Podcasts about alerrt

Dr. Hunter Martaindale is the Director of Research at the Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training (ALERRT) Center at Texas State University and an Associate Research Professor within the School of Criminal Justice and Criminology. In this role, he oversees all research activities for ALERRT, including analyzing active shooter events, conducting active shooter training program evaluations through experimental design, and testing methods/interventions to improve law enforcement decision-making and overall performance. Beyond that, Hunter actively supports other researchers with applied policing projects in an effort to get actionable results to practitioners. In this podcast, Dr. Martindale discusses his research on virtual reality (VR) training in law enforcement. The purpose of the study was to determine if VR training scenarios can elicit a similar stress response as realistic scenario-based training. The study involved two phases: a scenario-based training phase and a VR training phase. Participants went through a high-fidelity scenario involving professional actors and simulated injuries. The same scenario was then recreated in VR. Salivary measures of stress were collected before and after each training phase. The results showed that VR training was able to elicit  similar physiological stress responses as realistic scenario-based, or high-fidelity training. VR can be a valuable tool for law enforcement agencies and trainers to replicate real-life scenarios and ensure consistent training for all officers. However, VR should not replace in-person training entirely and should be used as a supplement. VR technology has improved significantly, and agencies should actively investigate and incorporate VR into their training programs.   Takeaways Virtual reality (VR) training has the potential to bridge the gap between law enforcement training and academic research. VR training can supplement in-person training and help retain skills that may not come up in an officer's day-to-day job. Measuring heart rate alone is not a reliable indicator of stress response; other measures, such as salivary markers, can provide more accurate results. High-fidelity scenarios with professional actors can enhance the realism of training and elicit a stronger stress response. The study found that VR training was able to elicit a similar stress response as realistic scenario-based training. VR training elicited similar physiological stress responses as high-fidelity scenario-based training. VR can be a valuable tool for law enforcement agencies and trainers to replicate real-life scenarios and ensure consistent training. VR should be used as a supplement to in-person training and not as a replacement. Future research should focus on the long-term effects of VR training on skill development and retention. The technology has improved significantly, with better refresh rates and reduced motion sickness. Agencies should actively investigate and incorporate VR into their training programs.

In this episode of “School Safety Today”, host Michelle Dawn Mooney speaks with Lt. Pamela Revels, President of NASRO and Lieutenant of the School Resource Division at the Lee County Sheriff's Office in Alabama. Drawing from 20 years of experience as an SRO, Lt. Revels highlights the vital role School Resource Officers have in creating safer schools through law enforcement, education, and mentorship. She explains how SROs are not only responsible for crisis response but also for building trust, preventing incidents, and guiding students toward better decisions, all in collaboration with school staff and the broader community.Key Takeaways:• Lt. Revels emphasizes the importance of careful selection and comprehensive training for SROs, ensuring they are prepared to meet the unique demands of school environments.• The SRO Triad Model positions officers as law enforcement, educators, and mentors, allowing them to build trust and intervene before issues escalate.• SROs play a pivotal role not just in crisis response, but in daily prevention and relationship-building, making schools safer environments for students and staff alike.Lt. Pamela Revels, originally from Enterprise, Alabama, has served with the Lee County Sheriff's Office since 2004, now holding the position of Lieutenant of the School Resource Division. She holds a bachelor's degree in criminal justice administration and an MBA from Columbia Southern University and is currently pursuing a Doctorate in Public Administration at Liberty University. A recognized leader in school safety, Lt. Revels is the President of the National Association of School Resource Officers (NASRO) and has led the Alabama Association of School Resource Officers (TAASRO) for 14 years. She holds numerous instructor certifications, including RAD, ALERRT, and Taser, and serves on various local and state committees focused on school safety. Lt. Revels is also a Subject Matter Expert for the U.S. Department of Justice's Collaborative Reform Initiative, contributing to national curriculum development and presentations. She has been honored multiple times, including being named the We Tip National School Resource Officer of the Year twice. Her community work includes educating students on safety and running the Junior Deputy Academy to foster positive interactions between youth and law enforcement.

Here's the SCOOP ... your cheat sheet for the week ahead! ✓ 6:00: A remarkable find discovered in a North Carolina filing cabinet may fetch millions at auction.   ✓ 10:00: We shift to politics and the presidential debate.     ✓ 13:00: To mute or not to mute?  ✓ 16:00: A SmartHER take on debates and a fun fact about the first televised presidential debate did not include … presidential candidates.   ✓ 17:00: Congresswoman Cheney (R-WY) explains her endorsement for VP Kamala Harris and Gov. Huckabee Sanders (R-AR) responds.     ✓ 23:00: Do political and celebrity endorsements matter?    ✓ 25:00: “The data is a little bit funky ...” the SCOOP on Jobs Report revisions.     ✓ 29:00: We shift to school safety. Updates on last week's school shooting in Georgia.     ✓ 31:00: Jenna addresses Barbara's question about the precedent of charging a school shooter's parents.   ✓ 35:00: Jenna addresses Mary's question about ways citizens could create change to prevent such tragedies from happening in the future.     ✓ 40:00: What is ALERRT training and why does it matter?    ✓ 44:00: A poignant parenting tip from a father who lost his daughter in a school shooting.     ✓ 45:00: An uplifting update from the Royal Family.     SHOW NOTES    A rare copy of the US Constitution went missing for centuries. Now it's being auctioned for millions (AP News)    Man Charged with Planning ISIS Attack at NYC Jewish Center (SmartHER News)  Jobs Report: “The Sky Is Not Falling” (SmartHER News)    Father of Suspected High School Shooter Arrested (SmartHER News)  Shooting at Georgia High School (SmartHER News)     How to Stay Safe (ALERRT)     ALERRT.org     Princess Catherine Completes Chemotherapy Treatment      SUPPORT OUR MISSION     If you'd like to help support SmartHER News' mission of a free, independent, nonpartisan press – here's how you can become a SCOOP insider: https://www.scoop.smarthernews.com/get-the-inside-scoop/     Instagram: Instagram.com/SmartHERNews   Website: SmartHERNews.com   YouTube Channel: YouTube.com/SmartHERNews 

Episode Summary Dr. Pete Blair is the Executive Director of the Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training (ALERRT) Center and a Professor of Criminal Justice at Texas State University.  Dr. Blair discusses the need to reform police training in order to address the current crisis in policing. He emphasizes the importance of an evidence-informed approach and highlights the work of ALERRT in providing critical incident response training. Blair identifies the shortcomings of the traditional model of police training, including the focus on ideal techniques and the lack of transferability to real-world situations. He advocates for a shift towards an ecological dynamics approach, which emphasizes self-organization, contextualization, and problem-solving. Blair argues that training should focus on outcomes rather than specific techniques and should incorporate rich and variable environments to enhance transferability. The conversation explores the concept of self-organization in training and how it can lead to more effective and efficient performance. The discussion includes the importance of setting clear intentions and understanding the intention structure in any given situation. They emphasize the need for trainers to guide learners towards exploring more optimal and effective solutions while still allowing for self-organization. The conversation also touches on the role of attention and the shift from internal focus to goal-focused attention. Dr. Blair highlight the importance of understanding what learners will do in real-world situations and focusing on the desired outcome rather than rigid techniques or formations. Takeaways The traditional model of police training is not effective in enhancing the retention and transfer of critical performance skills. Police training should adopt an evidence-informed approach and focus on outcomes rather than specific techniques. Training should incorporate rich and variable environments to enhance transferability to real-world situations. Self-organization is a key concept in training, where the body organizes around the intended outcome to achieve it efficiently and effectively. Contextualization and problem-solving should be emphasized in training to prepare officers for the complex and ever-changing environments they operate in. Setting clear intentions and understanding the intention structure is crucial for self-organization in training. Trainers should guide learners towards exploring more optimal and effective solutions while still allowing for self-organization. Attention should be goal-focused rather than internally focused. Understanding what learners will do in real-world situations is important for effective training. Focusing on the desired outcome is more important than rigid techniques or formations.

  On today's Coffee with Rich, we will be joined by Karl Rehn.   Karl Rehn has been a firearms training since 1991. He is lead instructor and range owner of KR Training, a central Texas based training company with a dozen assistant instructors offering weekly classes to all levels. He is a Grand Master in multiple USPSA divisions and is an instructor certified by the NRA, Rangemaster, Texas Department of Public Safety, Massad Ayoob Group, Palisades Training Group, ALERRT, DHS, Simunition and other programs.   Visit Karl's website: http://www.krtraining.com/   American Warrior Show: https://americanwarriorshow.com/index.html SWAG: https://shop.americanwarriorsociety.com/ American Warrior Society please visit: https://americanwarriorsociety.com/      

On this episode we sit down with “Sandy” Wall.  Sandy is a retired Master Peace Officer and a 28-year veteran of the Houston Police Department. He has worked in Patrol, Narcotics, and has served 22 years on the HPD SWAT Detail. He served as a Team Leader for more than 12 years.After Law Enforcement he worked for Safariland Group as Director of Training for 15 years.He co-authored, “Training the SWAT Trainer”. (Thomas publishing)He is a multi-patent owner and inventor of the WallBanger Tactical System. Owner and CEO of Less Lethal Options, LLC.He has been recognized in the U.S. Federal Courts as a subject matter expert in Less Lethal Munitions and Tactics. He serves on the Advisory Board of the Texas Tactical Police Officers Association and Tactical Response Magazine. He has instructed for the FBI, TTPOA, MSTOA, CATO, NTOA, LTPOA, ATOA, Florida SWAT Association, CATI, ALERRT and the US State Department.Check out his new book "The Long Ride Home" https://www.amazon.com/Long-Road-Home-Sandy-Wall/dp/B0B18N6M3KWhen Andy, a fresh-faced, naïve young man escapes his small town in Texas to embark on a career to become a big city cop, his life is changed forever. When he joins the Houston Police Department, his experiences, sometimes exciting, sometimes shocking force him to confront evils that most of us could never imagine, all while keeping his own demons at bay.  After ten years of service as a beat cop, and fighting crime in the dangerous world of narcotics in the nation's fourth-largest city, Andy accepts the ultimate challenge, joining the Houston SWAT Team. His limits are tested like never before and he finds himself living on the edge where he must face his greatest fears, and finally confront the adversaries who have taunted him along the way.

