Proto-Talks

Transcription

Matt Morgan: Welcome everyone. Welcome to Proto-Talks. Welcome to our ninth installment. I'm your host, Matt Morgan. I'm president of Protogetic, The Protective Design Marketplace, the industry's first digital marketplace for the high security industry. Before we get started, I'm very proud to recognize our sponsor of today's Proto-Talks, Amidon Shield. They are a producer of next generation physical security and force protection products. Go ahead and check them out at amidoninc.com.
Today's 60-minute discussion is really a very important one, and I'm been looking forward to this for quite some time, but it's going to introduce us to a valuable perspective on how counter-terrorism strategies, activism, and the sheer force of will, can help prevent future attacks and save lives. To that end, I'm proud to introduce Figen Murray, from the UK. Figen is the mother of Mr. Martyn Hett, who at 29 years of age was tragically killed along with 21 others at the Manchester Arena terrorist attack in May 2017.
Since the Manchester Arena attack, Figen has been the force behind Martyn's Law, Protect Duty legislation, that requires publicly accessible locations to improve security against the threat of terrorism, so that no family will have to experience what hers has endured. Her ambitions to better understand the threats we face, earned her a Master's Degree, with distinction, in Counterterrorism from the University of Central Lancashire. In 2022, Figen was awarded Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, for her dedication and work in counterterrorism. She is a visiting fellow for the Institute of Strategic Risk Management, a member of the senior leadership team for TINYg, the Global Terrorism Information Network, and an associate member of the Security Institute. Welcome back, Figen. It's so great to see you again.

Figen Murray: Nice to be here. Thank you very much for asking me to join you.
Matt Morgan: It's really our pleasure. I'm so looking forward to the presentation. I understand that we have some very exciting news regarding Protect Duty legislation.
Figen Murray: Yes, indeed. After four and a half years of campaigning, we finally had some good news in December. But I'll talk about it later on in the presentation.
Matt Morgan: Well, that sounds very exciting and I can't wait to hear it. In the meantime, I'm going to hand over the reins to you and let you get started.
Figen Murray: Thank you.
Matt Morgan: There you go.
Figen Murray: Thank you. Let me just introduce you to my son, Martyn. If you haven't figured out how old he is from the dates, he was 29 and a half years old. Next slide please. But Martyn wasn't the only one who passed away on that day. You can see on this photo all the people who died alongside him. The youngest victim was Saffie Rose, who is in the middle row, the third picture along from the left. She was 8 years old. But it wasn't just concert goers who died that day. It was actually family member's, parents who went to pick up their children from the concert. In one family's case, both mum and dad died as they were picking up their two daughters, who are now, sadly, orphaned. Next slide, please.
The night it happened, it was 22nd of May 2017. It was a Monday, a day like all the other days. I had been working as a psychotherapist in my own business. I had a busy day that day, so I went to bed early. At the time, there were only two of my five kids still living at home and they were in their respective bedrooms doing stuff for college and university and school. My husband stayed downstairs doing paperwork and I went to sleep probably straight away at 10 o'clock. About I would say 10 to 11 that evening, one of my children woke me up. My older daughter woke me up and said, "Mom, I'm sorry, have you received a message or phone call of Martyn on your phone?" I said, "No, why would he?" I had assumed that he's at home getting ready for a holiday he had planned to America.
But actually in reality, he was actually at the concert with 10 or 12 of his friends. Quite a big group of them went. She said, "Well, there's been an event something, an incidence at the Manchester Arena, and his mates keep texting me, "They can't find him." Of course, we then got up and stayed up to watch the news and communicated with his friends. Unfortunately, about quarter past 11, I had the strangest feeling in my stomach. It was a really physical feeling and I just turned to my daughter and said, "You know what, he's dead." She burst out crying, quite understandably. She was horrified. I just said, "Look, I just literally cannot feel him anymore."
