Back in my CG days, a report made it to my desk from the security man, detailing the deficiencies of our physical security plan on post. Obviously, a great deal of time had been spent on its construction, as the problems listed were between two and three dozen.
Nothing really earth shattering either. Access point X has Y problem with its pad key, the front room manager of A section is propping open B door because the temperature gets too warm, notations like this. It was one of those reports a fellow looks at, decides that the security people are nuts, asks of one or two of these problems can generally be worked through, and then forgets about it until next year.
Preventive security is forgettable. Preventive security people are irritating.
My security fellow is and was a brilliant fellow, took his role in this function very seriously, and is literally one of the nicest men on the planet. He surely did irritate me on occasion, mostly because of this constant and unrelenting good mood that he has been in since birth, and that is somewhat inconsistent from the grumpy preventive security manager that we can easily envision in our heads.
But he- Charlie- is irritating still yet, because he sees these minor little nit-noid details, and points them out, down to the most intricate and minute level. It can start an argument, and certainly irritation, everybody is busy, and when the front office manager is uncomfortable, when facilities have to stop what they are doing to fix a lock on a door on the back of the back lot of the EOC that does not work, having accepted the easy bypasses when employed, normally propping the door open. It is an act of irritation, but of also denial.
Fixing such minor issues is irritating, and prompts some chiding, which at times uses humor that does mask the irritation, if only a smidge. “I guess it’s curtains for the free world if we don’t fix that one dang lock, on that one dang door, that nobody even uses…..”
I know my facilities people were irritated at Charlie and I both, as when I forwarded the report to them, the instructions read: “Complete to satisfaction, all noted recommendations. Priority.” Hogan is one of those security guys too, and we irritate; that is what we do.
Alarmist, is the word that the residents of those spaces use, again, in irritation. They naturally do not see the necessity of working more, if it makes no difference, and these small things do not. Nothing ever is going to happen.
Until they do.
Until the door propped open on the back lot is seen by someone that needs to get into the building to shoot the people in there. The office residents will make fun of the security guy, claim that he is creating booger men, and they will hold onto that notion, and their irritation until the booger man actually shows up.
Mr. Trump’s election has changed the security situation nationally. It has generated a clear, black and white approach to policy, which tends to irritate the 49% of those people in the nation that do not support him, or his policies. Of those 49%, there are those so frustrated, so infuriated, that the active shooter method of terroristic attack will at least continue at the same rate, or increase.
I am thinking mostly about Nashville here. Two school shootings in the last two years, two terroristic actors that killed people, two manifestos recovered. The shooter did not kill those people because he hated them; he shot those people so their manifestos would be read, and they were. One can see the value that this represents to a terrorist.
I am fearful that this is going to happen more. A proper, up and down establishment creates proper, up and down terrorists. Something that active shooters truly are.
I have done surveys, normally in the immediate aftermath of a shooting elsewhere. It is on the clients’ minds, at that point, who are scared now- to know how prepared are they, aside from the mandatory trainings that do not train anyone to do anything.
The surveys normally point out those nit-noid details that Charlie would excel. The active shooter act is properly defeated by doors and locks, mostly, with a few exceptions. This takes some money. Access points, doors and locks, must be hardened, and designed to take the time away from the shooter so that a responder can arrive and deal with him properly.
A week after the report of survey is completed, management tries to find the money, as after a week they are busy again, and less scared. A month after the survey is completed, they find that they have no money- and about as much interest- because is it really that important? Does one door that opens out, instead of opening in, make that much of a difference? A safe space, that would create time that the responders would need, well, that is really expensive.
We’ll see it again. Irritations disregarded because of the security guy’s alarmist attitude that the people that are busy did not take seriously. Barriers placed on Bourbon Street? Do we have them? We do? Well, we’ll get to it. Likely never happen….. Crazy Charlie thinks a man will drive down the street over people, isn’t that irritating? Too late. I expect the NOPD would have preferred, at that moment, to have been irritated at Charlie. Even happy that he irritated them, but satisfied, instead of mortified, that they did not listen to him; which they did not.
Maybe the ones that have the budget, the ones that humor the alarmists, still figure that the security guy is paranoid, ridiculous, irritating, but do has he says, the attack doesn’t happen there. Maybe it is because they humored the ridiculous is why an attack hasn’t happened there. But, again, we do not have proof if it worked- because the attack did not happen there.
So, those that do not do the work cannot point to a single instance that those additional, irritating, security steps worked. Because- they worked.
This is what we need to do. Humor the paranoid security guy, because it might happen. Once we realize that it might happen, and spend the money, buy more locks, install doors that open in and not out, irritate those that have to use a keypad, irritate those that cannot leave the door propped open to go outside and smoke, irritate those that believe that it cannot happen here; whatever- because humoring the irritating security guy is why that it does not happen here.
This is what we need. We need a nice guy Charlie to be irritated at, as long as we do what he asks us to do.