Protection Starts With Prevention

It’s an unfortunate reality of our times that we in law enforcement have to be constantly prepared, at every level, for response to events like active shooters. Perhaps nowhere in our profession does the phrase “Failing to prepare is preparing to fail” apply more. As much as we have a duty to respond to such an event in a timely and efficient fashion, we have a duty to prepare, plan, train, and equip to respond. It’s our intention to assist with that effort with this supplement.

Articles in the 2019 Active Shooter Response Supplement Include:
• Why A Variety Of Rally Points Matters
• Trauma Training and Supplies
• The Active Shooter Response Tool Bag
• How To Overcome Target Location Labeling in Prolonged Incidents 

Several of these articles can be applied by officers at every rank and in any primary assignment. You’ll also find some information specifically generated for command level officers. What you won’t see are references to the National Incident Management protocols or Incident Command Systems. Such references would often be lost on the patrol officers and front line supervisors who haven’t been exposed to such. 

For 20 years now, agencies nationwide have been instituting and evolving their active shooter response protocols. It almost feels like every time we make a change for the better, along comes some ne'er-do-well who finds a way to defeat it or creates a situation our new protocol(s) wouldn’t work within. While unfortunate and often frustrating, it’s a reality of life. The only thing that is constant is change.

The truest lesson learned is that your agency policies and training courses have to be evaluated annually and adapted to the best of your staff’s ability. We have a duty to grow regularly to become the best we can be for the community we serve. Such growth and evaluation is most efficient if we coordinate it with our surrounding agencies. While we may never achieve 100% work efficiency, the closer we can get to it, the more lives we can save—and that’s our bottom line. “Protect and serve” is displayed nowhere more than when we respond to a mass attack on any part of those we took an oath to protect and serve.

In these events, protection starts with prevention and we all constantly work at that. We realistically can’t prevent every attack, so we train to respond as efficiently as possible, to neutralize the threat as quickly as possible. Where we fail at that, the public is understandably upset and we owe it to them to do the best we can. After we have neutralized the threat our duties start dividing quickly: secure the scene, preserve evidence, investigate the event, etc. What we might do better is provide emergency medical care to a higher level. That requires more training, more equipment and empowerment via policy from the command of any agency. 

If there is a topic related to active shooter response that we aren’t covering or that you’d like to see more information about, please don’t hesitate to let us know. You can send emails to [email protected] or to me directly at [email protected]. We look forward to your comments and suggestions.

Stay safe,

Lt. Frank Borelli

Download the full 2019 Active Shooter Response Supplement at Officer.com/21081202.

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