Amy Rock (00:00): Hi everyone. Welcome to another episode of the Campus Safety Voices podcast. My name is Amy Rock, I'm Campus Safety's executive editor, and joining me today is Peter Evans, CEO of Xtract One Technologies, and today we will be discussing weapons detection systems. And now I know graduation season is upon us. And in many schools, particularly college campuses or university campuses, they have turned to metal detectors as an added layer of protection for their graduation ceremonies. And Peter, I know you and your company, you work with tons of colleges and universities, and in your discussion with campus leaders, I was wondering what are some of the biggest concerns or challenges when it comes to securing graduation ceremonies?

Peter Evans (00:41): Well, Amy, first off, thank you for inviting me to the event today. Very much appreciate working with Campus Safety magazine and organization from our point of view specifically to graduations. And I had the benefit of attending one of the graduation events recently. There's a couple of interesting dynamics. The first is oftentimes people don't think that I'm going to an event and it's a secured event. We were at an event whereas a graduation ceremony was being held in arena, which would normally scan and screen for weapons on the way in for any concert, any sport event or things like that. But somehow people forgot about that and they were expecting just to walk in and celebrate. And this is of course, something you want to celebrate. It's an important milestone in life. And so there was a little bit of reticence and reluctance by people. What do you mean we're screening? This is my family, this is my grandmother, this is my grandpa who are coming to this event, and grandpa and grandpa happen to be carrying telephoto lenses and maybe they're in their wheelchairs, their walkers and these sorts of things. So you find it's a little bit of a different dynamic that didn't expect to be screened, and they're very, very excited about the event and they don't want the harassment or the slowdown of going through screening activities.

And this is where I think as people think about, you mentioned walkthrough metal detectors. As you think about walkthrough metal detectors, that's a 50-year-old technology to solve a different problem from a different time. And it's where a lot of the universities are now adopting AI-enabled technologies to have a great guest experience and to not alert on those benign objects like the telephoto lens on a camera or the cell phones and keys and purses and things like that. And so it's a different dynamic and people forget it still has to be a very safe and secure environment.

I think the other challenge is, unfortunately when people are choosing to enact malicious acts, they're going to go to create a place where they're going to get the most notoriety. And so I can imagine that someone targeting event, like a graduation ceremony because of the impact that the negative impact that will have. So there's a requirement for increased levels of due diligence and scrutiny when it applies to security at those types of events,

Amy Rock (02:56): You'd rather with the complaining from people about having to go through security, then dealing with the complaining of people post if there's a traumatic incident that happens.

Peter Evans (03:06): Yeah, I mean ultimately there was a great quote from one of the former directors of the FBI who said security is always too much until it's never enough. And most good security organizations, they recognize, particularly in this day and age, we seem to have a more disruptive society that we're all living in today, that more people are being proactive in nature to take care of all their individuals. And again, using the right types of technology and getting all the processes correct, you can actually have a very engaging, seamless, transparent entry experience without the hassles of standing in the long lines like we would expect to do with walkthrough metal detectors. So it can be a very engaging and very embracing and very welcoming experience at something like a graduation ceremony with some of the next generation technologies that are available.

Amy Rock (03:59): And now I know there can be some hesitation sometimes. How are you able to convince campuses or show campuses that they don't need to have these fears of these systems in place?

Peter Evans (04:14): Yeah, there's nothing that works better than a real world aha experience. Oftentimes we'll do demonstrations with those environments, with those campuses, with those arenas or stadiums or schools. We'll do a week long experience on ingress of students going to class or we'll do a series of concert events or basketball events leading up to say the graduation ceremony or leading up to adoption of the technology for deployment in their stadium. And then you start to take a lot of data out of that to say, here's how fast people are getting in and how long they were waiting in line. Here's how fast they're getting in now. And by the way, side by side versus the historical walkthrough metal detectors, we've actually detected twice as many weapons as you might've before. And so you're showing that you can create a safer environment with a much better guest experience. And those two things don't have to be butting heads with each other like, oh my gosh, everyone's going to be angry because we're now doing screening where we never did before.

