We all have seen it on TV – the cops get to the scene
and one wants to wait “for back up and the other
wants to just go”. So when the Parkville shooting hap pened
there was a huge uproar over the police officer
who waited and the shooter kept shooting. It was
never made clear whether he was following directions
or not. Unfortunately, with the active shooter incidents
happening almost weekly, officers no longer train to
wait. The rule now is that they go in. They go in and
they go in specifically to stop the shooter; their primary
objective is not to offer aid or to check on someone
who is down. Anything that will slow or distract the
officer from confronting the shooter give the shooter
time to continue his carnage.
This was the beginning of our monthly Texas City
Citizens Police Academy Alumni Association meeting
presentation at the Texas City Police Department.
The subject was Paradigm Shift – How Officers and
Civilians Must adjust to the reality of Active Shooter
Incidents. Santa Fe High School marked the 101st
mass shooting this year. In 2017 there were 346.
So if we are to learn from this wave, we must consider
lessons learned before and adjust our behavior
to respond more effectively and hopefully, to stop
these nightmares from occurring.
Fortunately, in our neck of the woods, our Police
Department has most of the assets needed to address
this kind of situation. Assets such as SWAT,
Bomb Squad, Canine, Snipers, Drones. Not all cities
have this combination of assets. When Santa Fe happened,
departments from all over came to their aid.
“The one thing that can go wrong in these situations
is communication. Whoever is the Scene Commander
remains so and everyone takes direction from the
Scene commander, no matter their rank.”
In cases like this, the shooter is not the only real
danger for the responders. Santa Fe was not the first
occurrence where IED’s were in place. Sadly gun bat tles
can be used by a shooter to lure officers toward
the IED’s in order to take out those officers. This is
where drones can play a vital role in preventing loss
of life. And then there is the paradigm shift impacting
the civilian…US…how do we change our response to
an attack? For a very long time the advice has been
HIDE, RUN, FIGHT, in that order. And what have we
learned about that approach? In one incident the
door was blocked, the students huddled together in
the corner of the room but when the shooter broke
through, he had only to fire into the huddle. That room
had windows but no one climbed out. At another incident
students hid in a closet and the shooter simply
fired through the door and hit most of them. Hide, Run
Fight is still viable but in no particular order. Responding
to the situation is the most important response.
Fire alarms are a distraction; throwing whatever is
available at the shooter is a distraction. Escape is always
best, but only if you know where the shooter is.
If you are caught in a contained space, decide what
you can do within that space long before there is ever
an incident. Think through what your options are at
your place of work, your school and in your home.
Not unlike preparing ourselves for a hurricane,
thinking through how you respond to a person or persons
intent on doing you harm with a weapon of any
kind gives you an advantage that you did not have
before. Distraction can work to your advantage, making
yourself less of a target, knowing how to best get
away or how to keep a threat out and being prepared
to do so quickly – all these are going to give you an
edge and that is the goal.
The simple truth is that it has become more dangerous
to be a police officer and it has become more
dangerous to be a student or a church goer or a concert
attendee. We live in a world where poems like the
following appear in kindergarten classes. Not unlike
hiding under one’s desk in the event of a Hydrogen
Bomb when I was in school, this is probably not much
protection but a need to face this new normal requires
that we do “something”.
