Basic Steps to School Visitor Management

  

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Installing a visitor management system is an integral element in keeping your facility secure and your students safe. There are 4 key considerations when choosing a system:

1) No self-sign-in for visitors. If the system allows self-sign-in for visitors, false names can be used to gain entry. All visitors must sign in with the front office using government approved identification on their initial visit to ensure the integrity of your process. 

2) Visitor photo directly on badge. Each campus must ensure that visitors receive a badge that contains both their photo and destination. Using a photo and destination on each badge ensures that campus staff can verify at a glance that it is the same individual who signed in at the front office and that they are at their stated destination. 

3) Instant sex offender screening. It is important that if a campus chooses to screen visitor for registered sex offenders, then the screening must be instant and easy. If not, front office personnel will be tempted to not take the extra steps to screen each individual and thereby allow sex offenders to enter their campus.

4) Web-based design. Using a system that is web-based allows staff to monitor visitor logs off site and even in the event of an emergency evacuation. One of the critical lessons from Columbine and the World Trade Center is that if your visitor management system is not web-based, you will not be able to access the system in the case of an evacuation and all records will be destroyed if the building or office is compromised. 

Sylvia Canales, Technical Support Manager, Raptor Technologies, scanales@raptorware.com, 713-880-8902, www.raptorware.com 

A WakeUp Call for U.S. Schools Extraordinary School Security Measures that Work

  

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 Watching ABC News "Good Morning America," I was thrilled to see their focus within the first 15 minutes of morning news highlight a Search for Solutions on school security. Correspondent Alex Perez profiled a suburban Chicago school doing everything possible to reassure parents that their kids are safe in the classroom. From front door vestibules to visitor management, any adult trying to enter that school would have no doubt that they are being watched and deterred from doing harm on campus. Delays are key, according to security consultant Paul Timm.  

I live in Texas and have three children attending three different schools which all use the Raptor Visitor Management System along with additional security measures. I've seen the system work time and again at our schools- stopping custody violators, sex offenders and other unwanted visitors. 

I'm shocked to know that tens of thousands of schools throughout the U.S. use no technology or modern security measures to protect students and faculty inside our schools. It's safer at the local mall than it is inside those unprotected school classrooms. This must change. PTA's, community organizations and local businesses should take a close look at schools in their neighborhood.

Visitor Management is simple and costs a few hundred dollars. It's a security measure that most kids never notice, but adults will find invasive. And let me tell you- if you're attempting to get near my kids while they are sitting in a classroom or cafeteria, you had better count on being stopped, watched and recorded every step of the way. Raptor is keeping watch at our schools- and I hope to see it help many more schools to come! 

-Tonya Kerr Yahoo! Contributor Network

TABLET TECHNOLOGY WITH V-SOFT

  

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By Jim Vesterman & Tonya Kerr - 6/25/2012

The use of tablets in schools is increasing fast. At the end of 2011, Apple announced that over 1.5 million iPads were already in use in the education market. As demand rises and costs come down, schools across the nation are relying more and more heavily on tablet technologies. 

Sales for the entire tablet market in 2012 are expected to nearly double worldwide to more than 118 million devices, according to analysts at Gartner. And they predict more than 665 million tablets in people’s hands by the year 2016, with more than a third of them using tablets on the job. 

Raptor is integrating tablet technology into its V-Soft system to offer schools and businesses a host of new capabilities through real-time and interactive mobile applications. 

Most school resource officers and administrators will tell you that countless hours are wasted every day across school districts collecting and inputting data for infractions like student tardies and misbehavior. There has to be a better way…and there is. 

A hall monitor armed with a tablet computer and a mobile printer can easily scan a student identification card or do a quick search; wirelessly and securely connect to the V-Soft database in the front office; input the infraction; and print out a ticket on the spot.

Mobile devices can also make visitor management more efficient. Most schools have experience with those long lines bottlenecking visitors at special events like a Valentine’s Day party or an awards assembly. Why work all year long to screen visitors and protect students when anyone can enter your campus during heavily attended events?

