New security measures in place as Covenant School begins fall semester following deadly shooting

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WSMV) - Students, faculty and staff are gearing up to begin the start of the school year at The Covenant School following the deadly shooting in March, and security is top of mind.

Covert Results is the security company Covenant hired for protection, and WSMV4 was able to speak with Robert Young about the security measures put in place for the upcoming school year.

Young says that they’ve spent the summer training, and officers will be patrolling in and outside of the school’s temporary campus at Brentwood Hills Church of Christ.

He adds that they’ll be able to run license plates for any suspicious vehicle lingering around the school and officers will have ballistic backpacks filled with emergency supplies.

“The officers that we have in all the schools, they’re gonna be patrolling inside [and] outside on foot,” Young said.

“All these places have surveillance footage and cameras that we’re watching and monitoring as well,” Young said. “And if they just happen to see random people walking around, it’s going to take our officers’ attention away from the school and what’s going on on the inside and around the curtilage of the campus. They might take them away just to engage with somebody. I mean, that’s what we teach. If there’s somebody that you don’t need, they just may not be in the right place or they look out of place.”

Young explains that in the event of an active threat, officers can quickly switch their ballistics backpack to the front of their body where they can still access their weapon and press towards an active threat.

“So I’ve had my weapon out and also I’m protected with the markings as a school resource officer and the ballistic panel. If you need to access anything in the bag, you can easily open it up. You got your medical kit, you can easily throw to a victim,” Young said.

“There are plenty of people that have been trained mostly by a defense system is a great partner that we use to train a lot of the schools, businesses and churches in the area. And that’s who we obtained medical kits from. So, essentially, if you’re going down the hall and there’s someone that needs a tourniquet application, it’s highly likely that they’ve been trained on how to put that on. So if I’m the officer and I have my weapon out and I’m going down the hall, I can easily pull out a medical kit and drop it for someone to apply a tourniquet and there’s also other tools in the bag. and then there’s also a fluorescent vest. So essentially, you know we are equipping these officers with tools that will help them do their job and also make them more comfortable in these types of situations because we know that these are not going away.”

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