August 17, 2023
Speaker: Dr. Charles Denham
Bill, thank you so much for taking time today to help us understand some of the new issues that pertain to our rising freshmen in schools and high schools and our rising freshmen in colleges. First off, can you address your responsibilities at Texas Medical Center? Because it’s not just MD Anderson, it’s the University of Texas Health Science Center and you have a pretty broad group that you’re helping protect.
Speaker: Chief William Adcox
Well, thank you very much. Sorry, Dan, it’s a pleasure to be here. We do provide security risk and police services in both institutions. We are part of those institutions. Both institutions have very high expectations. And so we have a very rounded model, the combined protection model. We use the four Ps, particularly we look at prevention. We put together technology, security, administration, and policing in order to meet those needs. So again, with having the appropriate support in the community, it’s very critical. And both institutions are best in the world. And that’s what their expectations are and we strive every day to meet it.
Speaker: Dr. Charles Denham
Well, we love the fact that you are one of our leaders in threat safety science and glad you brought up the four Ps. So, if the first is prevention, both primary, things not happening and secondary harm, if things do happen, what’s your take on preparedness? Why preparedness is so important?
Bill: Preparedness is holistic. It’s universal across the board. So, it’s just not your security, your law enforcement agency. It’s all the incoming students who we’re talking about today. It’s the staff, it’s the faculty, it’s the visitors. So, you have to start with a well-rounded program that covers all bases. You need to have awareness, you need to have education, you need to have training, you need to have the drills and exercises to anchor that down so that you don’t just have competency, but you can make sure you have proficiency. At some point, you continue to develop these things so that you have current, you have currency. And so, the really important part is having MedTac in place, making sure you have the appropriate equipment in place and individuals on your campus, whoever it might be, might be the newest freshman, there might be a visitor with the signage, knows where your AEDs are, your stuff to bleed kids are, where they can get help if there’s any other kind of crisis or emergency. And so those things are very important to have those in place. And that’s what preparedness is all about, but it’s preparedness for everybody.
Speaker: Dr. Charles Denham
Fantastic. And then the third P is protection. And you helped us really understand the idea of moving upstream or left of boom, which is prevention and preparedness. What about protection now with our rising freshmen to colleges and high schools? We really know a lot more now about active shooter events, don’t we?
Speaker: Chief William Adcox
We do, we actually do. Protection is again, it’s multiple processes. It’s kind of like the Swiss cheese analogy. You have to have different layers in place. So, you need to have the environmental layers, which is lighting, it’s your locks, it’s your camera systems, it’s your electronic security, those types of things. But then you also have to have a very good, solid people system in place, which is your police and security operations. And your police and security should be very well linked to your local law enforcement if you don’t have your own campus police in particular, but even so, linked to your local. So, the way we put it is, is that your campus authorities are gonna be your first responders. And then you have to integrate the other response. But the issue is, is having the right coverage on your campus and having the right training in place and having your personnel equipped properly. And so that they can respond. So that’s part of the protection. The other part of the protection is, is what we feel is equally, if not more important. And that is the part about having protective intelligence. That’s the part about understanding and people understanding that you need to get in front of these behavioral issues. And the most important thing is, is when somebody’s baseline has changed and then getting the right people in place. And in our case, there might be student counseling for students, if you have students report one another to say, hey, you know, this individual seems to be a little out of place. There are some problems or they’re saying things that kind of give me pause or pause. Well, then let’s get some help in there to get them before they go up that pathway of violence. It’s the same token as other things where people are threatening from outside or where you’re keeping up with what may be a potential threat coming to your campus. And so, it’s having the intelligence and having the mechanism in place to put it together and look at it with a reasonable eye. You know, not everything’s a danger. And if you get up straight and left to boom and get individuals some help, I mean, that’s critical. Because frankly, if you get to boom, we’ve all lost. Yes, you wanna get in quickly after you’re with your protection model, you wanna get in and neutralize that threat. But that means somebody’s already hurt and something has already happened. So, so truthfully, it’s having a holistic system in place and having it properly vetted, accountability, transparent, and most of all, have it properly resourced and have the right people eating it. Pg slot
Speaker: Dr. Charles Denham
Fantastic. And then the fourth P is performance improvement. And it has been so great to collaborate with you and your world-class team to really study the other events and understand these threats that can really face our students. And I think it was pretty fascinating listening to Michael Dorn describe that fights are a real indicator of potential harm downstream and the advice to rising freshmen in college and in high school to avoid the confrontations, the fights, the bullying, because the downstream events can be pretty lethal.
