Frank Borelli
Editor-in-Chief
Officer.com
After the horrific attack at Columbine occurred there was a surge of new training and tactics amongst patrol officers nationwide. We generically call this tactical evolution
Active Shooter Response. Throughout this article I will refer to this via the acronym for
Active Shooter / Immediate Response or ASIR, and as you see, I tend to focus on the
immediate part.
That event and the public outcry regarding police response that followed caused a shift not only in our response tactics and policies but in what we require of the law enforcement personality. Suddenly, after more than three decades of letting SWAT handle the dangerous calls, patrol officers - virtually every cop or deputy in uniform - suddenly had to have the courage and fortitude to run into the shots being fired.
Protect and Serve took on new meaning as we had to redevelop the warrior mentality where it had been sacrificed in the name of liability management.
Inevitably, as with everything else in a capitalistic society, plenty of folks perked up and found ways to make a dollar off the ASIR policy and tactics shift. Rifles were, all of a sudden, in greater demand in the patrol vehicle - ultimately in the hands of the
average patrol officer. Hot on the heels of rifles came trauma or "blow out" kits. Response vests, go bags, surplus helmets and armor... the demand for all of them, relatively speaking, sky-rocketed. I'm not innocent in this as I've written my share of articles about equipment needs, training requirements, policy evolution, etc.
What caused me to stop and type out this blog though was this thought: ASIR is all about the
immediate response. Training and policy for ASIR applies to the time that passes between the dispatched call for shots being fired in a given location, travel to that location, getting into that location, moving to the sound of shots and neutralizing the identified threat. Obviously, the smaller we make that portion of time the better we're doing and the fewer lives get lost. It occurred to me though that many of the products sold and much of the training delivered is peripheral to that main window of time and action.
What do you absolutely need to do your job of neutralizing the threat? You need a gun and bullets. You need the guts to take that gun, move to the sound of shots and put bullets into the bad guy until he ceases to be a threat. Aside from a courageous officer and a loaded weapon with which he is skilled, all else is support equipment. Does that trivialize the support equipment? Absolutely not. But it does take away some of the sales pitch.
Now, don't get me wrong. I am a firm believer that every officer running into an ASIR event should be properly equipment and
properly includes more than just a gun and ammo. It
should also include:
- a helmet and upgraded body armor
- extra ammo
- trauma supplies
- flexi-cuffs
- marking supplies (tape, marker, etc)
- door wedges
- an extra flashlight
Take a look at that list, as incomplete as it is, though and realize that many of the items are not going to be used in the main window of response, that being the
hunting phase. They will be used AFTER the found bad guy has been neutralized or by an officer who has been taken out of the fight due to injury.
I bring all this up only to emphasize this point: Borelli Rule #3:
Focus on the mission; ignore the distractions (For a full list of the Borelli Rules
go here)
The
mission is seek and neutralize. All else is peripheral. As you decide how you're going to spend your dollars or agency dollars on ASIR response equipment, don't get distracted by the gee-whiz glitzy peripheral equipment needs. Make sure you get the important stuff first and the peripheral second. Every responding officer needs a rifle, three or more spare magazines FULL of ammo for that weapon and a means of carrying that ammo. Focus on that first, then the personal protective equipment, then the self-aid / first-aid equipment and THEN all the "after the fact" stuff.
Think about it...
and then share what you think.