That obviously was upsetting, but I just knew that he had gone. That was unfortunately not confirmed until 24 hours later, when we were asked to go to the Antioch football stadium for information and support. That's where they pulled family after family out and took them in the side room. Then, 10 minutes later they'd emerge in tears and we knew they had bad news. Eventually at 20 to 10 in the evening, the following day after the attack, it was our turn. The next slide, please.
A week after the attack, the police told us we can go and see him in the morgue. I was terrified, because I didn't know whether he still had all his arms and legs, and I was just really scared, and initially didn't want to go, but I decided last minute to go. I'm really glad I did. What you see on the slide is what I expected, with the exception of a table in the middle with a dead body covered with a sheet. We would be standing outside looking through a window and confirming whether it is him or not, if somebody lifted the head a bit. But when we got there, it wasn't like that at all. They did it really humanely.
They had set up almost like what looked like a private hospital room, room temperature. He was on a bed covered up, cleaned up head on a pillow. It was a little bit confusing because I thought for a split second, "Oh, you're not dead, you're just asleep." It was only when I walked around the bed and gave him a kiss and realized how cold his body was, that actually I knew they'd taken him out for our benefit from the freezers. But it was important. I went because that was the point in at which I really, really felt, "Yes, that's it. No return. He's dead." The next slide, please.
The week after, again, at the weekend, we were asked to go to the Manchester Arena to the exact spot where Martyn died. Again, I didn't want to go, but then my youngest daughter who was 16 at the time, she wanted to go. I felt a need to be there. That was a really, really, really difficult thing to do, because they placed a rose at every spot where somebody died, and every family had an hour to visit, and they would light a candle at the relevant rose. This is Martyn's rose. Thank you. The next slide, please.
This is Martyn with his cat, Emily. They absolutely worshiped each other. They were inseparable. Unfortunately on the next slide, you'll see the two of them together in their current state. Next slide, please. There they are in their respective urns here in my office. Looking at the bookshelf down the left gives me comfort to have them here, but it's difficult. I'd rather not have him on a shelf, to be honest. The next slide, please.
Few more points. The official news of his death were very difficult, obviously. We were at the Antioch Stadium and were taken in the side room and I had my four other children and all of Martyn's friends and some family in the room. There were probably about 25-30 of us. As we were told, his older brother just walked in the corner of the room and just kept looking at the football pitch and didn't want to talk to anybody or speak or see anybody.
One of my other children just dived under the table. That was her way of dealing with it. As a parent, to see your other children disintegrate in front of your eyes and there's nothing you can do about, it's really tough. Again, the 22:31 is the moment of the explosion. I, to this day, nearly six years on five and a half years on, I still feel guilt, terrible guilt, and a lot of shame about the fact that I was fast asleep in bed, as one of my children was slowly dying on a stone floor. Again, that is something I may never get over, but that is the burden I'll just have to carry as a bereaved mum. The next one, please.
We are really grateful for his big decisions, because you don't expect your child to die, but thankfully for some very odd reason, he had funeral instructions on his laptop, which one of his friends mentioned to us. Of course, we found them. We gave him a funeral to his liking and he also took the decision of us whether he wants to be buried or cremated. He wanted to be cremated. That is, again, something that we managed to do and we didn't have to make that awful, awful decision. Thank you. The next slide, please.
Since Martyn died, obviously the first year we didn't do anything, but we were deep in grief. But about 18 months after the attack, my husband was given some concert tickets for a singer he likes. We went and I foolishly expected that there's going to be security absolutely everywhere. When we got to the venue, there were no box searches, no searches whatsoever. In fact, my husband's tickets weren't even looked at, nobody really. We just walked in and went to our seats and sat down. That upset me terribly. That was in the December, 2019. 2018, sorry.
Then, in January '19, I decided to start a government petition, because over the Christmas period I researched security at venues and came across the government counter-terrorism document. Within it, it had the Protect Duty, but it basically said that security is only a recommendation, it's not a legislation. I felt that is absolutely appalling and I wanted that to change, which is why I've introduced the petition for Martyn's Law. Initially I did this on my own, but halfway through the petition and a guy called Brendan Cox joined me.
