NEW HAVEN, Conn. (WTNH) — In the wake of a deadly mass shooting at an elementary school in Texas, a local company is working to keep kids safe and prevent future tragedies.
Patrick Chagnon has spent decades in law enforcement and public safety. A former member of state police and Homeland Security, Chagnon is the president of BLUELINE Security Consulting Group in Windsor and teaches a class called “Protecting Our Schools.”
Protecting, he said, is a five-step process and recommends mandating all schools, private or public, K-university, have/do the following:
- Security manager to manage security program
- Internal threat teams
- Integrated safety and security policy/procedures
- Trained school resource officers and security officers
- Submit a comprehensive vulnerability assessment
“There is a difference between security and safety. There is the difference. Safety are the elements, the components, the process, procedures that we use to alarm us to inform us about abnormal conditions within an environment. ‘Hey, we got a smoke detector going off, everybody outside. Lets investigate what’s going on.’ Security are the policy, procedures, the technology,” Chagnon said. “The integration of everything that we want to use from a security practitioner’s standpoint that protects us from man-made events, criminal behavior.”
Chagnon said if he was to grade the state of Connecticut’s efforts of implementing the Sandy Hook recommendations from a physical security standpoint, he would give them a C-.
He said if we really want to protect kids equally, a child in Hartford should have the same security comfort as someone in Fairfield County.
