Learn some Steps You Can take Today to make a Security Plan for Your House of Worship
Episode 3 covers what you as a member of a congregation or as the leader of a congregation can do to increase security at your church or other house of worship. Churches, synagogues, mosques, temples and religious institutions of all shapes and sizes can benefit from a security assessment of their facilities.
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Robert McGowan: Welcome to the Protecting the Best Podcast. My name’s Robert McGowan.
Ian Poush: Ian Poush with OPS Security Group, and along with us today is …
Mike Krupa: Mike Krupa.
Ian Poush: Our Director of Strategic Development. This is episode three of our podcast, so we have three of us here. We thought three was a good number today.
Robert McGowan: Yup, there are three of us here Ian.
Ian Poush: There is three Bob, counting great.
Robert McGowan: Yeah.
Ian Poush: Today we’re going to be talking about current events, some security for houses of worship, targets that may be a little bit more vulnerable to some of the more nefarious attacks that we’ve seen in the news lately. That’s why we brought Michael on, he’s an expert in this area.
Mike Krupa: That’s saying a lot.
Ian Poush: Well, I think it’s being honest.
Mike Krupa: Yeah.
Ian Poush: Mike, you want to kind of open us up here and talk a little bit about this?
Churches and Other Places of Worship are Considered Soft Targets
Mike Krupa: Yeah. You’re talking about what’s typically known in the industry as a soft target. A hardened target would be more of your government installations, fenced areas, things with, I hate to say the wall, but things with walls around it. Areas of an approach would be difficult.
Mike Krupa: These are not those. These are on the other end of it. These are areas that are meant to be welcoming. These are areas that are softer in terms of security and in terms of vigilance because of the types of situations and the types of events that are going on inside. It presents a much harder aspect, a more challenging aspect for those of us in this industry to prevent and prepare for anything that could happen. We’re seeing that in the news recently as to how easy it is to get inside and do things that you want to.
Ian Poush: Yeah. From a company standpoint, we have several clients who have houses of worship, religious schools, things of that nature. The initial meetings with them, there’s always going to be some pushback as to what security is actually going to be at a place like that. Is it going to make it seem unwelcome? Is it going to detract from the services that are going on there?
Ian Poush: Houses of worship, this is somebody’s religion, this is something that they hold near and dear to them. Very strong beliefs. When you start introducing security, or the need for security, oftentimes the concern is it’s going to take away from the services that are actually going on in these places. That’s something that when we approach our clients has to be taken into account. Also, we’re looking at places that, as Mike said, are soft targets and are taking huge risks. What are some ways that they can kind of go about taking steps to make their facilities a bit more secure while still being welcoming?
Mike Krupa: Yeah, so what you’re talking about generally is you get sort of a two knee jerk reaction when it comes to an event that happens in a place of worship. You get one side of the fence says, “Turn the other cheek. We should just take it as it comes. Let’s just keep moving on and keep doing what we’re doing.” The other side of it is, “Everybody needs a gun and everybody should be carrying inside. And we need to ante up and kick in and take care of our own.” Sort of shepherd your flock, so to speak.
Mike Krupa: Somewhere in the middle has to be met, I believe. Personally I think all beliefs aside, and all belief systems aside, I think it’s kind of inherent on each one of us to take care of our own. If you are opening up your doors to a facility that’s going to allow more than one or two people inside, and they’re trusting you with their security, so you should provide that security.
Mike Krupa: I think some of the steps, to answer your question, I think some of the steps and measures that can be taken in regards to places of worship are sort of the same with educational facilities and everything else. I think security needs to become a mindset, it needs to become more than just a binder that somebody can prepare and hand you, that never gets followed, and quite frankly stays on the desk and collects dust for the rest of the year.
Ian Poush: It’s a great paperweight for paper.
Mike Krupa: Absolutely. Whenever I travel around and I talk to individuals like this, the first thing I do is ask for the binder. I grab ahold of it and I say, “Okay, a shooter walked in the door. What does your binder tell you to do?” Almost all the time nobody can tell me anything about what that binder says inside as far as an emergency response plan.
