Podcast appearances and mentions of bruce scott

What policies does the American Medical Association support? What does the American Medical Association fight for? What are the biggest struggles doctors face today? American Medical Association CXO Todd Unger hosts.

In this episode of Set Lessing Bruce, host Jesse Jackson and guest Scott Shea delve into Bruce Springsteen's unreleased albums, the recently announced box set 'Tracks 2', and specific tracks like 'Raining the River'. They explore Springsteen's prolific songwriting, the excitement of discovering new works, and anticipated surprises in the collection. The discussion further transitions to Van Morrison's journey post-'Brown Eyed Girl' and his relationship with the song. The episode wraps up with Scott Shea sharing insights on his current projects, including a Waylon Jennings book and an article on Wolfman Jack. 00:00 Welcome to Set Lessing Bruce 00:44 Excitement Over Bruce Springsteen's Unreleased Albums 02:45 Discussing the New Song 'Raining the River' 03:18 Comparing Unreleased Tracks and WWE Matches 08:58 Van Morrison's Musical Journey 09:49 The Story Behind 'Brown Eyed Girl' 14:25 Van Morrison's Live Performances 22:56 Day Job and Upcoming Projects 25:08 Conclusion and Farewell Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

4/10/2025 Mike and cohost, Wheel of Fortune announcer Jim Thornton welcomed Bruce Scott on ConversationsRadio. With a career spanning some 30 years, Bruce is a familiar voice heard in both Southern California and the Bay Area. From 2012 to 2025, Bruce was the afternoon host on KOST 103.5 FM in Southern California and then moved north to the Bay Area and did morningson KBAY 94.5 FM in San Jose. Bruce worked a couple of jobs outside of radio but eventually made it back to Southern California and in March, 2025 joined the on-air staff at Go Country 105 FM. You can catch him weekday morning on LA's only country music station. Thrilled to be back on LA radio, Bruce is settling in and is excited about this new chapter in his life and career. Mike and Jim enjoyed chatting with him about his new radio gig, his return to Southern California and everything in between. He is also a drummer and played in a band up north. Catch Bruce Scott weekdays mornings on LA's only country radio station Go Country 105 FM Enjoy the Podcast!

What are the outcomes of prior authorization patients? How do insurance companies use AI? How does prior authorization work? Who is responsible for getting pre authorization? AMA President Bruce A. Scott, MD, shares key takeaways from the AMA's recent prior auth survey, discusses physicians' concerns about prior authorization in healthcare, how prior authorization negatively impacts employers by reducing employee health and productivity. American Medical Association CXO Todd Unger hosts.

What is God's plan for Israel? Does His covenant still stand? Bruce Scott teaches about God's plan for Israel according to Romans 9-11, specifically 11:23-26. Him and his wife have been involved in reaching Jewish people with the good news of Christ for 40+ years.

00:00 Show open/ Dr. Bruce Scott, President of the American Medical Association (AMA) on physician pay cuts and doctor shortages. 6:14 Dr. Janet Wright, Director of Programming and Science for The Heart Disease and Stroke Prevention Division at The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) In Atlanta. 14:17 Face the State: Ohio Senate Minority Leader Senator Nickie Antonio (D- Lakewood) on the final days of the Ohio General Assembly's legislation session. Governor DeWine's announcement of driving simulators being set up in Springfield to address traffic safety issues involving Haitian migrants in the city and the deportation fears among Haitian migrants there. 26:54 Face the State: An interview with outgoing Ohio US Senator Sherrod Brown (D). Tech industry growth in Central Ohio.

In this episode, Dr. Privett sits down (live and in-person!) with AMA President Bruce Scott, MD, to discuss the American Medical Association's "5 keys to fixing America's rural health crisis," and to learn more about how these steps can help alleviate the physician shortage in Iowa.Thank you to our podcast sponsor: Foster Group

Why do prior authorizations get denied? Who is responsible for getting pre authorization? Why is prior authorization so difficult? How long does prior authorization take? Our guest is American Medical Association President Bruce Scott, MD. AMA CXO Todd Unger hosts.

What does the AMA fight for? Why is prior authorization taking so long? What is the scope of practice for the American Medical Association? Our guest is the new president of the AMA, Bruce Scott, MD. American Medical Association CXO Todd Unger hosts.

GUEST 1 OVERVIEW: Paul McGowan is an artist and social commentator who has been cancelled many times by the mainstream media. Addressing emotive issues, his works often provoke strong reactions. He studied art at Falmouth, Winchester and Bath School of Art. GUEST 2 OVERVIEW: Dr. Bruce Scott is an author and psychoanalyst based in the UK.

Hello lovely souls, welcome back to another soul-nourishing episode of Beyond the Words. Today's conversation was an absolute gem, diving deep into the intricacies of relationships, masculinity, and femininity.In this heart-to-heart dialogue between Kevin Bruce Scott and myself, we journeyed through the realms of safety, vulnerability, and growth within relationships. We explored the profound significance of feeling safe within ourselves and how it lays the groundwork for genuine connection with our partners.Here are some key takeaways to carry with you:Creating Emotional Safety: True safety in relationships encompasses both physical and emotional aspects, allowing partners to be authentically themselves.Redefining Stoicism: Stoicism isn't about suppressing emotions but acknowledging and managing them without letting them dictate our lives.The Power of Keeping Promises: Keeping commitments to ourselves is pivotal for personal growth and transformation.Balancing Masculine and Feminine Energies: Understanding the delicate dance between masculine and feminine energies in relationships is essential for fostering harmony and intimacy.Cultivating Curiosity and Growth: Embracing curiosity and continuous growth are vital for deepening intimacy and connection in our relationships. This episode was truly enlightening, offering insights that have the potential to transform lives. Until next time, stay curious, stay open, and keep nurturing those beautiful connections in your life.Kevin Bruce Scott Resources:Website: https://www.effortlessalpha.com/ and https://www.masculineexpansion.com/twom-for-women  and https://www.masculineexpansion.com/twomFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/kevinbrucescottInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/effortlessalpha/Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxut3cWM22oZRjsK675qepg Dimple Thakrar Resource Links: Website: https://dimpleglobal.com/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dimple.thakrarInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/dimplethakrar/

On today's show, Dr. Simon Elmer discusses the latest geopolitics and how the UK, USA, and other nations may end up being held accountable for war crimes. GUEST 1 OVERVIEW: Bruce is a psychoanalyst and a member of the College of Psychoanalysts-UK (CP-UK) Registered Member Psychoanalyst and former member of the board of governors of the College of Psychoanalysts-UK. His PhD research was concerned with the cognitive model of depression (the theoretical model which informs cognitive behavioural therapy-CBT) and selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor antidepressants-SSRI's (their effect on cognition in depression). GUEST 2 OVERVIEW: Dr Simon Elmer received his PhD in the History and Theory of Art from University College London in 2002. He has taught at the universities of London, Manchester, Reading and Michigan. In 2015 he co-founded Architects for Social Housing. Simon is an author of books on the Global Biosecurity State and the Great Reset. X: @SimonElmer2022 https://architectsforsocialhousing.co.uk/  

What is the main purpose of AMA? Why is health care legislation important? Do physicians need organized medicine? What does the AMA do—and why is the AMA important? Our guests are AMA President-Elect Bruce Scott, MD, and AMA Board of Trustees Member Bobby Mukkamala, MD. American Medical Association CXO Todd Unger hosts.

GUEST 1 OVERVIEW: Ralph Schoellhammer is an assistant professor of International Relations at Webster Vienna Private University and podcasts at The 1020. His research has a particular emphasis on how culture, values, and ideologies influence state behavior. Ralph has written for Unherd, Spiked, the Wall Street Journal and other publications about energy, and geopolitics.  GUEST 2 OVERVIEW: Bruce is a psychoanalyst and a member of the College of Psychoanalysts-UK (CP-UK) Registered Member Psychoanalyst and former member of the board of governors of the College of Psychoanalysts-UK. His PhD research was concerned with the cognitive model of depression (the theoretical model which informs cognitive behavioural therapy-CBT) and selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor antidepressants-SSRI's (their effect on cognition in depression).

  On today's show, there will be a presentation about No. 10's Nudge Unit during Covid. The discussion will delve into the long-term impact of the psychological techniques used during this time. Additionally, the show will explore why a Scottish art fund, funded through the National Lottery, is supporting hardcore porn and the sexual exploitation of children.   GUEST 1 OVERVIEW: Christopher Head is the UK's youngest Postmaster 2006 ex business owner #PostOfficeScandal victim & campaigner for justice for all involved.   GUEST 2 OVERVIEW: Bruce is a psychoanalyst and a member of the College of Psychoanalysts-UK (CP-UK) Registered Member Psychoanalyst and former member of the board of governors of the College of Psychoanalysts-UK. His PhD research was concerned with the cognitive model of depression (the theoretical model which informs cognitive behavioural therapy-CBT) and selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor antidepressants-SSRI's (their effect on cognition in depression).

GUEST 1 OVERVIEW: Dr Anne McCloskey is a GP with over 40 years experience in County Derry Northern Ireland. Anne was suspended from practising due to speaking out against harmful COVID vaccines and COVID hysteria. GUEST 2 OVERVIEW: Bruce is a psychoanalyst and a member of the College of Psychoanalysts-UK (CP-UK) Registered Member Psychoanalyst and former member of the board of governors of the College of Psychoanalysts-UK. His PhD research was concerned with the cognitive model of depression (the theoretical model which informs cognitive behavioural therapy-CBT) and selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor antidepressants-SSRI's (their effect on cognition in depression).

On today's show, Dr. Mark Bailey and Dr. Kevin Corbett discuss the idea that there was no COVID virus, presenting the perspective that the virus is merely a theory, not a proven reality. Later, Dr. Bruce Scott delves into the topics of conversion practices in Scotland and the Scottish COVID inquiry. He reflects on the week's events, including discussions involving notable figures such as Nicola Sturgeon. GUEST 1 OVERVIEW: Dr. Mark Bailey is a former New Zealand medical doctor who practiced from 1999 to 2016, including several years as a research physician in clinical trials. He decided to leave medical practice in 2016 as he no longer believed in allopathic medicine. Dr. Bailey, alongside Dr. Sam Bailey, has been providing health information to the public since early 2020, with a particular focus on topics related to COVID-19, disease transmission by microbes, and vaccines. GUEST 2 OVERVIEW: Dr. Kevin Corbett is a UK-based visual artist with 37 years of nursing experience. His clinical nursing research specialization encompasses acute, palliative, and primary medical care, forensics, respiratory and infectious diseases (STIs, HIV, and AIDS), medical screening, and testing. He holds an MSc in Nursing from King's College London (1989) and a PhD in Social Sciences from the London South Bank University (2001). You can find more about him at https://www.kevinpcorbett.com/. GUEST 3 OVERVIEW: Bruce is a psychoanalyst and a member of the College of Psychoanalysts-UK (CP-UK). He is a Registered Member Psychoanalyst and has served as a former member of the board of governors of the College of Psychoanalysts-UK. His PhD research focused on the cognitive model of depression, which informs cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), and the effects of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor antidepressants (SSRIs) on cognition in depression.

On today's show, Simon reports back from his trip to Davos as part of his 'The Great Sleep Out,' where he spent the night outdoors at the World Economic Forum, covering 150km to raise awareness for 150 million homeless and street dogs from Zurich to Davos. GUEST 1 OVERVIEW: Simon Miln is a businessman, entrepreneur, and campaigner from Edinburgh. He was "Made in Pakistan, born in Scotland, and raised in Africa." Simon has lived, worked, and owned businesses in Scotland, Africa, and the Middle East. GUEST 2 OVERVIEW: Bruce is a psychoanalyst and a member of the College of Psychoanalysts-UK (CP-UK), a registered member psychoanalyst, and a former member of the board of governors of the College of Psychoanalysts-UK. His PhD research focused on the cognitive model of depression (the theoretical model informing cognitive-behavioral therapy-CBT) and selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor antidepressants-SSRIs (their effect on cognition in depression).

GUEST 1 OVERVIEW: Bruce is a psychoanalyst and a member of the College of Psychoanalysts-UK (CP-UK) Registered Member Psychoanalyst and former member of the board of governors of the College of Psychoanalysts-UK. His PhD research was concerned with the cognitive model of depression (the theoretical model which informs cognitive behavioural therapy-CBT) and selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor antidepressants-SSRI's (their effect on cognition in depression). GUEST 2 OVERVIEW: Tony Gosling is an Investigative Journalist & Historian.

GUEST OVERVIEW: Bruce is a psychoanalyst and a member of the College of Psychoanalysts-UK (CP-UK) Registered Member Psychoanalyst and former member of the board of governors of the College of Psychoanalysts-UK. His PhD research was concerned with the cognitive model of depression (the theoretical model which informs cognitive behavioural therapy-CBT) and selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor antidepressants-SSRI's (their effect on cognition in depression).

GUEST OVERVIEW: Bruce is a psychoanalyst and a member of the College of Psychoanalysts-UK (CP-UK) Registered Member Psychoanalyst and former member of the board of governors of the College of Psychoanalysts-UK. His PhD research was concerned with the cognitive model of depression (the theoretical model which informs cognitive behavioural therapy-CBT) and selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor antidepressants-SSRI's (their effect on cognition in depression).

GUEST OVERVIEW: Bruce is a psychoanalyst and a member of the College of Psychoanalysts-UK (CP-UK) Registered Member Psychoanalyst and former member of the board of governors of the College of Psychoanalysts-UK. His PhD research was concerned with the cognitive model of depression (the theoretical model which informs cognitive behavioural therapy-CBT) and selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor antidepressants-SSRI's (their effect on cognition in depression).

Reforming Medicare payment is the top advocacy priority for the American Medical Association. Joining to discuss the steps the AMA is taking and what's at stake is AMA President-elect Bruce Scott, MD. American Medical Association CXO Todd Unger hosts.

GUEST OVERVIEW: Bruce is a psychoanalyst and a member of the College of Psychoanalysts-UK (CP-UK) Registered Member Psychoanalyst and former member of the board of governors of the College of Psychoanalysts-UK. His PhD research was concerned with the cognitive model of depression (the theoretical model which informs cognitive behavioural therapy-CBT) and selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitor antidepressants-SSRI's (their effect on cognition in depression).

Scott Shea joins Jesse to talk about working at SiriusXM, his musical fandom and his first book, All the Leaves Are Brown: How the Mamas & the Papas Came Together and Broke Apart  Available now   https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C26RHQL9/ref=docs-os-doi_0 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What are the 14 steps to financial freedom? What is your financial personality? Your financial health? The TTCI Method? Today's guest on the Crushing Debt Podcast is a CPA, speaker, course creator, and passionate about helping people become financially free.  Bruce Scott is the territory leader of (senior partner) at PricewaterhouseCoopers Jamaica. He has an MBA, FCA, FCCA, CPA (Colorado), chartered  accountant (Jamaica), and chartered certified accountant (UK). Bruce is passionate about financial intelligence leading to financial independence, and he offers financial training in several countries on strategies and behavioral changes required to pursue a path of financial freedom. Bruce, Shawn & George talk about: Being Obsessed with Financial Goals Your Financial GPS (Grow, Protect & Sow) TTCI (Track, Trim, Chop & Income) Rainy-Day Fund Reducing Debt Rules of Investing You can connect with Bruce at www.14stepstofinancialfreedom.com, as well as pick up a copy of his book there. You can connect with Bruce on Facebook and LinkedIn as well. Some memorable quotes from today's episode: "Excuses are just diagnosed lies." "When your Why makes you Cry." Let us know if you enjoy this episode and, if so, please get a copy of Bruce's book and share this episode with your friends! Please also visit our sponsor Mark Purvis to help retirees who are looking for a fun and rewarding project  by capturing wisdom and stories that will bless their families today and for generations to come. www.LegacySpotlight.com.  Or, you can support the show by visiting our new Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/crushingDebt  To contact George Curbelo, you can email him at GCFinancialCoach21@gmail.com or follow his Tiktok channel - https://www.tiktok.com/@curbelofinancialcoach  To contact Shawn Yesner, you can email him at Shawn@Yesnerlaw.com or visit www.YesnerLaw.com. 

GUEST OVERVIEW: Dr Bruce Scott is a psychoanalyst and a member of the College of Psychoanalysts-UK (CP-UK) Registered Member Psychoanalyst and former member of the board of governors of the College of Psychoanalysts-UK. His PhD research was concerned with the cognitive model of depression (the theoretical model which informs cognitive behavioural therapy-CBT) and selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor antidepressants-SSRI's (their effect on cognition in depression).

Joining Kyle in the Shop this week is Bruce Scott, personal finance specialist and Author of 14 Steps to Financial Freedom. Listen along as they discuss Bruce's journey: from his humble beginnings in Jamaica to giving back to his school by teaching finance (which formed the basis for his book), his tale is inspirational on multiple fronts. We also discuss some of the concepts in the book, as Bruce explains how to Grow, Protect and Sow your money, regardless of your starting point.About Bruce:Bruce is an international personal finance specialist who dug his way out of poverty. He is a certified public accountant (Colorado), a chartered accountant (Jamaica), a chartered certified accountant (UK) and creator of the online and in person course, 14 Steps to Financial Freedom. Bruce is also the territory leader (senior partner) at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) Jamaica, a member firm of PwC International Limited, one of the largest professional services networks in the world. Bruce started teaching the course in community-based institutions, including his alma mater, Jamaica College (high school), to increase financial literacy among working adults and students. The idea for his book stemmed from the warm reception to the course and the need to spread the financial freedom message at a faster rate.Guest Links:14 Steps to Financial Freedom - Website14 Steps to Financial Freedom - Book LinkSocial Links:Follow Bruce on InstagramFollow Bruce on LinkedInSponsorshipsSupport for 2 Bulls is brought to you by ​MANSCAPED™​, who is the best in men's below-the-waist grooming. ​Their products are precision-engineered tools for your family jewels. MANSCAPED's™ Performance Package the ultimate men's hygiene bundle! Join over 7 million men worldwide who trust MANSCAPED with this exclusive offer for you…. 20% off and free worldwide shipping with the code: 2BULLS at manscaped.com.If you are interested in signing up with TRADEPRO Academy, you can use our affiliate link here. We receive compensation for any purchases made when using this link, so it's a great way to support the show and learn at the same time! **Join our Discord for a link and code to save 10%**For anyone trading futures, check out Vantatrading.com. Founded by Mr. W Banks and Baba Yaga, they provide a ton of educational content with the focus of teaching aspiring traders how to build a repeatable, profitable process. You can find our exclusive affiliate link/discount code for Vanta in our free discord server as well!Check out the custom studies for futures trading over at OrderFlow Labs. We do not receive any compensation for referrals, we just love their community and tools!To contact us, you can email us directly at 2bulls@financialineptitude.com Or leave a message at (725) 22-BULLS. Be sure to follow us on Facebook, Twitter, or Discord to get updated when new content is posted! If you enjoyed this week's guest, check out our directory for other amazing interviews we've done in the past!If you like our show, please let us know by rating and subscribing on your platform of choice!If you like our show and hate social media, then please tell all your friends!If you have no friends and hate social media and you just want to give us money for advertising to help you find more friends, then you can donate to support the show here!China Shop Links:2 Bulls DiscordMiniseries PageChina Shop MerchGuest DirectoryAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Do you wish you could walk the streets of Jerusalem? Come visit the city on a virtual tour on this week's show! Our latest issue of Israel My Glory magazine treats readers to a tour of 15 sites in the Holy Land with stunning photos and engaging teaching on the biblical and cultural significance of each. Bruce Scott discusses his ... Read More The post May 20, 2023 | Israel My Glory In Depth: Interview w/ Bruce Scott appeared first on The Friends of Israel Today Radio.

