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#68: The Immediate Responder
87 Plays5 years ago
In this week's episode, series host Jill James speaks with Lindsay and Darcy, subject matter experts in Active Violence Emergency Response Training. Together, they're the founders and directors of AVERT.
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Transcript
Introduction to AVERT Founders
00:00:09
Speaker
This is the Accidental Safety Pro brought to you by HSI. This episode was recorded December 15th, 2020. My name is Jill James, HSI's Chief Safety Officer, and today I'm joined by Lindsay and Darcy, who are subject matter experts in active violence emergency response training. Together, they're the founders and directors of AVERT, which is an acronym that stands for Active Violence Emergency Response Training. Welcome to the show, both of you. Thanks for being here.
00:00:39
Speaker
Thanks for having us, Joe. We're excited to be here.
Lindsay's Background in Trauma Medicine
00:00:42
Speaker
Yeah, so tell us, how does a person become an expert in active violence emergency response training? Can we start there? Like, what are your backgrounds? This is interesting for our audience.
00:00:55
Speaker
Cool. Well, Lindsay, ladies first, right? So why don't you start talking about your background first? Because I can't compete with that anyway. So go ahead. All right. So I am a physician assistant. And my clinical experience is in emergency and trauma medicine and neurosurgery. And then I transitioned over into education. I taught at Wayne State, which is a university in Detroit for about 10 years. And then I was given the opportunity to go to Michigan State
00:01:25
Speaker
where I helped to develop their PA curriculum. And now I am the program director at Oakland University in Auburn Hills, Michigan, where we're starting a PA program there as well. So I have an extended background in education and I'm just finishing up my PhD in educational evaluation and research.
00:01:41
Speaker
Congratulations. Thank you. And I'm also a faculty evaluator for the American Council on Education's military programs. So I have the privilege to go to bases all over the country, evaluate their medical programs, and award credit where I can so that our service members can transition into civilian life when they've completed all of their duty.
00:02:04
Speaker
Wow, interesting, interesting. So how does that equate into active violence emergency response training? How did you find that niche?
00:02:16
Speaker
Well, Darcy and I started working together and we realized that there was really a void in taking these very simple emergency procedures and teaching them to civilians. And so we took Darcy's background, which he can tell you about, and combined it with my medical experience. And we created this new program that really combines tactical training with emergency medical treatment.
00:02:40
Speaker
Fabulous. Yeah, let's come back to that. Because I know there's a way that these two things come together. And I say that only because I've had the privilege of experiencing some of your training. And so I know some questions that I do want to ask. And I'm kind of foreshadowing. I'm seeing how this came together now. And I didn't know that before. So thank you for that. Darcy, yeah, tell us about your background.
Darcy's Experience in Emergency Services
00:03:05
Speaker
Right. Mine's a little bit different than Lindsay's. I started off as a paramedic in the state of Michigan and worked on an advanced life support ambulance, and I transitioned over into law enforcement. I spent 28 years at Warren Police Department, which is Metro Detroit.
00:03:21
Speaker
department, one of the busiest and largest in the state of Michigan. I was lucky enough to have a very varied career. I ended up as executive lieutenant in charge of special investigations. I ran a narcotics raid crew. 23 years I also was on and ended up being the team leader and also the commissioner for the SWAT team.
00:03:45
Speaker
So we were a very active team and we got to see firsthand a lot of active shooter type of scenarios and trainings and I also taught for the police academy the SWAT school so you know we saw this need develop when we were having a lot of active shooter type scenarios and it was basically a first responder program on how we can get better and
00:04:10
Speaker
But what we saw over time was, and especially when I transitioned after retirement over to the private sector and running a lot of major corporation security teams and executive protection teams, that the true value lies in what we call the immediate responder. It's the person that is initially on the scene
00:04:29
Speaker
before law enforcement and before first responders. That is where these situations can get mitigated.
Creation of AVERT Program
00:04:37
Speaker
We can mitigate the loss of life. We can mitigate the shooter's actions by teaching civilians very simple techniques that at that time only the professionals knew.
00:04:48
Speaker
how to disarm weapons from subjects, how to work in teams to overcome adversity. And then ultimately what Lindsay brought in is how to stop immediate bleeding, which is the major source of loss of life in these situations. And there's simple and easy things that everybody can do
00:05:06
Speaker
we packaged it together for the civilian market so they can do it. We went out, we tried and tested it for a couple years, we taught it to thousands of people, and we got an overwhelming response on how confident it made them, how comfortable they became, and how this is truly needed all over the United States and even beyond the borders here. So HSI found us,
00:05:33
Speaker
We did our program for HSI and they immediately thought it was the program that would fit in perfectly with the type of training that they do. So we've got together with their outstanding training team at HSI and we put this in a package together that really anybody can teach. You don't have to be a 30 year SWAT veteran or a
00:05:59
Speaker
physician assistant or even a high-level paramedic. If you've got a desire and a passion to teach and you want to sit down in about six to eight hours, learn this material, me and Lindsay give constant feedback and support as well as the HSI staff, we can develop almost anybody
00:06:21
Speaker
and to become an expert instructor and we can get this out to the masses and in doing so really have a very solid plan on saving lives.