Instilling a Security Mindset in Church Patrons Prevents them from Freezing in an Emergency Situation
Mike Krupa: I think what you need to do is you need to create and foster a mindset of safety and security, and a mindset is something that becomes a living, breathing thing. Instead of, or as opposed to, a plan. A plan is great, but what’s the quote? Everybody has a plan till you get punched in the face. Everybody has a plan until that gun comes in the door. Then once that does, everything shuts down and people start freezing.
If you create and foster a mindset of security, and you get people starting to think, “If this happens, I’m going to do this.” When you have that plan in place, when you have a security mindset that’s being fostered and cultured around the group of individuals, you’re going to stop the freeze.
You’re going to get people to actually fight and not flight. You’re going to get people that are not going to stand there with wide eyes, looking at what’s happening, wondering what they should do. You’re going to get people that react and act right away.
Mike Krupa: It doesn’t need to involve guns. It doesn’t need to involve weapons. It doesn’t need to involve a bucket of stones that are kept inside that you can start chucking at people, which I’ve seen online recently. Although, I kind of secretly like that idea a lot. Let me just put it this way. It is very hard to acquire a target and pull the trigger when you’ve got eight to ten stones coming at your head. I’m not advocating for any sort of a response plan. I’m just saying I kind of like the style.
Ian Poush: YMCA day camp, stone skipping.
Mike Krupa: I would up that ante and have bricks involved, but that’s just me. Anyway, getting back to the point. A living, breathing mindset, as opposed to something that’s on paper, is what’s going to win the day. Because at that point everybody’s involved, everybody knows what they’re doing, and everybody reacts. Instead of everybody having the oh my god moment.
Ian Poush: Do you think that … No.
Robert McGowan: Yeah. I was just going to say, a lot of-
Mike Krupa: I didn’t notice you down there Bob. You didn’t say anything. What’s going on?
Ian Poush: He was quiet for once.
Robert McGowan: Glad to be here. A lot of what Mike kind of handles with some of our current and prospective clients is a lot of the consulting services side. Mike, kind of take us through, and maybe you can answer some questions with this. With clients, or maybe prospective clients or current clients, who might not have any sort of a security plan. When you come in and start working with them, what are some things that you’re initially kind of thinking about, asking them questions?
Robert McGowan: For somebody who maybe is involved in a place of worship, like a church, what are some things that they can start asking themselves and kind of self-assessing to kind of start getting them in the right direction? Start having the right conversations with their organization so they can actually put together a viable security plan that can actually lead to something that’s going to be same for them and their community?
Perform a Vulnerability Assessment on Your Current Church Security Plan
Mike Krupa: Okay, so the first question they can ask themselves is, if I meant to do bad things, how would I do it? I used to work for the secret service before this, and I used to joke around with people that always asked me what my day was like. I used to say, “I killed the first family about three times today.” What I mean by that, please don’t put me on any sort of watch list.
Mike Krupa: What I mean by that is, as I was standing out there, bored out of my mind, or as I was cruising around in a vehicle, or doing whatever, I used to think about, if I meant to, or if I was the bad guy, if I was going to do something to these people, how would I do it? Where that’s valuable is if you start to think that way, then you start to see the holes in your security plan.
Mike Krupa: Whenever I meet with individuals and I start to talk to them sight unseen, they’ve never thought about security before, I always say that you want to think of security as a target. On that target you have certain rings that lead to a bullseye. The bullseye is whatever you want to protect. In reference to a place of worship, an educational facility, your people are your most important thing. You’re going to want to put them in that middle in the bullseye. Every ring outside of that is a layer of security.
Mike Krupa: Now every ring, no matter how good you are, whether you’re the secret service guarding the president at the White House, or you’re an individual that’s in a Baptist church out in Lubbock, Texas, what you’re looking at is every layer of security is going to have a hole in it. You just don’t want them all to line up in one direction, because if you line up in one direction, it’s easy for somebody to gain access. The whole point of the rings of security is to keep a delay going on so that they have to find their way in to get to what’s important.
