How To Defend Your Church

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In this episode we sit down with the founder of a Goppe tactical to discuss how individuals and organizations can stop most violence before it even happens. I'm daily wire executive editor John Bickley with Georgia Howl. This is a weekend episode of Morning Wire. Also if you want to see Georgia learn some self-defense tricks stick around for the end. Joining us now is founder of a Goppe tactical kin Alexandra. Thank you so much for coming on. Thank you for having me. So we've looked a lot at the issue of school shootings and now a lot of attacks on churches. They're being targeted in all kinds of ways and this is your expertise. This is what you can sult on and so we wanted to ask you some questions about how things have changed in some things that you've practically learned in terms of how to improve situations, particularly with churches, which is something we haven't talked as much about. So first of all give us a little background if you would on your experience. So I went to the University of Tennessee in from '87 to '91 and when I graduated I entered the Nashville Metropolitan Police Department ended up being an academy instructor there where I taught hand-to-hand combat firearms for police department anywhere from 12 to 1400 officers. From there I got selected to participate in the FBI's Violent Crimes Task Force where I got to work on cases involving bank robbery, child molesters, famous people who are being blackmailed things like that. So all in this region in Tennessee? Yes, the FBI was the middle discrepancy, yes. And then when that assignment ended, I finished my last 11 years as a training officer. Being a police officer is one of the greatest joys because there's no other occupation where you can actually help make a difference to somebody's life every single day. Even if you're arresting somebody and if you're taking bad out of that household and at least giving them some peace until they make bail and come back and get released. But man, I love changing tires on the side of the road, just helping people and trying to let kids especially view us in a positive light. So how did you get into church security specifically? I mean I think back to my childhood I don't think church is needed security or at least they weren't as like hardened targets like they are now. What changed and was there an event that made you passionate about that? So it was an accident. I'd been attending Thompson Station church for 20 plus years, not 26 years. And in 2009 the pastor asked, even before the need for church security, he was just a four-thinker and he said, "Hey, why don't you set up a, sometimes a safety ministry here?" We would just feel better. We were growing to be a large church. We've got just a large children's population and he felt better. He knew my background. So he said, "You are suited and equipped to do this." So I did. So I started that ministry in 2009. Well, he happened to be also the president of the Southern Baptist Convention at the time. So he's standing in, so how he tells me, he was standing in front of 2800 pastors giving a speech and somebody asked him the question, "Hey, what are you doing for safety at your church?" And then he gave my name out and what started out as just an offering that I was doing for my church turned into a part-time gig, which eventually forced me to choose one of the other because I couldn't continue to do both. What is the sort of process when you first begin working with a church? So we start with an assessment. You know, you always want to do a security vulnerability assessment because that enables you to identify what's broken because you can't fix, if you don't know it's broken, you can't fix it. You need an outside unbiased third party to take a look at it and then really divulge where the problems are. See, when we look at at a location, we look at it from the eyes of the wolf, all I want to do is how can I hurt you? And then when we give our recommendations, we close up all those holes where I can hurt you, then you win. And where will you do the most damage? If you can target the children's ministry, if you can harm the most precious asset that you have and the ones that are the most defenseless, that's where someone's going to want to hurt you. So we focus on that area and then all of the other recommendations just spill out and protect everyone else. But don't ever lose sight. Your focus is on those that cannot defend themselves and that's the children. They don't have a choice. They can only do what we tell them to do. So that's why we want to make sure that your processes are in place to keep them safe. There are certain phone calls that somehow stay on the to-do list, the dentist, the annual checkup, finding a new doctor after you move or change insurance. 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Now you said the the pastor was forward thinking before the threats against churches was really prominent that has shifted since then. How have you seen that change over the time and it has that led to just more demand for your types of services? So yes it's led to more demand. There are some churches that are on the cutting edge. They're just they realize if if if something catastrophic happens on their facility, people may not come back. I mean it changes it changes lives forever. So what are the steps that you take with churches to actually fortify them? Are you training up individuals to be posted in certain places? How does it work? So our process is real simple. We we use the deter detecting deny methodology. So deterrence is the psychological defeat before they before they even try. For example 75% of all incidences on faith-based properties occur in the parking lot. So how do you set up deterrence and the psychological defeat before they even try? We we know we know from bad