Major Community Safety Event at Clearpath EPM on May 16
Years ago, unrest or violence in a house of worship, business, or school was beyond our wildest imagination, but unfortunately, this is no longer the world we are living in, so preparedness and training are the keys to facing potential adversity.
At a time when many of us need the solace, comfort, refuge, and community that comes from spending time at houses of worship, there are grave safety concerns.
This is why the emergency planning management firm, Clearpath EPM is hosting a first-time, interactive, safety training program (both in-person and virtually) for schools, businesses, and houses of worship on Thursday, May 16.
Offered by highly trained safety and emergency planning experts, the specialized program is being held at the Center for Spiritual Living-Fort Lauderdale, 4849 Dixie Highway, Oakland Park. Lunch and training materials will be provided at the event for those in-person participants.
“We encourage South Florida schools, businesses, and houses of worship to bring several members of their group to determine what challenges they are facing and find ways to offer safety and security,” explained Mike Johnson, the CEO of Clearpath EPM.
“We are here to help them assess their threats and assets, and for a nominal fee participants will gain vital and understandable information from this unique training,” said Johnson. “We put this into terms that the layperson understands. No other organization in the world has our experience and expertise.”
Another great value of this training event, he said, is the excitement that comes from “bringing people together in a collaborative environment and starting to build relationships that will continue after the course is over.”
Johnson, a board member of the Center for Spiritual Living, strongly emphasizes the importance of human connection when it comes to safety concerns at houses of worship, schools, and other community gathering places. Johnson’s customized emergency action plans are the keys to successful training events.
“The best way to avoid human error is to provide training and build competency so that all stakeholders know what to do when faced with any incident or disruption,” Johnson explains. “I call that maintaining the human connection; the awareness of what to do if you see something that is potentially going to be disruptive and what you can do about it.”
School, business, and houses of worship leaders and staff members are encouraged to attend this remarkable event to learn how to implement emergency action plans tailored to their specific needs.
We are reminded daily by newspaper headlines and the nightly news that domestic threats and acts of violence against public meeting places in our divided and troubled nation have increased during the past 10 years, both in the U.S. and abroad.
Community, school, business, and church leaders are fearful of not being able to protect themselves and their participants in light of the growing number of fatal shootings and other unrest around the U.S., including several in South Florida.
Johnson, an involved member of the Broward County community, has spearheaded numerous highly effective training seminars for schools and businesses. This is the first one-of-its-kind training using Clearpath’s proven safety and training processes.
“This is what we are going to cover in the upcoming training,” Johnson said. “It’s about building a comprehensive program in which you train people on what to look for and how to respond. We want
everyone who attends to recognize that there is a lot that they can do to mitigate the risk.”
After 28 years in diplomatic security and law enforcement for the U.S. government, Johnson entered the private sector in 2010 as an executive with a global risk consulting company.
Johnson is a lead trainer and facilitator for several non-profit education organizations and has provided safety, security, and campus resiliency training to hundreds of school and business leaders around the world.
He is a Certified Protection Professional as awarded by the American Society for Industrial Security, (ASIS), a national and international security association made up of 34,000 professionals.
With political unrest around the world, school leaders sleep easier at night after they have hired Johnson and the Clearpath EPM team.
Over the years, team members have worked with schools in Argentina, Chile, Ecuador, Honduras, Bolivia, Columbia, Peru, Ghana, Brazil, Panama, Kenya, and other countries, further cementing the company’s position as experts in safety and emergency planning management for international schools.
“The most rewarding aspect of our work is when we meet up with heads of schools that we have worked with in the past and they are eager to share stories of how they were able to fix aspects of their safety plan because of our recommendations,” Johnson explained. “They tell us that we helped to make their school safer and that they are much more prepared to deal with incidents than they were before based on our visits and recommendations.”
Clearpath EPM’s interactive safety training session is for leaders, staff, and volunteers of schools, businesses, and houses of worship.
At the safety training, participants will learn about emergency communication, emergency response protocols, the 4D’s of security, (detect, deter, deny, and delay), and the importance of maintaining situational awareness.
They will also learn how to create a crisis management team, and safety response team to build the best practices for team incident response.
In addition, South Florida houses of worship, schools, and area businesses often host large events at their facilities, and they will learn how event planning is a critical part of overall protection and preparedness planning.
Retired U.S. Army Colonel Vince Lindenmeyer uses his extensive strategy experience, in his position as partner and chief strategy officer for Clearpath EPM.
“I am looking forward to the May 16 event because it is the opportunity to engage our community in a sound and proven methodology for creating a safety posture for schools, businesses, and houses of worship,” Lindenmeyer said.
“While there is great value being offered throughout the day, it is about building relationships, evaluating resources and assets, and being able to follow up with us,” he explained.
“People want a quick solution, but we want them to analyze their current processes and have a better security posture going forward,” said Lindenmeyer. The key is getting the leaders to say ‘We need this because this is what keeps me up at night.’ We want them to think about their security from A to Z.”
To attend this program in-person or virtually go to the Eventbrite Link:
For the Clearpath Website Click Here:
For additional information go to [email protected] or call 877-376-9133.
Michael Johnson is the CEO of Clearpath EPM and the lead facilitator for this six-hour training event. He recently wrote an insightful article titled “Training And Preparedness: Building A Security Team For Your Religious Community,” and he also shared his expertise on the importance of preparedness for disruptive events in a recent episode of The Chris Voss Show podcast.
