligence – of either the cranial or professional variety – in their roles as leaders. To combat against criminals, we must draw first thought as to where our weaknesses and vulnerabilities lie and, most especially, what the trend within our community is regarding probable threats. This is not easy, for while many communities envision active shooters and homicide bombings (owing to our 24/7 news coverage), few consider such things as MS-13 gang activities or cyber bullying. Inasmuch as security professionals must draw upon his or her personal experience to offer solutions to crimes and other disasters, he or she must validate these recommendations with proper intelligence support. In Florida, the lack of actionable intelligence usage has led to cries of “Oh, those damn guns again!” when the proper reaction should have been one of “That kid was just plain nuts!” Until we learn to behave within a primal manner, we shall never learn to deal with primal situations.

Kindness kills. During the 19th Century, Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz stated that the worst situations within war result from “kindness”. Writing within his treatise, On War, Clausewitz scolds those who seek to implement some measure of civility within brutal military campaigns, later echoed by Union General William Tecumseh Sherman’s declaration that “War is hell!” And, folks, combatting against homicide bombers, active shooters, drug traffickers, and MS-13 gang bangers is definitely not Heaven in the undertaking. Therefore, security and protective services professionals – including school administrators and other public officials! – must address the issue that they may have to accept hellish conditions in order to survive until peace can be restored. Here is where “security warriors” replace security guards; armed teachers replace absentee police officers. In a life and death situation, speed counts. Reaction must be both intuitive and heartfelt. In other words, police officers generally lose the ability to protect lives when they have to travel three or four minutes (or upwards of forty-five, in large cities) just to arrive at the scene. In Florida, several police officers had allegedly hid outside rather than proceed into the school to kill the perpetrator. If this is indeed the case, then these “professionals” simply allowed the shooter to complete his atrocity prior to their moving into the facility to conduct what can only be described as a post-event evacuation of the building. When confronting death from an assailant, security simply means that we “render the aggressor unable to inflict harm” to borrow the phrase from the Catechism of the Catholic Church, with the preference to ensuring that he or she never lifts a finger to harm another living soul.

Actionable security involves everyone. A funny thing happens as soon as we pay someone to act on our behalf: we lose control of what needs to be done. We pay politicians to create laws, but they tend to legislate against our freedoms. We pay police officers to apprehend criminals, but they congregate in donut shops and precincts. We pay security professionals to protect us, but they toss money away on accreditation. Why? Are laws valuable to those that break them? Are police officers valuable when we outnumber them by the hundreds to one? Are credentialed security professionals valuable simply by virtue of their parchments? Frankly, no. A person is only as valuable as he or she meets our expectations. Little else. During the rest of the time, politicians, police officers, and security personnel tend to “get in our way” as we strive to live normal lives under the threat of eternal extinction. Perhaps it would behoove us to do away with professional titles altogether. In other words, as soon as people relinquish responsibility for being human, we tend to collapse into sheep. Blame our educational systems on that. In the past, a college education was designed to shepherd us into being, well, shepherds whereas high school served two distinct goals: teach a trade or prepare for college. Today, colleges and universities have largely done away with the drive for superiority by making room for “anyone” to earn a degree despite his or her financial or academic ability. If little else, this has diminished the raw value of an education as most employers have largely ignored the presence of course selection or publication in favor of deferring responsibility towards that piece of parchment we clutter our offices with. Security must begin with those closest to the threat and this means everyone must be held accountable for protecting one another, for directing others to protect us simply removes the responsibility for others’ actions.

Few junkyards are protected by well-groomed Pomeranians. And for good reason: criminals are only swayed by superior violence. Which also explains why they tend to seek out soft targets (as do most terrorists and the Aurora, Colorado shooter did.) Even those who seek suicidal death still desire to go out killing as many of us as they can. Nobody commits atrocities in private, the action itself being a form of fetish that must be served for him or her to become complete within his or her eyes. Grievances and opportunities simply compound the issue. People kill because they want to hold power over their victims and anyone else responsible enough to decipher what is happening. And this is where demonic influence raises its ugly head.

We cannot combat active threats with judicial thinking. Nor can security absolve itself from martial applications. When seconds count, “security” is largely absent for the same reason that law enforcement is necessarily delayed. Instead of pushing our expertise as proprietary, we need to join forces with our local communities to make protection a way of life rather than a sacred commodity. There are enough threats to go around to make most personal bank accounts happy; we need to keep the value of human life at the fore of our minds and this involves doing whatever we can to target and eliminate the bad guys. Or at least apprehend them until our sloth-like judicial system earns its own paycheck. No one bears nightmares over being gummed to death by a toothless Cujo…

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R.J. Godlewski (GOD LESS KEY) is the former executive manager of a threat resolution services company and served as the president of his own security company. He is an alumnus of American Military University, holding an M.A. in Military Studies, Asymmetrical Warfare concentration and a B.A. in Intelligence Studies, Terrorism Studies concentration (with minor degree in Area Studies -- Middle East), both earned with academic honors. He further holds graduate and undergraduate certificates in Security Management and Explosive Ordnance Disposal, respectively. Mr. Godlewski is a veteran of both the U.S. Navy and U.S. Navy Reserve. He remains devoted to protecting the dignity and integrity of innocent human life, wherever and whenever it may be placed in jeopardy and by whatever means may be necessary and employs the breadth of his knowledge, experiences, and assets to achieve this mission. He is also the author of Communities at War: Defending our schools, hospitals, and houses of worship in the 21st Century and numerous other books on protective security. Image: ? Sue Colvil - Fotolia.com