actors who have been arrested and taken alive that they have scoped out locations and they realized man I I'm not gonna be successful there. So you got to yeah so they'll go somewhere else. You have to understand how does a bad guy think? A a a true terrorist is not afraid of a man with a gun. They're afraid of failure. They know death is inevitable but but they want to take as as many people and cause as much devastation as they can in that process for them to be successful. They have done pre-attacks surveillance. So when they do that they look and they say ah I I can't get out of my vehicle without being being stopped or being seen. They'll go somewhere else to where they can get out of their vehicle without being seen. The rub that I continue to have and the conversations that I continue to have between um pastors and and and and and deacons or or or elder boards and and safety teams is they don't want to make it unwelcoming. So we have come up with a with a formula that not only eliminates the not welcoming we make it overly welcoming. Here's the example. Set up in my church. We have five opportunities to see bad and for bad to see us before they ever get to any door in our building, five opportunities. First there's no better to turn than a uniform police officer in a police car-directing traffic. So that's one, they see uniformed officers. Two, we have 104 people in our, we call it the first impressions ministry, which is parking lot, greeters, just people welcoming you every Sunday morning. As soon as you pull in the parking lot, you will see at a minimum of four men and women in yellow vests directing traffic with signs that say, if you're a visitor, turn your hazards on because we're going to give you the best parking, right? So just as soon as you turn in, there's four people waving at you, greeting you, welcoming you, but they're also trained in the powers of observation. If something doesn't look right, they also know because even though these people do not carry guns, they're not armed, they may if they want to, but they're not part of the safety ministry, but everyone has a radio. That's the key. You have to be able to communicate. And do you see the radio? Is that something you want to feature prominently? Oh, it's in their hand. They may be using it to wave or it may be clipped to the vest. Listen, I want those people. It's a strategy, the deterrence. I want them to be able to be seen from NASA. I want them to glow. I want every one of our church members and guests who are there legitimately to feel like they're here for an experience. We never get a second chance to make a first impression. So after we get past the yellow vested parking people, we have, because we have so much acreage and so many parking lots, we have seven golf carts that are driving around picking people up. So that's a third opportunity. So you have police, parking people, now golf carts picking people up. And then in front of each of our main entrances, we've got tents that say welcome to TSC. How can I help you? That's four. And then on the outside of our doors and we have one entrance in each building, we have the greeters. And if at any time someone radios in, bad as approaching, the doors are pre-locked, they just step inside, shut the doors. Now everybody inside is safe. So five opportunities to welcome people, but at the same time, bad seas, man, I won't even get out of my car without being spotted, or when we get my handshaked, or getting loved on, I'm going somewhere else, because they want anonymity. What about cameras and then you mentioned the doors, limited access points? You cannot control, save your security in any location if you do not have access control. It's impossible. You can't stop, but you can't see. When I deal with a new client and they may have 40 doors and 31 of them are open by seven in the morning. Church doesn't start till nine. They realize they don't have 31 people to watch those doors. So our goal is to get them down to one or two main access points because those can be controlled. And cameras are a wonderful thing, especially if you have a good camera operator and someone who knows what to look like and can pay attention. Because we train the camera people, the ushers, the greeters, the safety ministry, we all communicate with the same language. So the most important aspect of any mission of any operation is communication. But the number one failure in any operation is communication. A lot of times the camera guy is not speaking the same language as the team guy, and they have no idea how to lead them. So when you have these camera views, it's important that we name them a universal language. No, stairwell one or the lobby and make sure the team knows what you're calling things. So they can respond as quickly as you give them details. When you do have an emergency response, what is a standard procedure? What usually triggers? What happens? In a case we had five weeks ago at our church, two people get out of a car. They're carrying thigh rigs, thigh holsters on their side and they're walking down. We also know who they are because they've hit three of my clients in middle Tennessee and they're just YouTubers. They're wanting to see what reaction people have to them, open carrying like they were. Well, it worked perfectly because as soon as they got out of the car, the parking lot people radioed down and said, "Hey, this is what we got." We were waiting for them in the parking lot before they ever got close. Then we were able to discuss, "Hey, we have no problem when people can see a carrying but we don't allow open carry here." We said, "If you want to come worship, you're welcome to disarm and you're welcome to come in but we don't allow how you're carrying right now." You encountered them within a matter of seconds? Seconds. As soon as they got out of the car and then as soon as the parking lot people saw