Transcription
Jary: Uh, I know this is changing topics a little bit, but it's kind of a hot topic for all of us, I guess these days, uh, concerning concealed carry permits. Uh, holders bringing their weapons to church. I know in our state, um, it's not supposed to happen; illegal, apparently. But um, I had a discussion with our carrier, our insurance carrier, and they were recommending uh, developing a policy uh, for handling all these things in the church and have having them actually sign off on that policy so that later on, having who sign off, the insurance company, the carrier, so that at some point in the future, if uh, if a tragic event occurred, that they wouldn't back out saying, "We can't cover uh, your your handling of this." Do you recommend that kind of...?
Well, it all depends. They they just can't gratuitously make a statement like that; that that's got to tie into your policy. Is there a specific exclusion that addresses...? I can tell you that there isn't. I mean, this is all... who knew? They may be thinking about it behind closed doors. You know, how do we address this issue? I can understand that. But uh, Jerro, you can wait on this.
Yeah, actually, I would tell you that there is not a specific exclusion for that. However, sometimes on the application, there may be a question: "Do you have any... do you have any security?" So what they will come back and do is say, if you misled the the company on the question in the application, in the application, then they can come back and say, "You misled us; therefore, this policy is null and void." However, to date, there are no exclusions that says, if you have people that have concealed carry, if you have security guards um, that are working for you, um, is there an exclusion? Now, a lot of times, I will tell you that if you do have armed security, sometimes companies will actually charge for that, as if, you know, if you're using that in a public setting. I I will tell you with colleges that is the case. However, with churches, either churches will AC, you know, the insurance company will accept it or reject it if they know you have it. You know, there's a there's a there's a common um, misconception that, you know, "If I just don't tell the insurance company that I have this risk, they'll automatically cover it." For instance, um, if you know that something is a a risk, you need to, you know... Actually, I would at least visit with your insurance agent and get it in writing, because if he knows about it, you're you're safe, okay? As long as there's not a physical exclusion. I give you... like a lot of companies will actually exclude inflatables, so there's an actual exclusion on inflatables. There is not an exclusion when it comes to secur, you know, to security service or having people have a concealed carry. We actually talked about concealed carry before, but if you actually do what the local law enforcement does, you do the exact same training, um, you're okay. I think having that kind of system and actually, I will tell you that what what we have done is I've always dealt with the insurance carrier and said, "Here's how we do it, right," okay? And the insurance carrier says, "We like the way that you're setting this up; we'll allow it." I have also had insurance companies say, "You can do this, but we don't like this, and we're going to cancel your policy." So, um, and I'm talking, there are three major writers of churches in the United States, possibly four if you include Philadelphia. So you got Church Mutual, GuideOne, Brotherhood Mutual, Philadelphia Insurance Company. Those are your... State Farm, well, I don't consider them; they're not a dedicated church insurer, but they they are typically fourth place on... I have not seen them writing as many churches. And the reason is, you have a State Farm agent in your church that's on the board, uh, and so many boards buy insurance because of that agent being there, but then I also see that they do not have the proper ER coverages because they they're not a church insurance company.
That's correct. And that's kind of what I what I'm talking about is specialize in writing churches. So if you have a company that specializes writing, and when I say not a church insurance company, I mean they're not dedicated to the church market. And so, unlike the other three you mentioned, Church Mutual, Brotherhood, and prefer and GuideOne, they they are totally dedicated to the church market, and and and it shows I think in the coverages they provide and then the the counsel you receive from their agents. M and that and that's the thing is that if you get a company that actually is used to writing, you know, this is their bread and butter, they will actually work be work with you because they're used to writing churches. That was the case here, yeah, where they recommended that we would outline the programs, the the level of training and so forth and so on, which, you know, is a great thing to do. And we have certain security training for all of our people, including those that carry uh, tasers and and various things like that. And so they recommended that we put that in writing, have them sign off on it, so there would never be any questions.