In today's podcast episode, I interview Bruce Scott.  I ask Bruce about his journey to writing the book the 14 Steps to Financial Freedom.  I also ask Bruce to share with you how you can focus on the key steps to begin getting your financial life in order.  I also ask Bruce to talk with you about how his faith journey intersects with his work.   Show Notes and Resources.

It's not all that often where we get to hear a birth mothers' story and how the decision was made to adopt her child out. We have heard a birth father's story (Episode 2 with Bruce Scott) and now we have an opportunity to hear about the how hard it was for Ruth before and after giving birth to her daughter. It really underpins Prime Minister Julia Gillard's speech and apology around forced adoption. I hope you get as much out of Ruths story as i did. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We often don't know just how good we are designed to feel and in today's show, I interview Bruce Scott, the Body Magician, who works hard to help people feel that. Bodywork is a way through human touch and guidance, to help us nourish our nervous systems and re-write the programming of our physical and mental state as a result - a powerful tool because we are an equal part of the process rather than having something 'done' to us and in a world where health is so often externalised, bodywork calls on us to come home and explore. How did Bruce come to do this work? It's a powerful story in itself. At ten years of age, Bruce became sick with viral meningitis and went from being an elite gymnast to living in a dark room unable to go outside, even to school. Extensive treatments with Western medicine were not helping and by thirteen, Bruce had arthritis in every joint in his body.   He started learning tai chi and receiving a Swedish remedial massage once a week. Within six months, he was fully recovered and could play sports outdoors, run for miles and started boxing.Bruce, aka The Body Magician, says the combination of movement, breathing and massage transformed his life and  now he is using it to transform the lives of others. Known as BODYWORK, Bruce's work is a therapeutic practice combining massage, assisted stretching and breath-work to heal the body.He is on a mission to support the body's ability to heal, and helps clients find energy, vitality, creativity and clarity through deep relaxation. Bruce works with everyone from athletes to CEO's, mums and dads, entertainers, artists, authors and more. He helps people dealing with anxiety, depression, stress, insomnia, burnout, chronic pain, chronic fatigue, hormonal challenges, migraines, PTSD, pregnancy, pre and post operative care and mor and I'm delighted to bring you this conversation that I had with Bruce on the show as 2022 comes to an end. Enjoy the show and head to the show notes for more details over at lowtoxlife.com/podcastSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

GUEST HOST: Sonia Bailey On today's show Dr Bruce Scott discusses menticide and how the public can resist/combat this brainwashing, fear mongering. GUEST OVERVIEW: Dr Bruce Scott is a psychoanalyst and a member of the College of Psychoanalysts-UK (CP-UK) Registered Member Psychoanalyst and former member of the board of governors of the College of Psychoanalysts-UK. His PhD research was concerned with the cognitive model of depression (the theoretical model which informs cognitive behavioural therapy-CBT) and selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor antidepressants-SSRI's (their effect on cognition in depression).

In this special episode, Ben speaks to Dr. Bruce Scott, a Ph.D. qualified Psychoanalyst, Theologian, Novelist, and Writer.Bruce has a private practice in Edinburgh, is a contributor for the UK Column, and has written a novel "Gulag Caledonia" set in a post-Agenda 2030 dystopian image of Scotland in 2050.We talk about the brainwashing techniques used by our government now and during the COVID-19 fiasco, the reality of Good versus Evil, and why Climate Change Doom Goblins do not just cheer the f**k up.You can find Dr. Bruce in the following places:UK Column - https://www.ukcolumn.org/writer/dr-bruce-scottYouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC2wWLf5ZyiwpxDdFU8JV14ATwitter - https://twitter.com/DrBruceScottWebsite - https://www.brucescott.org.uk/Bitchute - https://www.bitchute.com/channel/ZqlSV23Saycl/Telegram - https://t.me/scottsviewsThe Wake Up Links:Join The Wake Up Telegram Channel - HERECo-Create  a Better World - LINKFollow The Wake Up On Twitter LINK

GUEST OVERVIEW: Author, Psychoanalyst Dr. Bruce Scott has a BSc and PhD in psychology. He is a member of the Philadelphia Association UK. Bruce provides a space for the practice of psychoanalysis or psychotherapy in Edinburgh city centre and also in the Scottish Borders near Jedburgh. Psychoanalysis or psychoanalytic psychotherapy is an open-ended conversation with no agenda and no time limit.

GUEST OVERVIEW: Dr Bruce Scott is an Author and Psychoanalyst and has a BSc and PhD in psychology. He is a member of the Philadelphia Association UK. Bruce provides a space for the practice of psychoanalysis or psychotherapy in Edinburgh city centre and also in the Scottish Borders near Jedburgh. Psychoanalysis or psychoanalytic psychotherapy is an open-ended conversation with no agenda and no time limit.

Lee and Leah are back to cover the Paul Bartel written and directed "Eating Raoul" (1982). Many asides come up this week when the hosts are not gushing over the amazing chemistry of Paul Bartel and Mary Woronov. Some things brought up include the depictions of rape in the film; comparing this film's style to John Waters' style, and how Waters' would have done this differently even though the subject matter is very similar to his films; the twisted moral values of the Blands; the lack of a strong counterparts to our protagonists in a political sense; the depictions of sex work in the film; how sexy Mary Woronov was; some of the funny gags; proper use of a dildo in one's asshole, and much more. Also: what the hosts have watched recently and they play a round of the IMDB Ratings game. "Eating Raoul" IMDB  Check out Leah's inspirational father, Robert Hardy The Walker-Runner.  Check out Lee's appearance on Motion Picture Massacre.  Featured Music: "Gimme the Cash, Jack" by Bruce Scott and "Exactly Like You" by Jonathan Beres

A new MP3 sermon from Paul Scharf—Friends of Israel is now available on SermonAudio with the following details: Title: IMG In Depth: Interview with Bruce Scott Subtitle: 'The Friends of Israel Today' Speaker: Chris Katulka Broadcaster: Paul Scharf—Friends of Israel Event: Radio Broadcast Date: 8/13/2022 Bible: Genesis 3:15; Revelation 12:1-17 Length: 25 min.

We face a deadly adversary. His goal is to defeat God and take His power. He's the Dragon, the Devil, Satan, and He's after your soul. The Friends of Israel Bible teacher Bruce Scott joins Chris this week to equip us for spiritual warfare. He shares insight from his recent Israel My Glory article about the terrible plans of this ... Read More The post August 13, 2022 | IMG In Depth: Interview with Bruce Scott appeared first on The Friends of Israel Today Radio.

GUEST OVERVIEW: Bruce Scott has a BSc and PhD in psychology. He is a member of the Philadelphia Association UK. Bruce provides a space for the practice of psychoanalysis or psychotherapy in Edinburgh city centre and also in the Scottish Borders near Jedburgh. Psychoanalysis or psychoanalytic psychotherapy is an open-ended conversation with no agenda and no time limit.

GUEST OVERVIEW: Bruce Scott has a BSc and PhD in Psychology. He is a member of the Philadelphia Association UK. Bruce provides a space for the practice of Psychoanalysis or Psychotherapy in Edinburgh City Centre and also in the Scottish Borders near Jedburgh. Psychoanalysis or Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy is an open-ended conversation with no agenda and no time limit.

GUEST OVERVIEW: Bruce Scott is an Author and Psychoanalyst. He has a BSc and PhD in Psychology. He is a member of the Philadelphia Association UK. Bruce provides a space for the practice of Psychoanalysis or Psychotherapy in Edinburgh City Centre and also in the Scottish Borders near Jedburgh.

Former member for Maranoa, Bruce Scott, says David Littleproud will address election shortfalls as Nationals leader and cold blast greets Ballera gasfields with 3 degree apparent temperatures and 70 kilometre winds.

BTS Consultant's Founder and Principal, Bruce Scott,  joins Coruzant Technologies for the Digital Executive podcast. He shares his passion with helping customers and found his success in listening to understand the customer. He continues to grow, having a life-long curiosity and continual learning philosophy.

The internet can be a beautiful place sometimes. After almost 3 full seasons of talking Airwolf, Jean Bruce Scott, everyone's favorite Caitlin, came on our show to discuss the latest episode! Listen in as we hear wonderful stories and behind the scenes information about the episode!Episode Title: Desperate MondayOriginal Airdate: February 8, 1986Like and Follow The Jean Bruce Scott Archive on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JeanBruceScottArchiveFind The Knight Rider Years on this feed!: Episodes 1 - 95Sinjin Lover: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsJ9spoGEFoDom's Delight: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ar6UpCt-Nes-----Airwolf Years Opening Theme Song by: Steve Corning, http://thinkfishtank.comAirwolf Years Closing Theme by: Lee Hutchings (Instagram: @leehutchings84)Airwolf Years Logo Design by: Luke Larsson, http://www.meaningfullymaed.comFollow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ciampakleinInstagram: @airwolfyearsTwitter: @AirWolfPodEmail us: letusblowyourmind@gmail.comCall our Hotline: (207) 835-1954Rate and review us on Apple Podcasts!-----The Airwolf Years is a proud member of The Podfix Network. Check us out and all the other amazing podcasts at www.podfixnetwork.comInstagram: @official_podfixTwitter: @podfixFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/podfixnetwork

You will hear a tale of serendipity and luck, never giving up and great timing! Kylee and Bruce's story starts in New Zealand, hops over to Perth and finishes in Brisbane. Along the way, you will laugh, cry and be amazed at how luck can play a central role in their reconnection story. Its a beautiful story told in a heartfelt and generous conversation. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

Originally posted on the karenmurphy.earth blog here:  https://www.karenmurphy.earth/blog/69811-what-if-your-only-obligation-to-anyoneBook quoted:  Being Real, an ongoing decision by Bruce Scott

Today on the podcast I have the incredible Bruce Scott (aka. The Body Magician) joining me to share his wisdom and knowledge. Bruce is a Master Bodyworker, Yogi & Martial Arts Practitioner, and brings a fresh masculine perspective to this conversation of somatic healing. He has a unique story of going from an elite gymnast to suffering a complete body shut down at the age of ten, before the combination of movement, breathing and massage transformed this life. As someone who deeply understands and embodies that healing is a return to wholeness, my hope is that he inspires your own perspectives on healing and energy and how you relate to yourself as a unique multi layered individual. We talk about: - The difference between being a healer and holding space for healing - Energy management from a nervous system perspective - Working with the body and learning to understand what's happening at a deeper level - Plus we dive into the patterns that bruce sees in women in comparison to men. Visit claireobeid.com/episode107 for more. Show Notes: You can connect with Bruce via his website at https://thebodymagician.com/ Love + light, Claire

In Part 2 of our feature on building resilience in the Australian horticulture industry, we hear how improving the mental health of farmers is key to the industry's longevity. Rural Aid is an organisation dedicated to improving the mental health outcomes of rural Australia. They often have multi-tiered roles in natural disasters… https://www.ruralaid.org.au/ Lauren Stracey is their national manager for mental health and wellbeing. The National Recovery and Resilience Agency https://recovery.gov.au/ was established by Prime Minister Scott Morrison in response to recommendations from the Royal Commission into National Natural Disaster Arrangements. We hear from Shane Stone, the Co-ordinator General of the agency and Bruce Scott- western Queensland cattleman, and one of Shane's ‘boots on the ground' with the Agency. They want to change the narrative around how the Federal Government supports rural industries and put more focus on preparation alongside recovery. We also hear from Lena Knudson from Growcom, the peak industry body for horticulture. Though based in Queensland, Growcom delivers national-scale projects and policy initiatives

