The Joe Piscopo Show • Lightly edited for clarity.

Joe Piscopo: Chris Grollnek is kind enough to jump on the air with us, retired police detective corporal, active shooter expert, and founder of the Active Shooter Prevention Project. Chris, welcome back. We always seem to wait until an event unfolds, but you put out a piece online that I just retweeted a great post. Were you talking about a device that detects guns when they come close to an area? Is that what that was about?

Chris Grollnek: It was about two things, Joe. First, determining where a firearm or weapon, even a knife, or bad intentions could show up, through the lens of a camera that doesn’t keep a memory like metadata. It’s not focusing on a human, so it’s not violating anyone’s rights or eavesdropping. Then it puts that alert into a visualization platform. Think about the map on your dashboard, the icon that says there’s a gas station on the right. Now imagine it popped up and told you, “Your family is driving down that street, and there’s a threat to have them turn around.” It works outdoors, indoors, anywhere you position that type of technology.

Joe Piscopo: You see? You listen to this show, you get answers. We’ve got to do this. Chris will get all the information to anyone listening, because this is good for schools and religious organizations.

Chris Grollnek: More than good, Joe. It’s not a false sense of security, and it’s not over-security. It augments the human. Good governance, within the boundaries of ethics, and you always have a human in the loop, but you don’t have to have a human do the entire thing. Because humans are humans, we don’t always know how we’ll act or react. We’ve seen officers over the years do exceptionally good things, and sometimes the opposite. We need technology to augment that. That’s what started this path four or five years ago. You can’t open a school or a house of worship without a fire code, without fire extinguishers or smoke detectors.

Chris Grollnek: These systems are nothing more than detection devices. If a gun is present, it detects it and alerts you just like a smoke detector. If a gunshot rings out, it detects it and tells you where it is, like a fire alarm panel. Before and after. And both are digitally visualized on a map. What does “digitally visualized” mean? Forty years ago, you kept a Thomas Brothers map behind your seat and opened to the page you needed. Then came the TomToms, then MapQuest online, then your phone, then your watch. So why not go indoors? When you walk up to the front door of a building, that map ends. Now we’re exceeding that boundary, you have a visualized entry. It’s like putting a satellite view of Google Earth on whatever device you’re looking at, except now you’re looking indoors, where you are. You can follow your children at a school, a mall, or a house of worship on a Sunday. You want a reunification point if something goes wrong, a direction to get out. It’s just logical.

Joe Piscopo: God bless you for this. So what happened in Ohio? This was near Toledo. I watched it unfold all night and thought, my gosh, it’s anywhere, always, all the time now. Twelve wounded. Was that gang-related? Do we know?

Chris Grollnek: We don’t know if it was gang-related, but the probability is that two people who were upset with each other chose firearms to take out their aggression. Twelve innocent people were shot. The good side of this morning’s conversation, to my knowledge, no one has passed, thank goodness, and I believe most are out of the woods. But what a tragedy: you’re at a festival, minding your own business. Let’s talk about visualization for a second. It takes zero to eight minutes for something like this to unfold. The name doesn’t matter, active shooter, mass shooting, gang-related; semantics don’t matter. Two people got into a shootout and ended up shooting twelve others.

Chris Grollnek: It took paramedics about five minutes to reach the first wounded person, because they were at the fair. It took police about seven or eight minutes to even find where they were going. And that’s within the national average; that’s actually exceptional police work. So if we want exceptional police work at the eight-minute mark, then we have nothing left to discuss. But I don’t think that’s good enough. I think we can get it down to zero minutes.

Joe Piscopo: I was talking about doing an event with one of my religious buddies. There was a sheriff out front. I thanked him for his service, and he said, “It’s sad, but we’ve got to be here.” You’ve got to put somebody out there. But what you’re describing, I just found that piece and retweeted it: “When Seconds Decide Outcomes Why Do Most Accept Minutes?” from Chris Grollnek. You’ve got to see it. This device can detect something, and I’m shocked we don’t look into it more. Sooner or later, they’ll see it and use it. They won’t give our show credit, but that’s okay, we’re good to share if it’s good for the country. Where can we find you, Chris? If there’s a religious organization or a school with problems before it turns deadly, where can we find this information, sir?

Chris Grollnek: You can just type “active shooter expert” into Google, probably the easiest way to find me. You can’t “NOT” find me; I’m the first thirty-two pages of Google. And that’s not SEO, we’re not buying placement. This is a solution that works. That’s why it’s trademarked. And we give away more than we sell. I’ve told you that for five years now.

Joe Piscopo: I appreciate that. Chris Grollnek, active shooter expert, is the man. A great chat solution-based is what we’re looking for. All the very best to you, my friend, and thank you for taking the time, as always.

Chris Grollnek: Stay safe, Joe. I appreciate you very much, and all your listeners, too. Thank you.

Joe Piscopo: Thank you, sir, Chris Grollnek, active shooter expert. There’s technology to stop this, and I find it puzzling why more people aren’t on it. That’s what we’re talking about: solution-based.