Active Shooter Response For Police
Columbine 04/20/99, Utah Mall Shooting 02/07, Virginia Tech Massacre 04/16/07. These are all active shooter situations where armed subject(s) enter a public place to murder as many people as possible. These incidents have become more common in our society and it is the Patrol Officer who will be first on scene and may have to confront heavily armed suspect(s). Hopefully your agency has developed training and procedures for responding to active shooter situations. These situations are extremely dangerous for the responding Officer(s) because by the time we arrive, the scene is chaotic and information is usually limited and basic.
Obviously you will want to adhere to your department’s procedures if you find yourself responding to one of these situations during your career. The importance of a fast and rapid response by Officers cannot be stressed enough when talking about an active shooter situation. Officers must respond rapidly and and move to eliminate the threat immediately and without hesitation. We have to remember that as we are responding to one of these situations people are being killed and our quick response and action could save many lives.
Even if the suspect(s) commit suicide before we arrive, our rapid response into the shooting scene will allow us to render life-saving first aid and allow for the deployment of more highly trained medical first responders to treat the wounded. These are not situations where we setup a perimeter and wait for the Swat Team. Swat will be used if we can contain the active shooter(s) in a specific location where they are trapped or if hostages are taken.
The ideal situation would be for 2-4 Officers to arrive at the scene and then form a fire-team to deploy into the active shooter area.A fire-team is simply a group of Officers working together as a single unit to complete a required task. It makes sense that 2-4 Officers working together will be more capable of dealing with an active shooter than a single Officer. A 4 Officer fire-team is ideal because the 3rd Officer will protect the rear as your team moves around the shooting scene.
If I was the first Officer on the scene of an active shooter I would wait for the next Officer or Officers to arrive before deploying into the shooting scene. A team needs a leader so it would make sense for the most experienced Officer or highest ranking Officer to be the leader. If a member of your team happens to be a Swat or Tactical Officer then he becomes the leader for obvious reasons. Because we are in rapid-response mode we want to form up quickly and then deploy into the shooting scene.
With a 4 man fire-team I would want a minimum of 2 Officers with long guns and a subgun if available. Because most active shooter situations are in confined areas like school buildings & officer buildings, compact weapons like mp5’s, short barrel shotguns, and handguns are ideal. I carry a short barrel pistol-grip shotgun and I love it for close quarter combat scenarios. It gives me the knock down power but affords me the ability to crawl, climb, jump, and run around with ease.
It is ideal to have someone with a long gun like an an-15 because you may need someone to take a distance shot or you may encounter someone with body armor. Think of your fire-team as a mini swat team and remember that Swat Teams bring an assortment of weapons and equipment for good reason.
I wont get into any specifics on tactics for a 2-4 man fire-team because this is something that needs to be taught in person in a live action setting. As a fire-team you stay together and do not get separated unless absolutely necessary. It may become necessary to split the team in two if you have the suspect(s) pinned down and you need to perform a flanking move. You may also need to split the team up if you come across injured victims who need to be removed from the scene.
As you and your team begin to deploy into the shooting scene you will hopefully have more intelligence being relayed to you by dispatch. Survivors will have escaped to safety by now and will have called 911 with suspect(s) descriptions and direction of travel. You will also encounter witnesses who you can quickly interview for intelligence on the movement of the suspect(s).
It also obviously important to communicate with dispatch and other Officers so that you can coordinate your movement with other fire-teams that may also be deploying into the area. Several fire-teams converging on an active shooter can mean a very quick end to the threat. Always keep in mind that there may be more than 1 active shooter even though initial reports indicated only one. It is also important to remember that an active shooter could possible ditch his weapon(s) and attempt to flee the area by acting as an innocent victim. This is the reason that you saw so many kids being forced to walk single file with their hands on their heads during the Columbine shootings.
Every active shooter situation is unique and has different elements that will require different methods and tactics. The key things that I am trying to stress is that it is imperative that we respond quickly and we deploy into the shooting scene with other Officers and a team so that we can safely & quickly eliminate the threat(s) and save lives. Police departments must train for these situations so that their Officers will be prepared in the event that one of these dangerous situations happen in their city. It is unfortunate that we will be seeing more and more of these active shooter situations in the future but with proper training and equipment we can end these quickly and save lives in the process.
Author is a current Police Officer with 18 years of experience & webmaster at http://www.monsterswatmonkey.com which is a Law Enforcement Community Site.
Tags: crime, law, law enforcement, officer, police, police officer, police tactics, swat, swat team