Episode 38: Tips for Working Together at Tactial, Triage and TransportA discussion about tips and tricks at the tactical, triage and transport location.Bill Godfrey:Welcome to the Active Shooter Incident Management podcast. My name is Bill Godfrey, your host of the podcast. Today's topic, we are going to be talking about some tips and tricks for working together at the tactical, triage, and transport location, which is an interesting challenge. We've got quite a laundry list of things I think we're going to be able to go through here today.We have with us three of the instructors from C3 Pathways, Ken Lamb, on the law enforcement side. Ken, good to have you back in the house.Ken Lamb:Yes, sir. Happy to be here.Bill Godfrey:All right. And we've got our world traveler, Bruce Scott, from the fire EMS side, like myself. Bruce, good to have you back in town.Bruce Scott:Thanks a lot, Bill. Glad to be here.Bill Godfrey:And we have Pete Kelting from the law enforcement side. Peter, good to have you back.Pete Kelting:Great to be here, Bill. Thank you.Bill Godfrey:All right. So today's topic. We're going to be talking about tactical, triage and transport, and some tips and tricks on how to make that more effective, more efficient, work together. Basically take some of the friction out.So I think, before we get too far into this, we probably ought to just take a minute and make sure that everybody understands. When we talk about tactical, triage, and transport, what those functions do. What's the main thing that happens at those locations before we start talking about how to work better?Pete, tell me a little bit from the law enforcement perspective, what are the key things that the tactical group supervisor needs to be doing on the law enforcement side to execute their mission?Pete Kelting:Yeah. When the tactical supervisor gets on scene, they've got to get that situational awareness. So everything has been going on. They may have been listening to the calls, they're responding, but when they plant the flag where they're going to be, they need to get that situational awareness. They need to talk with the contact teams and see what's going on, determine casualties, initial casualty count from the law enforcement side. They've got to see what additional resources need to support those. Either a solo officer response, or the contact team is down there working. And then they need to request for the fire department to come join them at that location. That's how that tactical, triage, and transport start to form up, and to where the communications can happen immediately, to support what's going on downrange.Bill Godfrey:So that tactical position, Pete, on the law enforcement side, primarily responsible for making the security picture better in the downrange, everything in the hot and the warm zone, they're trying to make that better.Pete Kelting:Absolutely. Putting the resources downrange that need to engage the threat that's taken place. And then, begin to look at the perimeters and the security cordons, to start to make the other resources available to come downrange. But that tactical supervisor has to request that fire department resource to come to set up triage and transport next to them, to start moving into what is next.Bill Godfrey:All right. Perfect segue. Bruce, give us a quick rundown. What are the responsibilities of triage and transport group supervisors at this forward area where tactical, triage, and transport are working together?Bruce Scott:Right. So I was standing next to Pete. Pete is my tactical group supervisor. He's got his folks down there doing security work. He's telling me, or I'm listening to what he's saying, or hearing on the radio, basically, what the security image looks like at that particular point in time, as well as some initial patient counts. As his contact teams are moving downrange, and given those, some initial patient counts, myself, as triage, gives me an idea of how many rescue task force I'm going to need. And if I'm the transport group supervisor, how many transport units I'm going to need. So it allows me to start painting my resource picture right off the bat, just because I'm co-located with Pete, and we haven't even sent anybody downrange yet, but we're already starting to go to work.Bill Godfrey:All right. Fantastic. I think that's a perfect segue into us talking about the first issue, which is co-locating together. So Ken, why don't you lead us off, talking about that?Ken Lamb:Right. In law enforcement, we've recognized that we have to have both triage and transport working together with tactical to ensure that we are beating that clock, and that we are getting those impacted individuals to the hospital as soon as possible. The only way we can do that, is if we are tied at the hip with both triage and transport. And I hate to be over-simplistic, but teamwork makes a dream work. So if we can be tied together with those individuals, and we can be sharing that information as it's coming in, and not have to worry about relaying it over a radio that's probably already being tied up, or sending a runner, obviously that would equal out in us to having more efficient response.Now what's critical, as far as being a policeman in the tactical position is, identifying that warm zone, where we can link up with those fire/rescue personnel, and ensuring that we have adequate security measures in place. And preferably a position of cover, whether it be a building, or a fire engine, or some solid cover, so that we're giving our fire rescue partners the warm and fuzzy, that, hey, you can link up here with me, and this is a safe approach.Because understandably, some fire/rescue personnel, this could be a new concept, or they could be hesitant to approach that warm zone area. And they want to know that their security is taken care of, so we're either providing that officer to provide security, or we're identifying a clearly identifiable location for that link up, to then work that a tactical, triage, and transport function, so that we can be more efficient and effective in getting those individuals the medical care, they need.Bill Godfrey:Interesting insight. Bruce, what are your thoughts? What are the key reasons that you see that tactical, triage, and transport need to be shoulder to shoulder, working together?Bruce Scott:Well, first off, I think Ken brought up a really great point, and the fact is that number one, I have to feel secure that I can get my fire/EMS folks to fill those two group supervisor positions, the tactical and the transport group supervisor, co-located with the triage and transport group supervisors, co-located with the tactical group supervisor. I need to know that I can get them there in a relatively safe place.But most importantly, as a triage group supervisor, my primary role is to get my RTFs downrange, and I can not do that until my tactical group supervisor tells me that that warm zone has been established, where they're going to be able to go work. And as Ken alluded to, if he has to tell me that on the radio, we get, radio traffic gets lost, we get lost in that... We're trying to beat that clock, and time is hugely important. Then if, he's standing right next to me and says, "Hey, Bruce, the casualty collections point is set up in the cafeteria. It's a warm zone. We're ready for RTFs to get down there." I'm very sure at that point, that he has set enough security in place for my folks to get down there and work.So starting off, that's the number one goal. If I'm going to try to get my folks downrange, the guy that knows that information is standing right beside me, and he can give it to me.Bill Godfrey:Pete, what are your thoughts on it?Pete Kelting:I think exactly what the two of them were talking about is extremely important to make it efficient, and what we have to do to make that happen is training. Training and relationships. If we don't train that, then the fire department, our fire friends are going to respond the way they've always responded, either to the staging or the command post. And we're going to lose that communication, tied at the hip, as Ken was referring to. So, relationships and training and interoperability. And if there's a fallback from that, can the fire department in that jurisdiction hop up on the law enforcement channel? Since 911, our inter-operability is supposed to be to that extent friendly, in that sense, in delegation of authority to operate across all channels. And if you train with that, and you're able to hop up on the channel, if you didn't happen to co-locate, you can at least still get the information from being on that particular tactical channel from the FD side.Bill Godfrey:Yeah. I think you guys are all hitting right on it. From my point of view, it's at a very basic level. We need each other to do the job. Law enforcement needs the medical piece of this, and the medical needs the security piece of this. And it takes all of us working together as a unified team, as one team, to make that happen. I think it's a real base level there.Okay. So we've got tactical, triage, and transport co-located together at a location where they're able to work together face to face. Hopefully, that's a safe location, that the fire department or EMS were able to come up to, if not, they got to get an escort. I think Ken mentioned that. They got to get some security to bring them up. But picking that location... I don't know, Ken, Pete, before we leave that, let's talk a little bit about that for a second, for the location. What are the kinds of decision-making things that should go through the mind of the fifth man? As they're getting ready to assume that position, how are they going to pick their location? What's the split-second decisions that are running through your head, on how to pick a good spot?Ken Lamb:Oh wow, yeah. I think it's really critical to understand that the fifth man doesn't necessarily have to be a supervisor. I believe in the law enforcement community, we could do a lot of work in educating our line level officers to understand what the fifth man is, and the responsibility in finding this location, so that they could stand up the tactical position, and knowing that. You have to have a good situational awareness of what is going on in the target location, but also, you can be detached so that you can act as that funnel. So when resources are coming to you, your attention doesn't have to be directed on a target location. You can take your attention off of it in a secure area and direct those resources to whatever their task and their assignment is.So in my mind, when I think of what would be a perfect location, it would be a building that was between you, or some sort of structure that was between you and the target location. And if I couldn't find a building, then that's, I think would be a great time to get a large vehicle. If you had a tactical vehicle, you had the accessibility to that on scene. You could utilize that. You could also utilize a fire engine. Something that that could provide a decent amount of cover, so not only are you covered from the potential subject that's at large, but you could also provide cover for all those resources that would be meeting you at that location to receive their assignment.Bruce Scott:I think it's really important, Bill, that we have an understanding of the fire department culture. Right? So for years, and years, and years, we've heard that we're not going to put our folks in harm's way until the law enforcement tells me it's safe. And having that understanding that we've built those relationships, as Pete has alluded to, and that when they're ready for my folks to move up as the triage and transport group supervisors, that they've actually taken that into consideration.And again, I think Pete alluded to it earlier is, the only way to do that is to train together, plan together, train together and build those relationships so we feel comfortable in that. I have a feeling that the natural pushback around the country is, if that fifth man, or tactical group supervisor, is set up in a too hot zone, we are going to drag our feet, putting our folks up there, and we got to really work through that. So that the training needs to happen on the law enforcement side to say, when I establish that tactical group supervisor position, I have to take into account, pretty soon, there's going to be a triage and transport group supervisor with me, and I need to factor that into my location planning.It is basically, the trust that I alluded to earlier, as Bruce was saying. The more we train the more similar faces see each other, and start to rely upon each other's trust. If Bruce says to me, "Hey, come with me and dress out. I can take you through this burning building." I'm going to trust in that he can get me through this burning building, and I'm going to come out with no problems. No flames and suit and scorches on me.The same thing with us, tactical. If we train enough, and we pick the locations that provide that warm and fuzzy feeling, as Ken's talking about, then when it comes to real world, there's no hesitation that the tactical, the triage, and the transport are going to end up locating next to each other and working efficiently.Bill Godfrey:Fantastic. So Bruce, Pete said a little bit earlier, he talked about the importance of getting situational awareness for the tactical group supervisor. When triage and transport show up, how does that start? You're part of the team. You and I are part of the team. You're triage, your transport. You need to get your information first. What are you looking for? What does that sound like?Bruce Scott:I got to tell you, one of the first things I'm going to ask Pete is, have you got any kind of initial casualty count at this point? I want to know that information pretty quick. And secondly is, what is your, the security posture, as far as where the casualty collection point is going to be? Where they're moving these folks to, and what that security posture looks like. So that I can begin planning accordingly from the triage group supervisor position, to be able to get my rescue task forces into that warm zone, that casualty collection point, and they can start doing their work. So the very first conversation that Pete and I are going to have is number one, what does your initial casualty count look like? And number two, what's our security posture downrange?Bill Godfrey:You mentioned the zones, and I think that's a really interesting area to talk about. Something that comes up frequently in our training is, this cultural myth within the fire and EMS service, that the line between the hot zone and the warm zone is like, the line of death. This side of the line, you die, this side of the line, you're fine. Except it's not that clear cut at all. There's a lot of gray, a lot of shades. I often say it looks more like an amoeba than a bunch of circles around each other. Ken, what are some of the things that occur in trying to define what is hot, what is warm?Ken Lamb:Right. As a matter of defining both the hot and warm zone, the hot zone, we want to make sure we're crystal clear on where it's located, because it you're assuming that you're under a direct threat, so that a suspect could potentially impact you, when you enter in the hot zone.Now, what I personally like to do is, point out clear identifiable marks of interest within the location to say, once you pass that light pole, or once you pass that building, you are now entering the hot zone, or that building is the warm zone. Because we all understand where the building is located, everyone. It's a common location language, okay, that building. And it's a little easier to say, "Well, the parking lot.", are easier than identifying say, the parking lot is the hot zone. The parking lot can mean one thing to one person, and another thing to another, to a second person.So when we identify it, and in my opinion, we want to be clear and specific on the point that we're identifying as that line of demarcation between the hot and warm zone, so that it has a common understanding, and everyone is crystal clear, as far as when I'm leaving the warm zone and I'm entering the hot zone, I have now stepped into a different level of security, where I need to have my head on a swivel and ensure that I'm covering all potential advantage points that the suspect may have access to.Bruce Scott:Hey, Bill, I think it's important that we also mention that there are no absolutes in this business. Right? So if Ken or Pete roll up and go, hey, their initial description of the incidence is, we're making the entire campus a hot zone, and you have to understand, that's just that moment in time. It is not an absolute that's going to be the entire time. As they gain situational awareness, as they get their contact teams downrange and start beginning to get a better picture on what's going on, those zones may very well change minute to minute, and we just have to be prepared to adapt. I think we've talked about it on the fireside before, when we talk about zones, they're not concentric circles. That's the way we grew up in the hazard materials world. That's what you and I grew up, that they're concentric circles.But we have to understand that that situation is evolving at all times. Warm may move, and hot may move, and we just have to be prepared to adapt.Pete Kelting:And like Ken said, if I'm the tactical command and Bruce rolls up as triage, I'm going to clearly paint that picture to him and say, "Hey, listen, this is what's been going on. This is where our threat is. We still have an active shooter in this area, but we've got plenty of contact teams engaging that active shooter. And we also have additional contact teams of trailer teams, setting up safety cordons. And we have got to get RTFs working downrange right here." Because the first CCP, and the first request for RTFs, come from the law enforcement side, and we have to be crystal clear with each other, that we feel that we can make that happen.And so, if we paint that picture from the information coming downrange, and again, you've heard me say this before, that information coming downrange comes from folks that take charge downrange, and know what it means to pass that information up, for the bosses above them to start making those decisions. And so when that happens, Bruce feels, "Okay, we can get those RTFs down there." But remember, RTFs are comprised with law and fire for a reason. We're doing the best we can to delineate between hot and warm. But even though we're operating in a warm, at any given time, it could turn hot again. That's where that training into, rescue task forces recognize that, and that there's no hesitation.Bill Godfrey:There are no absolutes.Ken Lamb:And typically, I'm just kind of thinking this as we talk about it, we always think about things, at least in my point of view, as daytime. But these can happen at night, and that adds an additional complexity. So how are we identifying these areas at night? And that's where I think, if you have these thoughts and you do these training with your partners, then you discuss the usage of a chem light, so that you can identify, well, this is the difference between the hot zone and the cold zone. So that it's, again, it's crystal clear to the fire/rescue personnel that they have security measures in place, and they're comfortable before they move downrange to start providing that rescue.Bill Godfrey:So let me see if I can summarize this a little bit. So, zones are fuzzy at best. They're not absolutes. Bruce, I think you said that very eloquently. They're not absolutes. But they give us a pretty good sense of where we can and can't work, or where we should or shouldn't work. And we have to have a little faith and trust in each other, which hopefully has been built with some relationships and some joint training, to know that a law enforcement officer who's downrange, who understands darn good and well, what it means to be asking for an unarmed paramedic to come downrange to help. When they say, "I'm ready for the medics.", send them. That we can take that, and have some faith and some trust in it, that we can go execute that. Is that fair?Ken Lamb:Absolutely.Bruce Scott:I think it's fair. And the only thing you have to overcome is that fire department supervisor saying, "Is the bad guy in custody? Is the bad guy down? Is there absolutely no threat to my folks?" That's what we have to overcome.Bill Godfrey:Yeah. And that's a cultural challenge in some ways. Okay. So let's talk about sharing information at your work site there. So tactical triage and transportive got a location. They are shoulder to shoulder. Tacticals work in the law enforcement channel. Triage and transport, of course, work in the medical channel. Tactical's running the contact teams, who hopefully have selected a casualty collection point and begun moving some of the casualties, if not all of them. Triage has worked in the medical channel, trying to get those rescue task forces pushed forward. What are the kinds of information that needs to be shared back and forth between them, between each other face to face, in order for them to do their jobs? Pete?Pete Kelting:Yeah, I think we've talked about that, and just as we've been discussing all the other items is again, the most common thing is painting the picture, and what security measures we have in place, when Bruce rolls up, that he's able to glean that from me.Now, a couple of things working in any position is, do we have enough staffing there? So tactical command, I would say, as quickly as you can to get an assistant, a scribe, or a deputy, or somebody that's there to take notes of what you're doing. And then if you're busy on the radio, when Bruce rolls up, that person can brief Bruce up. Or as you see in our curriculum, we have the tactical T in the transport, triage T. Those are designed so that we can document the information that's coming up to the tactical command, and share that quickly, either by the FD representative, just looking at the command board, and seeing what's taken place, and starting to make decisions. Or having that ability again, to have that briefing that sides up to what's going on downrange.Ken Lamb:I think an excellent point that Pete mentioned is, the usage of a board to display information, and using the vehicle in displaying that information, so that when fire personnel, or triage, or transport come up, they have a place to go, a one stop shop, of what has occurred and what the objectives are, so that they get the warm and fuzzy about what you're trying to accomplish. And even moreso is, I think, on the law side, we forget to brief up the security for the rescue task force. Because we just assume the rescue task force is working for triage and transport, so they got it. No, no. We need to make sure they understand what the responsibility is, and what we're trying to accomplish.Bill Godfrey:Bruce, from your point of view on the triage and transport side, what are the kinds of things that you're hearing and seeing that need to be shared back with tactical?Bruce Scott:Obviously, as my rescue task forces are downrange, and they start identifying maybe a better, or an ambulance exchange point, or what the true patient count is. And then we say this, "Hey, outside the cafeteria is going to be our ambulance exchange point. Hey Pete, can we make sure that we have enough security at that AP? That's the AP that works best for RTFs, or downrange. And this is our current patient count." And giving him that information, and then he certainly would share with me when he has enough security there, so that I can get my ambulances downrange, my transport units downrange, and get those folks off the scene, and to the hospital. And the faster that happens, again, we're trying to shave those seconds off the clock.And again, "Hey, Pete, ambulance change point's going to be outside the cafeteria. You good with that?" Right? And if he is good with that, "Pete, can you make sure we have enough security there, so I can start bringing my ambulances downrange? Hey, Pete, what's the best way for my ambulances to get there? Are you good with that, me bringing them down Avenue A?" Right? So those are the conversations that Pete and I have to have. Then when he says, "Yes, Bruce, security is there." Good. Ambulance one, or rescue 16, whatever, it is, we're ready for you. Then we can call staging, and get those ambulances out of the staging and to the ambulance exchange point.Pete Kelting:And it even starts, Bill, with the first request for CCP location from the contact teams downrange, when Bruce arrives. That I'm able to tell him, "Hey, this is our first location, the CCP, our contact teams downrange." It felt that it's accessible, it's defensible. They're able to move most of the casualties there. There may be a need to leapfrog from room to room, or move into the structure a little bit more, but, that there's a good feeling that that first CCP is set up, so when Bruce decides to send that RTF downrange, that that can take place.And then, just adding on the AEP, the amble exchange point. You hear us a lot of times coaching up folks in the training that resource is limited sometimes. So, overwatch, using high ground and folks to be able to look at that long road of ingress in with RTFs moving downrange, or ambulances moving downrange, to either CCP or AP, can provide again, an additional layer of warm and fuzzy feeling, that Ken was talking about. So that our fire folks that are working with us, trust us that we're bringing their folks in safely.Bill Godfrey:So lot of information there. Let's talk a little bit about the AP for a second, and the overwatch issue. You mentioned training. One of the things that we see pretty commonly is, as soon as we start getting ready to transport patients, is the transport group supervisor wants to push 15 ambulances up to the ambulance exchange point, which is not a good idea. Ken, talk a little bit about some of the security challenges that you face to secure an image exchange point, when not one or two ambulances show up, but when four or five show up.Ken Lamb:Yeah. Well, you're expanding your footprint, which is requiring additional resources. And the additional resources you get, you obviously need to make sure they're briefed on what they're trying to accomplish. They have different angles they're trying to cover, which complicates their job. Particularly, if the suspect is still outstanding. Right? I think the easy response is, if the suspect has been neutralized. But the more complex response is, a suspect is outstanding, and we've identified and established this warm zone to move in, and established the ambulance exchange point. When we take the latter situation, we need to ensure that we're moving those ambulances up, and in a manner that we can provide security for. And again, that's a detailed conversation that needs to take place between tactical, as well as transport and triage, to say, "This is the amount of ambulances that I can support with my security downrange." And if you're expecting to move more ambulances up, well, then I need some additional time, and work with staging to get some resources up here to provide an expanded security perimeter.Bruce Scott:Yeah. And I'd like to jump in here if I can Bill, because if we're having that conversation with our tactical group supervisor, and I'm the transport group supervisor, and he's letting me know, or he or she are letting me know, that we are very limited, we do have some security in place, but it's not absolute. I'm not going to send 15 ambulances. Transport to staging. One ambulance to the ambulance exchange point. When they're in route to the hospital, go ahead and start the second ambulance. Right? Go ahead and delegate that to your staging manager, let them get downrange, with a complete understanding that ambulance, there's nothing but big targets. Right?And again, it sounds like I'm saying the same thing over and over again, there are no absolutes, right? We're going to bring them into that warm zone where that ambulance exchange point is, get them off, bring another one in. Limit our exposure with our folks and not stack 15 ambulances at the ambulance exchange point.Pete Kelting:You've heard us coach up before Bill, in the sense of also contact teams downrange knowing that. What's their task and purpose? If they're done with finding the bad actor, and they're moving into other things, but they talk back to tactical and say, "Hey, we've got a couple of contact teams that can be repurposed." That's information for the tactical officer to know, because we struggle sometimes where we probably need to bubble out from downrange to put resources on ambulance exchange points, and try to hustle up contact teams, or trailer teams, to come in.So, it's again about painting that picture, and situational awareness. You look at Pulse. Obviously, they had the hospital right down the road. But even look at Las Vegas, that you've got to get a lot of ambulances down to red patients that need to be transported, and that frequency and volume is going to go quick. And so we have to be prepared for that, to be able to protect that ingress of ambulances going down. But then again, like Ken said, not to overload it and increase our footprint before we're ready for it.Bill Godfrey:Pete, I completely agree with you, and I think it's probably important to remind everybody that the whole reason that we're trying to do this ambulance exchange point, as opposed to just shuttling patients away from the impacted site to a safe area, quote, unquote, safe area, where we can load ambulances in a cold zone. It's not that you can't do that, it's just slow. If you're-Bruce Scott:Kind of exhausting.Bill Godfrey:And exhausting, yeah. If you want to save lives, and everybody who gets in this business, they want to save lives. If you want to save lives, then you got to take minutes off the clock. You have to save time. And so these things are part of the process that's just necessary to get to taking that time off the clock. I think these are all critical elements.Let's go around the table and see. I'd like to hear your number one tip that you, when you're coaching for tactical, triage, and transport, what's the tip that you give the most often? What's the thing that comes up the most?Ken Lamb:Get a scribe, and someone to operate the radio. Because there is so much going on, and you're trying. If you're doing it right, in my opinion, you're thinking strategy to avoid a blue on blue, particularly on some of the larger structures, and it just takes time to think it through. And it's difficult to think through these concepts and strategies if you're constantly answering the radio and trying to write down notes. So I know it's a really simple trick, but in my experience, you're never short resources. You're going to have people that are going to come to you and say, "What can I do? Where do you need me?" And in those cases, if you've recognized that we're addressing the priority, and we're addressing the active threat, and we have resources that are also addressing rescue, then start grabbing individuals to assist you in the radio operation, as well as writing down information.Bill Godfrey:I think that's great. Bruce, what's on your list?Bruce Scott:My number one thing is talk to your tactical group supervisor. If I'm the triage group supervisor, and I'm ready to move my resources, or I'm anticipating what my resources are going to be doing downrange, I don't know how many times in these trainings we've heard, "Well, I'm ready for my rescue task force." I'm like, "Oh, have you talked to your tactical group supervisor? Do they have a casualty collection point? Is it warm?" Have those communications. Don't be shy. If you have a question or information, turn to the person that has the best picture of what's going on downrange. Don't work in a bubble. Don't work in a silo. Reach over and talk to your tactical group supervisor, get that information from them, and then make the decision based on that information.Bill Godfrey:Pete, how about you?Pete Kelting:I think mine is, really putting a priority on identifying and delineating that warm zone from the hot zone. Because you really don't have an idea how long that hot zone, whatever size it's going to be, where the bad actor is going to be, is going to go on. It could be a barricaded situation and that hot zone's going to be there. So that priority of really not waiting to get that warm zone identified and secured up with the security forces and cordons done, to get those RTFs downrange. You have to get the RTFs downrange.Bill Godfrey:I think mine would probably be, and I think this is true for triage, transport, and for tactical. Don't get hung up on what the casualty numbers were 10 minutes ago, or the colors, or the numbers of colors. Don't get hung up on that. Because they're never going to match. They're not going to add up, so don't get wrapped around the axle. Focus on what is left. Triage to RTF one. What do you have left at your location? And if you're working more than one casualty collection point, triage to RTF, whichever, at the other casualty collection point. What do you guys have left? And just focus on what's left.One of the most common issues I see is, we tend to lock on to those early numbers. Then, if they don't add up 20 minutes later, then something's wrong, and it's not. You got, greens have become yellows, yellows have become reds, reds have become black tags. You have black tags that were initially labeled as reds, that were never really reds. I mean, the numbers are just going to be a moving target. So I think that's mine. Everybody got enough for another one?Ken Lamb:I do.Bill Godfrey:Go around again?Ken Lamb:Absolutely.Bill Godfrey:All right, Ken, hit it.Ken Lamb:I think in the tactical position, because you have so much that's going on, it's very easy to lose the concept of managing your resources downrange. And oftentimes, these contact teams are mixed resources and they vary in experience, and you could... I work on a midnight watch. I could have a contact team full of one month probation officers. So they need my leadership and guidance as far as what to do next. They understand the basic concept of stop the killing, stop the dying, but they also need to know, do you have security in place? Do you have an immediate action plan? Are you providing medical?And I need to be listening on the radio, or have someone who's assisting me, listen on the radio, to ensure that they're thinking about some of those contingencies, and they're planning on addressing the contingencies, if they come up, so that they can be more efficient in their response. Because if we've learned anything in these situations, you cannot be stuck in concrete. And your job is not done when the threat is eliminated, there are more tasks that need to be completed.Bill Godfrey:Yeah, that's a great one. Bruce, how about you? You got another one?Bruce Scott:Yeah. It's going to come back to that same thing, communication. Right now, as a triage group supervisor, if I'm starved for information, who do I get that from? Whether it's my RTFs downrange. Right? Give me that information. What's my viable patient count now? Right? So I'm going to be starved for information so I can make decisions. So consistently, and if you come back a third time, I'm probably say something very similar, because communication is where we seem to fail just about every time. And people think we fail because our radios don't work, it's because we don't turn to each other and have a conversation about what our needs are, what we're trying to accomplish. And we're all working, rowing the boat in the same direction, if you will. And so much of that could be solved if we just learn to communicate with each other.Bill Godfrey:Pete, how about you? You got another one?Pete Kelting:Yeah. Kind of like Bruce, I was going to say, delineate between the hot and warm zone, because it's that important. But reassess, constantly reassess your strategy. We say on the gun range, "Did it hit, did it work?" If it's not hitting, not working, then we need to change our strategy. So we've got to constantly reassess. There's going to be more than one CCP in a lot of these incidents, there's going to be potentially more than one AEP. So as Ken alluded to, the footprint's going to expand, sometimes out of our control, and we've got to reassess, be flexible, and be adaptive at the tactical command.Bill Godfrey:I'm not going to torture you guys, come around another pass. But I think my last one would be, we all have to work together and communicate together, but it's important for us to stay in our lane and remember what our role is. What I'm specifically thinking about is, before triage and transport, get to the tactical group supervisor position. Then tactical owns all of it. Their own in the contact teams, their own in the security, their own in the medical. They're trying to get patient information, and numbers, and all of that kind of stuff. And it's very overwhelming. My job when I get there as the triage group supervisor, once I get briefed up, should be to take all of that off of the plate of the tactical group supervisor, and frankly, the contact teams downrange.Once we get stood up on the fire/EMS side, we should be managing that medical piece. It shouldn't be necessary after we've stood up, to continue to have medical information being transmitted, and taking up space on the law enforcement channel. We should be taking that off of their plate. That's our responsibility. And it does require a little bit of shifting gears, but I think it's important, because in the beginning, tactical has a whole lot on their plate. There's a lot going on and our job should be, not just to do our job, but to help them out. And if I execute my job by staying in my lane and keeping tactical from having to mess with that other stuff, then I've helped.Bruce Scott:The alibi I would have to that though, Bill, is the beauty of triage, transport, and tactical all standing together. If I can't get it, if I'm on an RTF and I cannot get my message to the triage group supervisor, my law enforcement element that's with me, can certainly tell that tactical guy, and he can lean over and say, "Hey, Bruce, this is what we're hearing from RTF one."Bill Godfrey:Absolutely. And we have seen that time and time again. And of course it goes the other way as well.Bruce Scott:Yeah.Bill Godfrey:If triage can't get ahold of an RTF, "Hey tactical, can you get ahold of this RTF and tell him to answer the radio?"Bruce Scott:Yeah.Bill Godfrey:And tactical will call down to the law enforcement element on RTF three and go, "Hey, triage has been calling you. Get your medical guys to answer the radio.Bruce Scott:Absolutely.Bill Godfrey:Yeah.Pete Kelting:Bill, if I can add as a summary, in a sense, from a law enforcement profession to fire side profession is that, me as a tactical commander, I want to be successful in the sense of putting the bad guy down, or contain the bad guy, or winning on my side. But I also have to remember that, Bruce coming in as a triage or a transport, he wants to be successful. He has his goals to be successful. We all have our bosses to be successful too, and I have to show and share as much information to make him successful at that tactical man as he does back to us. So that's the important thing, knowing the success of both of us is what is important.Bill Godfrey:Pete, I think that's a fantastic way to summarize it and wrap it up, so we will leave that one there.Gentlemen, thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for tuning in. We hope you enjoyed this. If you haven't subscribed to the podcast, please do so. Click the subscribe button on your device, or wherever you consume them. If you have any suggestions or questions for us for future podcasts, please email those to us at info@c3pathways.com. Again, that's info@c3pathways.com.Also, I'd like to say a special thanks to our producer, Karla Torres, for doing a great job editing these things. We do not always get these. We are not the one cut wonders, and she does a fantastic job putting these things together for us. Until next time, stay safe.