His wife was murdered by... She was a politician. She was murdered the year before Martyn, and he has a lot of contacts in government. He rang me and said, "I believe in what you're doing is the right thing to do. I can put you in front of security ministers and you can talk to them about this." He then introduced me to Nick Aldworth, who at the time worked in counter-terrorism. The three of us were the main campaigners in this. What we want the government to do, what we want us for, is that people engage in freely available ACT e-learning training, which is action counter-terrorism, that it stands for.
We wanted people to carry out risk assessments for terrorism inside and outside buildings. We wanted them to mitigate any risks identified during that risk assessment. We wanted people to have a counter-terrorism action plan and inform staff, so that members of staff know actually what to do in case of an attack, were to [inaudible 00:13:36] or evacuate people how to be, how to behave. We wanted that in place and we wanted local authorities to be prepared and work with the bigger venues. Thank you. The next slide, please.
This campaign has lasted for four and a half, five years now. I have been incredibly busy on social media in particular. I tweet about it all the time. I've been on LinkedIn. I talk at endless conferences up and down the UK and nowadays also abroad, because I've been to America twice. I have been to Istanbul recently to talk at a conference, and I'm going to Germany in March. I have also done presentations to organizations in Canada and further ones in the US as well.
It's keeping me rather busy, but I feel very strongly that until the legislation is a thing, I will not take my foot off the pedal, because the government may forget about it and I will not allow that to happen. We kept asking for the government to set security legislation in for any venue with 100 plus capacity. The government kept saying, "No." They said, "That'll scare people. It's too much, it's too stringent. It's not necessary." What we kept saying is if you cover 100 plus businesses, and cafes, and restaurants, et cetera, that would cover 650,000 small and medium enterprises.They wanted to go for 850 plus, which would've only covered about 26,000.
Our argument was, well, first of all that would be a waste of time, because it wouldn't keep people safe, the general public as safe, and many, many people would be at risk. Also, because the evidence showed that most of the attacks apart from the arena were not at sports grounds at arenas, at big, big venues. There were in small cafes, restaurants, streets, parks, et cetera, where people congregate. The smaller number was really important for us. But when I then had the meeting with the home secretary in December, we were ready.
We usually have a meeting opposite the home office to discuss what we would say, if they don't say what we expect them to say. We had a power meeting every time. During that meeting, I said, "I will only accept a minimum of 300. That is the very lowest I will go." When we got in there, we were ready for a fight. Actually we didn't need to. Somehow they decided to go with 100 plus capacity, which was music to our ears. I think they took note of so many people writing in. We had so many people responding to the tweets, responding at conferences saying, "Yes, 100 plus is the right thing."
But the other thing that happened, is that the 100 plus capacity was supported by police chiefs, past police counter-terrorism chiefs, and also seven previous home secretaries wrote into the Prime Minister. All these letters and all the pressure on social media has really had the effect that we wanted and we are really thrilled about it. The standard tier with 100 plus capacity would include training of staff that they do have a preparedness plan. By that, I mean that the staff are actually told what is in this plan and that the staff also will have lifesaving knowledge and training. I myself, now, carry a tourniquet in my handbag all the time, wherever I go. I have another one in the car. I have a bleed control pack in my car. This is really important stuff to me now.
I have to also say that the training that is offered is free of charge. It's on an app called the Protect UK app. The ACT training is on there and loads of other training is available. Lots and lots of information is available. I would always encourage members of staff in these venues to download the app. The enhanced tier would cover all of the above, but also have a very stringent risk assessment of the premises both indoors and outside. They would have to have a very sophisticated thorough security plan. They may have to introduce better screening equipment, they may introduce better CC TV cameras, et cetera. Okay, The next slide, please.