This week saw the fifth anniversary of the February 14, 2018, shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, where an individual fatally shot 17 people and wounded 17 others. In this episode of Policing Matters, host Jim Dudley speaks with Dr. Peter Blair, the executive director of the Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training (ALERRT) center in Texas, about what have we done since then to prevent such tragedies. Dr. Peter Blair earned his Ph.D. in criminal justice from Michigan State University. He is recognized as a leading expert in the field of active attacks. He has published numerous books, articles and commentaries on active attacks, police tactics and training.  This episode of the Policing Matters Podcast is brought to you by L3Harris. When seconds matter count on dependable coverage on and off campus. L3Harris offers flexible and affordable portables. Communicate on the move with Wi-Fi voice and data, GPS, and app-based devices that keep you connected. Schedule your demo today.

Three Elmendorf police officers (above, left) provide cover while another police trio (above, right) advances, with both teams ultimately converging on and “breaching” a building during Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training (ALERRT) Nov. 8 on the grounds of St. Anthony Catholic Church in Elmendorf. This course of instruction is designed to prepare first responders to “isolate, distract, and neutralize an active shooter.” In all, 12 Elmendorf officers completed the training, conducted Nov. 7-8 by four instructors from the ALERRT Center at Texas State University in San Marcos.Article Link

The Executive Director of ALERRT (a national leader in active shooter training), Pete Blair, Ph.D., on why training matters for both professional law enforcement and private citizens — and what it takes to stay safe.

In this one we sit down with Pete Blair the Executive Director at ALERRT, and Jake King a Lt in the Marietta Police Department in Marietta, Ga. Both of these guys are BJJ Purple Belts and students of the impact that BJJ Training has had on the Law Enforcement industry. They talk about the data that is collected and we even discuss the correct pronunciation of the word DATA.

We had the chance to sit down with a couple Green Berets in this Episode. Nick 'The Machine' Lavery, lost his leg in Combat, went through rehab, and returned to full duty, and is doing great things. Listen to his story, and find out how many legs he takes with him on deployment. Hear what his new book is all about. Learn more about Nick at https://www.machinenick.com/ and follow him on Socials. Learn more about the ALERRT program at https://alerrt.org/ Follow us on Socials and look at what we do with our Annual Conference at https://www.alerrtconference.org/

