Chief of District Security Chris Wynn Weighs In on the Who, What & Why of Campus Security Systems

Finally, I think once you figure out who all these people are, you just need to make sure that you have policies put in place that talk about how they’ll be used. With any new technology and new idea, if it’s not used universally at all of your sites, you will find that it’s stopped being used.

5) What are some tips you would offer schools that need help with their security system?

If I could give any advice at all, it would be not to settle on the first vendor. Vendors do a good job of coming in and marketing their product. I think we looked at four or five different lobby management systems before we settled on Raptor, and it was solely because Raptor met our objectives. The other systems were all good, I don’t bad mouth any of them. They may work great on other sites, but they didn’t do what we wanted them to do.

The last thing that you really need to be reasonable about is prices. Security is not cheap. Every time I come up with a plan or a new idea, the first question that’s asked is money, and my response is almost always, “security is not free.” There’s nothing out there that makes security cheap. You have to be realistic because there are a lot of products that can price themselves right out of the market, but at the same time, you can’t put a dollar amount on security.

If your browser supports an embedded audio player you can listen to the audio portion of this interview. If the audio player does not appear, please use the link below to listen using your computers preferred audio player or download the file to listen externally.