Yeah. And let me say this: there there's been no litigation involving churches that have had maniacs, you know, shooting on church premises. There's no case uh, that's in this country where a church was sued because of that. So we don't we have no precedent. There have been a couple of cases involving universities. You remember the Virginia Tech case a few years ago where like 30 people were killed by that maniac before he shot himself, uh, there was uh, a lawsuit brought by four family members, and they all received $4 million at a trial court for negligence and because the school didn't have an adequate policy. That was appealed to the Virginia Supreme Court, which just rendered its opinion fairly recently, and they they reversed all those judgments and and threw the case out. And and the reason was the University was not negligent. They didn't have any to be negligent. There's got to be foreseeability of injury, and there had been no such incidents happen on University premises, so they didn't there was no reason to believe this was going to happen that would have warranted extreme measures, uh, and and I think that's an important point. You know, you can have your policy, but you don't need it in terms of legally. There's no legal... legally, if we started seeing cases all over the country where churches were being found liable, uh, we could begin maybe to articulate recommendations there, but to date there's none. And in fact, the few analogous cases we see, they're thrown out because of the lack of foreseeability. So the legal duty is attached to foreseeability. And if if you have... Oh yeah, we've had gunfire in our parking lot or on our premises before, you better believe you've got a legal duty to go to the next step and institute a a uh, a comprehensive program. But if you've had no uh, you know, uh, weapons-related crimes on your premises or adjacent perhaps in recent history, there's no legal duty to do anything. Uh, now some churches say, "Well, there's not there's not a legal duty, but we believe we have an ethical or maybe a theological duty, a spirit a a uh, duty to protect innocent life." And I'm not opposed to that. I'm just saying you don't need to do it until you start seeing people shooting each other uh, you know, on or near your property. Then the courts would say it becomes foreseeable, and that that triggers the uh, the duty of uh, of care to avoid a negligence claim. But I say churches get really agitated over this issue, and and they they read something in the paper and, "Oh man, we've got to have this full-fledged uh, vigilante group within the church." And in many cases, it's counterproductive. These people aren't trained. I'm a... I've got a CCW and, you know, I have to say I'm the last person you'd want as your... You know... No, but but the point is that CCW status, it's it's... there's a wide variety of competencies, any from me on one hand to somebody that's truly competent on the other, and somebody that is skilled, maybe a current or or or retired military or police or law enforcement that is extremely experienced in using firearms. And it's the kind of person you would want. And that's where it gets into your vetting process of who are we going to allow. Most states, people just can't use that permit to bring a gun into a church; it's it's limited. The church has got to consent to it, and you want to be careful who you consent to. And but I think if you if you consent to only those with a a demonstrable experience and expertise in handling firearms, then uh, in conjunction with law enforcement, they in my opinion, they should always be working subservient to uniformed police officers on your premises. And you say, "Well, how can we afford that?" Well, it's not expensive. They're there for a couple hours on Sunday morning, uh, maybe a few more hours during the week, but it's not a huge cost. And it's the best way you've got to to manage uh, a a criminal situation. These people are trained in responding to criminal activity. And I think the most important point I make is that when they do respond to criminal activity, law enforcement officers cease to be your church's agent and they become on duty, which cuts any liability to the church for their excessive use of force or their negligence.