Marty Adcock is a Regional Manager at ALERRT - the Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training Center at Texas State University. ALERRT was created in 2002 to address the need for active shooter response training for first responders. They've since expanded their program to train out of state, and now train first responders and citizens across all 50 states and even some foreign nations.  ALERRT has trained more than 130,000 law enforcement and fire officials nationwide. Strategic partnerships and grant funding have allowed them to expand their course offerings to also cater to civilians – they've since trained more than 200,000 citizens in their Civilian Response to Active Shooter Events (CRASE) Avoid-Deny-Awareness program.View ALERRT's course catalog here.  At the 2021 ILEETA conference, Adam and Marty got together to discuss ALERRT's mission, training model, and their work with both first responders and civilians. They also discuss the benefits of cross-disciplinary training and integrated critical incident response for first responders. In this episode, you will learn about proactive training vs reactive training, citizen training as a means of positively engaging your community, situational awareness, phases of critical incidents, utilizing TECC training, and key takeaways from the training offered by Marty at the ILEETA conference.  ALERRT also hosts the ALERRT Active Shooter Integrated Response Conference - the only national conference bridging the law enforcement, Fire and EMS responses to active shooter/attack events. Integrating first responder teams has proven to create stronger local, regional, state, and national active shooter response preparedness. Review the 2021 conference at: ALERRTConference.org. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode 48: Interview with TEEX's Jesse WatkinsOn this week's podcast we have our sponsor of the Active Shooter Incident Management Advanced and Intermediate courses, TEEX's Jesse Watkins. In this episode we talk about the courses and training available to the first responder community.Bill Godfrey:Welcome to the Active Shooter Incident Management podcast. My name is Bill Godfrey, your podcast host. We have a special guest with us today. Today, we have Jesse Watkins, the director of operations for NERRTC. That's the National Emergency Response and Recovery Training Center over at TEEX out in Texas. Jesse, thanks for joining us today.Jesse Watkins:Oh, it's my pleasure Bill. Thank you for having me.Bill Godfrey:So obviously NERRTC and TEEX are the sponsors of the Active Shooter Incident Management advanced and intermediate courses that we developed that is DHS funded. And people who've heard me tell this story before, it's a little convoluted, the money flow, but it DHS to NERRTC to or, DHS to TEEX NERRTC, then over to ALERRT and then over to us to go out and do the classes. But Jesse, it's actually a little more complicated than that, isn't it? Tell everybody a little bit about how the structure works and how the pieces fit together.Jesse Watkins:It is a little bit more complicated than that. For those of you that don't know a whole lot about who TEEX is or who NERRTC is, TEEX is an agency within the state of Texas or for the state of Texas, and it's within the Texas A and M University System, which is comprised of 11 universities and now eight state agencies. And our primary mission is an extension. And within that extension, training, and in some cases, exercise. Back in 1998, as a result of the Oklahoma City bombing, we solicited Congress as a part of an organization called the NDPC, National Domestic Preparedness Consortium, for funding to go out and do online security training around the country. At the time that funding came on to DOJ and then after 9-11, it moved under Homeland Security with FEMA being the oversight organization, it was the checks and balances for what we do and how we spend the money that being said, NERRTC proper, National Emergency Response Recovery Training center, has 73 courses that we've developed under our funding to go out and train first responders, elected officials, a whole host of organizations.But you know, our primary mission is incident management, cyber security, critical infrastructure, and several other areas. I won't go into all of them, but a lot of resources, put it that way, that we pour towards going out and doing training at no cost to participants or to the jurisdictions that's requesting it. As a result of that, a few years back, we started looking at the active shooter situation that was going on in the country. Obviously, Bill, you and I had conversations at the time. Steve, in a different capacity, and I had conversations at the time and agreed that we would like to be able to fund doing some active shooter training around the country. And you obviously had the course resources in terms of going out with the materials, going and doing the deliveries. We had some funding that we could put behind that, but it's under our DHS funding.And what was born out of that is this relationship where we have now in which we subcontract to ALERRT and then ALERRT in turns, subcontracts to you. That being said, the relationship works. It is a little cumbersome. You know, when you stop thinking about how many different organizations it's taken to get this done, but we have figured out a way to make that effective and efficient over the years. And I'm happy about the relationship. That being said, the mission is the thing that's the most important piece to me. Going out and observing you all do this training obviously brings me a lot of satisfaction and that satisfaction is in knowing that we are training that first response community to be better and to react and respond better to active shooter situations and also to extrapolate out of that, using what they use in the classroom during this training and other scenarios as well.I think it makes them more effective as a operational unit by the time they're done with it. So, I love that aspect of it. That's, that's really the driver for me. But when you stop and think about NERRTC or I can explain a little bit about NERRTC, most of the training that we do, we do in-house meaning we have SMEs and full-time staff that are devoted to doing nothing but delivery of those courses that I mentioned before.So this relationship that we have with alert and with you is, it's not unique because we do have one other subcontractor that we work with that has a similar relationship, but it is out of the ordinary for what we typically do. We have roughly 80 full-time staff and we're around 300 adjunct instructors SMEs from around the country that go out and do our trainings. But at the end of the day, the way that you all go in and do your training and conduct yourselves is very much in line with how we do business here. So, is the relationship a little bit unique? Yes, it is, but it does fit well within what we do and how we do it.When I look at a bigger picture in terms of our relationship with National Domestic Preparedness Consortium, as I mentioned before, we were one of the founding members back in 1998. The consortium itself is now seven members strong. It started with four, now it's at seven. If you're interested in more information on each and every one of those organizations, feel free to reach out to Bill, or you can reach out to me. He has my contact information and I can, I can provide you more detail. I won't bore you with going through all the locations. That being said, those seven organizations have roughly $162 million a year that they pour into training. Just like I mentioned before with NERRTC. What that equates to over the last 20 years is roughly 3.5 million participants trained across the country, across the U.S and the U.S. Territories. So we are very impactful with what we do and how we do it. And subsequently every year that we solicit Congress for funding, we have gotten it. So I'm very happy about that relationship that we have with the NDPC and also the relationship we have with our federal sponsors.Bill Godfrey:Jesse, thank you for that. That's not only some very gracious words, but really a great overview of what is, quite honestly can seem very overwhelming with the number of agencies and the number of groups that are doing this, but, seven principal partners in the NDPC and $162 million. That is an awful lot of training opportunities for first responders. And, as you said, and I want to kind of highlight this, there's no cost to the responders to take these classes, right?Jesse Watkins:That's correct.Bill Godfrey:Yeah. And, the way I've always said this, and I think this is correct, but tell me if there's, if I'm missing something here, these courses are available in kind of two different buckets, either the direct delivery where you bring the course to the participants, to their agency, to their hometown or a residential delivery, where they travel into a specific location to take the course, but their travel costs are reimbursed by you guys or the NDPC for their expenses, travel food, lodging, all that kind of stuff. Is that a fair way to say it?Jesse Watkins:Yeah, that's a fair way to say it. I can, just using our 314 course Enhanced Incident Management/Unified Command, that's the only resident course we have here at TEEX. It is a monster of a course, meaning we really put the participants through their paces for three and a half days. But using that as an example, we purchased the airline tickets for the participants to fly here. We arrange for the ground transportation to get them from the airport to College Station. We cover their lodging while they're here, meaning we paid for it. The thing that the participant pays for out of pocket at the time are their meals. However, we do reimburse those meals after the training is over. There's a worksheet that gets filled out. And then we ended up cutting the participant a check whenever we're done. It really is of no cost to the participant or their jurisdiction whenever they're here, other than their time.Now, when you get into mobile delivery, what we do is we come to your location and do the training, similar to what we do with the ASIM course. And obviously the participants are already there so we're not housing anyone, but we are paying for the instructors to get there, all the materials to get there. We publish all the course materials for the students and hand those out. So all we ask for from the jurisdiction is a host venue that can accommodate the students and accommodate them safely and effectively. And that's it pretty much, there might be some PA things or some communication things but there's really no cost to the organization aside from those.Bill Godfrey:It's such a terrific program. And I do want to make sure before I kind of move us on to some other topical areas. If someone's listening, has not heard of the NDPC or doesn't know what classes are offered or how to sign up for them, Jesse, what's your guidance to them on the best way to kind of get the lay of the land on what's available and how to request those courses or request to attend those courses?Jesse Watkins:Well, the first website I'll give you is simple. It is www.ndpc.us. If you go to that website, it's going to lay out who all seven members are. It's going to give you information on courses, new courses, retired courses, what our course catalogs are, all the resources that we have available that you can take advantage of. The second website that I will give you is firstrespondertraining.gov. That is a federal website but when you go to that website and you click on the course catalog, it will give you user-friendly access to every federally funded course that you can imagine, to include all the NDPC courses, those from partners, such as EMI. There's just a whole host of information on there, and it's pretty interactive. You can do keyword searches. So if you went in and put in active shooter, I always say the active shooter two and three-day versions will both come up whenever you do that. Those are the two best resources I could give.Bill Godfrey:So ndpc.us, and firstrespondertraining.gov and, and Jesse, if I'm a line cop, a line firefighter, line paramedic, and I see some courses that I'm interested in, what's my path forward to try to get, I mean, is it, should I reach out to my local emergency manager? How do I get into the channel?Jesse Watkins:Well, in terms of that, there's multiple scenarios. So if it is say a residential course, like we talked about before, and you know, for our 314 course, we don't take jurisdictions. We take people from jurisdictions, so one or two from jurisdictions all over the country that come in and make up the class. If you have an individual that's interested in a course like that, they can go on and follow the contact information that's on either of those sites for this specific course. And then somebody will reach out to them. That being said, not everybody qualifies. If it comes to the 314, there are some prerequisites and requirements for positions to be able to do it. And that's similar to other residential courses as well, but it doesn't, they don't just take anyone. It has to be relevant to your position.And a lot of times you have to have certain amount of experience. Now, if you're a jurisdiction or an individual from a jurisdiction that is wanting to host a course, there's contact information on there for doing that meaning to start the process. But my best advice is to go through whoever your training supervisor is for your organization, tell them you're interested in hosting a course, and then they can get the ball rolling from there. Because if the host, of course, obviously it's going to be more than just the one person that's wanting to go. So that training supervisor can typically coordinate that. And if you're in a control state, and I won't get too much into that, but in those states, the state training point of contact has to sign off on those states. And usually you're training supervisor within your organization is going to know who that is and what that process is.Bill Godfrey:Jesse, I think that's great advice and great things to point out, especially getting into the getting access to the training supervisor. And in some cases your immediate training supervisor might not know about the NDPS or might not know about these courses. So, share the websites with them and share this because it's great training. Jesse, I want to comment the course you're talking about that you guys do residential there, that's 314 course, that's a phenomenal course. It is a big animal, but talk about an impactful course that will give you a level of training and experience you're not going to get anywhere else short of a real event. And it's a great course.Jesse Watkins:It really is. I mean, or you could even start looking at national qualification system and PTB, Position Task Books, and the requirements that are in those. And when it comes to incident management or IMT, a lot of the experience requirements that you find in those PTBs can actually be obtained through participation in this course. So, it really is a very good course and very beneficial course to the participants that go through it. We get a lot of great feedback off of it. And it does a great job of preparing you for a real world event.Bill Godfrey:Yeah, absolutely. You know, the other thing, before we kind of move on from this topic, I also want to mention, you talked about the process of making the host requests for the mobile delivery or for the direct delivery courses. And in our case for the active shooter incident management, both the advanced and the intermediate, that process starts with submitting a request through the ALERRT website, which sometimes kind of throws people for a loop a little bit. They're like, wait a minute, I'm looking for the NDPC course, why do I need to do the ALERRT thing?But I think your explanation about how the organizations are all working together, kind of touches on that. So for our course, it starts by requesting, filing a request or the alert a website, or that you want to host the class and then it goes into the queue and unfortunately there's much more need and demand than there really is capacity to do it. I mean, there's only so much money to go around and there's obviously a lot of need, but we work through the queue as best we can. Jesse, any comments you want to offer about that?Jesse Watkins:Yeah, absolutely. Well, I guess if I'm just speaking, frankly, it does get frustrating because I know the demand is greater than our financial resources will allow us to address of that being said.We've done a pretty good job of triaging, prioritizing and taking care of the customers whenever they come through. The request process is a little wonky, for lack of better word. That being said it is effective, put it that way, so once an organization gets their requests into the queue with alert and it makes it up here, there's a couple of review steps that take place. One, one of my staff members goes through and takes a look at it. And the second as I look at it as well for everybody's benefit. None of them are a surprise to me because you and I communicate so much on where you're going, what you're doing, what the needs are, who has priority, but it does go through all that process. But once we got it in the queue, it is pretty easy to track, I guess, what our progress is progressing the need...Bill Godfrey:I think that's fair. I mean, I agree with you. I think we do, given the parameters that we've got, I think we do a pretty good job of trying to get them around, moving around to different parts of the country, to different regions, different areas, different states, coordinating what the TPOC coordinating with the site hosts. It is a little bit of a process because this class, kind of like your 314 class, this is a big class, it's three days on the ground with five or six instructors, a trailer full of equipment. I mean, we've got a 30 foot trailer that hauls the gear around. Usually it takes the instructors five, six hours to set up the day before to get everything going. So it's not a small lift, there's a lot of money out, and you're laughing.There's a lot of planning that has to go into it. And, there's a fair amount of work on the host to be able to do this. And some, some folks, when they submit the request, they don't necessarily understand all the specifics. And when we reach out, they're like, oh, well I need to partner with a couple of different agencies and we try to, you know, facilitate all that. But we, I think we've got a pretty good process in place now for tracking those requests, not losing track of them, kind of keeping an eye on where those requests are coming in across the country, and then trying to hit regional spaces. We can't do every single request, but sometimes when we get a cluster of four or five in one area, we can pick one and just reach out to those each of those hosts and say, okay, look, we're only going to get one for your region. This is it. So you guys all collaborate on sharing seats and that I think it works pretty well.Jesse Watkins:I think it works great to be perfectly honest with you. And I mean, just for the listeners benefit, I talked about 314 course. It is a large course and if you've ever been to it, you know what all goes into it. I mean, it takes dedicated infrastructure to make it work.That being said, you've taken the equivalent of that course and put it in the trailer and haul it