CRISTINA ROSE 0:12
Hello friends and welcome to this week’s episode of “Not Your Momma’s Podcast”. The title of this episode is survival tools for administrators and teachers. In this episode, we are speaking with “Daniel Daluzneski”, who is a retired “lieutenant US Secret Service and former coordinator of Emergency Management, Safety and Security. Pinellas County Schools”. Daniel’s personal mission is to educate people within organizations about what to do in an emergency situation, such as an active shooter, fire or bomb threat. His background and experience is an individual tool to train people and help increase their confidence in responding to a threat. It is always better to be proactive and prepared in advance for a situation that may occur. He also has a book called The first five minutes school shooting Survival Guide for administrators and teachers. Daniel, it is such an honor to have you on, there have been so many active shooter situations going on in the schools lately that I feel like I’ve been hearing in the news. So I’m really glad to have you on to discuss your book, tips that we need to know how to respond in a threatening situation. But before we dive into the topic today, can you give the audience a little bit more about your background and how you got to where you are today?
DANIEL DLUZNESKI 1:31
Miss Christina, thank you so much for having me on. And yeah, a little bit more of my background, you explained already 24 years of the Secret Service. And when I while I was with them, I was fortunate enough to have a dog a bomb dog. His name was cor-x. So I was a canine technician for them for a while until he retired. And luckily when he retired, I was able to keep him. So that was fortunate for me. I became a very good house pet. After that I moved down here to Florida and I was just going to retire and you know, live on a beach with an alpha personality doesn’t work out too well. So I was told look, you better get a job. So I just decided to just something opened up with the school system. And it looked perfect for my resume. So I applied there it was a coordinator with their emergency management system not realizing that I look, I assumed when just retired people moved to Florida. No, no. A lot of people who move to Florida and a lot of people in Florida have children. And the district that I covered had over 100,000 Students with 140 schools. And I was it I had no staff, no secretary, nothing. It was just me, that dealt with the number of students, teachers and administrators, we had a number of schools. So it was kind of trial by fire. But I was fortunate enough to had some autonomy, where I was able to at least change some things around and dealing not only with administrators and teachers, but with a lot of parents. Because as we found out and as people out there in the audience have children. It’s, I don’t want to say helicopter parents, look, I have a son in high school. He’s 16 years old. And obviously I want to keep him safe. But when I go to some of these schools, and I’m going to concentrate mostly on elementary schools, because middle and high schools, it’s a lot different than we were when I was younger. Now it’s the high schools are bad. These kids are so mature. It’s like being on a college campus. And these campuses are so big. And middle schools now our high school used to base a concentrate more elementary school. And obviously what happened at Sandy Hook and more recently, what happened in Valley at the elementary schools. That’s where I’ve been concentrating on and when I meet with these parents, I try to explain to them they’re the ones now especially, I want to say especially here in Florida, but across the nation, but since I live in Florida, I can explain I relate more to what happened in Florida is that the parents have to push this kind of thing with school boards and with their legislatures on what they want in the safety program at their schools. Now in some respects, legislatures have already passed certain things and the reason I left am eyes was talk about that. The Pinellas County system because after parkland, which was Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School where they had a shooter there, and after that incident, Florida legislation decided that it was better for law enforcement to take over the safety and security of schools. And former law enforcement. I completely disagreed with that. Because the Meilan forcement is reactive. They’re not preventative, they’re not in a preparation business. They’re there to react, come and help you. So I disagreed with that and thought no, I don’t I’m not suited for that. I disagree with some of their policies. And of course, when you have, whether it’s a new administration, anybody new come into something, they want to change things, whether it’s a new boss or a new administration, we got to change things can’t keep things the way they are. So what happened was I will tell you, and I’m sure you already know and your audience should know that when an active shooter is on campus, actually in the school, the school should go into a lockdown. And what a lockdown means is that the classroom doors are locked, which they should be already some our state here, at least, excuse me, my county at least does that I’m hoping across the country that you do that. classroom doors should be locked during learning time. You lock the door, you turn off the lights, you cover the windows, you have the children sit on the floor away from the window, usually in a corner, turn off your cell phone, or at least silence it. And just be quiet and wait for the good guys to come. And they will eventually come.
