Safety On Campus Scores with a Slapshot to the Gunman

Norris is always on the lookout for new and interesting stories from the world of life-safety and security. It’s our job to keep you informed on best practices for corporate and campus security to help keep you, your personnel, students, and patrons safe and secure.

In recent news from Campus Safety Magazine, a Detroit-area school has taken an unusual step to help give students, faculty, and staff a reminder that as a last resort they can fight back. It’s a step the school is hoping will give folks a fighting chance–a veritable slapshot in the face–during of an active shooter event.

Oakland University recently began administering hockey pucks to students, faculty, and staff with the direction to throw them at an attacker as a last resort.

Oakland safety officers (and indeed most safety officers) recommend a Run, Hide, Fight hierarchy for the best chance of survival, encouraging victims of an active shooter event to first flee the scene, then find a place to hunker down and hide. Only as a last resort, if your hiding spot is found out should you attempt to fight.

Students began asking how they should do that when the Oakland campus is a weapons-free zone.

The Campus Safety story notes that Oakland U Police Chief Mark Gordon, who gives back to his community by coaching youth hockey, says getting hit in the head with a hockey puck one time gave him the idea.

“It was just kind of a spur-of-the-moment idea that seemed to have some merit to it and it kind of caught on,” he said in the Campus Safety story. “[Hockey pucks] have enough mass to cause injury, small enough to be thrown, [are] portable and they’re not considered a weapon.”

The story goes on to report that the school itself ordered 2,500 hockey pucks and the student government ordered an additional 1,000 pucks to hand out.

One school official was very careful to make clear that the pucks were to be used as a last resort, and hopefully would never need to be used. But in the meantime, they were a reminder that one is not completely helpless just because one doesn’t have a gun.

Norris can help you with your emergency preparedness and life-safety and security systems. Give us a call at 800-370-3473 or drop us a line and let us sit down with you to figure out how best to serve your life-safety, security and emergency preparedness needs.

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What is Norris All About?

Norris, Inc.—a South Portland, Maine-based life-safety and security systems integrator with satellite offices in Bangor, Maine; Lee, New Hampshire; and Burlington, Vermont—was founded nearly 40 years ago by two brothers, Brad and Harty Norris. The brothers remain on the board of directors today and continue to help steer the enterprise toward its goal of advancing life-safety, security, and communications while striving to grow in its status as Northern New England’s leading systems integrator. Norris provides fully integrated life-safety and security solutions, comprising disparate systems including fire alarm, intrusion detection, access control, video surveillance, emergency notification, and communications.