With mobile visitor management devices, one person can walk down the line and quickly and efficiently check parents and visitors through Raptor’s VSoft system using their tablet and a mobile printer right on their hip.

Integrating mobile technology with Raptor’s V-Soft visitor management and monitoring system is coming to a school near you. Parents and students will be more effectively served, while schools save time and integration costs. More than 7,000 schools in 42 states already depend on Raptor Technologies and its V-soft system. Over the last decade, Raptor has identified and alerted officials to more than 15,000 sex offenders entering campuses where children were present. The system has also been credited with the arrests of numerous absconded offenders who have crossed state lines.

Raptor can be deployed quickly and easily at both single schools and school districts. Beyond visitor management, Raptor’s V-Soft system includes additional modules that can track and screen volunteers, manage student tardies as well as early checkouts, and even track faculty by building. Raptor is at the forefront of developing tablet applications and other integrated systems as mobile computers grow in popularity and scope. Raptor’s software is web-based, which allows the software to be instantly updated over the Internet with the latest features and functionality. This web-based platform also allows administrators to work offsite and not be tied to a single front office computer.

Raptor Technologies is excited about what the future holds. As they pioneer this evolution into mobile capabilities, Raptor looks forward to helping schools work smarter and more efficiently as they address school security and visitor management.

Please call (713) 880-8902 or toll free at (877) 7-RAPTOR to learn more. You can also visit www.raptorware.com for more information. 

The Need for Accurate Language In Penn State Coverage

  

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Wendy Murphy is a close friend of Allan Measom, President at Raptor Technologies. It is with her permission - we are allowed to post her work. Mrs. Murphy is a victims activist and believes deeply in Raptor Technologies.

Tuesday, November 29, 2011 07:41 

The language in media reporting on the Penn State scandal has been almost universally inappropriate, both in print and television coverage. The media are pervasively using inappropriate language to describe the harm done to Jerry Sandusky's victims. As a former child abuse and sex crimes prosecutor, I've spent more than 20 years teaching, advocating and writing about sexual violence, victims' rights and the criminal justice system.
Along with my students, I run a program I developed ten years ago at New England Law/Boston entitled The Judicial Language Project. We use sociolinguistic research to critique the language used in law and society to describe violence against women and children. In connection with this project, I have trained judges and advocates around the country and have worked with the Poynter Institute to teach journalists about appropriate reporting styles when writing about sexual violence.
Erotic and vague terms, as well as phraseology that portrays the victim in a blameworthy role, inhibit our understanding of the crime as a unilateral act of violence committed by the perpetrator against a blameless victim.
By identifying problematic language and offering appropriate alternatives, the Judicial Language Project strives to improve the public's perception of sexual violence as a devastating harm that the U.S.  Supreme Court has called the most severe injury to the self "short of homicide."

A simple Google search makes the point about the problems with the Penn State coverage. The phrase "Sandusky victim anal sex" produced 172,000 hits while "Sandusky victim anal rape" produced a mere 38,000 hits. 
While the word "rape" rarely appears, nearly every news source describes the crimes at issue using the following terms and phrases: "engaging in sexual activity"; "fondling"; "the boy performing oral sex"; "anal sex/intercourse" and "sexual assault". These terms distort the truth about what allegedly happened to the children,  and they interfere with our understanding of the victims' suffering.  

A closer look at each word/phrase will better articulate the problem: 

ENGAGING IN  
The word "engage" is defined as "to bring together" or "to induce to participate."  The implication in such language is that the victim was an active participant who was causally involved in making the crime happen, rather than a recipient of the unilaterally harmful conduct of another. Words that imply any active responsibility on the part of a child obscure the offender's exclusive moral and legal culpability. 

SEXUAL ACTIVITY/ASSAULT/MOLEST 
"Sexual activity", "sexual assault" and "molest" are vague terms that tell us nothing about the actual crime, making it impossible for the public to understand what happened, or to know how to feel about the harm done and whether the reactions of responsible adults, law enforcement officials, etc., have been appropriate. 

