# Another door invention to make doors inoperable



## mtlogcabin (Jun 12, 2014)

Concern over school shootings recently led a middle school teacher in Iowa to take definitive action, inventing a new device that helps educators protect students and faculty, alike.

Called “The Sleeve,” the product is a 12-gauge carbon steel case that can handle 550-foot pounds of force. Placed on a door’s closer arm, it prevents intruders from entering classrooms,WQAD-TV reported.

Daniel Nietzel, an educator at West Middle School in Muscatine, Iowa, got the idea for the device from an active shooter training held in his district.





Image source: Fighting Chance Solutions



After hearing the recommendation that teachers tie a belt or a cord around their door’s closer arm, Nietzel realized these elements might not be strong enough to keep intruders out.

So, he and his colleagues formed the company Fighting Chance Solutions and began designing and testing a viable device.

After 10 months of brainstorming and development, The Sleeve was born and brought to market.

“We look at it as a cheap insurance policy,” Nietzel told WQAD-TV. “If you have someone out in the hallway, and you have an active situation, a dangerous situation unfolding and [don't] want to go out into the hallway and lock your door, we want to provide you with a way to close that door.”

According to the product’s website, The Sleeve can be quickly applied and removed and it does not require a key or any installation element that would make it cumbersome to use in the event of an emergency.

“The team of educators understand the pressing need for schools and businesses to be able to lock a door from inside the classroom or office quickly and safely,” reads an official description.

It continues, “They also understand that making any modifications to a door, (which in many cases may be ‘rated’ as a fire barrier), would not only be costly, but may violate state and/or federal fire codes.”

Here’s a video that shows how it works:

The Sleve costs $65 for individual units, though schools can also order in bulk.

(H/T: WQAD-TV)


----------



## JCraver (Jun 12, 2014)

So you have a ~60 year old teacher in a class full of 3 foot tall first graders, who has a heart attack and is laying on the floor within seconds of the first gunshot.  And you have one of these devices six feet off the floor that no one inside the room can reach?

Sounds like a good plan to me.....  :-?


----------



## cda (Jun 12, 2014)

Well if the kids can add 3+3 they can figure one kid on top oaf another will reach

Maybe they will have "door control monitor" along with milk monitor position


----------



## Francis Vineyard (Jun 12, 2014)

Shhhhh!

Obtain some screen door springs and with the door opened attached an end of the spring to the hole in the device and the other end to the top of the closure, walk out of the empty room and let the door shut behind you.  The spring should slide the sleeve on as the door closes to the principal's office.  Sneak to the engineer's office and repeat. Next the teachers lounge, then . . .


----------



## fatboy (Jun 13, 2014)

Hey! It's not about getting out! It's the bad people getting in!


----------



## georgia plans exam (Jun 14, 2014)

I think it's a pretty good idea. Better than nothing. A large "C" clamp might work just as well, if not just as fast.   GPE


----------



## Frank (Jun 15, 2014)

Now the question is how long until a mass murderer uses door hold closed devices the fix doors closed and then 5 gallons of flammables to torch a crowded cafeteria etc--with a lot higher death toll--as in the 87 killed at Happy Land nightclub when rear exit was locked and angry exboyfriend torched the entrance stair with 1 gallon of gasoline.  Only 4 inside survived.

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/jealous-ex-boyfriend-fury-killed-87-happy-land-fire-20-years-article-1.173625

Or a shooter uses them to keep police out and his victims in as was done in Norris Hall at VA Tech.

Our Lady of Angels fire, possible arson 95 dead.


----------



## MASSDRIVER (Jun 15, 2014)

Frank said:
			
		

> Now the question is how long until a mass murderer uses door hold closed devices the fix doors closed and then 5 gallons of flammables to torch a crowded cafeteria etc--with a lot higher death toll--as in the 87 killed at Happy Land nightclub when rear exit was locked and angry exboyfriend torched the entrance stair with 1 gallon of gasoline.  Only 4 inside survived.http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/jealous-ex-boyfriend-fury-killed-87-happy-land-fire-20-years-article-1.173625
> 
> Or a shooter uses them to keep police out and his victims in as was done in Norris Hall at VA Tech.
> 
> Our Lady of Angels fire, possible arson 95 dead.


Closers on the inside so I'm not sure how you would lock them in with that device.

As for the crotch fruit being able to remove it, just tie a string to it.

Brent.


----------



## ICE (Jun 15, 2014)

Crotchfruit is one word.