CRISTINA ROSE 5:43
What happened, Scary?
DANIEL DLUZNESKI 5:46
It’s yeah, and I try to explain because I’m gonna, I’m going to tell you a second option here. And I hate to use the word option, but that’s what it’s called, instead of going into a lockdown. What some teachings out there have said is let’s give the teachers options. Let’s give them an option of what’s called Run, Hide fight. And run, hide, fight was created by Department of Homeland Security for businesses wasn’t created specifically for schools. Some of these security experts have said, well now let’s use it for schools. High School, maybe. But what happened at Marjory Stoneman Douglas didn’t turn out so well, when they tried this run, hide, fight or had these options because I’m gonna throw a lot of information out at your parkland, what happened was they had done a lockdown, or an active shooter drill a month prior. So when this actually happened, when the real active shooting happened, they at first thought it was a drill, because most people are in denial when something like that happens. I mean, you don’t think the gunfire at your school. And this thing is like, you know, I’m sorry to say it’s an elite, basically University kind of campus. So you wouldn’t expect something like that there. Anyway, to continue at Parkland, the fire alarm, I think the fire alarm went off accidentally, some say it was pulled, they never trained for that. So now they hear the fire alarm and they hear the shooting going on. They’re really confused. Should we go out? Should we stay? Should we lock down. And it was a lot of chaos. And what happened was some of the teachers decided, well, I hear shots at the other end of the hallway. So we’re going to run, let’s take my students and run. Well, they made the mistake of what they were hearing with echoes of the shots. And they actually were running towards the shooter. So this idea of options-based training, which means that they’re giving the teachers the option, so as a teacher, you know, try to put yourself in their place. Teachers have learned, I mean, they have the toughest job. Now, not only with pay with COVID, with all the stuff that’s happening, now you got to be involved with, you know, some kind of active shooting. So instead of locking down, I say instead of the option is you can lock down or here’s the option you could run with your students. All right, high school, maybe they’re adult enough, they can figure it out if they want to run okay, middle school, a little 50 50 on that, but Elementary School, definitely not. But you’re giving the teachers this added pressure of the signing. Okay, yeah, I’m pretty sure to shooters over there. Come on, kids, let’s go, we’re going to run out here. And you’re talking 25 or 30 kids in these classrooms, tiny children, we’re going to hear some really bad stuff, we’re going to see some really bad stuff, who are more likely going to panic. And just little kids are going to, you know, some are going to refuse to go, I gotta say, hey, my dad said something like this happens. I don’t go anywhere we’re going to lock down. So to have to put the pressure on the teachers for that is absolutely. It’s outrageous for that to happen. It’s bad enough that I’ll give you one example of how my school system dealt with this when they would have a three-day conference, which was a yearly conference before school started, you’d have three days you’d bring in teachers and administrators. And for three days, they would talk about education. Well, the amount of time I got to talk about security was 45 minutes. And that was it. So I’m up there just spewing out all kinds of stuff at them. All right, now we gotta go back to teaching. And I understand. Because I don’t know how other states do it or counties do it. But in Florida, it’s a grading system for each of the schools A through F. Well, if you’re a D or F school, you’re going to be you’re in big trouble. You want to get that grade up so they’re under pressure to continue to teach a fire alarm at most. Even in a big school. 