around the country is essentially what you've done with the ASIM course. So it is a marvel, that's the reason I chuckled it is a marvelous thing whenever you show up, there's a lot of hardware that goes into making this class as realistic as possible for students. And I think the folks that have gone through it realize that, realize the benefits they get out of each and every component of that class when they're going through, whether it be the didactic piece or, you know, going through the simulation piece at their station, but it's amazing to see and it's definitely amazing to participate in. So I encourage anyone out there that thinks that their jurisdiction can benefit from this, and I know there's many, to reach out as quickly as possible and get their name in the queue so that way they can get serviced as soon as they can.Bill Godfrey:Absolutely. Absolutely. All right. So let's, let's shift gears a little bit, Jesse, obviously, COVID was a shock to everyone and a shock to the system if you will, on the impact it had for training, we went through a period where we had to do a shutdown face-to-face training and do some adjustments, but given where we are now, and this is, we're recording this in September of 2021, what do you see on the horizon now? What are the issues today? What are the short-term issues over the next three to six months? And what do you think the implications are for us longterm on trying to train everybody?Jesse Watkins:You know, just speaking for me personally, I'm cautiously optimistic about where we are and where we're going. We've seen a steady increase since the restrictions were removed off of our face-to-face training. We've seen a steady increase in demand month to month, this month being a very good month. And we will do about ninety deliveries by the end of the month of our courses. Next month will be about the same. That being said, put in perspective, our normal, a normal month of deliveries for us is about 120 face-to-face. So we're not quite back to pre COVID numbers. I don't know when we will get to pre COVID numbers, so that's the cautiously optimistic part. I'm happy that we are able to go out and facilitate face to face training again. We're still doing so very cautiously. We are still doing so minding whatever the local restrictions are for conducting a class, making sure that we're putting all the safety procedures that we can in place.And I think we're going to be doing that for a good while. Now. I don't, I don't see that going away within the next month or two. So I think we're going to be operating under this COVID cloud at least for the next six, eight, maybe next year. That being said, looking on the positive side of things, we are able to go out and do training. Before we, we had to shift gears, we converted a bunch of courses to virtual. You know what that was like, you put a lot of resources into converting the ASIM course into a two day virtual version, but just speaking from my own opinion, it was an effective course, but it's not nearly as effective as face-to-face version where students are getting hands-on practical experience with the exercises. So what I'm hoping is we can continue this trend of doing face-to-face and doing it safely without incident, and hopefully get back to pre-COVID numbers in the near future.Bill Godfrey:You and I, of course, see that on the same way. We both, there's huge value in face-to-face. And there's so many subtleties that are very, very difficult to replicate in a remote or virtual environment. And as you mentioned, Jesse, I mean, we found ourselves in a position of, okay, we're teaching this active shooter incident management class, which has a tremendous amount of hands-on components. We're running live scenarios from, dispatch to last patient transported off the scene with all these different components. How the heck are we going to do that remotely, because you're not going to get that done with Zoom or, or Microsoft Teams. And we ended up building our own platform to be able to enable us to do that. And I really think it was, really was remarkable.And I'm so proud of what our team here accomplished in pulling that off and the instructors and shifting gears and being able to do that there, is it the same as the face-to-face? No, it's not, it's not, it's a different experience, but I think we're still able to, in our particular case, we're still able to hit those, those training objectives and those learning objectives with a relative high fidelity, but it didn't come easy. It took a lot of work by the instructors. It took a lot of work by the programmers and, ironically, I don't know, Jesse, what would you say the first three or four months that we were doing that, we were still trying to tweak it and get everything figured out, and about the time we got it just right, we were able to go back to face-to-face training?Jesse Watkins:That's right. You know, that being said, I know you spent time tweaking it, but the course it was very effective once it hit the market. So when you have it out there, I know that there were a lot of systems I went through that were very appreciative of being able to have an opportunity, one to not only receive training at all, but definitely to receive active shooter training because that's the problem. We had a massive list of organizations that were in the queue for ASIM training. And it may, it could have been years down the road before they got, being able to get it in front of those organizations and on effect training to as many participants, as we did was, was very beneficial for them. And it was beneficial to us as well. You know, it keeps traction and helped us keep engaged throughout the process and also helped us develop some skill sets on things that we didn't have prior to all this happening.And now we do have them and we will maintain them to a degree because I think there will be in demand even after COVID is over for organizations to receive virtual training. You can look at some states and jurisdictions that just cannot fill enough people for a face-to-face class, but yeah, you can put on a virtual delivery of a course and they can get folks in it. And then some other jurisdictions that just have ones and twos can get folks in it. And next thing you know, you've got a full class and you're affecting training, affecting training to people that otherwise would not get it there, and underserved areas of the country. So I feel good about that as well.Bill Godfrey:Yeah. And, we actually did that as you mentioned, that the queue being pretty backed up, we did identify a number of the, what I'll call the smaller agencies that it's suggested that it requested a host and some rural ones that would have had a real challenge hosting and filling the class in person face-to-face, but we were able to take them and then kind of mix and match without regard to geography and have people from all over the country in the class and kind of keep those classes full and keep them moving and it was pretty interesting to see.I have this one, just a memory that makes me laugh every time we were doing, we had finished a scenario and we were doing the hotwash after the scenario and the gentleman that was playing the role of the medical triage just could not get over that he was able to, during the scenario, stand right next to the tactical officer and be able to communicate just verbally face to face and hear what was going on and kind of coordinate that. And he just, it kept freaking him out and blowing his mind that he was on the east coast and the police officer that was playing the role of tactical was actually out in either Portland or Seattle, somewhere up in the Northwest, you know, three times zones away. And he's like, it's like the guy standing right next to me, except he's not he's...it was one of those moments that was just a little surreal and kind of funny.Jesse Watkins:Right. Well, and there's side benefits to all these courses, right. And the side benefits of the relationships that get built in the classroom, and those two individuals might not normally work together, but they have shared, they can share experiences that, each of them can take back. So that, that ability to social network, while you're in the class is hugely beneficial. It's not something that we list in one of the training materials or any of those things, but our participants know it and they usually get a lot of takeaways from that as well. So, I appreciate his story in terms of being able to stand next to someone. I mean, we have similar experience, right, where I'm sitting, I think at my house at the time and you're doing the system up and demoing it for us and all of a sudden I'm standing and looking at Steve and looking at you within the realm of the software. And so it does make you kind of feel like you're present with the individuals that you're training with.Bill Godfrey:Yeah. And you know, the other thing that was a reality for me is in the face-to-face class, obviously we're pulling people that are attending from within that region or local area and when we started doing the class remotely through NCIER Campus, we ended up with people all over the country in a class. And one of the comments that came out of that regularly from the participants is how much they appreciated hearing how another law enforcement agency on the other side of the country or another fire department, different ideas, different policies, different ways of approaching it, different issues that they'd had, those kinds of things and it really led to some very interesting discussions and learning opportunities in the class that I don't really know would have come up had we not put people that were so geographically distributed into the same class, so it was kind of fascinating.Jesse Watkins:Right. And it really is. I can use the example, there was a period, and I think Steve was involved in this as well, where we were kind of traveling the country on a limited basis meeting with different EOCs, emergency operation centers, because we were talking about standardizing operation for them in emergency operation center. And the thing that you come to realize after you go to all these different places, there's nothing standard about how EOCs operate. You know, they each have ways how they do things based off of what their threats and their hazards are, how their response structure is set up. And so identifying that difference between those centers was critical to making the decision that maybe standardization's not the best thing.And I think you can say that about any response organization. You can have a response organization three counties away, they may do things different than the one that you're in. And there might be some takeaways from each of those places that are beneficial to the other, where they can say, okay, we haven't thought about that, or that's not how we do it, maybe we want to do with that. So there's a lot of things that come out of those classroom relationships that you build that can be taken back and really make the organizations that individual works for better.Bill Godfrey:I completely agree with you. You mentioned a few minutes ago that the remote learning, the virtual learning is probably a model that's going to stay with us even post COVID. And I agree with you. I think that that's absolutely true. My trepidation over that is that e-learning, distance learning, remote learning was mediocre, just in a general sense from my, again, as you, as you said, from my personal opinion, was mediocre at best before COVID, and then during COVID, there was such a rush to convert to remote and distance learning that I feel like a lot of shortcuts and compromises were made, to get to the end goal. And I'm concerned that there's folks that go, Hey, look, this work, this work we don't need to do. We don't need to do X, Y, Z anymore.We can do this remote stuff and we can pump up the numbers and get there, but I'm looking at it and concerned about the quality. I guess my question to you would be two parts. One, do you share that? Do you see it a little differently? Or do you see it about the same way? And, then the second part of that more practical is in your mind, you've seen a tremendous amount of training, all kinds of different classes, instructors all over the country, in your mind, what are the biggest gaps that we're not, that we need to hit with remote or virtual learning that, that we're not hitting yet?Jesse Watkins:Oh, okay. Those are two great questions. So, first off, when you talk about the possibility of growing out of traditional face-to-face or not having as much traditional face-to-face as we've had in the past because of some of the developments that happened with virtual deliveries, I can't speak for every organization in the country. I can speak for the NDPC and what our directive has been from our sponsor at FEMA and that is definitely not the case. The case with our sponsor is, couldn't wait to get back to face to face, glad that we are back to face-to-face. Yeah, keep the virtual delivery capability because it is something we've developed and we don't want to just trash it, keep it because we might need it, but get back to doing what we do best.When you start talking about some of the areas out there for conducting virtual delivery, I think there's probably a number of areas that we didn't dive off into. We had limited resources for converting courses. A lot of our courses were not structured to be converted to virtual, especially those with a lot of exercise component. Once you take those out, then the course loses its meaning, focus. That's why we didn't convert all. I do think there's some areas where we can continue to make some progress. You started getting into things like, just speaking off the cuff, like THIRA, they they've revised our process.And we were a big partner in that with our federal partners on putting together the courses to teach that. We've got a web based course that is going along with that, teaches that. And we also have a face-to-face that teaches that. That's a course that you can also do a virtual delivery with and it still be very effective down the road. Our EOC course was one that I had a lot of trepidation over converting to virtual, but we did. And that has been effective to a lot of folks. And I think we can probably continue that. It is not quite as intensive as you would get in face-to-face version, but there are still a lot of takeaways that come from that, where we are finding jurisdictions are getting a lot of benefit out of it. I was still requesting testing on a couple. One of the biggest challenges though that most people don't understand is from an organizational standpoint, you have to be set up well to deliver virtual courses.And it's not just what platform am I going to use for two instructors to stand in front of the screen? You know, it's how you deliver the content that students, how can you make the course materials successful for the students electronically and ahead of the class? How do you go about doing your pre and post tests and level one evaluations electronically, which is, these are all things that we didn't do prior to COVID.So we're not only develop the capability to do, but we'll continue to push forward even we're doing face-to-face classes in the future. So there's a lot of things that go on, a lot of those behind the scenes to try to be effective with virtual deliveries. And I still think we have a lot of work to do in terms of our systems that we have in place to accommodate that. And I know as an agency, we have put that as a priority, to look at that and address that over the next year. It was, how do we get better at doing this and how do we get better and make it easier for the student to have access to and complete our courses in a virtual environment.Bill Godfrey:I think that makes a tremendous amount of sense. And I'm thrilled to hear that there's still a significant commitment to face-to-face training moving forward. And I think there is value in remote training and virtual training and continuing to develop those capabilities. I just, I think it's important for people to make sure, as they move forward, like you mentioned with the 314 class, it's a very intensive, very hands-on and in many ways you face the same issues with that class that we did with trying to convert ASIM over, which is why I wanted that campus capability so that you could talk to somebody just by walking up to them and you can step into a breakout room, you can leave one breakout room and go to a different breakout room and it's not confusing. There's not a big interface. There's not a million people talking over each other. It kind of feels like you're in a training center and you're moving from the main auditorium to these different breakout rooms and working through the exercises.But I worry a little bit about being in the minority on that. To me, I can remember, and I want to date myself, but at 20 years ago, working on some e-learning, which was pretty doggone new at the time and trying to figure out what worked and what didn't work. And we had these great dreams for it, but achieving that turned out to be problematic. It turns out people don't really want to watch a video on training. They, you know, they glaze over or tune out and a lot of these other interactions and of course firefighters have nothing, but I say this and I are one, firefighters have nothing but time to learn how to game the system. So, how do you make the training engaging and impactful? And I think there's, I think there's answers out there, but I think it's still something that we all need to continue to work on and work towards to continue to improve it.Jesse Watkins:I agree. I mean, the bulk of our customers, and I'll just sum it up by saying they don't want to watch training. They want to participate in training.Bill Godfrey:That's a great way to say it.Jesse Watkins:You get the maximum amount of participation in your face-to-face deliveries, it's just all the way around. I'm not saying there's not benefit in virtual. There's absolute benefit in virtual, and we, we have had some customers that loved it and want to continue to do it, and I get that, completely understand it and hopefully we can support that to some extent. But in terms of the face-to-face, the overwhelming demand, what I saw from reviewing every piece of feedback we got on every virtual delivery we did over the year plus, was that folks were appreciative of virtual, that they could not wait to get back to hands-on, face-to-face training.Bill Godfrey:Total agreement, total agreement. Well, Jesse, I cannot thank you enough for taking the time to chat with us today and to talk about some of this stuff. It is, from my point of view, a special treat to have you take the time to come on and kind of talk about where the future of some of this is going and some of the other trainings that are available. So thanks for joining us today.Jesse Watkins:Thank you very much for having me Bill. It was my pleasure.Bill Godfrey:Alright. Great. That's Jesse Watkins, director of operations for the National Emergency Response and Recovery Training center. Our sponsor over at TEEX. Ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for joining us today. Hope you enjoyed the podcast. If you have any questions or suggestions for future podcasts, please send them to us at info@c3pathways.com. Again, that's info@c3pathways.com. Thank you to Karla Torres, our producer. And until next time stay safe.