00:06:32
Speaker
Yeah, excellent. So let's get back to how you're training trainers in a second. But you talked about your backgrounds. And so the continuity or the thread that you found that brought you together was, Lindsay, your background in emergency medicine, which Darcy, you had in your background as well, but you had the bigger law enforcement background. And you combine these two things, particularly, Lindsay, it sounds like because of what you said about bleeding control.
00:07:01
Speaker
And yes? Yes, absolutely. Bleeding control is such a simple concept and we need to teach it to everybody. Just like CPR is taught, there's no reason why everyone can't learn bleeding control as well. It's the new up and coming certification to get and we completely embedded it into every one of our programs because we feel so strongly about it. I don't think a lot of people realize that someone can bleed to death in as quickly as three minutes.
00:07:29
Speaker
that's not enough time for paramedics or law enforcement or anyone else to arrive. It's really put into the hands of the people, like Darcy said, the immediate responders that are first to the scene. We need to help each other. Yeah, so your focus is really, Darcy, what you were talking about, these emergency responders and equipping emergency responders, which means
00:07:50
Speaker
the people who are just like, something happened, something happened at their workplace, and what's your plan for internal before you, you know, as you're picking up the phone to call for help, somebody still has to be doing something. And so you're really- You have to be doing something. Yeah, Joey, you could be in the middle of a lake on your boat, and somebody falls off the boat, and they cut their leg on the prop, and the propeller behind it. You could bleed to death, and there's nobody around to help you. These are tools you can do to yourself, even.
00:08:18
Speaker
These are self saving life's situational trainings that we are going to show you that you can do to yourself or others. And that really is the key, the one part we put into this.
Empowering Civilians in Active Violence Response
00:08:29
Speaker
And then also the other major thing is, you know, we work off the run, hide, fight concept.
00:08:33
Speaker
But we actually teach you where to run to, what cover and concealment is. If you have to fight and if that's your last resort, have your very best chance for survival by controlling the weapon and working as a team by overcoming the subject. And if you're going to hide and you have to hide,
00:08:52
Speaker
You can't get out, where do you hide? What will stop bullets? What will hide you from observation? And we not only say these things, we teach the instructors how to set up real life scenarios. There's where the confidence is built. Because once these people are put in the team, everybody goes through these team building exercises in these companies, right? But the true team building exercise is how you rely on each other to live and how to save your lives.
00:09:20
Speaker
I mean, we have people walk out of these classes, they're high five in each other, they're no longer scared. Many times a lot of these companies and colleges, they were kind of scared to teach this because it might scare some of our people and we're talking about bleeding, we're talking about an uncomfortable concept and topic. But in reality, once they leave, we've had nothing but a 100% approval from the trainings we've taught constant for thousands of people.
00:09:47
Speaker
and their comment every time is, I gotta go teach 50 other people this, or where do we get these bleeding control kits, or I wanna get tack packs for all my friends for Christmas. I mean, this is something that breeds excitement.
00:10:01
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. So you said a couple of things there. And in full disclosure, Darcy, you had mentioned that you did training with HSI, which is I work for HSI. You guys are part of HSI now, so selfless plug for our company. But really, that's how I experienced what you do firsthand, which as you put out was really impressive in terms of just really empowerment. It felt very empowering to me to learn bleeding control.
00:10:29
Speaker
which you taught me. And also, the things that you taught that empower someone to not feel scared, it stuck. It stuck in my head. I had shared with you the other day about something you had taught about throwing something at a perpetrator. It distracts people. And I'm like,
00:10:51
Speaker
Oh, I can remember that. There were just certain things that you taught that were so impactful to me in the small number of hours that we were together. Yeah, and I want to keep talking about how you're training people to be trainers. But Darcy, you had said something a minute ago that you train on that gold standard of run, hide, fight. But there's something about what you do that's different. So can you talk about what's, a lot of people know run, hide, fight, but what's different about what you do?
00:11:21
Speaker
Well, the interesting thing is we come from a concept where we've actually done these things. A lot of programs will go out and they'll teach it based on theories. Ours are based on practicality. We've been in situations where we had to disarm weapons from people.
00:11:36
Speaker
We've been in situations where there have been an active shooter inside of a building and we've had to search them out. Lindsay's been in medical situations where she's actually had to do the topics that she's teaching you so they're tried, chewed, and tested. We're not reading out of a book. We got our hands dirty.
