I work in a nondescript multi-story county building in a university city in the United States. People have mistaken our building for everything from a hotel to a bank to a suite of medical offices. We don’t have children on-site (like a school does); we don’t have rows and rows of people sitting quietly (like a movie theater does); we don’t have any religious affiliation (like a house of worship does). But one day not long ago, we all had to attend a half-day of “Active Shooter Training” led by officers from the county sheriff’s department, because — to quote one of the officers — the mindset we should all have is “Not if, but when.”
The first hour of training consisted of a PowerPoint presentation highlighting some of the “big name” school shootings: Columbine. Virginia Tech. Sandy Hook. And now, Umpqua Community College. The police officers who led our training said that the Columbine Shooting was “the B.C./A.D. line” in terms of public awareness. I am old enough to remember what going to school was like both before and after Columbine, and how some things that were allowed Before were not allowed After.
After Columbine came Virginia Tech. The officers said this was how they knew that the “bad guys” were stepping up their game in response to police officers’ changing tactics. Pre-Columbine, police officers would surround the location and await backup. Post-Columbine, they rush to the shooter and attempt to engage. So what happened at Virginia Tech? The shooter used a chain to secure the doors from the inside, requiring the police to spend five crucial minutes finding the equipment they needed to break through.
During the discussion on Sandy Hook, one of the officers told us that he was married to a teacher. Every officer at the training mentioned the ages of his children, or grandchildren. The officer in charge of the PowerPoint said, “I can’t imagine what those teachers go through. You’re all adults, you can look out for yourselves. But running a drill — or, god forbid, the real thing — with 30 little kids? They’re like puppies. How can you control 30 first- or second-graders?” He seemed close to saying something radical at that point, but then composed himself and moved on.
I had honestly expected there to be a segment devoted to identifying potential shooters, but there wasn’t. At the airport, we’re all asked “Has anyone unknown to you approached you or asked you to carry something in your luggage?” Maybe I expected to hear “Look out for people carrying multiple duffle bags” or “Unseasonable clothing could conceal weapons and ammunition” or even “The majority of these shooters have been young white able-bodied men” at the training. One of the police officers did start a sentence with “When these mentally ill people…,” at which point I interrupted him.
“Sir, please stop,” I said. “Please do not lay this at the feet of people who are mentally ill. I have a mental illness. It’s not people with mental illness, it’s people with guns.”
There was a moment of silence. “Okay, thank you,” he said, and quickly moved along.
The second hour of the presentation focused on tactics. Everybody knows to get out of the building if there’s a fire, but the default procedure for virtually everything else used to be to stay put and await further instructions. The officers said this led to more casualties at Virginia Tech. Students lined the halls as if it were a tornado warning. In drills run at schools and universities, students would often ignore the emergency exits and attempt to flee via the main doors of a building, because the only possible use for the emergency doors, in most peoples’ minds, is a fire.
Now the first option the police officers want people to consider during a shooting is to get out of the building by any means possible. A junior employee asked the more senior employees if the windows on the upper stories could be broken with a chair. No one had a good answer. Everyone started looking at the stairs and doors and elevators — how many of us could fit? Who would trample whom?
The police officers then said that if we were trapped in the building with no opportunity to flee, the best option was to shelter in place. Improvise barricades with office furniture. Lock doors if possible, but don’t leave the key in the door. The average shooter wants to kill as many people with as little resistance as possible, so if a couple of solid kicks to the door are ineffective, he’ll likely move on. Which, when you think about it, amounts to “Get the shooter to ignore you and look for someone else to kill.”
Next the officers advised us in improvised weaponry, which is a fancy way of saying “Throw anything that isn’t bolted down.” They said that even with all their years of training, when someone starts throwing small objects at them, it’s very distracting. The average shooter is anticipating stationary targets he can spray with bullets, but if he is suddenly being pelted from all sides with staplers and shoes, he may become disoriented or even flee. Luckily for us, I suppose, there’s no shortage of small, throwable objects within reach at my workplace.