Episode 47: Interview with ALERRT's John CurnuttThis week we are interviewing John Curnutt from ALERRT. We discuss how ALERRT started, it's mission, and how it works together in the active shooter picture.Bill Godfrey:Welcome to the Active Shooter Incident Management Podcast. My name is Bill Godfrey, your podcast host. Today I've got with us a special guest. We've got John Curnutt, assistant director of the ALERRT Center over in San Marcos, Texas, and our sponsor for the ASIM class along with TEEX. John, it's good to have you here.John Curnutt:Oh man, it is great to be here. Thank you for having me.Bill Godfrey:So John, thanks for joining us today. Why don't we start off ... I'd be actually surprised if any of our audience didn't really know who ALERRT was or how you guys fit into the active shooter picture but talk a little bit about ALERRT and the mission and how everything fits together.John Curnutt:It's great to be here. Thank you for having me. It's interesting, our starts are very humble. Back in 2000, 2001, it was very localized. We were looking at our response after Columbine and trying to see how would we do something different in our training, the equipment, the policies, everything that needed to change for the new normal or the new emerging trends as we saw them.So long story short, we started applying for grants because we were ... Small to medium-sized agencies, we didn't have the big budgets, and we could not afford to get the training and the equipment to train with that we knew that we needed to have the best bang for the buck. So as we applied for grants, everything just kind of turned into a here's a program, you have a program, we'll help fund this, but you have to take this program out. So if it was a state grant, we were going across the state now. If it was a federal grant, we were going across the country.Right after we started kind of working on this, 9/11 happened. We're coming up on the 20 year anniversary of that. So that kind of kicked things into a whole nother gear. They started looking for anti-terrorism programs that were up and ready to go. They could just be retooled just a little bit to kind of fit this new national threat that we were facing, and so all this kind of contributed to what we put in our course and the ferocity and the passion behind teaching the course.So years later, we are a research-based organization out of Texas State University. We look at everything, we analyze everything. The events, the cause and effect of how the response went, any deficiencies, and we try to fill those gaps with meaningful curriculum. So what do we teach, how do we teach, what do we spend more time on, all that stuff. So we've developed civilian response training as a result of that. We've developed medical training for police, we've developed tactical training for the medical people, all this stuff over the years. The incident management piece has obviously been huge. We've studied all these events and the communication, command and control, the C3 if you will, has always been lacking, and a lot of it, it's a law enforcement issue.So we're always looking for where are the gaps and how to best fill those gaps, and the connectivity with our other sister services in the first response community, the civilian response component, the emergency management aspect, we're trying to bring all the stakeholders together as best we can with the grants that we're given. Our goal basically to sum it up is to have the best research-based active attack training in the country. So in doing that, we solicit, we look for, we seek out events and great training programs and people with a lot of experiences and friends of ours that have been through a lot of stuff, not just here in the United States but overseas, and we try to extrapolate from that what would translate well into a patrol reality, into an EMS paramedic reality, into a firefighter reality as you make the scene first on one of these incidents. So that's kind of who we are in a nutshell and what we do and who we do it for and what we're all about.Bill Godfrey:John, I think that's a fantastic explanation of what ALERRT does and the mission, and you're the assistant director there, right? What does your day to day job look like? What is the kind of stuff you end up spending your time on?John Curnutt:Yes sir. So I started as one of the lead instructors back in the day and then moved up to director of training and then into the assistant director position. My day to day now, I have IT training, logistics. I coordinate very heavily with research so that everything is all pulling and pointing in the same direction and everything complements each other smoothly across the board. So the grants that we get, they offset the costs for the training we do out the door. So right before COVID, we were tooled up and on track to do about 1,300 , maybe almost 1,400 classes per year across the United States with the grants that we were receiving, both state and federal grants. So putting that all together and sending it out the door, making it free for the end user, for the agencies, for the officers that are attending, it's a very, very herculean effort if you will from kind of a small staff, relatively small staff when you look at the amount of throughput that we have, about 35 staff members. So I'm looking at all these areas, making sure that everything kind of complements and works in unison.During COVID, the in-person training obviously was shut down for a period of time. So all of our training programs that we put out, all of the certified instructors that we had minted over the years, they continue to do their own internal training. So we're still doing some training and we're still supporting those indirects with our funding. But we had to kind of look at things a little bit differently so we created an e-learning LMS revision for ALERRT so that we could go online and we could do some meaningful training online and really try to get into that space and just expand our course offerings and how we offered it and be able to kind of permeate the training more across all of our responders. So we create a new learning division in 2020, which required us to get the LMS system and hire people. So that is under me as well and as we kind of build that thing out and figure out how that's going to complement everything that we do in-person and maybe even some of the things we can't afford to do in-person yet, we can start putting some online versions of those courses and trainings and supplemental training, instructor updates, re-certifications, all that stuff is going through our LMS now.So I basically make sure that everything that we say we're going to do on the grant applications get done, the operational output, throughput is done. Make sure that people know who we are, what we're about, and if they have something that they want or need from us, that we get it to them.Bill Godfrey:It sounds like you have a very busy day, day to day.John Curnutt:Yeah. It's fun. It's fun.Bill Godfrey:So you mentioned in the opening when you were talking about ALERRT, the research-based mission or the research-based component of the training. I know Dr. Martindale has just recently gone through and updated the data set with the latest stuff from last year. What new trends if any are you seeing? What stayed the same, what's shifting around a little bit, any insights into the data and changes that that may be driving for the ALERRT mission coming up?John Curnutt:Absolutely. Well you know early on, when we were looking at events and there were only 12 to 15 to 18 a year, you would have an outlier event and it would really skew the averages quite a bit. A large event and several small events, and you average those together, and the problem still looked a lot bigger than it really was or lasted a lot longer than it really did. So we started using median or the mean...that middle number. There was an equal number smaller, equal number larger, so that we could kind of try to frame or reference this thing a little bit cleaner. As time has gone on now, we're at well over 400 events in the last 20 years that we've studied and co-authored with the FBI's research. We're starting to see that the time duration for these events seems to be trending downward like they're over with quicker. I think that's attributable to civilian response, the messaging that's getting out thee, the training that public and private organizations are engaging with their employees, their staff, even churches are getting this and civic groups are getting this. Kiwanis Clubs were going out and doing these all over the places. So you're starting to see that these events are less people that are caught up in the event because it lasts less time.The other thing we've seen is over the last seven or so years, we're starting to see an increase in the number of attacks involving edged weapons and vehicles as the mode of injury. So they're still very predominately firearms-related, but when it's an edged weapon, a knife, a machete, something like that or a vehicle that's being used to mow through a crowd of people, there's this tendency for people to look at that and go, "Okay, so what's the training for that?" It's the same. The response is the same. There's a serious injury or death that's occurring in progress, we show up, you have to stop that killing in progress, and then you have people that are seriously injured, you have to stop them from dying as a result of their injuries and you have to coordinate with other services. You have to get all this stuff done.So the trends have been over the years getting medical training into the cops' hands, getting tactical training into the fire and EMS. Integrating them cleanly with unified command and establishing a command structure and building it as time and resources arrive on scene and trying to really refine that process of everything that happens after, after we stop the killing, the coordination, the communication, the prioritization of getting life-saving treatment to those who need it and getting them very quickly to definitive care, because it's really going to be surgical intervention that's going to save their lives or just trying to delay the dying process with everything that we do in pre-hospital care. So these are all the kind of emerging trends, now we're getting into pre-hospital care, fresh blood. Some of the other stuff that we're seeing. That's kind of where we're looking is the coordination, communication, command and control piece, the pre-hospital care, the tactical piece has been worked on for quite a while and I think we've gotten pretty good at arriving on scene very quickly. We've definitely done a good job in training civilians to protect themselves, get away, keep them out and then when they have to defend themselves. So these are things that we'll just continue to double down on but we're also looking for emerging trends and those are the ones that we see at this time.Bill Godfrey:That makes sense, and obviously your discussion about the incident management piece and that coordination piece is where we've been living for a decade now and focusing on the training and the process that drives behind the ASIM checklist and pulling all that together but it obviously is focused around the time. What if anything can we do to neutralize the threat faster and certainly to medically intervene and decrease the time it takes to get them on an ambulance and get them to the hospital. So I think those are great focus areas.You mentioned the duration stuff, that the duration seems to be shortening up a little bit and I know from years past and talking with Dr. Martindale, that the duration data has been shall we say challenging to say the least. A lack of documentation, a lack of clean standards. Sometimes you don't know when the threat actually ceased to be a threat, even after the investigation, it can be hard to pin down. Have you guys, and I know he was working really hard with his research team to try to nail that down, did they actually get their arms around that in this last pass on some of the new events and the data? Is that getting cleaner?John Curnutt:Yeah, so one of the difficult things is trying to code these events very specifically so that we're talking about apples and apples every time something happens, when we look at the cause and effet, how do we prepare people to arrive on scene and handle what they're dealing with and not try to loop this in with some other kind of more common type of occurrence. A lot of people get shot on certain nights or weekends in certain cities, but those aren't active shooters per se. These were not workplace violence or somebody walking into a school or just randomly attacking a school or a church or a music venue or anything like that. But one of the things that we've started to kind of open up is this discussion on mass shootings where maybe it is gang-related or maybe it is a fight gone bad or somebody got angry and shot into a crowd of people, aiming for somebody they were angry with and just gotten into a fight with, but they hit a bunch of other people and this just happened a couple months ago in Austin.When we show up on the scene, we don't know what the motive of the offender was or how many offenders there were or whatever, we just have the same net result, which is a bunch of people shot laying on the ground in an unknown security situation, so now we've got to get security, we got to have incident command up and running, we got to get medical going, we got to get them expedited out of here, and have these contingency plans for what if things that are going okay right now go south really quick. So we're starting to kind of broaden that definition from traditional active shooter workplace violence, school violence to any mass shooting, mass casualty incident, regardless of the motive of the person.Bill Godfrey:I think that makes a lot of sense for all kinds of reasons but not the least of which is the challenges sometimes of comparing one data set with another one. I know that of course in our courses, we're using the data set that ALERRT publishes, which is fairly consistent with the FBI but even there there's some little differences. I always find it fascinated how much people can get wrapped around the axle about arguing, about what was or wasn't an active shooter event, and from my point, it's a little bit of a ... What's the word