00:11:52
Speaker
We've lived it. We've done it. So during the course, we lay it out very simply as we give everybody a concept where they watch the video and they get a core understanding of the concepts of a VRT. And once they understand those concepts and they read this, they come into the classroom and we put them into practical scenario-based training situations. We take a firearm, a long gun and a handgun and these are
00:12:18
Speaker
plastic replicas, everything is safe. We've taken every type of possible dangerous situation out of it. And we go, listen, if you are going to disarm somebody, you need to come from an element of surprise. We teach you on how to dig corners, how to hide in areas where people coming into a room probably won't see you, how to work as a team to overcome a subject, how to use distractions and how to use speed, surprise and diversion to
00:12:48
Speaker
overwhelm a person that is not expecting this coming into an area to cause harm and or death. So we take those practical elements and we've made it very simple because to disarm a weapon, that's a five day, 10 hour class. You know, when I, when we teach this at schools, but we go, let's break this down to the simplest concepts is let's take this weapon. Let's point it in the safest direction. Let's control the weapon and let's attack the vital points of the person.
00:13:18
Speaker
Once that is it, we teach you how to control the subject, get them on down into the area and hide on them. We stack onto the person, we attack them.
00:13:28
Speaker
and we do different things in the training that is very effective. So that's the one concept, yeah. Yeah, so in terms of the things that you all do, would it be accurate to say we kind of divided into two parts, like doing the training like I experienced to empower me to know what to do and to work with a team within my company, but you also train trainers to do what you do, is that accurate?
00:13:54
Speaker
Correct. Lindsay, why don't you talk about what the simple, what a day looks like at a train to trainer class.
Train-the-Trainer Classes for AVERT
00:14:00
Speaker
Yeah, sure. Well, because the program is so new, our train-the-trainer class starts with the prospective trainers actually taking the overt course. So they get to go through what the course will look like when they actually teach it. And then after that, we go into the instructor development portion where we go through each section and explain why we teach it the way we do. And we share some of our personal experiences and what we've encountered while we were in the field and why
00:14:27
Speaker
we do things maybe a little bit differently than what a lot of people are used to. So that's a lot of times like we always say question the why, always ask why and that's what we really always try.
00:14:38
Speaker
to enforce when we're teaching our courses. And then after our students are all done with the course, then they can go out and teach it and distribute the material. And as Daricey said, you don't have to have a background in medical or law enforcement or anything in order to teach this class. We recorded all of the core content, and so it really is just facilitating practical exercises.
00:15:01
Speaker
which is really very interesting. The way that we teach is extremely interactive. So we're doing the exercises with students through the video. Then the instructor also is doing it in the classroom. And the participants in the course are doing these exercises over and over. It's not a one-time, put a tourniquet on and be done. We're throwing these exercises in throughout the entire program, which really sets us apart from a lot of other training programs that are out there.
00:15:30
Speaker
I think that our participants are really confident when they're done because their skills have been tested and proven by the end of our programs.
00:15:40
Speaker
So you had said that it's really accessible to anyone. So if someone is listening and our audience is made up of health and safety professionals from all over the United States and other parts and HR professionals, but a lot of safety and health professionals might have a side gig doing consulting. Some of them are consultants and maybe they're listening and thinking,
00:16:04
Speaker
Really? Is this true? Like could I become a trainer like this if I don't have a background like Darcy or I don't have a background like Lindsay? So what you're saying is it is accessible. So someone's thinking about that.
00:16:16
Speaker
It's accessible. Well and then also we're setting up the program so we also are we are accessible where we will have chat rooms to discuss if you've had an issue with a class where it didn't go you thought the way it went or you had questions you didn't know quite how to answer it. We are going to have regular
00:16:37
Speaker
you know sessions where we can ask the experts, ask us what we should do in those type of scenarios and then we hope actually every year to get together with our instructors and break out into the sessions because this is a program that will constantly evolve.
00:16:53
Speaker
There's going to be new things that will always happen. So anytime we have a major event, we have access to the experts most of the time that we're either on the scene or they're evaluating the response and practices. So we get to
00:17:08
Speaker
almost sit there and debate what happened, what should have happened, and what can be done better next time. And then we discuss that and we add this on. So the course that you're seeing today could be changed down the road a year from now based on best practices that we learned during that time.
00:17:26
Speaker
So one of the advantages for an instructor, if they've taken training with you, is access to you all afterward as well. So it's not like you take a class that's once and done, you got your certificate, you hang it on the wall, and now you're on your own. It sounds like you've got time built in so that they always have access to you.
00:17:48
Speaker
Right, yes. HSI is putting together the platforms at this time to set that in motion, where we will have regular sessions where we can get on Zoom meetings or team meetings. And like we're doing today, have roundtable discussions on what is the best practices for this program.
00:18:07
Speaker
Because at the end of the day, we want to save lives. We want to develop the best training possible out there and we are so ingrained in these concepts and so proud of them that this is something that we are going to devote 100% of our attention on.