FONDLE 
"Fondle", as a verb, is defined as "to handle, stroke or caress lovingly." As a noun, the word refers to "affectionate play (or foreplay without contact with the genital organs)." The term conveys the idea that child sexual abuse is pleasant and gentle, which undermines our ability to see the behavior as harmful criminal activity.  

THE CHILD PERFORMED ORAL SEX  
Saying "the child performed oral sex" portrays the victim as the aggressor and paints a scene where the offending adult is barely present, and only a passive recipient of the child's affirmative actions. The child as primary actor thus absorbs moral and legal responsibility for the actions of a violent adult. Alone, the word "perform" offers a near circus-like description of the child's role in causing rather than receiving harm.
Clearly, a child enduring the violence of another does not "perform" a sex crime on himself. Indeed, he cannot even lawfully consent as a passive participant and the law is clear in every jurisdiction that the adult bears 100 percent of the blame. Words that shift responsibility away from the offender mitigate the offender's exclusive responsibility for his actions.

ORAL SEX, ANAL SEX, ANAL INTERCOURSE 
The phrases "oral sex", "anal sex" and "anal intercourse" are similarly problematic in that they literally define actions that involve mutual pleasure and enjoyable stimulation of sex organs. These erotic terms bring criminal behavior discursively into the range of everyday, often pleasurable, human activity.
This necessarily prevents the public from appreciating the fact the victim experienced fear, disgust, objectification and harm, and it blurs an important line between sexual pleasure and criminal violence. 
Words both reflect and generate cultural ideas about sexual violence. Consumers of words passively take in and unconsciously attribute language to their understanding of human behavior. This becomes an internal narrative that creates social norms and expectations.
When language used to tell stories about sexual violence is vague, needlessly erotic and/or implies that the victim bears some of the blame, the constructed story creates harmful ideas about offender responsibility and the reality of victims' suffering.
In criminal cases involving children in particular, it is critically important to use factually correct terminology that assigns complete responsibility to the offender because children lack legal capacity to consent.

Thus, for example, rather than "anal sex", a reporter could say, "the offender penetrated the child's anus with his penis". Instead of "the child performed oral sex," a reporter could say, "the offender pushed his penis into the child's mouth."
This accurate, if blunt, use of language makes it clear that the victim suffered harm and bears no responsibility for the criminal acts of the harmdoer.
By: Wendy Murphy

Wendy J. Murphy is an adjunct professor at New England Law/Boston and a former prosecutor in Middlesex County, Massachusetts. She welcomes comments from readers.

Source:http://www.thecrimereport.org/viewpoints/2011-11-murphy-blog-on-sex-terms

School Security Works! Raptor's Visitor Management Leading the Charge

  

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When someone asks me if school security measures, like Raptor’s V-Soft system, really keep our kids safe, I tell them to look at the facts.

Houston-based Raptor Technologies has been tracking Registered Sex Offenders (RSO’s) in schools and other facilities for 10 years now. For the past several years, we have documented and positively identified an average of 3000-plus RSO’s per year entering the 7,000-plus schools using the Raptor system. 

Law enforcement agencies, school resource officers, and campus administrators continuously and publically commend Raptor’s assistance in stopping (and in some cases arresting) the would-be perpetrators from entering schools.

And when you consider that there are roughly 120,000 public schools in the U.S. (a majority of them do not use any type of electronic visitor management system), there is likely an average of more than 51,000 RSO’s attempting to enter our kids’ schools around the nation every year.

Also, based on Raptor’s success, our data indicates an average of 10 to 12 % of Raptor- identified RSO’s are actually absconders- those who leave one state and fail to register in another.  That means that government-operated sex offender databases are not as thorough and allow thousands of RSO's to fall through the cracks.

I challenge those who are not tracking these numbers or who ridicule this technology as scaremongering to walk in our shoes on a school day when an offender flashes up on our screens.