Episode 33: Emergency ManagementA discussion about the role of emergency management and the emergency manager in active shooter events.Bill Godfrey:Welcome to the Active Shooter Incident Management podcast. My name is Bill Godfrey, I'm your host of the podcast. Today we're going to be talking about the role of emergency management and the emergency manager in active shooter events. Something that doesn't always get a lot of coverage, but certainly an important topic. We're glad to have you with us today. I've got with me three of the instructors from C3 Pathway. Stephen Shaw out of North Carolina. Steve, it's good to see you again. Been awhile.Stephen Shaw:Good to see you, Bill. Thank you for having me.Bill Godfrey:Absolutely. And we've got back with us Robert McMahan. Retired out of Colorado, now living in Oklahoma.Robert McMahan:Yeah, it's a great place to be. Thanks for having me again.Bill Godfrey:And a familiar voice, we've got with us Bruce Scott out of Jacksonville, retired, but down here in the house. Bruce, how you doing?Bruce Scott:I'm doing well, Bill, and yourself?Bill Godfrey:Doing well, doing well. Guys, thanks for coming in to talk about this with us today. So as I said in the opening, the subject here is emergency management and the role it plays in an active shooter event, and I kind of want to set the stage here a little bit as we start to talk about this topic. Senior-ranking officials in law enforcement, fire, EMS certainly understand the role of emergency management. Usually have some sort of involvement with emergency management. But as you move down towards the line level, Bruce, would you say it's fair to say they're aware of emergency management but not necessarily real clear on what they can do for us and where we fit it?Bruce Scott:Absolutely, and I'll share with you, Bill, we're both from Florida and most of your folks in Florida, your typical first responders in Florida, they're going to tell you that emergency operation centers are for hurricanes. That's it.Bill Godfrey:And wildfires.Bruce Scott:Yeah.Bill Godfrey:Yeah.Robert McMahan:Yeah, in Colorado that was for snow storms.Bill Godfrey:Oh, there you go. What'd you guys use them for in North Carolina, floods?Stephen Shaw:Hurricanes, floods.Bill Godfrey:Hurricanes? Okay. All right, fair enough. So what we're going to talk about today, gang, is the role of emergency management in an active shooter event. And it's actually very significant and very consequential and can make a pretty big difference in your incident, especially if you fail to think about it early on. Bruce, I'm going to go to you to start us off here a little bit and kind of set the stage for the audience on some of the challenges that will come up on nearly every active shooter event that go a whole lot better if you've got emergency management there with you.Bruce Scott:Well, Bill, you mentioned if we have this active shooter incident, and the role of emergency management will play, but let's talk about also the role that they might have, or should have, or could have prior to this incident ever happening in your community. Emergency management typically has mechanisms to bring trainings. All right? They're the ones working the grounds. They're the ones building these relationships and partnerships across organizational boundaries that can allow us to train and work together. So emergency management is actually a player long before that incident ever happens, and I think that's important.Bill Godfrey:I think that's a really good point, the pre-event involvement. What are some of the other places that jump out in your head for pre-event involvement? Resources-Bruce Scott:Yeah.Bill Godfrey:Relationships with NGOs?Bruce Scott:Absolutely. So you know, your faith-based organizations, your volunteer organizations, your other agencies that may live and work in your community. There's a really good chance that emergency management has previously established relationships with those organizations. They also have planned with them, right? They've worked and built those relationships. We talked years ago about the whole community approach to emergency management and the whole community approach brought in all these NGOs, all these faith-based organizations, into emergency management planning. As well as the individuals that live and work in our communities.Bill Godfrey:Schools?Bruce Scott:Absolutely. I know you're giving me the cross-eyed look like I missed that, right? I didn't grab the low-hanging fruit and I apologize. I will share with you, yeah, not only... I remember a story when I worked in emergency management where one of our school had a active shooter situation happen in that school, and so every school in our district basically started calling emergency management and asking us what are our plans for reunification of our students? Looking to emergency management not only to have a plan but already know what that plan is and already be able to give them a blueprint of what that plan was to reunify their studentsAnd so we realize we missed the bus, really, on building those relationships with our schools and letting them know, "Hey this is your plan. We'll help you develop, give you some templates. We can give you some best practices, but this has got to be tailor-made to your own school." And we were really successful with that over the next two years and building those relationships with our schools. Long before it became the soup du jour, or active shooters became the soup du jour, was building those relationships with the schools to help them develop their plans, working with our law enforcement partners to talk about security. It might happen... Some of the security practices they can put in place in their schools to make them safer. But then drilling, and working, and exercising with those schools to make sure that the school board, law enforcement, fire, EMS, emergency management, we were all on the same page.Bill Godfrey:I think that's a great list of stuff, and I want to come back and pick up on a couple of those. But before we do, I think I want to go back to the very beginning of this thing. So, Steve, Robert, I'm going to come to you guys to talk a little bit about those operational actions that are going to go on for pretty much any active shooter event. And I'm not talking about the first 15 minutes, 20 minutes of neutralizing the threat and the initial response and taking care of the injured. In most cases, that's going to happen, for better or worse, fairly quickly, we hope. Talk to me a little bit about what happens. So you've got... Your threat's either neutralized or not a factor, and you've got your last of your injured transported. What are the things that's going to happen at that point moving forward? Take me through the operations of that.Robert McMahan:Well, you're going to have impact on the local area as far as transportation, effects on businesses, and you're going to have to have some of those relationships ironed out beforehand. As I'm sitting here talking about it, I'm thinking about Las Vegas. You look at that shooting that occurred there, and if emergency management hadn't had some working relationship with the casinos and businesses that were impacted by that shooting, I think it would've been a lot bigger disaster than what it was. There's crime scenes to be investigated, and there's just a lot of logistics that go on supporting that crime scene investigation and managing that incident in the aftermath of the shooter and rescuing victims. And puts law enforcement on post to manage crime scene, to take care of victims, to move people around, and it just consumes a lot of resources that puts those people out there for a long time, and that takes support. It takes food, and shelter, and all kinds of things that help make that successful and support those first responders and community while they're out there dealing with that aftermath.Stephen Shaw:I think that's one thing that gets taken for granted, he mentioned the crime scene. This is an active crime scene that has to be processed. We have people there, there's going to be bags laying around that we have to check and search. What do we do with these people? If this is an active business or a school, what about the people that were there? We have to interview all those people, and now we have to follow up with them. We talk about reunification a lot for schools, but what if this happens in a business where people are... And one of the things that we have locally is a lot of people work at the university, and they park off-site and they ride a shuttle.So how are we going to get these people back there? So a lot of that, just the logistics of working a crime scene that large with that many people involved, I think, is taken for granted. That's where emergency management, like Robert was saying, you're going to have police officers that are going to be on post for a long time, and I think a lot of times people don't understand that. And I think that's where emergency management comes in to get these people food, relief, shelter, water, things like that that a lot of times, just on the patrol level, you don't think about. Or even at the first line supervisor level, you don't think about that kind of stuff.Robert McMahan:And the civilians, too, you know? I already mentioned Las Vegas, but think of a mall or anything else like that that's a business where people flee the scene or they go shelter and their transportation or belongings, or whatever it is becomes part of that crime scene and they can't get to it. Those people are going to need support to get reestablished somewhere else or in a shelter until they can get back to normal.Bill Godfrey:I think these are all really great examples of the kinds of things that emergency management can and needs to be involved in. It's interesting, Steve and Robert, you guys are talking mostly about the impacts at the site. And Bruce mentioned the community impact, and that's one of the things that I don't know that always gets really well-considered or thought out of. Yes, we have all these responders at the scene. We're going to have needs at the scene. We're going to have logistics requirements. The crime scene may go on for days if not weeks. There may be some security require... That's all at that scene.But if it's a school, what are we doing about the other schools? Are they being put on lockdown or secured? To what degree? What's the communication going on with the parents? What's the location that we've shut down? How widespread is that? How are we going to communicate that? How are we going to work traffic around it? Is it going to interrupt transportation or shuttle commuter operations? Things like that. Bruce, how big a deal do you think that is for emergency management to be on top of that as opposed to the incident commander that's overseeing the site focused on his site? Is that a good delineation of-Bruce Scott:Absolutely. And I'll share with you, there's actually a FEMA class out there that I took a long time ago. It was the ICS/EOC interface, and it was talking about that relationship that has to happen between the on-scene incident commander and the emergency operation center. And the role that emergency operation centers can... What emergency operation center or emergency managers bring to the table in support of those incident commanders. And it basically forces the emergency managers in the class to look at it through the incident commander's eyes, and it forces the incident commanders to look at it through the emergency manager's eyes. And it really is a fantastic class to kind of look at how the other half lives and what their roles and responsibilities are.I'll share with you that that on-scene incident commander's dealing with the here and now, and what happens next, but all those things that Robert and Steve talked about that we've kind of alluded to, if emergency management's doing their job, those plans may very well be in place. They may already have those relationships established, so quickly and efficiently bring those resources into the fight. Simple things like transportation. You start talking about moving 100s of students somewhere where you can secure them and interview them, as Steve said. Somewhere that is not on the crime scene. How are we going to do that? And relationships with emergency managers, letting them know they can pick up that phone and have that conversation with that emergency manager, and they have those pre-established relationships. They potentially have contracts in place to be able to execute city buses, school buses, or other forms of transportation to move those students, right?We often talk about emergency managers... How important a role they have with that whole subject of complex coordinated attacks, and we talk about an area command staging, we talk about huge resource requests and we're going to bring them into our jurisdiction. You start bringing that amount of resources into your jurisdiction, how are you going to support them? Simple things like a place to go to the bathroom, mechanical issues, fuel, food. You have to be able to support those resources. You just can't bring them and sit them. You want to be able to support them. So I think that we kind of talked about that relationship that happens, but I think it's important that everybody, every first responder, every emergency manager, understand that relationship can't be built on the day that the bad thing's happening. You want to do them beforehand.Robert McMahan:And that's especially important if you get into an event that lasts a long time. You get into multi-operational periods because those things just take a lot more resources to support the resources. A lot more logistics involved to feed and shelter and provide basics for people.Bill Godfrey:Absolutely. Bruce, you mentioned the ICS/EOC interface class was a great class. I think one of the fascinating things, to me, and we all enjoy doing this, is when we have emergency managers in the training classes, not only do we have them play the EOC role, we also have one of the emergency managers be a liaison at the command post.Stephen Shaw:Absolutely.Bill Godfrey:So that they do get that first-hand experience, and the exchanges... What I almost always hear, whether it's during the scenario or in the hot wash afterwards is the discussion about the emergency manager saying, "I didn't realize how fast and furious and chaotic the information is that's coming in." And then you end up with the incident commander going, "Yeah, I had all these things that came up and I didn't know how I was going to deal with them," but the emergency manager said, "I can take that, I can do that, we can work on that, we can handle this."And so there's this kind of common understanding, and I would go so far as to say I think that's a best practice for emergency management operations across the country to not only stand up their EOC, whether it's a full activation or a partial activation, but also have one of their EM persons go to the scene to be the liaison directly at the command post because if you're sitting at the EOC waiting on the phone to ring, but the incident commander doesn't know to call you, as opposed to being in the command post and hearing, like you said, the discussion come up, "We're going to need about 20 buses. We're going to need a facility to lock down and be able to use." And then they can hear those conversations and kind of volunteer. "Hey, we've got an option for that."Bruce Scott:And we talked about the dispatchers and the role that they play, and you start looking in these after-action reports and not being specific to any one of them, but you'll often find on there that senior leadership or emergency management was never notified of the incident. And so I think that's another place that we can tag our dispatchers in their role into our active shooter response, is to make sure there's some automatic notifications that go out to our emergency managers.Bill Godfrey:I think that's a really good point. Okay, I'm going to shift gears here a little bit. Bruce, you've got a saying that I want to bring out here for incident command and emergency management alike, and I really like this one. You know where I'm going with it, right?Bruce Scott:I do, yes sir.Bill Godfrey:All right, why don't you go ahead and tell the group, then?Bruce Scott:Well, I often ask folks when I'm doing a class, "Do you know what PPE stands for?" And everybody will shake their head, nod their head, and I'll say, "Well what does it stand for?" And they'll say, "Personal protective equipment." And I go, "No, that's wrong." And they look at me like I'm stupid, right? What do you mean it's wrong? And I'll say "No, you're right. PPE does stand for Personal Protective Equipment," but when you start talking incident management, especially significant incident management, what you need PPE for is the things that are going to effect our operations the most and that's personalities, politics, and egos. And if you can eliminate those three things out of our response, you're going to be way ahead of the game.And if I got a second here, Bill, I'd like to share with... One of the things as an incident commander you don't ever want to see coming into your incident command post is your senior elected officials. Start wandering in your command post asking questions. But the incident commander has to understand, we live in... We have forms of government in our country that our public expects our elected officials to be in charge. And we expect that. We expect them to be on the news. We expect them to be in front of the media.Bill Godfrey:Expect them to be engaged.Bruce Scott:Absolutely. But where they can engage best, often, is through emergency management. Emergency management with that executive policy group, our sheriffs and our other elected officials, if they understand they have a role and what that role is, and it's not being in the incident commander's pocket, we can both do our jobs.Bill Godfrey:Absolutely. So Robert, I'm going to come to you with a question and then, Steve, I'm going to come to you with a similar question. Now sanitize the details so that we're not talking about any one particular instance that... You're already grinning ear-to-ear. Can you tell us a story, tell the audience a story, about an experience that you've had one either of your many active shooter events that you've responded to or something similar where personalities, politics, and egos in the command post turned into an issue?Robert McMahan:Yeah, it did. And you want me to elaborate.Bill Godfrey:I do.Robert McMahan:Yeah.Bill Godfrey:But you can sanitize the details.Robert McMahan:Well, so the personalities, politics, and egos... I think the biggest one that we ever experienced was politics and having elected officials or high-level appointees try and steer or guide things, that's a polite way of saying it, to meet political agendas or political stances that certain people have. And I think this is a huge area that a good EM can head off, if he has those right relationships early on, and the politicians... In our case, it was county commissioners that ran the county. And we also had several chiefs of police and mayors. If you have a place for them to go and to be informed and the EOC's got a good situation unit running and they can come in there and talk, find out what's going on, express their views, then those things can get filtered back to the incident commander without all the personality, and politics, and egos attached to it. I think that's a good way to handle those things so that he's getting the message, but he's not getting interfered with in running the incident.Bill Godfrey:I think that's a real good point. Steve, any that jump out in your head? Again, remember to sanitize the details.Stephen Shaw:Yeah, I think it's important to remember that politics doesn't just show up with elected officials. You can have inter-agency politics. Politics between your agency and another one in your own county.Bill Godfrey:Good point.Stephen Shaw:We had an incident recently. In the area where I work, we have several different law enforcement agencies that are very close and there's actually two different law enforcement agencies that are inside my own city. So there's my city, and then two different police departments inside of that. So to make a long story short, we had an incident. It turned out to be a false alarm, but we were... My agency was running the incident on another agency's property, pretty much. But the politics came into play when we started to believe that it was maybe a false alarm. The interest shifted from community safety to we want to get stuff back open. And I think as first responders, a lot of times we feel like our community safety interest is the biggest thing, or is the most important thing, and it should trump everything else.But I think we have to keep in mind that not everybody ultimately answers that public safety or community safety question. They have other people that are going to say, "Well why do we lose all this money over a false alarm? Why was traffic jammed up for two hours because you were clearing a building or whatever the case is?" So I think it's just important that sometimes we step back to say this person may be pushing us in a direction that we don't want to go, but there's another reason for that. And what we were talking about earlier about building those relationships ahead of time, a lot of times will head that stuff off. In my limited experience, I've kind of seen that. Good relationships on the front end usually lead to good decisions being made during the incident.Bill Godfrey:Yeah, I think that's a really good point. You have to recognize that people from different walks are going to have different perspectives and just because it doesn't agree with our own, we shouldn't be dismissive of it. It's important to understand-Bruce Scott:Everybody has a role.Bill Godfrey:Yeah, yeah. It really is.Robert McMahan:Those relationships can also head off attempts by people that aren't running the incident to go off and do things that aren't helpful to the incident. And we were involved in an extensive gun battle at point where an officer was killed, and we had some elected officials that... Well, one elected official that decided to go off and do something on their own. Grandstanding a bit, but it wasn't helpful to the incident and it wasn't coordinated with the incident. So having these relationships early on helps people to understand how they can help and how they can be involved and still have their involvement that they should as elected officials, but not getting outside the incident itself and not creating other problems for the community.Bill Godfrey:Yeah, I think that's a really good point. The example that I would give, I was working for a large organization and we'd had a significant disaster that hit really... The scope and scale caught us quite by surprise. And weren't as prepared as we would have liked to have been. So we were trying to get organized and get everything stood up. The EOC was at full activation. We had our leadership team, and once it came into visibility how serious the situation was, the county manager walked into the EOC executive leadership briefing, I was the planning manager on this one, and grabs the whiteboard and says, "This is how I want the response organized." And he proceeds to give everybody his version, and he used to be a utilities manager and so when you kind of put that lens on it you understand where he was coming from.He gives everybody his version of how the sticks and box work structure should be set up, and it's not got a single ICS term in it. It's completely foreign. It's the first time anybody's ever heard it, seen it, and I'm sitting there listening to it and I'm thinking, "This is what happens when leadership doesn't come to training." When the senior executives who have a certain amount of, shall we say, unchecked power, don't participate in the training and don't necessarily get this. And the whole room just kind of fell silent and nobody really... He says, "Any questions?" And nobody asks any questions and he puts the marker down and he walked out of the room. And the fire chief at the time kind of looked at the table, and I just kind of motioned to him and said, "Hey, give me five minutes. Let's just take a recess for five minutes and come back." And I went in the other room with a couple of the other people from my team and we sat down and we mapped out what we'd just been told by the county manager back to an ICS structure.And so we used, for the reports and things that we gave him, because we didn't have any choice, we used the terminology that he had given us, but right below that was the terminology that everybody else was used to doing it. And it was just one of those kind of frustrating things that you don't need to come up at the time of the incident, but it just goes to show there's an awful lot of flexibility in what we do, and sometimes it can be better to try to find the path through than necessarily just resist, I guess would be the way to say that. Bruce, you got any that stick out in your head?Bruce Scott:Absolutely. I did want to share though, that's not unique to the community you came from. That's definitely not a unique thing. Our elected officials, their time is very important. Expect them to participate at the level of training that we may participate in is probably not realistic.Robert McMahan:Agreed.Bruce Scott:But what we can do, even it's a simple, I like to call them de-side-brief. Let that county emergency manager sit down with that... Or that emergency manager sit down with the city manager or the town council and have those 15 minute, kind of let me explain to you how we do business. And those conversations have to happen, and about the time you figure that you got it all down, then we go through another election cycle and we start all over again, right?Bill Godfrey:Oh yeah.Bruce Scott:It just never stops. The one that I'll share with you is during a hurricane response, we had pods, places for folks to come get food and water and tarps post-storm. And our elected officials took exception to the fact that there was certain areas of our town that didn't have those points of dispensing, and have those pods set ups. And even though in their part of the county, electricities were on, stores were open, so from an operational standpoint it made no sense for us to put a pod site in that part of the community.But our elected officials insisted if we were going to give away water and food and tarps in one part of our community, we needed to do it in all the parts of our community. So we were constantly fighting that fight as opposed to we need X number of resources to execute the mission that's needed, and now we need more resources to execute the mission that our politicians have said that's what you will do. So that's my personal reflection on that. And I often ask classes, you've probably heard me say it, Bill, does politics ever effect operations? 99.9% of the folks that we are involved with will all shake their heads in the affirmative.Bill Godfrey:Absolutely. All right, so I think those were some great examples. Let's shift gears a little bit and talk just briefly about logistics and the types of things that emergency management can bring to bare in short order if they need to. And I want to set this stage by saying the emergency manager can not only be your best friend, but he's got a lot of people on speed dial and you're going to want access to that speed dial. So Robert, in the events that you were a part of, I know a couple of them drug out over several days or actually even beyond that, right? What were some of the things that you saw come up from a logistics need in the long term? Not just day-of, but in the things that went on.Robert McMahan:Well, one of our events required evacuation of an apartment complex and so we had a lot of displaced civilians, and we were able to get a shelter set up and I was involved in getting that done. The incident commander says, "I need a shelter for these plays." So I knew, right away I called the emergency manager, get a shelter, and get Red Cross over there to feed people at that shelter. And so it was very easy for me to get that done because of the work the EM had done before establishing those relationships and able to get that supplied right away. And it just went spectacularly smooth compared to everything else that went on at that incident.So food, shelter, and even transportation. And you think of it like a mall, let's just say a mall. We know about reunification for schools, and most people are practicing that, but let's think about a mall for a minute. You got a Saturday afternoon at a mall, you have an event, and you got a bunch of teenagers at that mall. They get evacuated. We're going to need to establish a reunification for them, as well, because they're not going to be able to get to their cars. So having that EM that has those relationships and has those contracts and agreements in place that can support that is hugely important.Bill Godfrey:Steve, how about you?Stephen Shaw:Same stuff Robert talked about. Food, shelter, transportation. One thing that I did think about while he was speaking, I work in a community that has a lot of basketball NCAA type stuff, so we're heavy on EOC for preplanned events. And one of the things that the emergency managers in our county do help out a lot with is communications radios. If you get an event, even like an active shooter event, that lasts long enough you're going to have to bring some people... More than likely you're going to have to bring some people in from another jurisdiction, another area, and they may not have the same communication system as you. So we've always been able to pass out radios to these people so that we could talk to each other. Coordinating, getting those people there, giving them a place to stay, if it's something that is going to be shut down for awhile, how far are we willing to bring other police? Is it a driving distance type of thing or are we going to have to put them up for the night type of deal?A lot of times your agency commanders or incident commanders are not going to necessarily have the time or the resources to coordinate a lot of that stuff. And you can handle it either on the county level, or the state level. And that's the biggest thing that I've noticed. So we've been running an EOC throughout the entire COVID-19 pandemic, and that's one thing working with them that I've seen, they have... It's really taken a lot of pressure away from some of our town officials to pass that off to the counties and emergency management. To coordinate with the state, to coordinate with federal resources, and you could do the same thing if you have a spontaneous, like a active shooter event or a terrorist attack or whatever. Any time that you have somebody that... Or you have a lot of responders that are going to be on post for awhile, or you have logistics needs that you don't have at your agency, that's where your emergency management can come into play.Bill Godfrey:I'm curious, what about fencing? Does that come up as a regular issue for law enforcement when they've got a multi-day investigation? I remember it was a significant issue down at Pulse, and of course they were there for a very extended period of time, but pretty quickly brought in fencing to try to isolate the building and help them secure it a little bit better. Robert, has that come up for you before in anything you can recall?Robert McMahan:I haven't experienced that, but I can certainly see its value. I'm thinking wow, that would've been really smart to use at that incident. Yeah. And I think, you ask any law enforcement commander, "Where do you get some fence right now? You need 1000 yards of fence to put around this incident, where are you going to get it?" They're just going to scratch their head, they don't know. And these are the things that EMs bring to the table. Where do I get 300 radios for these other responders that I brought it? EM's probably got a cache of those, or they know where to get them. And those are the kinds of things that an EM that's worth their salt will have lined out and prepared in advance.Bill Godfrey:Good point. Steve, how about you? Have you had any where you guys have used fencing after the fact?Stephen Shaw:Not that I can recall. I know we use them a lot for the pre-planned events, the NCAA tournament games and things like that, but I don't know that we've had them for any of our spontaneous events. But yeah, I'm with Robert, I can think of a couple where it would've been nice to have some barriers up because we had a domestic incident at an elementary school one time, and it happened right in the front traffic circle of the elementary school and it was right about the time that the kids were getting ready to get released, and so we had parents that were literally walking into our crime scene on foot. We might not have been able to have it in the first couple of hours, but we did have that scene locked down for a little while, and that would've been a... I'm with Robert, and looking back on that it would've been a good thing to have there.But yeah, it's things like that that you don't think about, and I can speak from a patrol perspective. You don't think about these things. And even as a first line supervisor, you don't think about these things a lot of times. And that's where communication comes in. And your incident commander working with your emergency manager, if you have a supervisor on the ground or even just a responder on the ground that says, "Hey, I've got 50 parents coming at me walking up wanting to get to their kid." Emergency manager might can say, "Hey, I've got some temporary barriers at this place that we can toss up real quick." I mean, that's just communication I think would help.Bruce Scott:Or they know how to buy it. One of the things that we talked about, they have the direct line to our elected officials, Bill, and we often talk about a local state of emergency, whether that's at the municipal level or the county level. Well what that does, if you can get that chief elected officials to declare that local state of emergency, that changes the way government can buy things 99% of the time. All right? So we don't have to go out, wait 60 days, get three quotes for fence, or wood, or in my case was lumber on a collapsed building. Where are we going to get four by four's to search a collapsed building? That local state of emergency, that emergency manager knows how to get that executed. And that local state of emergency, like I said before, changes the rules of government for a short period of time and it allows us to do things quicker than we normally could on a day-to-day basis.Bill Godfrey:Yeah, I absolutely agree. I think my most stunning experience with emergency management, we had a... Ironically, you'd never think that this would happen. We had a large nursing... It was a 450 patient nursing home. Very, very big. Multi-stories and spread out. And it was large enough that they had very large water chiller AC units. Now, this is in Florida so you think an AC is probably a pretty important issue. And for whatever reason, the thing that broke, and I never really understood what it was, but something broke, and these things went from blowing nice, cool air, because it was the middle of summer, to blowing air out of the vents that was about 110 degree air. It just had run away hot air. And you start thinking how do you do that?And we started having medical emergencies with the patients almost immediately. It was really a very, very difficult environment. It was very difficult to figure out how to shut these things down. And so fast forward through this, we got some folks out fairly quickly to at least get that thing shut down. But now here it is, we got the windows open. The place is super heated because of all this blowing hot air. It's summer in Florida, so it's not cooling down, and there is no place that you're going to move 450 nursing home patients on a Friday night, which is what this was. It's two in the morning on a Friday night or Saturday morning.And I called up the emergency manager and the county manager and I go... Well I think I said, "Y'all ain't going to believe this shit." But I said, "I need large commercial 40-ton, 50-ton AC units to be brought in to take over for this thing," because the thing that broke could not be fixed. They had to get a part in and couldn't make it work. So four hours later, here comes three or four semi-trucks, and I forget how many pickup trucks full of crews with this loaded, heavy-duty AC equipment, these huge generators. I never did see how much that cost, but I'm going to guess it was a big number.Bruce Scott:I would imagine so.Stephen Shaw:Yeah.Bruce Scott:While you were talking about it, Bill, I just jotted real quick some of the things that emergency management help with here. Some of it we already mentioned, but I think... We start talking about active shooter situations, and we've broached the conversations recently about civil unrest, some of things we're facing. You start talking about curfews, restrictions of alcohol sales, restrictions of gun sales, those are not incident commander decisions. Those are elected officials, those are political decisions that have to be made. Again, we kind of talked in circles about it, but that relationship that happens between the emergency manager and our chief elected officials to be able to execute those things when we're actually taking away people's rights to a certain extent, that's the only way that can happen. The incident commander can not order a curfew. The incident commander can not order the restriction of gun or alcohol sales. They can not order an evacuation. Those are all done by our chief elected officials. So that relationship has to exist if we get in that posture.Bill Godfrey:I'm curious, Bruce, I'm with you right there because we're both out of the Florida gig. Was that the same rules for you in Colorado?Bruce Scott:Yeah, pretty much. We had to have elected officials involved to enact those declared emergencies. And even then, for evacuations it was tough, but all those political hot topics come into play with these events and it is not time to work them out at the event or with the incident commander. Those policies and decisions have to be driven through the EM. Not by the EM, but through the EM, to get the right message out to the community because they're also going to be communicating to the community, as well. Some of these things that are going on behind the scene.Bill Godfrey:Steve, how about you? Do you know is that kind of the same general way it is in North Carolina, as well?Stephen Shaw:It is. We will actually... We can declare local emergencies, and we'll a lot of times do those for preplanned events which will allow us to do things like set up checkpoints on the street, restrict, like Bruce was saying, alcohol sales, time and things like that. But yeah, same thing. We've got to have elected officials make that decision to say, "We're going to take this limited amount of people's freedom away."Bill Godfrey:So I think this has been a great conversation. A little bit wide-ranging as we pulled from some of our history, but in some ways I wanted to get those examples out even though they didn't necessarily fit active shooter events just to kind of illustrate some of the challenges that can come up. Let's go around, last thoughts. Bruce, what are the takeaways that you want our audience to get out of this?Bruce Scott:I think the takeaways are involve your emergency managers in every aspect of your active shooter planning and training, all right? Let them help you solve the problem. And also use them... Both Robert and Steve said, if you start getting in these postures where you're making these political decisions, there's a really good chance that emergency manager has the JIC plan, the joint information center plan, so we can make sure that law enforcement, fire, EMS, public works, everybody's putting out that same message. So use them to help you broadcast that message, but incorporate them into your training just like your typical first responders, and make sure they're included. Find out what they're capabilities are and what their capacity is, not just their capabilities but also their capacity.Bill Godfrey:Robert, final thoughts?Robert McMahan:Yeah, for law enforcement and fire, and when you think about in terms of active shooter incident management, think what that emergency manager is doing with those city or county officials all the time. They are preparing disaster plans, they're preparing disaster recovery plans, they're also providing incident management system-type training for those elected officials as a matter of law and policy in those areas. So make sure that they're incorporating this type of event in those plans and policies and training.Bill Godfrey:Stephen?Stephen Shaw:Bruce mentioned getting your emergency managers involved in training. I would say for the first responders, get involved in emergency management.Bill Godfrey:I like that.Stephen Shaw:I can think of several times during my career where we've had EOC set up for snow storms, or hurricanes, or floods, and they go around briefing. You come into work patrol and they said, "Hey, we need somebody to go up to the EOC and work the radio." And everybody kind of hides their heads or whatever, but I did that a couple times and it really opened up my eyes about what EOC's are about, what emergency managers do, and I think that's something that... You might be a patrol officer today. You go work that EOC, or you work with your emergency manager, but one day down the road you might find yourself as an incident commander on one of these scenes and it would be helpful to know what these people are capable of and what they can bring to the table. And that day may come sooner than you think. You might just find yourself there one day.Robert McMahan:That's a ESF13 position, isn't it?Stephen Shaw:Yeah.Bill Godfrey:Well said, Steve. I think for me, my final thought would be incorporate your emergency manager at the command post. And certainly for active shooter events, but I would actually say for any event of consequence, get in the habit of having an EM, emergency management liaison, in the command post with you so that they get a chance to learn what's going on at your command post and you get a chance to learn what they can do and what they can bring to make life a little bit better for everybody. Well gentlemen, thank you very much for taking the time to come together. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for listening to this podcast. If you have not subscribed to the podcast, please hit the subscribe button on whatever device you're listening on. And if you have any suggestions for us for topics that you'd like us to discuss, please email them to us at info@c3pathways.com. That's info@c3pathways.com. Thank you very much, and until the next time, stay safe.