20 minutes for me does fire alarms it didn’t once a month you go out and wait outside for a while. Okay, the bell rings Alright, we’re back and let’s start teaching active shooter drills. The best I’ve ever done is 30 35 minutes and that’s saying something that’s only because They usually pre-prepared, which I disagree with. But you’re talking 45 minutes, probably to an hour for an active shooter drill, because to do it properly, you need to make the announcement, you need to have everyone locked down. At the end of the drill, do not make an announcement and say it’s over. Because the bad guy could be holding somebody hostage and bringing somebody out. So now you have to go through and unlock the doors physically, and let people out and tell them to wait, if it’s a huge campus, wait until we got everybody you know, unlocked. And then we go back to teaching. So I understand these teachers, like they hate and say, hey, they dislike active shooter drills because it takes so much time away from teaching. And I understand as I’ve got papers, do I get homework at a test coming up? The pressure is enormous, especially if they got pressure again, but bringing their grades to school. So yes, it is a balance that has to happen. And as more and more I say more if you kind of avoid that word, but it’s going to happen again. The reason I wrote the book, I was very upset after Valley. I mean, obviously being with law enforcement, you know, but that wasn’t a whole problem in that school was from beginning to end, there was just, it was really bad it was everything went wrong. I mean, all the way up to the end. So that’s the reason I wrote it. My wife said, look, you have to vent, you got to get something out there. So I never wrote a book before, I didn’t know what that guy was doing. Anyway, I just wanted a short, it’s only 77 pages. It’s a short practical handbook slash guidebook that anyone can look at quickly. And know what they need to do. I did not want to write this 200 or 300-page administrative guidebook with every situation you could possibly come into. In the safety of a school I wanted to concentrate on looking, bad stuff is going to happen. When it happens, this is what you need to do, and have the confidence to do that. And help is on the way. So the reason I named it five minutes, the first five minutes, excuse me, the FBI statistics. And you know, it takes a while for them to build up the data for that. So it’s not something that the current active shooter shootings themselves take between three to five minutes. Okay. So within that time, you’re on your own. Everybody’s on their own.
CRISTINA ROSE 12:24
I have a question, what do you think about like teachers having guns or like law enforced not law enforcement, but like security, they’re like, already has like the gun to shoot an inactive shooter? Because, yeah, you can have the doors locks, but can’t they like shoot up the door handle and unlock the door and come in and start like, you know, raging bullets at the classroom and the students? I mean, in my opinion, I feel like there always needs to be someone at the school, guarding the school ready to take down a shooter before the shooter takes down anyone.
DANIEL DLUZNESKI 12:58
Good question. And I agree with you. I disagree with having teachers armed, because of the training it would take will take way too long, it will take much too long if they’ve got to be at the same training level that you have a police However, having special resource officers or what we call SROs. Armed at the schools is a very good idea. The problem is because of the riots we had with Black Lives Matter just you know, a few years ago, and this defund the police. You’ve had a lot of mostly students and young people say no, I don’t want the police in here. Don’t trust them. I don’t do not want them in the school. It’s the parents who usually I’m hoping pushed back and say no, no, we want an armed person in the school in uniform. So if something happens, then they will be able to at least engage the shooter. Yeah, it’s good question. And then that’s my opinion on what should happen.
CRISTINA ROSE 14:00
I feel like it’s only logical.
DANIEL DLUZNESKI 14:03
Yeah.
CRISTINA ROSE 14:03
You can’t hold the teachers like you said the training for the teachers is going to be way too much for them. They already have a load. And it’s not their responsibility. Their responsibility is to teach the kids and focus on what their job is. They don’t need to be like the bodyguards. But I just don’t understand why it’s such a hard concept to just put, you know, trained background checks, certified armed officers at the school like a minimum of two to shoot back. Like, I don’t understand why people have to like the no gun zone because people don’t follow the rules and they’re still going to come in there with a gun or a knife and they’re still going to do it and then what are you going to do you can’t protect yourself against the bad guy because it’s a no gun zone, but people are still going to bring a gun in a no gun zone. That’s what criminals do. They don’t follow the rules. They feel entitled and then they want to cause a ruckus, so I don’t know why it’s such a bad All between protection and like, oh, but we don’t like the police to me. I’m just like, bring the armed guards there. Shoot up that person who’s gonna be common and being disruptive on campus so I don’t know that’s my opinion…