We had an experience with the Moody Center in Austin, Texas where they previously were not screening fans and alumni who are going to the basketball games for ut, and there was a lot of reticence about all of a sudden if they moved to the Moody Center, which was mandating, they would do screening because they were going to be used as a mixed environment to in concerts and sporting events and events for the NBA and others. So they were going to have to screen. And so there was a lot of concern about how the alumni would react to what was perceived to be forced long lines for walkthrough metal detectors. And they deployed our technology and were very pleased because most people just walked right in not even knowing that they'd been screened. It was a completely transparent experience.

Amy Rock (05:54): That's wonderful. Now, from your perspective as a solutions provider that offers these solutions, what makes graduation ceremonies particularly hard to secure maybe compared to other events or venues?

Peter Evans (06:07): I think there's a couple of things there, Amy. It's a really good question. First off, what we've seen at some of these venues is they don't just one run ceremony has done, they might run two or three or four if you think about all the high schools in a school district and they're all going to that one arena and they need to bring in school number one, school number two, school number three, and they have to rotate them through very quickly getting people in, then getting them out and then getting them back in again. And it's almost like Radio City Music Hall that does five shows at Christmas with the Rockettes and they have to move 5,000 people out of the building and into the building in an hour. And so it's very different dynamics and it takes a lot of coordination and focus on what is the flow of patrons and the use of the entrances.

It's not just about dropping technology on the ground. You have to think about the end-to-end processes. I think the other thing is the demographics of the crowd are very, very different. If you have your average NCAA basketball game, you sort of know what the demographics look like, what the average person is, what they're carrying on them, cell phone, watch, wallet, keys. Well, now as I mentioned earlier, graduation ceremony, you've got the whole family coming and they've driven in from all parts of the United States to go see the granddaughter, the daughter, whatever, the cousin, the aunt, the uncle graduate. And so there's a larger families who are traveling in larger groups. As I mentioned, a lot of cameras, a lot of camera stands, a lot of things that are prohibited from these arenas because considered weapons like the tripod system that you'd find for a camera. And then you also have a much broader demographics between very young to very old. And so you're going to have a lot more all sorts of things that may or may not be the conops around managing that complex crowd changes significantly. The good thing from a weapons detection point of view, those people don't affect the system, right? People can just walk right in without necessarily having to stop and pause and have a full search of their bags.

Amy Rock (08:13): Peter just moved to another area to get some better internet connection. So my next question, which might be kind of a good segue from your last question, what do you think are some must haves when it comes to weapons detections policies and procedures for larger campus events?

Peter Evans (08:29): Well, I think there's a couple of things to think about there. First off is what we see with a lot of folks who deploy these solutions is they fail to think about all the proper staffing and training. Oftentimes you'll have transitory staff, they may be actually outsourced to a third party. And so one, the systems have to be made as simple as possible to operate, knowing that you may have different staff for every event. The second thing is from the campuses, make sure that you're training your staff before every event. The systems of are designed to be very, very simple, very easy to operate, not a lot of complexity. You don't need a degree in engineering to run them, but if not operated correctly, you will miss weapons and you're lowering the value of the solution. So I always say make sure you've got the right experts there who can provide the proper training for any solution.

I think the other thing is again, think about the demographics of the event. Is this a bunch of students coming to see a concert in the basketball arena? Is this a whole stadium with a lot of people coming to see the alumni in the rivalry game or the alumni coming to see the rivalry game? You have to think about people, processes and technology, not just the technology. A lot of people are looking for miracles out of the technology. In our case, it's been designed to work very, very simply, but if you've got the people in the processes wrong, you're going to fail to get the value out of the systems that you're looking for and have that exemplary guest experience overall.

Amy Rock (09:59): Absolutely. Now, we know obviously one of the main goals of a weapons detection system is to keep potentially harmful items out. What are some maybe unexpected ways your systems have improved campus safety or security?