The last half-hour or so was devoted to a simulated scenario during which an officer would fire blank bullets inside our building. People were divided into groups and staggered around the building to recreate an average day, with both staff and visitors going about their typical activities. I elected to stay in an open area near the entrance, which is where many people might be waiting for appointments on a typical day. An officer later pointed out to me, “Anyone in this area is probably dead.”
The officers warned us what would happen. We all knew that the whole point of active shooter training was to hear and understand what gunfire would sound like in our building.
And then it started. Down the hallway, I could hear the “shooter” kicking in doors, screaming “I’ll kill you all!” and firing repeatedly. Some of my coworkers nearby fled into an open office. I curled up in my seat with my head down. I imagined sitting here, as I often do, reading a book before I clock in, or just looking out the window.
The shots kept coming, getting louder. It smelled like blown-out birthday candles. I was frozen. I didn’t think to reach for my phone. I couldn’t bend down to pull off my shoe. I was rooted to my spot, just waiting.
“Recover! Recover! Recover!” shouted an officer, the signal that it was all over.
Everyone came out of hiding, one by one, and recounted the methods they had tried when the shooting began. One group barricaded themselves in a supply closet. Another group improvised a counter-attack – one person climbed on top of a stack of chairs and was ready to brain the “shooter” with a potted plant. A more senior staff member openly admitted he had made for the roof access ladder hidden in the electrical room, and wasn’t concerned for anyone but himself.
The officers urged us to keep discussing tactics and to remain vigilant. “Remember,” they said, “it’s not if, it’s when. And if it’s not here, it might be when you’re out at a restaurant, or visiting your grandma at the hospital, or picking up your kids at school.”
When it was all over, I thought back to something one of the officers had said about fire drills: Thanks to the ubiquity of fire drills, we haven’t lost a child to a fire in a school since 1956. I doubt there’s anyone under the age of 35 in this country who doesn’t know the phrase “Stop, drop, and roll!”
But I don’t think the lack of children dying in school fires is due solely to the effectiveness of the drills we run. I think it probably also has something to do with better building materials that don’t catch on fire as often, and more exits, and fewer staircases, and more fire extinguishers, and telling children all the time, “Don’t play with fire.” Despite the fact that matches and lighters are available for a dollar or less at every gas station from coast to coast, a gas station employee would probably think twice before selling a lighter to a 10-year-old.
Arson does happen, of course. But no one seems to be suggesting that church fires or clinic fires are the new normal — that it’s not a matter of if, but when the next one happens. There’s no outcry from some “open torch” group. People who carry lighters around because they smoke cigarettes, people who build the occasional campfire or bonfire won’t get touchy and defensive. Everyone seems to accept that fire can and should be regulated.
I don’t know. I’m not an expert, obviously. I’m just a low-level county employee in a university town who punched in to work one day and got paid for three hours of Active Shooter Training. Maybe this will eventually become a certification that has to get renewed every couple of years, like our First Aid training. Maybe there’s even a teacher out there who has made up a catchy slogan to go along with “Stop, drop, and roll” to help their students remember what to do: “Throw a book, flip a chair, don’t look back, get out of there.”
was working. now, crying.
I am a teacher. My high school faculty has been through three active shooter drills in the last year. My entire department has been “killed” twice. I personally “sacrificed” myself to call the lockdown on the PA system in drill #3, only to discover during the debriefing that I “died” in vain because my announcement was incomprehensible.
Everything you said here is true, and yes, much scarier when you imagine doing it with students (which we have not, at this point). We think of schools as very mundane institutions, and in many ways this is accurate. We go to our buildings every day and we do things that are, in many ways, predictable and regimented. Everyone has been in a school at some point, and they mostly feel like they understand how schools work. Mostly they’re right. We aren’t conducting secret secret rituals in the teachers’ lounge.