Understand our extensive and uncompromising data collected over the last 10 years and the tenacity of our Raptor support staff as they work together to assist the campus in a methodical and real-time effort as the perpetrator stands in the front office waiting to walk into a school.

Until you walk in our shoes, work with law enforcement daily, and reassure those administrators that we are keeping watch daily, just put your little pen down and go back to the library.

Thousands of men and women in law enforcement are putting their lives on the line each and every day. Many of them are being mentors and role models for the students they serve.

Raptor and other school security measures support those efforts on a daily basis.  Together, we are all making a difference that is measured not only in successful and undisputed facts, but in the peace of mind that we are doing everything in our power to keep our kids safe.

In the words of U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks, “Parents must recognize that our educators are already overburdened, not only with the education of our children, but also with the regulations and bureaucratic responsibilities placed on them.  In today’s crowded public schools, making exceptions to reasonable school policies for each and every parent who dislikes a school rule is unworkable and further distracts from a school’s primary purpose: education. Not only that, but in the educational world following the Columbine school shooting and the increased visibility of and sensitivity to sex offender, schools have not only an interest but a duty to take appropriate steps to protect our children while they are at school.”

Enough said.

E. Allan Measom

President & CEO

Raptor Technologies, Inc.

Thank You SRO's! Raptor Supports Your Efforts All Year Long

  

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As lay persons, most of us never take part in the training provided to law enforcement.  But for the past decade, I've had the unique opportunity to participate, facilitate and learn side-by-side with some of the most dedicated men and women in the field.

School Resource Officers (SRO's), for the most part, are street cops who work in our public schools for a good part of their day.  And despite recent budget cuts in education resources, more and more school districts are making SRO's an important presence on their campuses.

In today’s climate of violence, it's just too much for teachers and administrators to appropriately handle the day-to-day trouble on campus.  Additionally there are the legal ramifications of how each incident is handled.

This is why, each summer and throughout the year, SRO's attend training and share information with each other across the state, as well as throughout the country.

When I grew up, we had fights on campus.  If caught, we were sent to the principal’s office, our parents were called and we might get a few days suspension.  The principal also kept a paddle on the wall, and if you were willing to take a few swats everything was resolved right there.

But today, it is a legal matter.  Charges can be filed if due diligence and procedures aren't followed precisely.  It's not unusual anymore for a trouble-making student to be cuffed and hauled off in a police car.  If you choose not to arrest the kid, then the parents may have legal recourse in some cases.  SRO's new to the campus environment need to have a thorough understanding of the rules.

MIKE JONES - BAY COUNTY SCHOOLS

DIRECTOR OF SECURITY

I have been fortunate to attend numerous trainings from active shooter to FBI profiler, and all of them teach the signs to look for when interviewing an active case.  There have been many high profile cases over the years which have caught the media's eye.  And for this reason, SRO's also need to be trained on how to correctly answer the questions asked.  (The media loves to run with something many times before the facts are straight.  SRO’s are not big fans of the media.  I for one cannot blame them).

Many SRO training courses are a necessary evil, such as one I attended on teen killers.  That full day of training will open your eyes.  But what these classes really do is make the officers aware that what they could be hearing or seeing is crucial to saving lives.  Posters in a locker or a certain behavior could  be indicators that a kid might go off.

The instructors for these courses do endless research and present case studies going back to school killings in the 1800’s.  So many times the signals were there, but no one saw them. That's why training is helpful.  As one of their many tools, SRO's profile people.  Sorry folks, that's just the facts.  And I, for one, am glad they do. 

SRO's are trained to predict trouble before it gets out of hand.  They spend countless hours in those classes to stay one step ahead of troubled kids, and they lives in our schools each and every day.

So the next time you see a SRO, take a moment and say thank you.  That goes for street cops and even the men and women in our armed forces, too.  So much goes on around us that we're never exposed to because they stop it before it starts. 

Summer training for law enforcement is vital, and Raptor supports these organizations in as many ways as possible to ensure that they get that training-  and maybe enjoy their time while they're there.

