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.