I'm trying to think of? Tempest in a teapot, arguing about a distinction, when really the question should be what was the response?John Curnutt:There you go.Bill Godfrey:What did we know at the time of dispatch? Because as you said, when the call goes out, it doesn't matter what it actually is or what it turns out to be two days later when the investigators are done. What matters is it what it sounds like when it went out and then how do we respond to that.I do find it fascinating, having those conversations with people that just really...they'll go through the data to the nth degree, and then get really frustrated when they can't compare one data set to another and of course part of that argument goes away, the larger these data sets get, the more reliable they get. But it is kind of interesting. Have you experienced that as well when you're having ... Because I know you work pretty closely with the FBI and a lot of the other federal organizations. Do you end up in that same conversation sometimes?John Curnutt:We do. But that conversation is the same as many other conversations we've had on other topics, when we talk about tactics, since day one. Our own people, let alone us showing up to some strange new city from wherever we came from, can talk about tactics, and everyone loves to argue about tactics. It seems like the comfort zone of this is what I think and this is why I think it and who are you to say anything different, and a long time ago we learned...Something that was said many, many years ago, that amateurs argue tactics, professionals will discuss strategy and logistics. So we get caught up in these arguments though and this is another one of those. So is this an active attack? Is this an active shooting? Is this a mass shooting? Is this a...I think forensically when you look back on it you need a post-incident analysis. It is interesting to know, "All right, so if it was workplace violence, what were the pre-attack indicators that probably could have been seen and something said about them to maybe prevent this? What was the psychology of this student that walked in and started shooting a bunch of people and what were the pre-attack indicators where we might have been able to get better at intervention and prevention?"When you lump that in with gang fights and fights gone bad in a mass environment or somebody got kicked out of a club and they walk back and just shoot indiscriminately into the club, you really aren't looking at anything different on the tactical response or the medical response, but you are looking at this differently from the investigative standpoint of culpability or prevention or could it have been prevented or how do we look for the red flags based off of the psychological clues. But at the end of the day, yeah, we're all sitting around and we're arguing semantics and we're arguing context and I have the luxury of saying that's awesome, you health science people, you mental science people, you argue that.I'm down here in the weeds, I'm kind of a knuckle dragger and I'm going to be down here, teaching people again, what do we know about these events, how do we show up on scene, ready to go? What do we need to take with us as far as equipment and mindset, physical and mental and tactical abilities that we've honed prior to this day, and what do we know about the people that we're going to invite to the party as early as possible and the fire and EMS services? What are we doing with our hospitals that are going to receive this surge of patients and what's their surge capacity for this many trauma wounds and all this stuff that we have to work with. I'll let the other people talk about how to categorize this. Meanwhile I'm going to go back here, working on trying to bend the space-time continuum with this patrol car and get there faster.Bill Godfrey:Yeah, 100%. 100%. One of the funny things to me, I mean this is probably not going to be funny to you when I say it, but it is funny to me. I learned a while back, one of the fastest ways to get a bunch of cops arguing with each other is to get them started talking about room entry tactics. It does seem to be one of those things that nobody can agree on and like you said everybody holds...They not only hold their own opinion but they hold the position that only their opinion is correct and it can lead to some fireworks in the classroom.John Curnutt:Oh yeah. It's fighting words. It's like talking about somebody's sister, but again, it's funny because the tactics are all based around the same basic concepts. Speed, surprise, controlled aggression, you're trying to get from a point that you control through a choke point into a new area that you don't control and gain control of it, given that anything can happen on the way to, through, and beyond the door that you're about to make entry through. Another thing we argue about is which way, do you go this way, do you go that way, do you attack this corner first, do you attack that corner first, do you move in the direction that you've seen, do you move in the direction you haven't seen? How's your ballistic protection postured as you go through the door, where the threats could come from first and then second and then third and then fourth. At the end of the day, we're all still arguing within the same operational context. You really want to win this fight, so you're looking for where the fight has to occur now, and then two seconds from now, two feet from now.At the end of the day when we do our research that's another reason to really go back to the research component of what we do is we will spend so much time arguing and we will hijack entire portions of training classes, arguing about the minutiae and the tactics and the preferences, and at the end of the day, when we look at the data, that's not where we're getting shot on these actual event responses. We're getting shot arriving on scene, getting out of our car, people showing up at the front of the building, trying to get in, moving down the hallway to intercept them as we know where they're at and we're driving towards them and they come out and they see us, we see them, and then we have it out there in the hallway. So if those are the areas where we're actually getting shot and killed responding to these things, how do we...Do we put more emphasis on approaches to buildings as opposed to room entries? No we don't do that, because we still like to argue about room entries.So it's a never-ending battle. Everyone has really good points. No one's wrong, everyone wants to do the right thing and wants to make this a better product and get better performance out of their people. As a program, it goes from very small, two, three person agencies all the way up to 45,000 person agencies and everything in between. Our approach has to be flexible so that we can meet people where they're at and we can show them what they're willing and able to open their minds to. Or if they're not, then we can show them, "Okay, so you like that. We teach that. Let's work on that." Again, training is about learning new things. It may be validating what you do, but also if there's another way to skin this cat, because if the primary plan doesn't work, you have to have an alternate and you have to have a contingency, maybe an emergency plan. But again, we're not going to argue with anybody. I mean we've seen all these ways work. At the end of the day it's really a mindset thing a little bit more than a tactical thing. I've seen some people in really bad situations with poor equipment but they have the right mindset and they can still see that tactical advantage. There's so much to this that we're not going to get caught up in these arguments anymore.Bill Godfrey:I think you're right on the spot. The other thing that I think sometimes people forget is the amount of training that the typical patrol officer or guy or gal on the street actually gets in the academy and why some of this stuff is so essential. I was speaking last night to a group of city and counter managers and I was saying...We were talking a little bit about some of the current stuff that comes up and the challenges that can occur at that city and county manager level, and I said, "Look, you've got to remember. A typical patrol officer," and it varies from state to state and one jurisdiction to another. But a typical academy is about six months. Some are a little shorter, some are a little longer, but about six months, and within that six months, they might actually spend two days working on active shooter response, active shooter training, and dynamic room entries. In that two days, you've got a handful of instructors that are running evolutions with two or three officers at a time, everybody else is kind of standing and watching. You got class sizes usually of 30 to 40 people in the class, do the math. Each officer is getting...If they're lucky, an hour of actual training on that, and how much are they going to be able to remember that? How much are they going to retain it?So when I look at, and of course, for the full transparency here, everybody remember, I'm a fire guy, not a cop. When I look at the training that's going on in the classes, and John, some of the arguments that you just talked about that come up of, "Well, you're supposed to hook right or I hook left or I go to the center or you get the blind corner, whatever," and I'm thinking, "Lord. You're scripting stuff at a level that might be appropriate for a SWAT team that's practicing what, once or twice a week? They're running their drills and running rehearsals and they're doing deployments or call-outs on a regular basis, not a control person that had training in the academy and hasn't had a refresher in three years and you're expecting them under the moment of pressure to recall all this." The thing that strikes me is that it really ... I think the bigger issue is just can we simplify that message so that what they remember is I need to go in.John Curnutt:That's it.Bill Godfrey:I need to go in and try to make a difference and stop this and if I've got a buddy with me, great. Here's how that should sort of kind of look. Not the least of which let's not shoot each other in the process of going through the door. But yeah, I agree with you. I think it's an awful lot of time and energy spent on a discussion and like you said, it's not wrong, but is it the right discussion for the audience and are they going to be able to retain that with the level of training that their particular organization is going to maintain with them? What do you think about that?John Curnutt:Well, we're very checklist-oriented. We want to create a checklist that we can follow that's going to solve the problem. The issue with that is these problems are very dynamic and fluid and there's just so many variables that could come in the situation, the location, the time, the resources you have to throw with this. Everything gets a vote, and so it may not go according to your checklist. Matter of fact, it's probably not going to go according to your checklist. So now you've got to have people that are capable of critical thinking, and not just rote memorization drills, trying to apply this template over something that doesn't work and I use the analogy all the time of learning how to dance and okay, so if you memorize these dance steps of that one song, what happens when they switch songs? What happens when the music speeds up, slows down or stops altogether? You're not even paying attention to that anymore because you're still worried about on the left foot, right foot.It's also, you use another analogy, we learn tactics very much like we learn language. So when we're kid, we learn ABCs, and we play with these little blocks that we put together in different orders to form words and then we form sentences and then we hope to form paragraphs and then pages and then thesis statements. We don't get that far in training because we don't have enough time to advance beyond the ABCs of the words of the sentences. So we certainly never get to any graduate level or doctoral level analysis on what we're doing and why we're doing it. We're just still playing with these building blocks. Because that's the amount of time that we're given. I mean we have high school sports teams that are training more for a game on Friday than we're getting to train for life and death situations that we go to. There's an issue with that. So defund the police and shrink the budgets and less training is all, it's all in the wrong direction. But then it's not just more training and more budget, it's what are we doing with our time and we're trying to take what we do on the...I was on SWAT for 18 years and we were carefully selected, very rigorous selection process. Go through this training on a regular basis to create this organic functional team. There's a lot that we developed through all of that that does not translate cleanly to what you already talked about is a very small ad hoc team of people who don't know each other, the disparity of training and experience and mindset and equipment from different agencies most likely that shows up on one of these events. There is your team, how do you keep that together and how does that function the same way that this polished, smooth, organic professional team over here does? It doesn't. So something has to be translated differently, something has to be modified to fit that reality, but we don't ever want to go down that road.So yeah, you've got to have critical thinkers. People that can size up the situation and go, "Okay, this is what we're dealing with. Here's how we get this done. How do we go through this door? You could go left, you could go right, you could go straight, but I just know we need to get the hell through the door."Bill Godfrey:Right. Yes, yes. Yes twice. It's funny, you talked about the checklist stuff. I mean that's always one of the items that we had to carefully balance when we developed the original version of the checklist so many years ago, and of course, we're always watching for opportunities of can we simplify it, can we make it better, what are the lessons learned. It comes down to it's a rather than a procedural checklist, like you might have a pilot, and a lot of people don't draw the distinction. But with an aircraft checklist that a pilot would use, it's a very specific, very precise procedure in a very specific order. Throw this switch, set this, do