Mike Krupa: Why you want to buy yourself time is because no matter what you’re protecting, it’s never fully safe. If you want to look at history, whenever there’s been a castle, every castle has probably, I’m not a history major, but every castle has been sieged in history. There’s never been a fortress or a castle that has stood the test of a siege warfare.
Mike Krupa: In present day that just means that if you have a wall, there’s probably a way around it. If you have a gate, there’s probably a way through it. If you have a door, there’s probably a way through it. What you want to make sure is that you’ve set up the layers of security to the point that it delays so much that you get everybody out or you have police officers that can respond in time. In security, you’re really just talking about the time frame.
Robert McGowan: Now is that something that community members or religious organization members should be reaching out to their local law enforcement agencies first? Should they be meeting amongst themselves to put together their own security plan? Should they be reaching out to maybe a third party private security vendor like OPS? What would you recommend kind of first steps if they wanted to build a start from scratch church security plan?
Local Law Enforcement Can Be a Valuable Resource in Building a Church Security Plan
Mike Krupa: Yeah. I think that all comes down to resources available. If you have, a lot of the places of worship will have a parishioner that is on the job, that is a police officer or in the security element. A lot of times they’ll reach out to them first and they’ll put something together. Anything’s better than nothing. If you have no resources and you have somebody that wants to volunteer their time and effort, by all means. Otherwise, if you don’t have any resources, you’re doing the old, the Google, YouTube, how can I do this? Which you have to be very cautious, because there’s a lot of snake oil salesmen out there when it comes to this industry.
Mike Krupa: Anybody that has any sort of resources, and I would say if you don’t, then reach out to your people. There’s a collection plate that goes around pretty much every church that’s out there. You can take up a donation. You can take up a GoFundMe, because at the end of the day it’s taking care of their people.
Mike Krupa: Once you start to get those resources, I would say it is valuable to reach out to your local law enforcement, only to the effect that it gets their face out there. They know who’s going to be responding and who’s going to be taking care of them. A lot of times they will try to develop a plan, but you’ve got to think about, they also have a bunch of runs that they have to go on that day. They have emergency calls that they have to go on that day. They may not have the time to sit down and look at your site and do the plan for you.
Mike Krupa: Basically when you reach out to local law enforcement there’s sort of a double edged sword. You’re going to get somebody that is very capable at responding to incidents, that’s very capable at handling themselves under pressure, that has a lot of training in responding to threats and in arresting the bad guy. That’s what they’ve been trained at. That’s what their experience gives them.
Mike Krupa: However, not a lot of officers are schooled, or educated, or trained in how to develop a security plan. It’s just really not in their expertise. When you go through the academy, you don’t come out with an ASIS CPP degree, or a masters in security, or in general building security. A lot of these guys, they go through the academy and they’re very good at what they do, but quite honestly they don’t necessarily know how to write a plan. Like I said, anything’s better than nothing. If you reach out and your local police department gives you a plan, they’re going to be very well versed in how they’re going to respond to an incident and in what bad guys generally do. That’s a start.
Contact a Security Expert for a Vulnerability Threat Assessment on your Place of Worship
Mike Krupa: What I would say is if you have any sort of resources, you’re definitely going to want to seek out some experts in the field. Seek out the subject matter expert that has a lot of experience in writing security plans and writing security procedures, and does risk assessments and threat and vulnerability assessment.
Mike Krupa: A good threat and vulnerability assessment is going to give you such a leg to stand on to be able to plan out your security from there, because this building is different from the building that’s next door.
Your church, or your synagogue, or your temple is going to be different than the one that’s up the street. Every building on every street is different, so every plan has to be different.
You can’t get a cookie cut one fits all plan when it comes to any sort of a facility.