Peter Evans (10:13): Well, there's a couple of things there. First is you're absolutely right. The primary focus should be keep the weapons out. And that is a mantra that we've started with from day one. Let's focus on security first and make sure that we deliver upon that. But one of the downsides of actually some of these systems is when you get too much metal, this is universal for all technologies that are out there. When you get too much metal, they're going to alert. And we start to think of the average student on the average campus. They have a laptop, they have a binder, they have a metal water bottle, they've got chargers, smartphones, headsets, all of these sorts of things that is well above the too much metal alert route level. And so what I'd ask people to think about is we've developed technology where I can carry all those kinds of things.

And so ancillary benefit here is now the student with a full backpack can just walk right in with their laptop, with their tablets, with their Beats headset and not alert while still detecting on the weapons. Other ancillary benefits that we've seen interesting enough is we did a study with one healthcare organization and with one campus environment. And while we were detecting all the weapons, we also saw a very interesting deterrent effect, and we were tracking the percentage of people that did the U-turn. They came, they saw the system, they immediately went back to the car and then they came back in through the building. Now whether that was some other contraband drugs, alcohol, something like that, hard to tell. But you saw a very significant deterrent effect also as well as keeping the weapons out. So again, the two headlines there is look for solutions that do not force you as a university to have to have unnecessary screening systems and approaches in order to deal with what the average student carries.

You don't need X-ray machines, you don't need to have students carrying laptops above their head. You don't need to have separate bag checks if you've got the right technology that just allows students to walk in with their laptops and everything else. And secondly, there's the benefit of all the ancillary deterrent effect that comes from using the systems. I would say the one other thing, Amy, while I'm thinking about when campuses are looking for technology like this, they need to really think again about the whole CONOPS people processes and technology and do those demos and run those demos for an extended period of time to really understand how many staff do I need? Do I need one staff because of the pace that the kids are walking in? Or if I'm going to choose this solution which is going to require an additional X-ray machine, well, do I need a staff for the X-ray machine, a staff for this system, a staff for secondary bag checks a staff for? And all of a sudden we're finding a lot of people in some cases have come to us because they've deployed a solution that requires 'em to have too many staff that they can't afford. And so they've come to us saying, we need to run your system because it's reduced not only the annoyance alerts on things like laptops, but also it significantly reduced our staffing requirements too.

Amy Rock (13:19): You hear a lot of campuses, I would say particularly from my experiences, is a lot of K through 12 settings that they've adopted these technologies, but they're not even being used at the beginning of the day because they don't even have someone to operate them. So I think they're just not taking into consideration the other costs that come with it. So like you said, people, technology, what was the other one? Processes?

Peter Evans (13:44): People, processes, and technology. So a good example of a school that we've been talking to, they had adopted a technology. All the kids were alerting 100% on their laptops, therefore they had to go through bag checks to really find out is there something in the bag? And it wasn't as simple as holding a laptop above their head. They were looking for more and they were taking the parent volunteers who were out in front of the school to do traffic management and bringing them in for the bag checks. They were taking the teachers out of the classroom who were giving tutorial assistance to students and taking them out of classroom. And so you're fundamentally defeating the purpose of a school, which was an embracing educational experience to have people do unnecessary bag checks to work around the shortcomings of the technology they've chosen. And so what I would encourage people is to think about end-to-end process.

And some people have said, okay, well let's drop in X-ray machines. Now, my entrance to my school is like a TSA checkpoint. And I don't know about you, Amy, but I'm not really happy whenever I have to stand in a long line at the TSA. There's a real benefit to SA precheck, but even then it's a long line. And so did I really want my school to look like a TSA precheck and have that same sort of engagement? No, we want the kids to be embraced and walk in and engaged. So look for technologies that don't have those complex conops require secondary technologies, don't require an excessive staff. Just allow the kids to walk in as if there was a day screening system in the first place.

Amy Rock (15:16): Absolutely. Now jumping back to colleges and universities, I know that Bowie State University recently selected Xtract One SmartGateway for weapons detection, and when they approach Xtract One, what were some of their main goals in adopting this technology? Sure. Any campuses that you talk to have a list of things that they want to accomplish? And how have you ensured that those goals have been met?