00:18:24
Speaker
Yeah. And so your goal is to develop this cadre of trainers across the US and elsewhere, I'm guessing, to be able to do what you do on a daily basis. Yes. Yeah. Lindsay, you had mentioned a little while ago about your tech packs. I'm sorry. I didn't say that right. It's for bleeding control. Can you talk about that? And is it something that the instructors have access to? What's all that about?
00:18:52
Speaker
Sure. So we develop bleeding control kits to go along with our training program. And the reason is that when we teach something like CPR, we need our hands in order to do the skill. When we teach bleeding control, we really need tourniquets and bleeding control supplies available. I always tell people, if I taught CPR and then tied your hands behind your back, you wouldn't be able to do it. And so when we talk about bleeding control, we supply these tack pack kits
00:19:19
Speaker
as an option for all of our participants to purchase at the end.
00:19:23
Speaker
so that they can keep them close and ready. As I mentioned earlier, someone can die from a bleeding emergency in as short as three minutes. So we need supplies close, fast, ready. Things that are really unique about our kits, because there are a lot of different first aid kits that are out there, is that our tech pack kits are strictly for bleeding control. They don't have a lot of extras inside, because when you're having an emergency, you don't need to decide between a band-aid or a tourniquet. If it's a true bleeding emergency,
00:19:50
Speaker
You just need those supplies ready and available. Other things that are unique about our kits is that nothing inside ever expires and there's nothing in them that anyone should be allergic to. So they're very safe to have and you can keep them for a long time. We keep them in cars, on boats. We have school districts where teachers keep them right in their desks. So there's a lot of applications for these bleeding control kits.
00:20:17
Speaker
And instructors that teach overt are also able to become distributors for the bleeding control kits and can partake in that if they so choose. And so if someone becomes a trainer, is this something that some people do as a full-time gig, a full-time job? Is it something that they add into a consulting business? What are you seeing with the trainers that you've trained already?
00:20:42
Speaker
We're seeing both. It really depends on the instructor's availability and their connections and how often they want to teach it. Active shooter is a problem and active violence is a problem that occurs in all settings. So it's not just a workplace issue. We're seeing this in
00:21:01
Speaker
houses of worship and in schools and really every type of business. So these are skills that can really be used and taught by anyone anywhere. So we have some who will just do this as a consulting type of job and others who really teach this full time. The course takes about two hours to teach. So if you are in an actual business, you can technically teach it four times in an eight hour day.
00:21:32
Speaker
Wow. So, Darcy, you had mentioned something earlier about staying current and how you do essentially post-mortems every time there's an event that happens in the country and that changes up your curriculum. How do the two of you stay current, assuming that this is really important piece? Well, I think we stay current because we both
00:21:59
Speaker
We both are active in the field. We both are still working in the field at the highest level. Lindsay is working in a major university teaching medical students. I am the vice president of a major corporation that works in executive protection and high level security. I still have a lot of connections with law enforcement and tactical response teams.
00:22:25
Speaker
And I do sit on committees with ASES and other areas that we get the most current information and the most latest debriefings on these events. So we get to read these before most people get to see them. And we get to be hypercritical about ourselves. And that's the first thing whenever I was on a raid or a barricaded gunman or whatever it was, the first thing we got back, we talked about what can we do better next time.
00:22:50
Speaker
What can we change? What do we need to train to do better? And on every single one of these incidents that happens around the country, and they're happening right now, we get the alerts every day when an active shooter and active violence events comes across. The media right now is just focusing on COVID in the election.
00:23:08
Speaker
Once that starts dying back down, you will see these active shooter events become central again on media because they're going to need stories. These things have really not gone away. They just haven't been out there. Right, right. So, Lindsay, you had said this is essentially for any industry.
00:23:32
Speaker
I'm assuming that you train people in any workplace, any environment whatsoever. People shouldn't say, oh, I'm not a this or a that, so it wouldn't work for me. You're saying that this is applicable to anyone. Absolutely. These events occur in all settings, so it's absolutely applicable anywhere you go, whether it's to the shopping mall, to the movies,
00:23:54
Speaker
to work, schools, like I said before, houses of worship as well. We see these events all the time on the media, and so they're not, unfortunately, not going away, so it's important for us to prepare. Lindsay, you sent me something today that showed the increase in violence in hospitals and emergency rooms.
00:24:15
Speaker
This is another major area that's getting a lot of attention recently. And in the staff in the emergency room, a lot of people we're getting, they go, please give us information on how to keep ourselves safe in these areas. Because this right now primarily is where violence is happening. So we've taught doctors' offices, hospitals, social workers.