Nothing else in my personal and professional experience has demonstrated the difficulty of communicating the mechanics and the minutiae of how schools work like an active shooter drill does.
I appreciated the depth of detail in this piece. I did an active shooter training at a museum some years ago–without acting out the scenarios, but with video footage of Columbine, which has remained with me to this day.
What I remember from the tactics is to separate and hide. Lock and barricade doors (there was no mention of going outside), turn off the lights, don’t move, don’t talk. Hide alone and your odds of survival improve.
This differs somewhat from your experience, which makes me wonder. Were our instructions tailored for our immense, labyrinthine museum building? Or have Active Shooter Best Practices changed over time? Are mine out of date? Maybe getting a regularly renewed license is not the worst response.
I had the training in 2013 in a converted office building (now a museum), and our instructions were much the same. If you’re in one of the open areas where the galleries are, run. If you’re not? stay and play dead, basically, with locked doors and lights off and NOT directly in front of a door or window in case bullets come through.
Since I’m front-end and work with visitors, and also my desk is in front of giant plate glass windows facing both a courthouse and city hall, most of what I remember from the training is about hiding under my desk if someone’s on the street, so I’m protected from shattered glass (that is, if i don’t have time to run into our basement or out the back door), or running out into the street as fast as possible to flag down one of the cops. 😛
The biggest takeaway, though, was to have a plan in place, so that if something does happen – a fire, shooter, fed courthouse bomb – we aren’t completely frozen. Whether you’re told to hide or to run, just knowing what to do is better than going around in circles. Having the plan will help keep you calm, which will help you make better split-second decisions.
dang, such a great piece of writing – the comparison to fire drills is great in a lot of ways. I remember being a nervous lil kid who always got scared at fire drills and worried more than necessary about fires as a result, and I hate thinking about that kid, now, having to handle shooter drills…
Reading this from the UK and just wow, guys, wow. I hope the tide is finally beginning to turn on the idea that this might not be normal.
The trouble is, I’m not sure the tide is turning. My 7 year old nephew does drills in school for these things and… no one else seems to be too upset that we’re having to teach small children what to do in a mass shooting. It’s scary, how routine it becomes.
I’m a child therapist and I’ve been seeing several kids who are having phobias about going to schools due to fear of school shootings and lockdown drills. It’s so sad.
I am really grossed out that I read this article and was like “Yep. This is a thing that happens in the world now,” when I know perfectly well it doesn’t happen everywhere, in fact, I believe it rarely happens in developed countries other than the US.
I have so much rage about how we’ve just accepted this as our lot now, and as the lot of our children and grandchildren (because, realistically, it’s probably going to take generations to reduce the amount of firepower in this country). So much rage.
Actually, while I don’t have any starts to back it up, I wonder if this kind of active resistance training will eventually serve as a deterrent to would-be mass shooters. After all, the kind of people who shoot up schools or movie theaters are basically cowards, looking for the least amount of resistance possible.
I’m sure it would take years but I think a shift I’m thinking can take place (also a change in the way we talk about mass shootings, ESPECIALLY on the news). If we can convince your neighborhood sociopath that the local elementary school is NOT full of helpless would-be victims, but empowered individuals who will straight up throw a stapler at your head, MAYBE he will think twice.
(also Gavin De Becker points out we should stop using the full names of mass shooters on the news but that’s a whole other discussion)
We had a new active shooter component added to our annual safety training this year. This video was part of the training and it made me cry.
Really well written piece, thanks.
We just had to watch the LA County Sheriff’s Department one just this week during a faculty meeting. I thought I was going to be sick. (Not linking here; it’s easy enough to find on YouTube.)
I just completed Active Shooter Training (I am on the faculty at a community college). There is a snappy new slogan, if you are interested. “Run, Hide, Fight.”
this is the slogan at least one government agency supplies in its (web-based) active shooter training, as well.
