The Gary Bowden Show, on the AJR News Network
Recorded: March 8, 2018
Gary Bowden: It's the Gary Bowden show on the Air News Network. All right. Next up on the show and in our studio. Spike, this is great. We've got guests lined up outside the door of the studio today. So many of our interviews are done on the phone. Rob Lambert joins us. Rob, thanks for coming in this morning.
Rob Lambert: Thank you.
Gary Bowden: Bright and early on a Monday Rob's the owner of Sentry Surveillance in Buckhannon.
Rob Lambert: Yes sir.
Gary Bowden: I wanted to make sure I got the location right because I know you're working with schools and other areas. The story, I think it was Valentine's Day here just a couple of weeks ago in Parkland, Florida of the school shooting has cast a lot of attention certainly on guns. Again, a big battles in the legislature in the state of Florida, a big battles again in Congress, but another huge story that always is talked about when we hear of one of these shootings is security and our schools are we protecting our kids? When you send that child off, you know, are they going to be safe? And God knows in this day and age, Rob, that has to be a scary situation for moms and dads. You're working with a program called CODE RED, which, and I'm going to let you describe it much better than I can, but it essentially lets you become in very quick fashion, we hope, a kind of an independent set of eyes that immediately is looking at cameras within these schools and can identify and provide information on where the shooter might be. Why don't you jump in and kind of tell us how CODE RED works then?
Rob Lambert: Well, obviously schools are starting to put in more security cameras, which is where we've kind of been brought into this and remote view is one of the things that we do. We not only sell set up school administrators where they can view cameras for other reasons, but we have actually assembled an operations center where we're able to actually log in on a school's camera systems within 30 seconds of being called. And we can provide overwatch support.
Gary Bowden: You would get a notified by nine one, one or law enforcement?
Rob Lambert: It's going to depend on the area and how they want to do things.
Gary Bowden: Ok, yes, and so you jump into your command center we're you can immediately pull up the cameras from X, Y, Z elementary school or high school.
Rob Lambert: Absolutely.
Gary Bowden: And start looking at those cameras to see what's going on inside the building, which is obviously a big problem for law enforcement.
Rob Lambert: Yeah. Historically we've seen law enforcement responding to these active shooter situations and they arrive with very little, very little information. A lot of times the information is false or conflicting. And so, I mean the shooter has a big advantage. We want to take that advantage away.
Gary Bowden: The key that you're trying to provide is this speed and knowledge...
Rob Lambert: Yes, it's all about fast response.
Gary Bowden: because most of the, what did you say the duration is of most of these school shootings?
Rob Lambert: Most of these shootings are over and under 10 minutes now. It's a testament to our officers, often their on scene in roughly three to four minutes. That's amazing in itself but from that point, we've got to get them the information they need and get them in that school. If you go the wrong direction when you go into school, you've already wasted the time you had, or if it has in Sandy Hook, they confronted a parent outside that someone had said he was carrying something so they have no visual cues as to what was really going on, so they have to do the best they can. So they wasted a further three and a half minutes confronting someone outside the school.
Gary Bowden: We're talking, we're talking with Rob Lambert, who's the owner of Sentry Surveillance, in Buckhannon and you sell security systems and the cameras and all. But I thought the really nice thing about what you're doing and spreading this word about CODE RED is you can work with a school that already has some or all of the equipment and tie them into your CODE RED Program?
Rob Lambert: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, in fact, you know, we're doing this because it's the right thing to do. I mean, I have children in school systems, our employees have children in the West Virginia school system and basically we've made this service very affordable for schools. It basically covers the expense of the technology on our end and keeping that up to date.
Gary Bowden: Well we're going to, we've got to take a little break here at the bottom of the hour to, to check news, but we'll get into some of the ways that you actually are making sure that on a regular basis that all that equipment is working. Golly you'd hate to have a system fail at an inopportune time obviously. So you're even doing some of those things and we'll get some more information about CODE RED, a big help for security systems in our schools. We are talking with Rob Lambert. We'll be back, first we're going to check in and find out what's happening all around the state of West Virginia on this Monday morning. We'll be back right after your metro news update.
Gary Bowden: We're back with Rob Lambert, owner of Sentry Surveillance of Buckhannon talking about a program called CODE RED, which essentially allows Rob to set up a command center linked to cameras in schools whereby if he gets notified in the event of an emergency, he becomes the eyes for law enforcement who are sending their people into that school. Sometimes blind, right Rob?
Rob Lambert: Most of the time.
Gary Bowden: They don't know where a shooter is. Why aren't, why aren't cameras in the schools where they have them? Do all schools have security cameras now? For the most part, I would think
Rob Lambert: It's more...
Gary Bowden: ...might not be what you'd like to see.