----------



## LGreene (Jun 16, 2014)

I posted the video on my site last week and there are a lot of comments there that might interest some of you:  http://idighardware.com/2014/06/ff-the-sleeve/

The news reports mention that teachers have to open the door to lock a lockset and this device removes the risk of exposing the teacher to the intruder.  What the reporters don't say is that there are locks which do not require the teacher to open the door to lock them (classroom security function), AND these locks can not be controlled by an unauthorized person like so many of these quick-fix devices can.  I'm counting on you all to make sure life safety and fire safety take precedent in the facilities in your jurisdiction.  You may think these non-compliant devices are ok because they are only used in an intruder situation, but what is to prevent an unauthorized person from securing the door to commit a crime?  There are 10s of thousands of assaults, thefts, sexual assaults, and incidents of vandalism on school grounds for every intruder situation.  Let's not make it easier for someone to commit these crimes because we want to save $100/door.


----------



## MASSDRIVER (Jun 16, 2014)

I'm trying to game out a scenario where this would contribute to more assaults, thefts etc.

I see nothing wrong with it, and saving $100 a door times however many tens of thousands of doors out there seems like a good idea.

Do you mind expounding

Brent.


----------



## Frank (Jun 16, 2014)

MASSDRIVER said:
			
		

> Closers on the inside so I'm not sure how you would lock them in with that device. As for the crotch fruit being able to remove it, just tie a string to it.
> 
> Brent.


At VA Tech the perp chained the panic hardware shut from the inside.  VA Tech has since replaced all door hardware with ones that would be very difficult to chain.


----------



## LGreene (Jun 18, 2014)

MASSDRIVER said:
			
		

> I'm trying to game out a scenario where this would contribute to more assaults, thefts etc. I see nothing wrong with it, and saving $100 a door times however many tens of thousands of doors out there seems like a good idea.
> 
> Do you mind expounding
> 
> Brent.


I'm always happy to expound.  This document has a lot of interesting stats about crime in schools:  http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/iscs11.pdf


- In 2010, students ages 12–18 were victims of about 828,000 nonfatal victimizations at school, including 470,000 thefts and 359,000 violent victimizations, 91,400 of which were serious violent victimizations.

- During the 2009–10 school year, 85 percent of public schools recorded that one or more crime incidents had taken place at school, amounting to an estimated 1.9 million crimes.

- During the 2009–10 school year, 23 percent of public schools reported that bullying occurred among students on a daily or weekly basis, and 9 percent reported widespread disorder in classrooms on a daily or weekly basis.

The same report shows that there were 33 school-associated violent deaths in the 2009-2010 school year.  A school-associated violent death is defined as “a homicide, suicide, or legal intervention (involving a law enforcement officer), in which the fatal injury occurred on the campus of a functioning elementary or secondary school in the United States while the victim was on the way to or from regular sessions at school or while the victim was attending or traveling to or from an official school-sponsored event. Victims include students, staff members, and others who are not students."  So the figure of 33 is fairly liberal - it is not limited to intruder situations (the report that I referenced below shows 12 school violence fatalities for the same period).

I am not in any way minimizing the importance of those fatalities.  My point is that the armed intruder situation is relatively rare when compared with the risk of non-fatal victimizations in school.  There is also a lot of good information about school violence here:  http://www.ruraledu.org/user_uploads/file/school-violence-report-2013-lowres.pdf.  According to this report, students, not intruders, were responsible for almost 75% of violent school deaths in middle and secondary schools for the time period studied (1974-2013).  Intruders accounted for a little over 10% of all incidents, and unknown assailants were responsible for a little over 10%.  In elementary schools, about a third of all On-Campus Single events were perpetrated by adult intruders, but elementary schools accounted for only about 10% of all incidents.

In middle schools and high schools, there is a relatively high risk of nonfatal victimization compared to the risk of an armed intruder.  In my opinion, the ability to lock a door should be controlled - teachers and staff can lock the door but others should not be able to.  If a high school kid locked the classroom door and raped my daughter, did the school contribute to the perp's ability to commit the crime?  You might think not, but I think it's relevant that schools are being held liable for wired glass injuries even though the glass was code-compliant when it was installed, because according to the courts the schools should have been aware of and addressed the hazard.  I'm not a lawyer, but it seems risky.

