Richard J. Caster, Ed.D is one of the Originators and Founders of the FASTERSavesLives Emergency Response Program that has been protecting and saving the lives of school children across the nation for a decade. Holding a doctorate in School Administration and having worked as an Instructor and Director of the National Association of School Resource Officers, Dr Caster has a deep understanding of the need and importance of securing our nations schools as we do every building that houses our nations treasures. In the early 2000s Dr. Caster, along with John Benner, the Founder and Owner of Tactical Defense Institute, wrote a school safety curriculum that would eventually become the FASTERSavesLives Training Manual. Tragically, it took the murders at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012 for teachers and administrators to understand and begin to demand this kind of armed and unarmed emergency training as well as the emergency field medical supplies and training that FASTER includes in the training.
Education:
Career/Work Experience:
Instructor Credentials:
United States Department of Homeland Security Instructor Certification
Instructor
(firearms/tactics/classroom
Guest Instructor/Lecturer:
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Our guest today is Dr. Dick Caster. Dr. Caster is one of the Originators and Founders of the FASTERSavesLives Emergency Response Program that has been protecting and saving the lives of school children across the nation for a decade. Holding a doctorate in School Administration and having worked as an Instructor and Director of the National Association of School Resource Officers, Dr Caster has a deep understanding of the need and importance of securing our nation’s schools as we do every building that houses our nations treasures. In the early 2000s Dr. Caster, along with John Benner, the Founder and Owner of Tactical Defense Institute, wrote a school safety curriculum that would eventually become the FASTERSavesLives Training Manual. Tragically, it took the murders at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012 for teachers and administrators to understand and begin to demand this kind of armed and unarmed emergency training as well as the emergency field medical supplies and training that FASTER includes in the training.
1) Walk us through those early days when you and John Benner were writing a manual? Was there an impetus that spurred you to write it?
2) At the time when you wrote that original manual surely you imagined it would never be accepted in schools. Yet you wrote it anyway. How did you go from words on paper to the very first training class?
– A week-long training program for the “Single Officer Response to an Active Killer” offered to law enforcement officers through the National Association of School Resource Officers.
3) What have been some of your greatest successes and biggest frustrations over the years?
4) Why is it important for us to study previous murders, including the methods and the motivations?
5) There seems to be a shift in the behaviors of people who commit these horrendous murders, from someone who is acting out a grievance to nowadays someone seeking some twisted idea of glory or fame. How does this impact our responses?
