Key Points
- Active shooter incidents are extremely time-sensitive, with events typically lasting under 13 minutes, while average law enforcement response time is often longer.
- Enhancing preparedness through victim-initiated mitigation systems, training, and security response is essential.
- Regular, realistic training exercises (from tabletop walkthroughs to mock drills) paired with structured debriefings and clear handoffs to emergency responders are essential to building resiliency and improving incident outcomes.
Major active assailant events are always followed by forensic investigation and often a public report. And, almost always, the “lessons learned” section highlights the time-critical nature of these incidents.
Attacks of random mass violence are over quickly. One recent study found that the average duration of an active shooter incident at Institutions of Higher Education is less than 13 minutes. (Disturbingly, researchers found that the average response time of local law enforcement to these incidents is 18 minutes.) Because minutes mean lives, institutions should consider actions that can save time, including making it easier to call for help, improving response, and making preparations to effectively transfer operational control to emergency responders.
Help People Help Themselves
Given the unavoidable time lapses between first shot, alarm, and officer response, it’s simply not enough time for even the most well prepared and trained police force to mitigate the number of victims. It is why some crime researchers stress the need to acknowledge “immutable realities” with respect to active shooter incidents, one of which is that incidents are often over by the time police arrive.
In the time separating the first and last shots fired in Active Shooter incidents the only individuals who have the capacity to react are the victims and potential victims. — “Defeating the Active Shooter: Applying Facility Upgrades in Order to Mitigate the Effects of Active Shooters in High Occupancy Facilities,” Ergenbright, Hubbard
Although specific solutions need to be tailored to a facility, researchers suggest that companies implement a “Victim Initiated Mitigation (VIM) system” to maximize the ability of potential victims to act in the midst of a shooting event. Such a system might entail centrally located emergency call boxes in public areas to facilitate calling for help, and a remotely located Incident Command Center staffed 24/7 capable of receiving and maintaining two-way communications with all emergency call boxes.
The primary benefit of systems that facilitate a “lock down” is to separate potential victims from a rampaging shooter, and through examining numerous case studies from universities and colleges, research suggests that institutions can reduce lethality in active shooter incidents by 34%.
In addition to physical hardening, most experts promote some version of the popular “Run, Hide, Fight” training module that teaches people in active shooter events to:
- Run (run away to a safe location)
- Hide (find a secure area and lockdown)
- Escape/Fight (only as a last resort if discovered/confronted)
It’s also worth noting that—more than training and despite technological advances—security personnel are believed to represent the best opportunity to prevent or mitigate shootings in a campus environment or in public spaces where controlling access is often impossible. See the ranking of security solutions here.
Preparation Requires Practice
Mock active shooter training exercises are the most effective way to train staff to respond to an active shooter situation and drillscan also reveal gaps that are hard to identify in any other way; for example, it might reveal that a certain building is a dead zone for two-ways radios. However, drills are both disruptive and complicated, and there are other ways to testreadiness.
Emergency and security exercises can take many forms—from simple to complex. At the simple end of the spectrum are validation exercises, which typically test whether certain plan information is accurate and complete. This may just be to make sure nothing has changed, the plan is up to date, the people listed in it are still around, or contact information is current.
More involved exercises include a tabletop walkthrough—a page by page rehearsal of the sequence of responding to an event—and tabletop simulations, in which a scenario is tossed out to exercise participants who discuss how they would respond, control, and manage it. Operational exercises test response to events within the actual physical environment and a mock exercise typically adds the element of surprise to tabletop or operational exercises by not announcing them in advance.
In all exercises and training simulations that are more detailed than validation exercises, there is one simple, but critical, piece to which companies often fail to pay sufficient attention: a structured post-exercise debriefing involving all exercise participants.
Nearly all emergency management models discuss it in termsof a life cycle, and the cycle is only complete when de-briefing has occurred,and the lessons learned are framed as actionable items designed to affectfuture preparedness. De-briefing is the critical learning phase of respondingto an incident (or exercise. It is the only part, really, that builds resiliency to deal with future incidents better.
Get Ready to Pass the Baton Effectively
When minutes mean lives, being able to transferresponsibility effectively and quickly to emergency responders is a vital—but often overlooked—aspect of active shooter planning. How effectively this ismanaged will depend on the extent to which a security operation can gainsituational awareness, according to guidelines developed by the Australia-NewZealand Counter-Terrorism Committee (Active Shooter Guidelines for Places ofMass Gathering, ANZCTC).
Then, it’s a matter of communication.
Establishing early, effective and continuous lines of communication from the incident site to the responding police agency will be critical in order to accurately inform them of the present situation and its subsequent development. — ANZTC
Learning the expectations of law enforcement responders in advance can help. “[It] will enable a more effective transition of incident control,” according to the guidelines. They also suggest training security staff how to respond when law enforcement arrives on the scene. The guidelines suggestother activities to support emergency response and investigation.
- Identifyand communicate safe access routes/gathering points for emergency services.
- Commenceincident and decision-making logs.
- Nominate a suitable emergency services liaison officer to meet/brief the police.
- Ensure access to site plans and video surveillance footage (where possible).
- Clearly identify when incident management has transitionedto the police.
- Provide ongoing support to the emergency response action asrequested
Recently, a university in the U.S. went the extra mile in its preparations, partnering with local state police to create an exercise scenario and inviting local emergency response agencies to participate in the exercise, including emergency medical services, fire, and police personnel. Among the lessons the school said it learned were the need for: (a)better interoperability of technology, (b) aerial maps of the campus, (c) a designated media assembly area, and (d) a unified code scheme to identify buildings (the college and state police had different ways of referring to identical buildings).