The government also said that they're establishing an inspection and enforcement regime that they are promoting compliance and positive cultural change. I did ask in the meeting how they're going to do that and they said they will run public educational campaigns to promote the message, so that the general public knows about it more. The government is also going to issue credible and fair sanctions for breaches. What we commented on there, was that those breaches, those sanctions have to be absolutely [inaudible 00:19:20]. They have to be powerful, otherwise there's no point in having the legislation.
People need to have hefty fines for breaches. Certainly the bigger venues and maybe even prison sentences if need be. The government will give dedicated guidance and bespoke support. They're particularly relating that to the smaller venues, who may not be as [inaudible 00:19:46] with security as the bigger venues, which is fair enough. As I said, the government has a Protect UK app, which is full of expert advice, training and guidance. That app is constantly being updated. Thank you. The next slide, please.
Our reaction was obviously, it succeeded our expectation, what we were told, but I did say during the phone call with the Prime Minister that until the legislation is a thing, I will be continuing my pressure on him and the government. I apologized to him in advance. He said, "You don't need to apologize, because I understand why you need to do it." I asked him if the legislation could be done by the sixth anniversary, which is the 22nd of May '23. He said, as much as he'd love to, it can't be done, because there will be a draft bill coming out in early March, then there will be two months for anybody opposing it and scrutinizing it. Then it'll be delivered to the different houses and it'll go back and forth, until it eventually becomes legislation. I don't think that'll happen until the end of this year, maybe even early next year.
Then Tom Tugendhat, the latest out of the seven security ministers I've met since the campaign started, because they kept changing jobs in government with all the problems we had over here. Tom Tugendhat is the latest security minister. He's absolutely marvelous. He's a gem. He, in the meeting, said to me, "Actually, we decided to call it Martyn's Law after all. They were going to all these years, they said. You do realize it's not going to be called Martyn's Law, because in the UK we don't do that. It'll be the amended Protect Duty." I kept referring to it as the Protect Duty as well. But Tom Tugendhat had then said, "We decided to call it Martyn's Law." I said, "Why is that?" Because that's not the done thing in the UK. The answer I got was, "Because of all the campaigning you did and to honor Martyn."
He said, "You do realize, that means that your son's name will be enshrined in British history for the rest of eternity." That was quite a precious comment to hear, really as a mum and after all the years of campaigning and that which has now turned into literally a full-time job. I'm literally in this room every day, all day, if I'm not out there presenting and talking about the legislation. The next slide, please.
That's me done. This is my contact details. Feel free to follow me on any of the social media. I wish to thank you for listening and I hope you found it of interest. Yeah. Thank you.
Matt Morgan: Thank you Figen, so very, very much. Wow. What a victory, though, for you and the team. Just a quick question. Have you been in touch with some of the other families that also lost loved ones?
Figen Murray: Yeah.
Matt Morgan: What was their reaction?
Figen Murray: Yeah, so I get a lot of that question. Unfortunately, the Ariana Grande concert was so popular, but a lot of the families who lost a loved one are not from Greater Manchester. Some of them are. I'll be in touch with some of them via social media, but not physically, because Greater Manchester is a big area and we all live at different corners, but there are people from other major cities, even from the Scottish islands who lost loved ones. No, I'm not in touch with them, other than when we have [inaudible 00:23:48], when the arena inquiry continues. We have one more day to go for the final report and that's when we will all meet again.
I'm in touch on social media with some of them, but people were not involved. In fact, I didn't even include my own husband with Martyn's Law, simply because I said to my husband from the beginning, when Martyn died, I was hit quite hard as a mother. I said to him, "I have to tell you, Stuart, that I need to grieve as a mum. I can't grieve as a parent. You need to fight your own way through your grief." That wasn't meant in an offensive way. I just took it really bad that my baby was killed, as a mum. I needed to do Martyn's Law as a mother.