that. What we've done on the active shooter incident management checklist is removed from that. It's almost more like a goal checklist. These are the things that need to get done, generally speaking, this is the order that you want to try to accomplish them in, but you've got to have the capability to adjust dynamically, which is one of the reasons that we run 11 full-scale scenarios through the course where we're throwing all different kinds of scenarios at them.I mean the very first one we'd start with on the beginning of the day is it's super simple. They get about four people shot, and the suspect kills themselves. So it's a very, very simple incident, but as we build over the course of the 11, we're building all the way up to basically Paris style complex coordinated attacks. But the process is the process, and when you can get a group on the same page of, "Oh yeah, okay, we need to do this. Okay, so this is kind of where we're at, this is the next step, these are the sequences." Some common terminology across it. Those are really the key elements to taking time off the clock, which of course is...John, I know you're well aware, is one of our big, big, big focuses in class. It's the very first thing we talk about in the opening on the morning of day one and it's the last thing we close with is reminding everybody that this is about the clock.One of the things that's important to me to say is it's not about best or right or wrong. I don't think those are useful terms. It's what's the fastest.John Curnutt:Yes. That's it.Bill Godfrey:What's the fastest way to get this done?John Curnutt:We've used terms like driving force and exigent to try to hit home these points. Look, exigent means it's got to happen right now. It doesn't have to be pretty, it just has to happen pretty darn quick. Because it's about results, and the results are stop the killing, stop people from dying as a result of their injuries, and the clock that you just talked about isn't from the time that we were made aware of the problem that's happening, the clock started the second that somebody, the instant that somebody was shot.Bill Godfrey:Absolutely.John Curnutt:So that's the real clock that we're up against.Bill Godfrey:Yeah, and it's interesting to see that with a little bit of process and a little bit of practice, how much time people can save off the clock. We see almost every single class, almost every single class, their time to get all patients transported on the very first scenario, which granted, first scenario is always bumpy. But their time to get those four patients off the scene and transported is usually longer than the time that they turn in on the very last capstone scenario, where they've got multiple attackers simultaneously attacking multiple sites. It's just a little bit of process and a little bit of practice goes a long way. It would be nice if we could get more people through it, but that's the reality of the challenge we face is there's only so many of these we can do, we got to move them around the country, get them in front of people. You mentioned your online effort. During COVID of course we were challenged, "Alright, everything we do is a hands-on training. How would we do this hands-on training remotely?"That led us to creating the NCIER Campus for the National Center for Integrated Emergency Response, we created an online campus that allows us to recreate almost a real classroom environment where you can actually casually talk to people, you can walk to different rooms. We've got the hands-on activities. We've even built out the 911 center in the CAD system, so we're able to run full scenarios soup to nuts, from the dispatch to the last patient transported into the hot wash. But if you would have asked me two years ago John, did I ever think that was possible, I would have flat-out told you no.John Curnutt:Yeah. Well that's something that everything we do is about let's look at what's working and see what's not working yet and we have to just constantly evolve. We have to constantly push beyond the loop to make ourselves better. It's funny because I'll use this, if my son never gets to hear this, he'll appreciate this. He's a huge basketball fan and his favorite player in the world is Steph Curry who happens to be...He holds the number one spot for career free-throw percentages, I think it's around 90, 91%. Which is incredible and people just go crazy, especially when you start talking about his shots from the field. But it's amazing that it's not 100% because the guy puts in thousands of reps a day and he has for 20+ years to hone his craft so that on game day, he can be 90%. So that's crazy, that's an anomaly when you start looking at who's the fifth best and who's the tenth best, these guys are professional athletes, high, high, highly paid professional athletes, and they will spend 90% of their time practicing perfectly these skills that they need to go out there and score and win games.None of that resembles what we do in first response training. We don't get that much time, we can't get that many reps in, but we're still expected to be 100% when we go out there on game day, given the myriad of variables that could come in there and interfere with our good plans and good intentions. I just think that...Oh, go ahead.Bill Godfrey:I was just going to say amen. I mean amen.John Curnutt:Yeah, and what's amazing to me is how close to 100% we still get, even though we don't put near that much time and effort into it because we just don't have that much time and money and effort to put into it because we're too busy working all the time. So I'm excited about the opportunity to find different ways to get people to think about these things, work through these problems, mentally, emotionally, tactically, physically put themselves in these situations and under the stress as much as they can to replicate the game day conditions so that we can see what the breaking point is and then go back and fix that, work on it again. Fix that, work on it again. So that's the perpetual mission of ours is just try to constantly advance our capabilities as a response culture across the country.Bill Godfrey:Amen. You used your son as an example. My wife will say to me every once in a while, a Tom Cruise movie comes on, she'll say, "Hmm. He still looks good." Tom Cruise is a couple years older than me, with the implied why don't you look like that, I'm like-John Curnutt:She'd look over you and go, "Hey, hey."Bill Godfrey:"Yeah, what's wrong with you?" And I'm like, "Hey, it's a little bit of a different context. You know what? If I had his money, a personal chef, a personal trainer and a personal gym and didn't have to work Monday through Wednesday most of the time except when I'm on set, I could look like that too." Not necessarily saying I would, but I could.John Curnutt:Or be closer to it. Yeah.Bill Godfrey:Yeah, and I think your analogy there, the professional sports team, is really appropriate because we don't as a public safety community, we are not afforded anywhere near that kind of time or training opportunity to do it. But the thing that I think is comparable with professional sports teams is they don't get better on their own just by practicing. Practice doesn't make perfect, perfect practice makes perfect, and that takes coaching. It takes people to help you hone your craft and I think that's one of the advantages that we certainly bring to the active shooter realm, both of our groups, us on the incident management side, and all of the stuff that ALERRT does is that you've got the opportunity to improve your practice, the little bit of practice you get, can get a whole lot better because you've got an expert coach there that can help you point out the little things that may matter. When your day comes tragically, God forbid when your day comes, that little thing that some instructor corrected or pointed out or got you to adjust might make the difference.John Curnutt:Well and so to kind of get back to an earlier conversation we had about arguing tactics and stuff, so it is a valid point that you've got to start somewhere and you have to work on those basics and you have to have a very sound system that you practice on a regular basis. But what's amazing to me is the true professionals, man I've seen some of these players make crazy shots, off-kilter, off-balance, falling down. But they understand the mechanics now of how to get a ball through the air that distance at an angle that's going to go off the glass maybe and then they joke about did he call glass or not. Sometimes it goes just straight in, nothing but net, some room. At some point, it isn't about the perfect form anymore, it's just understanding how to make the shot happen regardless of where I'm standing, how I'm standing, who's guarding me, what's going on.That's where we're trying to get our people is, "Look, it's no longer about it's got to be this platform, this form, or it's not going to work." No, we can still make it work. We've got to have this graduate level discussion. We've got to get beyond the ABC blocks. We just need more time and we've got to have more focused, intense effort on getting those things done that need to be done so that we can have graduate level discussions. We're writing paragraphs and pages and thesis statements on these topics that we're supposed to be industry experts on and not because of three hours of training that we took every two years or 40 hours that we took 25, six, eight years ago. That's ridiculous.Bill Godfrey:Yeah, it is important to remember there's always more than one way to get something done and everything we teach, it's a way, not the way. It's a way, and there's a lot of ways to get stuff done. I think amen to all of this. So we're running towards the end of our time here. Let me ask you, what's new? What's coming up for ALERRT that you're excited about?John Curnutt:Well, two things. So we have our annual conference each year, and the really cool thing about the conference is it's our way of being able to go beyond what we're able to do with the grants that we get. The grants are amazing and they're our life's blood of the program. But there's also kind of some limitations on who we can reach with these grants and how much we get to do. So with the conference, it's self-funded, so that allows us a little bit of expanded left and right boundaries. We get physicians in there, directors of security, educators, nurses, everybody comes into this, military, and we're all looking at this from our own altitude and perspectives but we gain some insight into what other people in our communities, other stakeholders are also looking at it from and how they view it and how it impacts them. So it's a really cool opportunity to kind of bring everybody together under one big tent if you will and discuss this thing holistically.The other thing that we're looking at, and again, typical fashion, we're all arriving late to this party but we're going to start pushing this really hard is none of the tactics that we teach, none of the verbal skills that we are trying to impart on people as far as de-escalation goes and interpersonal skills and all that, none of this works when the person that we're depending on to go out there and employ these things that they've learned in training, when that person is not in a good head space, in emotional health, mental health, physical health. These things have a direct correlating factor into how well they're going to perform in the field. The aggregate or cumulative effects of all the stress that we endure in our professions has been unaddressed. It's a PowerPoint slide that we say, "Hey everybody, stay happy." No, no, that's not enough. That's ridiculous. We got to do more, we got to take a more focused effort on trying to make people better. Bring people in healthy and keep them healthy throughout.We have maintenance plans on our vehicles. Every so many thousand miles, you got to take it in and change these fluids and change the brake pads. You don't want to have something go out when you're in the middle of driving in a...pursuit driving or high speeds, running code, service your weapons, service this, service that, maintain this, maintain that, maintain that. We don't do anything with our people. We don't pull them off the line and say, "Look, before you brake, we're going to take you over here and we're going to fix something that has started to build up. There's a little bit of carbon buildup here, we need to just get rid of that." We're not doing that. It's actually shunned, it's frowned upon, and I think we're starting to see cracks and fissures in the structure, in the foundation of our professions here, with our people that are ... We have more officers kill each other or kill themselves each year than are killed by suspects or violent offenders. There's something going on. There's something going on and we need to address it. So that's something else that we want to get out of ahead of is in the middle of all this, how do we not become the monsters that we're training to fight?Bill Godfrey:I think that's a really important, important message. It's been about a month, two months ago I guess, we did a couple of podcasts with some responders to actual events and some of the mental health docs. Very heartfelt, and got a lot of very positive response from that and it's interesting to know how many people are hurting, either...And it's not always from one event. Obviously it can be, but it can also be the pattern of a career, and just a bucket of stuff that finally fills up until it overflows and when it overflows it can be very unhealthy for the individual and those around them. I completely agree with you and I think we've got a lot of room, a lot of room to do there.Well John, it's been a pleasure having you with us today. I really enjoyed the conversation. Everybody look forward to the ALERRT conference October 30 through November 2 in Nashville this year, right?John Curnutt:Gaylord, Nashville, absolutely.Bill Godfrey:Alright. John, thanks for being with us today. I'd like to thank everybody for tuning in and listening. Hope you enjoyed the conversation. If you have any suggestions or questions for us that you'd like us to address, you can email them to info@c3pathways.com. Again that's info@c3pathways.com. I'd like to thank our producer Karla Torres for putting this together and until next time, stay safe.