00:24:40
Speaker
all the way up to houses of worship and major corporations. So the cool thing about this, it goes hand in hand if you already are a CPR instructor or a PPE instructor, is once you have that audience, you've got a built-in audience that also needs this training. And what we've seen from HSI and other corporations is they ask corporations, what's the number one training that they want to know about?
00:25:08
Speaker
And active shooter, active violence is the number one training that they're looking for. Right, right. And so during the pandemic, have you been able to do your train the trainers or how is how is that working right now? I mean, if people are listening and going, yes, I want I want this to be in my life. This sounds like something I'm interested in becoming a trainer on. What does that look like right now? Or are you building for that post pandemic?
00:25:32
Speaker
We absolutely are still doing train the trainer. We're following state guidelines for COVID and making sure that we're adhering to all the precautions while we're teaching. And we also encourage our instructors, of course, when they go out and teach this course to do the same. But this course absolutely is doable with COVID precautions to teach to train the trainer as well as to train
00:25:54
Speaker
your team. And one of the things that we've been really fortunate to do was develop a very strong ER to your emergency response team at Darcy's place of work. And so I'm sure he can talk about that. But that's something that during COVID, while there were a lot of people working from from home that we were able to really focus on small teams like security teams or safety teams that are still
Corporate Emergency Response Teams Development
00:26:18
Speaker
working at the actual business and really train them up during this time while things are a bit slower.
00:26:26
Speaker
Yeah, perfect segue, Lindsay. I was just going to ask you about that. You had mentioned to me when we spoke prior to our recording that you train trainers, but then you also work directly with employers to develop what you just said, emergency response teams, and to help people write their protocols for emergency response. So can we kind of pivot our conversation that way? Talk about what that looks like when you're working with an employer. And what is that?
00:26:51
Speaker
Well, a lot of security teams, if you're lucky enough for your corporation or business, they have a security team. They're usually stretched pretty thin and they're usually not trained up to the highest levels. So what we do is we come in, we can usually evaluate the company asking people that work there, what are they most afraid of? What keeps them awake at night? What are the biggest concerns? And then what we do is we develop training that the security team has, but then we take it another level further.
00:27:22
Speaker
we could create what we call the emergency response team. It is a group of individuals that work together, that are volunteers in the corporation, and they get together and they learn basic concepts of VRT, building evacuations for emergencies such as fires or any type of structural damage or earthquakes would have you. Whatever it may be. And now instead of a security team of just 20 or 25,
00:27:51
Speaker
I've got 50 volunteers now that have the same core concept of training. And whenever you get volunteers involved, they're always very excited and very enthusiastic to learn the training. So I've bolstered my team from 25 to 75 just through simple quarterly trainings.
00:28:10
Speaker
That's the concept of this, and you can really take it as far as your company will allow you to go. Right, right. Yeah, and so for our audience, anyone who's listening right now who's a safety and health professional, you know that we all have to have, like we're mandated by law through OSHA to have emergency response training and to have emergency response protocols. And that's what Darcy and Lindsay are talking about, helping develop that. And, you know, sometimes
00:28:36
Speaker
people don't always think about, you know, you think about fire, okay? Everybody knows you gotta have a protocol around fire and emerges, you know, that kind of thing. Sometimes people think about the natural disaster thing, like you just talked about with hurricanes or tornadoes, that kind of business. Or, you know, it'll be the standard, hey, we have a gas leak, and what are we gonna do about that? And, you know, the whole piece of an active, violent, something happening in that regard
00:29:05
Speaker
You know, people don't often know where that sits, but that's where it sits. It sits squarely in this area and it absolutely must be a part of part of your emergency response training and your protocols. That's a big protocol, but what you need to do is, and this is for the instructors out there, what we've learned is you have to sell it. What is the why? What is the need? And obviously protecting lives is the most important thing, but you're also looking at brand reputation.
00:29:35
Speaker
okay you're looking at mitigating loss when i would go into a company and i'd ask him if you had to be shut down for one hour what would the cost be to your company now if you have an active violence situation in your place you can be shut down anywhere from one day to seven days to two weeks what does that do eighty five percent of companies don't recover from that
00:29:57
Speaker
They don't have the bandwidth or they do not have the personnel intact to recover from something like that. So we tell and teach them that by simply setting up this training, it could possibly save you multi-millions of dollars down the road
00:30:15
Speaker
by setting this up and building a strong platform, what we call hardening the target. Make it something that is harder for something to happen. I had this conversation with somebody today. We talked about our building and where it's at and the surrounding neighborhoods and what it's like to go
00:30:33
Speaker
The idea is to put layers of protection in. It starts with patrolling the outside with a vehicle, a visible presence. And then it's the cameras that's also watching. And then you have somebody at the doors that's stopping everybody and talking to them. And then you have rovers on the inside that are walking around. You build layers of protection from outside in. And then your ultimate layer inside is your ERT team. That's the team who will be your immediate responders
00:30:58
Speaker
probably should something happen so not only you know if you ever have to go to court which ultimately if something happens you will you'll pull out listen we have this training we had experts come in and when OSHA and the lawyers get together you go we have a plan we trained a plan and this is how we responded to the plan
00:31:19
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, and speaking as a former OSHA person myself, I know I've asked employers those questions specifically, like show me that protocol, show me where it's written. What was your plan? How did you train? That was always part of investigations that I did. And for anyone who's listening who's like, hey, Jill, but yeah, my state doesn't have a law in the books for safety for violence.