I work at a Federal agency in DC; this is the gist of the training we have been given, too. I used to mock the “if all else fails, throw the desk lamp at him” advice, so it’s interesting to hear there’s actual logic behind that. They also reinforced that we shouldn’t try to interact with law enforcement who are running in as we are running out; as someone below said, they’re there to stop the shooter, not rescue victims. We’ve never had a re-enactment, though; I’m not sure quite how I’d handle being shot at, even with blanks.
I work at a major hospital and literally just watched the Run Hide Fight video an hour ago as part of my yearly “employee education” training, so this is an eerily timely piece to read.
This is the one that I have been trained on, too. At my old company we had the training shortly after an employee was let go for threatening another with a knife; we were genuinely afraid that he would come back and try something.
I work in a school, and just had two hours of mandatory ALICE training – basically what’s described here, but specific to school settings. I expected it to be by turns boring and terrifying (I have school age kids and really don’t want to think about that) but instead it was fascinating. The social science nerd in me eats up statistics like the fact that we haven’t had a school fire fatality in decades; or the fact that something like 96% of school shooters work alone. What really struck me, though, was how the instructor kept emphasizing the fact that there is NOT a single, pre-scripted list of instructions the way there might be for a lockdown or a fire drill. Rather, the adults in the school are to consider themselves empowered to make on-the-ground decisions. If you think you can evacuate, by all means evacuate; if not, barricade your classroom in the way that makes the most sense, whether it’s piling desks or wrapping an extension cord around a scissor hinge (genius); if a shooter still gets in, yeah, straight up throw books at him. Also, the PA system in our schools has been changed so that ANYONE (even a lowly lunch lady like me) can immediately alert the whole school. Basically, it was all about the idea that we don’t wait for the principal or the cops to TELL us what to do, we make a decision based on our available knowledge and we go with it. (A bad decision is still miles better than no decision.) And hey, empowering individuals to think and act for themselves in emergency situations is EXACTLY what Amanda Ripley wrote about in “The Unthinkable.”
The school fire analogy is interesting.
The reason there haven’t been any school fire fatalities in the US in decades isn’t because we drill – although that might have helped in a small number of cases. It’s because the 1908 Lake View School fire in Collinwood, OH was so horrific that communities changed the way they built schools.
oh, I think it’s fascinating how many horiffic fires there were in the late 19th/early 20th century and how it did eventually change the way we build buildings. Sometimes I go disaster crazy and spend hours on Wikipedia reading about fires or ship sinkings or railway disasters (there were a TON of those when trains were new) and how these disasters led to massive innovation (like watches for railway conductors that would actually tell the right time). I know in one of the big school fires the big problem was transom windows – the thought at the time was that kids needed a lot of natural light and fresh air (and given how incredibly polluted most cities were at the time, this was a reasonable line of thinking) but they also allowed fire to spread REALLY fast.
idk I just really geek out on this stuff
I had similar training (although not with actual roleplay and shooting) and I try not to think about it too much or I’ll want to quit my job, fill all the windows in my house with concrete and never leave.
I attended a “how to identify a shooter” workshop. It was useless, as it essentially boiled down to, “It could be anyone, but look for students who are particularly stressed or withdrawn.” Thanks; that’s real helpful, especially at exam times when everyone is particularly stressed and/or withdrawn.
Related: I voluntarily took an online “course” on how to identify and talk to potentially at-risk students. It was beyond useless; it was downright counterproductive because it relied exclusively on visual stereotypes. For example, the woman with short black hair, a leather jacket, and multiple tats and piercings obviously needed an intervention because of her “counterculture appearance.” Ugh.
I’ve taken that same online course. IIRC, the girl in question *didn’t* need intervention; her appearance was a ruse.
Our school district bans black nail polish and black lipstick because … I’m not sure … they’re scary looking, I guess?
Because banning the outward expression of a feeling or attitude will ban those feelings and attitudes, obviously.