Speaker: Chief William Adcox
That’s true. And that’s again, when you try to get in front of it, you try to see who’s out of place and who’s doing something that perhaps they shouldn’t. And really you need to move in and address it, but address it from a repilotative type approach. So we need to get in and get some of the buddies in the help and making sure that they can be taken care of. Making sure that that threat program that you have in place is one that is effective and it doesn’t touch one type of student or doesn’t touch a different minority or the females or the males differently or whatever. So you need to make sure that you have the right program in place that has a very, it’s culturally-based, it has a really strong understanding of what actions are of concern when the baseline. So if you have a student that’s constantly very quiet and then all of a sudden this student is just lashing out and getting really angry, that’s you need to report that because something’s not right there to get a couch, to get a professional in there that has the psychology, the medical background that can in fact see if there’s a problem and see what we can do as a group to assist this young man or this young woman or whoever it might be. Slot Kakek Merah
Speaker: Dr. Charles Denham
So Bill, Michael has shared the concerning number that homicides on campuses have gone up. He attributes as you know, the fact that the D-Fund police, the vacancy rates in the communities have had a big impact and that you have to carefully look at the data to really understand that the violence probably has gone up depending on how you look at the data. Is that surprising to you after COVID?
Speaker: Chief William Adcox
Well, it’s not surprising, but I don’t think that one size fits all. I don’t think that the D-Fund the police is impactful in every community. I don’t think that certain things are, but when you look at COVID, you look at all those things that you talk about, they’ve had an impact. For example, if you’re talking about shortage of policing, there’s a shortage of policing and there’s a lot fewer individuals, first and foremost, that want to become police officers. So the pool has gone way down and then there are fewer police officers. Part of that is, for example, when people have not been talking about it, part of that is cities that implemented the DROP program. So the DROP program says, okay, you can retire and then your money goes into the same 401(k) but you just keep working. So you’re still occupying a slot and you’re still getting promoted. What that causes is it lessens the ability for others to get promoted within the organization. And at some point, this aging group is gonna leave. So then when you start seeing anti-police stuff that goes on and you start seeing a lot of the unrest in the communities, those older individuals in particular, they’re able to leave. But you’ve never built up a supply of new police officers along the way in order to take their place. So now you have more people leaving and fewer people wanting to replace those individuals. And so you’re seeing some really bad stories across the country. You’re talking about dropping standards and allowing certain people with certain backgrounds to become police officers. At least you’re seeing a lot of the talk about it. That may not show up right away, but trust me, it will show up. And we saw that even in some of these states like Los Angeles with the Rodney King is. And when you look at, when you did the backgrounds of the people that were hired under a real push to bring people in, eventually those things will come out. So it is a perfect storm. And there are some issues that are out there that need to be addressed. I don’t think that we need to be in a panic. I just think we need to come together as a community and just work through those things. Another issue is there’s a change in philosophy of many prosecutors across the country, not everyone. But in particular, and so the change in philosophy might be second chances, it might be a different issue. There is some debate now over the constitutionality of cash bails. So that’s going on and still being worked on. So people are getting out now that they weren’t getting out before that had felony convictions. And trust us, the criminal justice organizations, criminal justice infrastructure is trying to work through these things. So you can’t just throw rocks and say it’s all bad. You need to be open-minded. You need to look at it and say, okay, what’s worked, what hasn’t worked? And what do we need to do? Sometimes you might correct too far, you need to come back a little bit. But we need to come together and not throw rocks, not become so partisan and divided that we can’t get anything done. And that the great people that we’ve all sworn to serve are getting hurt. So I really think that we need to look at the issues holistically and what’s going on. But the truth of it is, that the first responder net is frayed. And it is tore up. And we need to understand that. And one of the points that you’ve helped us understand is that in certain communities, not all, but that the first responders as police may not respond to a medical call the way that they might have in the past because of the potential litigation, other risks and that kind of thing. And why bystander rescue care and why the community needs to really step up and know what to do before EMS arrives because whoever responds might be a little later in their response and those minutes turn into graves or saves depending on what you do. Is that a fair statement as well?
