Lieutenant Joseph A. Hendry Jr., CLEE, is a 25-year veteran of the Kent State University Police Department, national instructor for the ALICE Training Institute, and father of 3.  Back in March, he emailed me to point out the similarities between classroom barricade devices and the locked cockpit door in the Germanwings crash, where the co-pilot locked the captain out of the cockpit and deliberately crashed the plane, killing all 150 people on board.  I asked if he would share his thoughts in a guest blog post, which I posted here.

In the October issue of Doors & Hardware, Lt. Hendry has once again shared his law enforcement perspective on the use of classroom barricade devices, in an article called America’s Maginot Line – Why our focus on secondary locking devices makes us more vulnerable to threats.

My favorite excerpt…

“The fact is these devices can easily be used against us… From a tactical standpoint, hanging the device next to the door is an invitation to disaster. It gives any threat the ability to secure a room with potential victims inside with little recourse for staff or law enforcement except to breach using physical force. The fact that vendors are touting the devices by posting videos of law enforcement using current assigned tools that cannot breach the door gives threats a tactical advantage in planning and use in a facility that is already a soft target.”

Many thanks to Joe for sharing his insight with us!

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