We did one this year over one of the breaks. The retired police guy who led it called it “Active Murder Training” (weird to see that on our schedule… looks like we were being trained to murder) because he was trying to drive home the point that if there is a shooter, don’t try to reason with them, they are trying to murder you. One of the major things that stuck with me was that the police (when they show up to active shooter scenes) are there to get the shooter. You have to protect yourself, they aren’t there to rescue you.
That was something that really stuck with me, too. (It was emphasized repeatedly that if you somehow manage to get the gun away from the shooter… DO NOT pick it up! Because then the police will think YOU are a shooter. We are supposed to kick it away or put a garbage can over it, instead.)
Sorry to keep harping on ‘The Unthinkable’ but one of the BIG takeaways I got from that book is that first responders aren’t actually the first responders. The REAL first responders are the people who are there when it happens.
The police guy mentioned that too–that anyone in the area can be considered a suspect so remain calm if you’re detained. Which makes sense but at the same time–you’ve been shot at, possibly watched people killed and now the police are holding you for questioning about your involvement?
Yeah, that sequence of events would *not* result in me being calm.
This came home to me when reading one of the many horrifying stories out of Paris after the attacks. A member of the police unit charged with getting into the concert hall and stopping the shooter(s) there said the team had to listen to the screams of the dying around them, because their mission was not to give first aid, it was to stop the shooter(s).
Ugh, it must have sucked for those cops to have to do that.
I used to clean offices at the building where Vermont’s last shooting was. Despite a ridiculous amount of guns and super lax restrictions, there just isn’t much in the way of violent crime. Period. Funny when it does happen though. Possibly because I went through military training, but my first reaction in any of those sorts of things is to act even when it is so, so stupid. But look at me rushing in regardless. Such a lot of training just to get to the point where you instinctively jump in and try to help instead of make like a normal person and freeze or flee.
In drills run at schools and universities, students would often ignore the emergency exits and attempt to flee via the main doors of a building, because the only possible use for the emergency doors, in most peoples’ minds, is a fire.
I’ve heard or read somewhere that in emergencies, people try to exit the same way they came in (which seems reasonable – it’s much harder, cognitively, to look around and find a new door than to just use the path you already know). Also, we usually learn to NOT use emergency exits. They’re usually off limits except when there’s an emergency. How are you supposed to even remember that the forbidden door exists just because there’s an emergency? It’s harder to think when you’re really stressed out.
That was in ‘The Unthinkable’ too. (Sorry I can’t shut up about that book but it’s really, really good.) The author recommends, among other things, counting the number of rows forward AND backward to the nearest exits when you’re on a plane because apparently that’s a huge problem in disasters – people only think to leave the way they came in.
Yep. When you’re on a plane they always remind you that the closest exit may be behind you and I do always look around to figure out where it is, but I know that most people don’t.
I never realized before this discussion that this is exactly why they say that on planes.
And I bet it’s so ingrained in me in the plane context that I’d think that way onboard. But put me someplace else, and I’d undoubtedly head for the same way I entered, instead of seeking an alternative.
“Not if, but when” is off the charts wrong, even in the US, and I actually feel it’s irresponsible to create fear in people like this? Anxiety disorders impact far more lives than random shootings. I bet they kill more people too.
I stumbled over a blog by a security expert a few days ago. There’s a lot of great articles about security and danger, and he’s really level-headed, it’s so comforting. The categories “Terrorism” and “Psychology of Security” are really helpful! Here’s a very good essay about shootings, written after the Virginia Tech shooting: https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2007/05/…
He also says that untrained laymen usually aren’t able to judge whether people are actually dangerous, so there’s no point in telling us to keep our eyes open, because random attacks are so incredibly rare that we just scare each other with paranoia.
Great article. Now I’ve got to read that whole site.
This is my objection to the “report suspicious behavior” thing that we have. Okay, sure, but if you’re not teaching us what suspicious behavior actually looks like, you get people saying “these people are speaking Arabic and that’s suspicious!”