Speaker: Chief William Adcox
Well, I don’t know that the police actually necessarily won’t want to try to save lives because there are laws that protect them. But I just think that it is very true. We talk about stop the bleed. And we know that, you know, we talk about active shooter which is probably one of the most horrendous things particularly involved in our schools. But the truth of it is there’s a lot of individuals that are getting hurt with slipping, you know, that fall they get run over in parking lots at schools. There are major car and truck accidents. And you need to stop the bleed because people will bleed out before they’ll die. I mean, before they’ll die from other injuries. So a lot of times it’s just knowing what to do for somebody whether it’s to apply a tourniquet or to apply pressure or whatever it might be until the EMS or someone else can get there that has specific training. But we can train the community in that and it makes these types of supplies very readily available for the individuals. And you can use, you know, a belt or other things for a tourniquet, you can use other things to help out. So I really think that having people step up bystander care is critical. MedTAC is absolutely the seven major causes of death, we know what they are. And one of those seven major causes would involve an active shooter. So you can see very clearly that what’s really taking the lives of our students on campus, percentage-wise and number-wise, far exceeds an active shooter. And so that if we can all come together. So I think it’s important that we teach that. I think that should be something that we all put into place. And remember, one size does not fit all. And so some people want to correct something by saying, we’re going to require every school to do XYZ. Well, it might be helpful and it may be damaging because we haven’t gone to that school and see what their unique circumstances are and what their real risks are. So we have to be logical and sensible about it, but we have to do something. Doing nothing is worse than doing something. So I think that we all have to come together and do everything we can possibly to protect our children.
Speaker: Dr. Charles Denham
Well, Bill, thank you for that. You know, when we listened to Michael, who is probably one of the world’s experts on vaping and the impact in schools. And has been an expert witness in so many different venues and has analyzed so many schools. I know I was surprised to hear that vaping is still about 30%. And that nicotine poisoning because of the concentration of it in the higher economic areas, higher socioeconomic areas and that cannabis-related products because it’s cheaper, we’re seeing overdoses in that area. So this area of public health, I think we’ve not been good at helping parents understand how critically important some of these substances are. Is that a fair statement as well?
Speaker: Chief William Adcox
Well, you know, Mr. Dorn would know more about that. He specializes in K through 12. You know, I’m in higher education, academic medical, but we all know vaping is certainly not good for you. And it’s really very, very damaging. I think the problem is, you know, just like when tobacco issues were so high, you know, we tried to explain to people just how dangerous it wasn’t, how damaging it was. And it was, you know, from everything from literature to educational programs. And that had a limited impact. And so a lot of times they’re trying to criminalize some stuff. Now they’re trying to criminalize vaping and different things that go on. Again, I don’t know that we should use the criminal justice system as a solution to social ills. So I do think there are some other things that can be done. I do think the manufacturers need to be held accountable, that we all come together and see what we can do with a cross-section of people coming together crossing lines at our legislative level and see what we need to do to protect the children. Because children are making decisions at a young age that certainly will impact the rest of their lives. And we need to certainly help them. We should be the sensible people. We’re supposed to be the quote-unquote adults. And so there have to be solutions out there. I think Mr. Dorn may have some in mind. But to me, it bothers me. I have a daughter, our oldest daughter is an elementary school principal. And she speaks to me often about the finding of vaping and the problems that they have in the school. And it seems to be, you know, a real concern for them. And this is even at the elementary level. So I can only imagine that middle school, junior high and high school, it’s probably very significant. So yes, we do need to address it. I personally don’t have a solution, but we do need to address it as a society.