In addition to possibly allowing an unauthorized person to lock the door, many of these add-on security devices are not compliant with the code requirements for egress, accessibility, and/or fire door assemblies.  This may seem justifiable considering that the device is only supposed to be used in the unlikely event of an intruder.  But it's a slippery slope once you start allowing something that's not code-compliant.  How many times have you seen a security device that's only supposed to be used "after hours" installed while the building is occupied?

There are solutions for classroom security that are code-compliant.  Cost should not be the deciding factor.  If it was, we'd just screw a hook and eye on every classroom door and call it a day.


----------



## JBI (Jun 19, 2014)

Fortunately for me I am no longer in direct enforcement, though the question may come up during one of my classes.

Fortunately for NYS Code Officials, Public Schools are regulated directly by the State Education Dept.

Unfortunately for NYS CO's Private Schools are under the local jurisdiction.

I live in a relatively safe area (little violent crime in or outside of schools), and my children are both out of school unless and until either one continues their college education. Personally this is a non-issue for me, but I can see where it could potentially cause quite a ruckus.

Intent of the device admirable and appreciated. As always, the underlying concerns and potential Code non-compliance(s) cause the problems.

Lastly, 'crotch fruit'? That's just wrong. On so many levels.


----------



## MASSDRIVER (Jun 20, 2014)

Thank you LGreene.

There are an awful lot of numbers there. Let me add a few more to add to the argument. These are rough.

We have about 132,000 schools in the U.S, K-12, public and private. Average classrooms per school seem to be about 30.

So disregarding all other factors (schools already retrofitted, doors other than classrooms, etc.) we can say there are maybe about 4 million classroom doors. At $100 bucks a door per lock, that comes to 4 hundred million dollars. Say conservatively $20 labor per lock installed, and now the total cost is 480,000,000 bucks. Coming up on half a billion dollars for that.

Now when we look at the statistics you provided, we unfortunately cannot determine a few things.

First, a "victimization" can mean practically anything at all, from verbal altercations on up. We should probably concentrate on violent victimization, of which there were 359,000.

Actually, the number is kind of irrelevant because we cannot determine how many of those were the result of someone being locked in a room.

And if they were locked in a room, a key could have been used to get them out.

So what I am doing is gaming out events to see how a key-locked door is beneficial. During the school day, a teacher is either in their classroom, or the room should be locked in their absence. So usually a classroom can not be used by a perpetrator to commit a crime while the school is functioning. Naturally, the entire school is locked while not in business. My question is, how can any of the statistics above have any bearing on whether or not a door can be secured from the inside, whether or not is can be locked by authorized personnel, or whether a closer sleeve would have an impact on the situation.

I think that general school violence, intimidation or standard shenanigans can not be affected one way or the other by door locks lockable from the inside by an authorized person.

That leaves us with only one type of situation, that of an occupied classroom, with a teacher (authorized door locker, ADL) confronting an extraordinary situation of violence or an intruder. Or possibly a student smuggling in a lethal device such as a gun, bomb, or incendiaries.

These events are statistically extremely rare, but we know they occur.

If the ADL has some advance warning and are calm and collected, they may be able to get a key in the lock and secure the door. Maybe in time before the event occuring in their particular classroom. Keep in mind that teachers as a group are not inclined to be in any kind of warrior mindset, or even a protective, alert, defensive mindset. In the chaos of the moment they must assess, and come to action. That may be hindered by even finding keys in a desk, and them manipulating a lock under duress. Compare that with the relative ease of sliding the metal sleeve over the closer. That would be phase one, would secure the door, and then if the threat was not imminent the ADL could more calmly set the lock, and then even remove the sleeve if desired. If the teacher were to be killed and the threat had moved on, their would be a better chance of the students removing the sleeve rather than retrieving a key, from a dead, maybe maimed body, possibly on a ring with other keys to effect their escape.

If the threat is inside the room, then that person, if they are are that dangerous, could impel the ADL to lock the door under threat of death. If the sleeve were there he may utilize that to secure the door. Either way, if a SWAT team were to breach, I'm sure they would rather deal with the sleeve than a door locked tight.  Generally if a door will open a little, with enough time you can get it open a lot. A random shooter will be more likely to move to an easier target than fight a secured door. SWAT on the other hand are trained, expert breachers with dedicated breaching tools.

If concern is a classroom of kids locked in a room that's on fire, keep in mind there have been no fire fatalities in a school in probably 60 years, plus that's what all those sprinklers are for.

So basically what we are talking about here is half a billion dollars spent to address the rarest of all occurrences, the active shooter. And to address in the worst possible manner, by locking the people up in easily killed packets.