I’m all about situational awareness, both from a safety POV and also a courtesy POV (notice when someone wants to pass you, when your bag is in someone’s way, etc), but paranoia doesn’t help any of us.
Recent Southwest Airlines news headlines, anyone?
I work in a school and we currently do the shelter in place, turn out the lights, lock the doors. Its duck and cover for the 21st century, a pointless something to do instead of dealing with guns. And a profitable boondoggle for “security experts.” I can’t tell you how enraged I am by the whole farce.
In “Active Shooter Training 202,” you learn how to foil the shooter’s plan by refusing to repeat his name in the media.
I’ve lent out my copy of ‘The Gift Of Fear’ and can’t reference it, but Gavin De Becker brings this up.
One of the BIG things that made Columbine different from other school shootings before (or after) is that EVERYONE knows the names of the two shooters. They wanted to be famous, and we as a society have unfortunately given them exactly what they want.
The phrase “active shooter” seems odd in this context. Doesn’t it refer to the status of the shooter when the police arrive? And if so, how is that relevant to people who are already there? How does an “active shooter” differ from a “shooter?” Or is this just a way of avoiding the term “gunman,” which could unfairly stigmatize men and guns (even though all of these killers have been men with guns)?
Is it too cynical of me to suspect that the only real purpose of this training is legal protection for the institutions in question? I seem to recall that parents of some Sandy Hook victims sued the city and school district for inadequate security. This way, if you are blown away at your desk, your employer can counter lawsuits by pointing out, “Well, they received the necessary training. They should have thrown more staplers.”
I think that the ‘active’ doesn’t refer to the shooter but to the would-be victims. Active resistance (evacuating if you can, making yourself a more difficult target if you can’t) is more effective than passive resistance (the traditional lockdown drills). The difference was borne out in reality with the VA Tech shooting so I don’t think it’s *just* about avoiding lawsuits.
Well, a “gunman” could simply be threatening people with a gun, and a “shooter” may only have fired one shot. An “active shooter”, to me, implies that they have fired multiple shots and are, at the moment they are being spoken of, still shooting.
We just did this, where in the second half teachers were put in the place of playing the first responders and had to decide when/if to shoot the person with the gun in the room before he could shoot anyone else. I suppose “just to see what it’s like.” Our basic takeaway was, “if you get shot by the bad guy or the police, it’s your own damn fault.” Infuriating.
the training I had hammered on the point DO NOT pick up the bad guy’s gun, for this very reason.
We were told to grab anything, even a gun if we could, to “take out” the bad guy, but to drop it if the police are there. Not sure how we are supposed to know that…
When Seattle Pacific University had a shooter, he was taken down by a brave student with pepper spray. Why don’t people advocate carrying long-range pepper spray instead of concealed guns? You don’t have to aim very well, you won’t kill someone by accident, and it’s a lot more effective than a freakin’ stapler.
When I was in 7th grade (1992), there was a shooting/hostage situation at my soon-to-be high school, Lindhurst, on the other side of the freeway. Our school went on lock down, and we were all rushed into a classroom with the lights off and the doors locked, initially goofing off because we had no idea what was going on. We had to wait until our parents came and signed us out. One teacher and three students were killed, and like 80 students were held hostage all day.
Sometimes when people talk about how there have been so many shootings since Columbine, I feel like this one was forgotten. It was before social media and cell phones and crazy news coverage (I’m old!), but I don’t know. I don’t even know what to say, so I usually don’t say anything, but it happened.
Now I work for local government, and we recently also had to watch the “Run, Hide, Fight” video – of course in the opening scene at least one person is shot and killed before they are able to run, so that’s great. :-/ Sometimes if I see a random person outside my son’s daycare I freak out a little inside, but have to squash it! It’s hard not to think about all the crazy crap happening in the world, and how vulnerable we are at any given moment, but I try not to dwell on it.
