In an active shooter situation, businesses need to know how to leverage their surveillance capabilities; during these scenarios, every second counts. Grant Cowan, Director of National Accounts at Salient Systems, and Keith Aubele, Founder, President & CEO of Nav1gate Group, possess years of surveillance, loss prevention, and risk management experience. They joined James Kent to explore several ways companies should be leveraging surveillance for a holistic approach towards active shooter scenarios. Today, with surveillance, it’s all about expectations, Cowan stated.
“Our consumers, our customers, our employees, our associates, they expect to have video surveillance. They expect action to be had.”
When an active shooter situation occurs, people expect surveillance to play a critical role in resolving that situation with as minor injury as possible.
“The thing that keeps us up at night is we have all these technologies at our disposal but are we engaging them to give us the absolute most effective time, warning, and indication that something might be amiss,” Aubele said. “And what Salient Systems is talking about are tools that are critical to pulling all of this together so we can use what we have to prevent loss of life.”
There are several things companies can do to leverage surveillance in an active shooter situation. Still, Cowan said the number one thing to start any conversation on this topic is analytics.
“The goal with using video analytics is to expand the zone and gain users more time.”
With these analytic solutions, Salient is trying to see how far a zone away from a building can provide appropriate parties more time to figure out a plan of action and help.
Keith Aubele
Keith is a retail industry veteran and has held executive leadership positions with two of the top retailers in the world. He led The Home Depot’s loss prevention division as a senior vice president and his team was responsible for bringing shrink down to the lowest in company history. While at the Home Depot, Keith was designated a high succession leadership candidate by the CEO. Prior to The Home Depot, Keith spent his career at Walmart where he was the Director of Loss Prevention. Other roles at Walmart included retail operations, and responsibility for the Supercenter Division. While at Walmart, Keith was placed on the fast-track program by CEO David Glass and was one of three executives selected to create, design and rollout the Neighborhood Market concept for Walmart.
Keith has the distinction of being personally mentored by Walmart founder Sam Walton, and The Home Depot’s founder, Bernie Marcus. He is a steering committee member of the ASIS Asset Protection Council, and the former Chairman. He is the founder, and former Chairman of the NW Arkansas ASIS Chapter. He holds a Certified Protection Professional (CPP) from ASIS International & Loss Prevention Professional (LPP) Certification from Missouri Southern State University. Keith has a BS in Criminology & AS in Law Enforcement from Missouri Southern, and he holds a Master’s Degree in Business from Troy University. Keith is a United States Air Force & Law Enforcement Veteran. He resides in Niantic Connecticut and serves on several non-profit boards.