Episode 31: ZonesThis episode is about Zones in Active Shooter Response and how they help us communicate the threat picture.Bill Godfrey:Welcome to the Active Shooter Incident Management podcast, my name is Bill Godfrey. I'm your host of the podcast. I've got with me three of the other instructors from C3 Pathways, Ron Otterbacher, retired from law enforcement. Ron, thanks for coming in, I know it's been a while since we've had you on the podcast.Ron Otterbacher:Thanks for having me.Bill Godfrey:Good to have you back. And of course we have Bruce Scott, a familiar voice to those. Bruce, how're you doing?Bruce Scott:I am very blessed Bill and yourself?Bill Godfrey:I'm doing well. And we're thankful to have back Pete Kelting in the house, also with law enforcement. Pete still is not retired, still active duty. How long have you got left Pete?Pete Kelting:About seven months Bill, but thank you for having me.Bill Godfrey:Thanks for being here. So folks today's subject, we are going to talk about zones in an active shooter response. So we're talking about the hot zone, the warm zone, the cold zone and some other terminology as well. It's a serious topic and one that's there to try to help us understand the threat picture that we're walking into and to operate a little bit better with each other. And I think we want to start with the hot zone. So Pete, why don't you lead us off in talking about that first arriving officer, how we establish that initial hot zone which is also, we're going to come back to this, but also called the direct threat care zone. Can you start us off?Pete Kelting:Yeah, absolutely Bill. I mean, obviously the incident's dispatched and our arriving officers are en route, and they're having to make a decision once they arrive on scene. What they're going to declare as the hot zone, either the entire venue or maybe an area that they may have vetted intelligence where the shooting had taken place or that's going to be where they're concentrating their first arriving officer. So it's really important to get that hot zone identified and communicated to follow on officers and dispatch so that everyone knows where they're coming at first.Bill Godfrey:So Ron, I mean, one of the things that we teach in the ASIM program, we say to those first arriving officers frequently, "Look, if you're not really sure just go big, make the whole area the hot zone and we'll narrow it down a little bit later." Can you talk about why and what's the thinking behind that?Ron Otterbacher:Again, we're trying to identify the zones of operation that lets us know how big the threat may be or how we anticipate the threat from the information we receive, whether it'll be visually, audible, so we're trying to determine what it is. It's easier to shrink down an operational zone than it is to expand it after you've already put people in that area. So we're looking after to say, we are trying to identify safe areas to travel or be as safe as we can and let people know that we may not have a safe area to travel, so they've got to be more cautious as they move into the situation.Bill Godfrey:So obviously, and we'll talk about this a little bit more on the fire/EMS side, we don't really want to go wandering into a hot zone, but that is an area where law enforcement is expected to work. How important, Pete, Ron, how important is it for that initial assessment, that initial size up, that initial report to be relayed to the other officers that are coming in right behind them so that they know. Is that important for them to know exactly where that hot zone is and when to be prepared, to have their guard up? How does that work?Ron Otterbacher:Absolutely Bill, I think the additional following officers need to have a clear understanding of what that hot zone is and where the first contact team has decided to work and where the second and third contact teams or individual responding officers are going to link up to where the area of responsibility is to stop that threat, because that is still our first priority at that point in time, it's stopping that threat based upon the driving force and the stimulus that we see, hear or are told.Pete Kelting:In my mind it's critical. As the first arriving officer gets on the scene, there's only one person that knows what's going on and that's them. It's critical they convey it back to the follow-on responders so they understand that I've still got active shooting, it seems to be limited to this area but I can't call everything clear, but if they don't put that information out, everyone else would right, actually, walk into a zone that could be like shooting ducks in the park.Bill Godfrey:Okay. So hot zone, and we want to talk a little bit about terminology for the audience, so hot zone, warm zone, cold zone is the most common three zones that we hear discussed when we're talking about active shooter events. And that terminology largely got adopted out of the hazardous materials response in the fireside of life with the hot zone, the warm zone and the cold zone and normally a nice little concentric circle that you draw a ring around. And we're going to talk a little bit more about how that is not the reality in an active shooter events. But before we leave that, let's talk a little bit about some of the other names that are sometimes heard.Bill Godfrey:So in tactical emergency casualty care, TECC, they call that the direct threat zone, which I don't really know that you would need an explanation of that, direct threat can't be much more obvious than that, it's a direct threat, you go there and you're going to be exposed to a direct threat from a shooting, stabbing, bombing, whatever the case may be. Ron, Pete, what are the other terms that you've heard in law enforcement that have referred to the hot zone? That might mean the same thing, but some agencies may call it different.Ron Otterbacher:You got the kill zone, pretty simple, self-Explanatory, you've got the funnel of death. There's all kinds of things they talk about and they're all bad, so it's trying to get everyone in their mindset that if I go in this place, I'm probably going to get hurt if not killed. And then again, it gets back to the criticality of these zones and identifying them so people know how to move around in an operation so that they're not as exposed to the threat as they could have been.Bill Godfrey:And Pete, have you heard any others?Pete Kelting:Generically I have heard folks refer to it as the danger area or danger zone depending on their local response and what they're used to training in. But as Ron said, the point is that you want your first following officers to know that you're still in an area that has a great propensity for violence, either from gunfire or some other type of threat that is facing those first responders.Bill Godfrey:Okay. Bruce, how about you, have you heard it referred either in or out of the fire side of things, called anything else?Bruce Scott:No, not really, I mean, we've trained in the fire service so long, as hot, warm and cold. It's easily understandable to our partners in the fire service and fire and EMS folks, and since we preach so much integrated response, it's going to mean the same thing to a firefighter if you say this is a red zone, that they know that that's probably not where they need to be. We don't want to be in that red zone and sharing that information early on so those dispatchers can give it to those responding units, the fire/EMS units, to make sure that they don't get into that red zone. So for example, if you say the whole entire campus is a red zone, then we need to set up our initial staging areas outside of that campus area, so that's hugely important.Bill Godfrey:Okay. So before we leave hot zone or the direct threat zone, I want to talk a little bit about the fire/EMS role in the hot zone. And that is to say that there really isn't one, they shouldn't be there, there's not really a circumstance, none that I can think of, where we would, for fire/EMS, we would deliberately have them go into a hot zone. So generally speaking, that's a no-go area for fire and EMS. That doesn't mean that at some point in time that they couldn't be in a warm zone and have it turned into a hot zone. So let's talk just a few minutes, if you're fire/EMS and you find yourself accidentally or just because of the nature of the threat... well, for whatever reason, you're suddenly in a hot zone with your security detail. What are the things that the fire and EMS folks should do? What are the things that the security detail should do to try to make the team safe? Who wants? Pete, you want to start off on this one?Pete Kelting:Well, I'll even start before that in the sense of local training that your fire and law are trained together and that you practiced your response into a scene and what you're going to do if you go from warm to hot. And there's different processes out there that different agencies use, but that's got to be trained so that if the shots ring out, then your security detail has certain ways to protect your fire and EMS that are in the RTF package. And if that's finding an immediate exit plan backwards or retreating, or into a hard point of cover in a hallway or diving into a room, those things have to be worked out ahead of time in training so that you respond quickly to that change in zone from warm to hot because of that immediate threat that has presented.Ron Otterbacher:The other thing is the security detail for that RTF or whatever it may be, whatever you may call it. Their sole responsibility is security for that team. We don't do other things, we never leave that team, we provide what security we can. The other key thing is if that happens, the folks from the fire side need to listen to what they say and react exactly like pizza, we should have talked about beforehand, we should have talked about it just before we deployed and then when it happens, it's not time to question, you do exactly what you're told by your security detail and understand that they're not going to leave your side and they're going to be there to protect you. That's their sole responsibility.Bill Godfrey:So guys, is it reasonable to say that it's a good possibility that the security team may elect to hold you into some room that they feel like they... rather than trying to move you out of the hot zone, is it a reasonable possibility that the security team is going to elect to just hold you where you're at or trying to find something close by where they feel like they can stand their ground and let the contact teams go deal with the threat? Or should we always expect to be moving out?Pete Kelting:I think it's the immediate assessment of how close that engagement is and that if you need to move to a point of hard cover and in a hallway or move into a defensible room, that's the decision on what you train locally. And it also depends upon the local build-out of the RTF. Is it a minimum of two officers and two fire/EMS, or do you have a heavy package of five law enforcement officers and three medics? It all depends a little bit of what you're training if you're going to make a decision to quickly be defensible and then move out after that, that's a decision for a local jurisdiction.Bill Godfrey:I understand that cover does just that, it provides you cover which stops, it minimizes the threat as opposed to move through an open area. If you have to move to an open area, I'm not going to take the package that direction, we're going to stay there, we're going to do everything we can to provide security as we're requesting other resource to come help us and get us out of that situation. We're not just sitting and waiting.Bruce Scott:And the other thing Bill that we have to consider is at what point the RTF is in play, are they in the midst of treating folks at a CCP and it becomes warm, and you have patients to consider in that sense too. Casualties that you're trying to treat and continue with your medical care down range, and how do you react to that if it went from warm to hot?Bill Godfrey:That makes sense. And I've shared in one of the previous podcasts, my experience, the very, very first time I went through a training session and I started trying to treat a patient in the middle of a T intersection in a hallway, and my security detail was telling me to get off the X, get off the X. And I'm like, "No, I got to treatment patient." And they said, "No, you need to get out of the hallway." And, "No, I need to treat my patient." And then I lost that and got dragged into the room and with my patient. And I'm like, "What's going on?" Well, if you're standing in the middle of a T intersection, there's four ways that people can shoot at you and any number of doors that they can pop out of. And there's somebody already laying there, which means somebody already got shot, which by the way is where the X is, is where the guy's laying that got shot.Bill Godfrey:Okay. So that wraps up, I think, pretty succinctly the hot zone and hot zone components. So now let's shift to our warm zone. And the there's a lot of different definitions out there for the warm zone. None of them are wrong, it's up to the local jurisdiction to decide what they want it to be. The one that we use is that there are security measures in place, and it is that simple. Security measures in place, what does that mean? It can mean a whole range of things from there's one cop that's got security there to it's been cleared and there's a detail and a cordon. But what it does mean is that law enforcement has done something to put some security measures in place, and that is now a warm zone or what TECC calls an indirect threat care zone.Bill Godfrey:And we obviously want to camp here a little bit on this topic and talk about it because it's a source of some discomfort and some controversy within the fire and EMS community, always appreciating and understanding that. So Ron, let me let you talk, lead us off in talking a little bit about how you would determine that an area is a warm zone, that you've got it to the point where you feel comfortable that a room or a wing of the building or whatever is a warm zone. Take us through that.Ron Otterbacher:I think the key is, there's security measures in place. We feel relatively sure that we've done enough searching in that area, moving through that area, that the bad guy's not just sitting there laying and waiting, but again, because it's not 100% certain, we're a little hesitant on calling it clear, but we feel relatively sure and we feel sure enough that we're willing to keep our resources in there and protect the fire resource that may come through there. And again, as we move through a warm zone with our fire resources, those people assigned to that particular security detail have no other mission at that time than to provide security for that detail that's moving through. And I don't know how to say, because if you say you stake your reputation on it, then your reputation may not be any good if something goes wrong, but we do everything we can to keep everyone safe in that area and we feel fairly sure as we move through it that we have the ability to keep you safe. There is no 100% certainty, it could still kick off and go back.Pete Kelting:So coming in and what Ron is saying, it's absolutely critical that when we make that transition from hot to warm, that the contact teams or officer's down range can really paint that picture back to our tactical command, because I see so often that, especially in multi jurisdiction response or even a different unit response to an event, that folks tend to not take charge, they're waiting for someone else to take charge of that particular area that they're operating in, trying to stop the threat and then change it to a warm zone, transition down to a warm zone and communicate that back because we've got to get those RTS down range as quickly as we can. We have to feel comfortable that we have enough security measures in place for that to take place, and then that starts the domino effect of making sure that we're choosing good CCP locations, that they're accessible, defensible and we move quicker into a warm zone. When we get held up down range and no one's taking charge to communicate that, you see that clock ticking and we don't have medical treatment being taken place down range.Bruce Scott:And I think that part of it is we're not moving into obscurity, we're moving to where another team's at, another team's taken ground. They feel like the avenue they told us to move through is ground they've already moved through and checked, and that gives us a little more assurance that we're going to the right place, plus they're there providing security as we're moving up. It's just not the security team that's with the RTF, you've got other people that are already out there that are providing security as you move up.Bill Godfrey:Okay guys, I think that's a great summary. So Bruce, I mentioned earlier the reference to the hazmat and the nice concentric circles, but that's not really what warm zones are like in an active shooter event. Can you talk a little bit about that and explain that and let's go through that a little bit.Bruce Scott:Oh yeah, absolutely. And again, just get that out of your mind if you're thinking concentric circles, that's just not the case. We have to trust our law enforcement brothers and sisters as they identify those warm zones, whether it's a pathway into or an area that can be secured and we have that security element with us. That may look more like, I think you described it one time, Bill, is an amoeba. So it could have lots of different shapes and sizes, but again, it comes back to the training as Pete alluded to, and heck it comes back to the trust that Ron alluded to, that says that if I'm going down range with Pete and Ron, they're going to take care of me, they've identified this warm zone, they've got this ground that they can protect and it may be a narrow space into a larger space. And I just have to trust that my law enforcement brothers and sisters are going to take me through that warm zone so I can get in there and do what I need to do.Bruce Scott:I don't think it's any more complicated than that, and I also want to come back, just circle back around to, as a fire guy, as a firefighter and a paramedic for a really long time. If I know that I have to have a security element with me, I certainly want to be paying attention to what they say and move when they tell me to move and move where they tell me to move. Even if I've been assigned to a completely different mission, I think that's hugely important and the folks who listen to this podcasts are very probably tired of me saying this, but that's adopt what that policy looks like, get your administrators to adopt that policy, train everybody on that policy, practice that policy over and over again. And that's not just within your single agencies, with all your partner agencies, potentially your mutual aid agencies that may be responding, it's hugely important that we're all talking the same language.Bill Godfrey:I think that's a really, really important element that Bruce just hit on. And it's something that fire/EMS really has to understand, that the role of the rescue task force is medical, that's the mission, that's why they exist, that's why they're there. But the movement of that group, the movement of those people in that team is entirely controlled by law enforcement. And as fire/EMS, we don't get a veto, we don't get an override. They're like the safety officer on the fire ground. They say when we can go, where we can go, how we can go and when we can't go.Pete Kelting:We see this in our trainings all the time, Bill, we stress that RTS work for triage, they give us our mission, where we're going. But then that coordination that has to happen with the law enforcement element, again, they're going to tell us where to go and what they want us to do when we get there, but the law enforcement element and working through tactical to make sure those warm zones are set up, and then to protect us as we get there. And the movement that happens is just... unfortunately, so many times we end up figuring out the right way to do this on the day that those things, those bad things happen, and if we can take that off our list prior to, I think we're way ahead of the game.Bruce Scott:And again, it's done with critical coordination with the people down range, those that can actually see what's going on, they know what's going on. We don't do any movement until they say, "Yes, you can come up here, this is where we're at, this is exactly where we want you at and this is exactly the route we want you to take, because we're sure that it's a safe route to come in."Ron Otterbacher:And reasonably sure, right? And we talk about this all the time, statistically speaking as time goes on, active shooter incidents get more safe and which is not the way we were raised in the fire service and statistically speaking, the fire gets more dangerous so we have to understand the difference. Unfortunately, there are no absolutes in this business, I think Pete alluded to that, and the critical thinking that has to happen down range. But again, I think it really comes down to trust and understand that everybody has a role there.Bill Godfrey:You know Ron, you mentioned being close to the problem, the people downrange are close to the problem, and I think one of the other things that has to be really raised and it really beat the drum on it, for fire/EMS to a degree as well, but certainly on the fireside with our approach to command and ICS. In the fire service on a fire ground, it is a top-down driven affair. Now, we always say that command is built from the bottom up, that's what the ICS documentation says, we always teach that everybody sitting at this table teaches ICS and teaches that stuff. But in reality, the fire service doesn't build from the bottom up, we get that first unit that gets there and initiates it and then the rest of it is, the battalion chief shows up, takes over and it's a top-down driven affair.Bill Godfrey:And there's a lot of reasons why that's okay and why it works on a fire ground, not the least of which is the battalion chief can stand on the curb and see what's happening to the building in the fire and make some intelligent decisions. But that's not the case in an active shooter event. In fact, it's just the opposite. The guy on the curb has the least situational awareness about what's going on inside. You can't