I just had the “random guy loitering outside preschool in a place where I have never before seen anyone loitering over the past three years” and… Yeah, I called the cops. I felt so awful for letting that paranoia get the best of me, but you just never know. It did make me feel slightly better that they took me seriously and sent a car out, but dude was gone by the time they got there.
I am a high school student and in the past two years we’ve been on lockdown/shelter-in-place THREE times due to events at the community college across the street and I’m honestly so used to it by now that the last time somebody said “Huh, there are police cars over there” that I LAUGHED because I was going to get to miss math class and I don’t know, maybe that’s not a healthy attitude? But sitting in a nice normal biology class and being told to go on lockdown and having to watch my classmates cry and my non-religious teacher starting to pray isn’t healthy either.
My sister was in law school in DC when there was that earthquake, 2011 I think. Classes had been cancelled, but she was driving so she didn’t know. She got to her building, no professor, no students, sirens going off everywhere, and she just sat there for 15 minutes before she realized something weird was going on.
I asked her about it later. She said “I don’t know, it’s DC. There’s always sirens or warnings or something. I just tuned it out.”
I remember having the news on at work this August when two local journalists were killed on camera, going into lockdown, and thinking that it really wasn’t the guns I was scared of, but the ANGER behind them. Nikki Giovanni taught the VT shooter, and voiced concerns to the administration over his chilling anger; he was not removed from her class. We sure as shit have a gun problem in this country, but a culture that always validates men’s anger and glorifies them for expressing it through violence is what’s pulling the trigger.
This part made me cheer. Good for you!
” ‘Sir, please stop,’ I said. ‘Please do not lay this at the feet of people who are mentally ill. I have a mental illness. It’s not people with mental illness, it’s people with guns.’ “
None of this is sitting well with me at all! I was upset to the point of tears to read further up in the comments that small children are being subjected to this kind of “training,” young enough to cry and wet their pants in fear. That’s ABSURD. The cumulative effect of fear and anxiety on a population has GOT to be more harmful than the total damage of actual shootings, as horrible as they are. Fear just breeds more hostility and rash decision-making and hate. Haven’t we learned that yet?? And encouraging people to constantly watch out for suspicious characters in baggy clothing is really inflammatory and dangerous and gross in ways that I think are pretty obvious.
I’m at the point where I’m regularly panicky in malls, big stores, airports. I think about when I sit by a window at Starbucks. I think about how close my desk is to the main door at work, how I couldn’t possibly hide or run if anything happened. It sucks. I don’t want those thoughts but they pop up anyway. And for what? How will a life peppered with panic attacks help me if someone decides to shoot me someday? It won’t.
My workplace had a hoax active shooter situation, and the really insidious thing is how it gets under your skin, even when it wasn’t real. (And it was obvious early on that it was probably bs, but due to the size and geography of the area in question, it took a long time to sort out.) When I moved into a new office, my brain immediately went, “okay, can I jump out the window? Is there something I can barricade the door with? Can I hide under this desk or is it open on the bottom?” etc. I would really rather not have this running on a loop in my brain, but I guess I’m stuck with it.
Many comments so far have focused on the fear/anxiety that these types of training programs instill, and I understand that to an extent. However, as someone who was a freshman at VT in 2007, I guarantee that the fear/anxiety that lingers after an actual situation is much, much worse. The part that hit me hardest was:
“Everybody knows to get out of the building if there’s a fire, but the default procedure for virtually everything else used to be to stay put and await further instructions. The officers said this led to more casualties at Virginia Tech.”
I can’t help but feeling that there can be great value in talking about specific tactics in unthinkable situations, because every little bit of information could have a huge impact. And even if it’s statistically unlikely that it will ever happen to you, it does happen to someone. Obviously the ultimate goal is to reduce the actual frequency of events, but until the lawmakers get their heads out of the NRA’s asses, I can only think about the people that are affected in the meantime.