Thanks guys- for everything you do! 

E. Allan Measom

President & CEO

Raptor Technologies Inc.

Raptor's Keeping Track- A Fun Prank in South Carolina!

  

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Raptor Logs 3,000+ Sex Offenders in 2010-2011 School Year

  

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In this school year since August 1, 2010, Raptor Technologies has logged over 3,000 sex offenders coming onto our school campuses.

And when you think that only 7% of all public schools use Raptor's V-Soft system, can you imagine the number we could expose if our technology was used in ALL of our schools?

More than 80 million students attend public and private schools across the U.S., and only a handful of the more than 100k school campuses use any type of visitor management technology. 

There is no longer any good excuse for schools, administrators and parents to ignore such a cost effective safety resource for the children they are supposed to protect.

If you know of a district or a single school still using a clipboard and honor system to allow adults access to school classrooms, cafeterias and field trips, we'd like to know about it.

Raptor Technologies was the first company to bridge this industry from corporate America into our schools.  Protecting children, our most precious resource, is what Raptor is all about!

Match.com begins Sex Offender Screening on customers

  

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The current reports show that over 40 million people have used online dating as a way to begin a relationship with the many love stories and long lasting relationship created that we have all seen on TV.  That amounts to about 1 out of every 8 people have used online dating.  Take away the older generation of baby boomers that account for a very small portion of those users and you are getting closer to 1 in 5.  Amazing from an industry that just a few years ago was considered taboo and it is increasingly growing.

Another report by Online Schools that is shocking as well:

• 1 in 10 sex offenders reported going online to get dates

That is REPORTED.  As many of us know in dealing with convicted felons and sex offenders on a daily basis, for some reason many do not always tell the total truth, but some variation, so that number is possibly much higher.

The good news is Raptor provides an instant screening service that allows for quick screening against the sex offender registries at a very reasonable price.  Wendy Murphy, a former prosecutor who specialized in child abuse and sex crimes commented on CNN last night that,"Raptor Technologies is very good at being proactive about giving people the technology to be able to do this".

Contact us today to discuss our API solution to this growing issue.

Made in the U.S. of A.: Raptor Technologies

  

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At Raptor Technologies, one of our most important tasks is to help protect our schools and the children inside them.  And that’s exactly why we believe that, today more than ever, there’s a need to buy products made right here in America.

As our nation’s dependence on foreign goods continues to rise, our manufacturing ability is fading fast.  Soon, future generations of US citizens (our kids) will be unable to find relevant jobs. We can’t let that happen!

Over the last century, millions of Americans left the family farm to take jobs in manufacturing and service industries- settling cities and eventually suburbs.

Americans worked hard and enjoyed the fruits of their labor like cars, refrigerators and television sets.  The middle class grew, as did their income and standard of living.  And the United States became the world leader it is today.

Now, more Americans have jobs in service-based industries like design, banking and technology.  We import most of our goods and those we still manufacture here, thanks to technology, require fewer workers on the assembly line. 

In fact, in 1960, foreign goods made up just eight percent of Americans' purchases. Today, nearly 60 percent of everything we buy is made overseas, and in 2010, the trade deficit totaled $497.8 billion, according to the federal government.

According to Moody's Economy.com, if every American spent an extra $3.33 on U.S. made goods, it would create nearly 10,000 new American jobs.

Raptor Technologies is proud to be a 100% USA company. When we outsource, it’s to other USA companies right here in the states.

We believe in American “exceptionalism” and support the people who do everything they can to promote this great country in as many ways possible.

America does not compare to India, Britain, China or any other country. America is exceptional.   We are and should always remain world leaders.

So when you see the name Raptor, know that your dollars are staying here at home. They always will.

Raptor’s goal is to continue protecting schools and future generations of Americans who can help rebuild this great country of ours for many years to come.

God Bless our troops, our children, and the good old U.S. of A.!

Houston-based Raptor Technologies, Inc., is made in the USA.