Matt Morgan: Yeah. Well, brilliant. I'm going to bring in our panelist. It was moving, so I'm a little bit delayed in my thought process here, so thank you so very much. But without further delay, let me introduce our second expert for today's discussion. We're fortunate to be joined again by Rob Reiter. Rob is a national subject-matter expert, in both perimeter security and the protection and safety of pedestrians in crowded spaces and retail locations.
In 2012, Rob co-founded the Storefront Safety Council, an advocacy organization focused on tracking and preventing vehicle into building crashes and accidental or deliberate vehicle incursions in crowded spaces. He is the chairman of the Perimeter Security subcommittee for the Security Industry Association, which is now writing new guidelines to address hostile vehicle attacks and mitigation, as well as creating a guideline for threat, risk, and vulnerability assessments.
Rob is the co-chair of the ASTM F12-10 subcommittee, that wrote the test standards for low speed safety barriers and is a voting member of the full F12-10 committee responsible for high speed anti-terrorist barriers standards. For more than 20 years, Rob has focused his efforts in both high security and public safety measures to protect people and property from accidental or deliberate harm. He is also one of my favorite people over six feet tall. Rob, welcome.
Rob Reiter: I know, and I'm one of my favorite people over six feet tall. I think we share that, you and I. Part of our bond.
Matt Morgan: Well, there we go. Rob, you and I have seen this Figen's presentation on a few occasions and we at Protogetic just thought it was very important to put it out there, because it shows that activism and perseverance really makes that the difference, if you will, in changing the way we're approaching security and safety. You know?
Rob Reiter: Well, and it's a profound story. I mean, you hear that story and the first thing you want to do is not to jump up and down and make plans to become whatever. This is, you listen to that in stunned silence and say, "My God, how would I handle it? My God, this woman is so strong, thank God she turned it into something that's going to be so positive." But at the end of the day, this is a very human story, and we don't get a lot of human stories as we go about the protective design workload that we all have.
Matt Morgan: Yeah, I think that's another good point. I mean, we're all in the security business with a core value of protecting people and property. But during the regular course of the day, we don't always stop and take stock in that. We've got things to do, and you've got numbers to hit and sales calls to make, or a business to run. I think it's one of these moments where Figen gets up and speaks and tells that story, and it brings everything sort of back home to what's truly at the core of our values.
Rob Reiter: Well, and not always at the core of our values, because we're oblivious to it. Imagine being a mother and learning the statistic of how many minutes it takes somebody to bleed out. I mean, you've got an EMT background, you carry the tools of your trade around with you when you travel just in case. But I didn't know that depending on the type of wound and so forth, that a person will bleed out in five minutes. I mean-
Matt Morgan: Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Rob Reiter: Yeah. No mother should have to know that.
Matt Morgan: Yeah. No, I think it's a great point. We talk about security and we talk about safety, and that brings me into my first question in a few seconds. But yeah, the preparedness level, the knowledge level, you're right. No mother should really need to know that.
Rob Reiter: We shouldn't. Whether you're protecting an NFL stadium or you're doing a shopping center, or a school, or something like that, you know need to be aware of it. Everybody has a duty of care. It varies from place to place and by jurisdiction and so forth, but there's nowhere that where the duty of care is zero.
Matt Morgan: Yeah.
Rob Reiter: If you're currently doing zero, you're not in the right and listen to Figen, because she's pointing out to you how easy it is to do it right. How many lives you could save on a daily basis, just silly dumb accidents that happen?
Matt Morgan: Yeah.
Rob Reiter: It doesn't have to be a major terrorist incident.
Matt Morgan: Yeah. I think, yeah, exactly. But it does seem that with her advocacy, the UK government saw the benefit of that and they made that number 100 people, in terms of that's the cutoff point for the standards.
Rob Reiter: Yeah. Right.
Matt Morgan: That's just exceptional.
Rob Reiter: Right, and that doesn't mean that the places under 100 seats aren't going to learn from it and aren't going to participate in their own way.
Matt Morgan: Oh, yeah.
