The deadly phase of an active shooter on your campus is over in the first four to eight minutes, statistically before the police can arrive and deploy.
This means your faculty, staff and employees are the first responders.
Every active shooter response I review is fatally flawed because each one misses essential procedures for you and your people during these first four to eight minutes.
An active shooter incident will unfold at lightning speed in terrifying conditions. As every veteran will tell you, you respond the way you’ve been trained.
Untrained, you and your people will freeze or panic. Yet you need to go further than planning and training.
Why you need to exercise your active shooter response
You need to exercise your response to determine if your planning and training stuck.
Just as airline pilots test how they respond to emergencies in a simulator, you need to test how you and your people will respond to an active shooter in a tabletop simulation, or exercise.
A tabletop exercise is how you address the fatal flaw in your active shooter response. This is how you can save lives and protect your campus.
Here’s what your active shooter response should address
Phase 1: Active shooter is spotted on your campus
You need procedures for:
- Who calls 911, what to say, and staying on the line with the dispatcher
- Alerting all faculty, staff and employees to the threat
- How they respond to protect students and themselves
- Training faculty, staff and employees in their response so they don’t waste time thinking, they immediately respond
Phase 2: Police arrive as the official responders
You need procedures for:
- Immediately briefing the police incident commander on the run about the shooter’s location and where your people are
- Taking police orders and instantly relaying those orders to faculty, staff, employees and students
- How to command and control the rest of your campus as circumstances unfold
Test your plan with a customized tabletop exercise
We’ll conduct an on-site tabletop exercise customized for your campus and active shooter response.
What you gain from your customized tabletop exercise:
- All participants are immersed in a simulation of an active shooter loose on your campus as the incident unfolds, confronting dozens of rapid-fire decisions—including those with deadly consequences
- You and your top people grasp all that you must do before the police can arrive
- You understand the role of the police and what they will need from you
- You will affirm the parts of your response that are solid
- You will uncover elements of your response that have holes
- You will be able to update your active shooter response and re-train your people to save lives and protect your campus
Would you fly with pilots who never spent time in the simulator testing their response to failed engines, severe weather, emergency landings and other catastrophes?
Would you allow your child to fly with those pilots?
Let’s address the fatal flaw in your active shooter response in a tabletop exercise—before you face the real thing. To learn more about how we can customize one for your campus, without any obligation, contact us:
- Call 203.563.9999
- Email me (put “Active Shooter TTX” in the subject field), or
- Fill out and submit this confidential form:
We’ll be in touch ASAP. Let’s be careful out there.
Bo Mitchell
CEM, CPP, CBCP, CHS-V, CSI-ML, HSEEP, IAC, MOAB, CHSP, CHEP, CSHM, CESCO, CHCM, CFC, CSSM, CSC, CAS, TFCT3, CERT, CMC
President