Speaker: Dr. Charles Denham
Well, Bill, thank you for all you’ve done to help us promote bystander rescue care. If you had the chance, because you’re in higher education and protecting so many of those students and nurses and doctors and doctors in training, why your pitch, what would be your pitch to those parents that are sending their kids off to higher education on bystander rescue care and why it would be so important for them to learn how to take care of their friends and be safer on campus? Your pitch.
Speaker: Chief William Adcox
Well, I think the pitch would be to make sure that your children understand how to perform CPR, how to understand when something does happen, how to ask somebody to call 911, give the exact address, how to properly call 911, and then also how to stop the bleed. And I think there are many, many programs out there with many, many organizations that have get them there and to get them thinking about that they can help save others’ lives. And even if there’s an anaphylactic shock case, asking someone who has an epi-pen in the audience might be concerned, sudden cardiac arrest, and making sure that they understand where the AEDs are, because as we all know, the AEDs are very, very easy to use now. All the instructions are on them. In fact, they’re voice-activated. They’ll tell you, the AED itself will walk you through what to do. So telling our children and making them aware of just how to use an AED, how to perform CPR, how to stop the bleed, and how to call for help, and how to ask others to help you call for help. I think those things are critical. If all of our young students know that, it’ll go a long way to saving each other’s lives.
Speaker: Dr. Charles Denham
Well, thank you, Bill. Then the final issue is, it’s an old issue, but it’s still a problem are the impaired drivers and why it’s so important now that we now have Uber and we have Lyft and we have all these services, why it’s so critical that our kids understand rising freshmen in high school and rising freshmen in college, why it’s so critical not to get into a car with someone who might be impaired by cannabis, might be impaired by alcohol. We see an enormous number of fatalities and long-term disabilities in our young people that get in the car with the wrong person.
Speaker: Chief William Adcox
Yeah, absolutely. Impaired drivers, BUI, DWI, they’re just horrible. I would tell you this, one of the things that I try to tell parents all the time, especially parents that are very, very responsible, they have a level of expectations, they have a level of rules and discipline in their homes. Most children don’t wanna let their parents down. Most children don’t wanna be found to be in trouble. And so they often, they won’t call the parents first for help and I think it’s very important to tell your children that at an age where they might be in a car, have gone to a party, be in a car where somebody’s impaired, they just tell them, don’t get in the car, make the first call to me and we have a no-blame policy between you and me, I won’t even ask you about it. I’m gonna come get you and help you, no questions asked. If you wanna talk about it, that’s your call, not mine. In that way, the child will not feel either embarrassed or that they’re gonna lie in trouble and take the chance of getting in the car with an impaired driver. So they can do that. On the higher side is whether or not these students are gonna be willing to call somebody, another adult, or maybe even the police department to say, hey, there’s a young man or young woman or is an individual that’s getting ready to drive and I think they’re impaired. I don’t know if they’ll go that far, but surely you as a parent need to have a relationship with your child to tell them that there’s a no-fault call to me, rather come get you and you’d be alive even though you’ve perhaps made a bad decision. Even if you were drinking too, doesn’t matter, I’ll come get you, it’s better you be alive. And then when the parent gets there, they can come get you, but the parent may be able to intervene as a parent too. So I just think it’s very powerful to make sure that you have that relationship with your child to where they know no matter what kind of a bad situation you get into, call you. Now, again, you as a parent, when they do everything you can to educate them and hopefully they won’t get into that situation, but all bets are off, they do get into it. You’re gonna come, no questions asked.
Speaker: Dr. Charles Denham
Fantastic, Bill. Well, thank you so much for all you do and for leading the way in threat safety science for us.
Thank you and have a good day.