A Culture of Preparedness

We live in a time where tragedy doesn’t just happen in far-off places. It happens in our schools, our places of worship, our offices, our streets. And yet the national conversation continues to focus on how we react, rather than how we prevent it. As a veteran-led safety and security firm rooted in New York City, Personal Protective Concepts recognizes prevention not as a luxury, but a responsibility. The following reflection is not just a reaction to recent events across the country. It’s a roadmap for how we, together, can stop the next one.

What the Headlines Keep Telling Us

Over just a few months, the headlines have been relentless:

A student in Evergreen, Colorado, shot two classmates before taking his own life.
A former student in Minneapolis fired into a school Mass, killing two children and injuring seventeen others.
Charlie Kirk was assassinated by a rooftop sniper at a Utah university.
The CDC’s Atlanta campus was targeted by an anti-vaccine extremist who fired nearly 200 rounds.
A U.S. Army sergeant opened fire at Fort Stewart, injuring five fellow soldiers.
A man citing grievances with the NFL stormed a Manhattan skyscraper and killed four.
Two Minnesota lawmakers were ambushed in their own homes.

Different people. Different motives. But all of them carried out with devastating efficiency, and all of them exposed the same gaps in our collective preparedness.

Behavioral Clues Are Almost Always There

Before nearly every incident, the warning signs were present.

A text message that read, “I might be dead soon.” A manifesto was uploaded online. A recent DUI. A prior breakdown. An obsession with a perceived injustice.

These are not minor red flags. These are signals of escalation. And yet too often, they fall through the cracks. Not because no one cared, but because no one was positioned to connect the dots.

The first step to prevention is creating environments where concerns are welcome, instead of being punished. Where behavioral threat assessment is standard, not reactive. Where every school, workplace, or agency has a trusted system to report, evaluate, and act on signs of risk.

We’re Still Leaving the Front Door Wide Open

At the CDC, the shooter never even stepped inside the building. He didn’t need to. He fired from the outside.

At Charlie Kirk’s event, a rooftop went unmonitored.

At 345 Park Avenue, a man entered a skyscraper lobby in body armor and with an assault rifle, unquestioned.

And at Fort Stewart, a soldier carried a personal handgun into a secured military facility.

These aren’t failures of metal detectors. These are failures of imagination.

We must ask ourselves: are we securing not just our doors, but our lines of sight? Have we accounted for the possibility that the next threat comes not from inside, but from above, behind, or online? Does our access control reflect today’s threats or yesterday’s habits?

Protective Intelligence: A Lifesaver

This section was contributed by Alex Pieken, Intelligence Specialist and Founder of Threat Readiness Solutions.

Again and again, we find out later that someone saw something. Heard something. I felt something.

A neighbor. A colleague. A police department. A Facebook friend.

But there was no system to share it. No pathway to connect it. And so nothing was done until it was too late.

If we want to stop attacks before they happen, we must build multidisciplinary intelligence networks that include not only law enforcement, but community members, educators, HR professionals, mental health providers, and yes, private security experts. Prevention lives at the intersection of those voices.

Information from these networks is paramount, though useless if not harnessed. Intelligence professionals are trained to analyze information gathered from concerned parties and help determine whether emergent threats exist.

This raw information is informative, though threatening; professional analysis leads to informed action and protection of our loved ones by showing security where to look and decision makers where to place their concerns.

It Doesn’t Just Happen “Over There”

Too often, people believe violence is an urban problem. Or a political one. Or a mental health one. Or a gun one. And while all of these may play a role, they distract from the deeper truth:

Violence happens where opportunity meets neglect.

Evergreen was a quiet suburb.
The Minneapolis church featured stained-glass windows and a choir.
Fort Stewart is a U.S. military base.

If your organization hasn’t yet asked “what if it happens here?”, now is the time.

When Seconds Count, People Save People

In those first terrifying minutes, policy won’t stop the bleeding. Culture will.

At Fort Stewart, soldiers tackled the shooter.
In Minneapolis, neighbors took children into their homes.
In every one of these cases, people who had no obligation to act, acted anyway.

We can train for this. We can plan for this. We can prepare our people not just to survive, but to protect one another.

From Compliance to Culture

Our focus is not just to teach active shooter drills. We dedicate our efforts to building cultures of readiness.

Compliance checks a box. Culture saves a life.

Ask yourself:

Do people in your building feel safe reporting a concern?
Do they know what to do if someone walks in with a weapon?
Do you have a plan not just to respond to violence, but to prevent it?

This Is the Moment to Lead

If you are a principal, a CEO, a pastor, a team lead, or a board member, this is your responsibility. It’s not enough to hope your community stays safe.

Instead, ask yourself this:

What would it look like if your community became the reason someone didn’t pull the trigger?

This is the question that drives our work. And it’s the vision we help our clients build every day.

Ready to take the first step?

Start with a conversation. Reach out to us here. Let’s design a culture of prevention together.

Personal Protective Concepts is a veteran-led safety & security firm based in New York City. We offer consulting, protective services, and community-focused training for schools, businesses, and institutions committed to real safety by design.