Evolving Active Shooter Response

If you’ve been paying attention you’ve seen the evolution of Active Shooter response from inception in early 2000 with the common four-man diamond response to the two-man “buddy team” response to the single-officer response most often taught and used today (if your agency has caught up). It’s a compliment to all of law enforcement that the single-officer response was essentially mandated by all of the officers who said, “I’m not waiting around if I hear shots. If children are being hurt or killed, I’m going in as fast as I can get there.”

This article appeared in the March/April issue of OFFICER Magazine. Click Here to subscribe to OFFICER Magazine.

What is now being called to the forefront in active shooter incidents, most especially at schools, is the number of legally armed non-law enforcement citizens on the scene or who respond when they hear about it. Many of those citizens are or may be parents of children in the target location and they are NOT happy to hear, “Stay here. We can’t let you in.” While that’s the position law enforcement has to have, we should understand, especially if we have children of our own, that the parental instinct to protect one’s children is strong and we’re denying them (necessarily so) the ability to exercise it. But what if the armed parent is already in the school when the event starts? If they choose to take action, how do you identify them when you respond? Before you respond about those legally armed parents, teachers or other staff, consider the possibility of an off-duty officer in the school for an event involving their child(ren). Such potential realities have to be addressed and trained for. Does your policy even take such into consideration?

Consider a different scenario: What if the active shooter attacks a mall, business building, park area, etc.? In those locations, there’s a greater chance that a legally armed citizen will be in the area and choose to take defensive action. When you get to the scene, have you thought about slowing down just enough to look for armed people who aren’t presenting any aggressive or threatening behaviors?

We recently had conversation with Rob Pincus, the Executive Vice President of the Second Amendment Organization (2AO), and this was the exact topic: recognizing legally armed citizens (or off-duty officers) who are armed, weapon in hand, but NOT presenting any aggressive behaviors. This eventuality offers the perfect opportunity for agencies to engage the communities they serve in a meaningful way: clear communication and transparency of policy that increases community support while also helping increase community safety.

What is required, though, is a proactive approach to such potential event. The agency first needs to identify/ accept the possibility and evolve the existing policy accordingly. Nationwide, recent statistics show an average of one out of every seven adult citizens legally carrying (or able to) a concealed handgun. Consider the last time you were in a shopping mall or out in any public place, such as a restaurant, park, etc. and how many people were there. Now consider that one in seven statistic. If an active shooter event occurred and even 10% of those legally armed decided to act, how many potential legally armed citizens are you going to see? How do you identify the “good guys” from the ”bad guys?” It behooves the law enforcement agency to identify the behaviors that separate the two and then encourage their legally armed citizenry to seek training from organizations that deliver proven training on such behaviors (such as the Second Amendment Organization).

Those behaviors, once identified, need to be included in the agency’s training curricula and tested in carefully choreographed force-on-force training scenarios. The truest test we can experience, without being in a real life situation, is being forced to identify the behaviors and respond accordingly while using proper officer risk management skills and balancing that against protecting the public.

Make no mistake, we are NOT suggesting that any officer ignore proper survival tactics. That said, some officers we’ve interviewed have voiced the outlook that any citizens with a gun in hand at or near the scene of an active shooter event will be neutralized. That’s not an acceptable outlook, especially considering the increase in carry permits, constitutional carry states and the reality that an armed citizen is almost always first on the scene in such attacks. We should be supporting and leveraging them rather than perceiving them as potential bad guys.

Keeping all of the above in mind, when you’re developing your training scenarios, or if you’re an officer going through a force on force scenario, before you engage just any subject with a gun in hand, slow down just enough to take a look at their behavioral presentation. You should already have your gun in hand, up in your line of sight and ready to engage threats, so you’re going to win the action versus reaction race. Is their gun also up in their line of sight or is it down in a suppressed position? Are they behind cover or are they moving aggressively? Do you see a badge anywhere? Is there anyone that looks to be hiding behind them? In other words, are they in a protective position? Are they facing the sound of shots? Or are they facing away and appear to be leading people toward an exit? These behaviors may indicate that they are not a threat, are acting legally and are simply trying to escape or lead others away from the threat.

In the heat of the moment, with adrenaline sky high, screams, alarms, sirens, potentially vision inhibitors such as flashing lights, emergency lights, smoke or other impairments, it is difficult at best to slow down enough to see that person with a gun as a non-threat. We all do better if we’ve seen such situations before in training.

Listen to the Officer Roll Call Podcast on Active Shooter Response Evolution, sponsored by FirstNet: officer.com/53056136