John Baker is a speaker working with Kirkland Productions through Safe & Sound Schools.

About

John Baker currently serves as the Chief of Police for the Lancaster Lebanon IU13 Police Department and the Safety and Security Director for the IU13.  John’s department provides support to over 90,000 students and 6,000 staff members in 190 locations across two counties.  John is passionate about his work and believes the skills he is teaching today’s young people and school staff members are valuable skills that they will carry with them throughout their life.  Believing in practical and affordable solutions for most safety and security issues, John is committed to working with clients to develop meaningful strategies that will be embraced by the school community while preserving limited resources to focus on their core mission of excellence in education.

Whether teaching situational awareness, how to deescalate volatile behavior in meetings, or responding to a violent intruder, John is committed to delivering material in an understandable fashion that can be easily applied to people’s lives and help them develop a healthy frame of mind when considering the hazards they may face in life. 

While John has 30 years in the law enforcement and public safety industry he is anything but a conventional police officer.  John’s undergraduate and graduate work is in  Psychology and is also a board certified protection professional (CPP), Executive Protection Professional (EP) and a specialist certified by the Attorney General’s Office of Florida  in designing space that supports positive human behavior (CPTED).  John is a graduate of Gavin DeBecker's Advanced  Threat Assessment Institute.  John is a frequent speaker at safety and security conferences and organizational meetings and is a published author and frequent contribute to industry periodicals.  John and his wife Cindy live in Lancaster, PA where Cindy has works as a 3rd grade teacher in a public school district. 

popular programs

With all of John's courses videotaping is permitted for future reference and refresher training and Power Point presentations are provided for duplication and distribution to your school or organization. All of these courses are popular with both school and municipal organizations.
Conducting Safe Meetings
Time: 90 minutes - 3 hours customized to your needs

What steps can we take to better prepare and conduct meetings so that people have the greatest opportunity to make wise and productive choices? Special attention is paid to designing a meeting space that supports positive and safe meetings, while strategies to deescalate and redirect aggressive behavior are covered. Understanding tipping points and signs of potential hostility are also reviewed. This live, interactive session covers both small meetings with parents and personnel all the way up to large community meetings involving a controversial board decision. Summarizing the discussion and tailored to each host, a custom Power Point is prepared and left with the school.

Ideal Audience includes:administrators, human resources, business managers, school boards, teachers and specialist involved in parental/guardian meetings.
Responding to Violent Intruders
Time:  90 minutes - 3 hours / 6 hour train-the-trainer workshop

Everyone is concerned about school violence, but we can’t live in a state of paranoia and fear.  We must train our students and staff in a non-traumatic way so that they can grasp the basic skills needed to avoid and respond to violence wherever it occurs.  Beyond applying to schools, this is a life  with practical applications for all situations.   We cannot solely focus on active killers.  Rather we must shift our thinking to anyone who becomes violent, and we all need to respond to that threat.  Practical, real life scenarios involving a violent student, parent or visitor—whether they have a firearm or not—are used in addition to speaking about mass-killers.  The goal is to empower individuals and small groups to respond to these events by exercising the run, hide, and fight concepts; the leading practice in our schools today.  This can be taught as a train-the-trainer program in a six-hour course or as a 90 minute – 3 hour presentation depending on your needs.  People will leave with practical tools to apply that empower them to get to a safe place until first responders arrive.

Ideal Audience includes: customizable for any audience of students and school staff.
The Power of Situational Awareness
Time:  90 minutes - 3 hours

No safety & security training, procedure or equipment is effective if you don’t realize there is a problem. This 90-minute presentation—which can be expanded and customized to meet your needs—discusses the importance of this foundational tool and how to begin the process of converting your school culture from a “virtual awareness” to a “real time awareness” with practical tips to share with staff and students.

Ideal Audience includes: customizable for any audience of students and school staff.

