The use of a violence and intimidation to instill fear is firmly established within society. Terrorism is such an aspect of the modern world that while the death and mayhem associated with the act may ebb and flow from year to year, the violence is unlikely to ever diminish.
In the latest free webinar from School Transportation News, School Buses: The Terrorism Target, Bret E. Brooks, chief operating officer for Gray Ram Tactical LLC, described the unpredictability of potential targets and attacks, believing that the only way to prepare for them, especially for the student transportation community, is “training, training, training.”
Governments, organizations and populations must remain in a constant state of vigilance to confront the brutality, since “sticking your head in the sand is not an option,” said Brooks, who is currently a full-time police officer for a Missouri law enforcement agency.
Founded in 2007, Gray Ram Tactical LLC is a consulting firm that operates throughout the country, focusing on the implementation and execution of workplace safety.
Brooks is a former captain of the Missouri Army National Guard with more than 10 years of military experience. He’s also a certified trainer of counter IED tactics by the Army and certified in anti-terrorism operations by the Department of Defense.
He has worked with a number of government agencies to conduct physical security assessments, examine anti-terrorism issues and form threat/risk analyses.
During the webinar, Brooks examined the desire of terrorists to seek out soft targets, or places that have “little security and little resistance.”
According to Brooks, schools and school buses are the definition of soft targets. He piloted the more than 240 webinar attendees through the history of modern-day terrorism, presenting the profile of a terrorist while showing how a terrorist group carries out from start to finish.
Terrorists, he said, normally seek out soft targets in order to maximize the “shocking of conscience” through body count and publicity.
While the attacks on schools in recent memory have been perpetrated by “lone wolf” shooters, whose only aim is mass murder, Brooks predicts a future terrorist attack on a school not as a hypothetical, but as a forgone conclusion, and “buses will play a part in it,” Brooks said.
Brooks honed attention on these lone wolf style attacks, like the latest ones in San Bernardino and Orlando, forecasting a rise in these sort of massacres, as terrorist groups prefer cells to be more decentralized with fewer members involved.
He went on to say that the only recourse schools have in priming for a possible terrorist attack is to check vulnerabilities and fix them, as well as commit to “mandatory active shooter training for teachers and students.”
Further preventative measures for school administrators and school bus drivers in a potential deadly situation is to “recognize the warnings signs and react in the proper way,” Brooks said.
Brooks will expand into further detail on the topic of terrorism and soft targets during two training sessions as part of the 2016 STN EXPO in Reno, Nevada next month.
This will not be the first time Brooks has attended the STN EXPO. Two years ago, he led a seminar about how to work with local law enforcement agencies.
He also trained the Washoe County Sheriff’s Office SWAT Team on how to breach a school bus in the event of an onboard criminal or terrorism incident.
Click here to listen to the webinar on-demand.