see the nature of the threat or the exact location or really even understand the lay of the land unless you've personally got familiarity with the building. And so one of the things that I think is really important to drive home on the fire/EMS side is that this is exactly the opposite of the fire where you have to trust the resources that are down range, you don't need to second guess them. If you don't think they're smart enough to make good decisions then don't send them down range.Ron Otterbacher:Or replace them.Bill Godfrey:Yeah. So that said, I want to talk a little a bit about something that's a sensitive topic here and we've seen it happen in a number of incidents where somebody calls for the rescue task forces and it gets overwritten in the command post. Oh, I'm not comfortable that we're ready.Pete Kelting:I'd like to talk about that for a minute.Bill Godfrey:Yeah, why don't you.Pete Kelting:I think, and I've had lots of conversations with fire chiefs over the years and I can tell you it's just their nature, they don't want to put people in harm's way till law enforcement tells them it is 100% clear. And I've had sheriffs, I've had police chiefs telling me and fire chiefs telling me, "You let us do our business, we'll make sure the threat is completely gone and then we will move those fire/EMS medical teams into place." And unfortunately, the person that's laying their shot, they don't have that time and we want to just change our organizational culture to say, "We are going to put people into harm's way, into that warm zone, if you will, with as much security and as much assurance as we can, but it's not going to be a hundred percent safe, but we do not have the time for you to completely clear a four story building that looks like three football fields, and folks are laying there bleeding to death."Pete Kelting:So we've potentially stopped the killing, but we haven't stopped the dying. That bullet is still in there causing damage and those folks are continuing to die. So we just have to change that mindset of our fire/EMS folks to say, "When we can make this as safe as possible, we need to put those fire and EMS folks into harm's way, into that warm zone, if you will, and begin treatment, coordinating the extraction of those folks and get them on the way to the hospital." I just can't make it any more clear than that, but it's changing hundreds of years of organizational culture that says, "Until you tell me it's completely clear, until my law enforcement brothers and sisters say it is 100% safe. We're not going to commit our resources." And it really is something we have to overcome.Bruce Scott:I've known each of you all for a long time, I would trust you if you told me you would do it, everything in your power to keep my grandchildren safe, and there's nothing more sacred than my grandchildren. And you told me you'd do everything in your power to keep them safe. I know that even if something went wrong, you did everything in your power to do everything to keep them safe.Bruce Scott:That's the relationship we've got to build between law enforcement and fire service is, we talked about it when we started teaching the command school, it's very easy for me to tell someone I don't know, "No, I can't do this." But if you've got a relationship and a trust built, and I tell you, "Look, I or my people are going to do everything I can to keep your people safe." Then you know that I've given must solemn vow to do everything. And if we've got a good relationship built, you know that I would never do anything to try and harm your people in any way or if I saw something that looked untoward, then we would stop and go a different direction. And I think that's what we have to do and that's part of what we do in this class, we build relationships. That's critical.Pete Kelting:Yeah. Bruce, obviously, you know I agree with you completely on that and I think you sum that up really well and stated it very clearly. The one thing that I would add that I would share, we've traveled all over this great country, doing this training for a long time now, over a decade, we've been doing it and met a lot of great people and a lot of police officers along the way. I've never met a single officer, ever, who left me with the impression that they didn't understand exactly what it meant when they were downrange and they said, "I'm ready for the rescue task forces," meaning send the unarmed paramedics to me, because I think it's safe and these people need help. I've never ever met a police officer that wanted an unarmed person added to their scene unless there was a really good damn reason to do it, and saving lives is a really good reason to do it.Pete Kelting:And I think that if the word trust has come up several times and it really is, but I think the other word is faith, because we don't always know the people that we're working with, but we have to have faith in each other and in the professionalism. And when there's an officer that says I'm ready for the unarmed paramedics to come down here and start saving lives, I've got to take that on faith and on face value, that that officer who spent six months, eight months going through probation or going through the Academy, another six months on FTO duty, I mean, he's got at least a year of training and before he gets turned. That officer understands exactly what he's saying when he says, "Send me the unarmed paramedics down here." Even though they're coming with security, he knows what that means.Pete Kelting:And I think it is ridiculous that someone with rank or a command position would presume from the curb, and quite likely the cold zone area of safety, say, "Oh, no, no, no. I don't think that's quite right." Now, the one exception would be tactical. If the tactical group supervisor, who's running this for law enforcement says to that officer, "I understand your request, but we're not ready to send the teams in, we've got something else going on." That's a different story. But for fire/EMS to override that from the command coast, because they don't have a warm fuzzy, I can't get with that.Ron Otterbacher:Unfortunately by the time they get warm fuzzies, more people have died. And I will share with you, in some of the after action reports we've read, law enforcement gets so frustrated by not being able to get those RTS in there and get those folks out that they start dragging them out themselves, potentially putting in them police cars and taking them to the hospital, which has just screwed up our warm zone too. If we start losing that law enforcement element down range that are protecting and turning that into a warm zone, and they start having to do patient movement completely out of the building, and loading them in their patrol cars and taking them to taking them to the hospital.Ron Otterbacher:That's a whole nother series of domino effect problems that potentially comes up by us losing some of our security element that may be downrange, and we've seen that time and time again and some of the after actions, you just read them, they just get frustrated that, "Hey, I need these folks in here and I need them in here now." And the hesitancy that happens for one reason or another, whether it's not having the warm, fuzzy at the command level or it is not having done staging right and they have no law enforcement element there to put with their rescue task forces that move them down range.Bill Godfrey:Yeah. I think we could do a whole nother podcast on that. In fact, we just recently did one on staging where that came up. Before we leave the warm zone, I want to talk for a moment about cordons and the idea of what a cordon is, if you could explain it to the audience, so we make sure everybody understands. And when it fits, when it's a really good idea and it's helpful, and when it doesn't always make sense. Pete?Pete Kelting:I'll add to that, and it touches on some of the things we just were talking about. And I'd like to say that I think we're also seeing a lot of progress in the training relationships in building trust and faith, as you're talking about, and I'll share an experience just recently in a local jurisdiction where I was an evaluator, and a newly promoted battalion chief came on scene and was designated as the triage officer and immediately came up to where the tactical officer was at. And as we preach here the importance of co-location between tactical and triage, they were able to communicate that information, although they knew each other and they'd trained together, they are able to communicate that information that built that faith and that trust of where they can operate. And one of the first words out of the battalion chief's mouth was, "Have you identified the warm areas that my RTF teams can operate in, and what are our casualties looking like?"Pete Kelting:So they already knew they were on the right track in that sense, and then they talked about resources and is there safety measures in place? And so they looked at the map together and the tactical command pointed out pretty much on the map and the footprint that they were looking at, is here's what we've got in place. So it's a visual that this battalion chief is looking at and that's making them feel even more comfortable that his RTF teams are going to be able to work down range really effectively. Then they talked about getting them from staging to the location that they're being sent to, and then the safety cordons and the resources of law enforcement being in place for those RTS going down range and then after that, predicting and leaning forward that there's going to be an ambulance exchange point set up and that those safety measures are in place with cordons and overwatch.Pete Kelting:So those are important things to make that faith and trust come together between the fire/EMS and the tactical, putting that plan together to get everybody down range. And you ask what is a cordon? It's simply that it is law enforcement in place and the way I've seen it done many times is, it's got a line of sight, and you know that you've got enough resources in place, either on the ground or in an overwatch capacity, that you have this warm area that's protected by law enforcement should another threat present itself, that immediate action can take place, but in the sense we're still going to bring RTS down range, although they're coming with security measures, and then we can bring ambulances down range.Pete Kelting:So they're extremely important if the resources are available and not tasked and purposed to something else that we can get those in place, that's the best outcome possible for security measures. Now, when they're not so effective is basically if you're trying to set one up without enough resources, because it's almost like a perimeter where you don't have that line of sight and you got holes and you got weaknesses. It's almost more unsafe if you're not sure you've got that in line. There, you have to determine if you're going to use what resource sources are down range to put in temporary safety cordons for an ambulance exchange point bubbling out to make sure that that ambulance is able to come in and maybe escorting that ambulance down with law enforcement.Bill Godfrey:Okay. Ron, how about you? You got any examples of when it really works and when it's not such a great fit?Ron Otterbacher:Again, like Pete said, if you get the resources to do it, then it works out well, it provides you a secure avenue of travel. And whether it be to move the RTF up to the contact teams where they are and we want to make sure we don't want to just say, "Okay, we got a warm zone for you to land in over here, but as you try to get towards the battle zone. So we've got to tell them the direction they can travel, we've got to tell them, "It's okay to come this way, we've got it secure, but it's not okay to come this way because we're still receiving aggressive fire from this direction." So we got to make sure they know their lanes of operation, we got to make sure our people down range know that they're coming to those lanes of operations, because we don't want to have a blue on blue situation, either a blue on blue and red situation. We've just got to make sure everyone knows where it's safe to operate and how to best operate in those areas, and we're prepared for it.Bill Godfrey:I think that does summarize it, I would observe that both of you mentioned the idea of having enough resources. With time, you'll have enough resources, the question is how long? And to me, that's one of the things that jumps up. I think cordons are great when you can do them, because it makes it so much easier to operate. You've still got your rescue task forces, but all of a sudden now you can build them up to a very large teams with a very, very low security footprint because you've got these cordon set up. But if you're operating in a large campus environment or a commercial environment or a big commercial building, multiple floors, you could be so spread out that it's difficult to cover that, Pete, like you said, you've got gaps in the line of sight and things like that. So the question is, how long does it take before you can get those resources in?Bill Godfrey:And I think that that's one of those decisions that has to be made at the time, on the spot, given the circumstances, and it's the job of the tactical officer or the tactical group supervisor to make that call and say, "Here's where we're going to go, here's what we're going to do." In conjunction, I think, right Pete? With the conversation with the triage group supervisor, the two of them are working together and they have a conversation. "Hey, can we do cordons?" "Well yeah, it's going to take this long." "Okay, well let's maybe put one or two RTFs down range, work on the cordons and see if we can get both of them in motion at the same time."Pete Kelting:It also comes down to priority of operation. You've got to determine what's the most important thing. You may have to forego putting your outer perimeter up so you've got to set cordon for travel and then follow up and put your outer perimeter up. So you've got to make those command decision, that's why it's so important and that's what we teach in this class is, this class is active shooter incident management. It's your job to manage the incident. It's your job to make the most sound decisions for what you're facing at that time and you may say, "It's more important that I have a cordon right now, than maybe have some other part of the operation that's important." But it's not as critical as saving lives at that time, so we create that.Bruce Scott:And I can't stress enough that it boils down the situational awareness from tactical command of what you've got going on down range, and to either continue the strategy and the priorities that's been set for the incident or make those minor adjustments with your resources to do exactly what Ron's talking about.Pete Kelting:And I think he brought up a good point about it, I'm sorry I didn't mean to interrupt you, is that you can minimize that risk, right? So let's get one rescue task force in, let's get two in and we'd talk about the same thing as moving the ambulances to the ambulance exchange point, right? Let's not bunch up 10 ambulances in the warm zone, let's just get one at a time and get them out then send that next ambulance in. So you can, to a certain degree, minimize that risk before you have these warm fuzzies.Bill Godfrey:I think that's a great point, so let me sum it up this way. Cordons are a great tool in the toolbox and they're fantastic when you can get them set up. But that tool may not always fit in and it may not always work so you got to have other ways of getting that done. All right. So we've covered hot zone, the direct threat area, we've covered the warm zone, the indirect threat area. So now let's talk just briefly about the cold zone, which we define as an area where no threat is reasonably expected there. So TECC defines it as the evacuation care area where you can do without limit, what your procedures need to be or whatever medical care you need to provide. I don't think this one's terribly complicated, but Bruce, there's a couple of functions that should be in the cold zone that's so often seemed like they're not. You want to talk a little bit about that?Pete Kelting:Or staging, it should be in the cold zone.Bill Godfrey:You mean it shouldn't be across the street Pete? Ron? It's not supposed to be across the street from the target building?Ron Otterbacher:No, sir.Bill Godfrey:No. I thought it was.Ron Otterbacher:Your command post, obviously. And if you've decided that you want to put... based on that situation where you have to designate a treatment area or a treatment group, where you don't have enough resources to get them off the scene, that treatment area should be in a cold zone as well. Those are the ones that come to mind immediately.Pete Kelting:Yeah. And I think just what you all were talking about, one of the things we quite often overlook is, we talk about a cold zone and where the command post is located or where staging is. But too often, we've seen that it designates between warm and cold sites the goal line, our command post and our staging is like three yards off with the goal line. And then yeah, the bad actor and so forth is 30 yards into the area or has gotten into the warm zone, they're undetected and then all of a sudden your cold zone is not a good place to be that close to the goal line.Bruce Scott:I think the key is relatively. And I use an example in the early '80s, we had a situation out in East Orange County, set the command post as SWAT deployed everyone else, and all of a sudden this fellow that they were looking for came blasting through in a car and fired up the command post and everything else. And they were far away, but he had just made it out and they weren't prepared to stop it and he decided to shoot him. Luckily, no one was injured, but again, even though we may call it a cold zone, we're in a life of the unexpected and we've got to be prepared for the eventuality. The other thing we've done is we've changed our philosophy and our position to where anytime now we set up a command post, well, it was that way before I left, but we would always screen the entire area with bomb dogs and make sure that... and this came after the Atlanta situation where they were going to have to follow on responders. So, we take certain steps to do the best we can do and it's relatively safe.Bill Godfrey:Relatively safe. We're having a little bit of chuckle about this and we don't mean to belittle that this occurs with some frequency, because there is a very, very serious implication of law enforcement having their command post or their staging too close to the incident. And that's that fire/EMS won't go there. Fire and EMS just won't go there and that's a problem. Because now you end up with two command posts, that's a disaster, you end up with separate staging areas, that's a disaster. And so this isn't something that we're trying to make light of, it is a fairly serious thing to make sure that law enforcement and fire are sharing a command post, they're sharing a staging area and that those things are in a relative area of safety. And yeah. Ron, I think you make a good point. Why wouldn't you have a couple of officers that are responsible for securing the staging area, are responsible for securing the command post?Ron Otterbacher:And you should, you absolutely should.Bill Godfrey:All right. Anything else about the cold zone that you guys want to hit?Bruce Scott:I just think it's important. I mentioned earlier changing our organizational culture. I don't know how many fire chiefs that I've worked with, they absolutely want to be on a fire scene where they can see the scene. In this case, you may not be able to see the scene, especially if you have IDs, you have people that are using rifles, bad actors that are using rifles. That cold zone is significantly, may not be where you see the scene. And again, you just have to overcome that and understand that.Ron Otterbacher:It's a giant paradigm shift for all of us, because now we've got to set our positions, whether it be tactical which is closer to the incident, but it's not actually in the hot zone or even our command post and staging at a place where the fireside is more comfortable with being than we've got to understand. In certain areas, if we're at a big fire, cops aren't comfortable being up close to a big fire where you all are near it every day. If we're in a bad situation that involved law enforcement, that's where we operate. But we've got to understand both sides of the equation. And we've got to move back and make sure that as we set things, it's a place where you're more comfortable because if you're not, you're not going to be there and then our situation fail.Pete Kelting:And it might be a topic for another podcast, but we've also come a long way in a use of technology that when our command post now, a lot of times in a cold zone, we have the ability of the down link from the helicopter. We're starting to see drone usage in surveying tactical downrange operations and that information being able to come back to our command post or come back to our tactical command. So we're really making progress in those areas too, to keep us from becoming complacent or stepping somewhere where we shouldn't be just trying to glean some information that we could get it some other way and still remain safe.Bruce Scott:Absolutely. I think it's also important to say, "If it's wrong, fix it." If the command post is in the wrong spot or staging is in the wrong spot, yes, it's going to take us a minute to unscrew this up, but you got to fix it. You can't continue to pile on doing it the wrong way or in an area that they're under potentially direct threat. You have to fix it. And if we do it right to begin with, we don't have to fix it.Bill Godfrey:And Bruce, I couldn't agree with you more. The pain that you'll feel to fix it is nothing compared to the pain you're going to feel after the fact and in the after action report if you don't fix it. Because you're going to find out there was all things that went wrong that would not have gone wrong if you had taken the time to fix it. Gentlemen, thank you so much for joining me today to talk about this. Ladies and gentlemen, I hope you enjoyed the show. If you have not subscribed to the podcast, please click that subscribe button. And until next time stay safe.

