Active Killer Response Necessities

I’m not one to toot my own horn but I’m going to do it just a bit in the course of this blog entry.  I’m going to start out way back in the year 2000, when I attended my first Active Shooter Response Instructor program. At that point I’d been a police officer (counting my military police time) for almost 19 years and an instructor for 11.  The instructor program I attended espoused – like almost every other program that existed at the time – the basic four man team using a diamond formation to make entry, move to the shooter and neutralize the threat.

Being the arrogant guy that I am (or can be), I examined the four-man diamond response model and felt that, as a standard, it was both impractical and too slow depending on the location of the incident.  Further, I felt it didn’t take into account the realistic possibility that active shooter events could take place outside of schools in places like malls and business centers. I was absolutely incensed that the response model being so widely adopted and taught not only accepted but planned for officers who were incapable of entering such a high threat environment and assigned them to stay outside, working communications.

The reason we were all taking such classes at that time was because in 1999 the Columbine High School attack had (relatively) recently occurred and the public was (understandably) upset that our current (in 1999) response tactics resulted in the loss of innocent lives while protecting the officers’.  As a military police officer I had taken an oath.  As a police officer in the civilian world, I had taken a similar oath.  I took my oath seriously.  As a parent, I couldn’t fathom the concept of staying someplace safe while a bad guy (or multiple bad guys) hunted children – mine or any other. In virtually every active shooter response course I’ve taught, or presentation I’ve made ever since, I’ve said the same thing to every law enforcement professional in attendance:  If you get dispatched to an active shooter event and find it on-going when you respond, if you don’t have the gumption to gear up and go into that situation with the intention of hunting the bad guy and saving children, then you have no business wearing a badge.  Find a new profession.  It’s not only a part of the job, but I view it as a moral imperative that we not only accept that risk but EMBRACE that risk if it draws the risk to US – those who are better protected and at least armed to fight back – and away from the innocent children.

The other thing I incorporated into my training, when I was asked to deliver it, was the concept of buddy teams and single-officer entries.  I knew from the outset that not every jurisdiction was going to have the luxury of waiting for four officers to arrive before they entered.  I felt that two was far more realistic – albeit a lot less safe for the officers involved – and in some cases, one was all that was going to show up in the first fifteen or twenty minutes.  I taught buddy-team entry using a basic two-man team and then using TWO buddy-teams as the four man diamond when it was available.  I would discuss the single-officer option because, in most cases, I KNEW a few of the officers in the class I was teaching and I KNEW those officers wouldn’t slow down upon arrival – not to wait for anyone or anything.  I KNEW that if they showed up and someone was inside a school shooting, that officer was going as fast as s/he could travel to the threat, to neutralize it without hesitation.  The single-officer response wasn’t a protocol anyone ever actually taught at that point; it was simply recognition of the defender spirit some officers embraced.

In 2003 Tom Clancy released a book and in it the terrorists attacked a mall.  Using small team tactics, they entered and started hunting all the citizens therein.  As I felt that Clancy’s books had already offered up at least one idea for an attack (Debt of Honor detailed how a pilot used a jetliner to crash into the Capital building in DC), I also felt that it might be a good idea for us to prepare for terrorists who took an idea from another one of his books.  As a result, in 2003 I started to preach that we should begin preparing our active shooter response protocols for response to small unit terrorist attacks as well.  After all, four 5-man terrorist teams had, just a couple years before, committed the worst terrorist attack on our nation that we’d ever experienced.  I also began to hint that we needed better emergency medical care training and equipment for EVERY officer on the street.  As one friend of mine put it: every officer should have two trauma kits – one for making the trauma and one for treating it.

In 2004 the Beslan Middle School terrorist siege occurred in Russia.  It was glaringly obvious that our active shooter response tactics, if practiced at the onset, would have done nothing but get a lot of people killed. It was equally obvious that there wasn’t much we could do about that.  The Russian military was used to retake the Beslan Middle School and even then, they had to use a tank to blow a hole in a wall to make entry.  Although the event didn’t change any of our protocols for response to active shooter, it DID bring home the fact that, by our FBI’s definition, terrorism is a CRIME in this nation and, as such, the law enforcement response will be the only response short of martial law being declared.  The biggest lesson learned for us that impacted our active shooter response protocols was that once the fight was engaged, there was no backing out or disengaging.  Once you were in the fight, you were there for as long as it might take.  Sure, it might be over in three shots or less.  Then again, it might be a fight against multiple shooter teams and you might be in it for hours.  Take plenty of ammo, plan for resupply and make sure your response kit included hydration.  People looked at me funny when I started including that in my active shooter response courses.  It forced them to see a potential reality that they were more comfortable not considering.

