Be Prepared Program
Douglass High School
Parkland, Florida
17 Killed/ 14 injured
At any given time, there are millions of legal and illegal weapons all around us in the United States. There are also over one hundred thousand men, women and children diagnosed with mental illnesses that have access to one or more of these weapons.
Society has seen its share of what happens when one of those persons has a ‘bad day’ and brings one of those weapons into school or private facility.
After the world witnessed the the most recent tragedy in Parkland, Florida, the overall belief is that the safety measures in place to protect students and teachers in public and private schools are at best, ill-functioning. LEVERAGE wants to assist your facility in becoming pro-active by re-accessing, strengthening or creating new security measures in and around your facility to protect those within against an armed attack.
LEVERAGE has designed the BE PREPARED Program.
The BE PREPARED Program is an Emergency Readiness Training (ERT) system that trains the administration, teachers, school personnel and students in custom methods of effective preparedness in case of an armed invasion at their facility.
Our belief at LEVERAGE is: "It is better to BE PREPARED and never necessitate the usage of our training than NOT BE PREPARED and suffer unfathomable loss."
Sandy Hook Elementary
Newton, Connecticut
28 Killed/ 2 injured
On December 14, 2012, sometime before 9:30 a.m., 20 year old Adam Peter Lanza fatally shot his mother, Nancy Lanza, with a .22 Marlin rifle in their Newtown home. Now armed with his mother's legally owned Bushmaster XM-15, Lanza drove to Sandy Hook Elementary School, shot his way through a locked glass door at the school's entrance and began to open fire at everyone he came in contact with. He shot all of his 30 victims multiple times before taking his own life with his weapon.
Virginia Tech Massacre
Blacksburg, Virginia
32 Killed/ 23 injured
Photo Credit: NBC News
On April 3, 2007, 7:15 a.m., Seung Hui Cho, a 23-year-old, South Korean born senior and English major at Blacksburg-based Virginia Tech, shot and killed 32 students and teachers in one of the deadliest shootings in U.S. history. Armed with a licensed 9-millimeter handgun and a 22-caliber handgun and hundreds of rounds of ammunition, he entered a classroom building. He chained and locked several main doors and went from room to room shooting people. Ten minutes after his rampage started, he committed suicide with his weapon.
Sandy Hook Elementary
Newton, Connecticut
28 Killed/ 2 injured
On April 20, 1999, at Columbine High School in Columbine, Colorado, senior students Eric Harris (18) and Dylan Klebold (17) placed duffel bags containing bombs in the cafeteria and set them to explode at 11:17 A.M. When they didn't detonate, they re-entered the cafeteria armed with an Intratec TEC-DC9 and a Stevens 311D double barreled sawed-off shotgun and opened fire killing 23 students and teachers. They injured 21 additional people and inured three more while attempting to escape the school. In addition to the shootings, the complex and highly planned attack involved a fire bomb to divert firefighters, propane tanks converted to bombs placed in the cafeteria, 99 explosive devices, and car bombs. Had the original devices exploded with full power, they would have killed or severely wounded all 488 students in the cafeteria by possibly collapsing the ceiling, dropping part of the library into the cafeteria. After exchanging fire with responding police officers, the pair subsequently committed suicide.
Reports estimate there are more than two million legal (and illegal) handguns on the streets of New York State at any time. There are also more than one million people clinically diagnosed with mental illnesses taking prescribed psychotropic medication in New York as well. The chances of a mentally disturbed person coming into contact with one or more of these weapons is very likely.
If you're an administrator, professor or teacher in a New York State public, private or charter school, consider these three very important questions:
•Do you feel your school is a safe environment for you and your children?
•On a scale of 1-10, rate the level of safety you feel at your facility.
•On a scale of 1-10, how would you rate your chances of survival should an 'active shooter' invade your facility?
(Your honest answers will shock you!)