In episode 49, Ryder Ashcraft sits down with Major General Bruce Scott, United States Army (Ret.). MG Scott is the president and CEO of the George and Carol Olmsted Foundation, a scholarship program that sends active duty officers overseas for a cultural immersion tour. They discuss the benefits of earning a graduate degree abroad and the military's diplomatic mission.

Lesley and Bruce Scott are a dynamic duo. They have championed the careers of countless performers and guided them in the pursuit of career and craft; providing invaluable experiences on tours and on stages.They launched their own company, Dance Encore Productions in 1980, supplying professional entertainment to Australia, New Zealand, South East Asia, Japan and South Korea. Theatre productions of Cinderella and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs contributed to their enormous output, with the two of them effectively completing many of the creative and producing tasks required.The pair were perfectly equipped as they came to the business extensively schooled as performers in the business! Bruce commenced his professional career in 1966 in J.C. Williamson’s production of Funny Girl as a dancer, and followed this with the appointment as Principal Dancer in their next production, Fiddler on the Roof. A sojourn to the U.K followed with gigs that included Humpty Dumpty on Ice, several West End revues and two years at the Lido in Paris. Returning to Australia he danced in the musicals Charlie Girl and Pippin.At the age of 9, Lesley made her first professional stage appearance in The Johnny O’Keefe Show followed by numerous Australian tours of the pantomimes Snow White, The Flintstones and Peter Pan. Performing in the Australian and West End seasons of the musicals My Fair Lady and Irene added to her growing resume; and for the Australian Opera, Lesley was the Principal Dancer in productions including The Merry Widow, La Boheme and Nambucco.Soon after meeting, the pair formed an adagio/acrobatic/contortion act and toured the world performing in some of the most famous theatres, nightclubs and cabarets.It is a delight to feature Lesley and Bruce Scott in this episode of STAGES. Theirs is a life rich in experience, wisdom and so much more; gathered from a dedication and life traversing vast stages.