Peter Evans (15:39): Yeah, so Bowie is a great example of a university's thinking proactively and very broadly, most universities will start to focus first off on places like the arenas and the stadiums where people gather and where they're gathering for graduation ceremonies or gathering for the basketball game or the football game. But Bowie took it one step further and they said, you know what? We're concerned about the dorms because that is also a place where a lot of people gather and they've got lockdown approaches for the classrooms. My daughter goes through a university where you can't get in a building without a badge versus other locations where she walked right into when she was doing her college tours, she walked right into a classroom, which was very concerning to her, and she chose not to go there for the safety reasons. Bowie is being very proactive and very thoughtful, and they said, not only are we looking at these places on the campus that people would normally think of, we also want to think about the dorms where there's a large student population and their number one priority was keep the students safe. And so that I thought was incredibly refreshing for them to do things that we've learned. We've learned more about the creativity of students and how they might look to circumvent systems if they don't want to walk through the system. And that's allowed us to fine tune our systems that much more and be that more attuned to what does the average campus need for the average student to keep them safe.

Amy Rock (17:01): Absolutely. And I know dorms, I mean, I went to college. They have a lot of visitors coming in and out that aren't part of that campus.

Peter Evans (17:09): And well, again, it's a good point, Amy, you're speaking to something that also with the graduation ceremonies, all the students know that when they go to the arena, they're going to get screened for weapons and they get used to it. They know carry these items, don't carry these items as an example. But now all of a sudden you've got a different demographics of all sorts of individuals who've never come to the U Room before. Just like for the dorms, you've got all sorts of visitors, never come to the dorms and don't know what the screening processes are. So as a university, you need to think about that. You've got an uneducated population who are now going to be coming into your entrances, and how do you continue to make that very welcoming? But despite the fact they may not know there's a bag policy, there's certain prohibited items like telephoto lenses and tripods for cameras that aren't allowed. So think about that as how you do that education pre-event as well as for new visitors too, the dorms, for example.

Amy Rock (18:07): Thank you. Now, my final question. I know Xtract One was also recently awarded the Department of Homeland Securities Safety Act designation. Can you explain what this is and what it means to you to have been awarded it?

Peter Evans (18:21): Yeah, so the Safety Act was put in place following 9 1 1 and obviously those tragic incidents, and it was really intended to find a way to assist and encourage organizations such as ours and other technology companies and other organizations to take on activities to accelerate the development of technologies, processes, people, staffing, you name it, in order to provide a more secure environment. And so it was encouraging organizations to get Safety Act approved and as a positive consequence of that to allow them to get insurance should an incident occur. And so there's three different levels. Think like Bronze, silver, gold for a Safety Act award. We've been awarded at what would be the silver level, the designation level Certification is the highest level, but you have to have been in business many years to get that. And what it does is the DHS tests and verifies not only your product, they do that through reports that come from third parties like customers who've used it for an extended period of time in different environments, and they attest to its performance capabilities.

But the DHS also tests everything about your business operations, your hiring practices, your supply chain practices, who you're sourcing your chips from. If you have an issue, how do you correct and rectify it and make sure it's addressed correctly. And so it's a very, very rigorous process for ensuring that the technologies that are delivered are safe. Now, it is a bit of a paper process. They don't actually go out and put their hands on the gear with weapons and go test it. And so what we'd like to do to compliment the DHS work is also to go out and do the hands-on testing with organizations like the TSA, like the NPSA in the UK, like the Federal Aviation Committee, and others like the Department of Justice. We actually worked at one time with the US Federal Marshals who were focused on perimeter security, making sure things like presidential elections were safe. And so we encourage everyone. DHS is a fantastic process. It'll make sure you're running a well run business that's safe and secure actually. But we compliment it with things like hands-on testing. What does it mean for an organization like a Bowie State University or any school? You can rest assured that the technologies have been tested and verified. And so by third parties like the TSA and the FAA who are responsible for our safety, when we get on an airplane or a cruise ship or a subway station or something like that.