My stepsister was worried about shootings (we live in the UK, but the Batman shooting in particular seemed to shake her up.)
What seemed to reassure her was me saying that basically, there are very few ways to effectively safeguard against someone who wants to do such a thing; so as a numbers game, a good way to look at it's surprisingly easy to do, and yet happens relatively rarely, so the vast majority of people are peaceful. She's 14, so it's probably not something you'd want to share with a nervous pre-teen, say, but it seemed to help her a little.
I work in an office block in Australia and about a year ago there was a siege in the building next to mine. There was, to be honest, a bit of confusion about what we should do: stay inside? use the fire exits? In the end the building management got us out through the fire exit (why couldn’t we have used the elevator as well? there was no fire) on the other side of the building to where the gunman was, but even then, no one was really sure what to do with us after that. There were cops everywhere but a lot of us were just standing around watching from down the street. (TBH I may not have done this, except that a buddy of mine who’s a news cameraman was on the scene and I felt like I couldn’t ever face his wife again if I walked away and something happened to him.)
The only drills we ever had in my office were fire drills and they only ever involved one way of exiting. Since then the OH&S people have been working on different scenarios, but I doubt they ever would have before.
TLDR: Australia does not have a shooter mentality when it comes to workplace safety.
My sister was in law school in DC when there was that earthquake, 2011 I think. Classes had been cancelled, but she was driving so she didn't know. She got to her building, no professor, no students, sirens going off everywhere, and she just sat there for 15 minutes before she realized something weird was going on.
I asked her about it later. She said "I don't know, it's DC. There's always sirens or warnings or something. I just tuned it out."
I work in a UK building which is a pretty high-profile potential target for terrorist attack. I've been working here for 10 years. In that time we have had precisely one briefing session on What to Do if the Bad Guys with Guns Get In. It lasted 2 hours, involved nothing more dramatic than PowerPoint, and could be summarized as "Find somewhere to hide while the specially trained armed cops do their thing." Then the dude from the police talked for a bit longer while everyone's eyes glazed over as we each went into our private Die Hard fantasies. It felt like reasonable preparation for a fairly remote and extreme possibility, not a session of being terrorized with my own inevitable and preventable violent death.
The analogy with fire is an extremely good one. The UK took the clear and obvious route on guns after the Dunblane massacre, but the USA has decided for the time being that that's not an option, so the clear and obvious thing to do just keeps getting on more and more clear and obvious while the workarounds and justifications and adaptations to not doing it get more and more mind-bending.
Knock on wood, I haven't had to worry about dealing with any type of disaster at work or school. But I know from experience that in scary situations, my first instinct is to freeze up (example of a "scary situation"=my cat brought a live mouse inside one time and let it go in the kitchen). So if a fire, gunman, etc. ever showed up at my office, I would freeze up and then wind up dead. So until we can categorically say that crazy tragedies like mass shootings will never, ever happen again…I actually wouldn't mind having some active shooter training at my workplace? On the off chance that it might help me NOT freeze up as a first response?
Because I would very much like to not get dead from any sort of workplace/public space shenanigans so I'll take all the help I can get.
No child has died in a school fire since 1956? Maybe that was a typo, since 92 children and three nuns died in the Our Lady of Angels fire in 1958. Since then, an average of 1-2 students per year have died in school fires, most caused by arson. If you count college students, most of whom are overgrown children, the average is much higher.
"I won't go and they can't make me." There is no reason for this. We can watch a video but to go through something where you are "pretend" shot at is abuse and subject people to traumatic scenarios that are unnecessary. I won't stand for it. The first time this is being required of our children I am pulling my children out of school. A video is fine, drills are great, but this is taking it too far.
I took a 7 hour class just yesterday and they taught MOST of these tactics, but they said the worst thing to do is play dead or hide under furniture.
At my class it was "Avoid, Deny, Defend". Deny as in deny them access to the area that you are in. Basically the same.