RETROFITTING FOR SECURITY

We get a call from a tech firm who has been warned in that one of the employees laid of during last personell change when ownership changed has been making threatening calls and they know from the H.R. file this person has been treated by a counselor for violent outburst in their past. Or say someone discovers a fellow employee has been posting intent to seek retribution on their manager for a poor performance evaluation. Your entrance looks like the one below and all that stands in the way of a violent intruder is your mid twenties 5' 4" 110 pound receptionist. Management is concerned about her safety as well as the others in the building. Can we make this situation better?

RECEPTION AREA AS ORIGINALLY BUILT

POST RETOFIT BARRIER CONCEPT

 

The client has a fair amount to work with but not enough for hiring armed security and creating a workspace that resembles a prison or Federal Courthouse. First we would suggest putting the front door on an electronic lock with speaker so your receptionist has to buzz each person in without an employee code or keycard. Since your door(s) are most likely glass we laminate them with our security film that resists forced entry and small handguns. Even if an attacker has a large enough firearm to defeat the window film we have taken some of his intial sting away and slowed them buying precious time for 911 response. So the person that comes to the door is not someone the receptionist perceives as a threat and buzzes them on in with intent to ask them to take a seat while their principal there to meet comes from their office to greet them. Always have visitors sign in and person their meeting escort them into your facility if not a busy retail or other high traffic flow business. Our door is always locked and onloy opened when expected client arrives.

The "threat" is now inside reception and when the receptioist calls upstairs discovers H.R. has an alert on this person or they donot have an appointment and suddenly produce a handgun. While unless we put the front end person in a sealed box they are exposed but per this rendering we have lined the entire front desk with 1/2" ballistic rted fiberglass and installed a brushed aluminum frame with 1/2" abrasion resistant polycarbonate which drastically reduces the shooters line of fire by raising the receptionists protection level another 16" above desh height. this gives your front end peson a decent protective ring to take cover under the counter covered three sides by ballistic protection along with being out of visibility so if perpetrator starts shooting its random with our ballistic shiled sucking up as much as its rated for. In addition to the gate at the bottom of the steps with is on a buzzer we have installed a force rated door in the entrance to the left of the rendering and at the top of the stairs. Your shooter is in a box with the option of trying to climb the gate and fight their way up the stairs to a solid door or waste ammo dumping it into the reception level doorway we sealed with a security door as well or leave the building before the police arrive.

While we are working with this client we discover that four employees have valid state Concealed Carry Permits for handguns. We meet and discover two of them are willing to bring their pistol into work each day and put in a lockbox we install at their work station so other employees are not disturbed by the sight of the handguns when they take their jackets off during the day. We advise that the two employees willing take our tactical handgun class to give H.R. piece of mind and your company buys them each a front entry bullet resistant vest that is stored under their desk. Shots are hear4d in the building and these two good, compassionate workers who are willing to protect their fellow workers now have fast access to a vest, their firearm, training to use both and if your losing people due to delay in 911 response or somehow thye shooter got past the reception area before revealing their intentions you have internal security for the cost of a couple of pieces of soft body armor and a tactical firearms class. Your receptionist is pinned under her desk, police have not arrived and one of your armed employees manages to stop the shooter from the upper floor landing.

At our facility we have an indoor shooting range and signs saying all employees are armed. What neer-do-well wants to ask us to unlock our door and let them in the reception room which is sealed tight with an armed person sitting behind a ballistic rated tinted window? The cost is small and odds of a shooter choosing us as a target low if able to even enter the facility.

PROTECITNG A LARGE AREA ON A BUDGET 

We were asked to help a church which had had an of campus shooting which by sheer Grace of God had been diverted on church campus as well as a disgruntled father involved in a messy divorce try to frst con his way into gaining custody of his children while wife was in sanctuary then switch to force. The church was tight on budget but had this very long kiosk where the children were processed as dropped off for the nursary, Sunday School, Childrens Church from infants to teens. There was almost four feet from rear of kiosk to wall and a little over four feet tall by twenty two feet long. In measuring and borrowing a pile of kids rough calculations showed we could shove over fifty people in mix of adults and children behind this counter. The kiosk butted up to wall on left and just past far right end was the door that leads into the childrens area.