Mike Krupa: To answer your question, I would say if you have no resources, seek out whoever you can. If you do have some resources, definitely involve your local law enforcement. They’re going to give you some good basis to go on. If you do have any sort of resources, go and seek out that third party option and get somebody that knows what the hell they’re talking about to come and help.
Robert McGowan: It almost seems like it’s a multi-prong approach. You have the reactionary side of law enforcement, and making sure that they’re kind of spun up on what your building is, what the needs are, what they perceive as the proverbial threats to that building. Then there’s also the proactive side, which comes with getting a subject matter expert, like yourself, to come in and kind of partner with you to build out what that security plan is.
Robert McGowan: You mentioned something about like watching when you’re going around on the internet for the proverbial snake oil salesman. Kind of elaborate on that a little bit about, if you’re reaching out and you’re saying, from somebody who has no security plan, you’re cold calling these subject matter experts to try to get them to come out. What should be some things that they should be looking for? Kind of like what we talked about on our past podcasts, of when you’re vetting these vendors, what should be something they should be looking for, staying away from? What are some kind of telltale signs that you know you have somebody who’s going to be able to help you put together a good security plan?
Mike Krupa: Yeah, absolutely. To go on record, I’m not saying that police officers cannot write a security plan. Some are probably very, very capable, and the academy training that they get gives them a base to stand on to be able to write a security plan. I’m not saying don’t seek out local law enforcement. Absolutely involve them every step of the way. I involve them every time I do a plan, because they’re the ones that are going to respond.
Mike Krupa: Even if you get them built in to the level that they now know the church layout, they now know the parishioners by face and name some of them, they’re going to know who they’re going to look for or what they’re going to look at when they go into a building and they have to do something. Absolutely involve them from day one.
Mike Krupa: However, the subject matter expertise comes into play when it’s somebody that’s actually been taught how to look at a site, what vulnerabilities come from the surrounding areas and the facility itself, what vulnerabilities come form the parishioners, the type of individuals in that area. What kind of crime rate is there in the area? There’s a lot of different factors that come into play when you’re doing a threat and vulnerability assessment, and developing a plan based off of that.
Be Aware of Bad Actors Selling False Security Expertise
Mike Krupa: What to look out for. Your YouTube warrior. The guy that maybe spent two days in the academy and left because he didn’t either hack it, or he got injured and now is a security professional. Somebody that has not had any sort of formal training or experience in security, I would say definitely stay away from. They’re very easy to recognize because a lot of what they say is just regurgitated, and you could probably Google or YouTube my building security, and you’re going to get somebody that’s going to sit there in front of a camera and tell you how to do things.
If they hand you a binder with a plan that they didn’t even ask you any sort of pertinent questions about your facility, throw it out, because it’s not going to do any good for you.
Robert McGowan: Somebody who would just maybe show up to the meeting with a predetermined plan with no understanding of seeing your building or anything.
Mike Krupa: Yeah. It’s to the extent that I’ve actually gone to meetings at a school and I’ve asked them for their security plan. They’ve given it to me and I’ve flipped to page six or seven and a different school’s name is at the bottom of the page because it was really just a copy and paste job that they did poorly. These people are paying $5,000 to $10,000 to $15,000 for that binder.
Robert McGowan: Wow.
Mike Krupa: Which if you’re going to invest that kind of resources, which quite frankly most places of worship do not have, make sure it’s somebody that comes from a reputable background and vet them. You can make phone calls. You can check military service records. You can check a lot of things that are going to give you an idea that these individuals are who they say they are.
Mike Krupa: If they’re in the local police department, they retire and now they have a private LLC, and they come out here and they throw a binder at you, call that local precinct. Hey, did you ever hear of this guy? How was he on the job? “Oh yeah, he went out and fell asleep in the parking lot every night, and he had an arrest rate of two in the entire 22 careers he was there.” I’m not saying anything against the badge. I’m just saying be aware of what’s behind the badge.