Rob Reiter: In America, we're 10 times the size of the UK. If they have 650,000 places that are going to need to be assessed under the Protect Duty, we're going to have six and a half million places that need to be assessed. We need good tools for assessment. We need good tools for risk and evaluation, and we need good tools for, "Okay, great, how do we teach all the people at these places how to put on a tourniquet, or how to prevent somebody leaving a backpack and an explosion?" This is a long educational process that we have in front of us.
Matt Morgan: Yeah, I agree. Within the scope of that, the difference between security and safety. Those differences are set about by department, it seems in the UK. How are we doing it differently, or are we doing it differently, here in the United States?
Rob Reiter: Well, I'm not sure we're even doing it in the United States in a coherent fashion, but in the UK, they have their health and safety rules. They have their, what we would call, public health rules, and so forth. There was an effort early on to put the Protect Duty inside of health and safety, but it's a security issue for them. They've experienced more direct terrorist acts against civilians in the UK than we have, and they have a different form of government. We've had to go about it backwards.
10 years ago, we started the standard for low-speed barriers, even though we didn't have any rules on how to use them or when to use them. But we're working through the system backwards, we're doing the assessments now. The security industry association is really busy working on that stuff. Insurance companies, we're pushing the insurance companies and we're starting to see insurance companies pushing venues. We're doing it backwards from the way they're doing it. They were doing it top down, we're doing it bottom up, but in the end, what's the goal? We want people to be secure in the process. We want them to be safe.
Matt Morgan: Yeah. Is that the way it translates? They have 600,000 venues in the UK, it translates to about six and a half million here in the United States?
Rob Reiter: Yeah. When they were evaluating the Protect Duty, they said that there's approximately 655,000 venues where that 100 or more applies. We are 10 times the size. Just extrapolating number of businesses, hotels, commercial areas, and schools, and so forth, we'll have to do six and a half million of them to whatever degree doing them requires.
Matt Morgan: Yeah. I just think in terms of, and let's just use the number six and a half million, as you're doing all these assessments, it would be very... I imagine they're going to try to cookie cut the assessment, so it's very straightforward and so on and so forth, but how do we make sure that that assessment or how we're protecting those venues doesn't become almost militarized, because of the vast number of the large number that we're dealing with?
Rob Reiter: Well, and I think that's the trick. You want good tools. In Washington DC, in the event we put on there, October, I guess maybe it was November, we had a demonstration from a company that is doing a phone-based... I'll just say it's a tool for assessment using smartphone. It gives you data on vehicle risks, blast risk and ballistic risk. It's funded by DHS, through a grant from CISA, Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency. There are tools.
Matt Morgan: You can basically look up on the app how secure this building is?
Rob Reiter: Oh, you take your smartphone, you have the app on it or your iPad, and you take four or five pictures out the front, it geo locates it for you. It knows what the buildings across the street are doing. It knows the traffic pattern. What happens is it gives you threat vectors. If there's a blast here, here's the range of the blast. If there's a blast here, here's what's going to happen to your glass windows. If you're worried about ballistics, here's the angle of bullets, and if you're worried about vehicle intrusions, here's the traffic pattern and here's where you need barriers. That's going to go into alpha testing in a month.
Matt Morgan: That's incredible.
Rob Reiter: We'll have some tools. Right?
Matt Morgan: Yeah. I mean, if you think about it in that terms, I mean, that's where I think that's a huge obstacle to overcome, because so many people as you know, have a difficult time just wrapping their head around the threat or their building and how to protect it. To have a tool like that just literally at your fingertips, is exceptional just in terms of that person getting a basic understanding of what they're looking at. What's the threat, and then what are the solutions to that threat now?
Rob Reiter: Right.
Matt Morgan: They're going into conversations now with whoever it is, whether it's protective design services or architects, knowing a bit more about what they need to accomplish.
Rob Reiter: Yeah. A good example of this sort of thing, Matt, is recently we've had a lot of critical infrastructure shot up. We've had some electrical substations hit on the transmission side, which is where the power is coming into the local area. They're better protected because the federal government has had standards and they've been spending money, and so they know the thread and they've addressed more of them. But on the local substation side, the distribution side, not so much, because that's the local utility.