You might want to comment about our our... I say uh, we we've kind of gone through the same thing uh, lately, Gary. And I think one of the things that gets confusing about this, this is something I learned along the way working with Rich and our insurance company and some others and developing some of this, is the line can get really blurry between what we're defining as our church-defined security response and what is just part of a CCW permit holder like Rich wanting to carry his gun on the church property. And there's a... we found that what we needed to write into our policy was something that clearly defines that difference. And, you know, like Rich alluded to, the laws are different in every state. In Missouri, uh, anyone that goes through a reasonable amount of training can apply and get a concealed carry permit, but there are 17 locations where they have to seek additional permission to carry in those locations. Churches are one of those. But the clause that talks about churches is very vague about who can give that permission. So a couple years ago, we developed at Central a a policy with our church board that basically defined that it is it is our church board who gives that permission. Nobody else can give it; nobody else can revoke it. It's our church board. But we also made it very clear that just because we give that permission, it in no way, shape, or form defines you as being a deputized security officer of the church; that you are expected to comply with state law at all times. And it's basically just extending your state CCW permit to our premises, uh, and it has certain other conditions. You know, like Rich mentioned, he teaches fifth-grade Sunday school; he signed a document that he agrees to not carry when he's when he's uh, working in that capacity. And uh, and some, you know, some other clauses like that are part of that policy. Every everyone who wants to uh, who's a CCW permit holder is should be familiar with the laws of the state of Missouri because they've gone to a class for that, and they should know that they need to request that permission. So we uh, we have an application they fill out; it goes through all these clauses; it goes before our church board; the church board uh, votes, takes action on on every one of those. And then we we do have a security team that kind of follows up, keeps keeps tabs on who has this permission, do we feel good about them having that permission, and those types of things. But a totally separate aspect of that is our security response, which is built, like Rich alluded to, on uh, on uniform... uniform. We use Green County Sheriff's officers here, uh, we've got a few other people who work closely with those, but the people who are dealing with weapons for us are Green County Sheriff's officers. And we... what our insurance company wanted to see was that we had a clearly defined line between those two, and we worked closely with them; that we sent them our document; they asked, they sent back a couple of questions; they just wanted some things clarified; helped us see there might have been some stuff we could write a little bit more clearly in our policy, so we did; we sent that back to them; and ultimately, we landed in a spot where they were happy and we were happy. And I think that we we found that. But I think the thing that that trips us up sometimes is we really almost... I I think sometimes we need to disambiguate what is church security and what is what is part of just the state law CCW permission. And and I think that's what the insurance companies want to see that we've got to handle on.
I agree. Maybe maybe, you know, better about that.
No, I no, I exactly... using working with your Police Department or Sheriff's Department um, is very very important because actually, I will tell you that I've had Sheriff's Departments saying, "If we see people with guns, we're taking them down. We we don't..." You you need to have some way of distinguishing and them knowing who the security people are. So I mean, I've had... actually, if you see some guy shooting wildly in the church, you don't know if that's your security guy or if that's... No, but if you see a person with a gun, you know they're they're looking to whoever's carrying a gun. That that again is another reason we we manage, we make sure our uniform security guys know who's been granted that permission to carry. So if they notice somebody carrying, they know if if that person has permission or if it's a gun that doesn't belong, and they've been trained that if it's a gun that doesn't belong, they confront it and and and find out what the story is on it. But they also know and and if they don't know the person right off hand, they can easily look up and see... We've got a way, again, in our in our management software, way for them to look up and see who's been extended that permission from the church board. And we make sure that is a... it's only in Missouri for three years; those are current permits. Yes, we we we verify their permit, and we make the uh, we make their permission expire with their permit. So if they renew their permit, they've got to renew their permission with us in a separate application. We have another member of our uh, Deacon board that uh uh, has a CCW permit. He was so obsessed with being getting the first recognition from the church board, and here I am, know nothing about guns, and uh, you know, I was going to be second place, but he wasn't there the night we made the formal decision, and so they bumped him to second. I got first. We had we had to delay the decision a couple of months as we worked through this with the insurance company, and and David missed the meeting where where we actually took the action, so made sure the minutes reflected that he won. And he told me later, he said, "Rich, anytime I I'm second to Rich Hammer, I consider that to be an honor."
There you go. I I was... that was a great compliment. Well, you know what, the time has traveled really fast. I know that you guys probably had a few more things that you'd like to discuss, but I think we got some really important subjects here. I really appreciate your time. Thank you for letting us use your facility, Gary, and uh, thanks Rich for all the knowledge that you bring. And thank you for watching Risk Management Live. We will see you next month when we bring you another topic that is just cutting edge. We'll see you then. Thank you very much.