That brings me to my final point; My opinion is the absolute best way to deal with an active shooter is fight it with the most natural behavior possible, which is panic and chaos. Let the students absolutely do what's natural, and run and escape all over the place, and flee. A shooter would have to deal with masses of people in a chaotic fashion, and that alone would severly curtail any "plan" they had devised. The chaos could be sorted out later when it becomes prioritized. A parent is better off *wondering* if their kid is alive, rather than *knowing* they aren't.

So the question for me is, is spending half a billion dollars on a bad solution to an extremely rare problem worth the money? Does it solve anything? Is it workable under stress, using fine motor skills, maybe not readily available nearby, and utilized by an unpracticed, untrained ADL under duress?

Or, is it more likely and sensible to use a device that costs 90% less, requires no installation, and can be utilized or removed quickly under stress and is obvious, nearby, and requires no special skills or calmness of mind?

Anxious to hear thoughts or scenarios by others.

Brent.

ETA:

I made a mistake on cost. On another website their is discussion of this being made avaialable for about 12-15 dollars. It looks like this ad is for 65 bucks, so the costs savings are not as dramatic if the price is that high. So savings would be more in line with $250,000,000 million or so. I just wanted to leave my origal remarks intact.


----------



## MASSDRIVER (Jun 20, 2014)

Frank said:
			
		

> At VA Tech the perp chained the panic hardware shut from the inside.  VA Tech has since replaced all door hardware with ones that would be very difficult to chain.


That's kind of a different situation. Those were general access doors, not classrooms. They still have no mechanism for authorized personnel to lock them.  Aren't they required to be operable at all times regardless?

I can see if the sleeves were available they would work on those closers, but I'm sure the police could have breached that easier than chains.

Brent.


----------



## LGreene (Jun 20, 2014)

MASSDRIVER said:
			
		

> Thank you LGreene.Now when we look at the statistics you provided, we unfortunately cannot determine a few things.
> 
> First, a "victimization" can mean practically anything at all, from verbal altercations on up. We should probably concentrate on violent victimization, of which there were 359,000.
> 
> ...


I agree that we don't know exactly what type of victimizations make up the big number.  There are some statistics on that but I haven't dug into them yet.  My point was that these are much more common than the active shooter scenario, so I am not in favor of letting go of egress and fire code requirements to prepare for the possibility of an intruder.

I spend a fair amount of time in schools, and there are classrooms that are empty and unlocked at any given time.  If the doors had locks and the teachers had keys and the protocol was to always lock the classroom when it was empty, and for the teacher to always maintain control of the classroom when he/she was present, it would remove some of the risk of unauthorized locking.  But if a school equips each classroom with a product like The Sleeve, a student (or someone else) could go into an empty unlocked classroom, lock the door, and the teacher would have no access.  And it's not compliant with the egress requirements.

If products that don't meet the egress requirements should be allowed on classrooms in case of an intruder, will the code requirements change to make that official?


----------



## MASSDRIVER (Jun 20, 2014)

LGreene said:
			
		

> I agree that we don't know exactly what type of victimizations make up the big number.  There are some statistics on that but I haven't dug into them yet.  My point was that these are much more common than the active shooter scenario, so I am not in favor of letting go of egress and fire code requirements to prepare for the possibility of an intruder. I spend a fair amount of time in schools, and there are classrooms that are empty and unlocked at any given time.  If the doors had locks and the teachers had keys and the protocol was to always lock the classroom when it was empty, and for the teacher to always maintain control of the classroom when he/she was present, it would remove some of the risk of unauthorized locking.  But if a school equips each classroom with a product like The Sleeve, a student (or someone else) could go into an empty unlocked classroom, lock the door, and the teacher would have no access.  And it's not compliant with the egress requirements.
> 
> If products that don't meet the egress requirements should be allowed on classrooms in case of an intruder, will the code requirements change to make that official?


So a behavior modification could solve probably 90% of "issues"? That's the track I'm on. Lock the doors when unused is a good start.

Locking groups in killboxes should be abandoned also.

Brent.


----------



## MASSDRIVER (Jun 20, 2014)

It should also be noted that if a little snot wanted to lock himself into a room that is easily accomplished by tying a belt around the closer. The best bet is to make the room inaccessible from the outside when not supervised. If no one wants to be responsible for their workspace then all the locks and devices on the planet wont add security.

Brent.


----------