00:31:47
Speaker
Well, guess what? You still have a requirement under federal OSHA everywhere for emergency response, which this is part of it. And then we also have, of course, the general duty clause that says employers duty is to to ensure the safety of their employees from predictable hazards, you know, known hazards in their workplace. And violence is certainly something that isn't, you know, not you are immune from it regardless of where you work.
00:32:17
Speaker
Absolutely, and I think the bleeding control portion is also quite interesting here. A lot of times we'll hear from businesses who are like, well, we don't do heavy manufacturing here, so we don't need bleeding control training. We don't have the big presses or any of that machinery, so we're not concerned about it. Well, what we found is that the people who actually end up using the bleeding control kits and the skills
00:32:39
Speaker
find themselves doing so in situations they at least expect. For example, we trained a local police department in bleeding control and equipped them with the tack pack kits and they were prepared to use them in the case of getting into a shootout or something like that.
00:32:54
Speaker
And they called us and said, well, we used your kits and it saved someone's life. We said, oh, well, what happened? And they said that there was a woman who was baking in her kitchen and the cake plate broke and cut her arm very badly. And they were able to save her with the tourniquet and they were able to protect her arm as well and salvage the arm. So it's sometimes in those situations that you least expect to use these skills, but it's so important to have them.
00:33:21
Speaker
Yeah, right. Right. Darcy, you had talked before about, you know, this subject in general, people are like, if we talk about it, you know, it's like it's like it's like teaching your kids about safe sex. If you say sex, that means they're going to do it. Right. And so if we talk about violence, it means it's going to happen.
00:33:42
Speaker
You know, it's like this big mysterious thing, like, ooh, we don't want to talk about it. You know, I'm a house of worship, that couldn't happen here. We're an educational setting, you know, we don't want to talk about that. How, when you are entering, you know, conversations with an employer or for our safety and health people who are listening, like, how do I even talk to my bosses about this to even broach this subject to try to
00:34:07
Speaker
You know open the door. What would you we what would you we start off a couple of different ways? You usually start off with we show them some statistics Which we also we bring up in the in the classes that we teach is okay These five businesses it cost them 80 billion when an incident happened this business it cost them a hundred billion So from a business standpoint, it's dollars and cents to them. Okay, you show them what the loss is
00:34:34
Speaker
Production-wise, lawsuit-wise, and brand reputation, that is usually what sells it along with OSHA regulations. But the hardest person that you have to sell usually is the school districts.
00:34:46
Speaker
They most are mandated to do lockdown drills and they'll do two to three lockdown drills a year and they'll be very simple. They'll, during the class, okay the bell will go off, everybody will close the door, go to the corner of the room and be quiet. And in reality it never happens that way.
00:35:05
Speaker
It's in the lunchroom or when the kids are out on recess. Have the lockdown drill then. Have the lockdown drill when the kids are in the lunchroom eating lunch. What do you do then? Challenge yourself. Find your deficiencies. Find where your weaknesses are at. So what we usually do is to overcome that, is I say, listen, we're gonna come into a free session. I'm gonna walk in the door for, I want your administrators there. I want your HR people there. I want the people that are gonna be my, person that's gonna fold their arms.
00:35:35
Speaker
sit back and go, show me. I don't believe it. Show me. And when I walk out and they got their hands over their heads going, that was awesome. We want this. We need this, right? That's the thing I, you know, I want to teach us. We're, we're going to teach us to a bunch of law enforcement officers first and, and a bunch of firefighters. We got this group coming together. It's like a super group of first responders around the United States. And the guy we spoke to, well,
00:36:01
Speaker
had this connection with really soon. He goes, listen, I want to bring together a group, and I want you to show this group. These are the best of the best first responders in the United States. He goes, who do you want there? I go, give me your biggest doubters, your best trained guys. Give me the guys that have done it, seen it, and been there that are teaching something else. Let me come in, and if I can't sell them, I'll walk out the door. Didn't cost you guys a penny.
00:36:27
Speaker
We walk in and blow them away every single time. So that's what it comes down to. And we go against the toughest critics and I say, listen, you tell me, you show me why the concepts that we're teaching you aren't the easiest to follow and aren't the most practical way of doing things. We'll change it. We'll switch it up. I mean, that's what we're all about, is being diverse.