The existing structure was made from standard construction materials with childrens church logo on front and rear had a 16" counter for the computer monitors and keyboards which stored each kids information in event a parent had to be contacted or a medical emergency, etc. Knowing they were on a tight budget asked some questions about the congregation and trades represented. Turned out one specialized in aluminum fabricartion, another owned a steel fabrication company and had several welders and contractors. We talked with each to find out the steel company owner had a lot of medium size drop sheets of 1/4" mild steel. The aluminum contractor kept 1.5" square aluminum extrusion in stock and was able to fabricate any frame we might need. We have accounts to buy all sorts of stuff but looking at the 1/4" mild steel and aluminum extrusion immediately concentrated on handgun threats as primary threat level. This stucture went from being functional as a piece of furniture to a nearly six feet tall by twentytwo foot long handgun resistant barrier where the majority of children tended to congregate. Its hard to hold a gun head high and shoot over a barrier like this if the shooter realizes his shots are not penetrating. Every round stopped by a barrier is one less the shooter has at their disposal to injure or kill someone. Even if the shooter has a rifle that defeats it a lot of each bullets energy is absorbed as it hits the barrier.

We drew up some rough plans, got all critical measurements and passed them on to the congregation members in the steel fabrication, aluminum fabrication, contractor and even a painter. We fabricated a few inverted L-shape pieces from the steel guy on site using a portable welder to tack the pieces together, slide into place then attach each section to the other. This lined the inside of the kiosk to bottom of counter height along with bottom of counter with the mild steel. (we are not big fans of mild steel but for free and church was pushing budget as hard as could with items had to buy it beat a piece of 1/2" fiberboard couter was constructed from) The aluminum contractor had donated a lot of brushed aluminum fixtures over the years so we purchased a sheet of 1/2" T6 aluminum, applied a brushed finish and lined the rear of the counter above the counter top to keep things looking consistent and not conspicuous. We mounted the three piece frame he had fabricated on top and slid in the 1/2" Palguard abrasion resistant polycarbonate which finished off the job. Instead of a 51" tall piece of fiberboard they now had a 70" tall barrier of mixed mild steel, T6 aluminum and abrasion resistant polycarbonate that we tested scraps in field behind church and none of the handgun/ammo combinations any of the volunteers were able to defeat, even the law wnforcement officer with a 40 Smith lodaded with "Law Enforcement Only" ammunition.

At our advice they replaced the door going into the childrens area with a force rated entry door which stays closed and locked at all times except to admit kids who exit from another door to reduce confusion. At the right side of the counter if facing it one of their off duty police officers they hire for all services is now stationed, staff along with ushers and greeters are trained at the first sign of trouble to start herding as many people as possible behind the counter and have them crouch as low and tight as possible out of sight. This church has three other such kiosks of differing sizes in the main common area where people enter. We are about to do the same to one of the others budgeted for 2019 then a third in 2020. You don't have to harden your entire facility at one time unless budget allows. We are more than willing to work with a single structure as your budget allows. We did the design and on site project management pro bono and only marked up the 1/2" T6 aluminum and 1/2" abrasion resistant polycarbonate a minimal amount just to cover our manpower cost to pick up, handle, cut and deliver the material. This would normally be a $7,500 job minimum to harden this much area but the church only paid $2,300 of that. We can't do this for all churches but if you help we will to. We have found in other attempts the promised donations of material and labor never materialized leaving the church in a bind with some expensive materials and key components missing. One had a member step up and pay us to complete the entire job and another has partial coverge which is almost as bad as none cond=sidering thier costs so be sure your promised in-house help is reliable.

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