What Does NIMS and Unified Command Mean to Me?
Time: 90 minutes - 3 hours

This presentation takes the often-overwhelming structure of National Incident Management Systems and Unified Command and boils it down to easy-to-understand terms for school officials.  Both systems are a valuable tool that help our first responders do their job with excellence every day, but without consistent exposure it quickly can become overwhelming.  This course answers the simple questions such as “what will police, fire and ambulance personnel want from me when they respond to a call at our school?”  This course is customizable depending on your needs.  Many districts bring administrators and crisis team members together for this session as they discuss how they will operate at the building level.

Ideal Audience includes:  administrators, human resources, business managers, school boards.

PA Approved Safety and Security Assessments
Time: 90 minutes - 3 hours

As an approved vendor for Act 44-2018 safety and security assessments we can conduct an on-site review of your buildings that will satisfy the criteria established by this Act.  This one-day assessment will serve as a valuable tool to identify & prioritize your safety & security needs at the building & district level for both public & non-public schools.

Ideal Audience includes:  administrators.
Interactive Table Top Drills
​Time: 90 minutes - 3 hours

This is a wonderful opportunity to engage your administrators and first responders (if you choose to include them) in a table-top exercise based on practical threats that face your school.  Many districts bring teams from each building who operate independently as they work the scenario and learn from the collective debriefs offered by each building’s team as they discuss their unique strategies.  Through establishing a scenario and interjecting variables throughout the drill the team will be challenged to identify their response and resources available to meet the challenge of the scenario.  A thorough debriefing leaves the team with both successful responses that are now proven and a deeper understanding of future improvements that need to be made.

Ideal Audience includes:  administrators, human resources, business managers, first responders.

Creating a Practical and Understandable All-Hazards Plan for Your School
Time: Self-paced

This consulting service takes you through the process of satisfying the PA School Code requirement to create and AHP consistent with PEMA models.  PEMA has done an excellent job at providing a free toolkit but if you are not familiar with this process, it can be time-consuming and intimidating. The goal of the consultant is to guide your team into customizing an AHP that works for you and meets School Code requirements in understandable terms.  This service is self-paced and based on your team’s ability to dedicate resources and time.

Ideal Audience includes:  administrators, human resources, business managers, school boards, teachers and specialist involved in parental/guardian meetings.

Customized Training
Time: 90 minutes - Full Day

We offer the services of both a Board-Certified Protection Professional (CPP) thru ASIS, the international gold standard of safety and security professionals as well as a Crime Prevention through Environmental Design (CPTED) Specialist.  With over 30 years of practical experience in the public safety industry we can design a training to fit most of your safety and security needs.  Contact our office to discuss how we can help you identify resources or provide customized training for your school.

Ideal Audience includes:  administrators, human resources, business managers, school boards, teachers and specialist involved in parental/guardian meetings.
Priorities: Determining The Safety and Security Initiatives to Tackle First
LENGTH: 3 hours to all-day

DESCRIPTION:  This practical session reviews a school’s vulnerability studies, assessments, budget and current programming to help them prioritize which projects to tackle and in what logical order based on solid industry fundamentals.  Alongside addressing the practical concerns, this program is designed to meet the emotional needs of a school community as they grapple with creating an environment which needs to “feel safe.”  John combines his 32 years of safety and security experience, CPP and CPTED certifications, and his undergraduate & graduate work in trauma psychology to help schools determine meaningful prioritization of their safety and security efforts.
 
AUDIENCE:  Administrators; Safety and Security Working Groups

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John Baker ... what a motivating, effective, and enthusiastic speaker. Using what I would describe as a “hybrid” speaking style, John will quickly build a rapport with any audience. In spite of often speaking on tragic or sensitive topics, John’s presentations display warmth, intelligence, and humor.  His listeners will quickly see John’s passion for promoting personal safety and life skills for all age and educational levels. John shares, but does not dwell on, his years of experience in the field as he emphasizes the need for situational awareness and general critical thinking skills. Those attending programs presented by John Baker always leave the program with actionable ideas.

Wayne W. Silcox, Chief, Millersville University Police Department – Retired; Instructor – Harrisburg Area Community College

MORE REVIEWS

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Bestselling Author of Permanent Midnight and I, Fatty

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