Rob Lambert: Absolutely, I think this whole thing is going to drive more security cameras.
Gary Bowden: Why aren't they connected to law enforcement? Or why isn't someone in the school in a locked down command center? Why doesn't that work?
Rob Lambert: Well, I mean, there's a lot of reasons and, and when we do this, we're actually talking to law enforcement themselves were not just, coming up with our own theories as to how this should work. We talk to them so that we make sure it works.
Gary Bowden: They're suggesting that this is the way to do it as well.
Rob Lambert: Exactly right. So, you know, I actually, you know, we've done several interviews ourself with law enforcement and that's how we come up with this stuff. But you were asking about, being in the school for instance, that's assuming that you can find the principal, you know, the principal, if it's the principal, for instance, the principal has a big job there. Not to mention, they're trying to salvage their life. The life of students. They do not have the time, first of all. And second of all, they don't operate the system enough. They probably operate a system in a school more than anybody else, but a big problem also is that you can't count on them being there that day, what if they're sick. What if...
Gary Bowden: Yeah...how about somebody at the police or sheriff's department?
Rob Lambert: Again, that comes down to a lack of experience with security cameras...
Gary Bowden: and sometimes resources...
Rob Lambert: Exactly. All the officers are going to be at the scene. That's their job. Their job is to go in and confront this gunman. My job was to get them there, to provide that, to operate this system. Anybody who's tried to operate a security camera system knows they're not intuitive. You have to operate them on a regular basis. If you're gonna do it successfully and we're talking about under stress. I would be under alot...I'm not even going to be in the building and I will be under stress.
Gary Bowden: Sure.
Rob Lambert: I need to be able to do that...almost automatically.
Gary Bowden: We all know that electronics can fail. You also help with that protection, making sure that these systems are checked routinely?
Rob Lambert: Yeah. And that. And that comes from experience as well. We've been specializing in security cameras for eight years, so we know that the moment you need something the most is when technology is going to crap out on you. So we check it every morning. We log on to every school every morning, verify that they have all the cameras they're supposed to have. Make sure the connection's good, make sure there's no a technical issues. And if there are, we let the school know so that they can get that taken care of rather than finding out you've had a camera out for three months and didn't know it.
Gary Bowden: Yeah. We're talking with Rob Lambert of Sentry Surveillance about security systems. Camera systems for all schools, grade schools, middle schools, high schools. How many schools are you working with?
Rob Lambert: We have five schools so far..
Gary Bowden: In the area?
Rob Lambert: I'm sorry, seven. We have Taylor county and Richie county. And we're trying to get the word out and get this...
Gary Bowden: ...talking to, to others. What about the mapping, in other words, how do you become acquainted...well, number one, how do you suggest to folks advise folks where their cameras should be to best assist you if you're going to be the eyes. And then how do you map that out for them?
Rob Lambert: Well, we work with law enforcement to actually, you know, we get a print of the school and then we kind of digest that and make it our own. And we, we set up zones where the cameras are seeing. We look at the building and say we need to see these areas, so we attack it in reverse. We say we need to see these areas, so we name those zones and that's mostly corridors at this point, you know, cafeterias, the gymnasium so that we can, if we see somebody moving on a camera, we're able to pull up the label of that camera and then know what zone that is so that we, we've tried to make this system be as intuitive as possible. So I mean, when you're under stress, you need to have a system where you think as little as possible. It needs to be automatic. So we've put a lot of work into this system.
Gary Bowden: A lot of these school systems and law enforcement departments have drills now with schools where your connected to a school, do you become a part of that drill?
Rob Lambert: Oh, absolutely. It's very important. Yeah. Yeah. In fact, this Saturday a Taylor County is going to be doing a drill at the Anna Jarvis, so I'll be in my center directing them and helping them find, find the bad guy. That helps them to become familiar with the school, which is important. Helps me to, you know, to sharpen my skills that helps everybody sharpen their skills.
Gary Bowden: Did you have to go through some kind of training to be in a position to do this?
Rob Lambert: No. It's just, I think, you know, with my company it is kind of line things up to where I, you know, I saw a need and saw the technology in place to just sit in the perfect place to do it.
Gary Bowden: And again, the CODE RED Program can be installed and put in place even if your school already has cameras.
Rob Lambert: Absolutely, in fact I encourage that if you don't have enough cameras, let us come in and use what you got. Anything we can provide our officers is better than nothing...
Gary Bowden: Talking with Rob Lambert, we're outta time, Rob. Again, thanks for joining us in the studio. And Gary, that's interesting. And it always becomes such a big topic in addition to guns. The topic of how do we make sure our kids are safe. So a CODE RED Interesting program. And, it'll be interesting to see how it, it grows in the area.