If you want to learn more about ALERRT visit our website https://alerrt.org

Get Caught Trying to Make the World Better! Special thanks to Gary Weinstein and to the ALERRT conference 2018.   Best Safety Podcast, Safety Program, Safety Storytelling, Investigations, Human Performance, Safety Differently, Operational Excellence, Resilience Engineering, Safety and Resilience Incentives Give this a listen. Thanks for listening and tell your friends.  See you in the ER.

Here is friend of the pod, Alan Frankfurt, talking about the 2018 ALERRT Conference. www.ALERRTConference.com Listen to this podcast. Best Safety Podcast, Safety Program, Safety Storytelling, Investigations, Human Performance, Safety Differently, Operational Excellence, Resilience Engineering, Safety and Resilience Incentives Give this a listen. Thanks for listening and tell your friends.  See you at the conference, someplace.

Larry Snow with the Secure Transportation and Executive Protection News for Friday, June 29th, 2018. In Technology News From the Verge Google Maps may be getting Waze’s best feature: incident reporting Waze’s incident reporting feature looks to be coming to Google Maps, as some users have spotted on their Android apps. The feature shows road work, the time an accident was reported, and whether a user is confident a slowdown is still active.     Read More   ================================   In Security News From Bloomberg Jarrod Ramos who opened fire at a Maryland newspaper office Thursday, killing five and injuring two others, police say he had a long, acrimonious history with the newspaper, including a lawsuit and years of harassment of its journalists on Twitter.   Read More   ======================   In Cybersecurity News From ZDNet A massive cache of law enforcement personnel data has leaked A data breach at a federally funded active shooter training center has exposed the personal data of thousands of US law enforcement officials, ZDNet has learned.   The cache of data contained identifiable information on local and state police officers, and federal agents, who sought out or underwent active shooter response training in the past few years. The backend database powers the website of Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training -- known as ALERRT -- at Texas State University. Read More   ========================   In Business of Executive Protection News From ISDACenter.Org Whether EP Provider or Trainer, You Are a Business If you are relatively new or have been in the profession for some time; whether you are a sole practitioner looking for the next job; a security provider looking for the next customer or client; or a trainer looking for the next student… YOU OR YOUR COMPANY ARE A BUSINESS!   Read More ==   The ISDA Summer Reading List With Summer officially in full swing, and with the July 4th holiday right around the corner, what better time to get started with your Summer reading. The ISDA has put together a list of books authored by ISDA members. Learn from Executive Protection professionals as they share their knowledge – from conducting an advance and advanced agent planning guide to business and leadership tips and techniques. Read More   ============================ Links to all news stories mentioned in this news briefing are available at the archive website securitydrivernews.libsyn.com. You can also listen to past news briefings and leave comments. As a reminder, the news briefing is available in Apple and Google Play podcast apps, Spotify, and Amazon Echo devices.   ============================ This flash briefing is brought to you by the International Security Driver Association. Whether you are exploring a career in executive protection, new to the profession, honing your expertise, or an established security executive, ISDA offers its Members benchmark educational, networking, and marketing programs. For more information about the ISDA membership, articles related to secure transportation, security, and executive protection, go to isdacenter.org. Thanks for listening to the Security Driver and Executive Protection News flash briefing.

Knowing what to do in an emergency situation with Lt. Rob Pendleton   Episode 23: Show Notes.   Our guest today is Lt. Rob Pendleton of the Snellville, GA Police Department.  Snellville, GA is located about 35 miles north of Atlanta, GA.  In the aftermath of the Las Vegas shootings, we are all asking ourselves what we can do.  Many cannot think of a good answer to that question.  It is my hope that we can take the information discussed in today’s episode and keep ourselves safer and more aware.   Lt. Pendleton has spent his adult life learning about how to keep others safe at his own peril.  In this episode he condenses years of experiences, training and reading into real life information that we can use to keep ourselves safe and think through any emergency situations.     Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:   ScalingUp! Podcast – http://scalinguph2o.com/ The Snellville, GA Police Department -  http://www.snellville.org/police-department ALERRT and CRAS - https://alerrt.org/page/CivilianResponse

Morehouse Campus Police is excited to bring you the Civilian Response to Active Shooter Events (CRASE). This presentation is designed and built on the Avoid, Deny, Defend strategy developed by ALERRT in 2004. It is designed to provide strategies, guidance and a proven plan for surviving an active shooter event. Since 2002, the Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training (ALERRT)™ Active Shooter Response program has delivered vital active shooter response training to more than 70,000 law enforcement professionals across the nation, through more than $45 million in state and federal funding.