My take on active shooters is easy. They are cowards who have decided they wish to end their own lives, but they also want a taste of fame on the way out. Their cowardice is exemplified by those they use to take their last stands: They attack innocent, unarmed people. Active shooters are terrorists who have allowed the everyday pressures of life we all face to turn them into killers. They don’t take on authority. They don’t take on armed resistance. They kill unsuspecting people—college kids, moviegoers, children—anyone who won’t pose a threat.
I don’t have much good to say about active shooters. I’m sure our society has changed in some way that has caused an increase in the frequency of these people, but that doesn’t excuse their actions. On my best day, Ol’ Bullethead is about as close to understanding what motivates these people as I am to wanting to get hit with a Taser (again). They are obviously lost—socially, morally and psychologically—and I hope the smart people figure out something soon to stem the tide of these people. But until they do stop showing up, we must all be ready and willing to put ourselves between them and their targets.
At my agency we train for active shooters on a fairly regular basis. The training takes many forms. Once a month our SWAT team takes a group of officers out and puts them through the training. We do this about 20 officers at a time, and when we get through the whole department we start over. The training cycle takes a while, but we touch a few officers from each area of the department on a regular basis. I hope they return to their units and at least discuss what they have been through so everyone keeps being exposed to the training at a minimal level on a regular basis.
We train using scenarios and Simunitions and cover each officer’s duty and responsibility for these incidents from soup to nuts. We cover everything from single-officer response to full contact and rescue teams. We do our best to discuss responses to everything from Beslan right down to just some freak who lost it and went active shooter at the local grocery store. Active shooter is also a topic covered in our patrol roll calls on a monthly basis. During roll calls, the sergeants discuss various types of responses. They generally cover the standard four-officer response and options for one- to three-officer responses as well.
Recently, our SWAT team started working with our fire department on teaching them how to respond to active-shooter incidents. The national trend is for firefighter/paramedics to enter active-shooter incidents, with cops in a force protection role for the medics.
This has been some interesting training. On the good side, we have a better relationship with our fire department than we’ve had in a long time. There’s been a serious learning curve on both sides. Overall, this shows a split objective from what many of us are familiar with. As cops, our objective has always been to put down the shooter as quickly as possible. This meant that if we had to put out multiple contact teams we would. These teams would hunt for the nut job until they found him or her and eliminate them to stop the killing.
Eventually we realized that if we had an idea of where the shooter was and enough cops there, we could send one or two contact teams after the threat and the rest could start to rescue victims by dragging them out to a safe area. My guess is someone from the medic side decided we’d be better off bringing medics into the area to triage patients right on scene. The idea is for medics to stop sucking chest wounds, arterial bleeding and other severe issues to preserve life for victims.
It’s a great idea. In my city we still need to work out the details, but the bottom line is we have dual priorities: Put down the threat to stop the killing and save as many who have already been hurt as possible.
The worst thing about active shooters is that no matter how often you train, I suspect none of us will ever be ready to deal with one as if it were a routine call. It will be complete chaos surrounded by horror. Training will help us to continue to develop tactics and to be as ready as we are able. Active shooters are an increasing threat we all must take seriously so we will be ready if we’re ever called upon to act—and that means you.