it, the radio guy, so we had photographs and we had real time video and just we followed them all the way to the end point and then eventually they decided they weren't going to get anywhere. They turned around and left. Now what about training up armed security? Is that the final step for this or do you not always include that? Depending on the denominations, some denominations do not believe in guns and church period. We have to be very creative because really the only thing that can stop a bad actor with a weapon is a good actor with a weapon, okay, unless you can deter them before they get to that denial. So deter detect denies, of course, deterrence is the psychological defeat. Detection is, you can't stop what you can't see and then denial is, "What if we trained to do to stop them from hurting our people?" There's two words in the English language that cannot go together in the same sentence and the sentence make any sense. That's safety and convenience. You cannot be both. We can set you up safely and you look like you're warm and welcoming just like I described to you, but you're not going to be convenient because we're only having one main access control point. If they have an armed response, because of my law enforcement background, we have what's called a force continuum and we want to train the entire force continuum. So the first is your presence, command presence. You standing there can be a deterrent to people as we've already described. Second is your ability to de-escalate verbally, right? How do you speak? We teach that. The next is soft-empty-hand control. What if you have to escort or prevent somebody? How do we do that without assaulting them and without hurting them? Then we teach hard-empty-hand, "What if somebody's physically assaulting you? How do you defend yourself?" And then deadly force and then of course medical response. We want to make sure if you're training to potentially take a life, you've got to be able to save a life at the same time because it may be your life that you're saving or your partner's life. We train that entire gambit through stress-enoculated training. You will learn absolutely nothing on a YouTube video from a perspective of emergency techniques. Something happens, but you've watched a video a bunch of times. No manner of women will rise to the occasion under stress. You'll sink to the highest level of mastery in your training and you're not going to master training by watching a video. You have to physically do it and then not only do you physically do it, but you need to do it when your heart rate is up and you do it over and over again. So you have some people, some churches will say, "We want some of these folks trained up fully." Is that process? I imagine this is a shock for a lot of people that have not gone through this kind of thing before and is that a fun process for you to oversee these trainings? It's an incredible process because when you, let's say you've gone through the program and you've trained and it's not you go to church, flip the light switch on in your tactical TED, but when churches over, you flip the light switch off and your Johnny Sakadona's again. Everywhere you go now, you understand situational awareness. Everywhere you go now, you have gotten a skill that makes you a better husband, a better father, a better citizen, a better wife, a better mother because now everyone around you is safer. Safety is contagious and you don't turn it on and turn it off. You understand living in yellow, which is relaxed but aware, it's everywhere you go and now you see things that you normally otherwise wouldn't have seen. So what's great is what you're learning for the protection of others in church really takes transcends for your personal life. How could you not want to be a part of that? You mentioned the color coding. We talked about this before. We actually started recording. Can you walk through that for us? A little quick, sure, so there's five color codes, white, yellow, orange, red and black. White is how 90% of Americans live their lives. It's relaxed and completely unaware of who's around them, right? I've interviewed rapists in prison to, so I could study and understand what the bad guys look for in a victim and whether you like it or not, they're watching us. And they say their favorite place to attack is a place of transition, like you go from building a safety into the unknown, a parking lot or parking garage. And they say the easiest way for someone not to be considered a victim is when they walk out of those doors. If they will scan the parking lot, scan their surroundings before they walk out without their phone in their face, their heads up and they're actually looking. They say, I can't sneak up on that person. I can't push them down from behind because they'll see me coming. I can't be out. They're the sick laymen lazy, but they don't they don't want to be caught. They don't want to be identified. Look, I run a company on my cell phone. It is an incredible device, but unfortunately our phones have caused our country to go into an acute case of anal cranial insertion. We walk around and we're two busy wondering what the Kardashians are doing, then worried about getting to my vehicle safely. And it's getting our country victimized. It is true. amazing how much you just see people looking down and I include myself. I am less aware of my surroundings than ever in my life at this point. So why does a dangerous place to be? Yellow is just simply relaxed but aware it is not a state of paranoia. It is a state of preparedness. I teach when I do women self-defense seminars, it's the easiest way to start getting a habit of living in yellow and start backing your car into a parking space. I back everywhere I go only because I'm generally facing the location that I'm trying to go to and it's really hard to sneak up on me when I'm looking at you. So orange is