Then in 2007 I was part of a team that debriefed the first responders at Virginia Tech after Cho killed 32 people there.  The law enforcement responders there were (and are) to be commended.  They were on scene within two minutes.  Unfortunately, because of Cho’s planning and preparation, it took another four minutes for the officers to make entry.  Another lesson was learned: we needed to adjust our plans to include breaching.  SWAT medics on scene saved several lives after the threat had been neutralized and that intensified my belief that ALL officers should be receiving more advanced emergency medical treatment skills.

Then in 2008, the terrorist attacks in Mumbai occurred; multiple teams in multiple locations.   I HATED being proved right but I’d been preaching that we needed to adjust our strategies for multiple terrorist teams attacking in multiple locations since… go back and look… 2003 – five years earlier.  The movement caught on and tactical entities across the nation began teaching protocols for response to such events.  About two months ago, in San Bernardino, we saw an active shooter event that wasn’t in a school and was committed by a religious fanatic (terrorist event).  I hate being right but I’m glad it was a single shooter team in a single location and not multiples (can you imagine how much the main stream media would have loved that?).

Now I’m going to make my last (for today) observation about active shooter / mass killing events:

We in the United States are unique in our ability to carry a sidearm.  The 2^nd Amendment recognizes our God-given right to be armed for the purpose of insuring our freedom.  Even as the gun control debate continues to rage across the country, the laws governing how and when citizens can carry a gun have steadily moved in favor of the armed citizen for about ten years now.  Estimates show more armed citizens out and about day to day now than there have been since (probably) the 1950s (per capita).  We cannot expect those armed citizens to simply run and hide if / when another terrorist attack occurs in a public place.  The armed citizen will shoot back.  As much as we law enforcement professionals would like for them to run or hide, we have to realize and accept that those legally armed Americans often feel the same commitment to resisting and overcoming an unlawful attack as we do.  They will shoot back.  Many of them, as military or law enforcement veterans, will use excellent tactics in doing so.  The largest majority of them won’t be immediately identifiable as “good guys.”

This is an unfortunate reality that was must accept and even embrace.  It means slowing down enough to analyze a situation before we engage a target.  It means understanding and accepting – whether we like it or not – that our fellow Americans will be engaging in the fight against bad guys with us.  They already are anyway, it just doesn’t happen in so glaringly a manner.  Good guys with guns are resisting crime and fighting back all across our nation.  It isn’t news in the mainstream media because there’s no sensationalism to be sold in it.  Honest, law abiding citizens have been our country’s first line of defense for centuries and they do it well.  Want an example?  Take a look at Flight 93 on September 11, 2001.  That was the response of American citizens who refused to be victims.

We as law enforcement professionals need to avoid being drawn into the debate about firearms, gun control, etc.  We need to accept that Americans are armed in greater numbers now than they have been in the past generation or two (or three).  We need to recognize that there’s nothing wrong with that.  Those citizens – the large majority of legally armed Americans – have pledged to help us if we need it.  They are committed to law and order and we have no easy way to recognize or identify them. They don’t wear uniforms. They don’t have a badge or star pinned on.  Even if they did, the bad guys would adapt and do the same thing in an attempt to confuse us or slow us down.  The bad guys are ALWAYS evolving their tactics in an effort to acquire more casualties.

So, what do we do?  As best we can we get to know our citizens.  We vet the ones we can and welcome them into combined training sessions where we identify areas of concern, basic response protocols and expected behaviors to minimize “good on good” shootings. We, on the front lines, stop arguing politics and start prioritizing efficient response using every tool available – and that includes the legally armed American citizen.

As a friend of mine has said time and time again: terrorists don’t fear America.  They fear Americans.  The strength of America isn’t her government; it’s the citizens that comprise her. It behooves us not to work against each other. We have enough enemies.  And the reality is this: it goes back to what I was preaching in 2003 - If we structure our training to battle terrorist teams in the streets then neutralizing a couple of school shooters gets an awful lot easier.

Stay safe.