Mike Krupa: Because if I’m a patrol officer for 25 years and that’s all I’ve done, does that make me an expert in active shooter scenarios? I’m going to catch a lot of flak for saying this kind of stuff, but I’ve got to put it out there. It doesn’t. I mean, honestly if I want to know how to pull over a car properly, I’ll go seek that guy out. If I want to know how to stay alive in an active shooter scenario, you typically don’t have to have somebody that doesn’t have the background to do it. It comes from experience and background.
Mike Krupa: The only reason I know anything about what I’m talking about when it comes to school safety or active shooter threats, or places of worship, is that in the time that I spent down in DC I got together with off duty officers and we walked through the schools. We talked to a lot of the teachers. We did pre-planning. We did pre-staging of events if we had to be the ones that responded to these incidents.
Mike Krupa: You don’t see a lot of that proaction in a lot of the officers that are out there. While I love the police officers to death, I wore the badge for more than a while, I would say be wary of who you go to out there. There’s a lot of individuals that tout themselves as experts that really aren’t.
Federal Grants are Available for Churches and other Non-Profits to make Security Assessments Affordable
Ian Poush: You talk about the cost of some of these things. You talk about 5, 10, 15. That is a lot for a house of worship. Yes, we have collection plates and things like that. That’s a lot for a house of worship. Is there any way for, are there grant programs out there, or anything like that, from either the Department of Homeland Security or anything, for houses of worship to seek to bolster their security? Whether it’s through a physical means, or through a personnel setup, or through a security consulting plan?
Mike Krupa: Sure, absolutely. There’s grants everywhere. I don’t have the website off the top of my head, but there-
Ian Poush: We’ll put it in the link.
Mike Krupa: Yeah, absolutely. There’s grants that can be had from especially Homeland Security, especially through counter terrorism funds that are out there, that quite honestly a lot of individuals don’t know about, a lot of entities don’t know about. There’s a lot of money that goes unclaimed every year that is there specifically for a nonprofit, for a place of worship, to be able to do exactly this, to seek out somebody that knows what they’re talking about and to afford these plans, which can get pretty pricey.
Mike Krupa: At the end of the day you’re really just talking about somebody’s time that they’re spending on your site. You’re paying a hefty amount for that time. One of the reasons I love working for OPS and coming out of the government, and I’m not just saying that to get a raise. No.
“One of the reasons I love working for OPS and coming out of the government…is that it’s not just we’re going to send Mike out to your site, he’s going to take a look at what you’ve got going on and he’s going to give you a report at the end of it. It’s also walking hand in hand and implementing that plan.”
Mike Krupa: You might not know, I might give you a plan that says you should hire three individuals that sit in the back of the room, or that you should put this fence here or that gate there. At the end of the day you need somebody to say, “Okay, well they’re putting that fence in the wrong way. They’re putting that gate in the wrong way. That lock’s not going to work for that gate.” I know I told you to get that, but now you don’t know who to go to and who to oversee the implementation of that plan is something we can do as well. Even to the extent of staffing it.
Mike Krupa: I’ve got a lot of guys that work for me from a protective side that would love to get involved into a community aspect like that, where you’re not just collecting a paycheck, you’re feeling like you’re helping out. Especially in today’s environment, in light of the things that are happening right now, the holistic approach of doing the assessment, doing the implementation of the recommendations off of those assessments, and then the staffing element at the end should you choose to have a gun inside your place of worship. You’ve got to do that responsibly. That I think is where we really, I’m pretty proud of it.
Professionally Trained and Armed Individuals are a Recommended Method of Church Security
Mike Krupa: The only thing I’ll say, if I can sum up the rest of I guess why I’m sitting in this seat is, just like you’re going to be cautious of the people out there that are going to give you advice, don’t let all of your parishioners just go out and get a concealed carry permit and strap up and now you’re worried about how many guns you have in the congregation. The best thing is to get out ahead of it.