your intuition. We talk about the color codes and that's just listen to your intuition, right? Then red is I'm in the fight. What have I trained to do? We already talked about you'll always do what you've done the most and if you've not trained you're you're going to go into the fetal position. And then black is I'm frozen in fear. Neural epinephrine under that that endorphin release will do one of two things to you depending on who you are. One, if you're trained it slows down time. It makes everything move in slow motion to allow you to react quicker. And the other thing is if you're untrained you become like you have concrete shoes on. But you can train so you're saying training can really affect that. It's not like this is this is just this person's natural response and it's always going to be like that you can train into responsive 100%. You train for an event but you truly train not just watch YouTube videos. You'll be amazed at how you perform and you didn't even know you did it. People think just because they bought a gun it makes them a gun fighter. In the exact opposite you're a danger to people unless you've trained. So we just want to help people fulfill the their goal of keeping themselves in their family and other safe but doing it without hurting anybody else. And you can't do that without range time and the whole force continuum you are you are ten times more likely I have to put hands on somebody than you're ever going to have to draw your firearm. If you do then you're doing something wrong. There's something wrong in your process where now the gun comes out. We didn't see it in time. So don't just train gun gun gun gun. We want to make sure we train awareness. We want to train de-escalation. We want to train hand-to-hand. Because if you overreact you may have just committed aggravated assault. So there's a training process involved in everything we do. Well like we said at the start you know I mean this is on people's mind more than ever that go to church. Schools obviously a major focus for us. So we loved having you come on and talk about this very helpful practically for all of us. And hopefully I want to check it with my church. What do they do exactly? Thank you so much for what you do. Go thank you for having me. I appreciate it. Thanks for coming on. That was a Gop A Tactical Founder Ken Alexander and this has been a weekend edition of Morning Wire. I want you to sum in the upper position if your elbow will bend this way and if you turn this way it goes against the arm. So just like this girl with my shoulder. All I want you to do is you're standing only do not allow me to bend your arm. Okay I'm going to add slow steady pressure one pound of the time. Oh try to go like that. No don't do that because that that pressure on that joint. Just like it is. Okay and I want to go slow steady pressure. Are you ready? Yeah. Okay good. There you go. Don't move it good. Good. Good. Excellent. Excellent. Good. Good. Now soon I got it. Now open and split your hand. Now when I say "splay," flex your hand. Yeah, flex. You open that hand up. Do not let me bend your arm. Are you ready? Yeah. What? That worked. I'll explain the signs behind you just a minute. Two. Do 90 degrees. McFist. Put it against my chest. Now this is where we're going to square your shoulders off to me. You put my hand in shoulders. You face that way. I'll face this way so we can kiss. You have to stop me from putting your arm back into your body. All right are you ready part? Yeah. Do a nice slow pressure. It's a possible stop. Okay. Now open it. Open and split but I want you to go one degree outside 90 degrees and because the only thing I'm going to be touching me is this bony part. It's going to hurt me. I'm going to angle your arm so you go across here. Okay. He may tame that. Are you required? Yeah. Okay so so it's called muscle recruitment. Make it fist. You're only using two muscles. Bicep forearm. Open and split. Bicep tricep tricep. I'm sorry forearm bicep tricep delg trapping lat. Using six muscle groups to do this. Only two to do this. So when we so for example when we teach our hand to hand our fighting stance is this. I'm doing that outside 90 fingers play which makes me stronger but it also looks what to the people. Figure. Well know it also but if you are a bystander and oh it looks like you're saying I'm doing it. Yeah but this is my fighting stance. Does that make sense? So so I'm strengthening you in that in that but you're prepared for a conflict. Now here's the greatest one and I know you've never you've never been to a bar before but if you would and you do this trick they'll be by your drinks all night which hands just like this. Okay um toes towards me good do not let me let your thumbs touch I'm gonna put pressure but you're gonna keep me from from letting your thumbs touch or you ready yeah you're gonna resist right now okay here we go. Awesome doesn't matter which foot rotate one foot out past 30 degrees just one there you go just one of it there you go do not let me touch your thumbs may be very important okay here we go oh crazy so so like this yeah and hands no so so one foot slide behind the other oh one okay but but but feet facing forward the biomechanage behind is our spine all of our strength comes from our core and when our spine is the perfect spinal alignment those muscles they push off of each other they give you stability as soon as you open the foot about past 30 degrees the coccyx bone the muscles that wrap on the coccyle pull it in the direction you open that foot separating contact from the last vertebrae so it has nothing to push off and you fold like a tent so my so my so my stance might we call it non-aggressive posture just like this hands out hey please don't hurt me or I don't want any trouble but this is also my prepared stance whether it's my draw stroke or whether I have to fight that was very cool so