00:36:52
Speaker
But they never do. They go, makes sense. You make it simple. You make it easy. And what do you need in a stressful situation?
00:37:01
Speaker
You need kiss. Keep it simple, stupid. You need easy to follow simple things because most people, these immediate responders, this is the worst day that they've ever had in their entire lives. They never expected this to happen, but when you build in a little bit of reputation and it pops back to them, that's what we want
Impactful Training Techniques of AVERT
00:37:20
Speaker
to reach. So that's how these trainers that we're speaking to today, take the training, become an instructor,
00:37:28
Speaker
and practice it with family, with friends, with small groups, work out your bugs, work out your kinks, call me and Lindsey, call HSI, get the experts to weigh in and then build your group, go to a little bit bigger group, a little bit bigger group. And in a few months, you'll have it down. And it's built through reputation. And you know, it's kind of funny is, because we have like asked the expert section, we get asked the same question over and over.
00:37:54
Speaker
like by these different groups so we can go listen they're gonna ask you this they're gonna ask you this and eventually we build it in the program so they don't ask it so many times but we figure out you know what the story is is you know can i bring my own gun to class to show them what a real gun looks like
00:38:11
Speaker
absolutely not you can't do that it's a safety factor what if the law enforcement officer shows up at class and he's got his gun no there is never a real gun law in any of these classes and this is why we always tell you the why we always sit down and say this is why and I know it's gonna be uncomfortable to tell these people why
00:38:29
Speaker
But me and Lindsay has been asked this question 5,000 times. And this is the answer that we found works best in most scenarios. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, the keep it simple, stupid. I experienced your training, I don't know how long ago, it's been maybe close to two years.
00:38:46
Speaker
and I remember it. It's time to get back, Jill. You gotta get back in and we gotta do this again. We gotta do it again. Okay. I'll happily be part of your training again, but I just want to say it stuck. Like, you know, you're talking about things. I'm like, yes, I remember that. Yes, I remember what you told me to do. I remember that. It's stuck in my head.
00:39:03
Speaker
which is fantastic. Before we tell people where they can learn more, I just wanted to circle back to what you said about developing an emergency response team. So if someone is listening right now and they're like, hey, but I don't already have a team,
00:39:21
Speaker
That doesn't mean that they can't have one. You work with people to help them develop one. If they're a loan safety person and they don't have a dedicated emergency response team because they don't work on a big campus and maybe they're a smaller employer, that doesn't mean that they can't have one, right? No, no. We work with corporations or businesses that have as little as 15 team members to 15,000.
00:39:47
Speaker
We can cover it all. The idea is, like the Avert concept is, the training that we give you is applicable wherever you go. Avert is applicable at the movies, at church, at a wedding, at an auditorium, at a concert. It's the same concept.
00:40:04
Speaker
With the ERT, it's the same thing too. Myself and Lindsay will come and we evaluate what you currently have, what your resources are, and how to help you build a concept and training model that will get you with at least the minimum essentials
00:40:22
Speaker
that you will need to be as successful as possible giving the situation you're given. And that's based off of data of what probably will happen. You always can't cover everything all the time and no concept works 100% in every different situation. And we wouldn't understand it. Lindsay was talking yesterday about medicine is the practice of medicine.
00:40:45
Speaker
We're practicing it. We have not become 100% expert in everything we do yet. And yeah, this is not a 100% this concept where it's absolutely every single time. But what we have found through our background experience of training is this is probably
00:41:03
Speaker
your best chance and we are giving you options to do. There's options with that program. You can try different things. And with the ERT program, it's the same type of thing. We'll give you options for training and see what works best for you in that given situation. It's like the run, hide, fight thing is the best option isn't always to fight.
00:41:25
Speaker
In most cases, the best option is to run. So that's why we give you three options. The run, hide, fight for us is escape, evade and attack is what we say. Don't fight, attack. You have to go all out, work as a team and go for crucial striking areas that we talk about. We ramp it up a little bit is what we try to do. I mean, the government has got an outstanding core basis, but
00:41:51
Speaker
You took it. Yeah, you took it. We took it a little bit further. We're for the people that go, all right, I get the fight, but I've never been in a fight. How do I do that? How do I do that? All right. Well here we're giving you an option. This is what we think is the best option. And then we just go to town and try to do it in a very dynamic setting with outstanding presentations. So does, does some of your training also include deescalation techniques?
00:42:17
Speaker
You know, you had, you had mentioned earlier where violence is really where we're seeing an uptick right now, particularly in healthcare. Right. And so do we see that, do we see that continuing right now? Sure. I mean, we're in the middle of a pandemic. We have a, you know, a healthcare shortage because the systems are maxed out. Um, you know, and then there's, there's always been, there's always been the person that comes in who's angry about their bill or not being able to.