Mike Krupa: You can pretty much factor that you’re probably going to have at least one or two that are going to go out and get a gun and carry it while they’re in their Sunday service. What I would recommend is get out ahead of it. Put an announcement out there that, “You know what? We’re going to seek a responsible way to have a gun in here. We’re going to seek professional help. We’re going to have individuals that you are probably not going to know are armed, but are in here.”
Mike Krupa: Think of the Air Marshal service, where you can have somebody who nobody knows who they are, they’re just a regular parishioner, but they’re also here contracted for help. I would recommend that highly above letting your sheep run out there and get armed, and now you have a lot of individuals who you have no idea what their credentials are.
Robert McGowan: Mike, you mentioned obviously being mindful of maybe parishioners, or individuals in the parish, or your community, that maybe have decided to take matters into their own hands and maybe arm themselves. What would you say, or how would you approach the conversation if you were going to assess a religious worship and they brought that you when you first met with them, that they already have, say five parishioners who are now arming themselves and being proactive. How would you approach that situation? Kind of take us through what you would recommend to do and kind of how basically to handle something like that.
Mike Krupa: Sure. Yeah, so to get it out there, we already had a client that contracted us for armed work in a synagogue. The first thing they said to us was, “What do you think about armed individuals?” Basically what you’re looking at whenever somebody asks me, “What should I be armed for, or should I have an armed individual in my site?”
Mike Krupa: Regardless of the contract it’s always, what’s the threat you’re answering? The threat that you’re answering is a rifle. It’s a long gun. It’s a high power rifle. With that threat, you need to answer that threat, I believe, with a firearm. I would recommend places of worship, and honestly you can take the place of worship out of the context of what we’re talking about. What’s the threat? It’s a large gathering of people. Who is the actor? Somebody with a rifle. In that sense I would say yes, absolutely I would recommend having a firearm on site during services.
Mike Krupa: Honestly we’ve had an individual come to us and ask us this same question that we currently contract with for armed support with a place of worship. Their first question was, “Should we have an armed?” I gave that answer. The second question was, “Yeah, because we have four people that I know of right now that went out and got a concealed carry permit after the synagogue shooting that happened outside of Pittsburgh.”
Mike Krupa: What I would say is, can you take it on face value that none of the individuals that you’re looking at when you’re standing up there overseeing a service are unarmed, or are armed? Can you take it on face value that none of them have a gun on them right now? Because what you’re dealing with is the general public, and in the general public I guarantee you, you’re going to have at least, if you have 50 people in that congregation, at least two of them have a firearm on them. Two of them probably had a firearm on them before any of this stuff started happening. It’s a safe bet that there’s at least one firearm in your congregation.
Ask Congregation Members not to Bring Weapons into the Building Without the Proper Training
Mike Krupa: I would say you definitely want to make sure that that individual is trained. You have no idea what level of training they have and what they’re going to do if somebody shows up. As I sort of alluded to before, it is best to get out there and kind of quell that fear by saying, “We’re taking matters into our own hands. We appreciate the help that you think that you’re going to give us by carrying a weapon, but we would ask that you keep them out. Just know that we’ve contracted individuals in here that are currently armed, that have a training level up to law enforcement and better.” Military training, former military, somebody that has the capability to answer that threat.
Mike Krupa: Outside of, I just went down to the county courthouse, and thank God in Pennsylvania I can get it pretty much the same day in some of them. I went and got my concealed carry permit. I went right down to the Walmart, got myself some ammo, and went to the gun shop and got myself a gun, and I’m now carrying and I have absolutely zero skillset. That to me is kind of more terrifying than the threat that’s coming in the door, because you have no idea how that person’s going to act, and now they’re more of a liability than they are a help.
Mike Krupa: If there are going to be volunteers, and I know of a few churches that are out there that have a volunteer security force from their parishioners, make sure they get trained. Seek out some training for them. Other than that, I would say make sure that they’re off duty law enforcement. As something that you can’t go wrong with is to seek out individuals that know what they’re doing, seek out a company that knows what it’s doing. For god’s sakes, if it’s not us, seek somebody out that’s reputable in the industry that can help you out.