Matt Morgan: Right, right.
Rob Reiter: In a two-acre site that nobody is based on. These are the type of things that a tool like that will do for you, and because it's such a large number, the protective design industry and the security industry is going to have to embrace two things. One, is that there's a need for better, more accurate, more professional work on this topic. Number two, we're going to need some tools to make it automated.
Matt Morgan: Yep. Yeah, I agree. I think here's an interesting question to pose to you. Obviously we can't protect every building from every single threat there is kind of thing. I mean, Rob, in your opinion, where do you draw the line in terms of the security crossroad, if you will, or the security tipping point?
Rob Reiter: Yeah, and I have two responses for that. Number one, is if I'm Figen, and I lost a son, I'm going to say everything should be as safe as possible, everywhere, 24 hours a day.
Matt Morgan: Of course.
Rob Reiter: I think that's one of the big take-aways from what she's saying, is she's just home, she's gone to bed, she's waiting, she gets woken up and she knows instantly something's very wrong. It's a week before she goes to the site. It's a couple of days before she gets to see Martyn. I mean, how do you do that? I mean, no one should have to do that.
Matt Morgan: Yeah.
Rob Reiter: My somewhat smarter Alec, but nevertheless illustrated thing, as far as what you said, I have a Subaru Outback. I have five lap belts, I have five shoulder belts, I have 10 cup holders, because that apparently increases the safety of the vehicle. I have, I think 13 airbags. I have crumple zones. I have a very safe vehicle. I don't have a secure vehicle. It's not bulletproof. The president can't ride in it, but I have a safe vehicle. I come down to, if you have very high risk and high value and a high likelihood of being a target, security is absolutely essential. As you drop down from threat level and drop down from vulnerability level, then safety becomes more of an issue. Safety is 10 times cheaper than high security.
Matt Morgan: Of course.
Rob Reiter: It just is.
Matt Morgan: Sure.
Rob Reiter: Where do I draw the line? If people need to be safe, let's make them safe, but sometimes that's having a first-aid kit on the wall and a fire extinguisher under the desk. It doesn't always have to be a protective design solution.
Matt Morgan: Right. Right. No, that's a great answer. I think there's a genuine balance between safety and security.
Rob Reiter: There is.
Matt Morgan: Certain areas just aren't going to have a high level security threat. In which case, you want to pivot to, "Okay, let's just keep people safe," kind of thing.
Rob Reiter: Yeah.
Matt Morgan: And vice versa. Yeah, that's a great answer.
Rob Reiter: In the old days, we talked about telling people, "Don't be the softest target on your block." There was a little bit of ratcheting up, and that's good advice to an extent, but what I think Figen points out, was the bomb blast was the bomb blast. It could have been easily prevented. They've had two very in-depth analysis of the incident, and it was basically poor training by minimum-wage security people with no supervision. They missed a lot of cues. They could have stopped the whole thing before it happened.
But what killed people was the blast, but it was flying glass. It was the stuff that was in the bomb, and it was a lack of how do you get emergency people there fast enough to stop people who are bleeding. They're stopping from bleeding out.
Matt Morgan: Yeah.
Rob Reiter: It's the day-to-day little stuff that cost lives.
Matt Morgan: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, Rob, thank you very much. That is all the time we have today. I want to thank Figen Murray, really from the bottom of my heart, for coming on and giving that presentation. I just found it to be so powerful and moving. Thank you, Figen. Thank you, Rob. Just one last correction. In the beginning I said our sponsor Amidon Shield could be found on amidoninc.com. In fact, it is amidonshield.com, so please go check out their products. I think you'll find it very interesting. Thank you everyone, it's been great. We will see you at the next Proto-Talk. Proto-Talk number 10. Rob, thanks.
Rob Reiter: Thanks, buddy.