Gregory Thomas Chief Executive Officer and Principal Consultant, The Alan Thomas Security Group LLC
Location:
Brooklyn,
NY United States Joined:
Sep 11th, 2013
As the former Deputy Director of Planning and Response in the National Center for Disaster Preparedness (NCDP) at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, Gregory Thomas assisted communities and schools around the nation in the assessment and improvement of their levels of emergency and disaster preparedness. While at the NCDP, he worked closely with the senior leadership of the National Hemophilia Foundation (NHF) and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), to design an emergency preparedness template that is currently being used by NHF’s national network of forty-eight chapters to develop a localized safety plan for its treatment centers.
Prior to his position with Columbia University, he served for six years as the Executive Director of the Office of School Safety and Planning with the New York City Department of Education (DOE), the largest school district in the United States. As the highest ranking uniformed official, he managed the administrative and operational functions of the nation’s largest school based uniformed security force (3,500 New York State Peace Officers), who were responsible for the safety and security of over one million children who attended over 1,100 schools. As the senior law enforcement/security official for the DOE, Mr. Thomas worked closely with federal, state and local officials to address security and disaster related issues that arose for the many schools in the lower Manhattan area affected by the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. As a result of his work, at the request of the U.S. Department of Education and the U.S. Department of State, in February 2002, Mr. Thomas served on a select panel of international school safety officials that discussed and implemented strategies to prepare schools for the possibility of terrorist attacks. In his current role as the Chief Executive Officer of a private consulting practice, he continues to work with public and private schools and colleges to help them prepare for emergencies and serves as a trainer and consultant to the U.S. Departments of Justice and Homeland Security and is one of the experts hired on behalf of the U.S. Department of Education to train educators nationwide on procedures to help them assess threats to school safety, like targeted school shootings. Mr. Thomas also has extensive experience as an expert witness in school safety litigation matters.
In addition to his positions in the school safety and emergency management disciplines, Mr. Thomas has also held various executive positions in the fields of criminal justice and public safety. He has served as an Assistant Commissioner with the New York City Fire Department, Associate Director of the City University of New York / New York City Police Department Cadet Program at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, as a senior investigator with the Mollen Commission, the mayoral commission that was charged with investigating allegations of police corruption and assessing the anti-corruption procedures of the New York City Police Department and as a First Deputy Inspector General with the New York City Department of Investigation.
Recognized as one of the nation’s top school safety experts and conference speakers, he has been featured in various international media venues such as the BBC, CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, NPR Radio, the New York Times, the USA Today and the U.S. News and World Report. He has authored and co-authored numerous academic publications and served as the lead editor and co-author of three books on school safety for the Janes Information Group, including the most comprehensive book published to date on school safety – the 450 page Janes Safe School Planning Guide for All Hazards. He is also the author of a book from Random House publishers titled Freedom from Fear: A Guide to Safety, Preparedness and the Threat of Terrorism, which offers advice to readers on how to prepare themselves and their families for a worst-case scenario like a natural disaster or an act of terrorism.
Mr. Thomas' professional affiliations include membership in the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives (NOBLE) where he currently serves as their National Second Vice-President, in Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity Inc., the American Society of Industrial Security (ASIS), the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) and association with the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies (CALEA), where he served as an assessor of police departments across the nation. He currently serves on the New York City Police Foundation’s Crime Stoppers Advisory Committee, on the board of directors of nationally acclaimed nonprofit organizations, Project Rebirth and The Hope Program, as a member of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention’s Working Group on Children and Disasters and was a subcommittee member of the congressionally created National Commission on Children and Disasters. He also serves on the faculty of the Security Management Institute at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University.
Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York where he currently resides with his wife Kim and their sons Joseph and Tyler, Mr. Thomas completed public school in New York City, and attended college at the University of Maryland, Eastern Shore where he received his Bachelor of Arts Degree in Sociology and the Brooklyn Campus of Long Island University where he received his Master of Science Degree in Criminal Justice.
In July of 2013, elected to the position of National Second-Vice President of the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives (NOBLE), where I will ascend to the position of National President in 2015