Robert McGowan: They’re able to find those services with us as well, those types of trainings.
Mike Krupa: Absolutely. We do protective work not just for places of worship, but high net worth individuals, individuals that just need some temporary protection, down to even armed security.
Ian Poush: Training for those things as well.
Mike Krupa: We do training as well, yeah. Firearms training if you have individuals that are volunteering, like I said, a cost effective could just make sure that these people are not duds, that they’re going to be able to help you out. We can definitely do that as well.
Robert McGowan: Yeah, and I mean, Mike, thank you again so much for taking the time to meet with us.
Mike Krupa: No problem.
Robert McGowan: I think one of the key themes that you’ll kind of see as we-
Mike Krupa: Thanks for this awesome, very high quality water bottle.
Robert McGowan: Yeah, absolutely.
Ian Poush: We only have the best.
Mike Krupa: I brought my Keurig, but if I had known I was getting the crystal.
Ian Poush: Sparkly.
Mike Krupa: I would have dressed a little-
Ian Poush: It’s right out of that-.
Robert McGowan: Yeah. It’s only the best here. This is obviously, this is pure crystal.
Mike Krupa: No, I appreciate it. Thanks guys.
Work Within Your Budget to Find Trained and Experienced Security Professionals for your Church or Place of Worship
Robert McGowan: No, absolutely. I think one of the key themes that you’ll see, and one of the things that we can kind of mention as we go through, is value. A lot of what we’re talking about unfortunately and fortunately does come at a dollar amount. Understanding the value that you’re going to get for that dollar I think is really going to go a long way.
Robert McGowan: Like Mike mentioned, some of these assessments can run anywhere between $5000 to $15,000. Understanding whoever is coming in and helping you build your security protocol for your church or place of worship, make sure you’re understanding what their value is. Reach out to clients that they’ve worked with in the past. Understand their credentials and their background, and are they going to be a good fit for-
Mike Krupa: If I can add to that real quickly before we close out.
Robert McGowan:Yeah, of course.
Mike Krupa: If you talk to somebody that’s in a security element and they’re going to do a risk assessment or they’re going to come in and do some consulting work, if they tell you that they can’t narrow their scope of work to help you out on the price, tell them, “Thanks for coming out.” Go to somebody else. I know that there’s a budget that is in question with everybody I talk to, no matter if I go to a Fortune 100 company or if I go to somebody that doesn’t have any funds. I know that I’m dealing with a budget.
Mike Krupa: I can absolutely work with and narrow my scope of work to focus on maybe just a couple of things, but that dramatically decreases the price of what I’m going to do and the time that I’m going to spend out there.
If you go to somebody and they push back on the price and they say there’s no way they can narrow their scope of work to give you a little bit of a value, then you need to talk to somebody else. They’re just trying to gouge you.
Robert McGowan: Yes, absolutely. As Mike and Ian both mentioned, with all the grants that are available through the Department of Homeland Security, take a look at that stuff. That is one of the services that we offer, Mike will kind of work with you on how to kind of navigate that type of stuff, and how to kind of put together a grant that is obviously successful, that gets you the award that you guys need in order to put together your church security plan. Mike, thanks again for being here.
Mike Krupa: No problem.
Robert McGowan: If you guys jumped into this episode, swing back and watch episodes one and two. For the Protecting the Best Podcast, I’m Robert McGowan.
Ian Poush: Ian Poush.
Mike Krupa: Mike Krupa.
Robert McGowan: Have a great day.
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About OPS Security Group
OPS Security Group has over 80 years of combined experience in security, safety and investigations throughout the region of Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey, Washington D.C. and Maryland. We offer a wide range of flexible security and safety services designed to keep you, your loved ones, your employees, property, and community safe.
All of our security guard services are tailored to fit your needs from front desk concierge to fire watch, virtual concierge and armed guard protection.