00:42:43
Speaker
say goodbye to their loved one. Yes, there's all this stuff happening at these doors right now. Is de-escalation some of the things? It's not. We have developed a concept in a de-escalation program that we do teach to hospitals, we teach to schools, teachers, we teach to first responders. But in this type of scenario with a vert, a guy's coming through the door of the gun.
00:43:07
Speaker
I'm not gonna take that opportunity to go, sir, I understand you're having a bad day. Let's talk about it. There's things that your de-escalation, no, no, you're coming to the door, you're killing people. We're teaching you how to stop the violence. And be the immediate responder. And then be there to fix and mitigate any problems that may have happened from it. So that's where the avert concept is, but we've got a whole other section of training for de-escalation which is outstanding.
00:43:33
Speaker
Okay, fantastic. overt also focuses on situational awareness. That is one topic that we do definitely address in the avert program. And that's the identification of all these potential problems in your surroundings to be aware of different warning signs, or different predictors of violence in the workplace or wherever you may be. So we touch on that. But as Darcy said, it's more of that immediate response
00:43:59
Speaker
But there are a lot of other programs that we work on that address the escalation portion. Got it. So as we're starting to close our time out together today, I just want everyone to know that in our show notes, we will include access to Lindsay and Darcy and about the AVERT program and also about the ERT, the Emergency Response Training Program. Are there ways that you want to share right now that people can follow you as they're listening?
00:44:26
Speaker
I think initially, go through HSI, the website, the www.get-avert.com. There will be links there. And there will be ways to get ahold of us through the HSI platform. We're lucky enough to be working with an outstanding company who is the world leader in safety and response to safety. And we're so happy that they put our program involved in this
00:44:52
Speaker
you know, nationally renowned company with all the other things that they're doing. We're just beyond proud to be associated with HSI. We'll start with that, getting in that way, and then we'll develop future models after. OK, thanks for the plug, Darcy. Appreciate that. Anything else that you want to share with our audience today?
00:45:17
Speaker
Lindsay, I've been talking my head off, and that's usually how it goes. Once I get talking, you can't shut me up, and Lindsay's the smart one out of the two of us. Why don't you say something that makes sense? I've been rambling on, Lindsay. The budding PhD, okay. Right. All right. I barely made it out of high school, and I'm competing with this.
00:45:35
Speaker
It's okay. I would step in if you're missing anything Darcy. Quality control at its finest. Absolutely. No, we're really, as Darcy said, we're so excited about this and we're very accessible people. We're very, very casual. So we do hope any of the listeners who are interested will reach out to us. We're always excited to talk to people who are interested in our program and we actually go out and teach a lot of the train, the trainer programs ourselves.
00:46:00
Speaker
We love to interact with people all over the United States and teach them about our experiences and get excited about really adopting this program in their own place of work. Very good. We said we really want this program, and HSI does also. We would like this program to become the national standard for active violence response, especially in the civilian market.
00:46:26
Speaker
That is the market that we are going after specifically because that's the one is the least trained and least informed. I've worked law enforcement for close to 30 years. I've been in the private sector for many years. We train at high levels. We've got the luxury of having experts around us that are pushing us to the limits constantly.
00:46:46
Speaker
But the civilians are really you guys out there that are going to be teaching. The teachers, the Sunday school teachers, the person that's working at the mall, they're the ones that are probably going to be the first one to encounter this. Those are the people that are truly going to be the people that can save lives, stop the violence, end it quicker.
00:47:07
Speaker
more than anybody else. So if we work together, we develop an awesome cadre of instructor coordinators and then instructors around the country and build this program out. I don't see why in the next two years that we can't be the number one program for responding to active violence and just take it to a whole other level.
00:47:29
Speaker
and everyone knows what avert means at that point. Yeah, that's a fantastic goal. Well, thank you so much for sharing your story today. Thanks for the inspiration. I hope people who are listening are going to dig in and read more and learn more about avert and at a minimum dust off that emergency response protocol that you may or may not have in your workplace.
00:47:54
Speaker
Hopefully this conversation motivates people to do that too and take a look at those as well. Really appreciate your time today. Thank you so much. Thanks, Joe. Yeah, Joe. Thank you for having us. You're welcome. And thank you all for spending your time listening today. And more importantly, thank you for your contribution toward the common good.
00:48:13
Speaker
making sure your workers, including your temporary workers, make it home safe every day. If you'd like to join the conversation about this episode or any of our previous episodes, follow our page and join the Accidental Safety Pro community group on Facebook. If you aren't subscribed and want to hear past and future episodes, you can subscribe in iTunes, the Apple Podcast app, or any other podcast player you'd like. We'd love it if you could leave a rating and review us on iTunes. It really helps us connect the show with more and more safety professionals like you and I and Darcy and Lindsay.
00:48:42
Speaker
Special thanks to Will Moss, our podcast producer. And until next time, thanks for listening.