Active Shooter Response Training
Frank Borelli
Editor-in-Chief
Officer.com
Be warned: I’m getting up on my soapbox. As one of the few “outside” officers who responded to the tragedy at Virginia Tech last spring, and as a trainer for Active Shooter/Immediate Response tactics, I try to pay attention to spree shooting events such as the recent one in Illinois. What amazes me still, and prompted me to write this blog entry, was how training with regard to such events seems to be losing focus.
What do I mean? The Active Shooter / Immediate Response (AS/IR) training boom started after the public outcry in reaction to the police response at Columbine. All over the country agencies began training their officers in AS/IR. There were a couple of issues with the level of training delivered, but we all know law enforcement is predominantly reactive in nature. We trained sufficiently to address the public outcry.
Columbine was in 1999. Contemporary response tactics would have been fantastic if they’d been used at Columbine. They WERE used at Virginia Tech and Cho still managed to kill 30 people in Norris Hall. This was in no way the fault of the police response. You don’t get a better response than two fully equipped SWAT Teams on scene in approximately two minutes. Still, the VA Tech event demonstrated that we probably need to evolve our outlook and tactics again.
With all that in mind I had to wonder if we’re even keeping up on the “standard” AS/IR training. So, I posted the poll question on the Officer.com homepage. The question was, “When did you last have Active Shooter / Immediate Response training?” As I type this, 441 answers / votes have been posted. Here’s the breakdown:
1% had attended AS/IR training within the past 30 days.
9% had attended AS/IR training within the past 90 days.
18% had attended AS/IR training within the past six months.
22% had attended AS/IR training within the past year.
17% had attended AS/IR training within the past three years.
10% attended AS/IR training more than three years ago (which means it’s been three to eight years)
19% have never had AS/IR training at all.
There is some good and bad information in those numbers. I am heartened to see that 10% of the recipients have had AS/IR training in the past 90 days.
It surprises me and makes me proud in my profession to see that a full 50% have had AS/IR training within the past year.
That’s all the good news.
The other side of the coin is that 29% of the respondents either haven’t ever had AS/IR training or have had it more than three years ago. That’s a scary statistic and I’ll tell you why: our country suffered more Active Shooter events in the past two years (2006 & 2007) than we did in the previous ten years (1995-2005) combined. The number of Active Shooter events each year seems to be accellerating - while we focus our training on other things.
I encourage you - if you’re not in that top 50% who have received AS/IR training in the past year - to seek it out. Read about it. Learn the history of it and use your experience and imagination to develop new response tactics. Discuss those with veteran officers, instructors, tactical officers, etc. Make this a topic of discussion that doesn’t go away. Why? Because one day it may be YOUR CHILD’s life that you save. Beyond that: we ALL took an oath that involved protecting those who can’t protect themselves. We should take that oath seriously. Do you?
Frank I could not agree with you more about the seriousness of AS/IR training. It is one of those things where we all think “oh, it won’t happen here”, and then it does. I am the training Capt at the Atlantic City Police Dept in NJ. I just took over training in Nov. 2007 and promised that one of the first blocks of instruction would be the AS/IR. We last had this training app. 4 years ago. We are starting our first round of training on Feb 20, 2008 during our Spring In-Service training. I plan to continue doing this training every 3rd In-Service session which would mean the officers are getting refreshers every 18 months. I know that it is just a matter of time before we have an incident here and my bet is that it will be in a foiled robbery attempt at one of the 13 casinos. Keep up the good work.
We at the largest community college system in the nation are starting to try and get some training through our state DPS, is there any suggestions that I should look at to make it the best possible training?
Involve as many people from the involved communities as you can. Make it as realistic as your time and budget will allow. Pull in some folks from allied agencies to evaluate it start to finish. Reach out to folks like the NTOA and other tactical associations to assist you with structure and topics.
As a training officer, I certainly endorse the use of AS/IR training for all PD’s. The change that needs to happen is the base concept. Action always beats reaction. PD’s need to focus efforts on interdiction and encourage target hardening of public places. Without that commitment, you might as well sit back and watch the news for the next incident.
Frank, I am a former police officer and currently work armed security for a county in Arizona and we patrol and respond to alarms and 911 calls within the county complex that includes 7 adminstrative buildins with nearly 1000 employees and public visitors a day as well as both adult and juvenile probation departments, a large juvenile court complex and we are surrounded by 4 different county jail complexes housing well over a 1000 prisoners. Essentially our function is first responders and perform most police functions for these locations. I know our administration will say that AS/IR training is not needed since the majority of the active shooters lately are school shootings - So I am wondering if you have any info on work-place active shooters at locations other than just schools and universities or if you can point me in the right direction. Thank you in advance, and keep up the great work - I look forward to reading your articles!
I am an active shooter/ Rapid response intructor. I’m shocked to see how many universities aren’t trained to standard in active shooter.Eight hours is not enough training. I don’t believe any of these universites have recertification. My agency,is not even close to being prepared if an active shooter incident occurs . If an active shooter situation occurs, I want the officers that arrive to know what they are doing. Especially when it comes to tactics.
It’s bad enough there’s a bad guy or guys killing people on the inside , but it’s really bad when you have officers that arrive and we are not on the same sheet of music.
Remember piss poor planning, promotes piss poor performance, piss poor performance, promotes pain.
My department refuses to send anyone to active shooter training. For being a suburb with 50 thousand people living in it, you would think they would spare the money aand time. But their budgets matter much more than peoples lives apartently. Now that my complaining is done, I would like to address my opinion of active shooters and police responce. As you said in the article, more effective active shooter training would have made a differance in the case of Columbine. The shooting went on for 47 minutes in that incident before they took their own lives. However, it did not make a differance at Virginia Tech. The fact of the matter is, the “gun free zones” of America have turned out to be the places where the most blood has spilled in recent years, forming my opinion that preventing private citizens from defending themselves is doing nothing but causing more harm than good. The reality is, even with an excellent police response the shooter with the proper plan, weapons and location selection can kill dozens before the police arrive. Most of these nuts know that the police are coming quicker than they used to so they plan for this. Am I correct in saying that the Virginia Tech shooter chained some of the doors to slow the police responce? I will tell you what, if I am a patrol officer with no breaching tools, I am going to be completly ineffective when it comes to a situation like that. Only lending to the thought that people are going to have to defend themselves. I hate to say it, but the citizens as a whole are going to have to step up and make these guys pay a quick and immediate price if they are going to walk into a school and shoot innocents. Unfortunately, universitys are liberal dominated, meaning the people have no fighting spirit and will generally lay down to be lambs for the slaughter when confronted with a lethal situation. So this is going to go on until people step up and defend themselves. The fact is, the police will risk their lives to save people, but they will not be there to hold your hand when the shooting starts.