Here is a list of equipment suggestions to include in your church security/safety office and as carried tools (depending on how many tools you want to carry, you may want to wear a sling bag, hip bag, or cargo pants):
Church security teams serve their congregations by overseeing the safety and decorum of church gatherings. Part of the training for team members includes the ability to quickly and correctly assess the reasons behind the disruptive behaviors of individuals during those events.
[ Read the SemperVerus article, Self-Defense and Church Security: Make Scanning Your Priority ]
Determining whether a person is unruly due to a mental health crisis or to an intentional violent motive will influence the proper response required to keep the peace.
[ Read the SemperVerus article, Chart: The Spectrum of Potential Threat Personas in Self-Defense and Church Security ]
The ministry Spiritual First Aid™ offers the free PDF resource, 25 Common Mental Health Fact Sheets, that helps identify the signs, symptoms, and triggers of mental health conditions people may struggle with; it’s a tool that can assist security team members in ascertaining whether de-escalation tactics or more extreme measures are necessary.
[ Read the SemperVerus article, Gentle Response De-Escalation Training for Church Security Teams ]
For example, the fact sheet on Intermittent Explosive Disorder (IED) states that this “is a mental health condition characterized by recurrent, sudden episodes of impulsive, aggressive, violent behavior, or angry verbal outbursts that are disproportionate to the situation. These episodes are typically brief and may result in physical harm to others, damage to property, or significant emotional distress, and they often lead to feelings of remorse or regret afterwards.”
[ Read the SemperVerus article, Tactical Training for Individuals and Church Security Teams to Thwart Active Violence Incidents (Part 2 ]
This comprehensive set of 25 fact sheets offers insights on the following topics:
The book, Just 2 Seconds: Using Time and Space to Defeat Assassins by Gavin de Becker, Tom Taylor, and Jeff Marquart, “examines the previously inviolate rules of protection, then subjects them to rigorous analysis. Will leave protection professionals reevaluating everything they know or thought they knew,” according to Vincent O’Neill, former Special Agent with the US Secret Service.
Gavin de Becker is the founder of Gavin de Becker & Associates (GDBA), a threat assessment and security firm that provides private, corporate, and government protection services and training courses.
While the book is 712 pages long, 570 pages consist of an extensive compendium describing thousands of successful and failed attacks, kidnappings, accidents, medical emergencies, and non-lethal incidents involving at-risk people worldwide over a period of more than 50 years, in addition to eight appendices of protection-related guidelines. Its title refers to the extreme brevity of time during which the average violent attack begins and ends.
The first 142 pages are comprised of five chapters detailing the important protective lessons learned from those events—highlighting 11 precepts that enhance personal safety—and the five essential insights for protectors. These conclusions are practical and proven standards for one’s own self-defense and the protection of others, that can be applied in church security.
The five essential insights for protectors (and individual self-defenders) are Now, Time, Mind, Space, and See. Here are a few excerpts for each one:
John Correia is the founder of Active Self Protection, teaching people to develop the attitude, skills, and plan (ASP) to defend themselves and their families from harm.
John is a nationally-recognized subject matter expert in private citizen defensive encounters and law enforcement use of force, a master firearms instructor, martial artist, court-admitted expert witness, teacher of teachers, and former pastor. He reviews thousands of violent incident videos as true-life self-defense teaching lessons on his Main and his Extra YouTube channels.
The following is a collection of some of the acronyms and checklists John has created to assist in remembering self-defense techniques and mindset.
• Vehicles are transitional spaces where threatening incidents can easily happen. Follow this LET’SS GO checklist IN NUMERICAL ORDER to quickly remove yourself from vulnerability:
LET’SS GO