Episode 25: StagingWhy Staging is so important in an Active Shooter Event, how it works, and how it can save youBill Godfrey:Welcome back to our next podcast. Today's topic is going to be staging. That probably sounds a little boring to some of you, but it turns out it's pretty important to having a successful response to an active shooter event. My name is Bill Godfrey, your host for the podcast. I'm one of the instructors here at C3 Pathways. And I am joined by three of our other instructors, Ken Lamb law enforcement Sergeant. Actually Ken you're up for promotion, aren't you?Ken Lamb:I am, a couple of months. Looking forward to it and looking forward to talking about staging today.Bill Godfrey:Well, welcome, Ken. We're also joined by Robert McMahan recently retired as chief deputy out of Colorado. How's retirement feeling Robert?Robert McMahan:It's awesome. It's awesome. Really enjoying it.Bill Godfrey:Absolutely. And of course, many of you are familiar instructor to the podcast, Bruce Scott, retired from the fire service. Bruce. Thanks for coming in again.Bruce Scott:Thanks a lot, Bill. I appreciate it.Bill Godfrey:So we're going to talk about staging today, as we said, and this is a familiar topic to the fire service and in some cases it may even be a yawner, or a gloss over, but it really shouldn't be. As we talk today, we're going to talk a little bit about some of the differences between doing staging in an active shooter event versus how we might stage in a structure fire. So there's certainly some important stuff here for the fire service overall, but clearly the fire service is familiar with the idea of staging, use it almost every day and use it regularly enough to be pretty good at it in most cases. But what about law enforcement? Ken, Robert, is staging important to law enforcement? Is it something that law enforcement by and large sees as a necessity in events like these or in large events?Ken Lamb:Right. So in events such as an active shooter event, staging is important and it is part of the, it's really embedded in our policy as far as making sure that our units are staging prior to arriving after the first five or six responders have made it on scene to neutralize the threat. Where it does become problematic is that you have a lot of radio traffic that's taking place in that initial response. And sometimes people get caught up in initial response and forget about the staging so that it can complicate efforts, if you don't have one person that's thinking about staging, stop short, starts relaying, or communicating to responding units, to move to staging.And what we see is an over convergence on the target, if staging isn't set up and it also, what we find out takes some pretty skillful communication with fire rescue in order to coordinate that staging location because most times, as you mentioned, fire rescue has already established staging. So even if we have that one person that says, "Hey, I'm going to stop short and I'm going to stage here," we have to make sure we're staging with fire rescue because if not, it can surely complicate matters as well.Bill Godfrey:Robert, Ken's talking from a perspective of, I think an agency that's already culturally kind of adopted that posture, or at least in the process of doing that. And I know that the agency you came from had done that as well, but it wasn't always that way, you kind of led through that transition. Can you talk a little bit about that?Robert McMahan:Sure. Ken makes some great points and one of the problems that we had in one of our active shooter events was not getting law enforcement and fire to staging together. And what it resulted in is an inability to get sufficient security assigned to RTF so that they could be ready to go down range and take care of patients. And the over convergence pieces is huge. That's the first thing that's going to happen if responding officers don't respond to staging and once you get those initial contact teams going. And they're going to overwhelm your incident, they're going to run over the top of you. And you're going to spend all your time trying to get your arms around that instead of doing other critical things that get patients to the hospital and save lives.Bill Godfrey:So you're talking about one of the lessons that you guys learned, and Robert, if memory serves me correctly, you've responded to three active shooter events in your career. Am I remembering that right?Robert McMahan:Yes.Bill Godfrey:As we always want to try to draw lessons learned from that, I know you shared with me and with the audience now, some of the lessons learned from that particular response, but has the message penetrated in the organization that you were a part of and in your surrounding communities, what's been the net effect of that? Was kind of learning that lesson once enough to turn the water?Robert McMahan:You would like to say so, but not always. I think we turn a little bit each time and we get a little better each time, but it does take a lot of effort to get law enforcement to change and adapt to go with the staging models that we're talking about because, we're cops, we want to run to the gunfire. We want to go take care of the bad guy and that's well and good, but there's other things to do in the incident besides that. And over time, I think law enforcement has gotten a lot better, but we certainly have to be more disciplined in the staging process and getting our resources to a place that they are ready to deploy with a mission and get a job done.Bill Godfrey:Before we leave this topic, can you share a little bit more for the listeners on the details of the incident that you're, you don't have to necessarily give the specifics, but just kind of set the stage form a little bit and tell them the practical of what happened to you guys.Robert McMahan:Sure. We had an active shooter incident in Colorado, not too long ago, just a few years ago that resulted in eight students being shot. And initial response was handled very well by the initial responding officers they got in and, and took care of the threats. And, but it was the other officers that kept coming. We had some neighboring agencies and they just overwhelmed us. They just kept coming and coming and coming right on top of the incident. And that resulted in an over convergence like Ken talked about, on the incident and creating chaos in the incident that didn't need to happen. These incidents are chaotic enough without having an over convergence of resources that you're not in control of.And the second thing that resulted was not having enough officers to assign to the RTF teams and they just would not move out of staging without that, and they're not supposed to. And so our officers adapted to that and they got the students out and to medical help quickly anyway, but that would have been a much better response to provide medical personnel to them at the casualty collection point, rather than having to drag them out and put them in ambulances on the street.Bill Godfrey:So if I'm understanding you correctly and reading between the lines, you had a staging location that was established, that your organization had set up and had effectively up and running. But when you're neighboring agencies, mutual aid, I presume rolled into the incident, they didn't go to the staging area you'd set up?Robert McMahan:That's correct. And one of the reasons for that is they were listening to their main channel, instead of going to our channel, which the incident was occurring on. And that's one of the things that we have talked about in the past. And one of the agreements that we had in place at the time was to go to the main agencies channel to get those instructions and that didn't occur and we debriefed it. They owned it and that's fine. And I think they're learning from that. I think we learned from that, but we did establish staging right away and our fire brothers were great at doing that. And so we had staging, but just no cops at staging that could be deployed to specific duties.Bill Godfrey:So Bruce, Robert's talking about having the staging area set up and having fire rescue ready to go. Can you talk us... I know you've done it hundreds, if not thousands of times in your career rolled into staging for a structure fire or other incident, but can you talk a little bit about what makes staging a little different for fire EMS in an active shooter event than a structure fire.Bruce Scott:Yeah. And there's a whole lot of difference Bill. Number one, on an active shooter incident, the first thing that's going to be different is ideally you're going to have a law enforcement staging manager there side-by-side with you. So you can begin, as Robert was alluding too, you begin forming up those rescue task forces with that law enforcement staging officer. Typically on the fire department, we stage, we wait for the incident commander to say, "Hey, engine one, come on down to the scene," or "Engine two, lay me a line," or "Ladder one, ladder the rear of the building." And you get those orders directly from the incident commander and the model that we use and we teach nationally now, as a standard, you may be getting those orders from tactical.You may be getting those orders from triage. You may be getting those orders from transport to fill those resource requests. So the only way to overcome this, so you don't figure it out on the day that bad things happen, adopt it as policy, train to those policies and then exercise those policies with all the agencies that may be involved. And that's the only way you can overcome it. So you don't deal with this problem when the bad things happen.Bill Godfrey:So one of the things that jumps out at me is in most models, you've got a single staging manager and maybe a deputy manager. We found out years ago that doesn't work very well here. You need at least one law enforcement staging manager. You need at least one fire EMS staging manager. If EMS is separate, you need a staging manager for them, basically for each one of the radio channels that you're using.Bruce Scott:Absolutely.Bill Godfrey:You're going to need some. And those staging managers together literally have to be together, working together. It's not like they stand on different sides of the parking lot. They're standing working together to make the team assignments. Can you talk a little bit about that?Bruce Scott:Absolutely. So they're in their hip pockets. So if Ken and I were working staging together, we be talking constantly. Him being a Sergeant, soon to be a Lieutenant on the Sheriff's house. He has some authority, so he can tell those officers, he can direct those officers. And myself as a captain of a fire department, I could certainly tell these units, "This is what we're doing." So we have some authority in the staging manager positions that can kind of direct those folks. In the fire service, you know this Bill, you spend a long time in the fire department. We used to use our, I hate to say this, our weakest link to be our staging manager. We knew they were probably not do well down at the fire scene so we would use that resource to the best of our ability. That cannot be the case in an active shooter incident. You need to have your well-trained, well-versed that can listen to what's going on, onto their radios and lean forward and prepare for what they think may happen next, go ahead and begin assembling those resources.Bill Godfrey:I completely agree with you there. Culturally, do you think it's a challenge for the fire service to kind of recognize that active shooter event is a little bit different than the way it gets managed and to let go of some of the, I'm not even sure what to call it, the rigidity of the ICS of having to flow those things through the commander that they... I'm not even sure quite how to phrase that question, Bruce, but you know where I'm trying to go. Culturally, how difficult is it for us to get fire service to recognize that just because of the way they do it on a structure fireworks doesn't necessarily mean that's the best model here and that that's all still okay under the incident command system. The incident commander can designate that authority to the staging manager, delegate that stuff.Bruce Scott:He should. He should delegate that authority to staging manager.Bill Godfrey:What are the cultural things that you think get in the way of that and how do we overcome it?Bruce Scott:Again, I think the only way to overcome it is to practice it where it becomes part of your normal organizational culture. You can't expect to have a plan and do something one way 99.9% of the time and then on this one particular type of incident changed the way you do things. So I think again, practicing it, using special events to practice it where you're staging extra officers or extra fire rescue folks at special events. Use every opportunity you can have available to you to practice it, but our own organizational cultures get in our way. We used to say in the fire service, we spent 200 years of tradition unimpeded by progress.Bill Godfrey:Yeah. It's funny. I was thinking that when Robert was talking about how law enforcement is slow to change, I'm thinking, no, not compared to fire service, it's like comparing a glacier to a flowing river.Bruce Scott:Yeah. We've gotten better at it. I think we're constantly in this training mode now and recognizing the importance of training. But again, I think the only answer to this is to adopt a policy, train that policy and practice that policy. And that's the only way you're going to overcome it long term.Bill Godfrey:So Ken, we're talking about the culture of the fire service kind of getting in the way a little bit here and having to overcome that. What about the culture in law enforcement towards staging?Ken Lamb:Right. So.Bill Godfrey:If your organization made the shift or at least is trying to make the shift, of the four of us here, you're the only ones still on active duty.Ken Lamb:Right.Bill Godfrey:What was that like? What's that culture shift like and what do you have to say to get officers to understand it?Ken Lamb:Right. So what I like to tell my officers, I learned from Billy Perry, which you're obviously familiar with is we need thinkers and doers and shooters. So I need officers that want to be part of the solution, but also need officers to have the ability to think outside of the box. So if they recognize that there are enough resources downrange taking care of the problem, then take a step back and realize what else needs to be taken care of. And in this case say, "Hey, I'm going to set up a staging area at this location," and coordinate that with the dispatcher. And one thing that I love about your programs is that it incorporates a dispatcher because I think the dispatcher or the telecommunication expert can be a critical piece of this and constantly putting over the radio when they're able to, the location of staging and reminding officers to respond to staging instead of going to the target location, because oftentimes the tunnel vision sets in with these officers, and understandably so traumatic event is taking place and they want to get there and be part of the solution.Right. So what I like to tell my officers, I learned from Billy Perry, which you're obviously familiar with is we need thinkers and doers and shooters. So I need officers that want to be part of the solution, but also need officers to have the ability to think outside of the box. So if they recognize that there are enough resources downrange taking care of the problem, then take a step back and realize what else needs to be taken care of. And in this case say, "Hey, I'm going to set up a staging area at this location," and coordinate that with the dispatcher. And one thing that I love about your programs is that it incorporates a dispatcher because I think the dispatcher or the telecommunication expert can be a critical piece of this and constantly putting over the radio when they're able to, the location of staging and reminding officers to respond to staging instead of going to the target location, because oftentimes the tunnel vision sets in with these officers, and understandably so traumatic event is taking place and they want to get there and be part of the solution.And what we've been taught since maybe officers is stop the killing, stop the dying. So they want to go and achieve those two objectives. But the reality is it doesn't take many officers to achieve that objective. And we have a whole lot of other people, a whole lot of other responders trying to be part of the solution coming, and we need to start getting our arms wrapped around this. And when we have thinkers, doers, and shooters, I think that finding their place in those three is really key to organizing this response and having a successful response and achieving this, stop the killing, and stop the dying and getting those people who were injured or survivors who are injured to the hospital within that golden hour.Bill Godfrey:So Ken, Robert was talking a little bit about his personal experience in an incident there. I know you were a responder on one of the active shooter events in Jacksonville.Ken Lamb:Absolutely.Bill Godfrey:What were your experiences? Can you talk a little bit about that?Ken Lamb:Absolutely. So one of the challenges that we had is that we had placed our incident location, staging command post, our witness holding area. We had placed those very close to the target location, that complicated efforts for a variety of reasons. I mean, the first being that you had a large amount of resources right across the street from the incident location, which led to folks who were not in the field level management diving into the field level management, if that makes sense to you. And it also was confusing as to who was checking into staging, who was assigned, who was doing what? And I think a lot of those problems can be solved by having some distance between those locations.And when we talk about staging, having that staging in a cold zone and easily identifiable by all the responders, as well as individuals on that are assigned to the incident so that you know where to go get available resources, because many times you would run across an officer and, "Hey we need someone to do this," and, "What are you doing?" "Well, I'm doing this," and, "I'm doing that." And it was difficult to differentiate who was doing what, and I think that some distance in that staging location would have assisted.Bill Godfrey:If I'm understanding, you're saying that your staging location was almost literally across the street from the attack site?Ken Lamb:Right. And I don't necessarily fault the initial response because there was a lot going on. Understandably so, there was some conflicting information that was coming on or coming in, which led them to stage at that location. But I think that at some point in time, when additional resources arrive and you recognize probably change this location and back this up a little bit and identify this as the new staging location and move in any available resources in that location so that we know the pool to draw from. And it eliminates a lot of the confusion in an already complicated situation.Bill Godfrey:Well, that makes sense. So you're describing a problem that's a little bit different than what Robert was talking about. Did you have any problems with mutual aid or non-agency units-Ken Lamb:Yes.Bill Godfrey:... Not coming to staging or things like that?Ken Lamb:We had problems with units that were not of our agency coming to the command post. So they weren't even checking in and staging, they were just coming straight to the command post. And part of that was due to our setup and the fact that we were so close, but I remember numerous alphabet agencies in the command post that had not checked into staging. And it certainly did complicate things.Bill Godfrey:Does that sound familiar, Robert?Robert McMahan:Yes it does. I want to talk a quick, about a point Ken brought up about dispatch helping out with reminding where that is. And I think that's very important. You get that information out repeatedly so that people coming in to service that, Oh, we heard something's going on. They go jump on the radio. They get that information about where staging's at. I went as far with our dispatchers to, I gave them the checklist. And one of the roles that tactical has is to set up staging right away. I told dispatch if tactical gets up and running and he doesn't tell you where staging is ask him where would you like staging? And that reminds him, that's a conversation that everybody's having like, Oh yeah, we got staging. We got to do that. And that helps get the process rolling in the right direction.Bill Godfrey:It's interesting how much sway dispatchers can have on an event going smoothly. And the idea of having them prompt that is something we try to reinforce in training. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but giving the dispatchers the checklist, making sure that they're just as educated on the checklist and the items and the terminology as the responders, I think is critically important. Bruce, would you agree?Bruce Scott:Absolutely. And I'm glad Robert brought the point up because that's the point that I wanted to bring up as well. Right. I don't know how many times in my career our dispatcher saved my button reminded me of things that I had forgotten about. Just simple little things like, "Hey, command, where, where where'd you put your staging area?" Dang, I didn't put a staging area. Maybe I should do that. So I don't know how many times they've saved us.Bill Godfrey:Absolutely. And I think that those items not only empowering the dispatchers, but the other piece is that, they've got to have the training, which I think is one of the reasons it's so important as Ken mentioned, to have dispatchers be part of the training we do, is they need to know what the process is supposed to be. What is it supposed to look like? What is it supposed to sound like? And what are the elements that are critical that if they're missed, as you just saying Bruce, I probably ought to provide a gentle reminder.Bruce Scott:Yeah.Bill Godfrey:That we need that benchmark. So Ken, I'm interested to know if you're comfortable talking about it because I realized this wasn't that long ago.Ken Lamb:Right.Bill Godfrey:With the staging area, almost literally across the scene from the attack site, was it a problem for you to get your fire department to stage with you in the same staging area?Ken Lamb:So the interesting part of that response is, by the time the following resources arrived, the fire department had already taken the survivors and transported them to the hospital. So they were gone. So it was kind of chaotic. We did eventually get them back and be part of our response, and Bruce can comment more on this than I could, but in my experience, they travel as a package. So when they arrive as a package, they're all leaving as a package.Bruce Scott:And the interesting thing on that particular call is that, the first responding fire units, weren't dispatched.Ken Lamb:Right.Bruce Scott:They were literally across the street doing some training exercises at a parking garage and heard the shots and people screaming, running out of the landing. So the firemen did what firemen do.Ken Lamb:Absolutely.Bruce Scott:They ran to it, without any help.Bill Godfrey:That's a whole new meaning to a first responder.Bruce Scott:Absolutely.Ken Lamb:Right.Bruce Scott:I think that led to what Ken's leading to is some difficulty getting them out of the hot zone because they were already in there treating them.Bill Godfrey:So Ken, more recently you had a civil unrest incident that required a fairly large response.Ken Lamb:Right.Bill Godfrey:And if I remember correctly, you inherited the staging manager role.Ken Lamb:Absolutely. And I was excited to do it because obviously been to this training, assisted in the instruction, so it was excited to take on that responsibility. And I remember watching this play out on TV and I was like, Oh, I can totally run this staging. Let's do it. And I got the call.Bill Godfrey:How did it go?Ken Lamb:It went really well. At first, so there were a lot of challenges. The first challenge that I had to overcome is, and we really don't think about this in time, but you have to get permission from individuals use their property. I mean, we're police, we just can't go take over someone's property and fortunately.Bill Godfrey:You can't?Ken Lamb:No. You can't.Bill Godfrey:I thought you could.Ken Lamb:We can't park 500 police cars on someone's parking lot and just say, "Hey, this is our parking lot for the next seven days." But fortunately we have really good partnerships in that area. And we had reached out to the local community college, their head of security, and he was gracious. It was during COVID. So they weren't having class anyways. Or if they were, it was very limited. And he gave us permission to use their entire parking lot, which had a good access control point. That was my first thing I was looking for is how can I control access to this? Because I feel like security is really important, particularly in this situation, we didn't want any of the protestors coming to our staging location and essentially starting an additional protest at that location, which brought up our second challenges that the protest was constantly moving. Like it started at this area and then we would find on social media that now they're going to do a protest in this area, which there was a park right next to our staging location, which meant we had to move our staging location from the parking lot.We are currently in to another parking lot. So I had to find an additional staging location and work through all the logistics of moving 200 plus police officers in addition to a change of shift, to a different location. And the communication there in was certainly complicated. But using many of the processes that we teach as C3 Pathways that really enabled a smooth transition and in my mind, my number one priority is I want to ensure that the officers know where they're going, what they're doing, and why they're doing it so that they're not disgruntled. Because I know this will be shocking to all of you guys, but there's nothing worse than disgruntled police officer, particularly in staging. They find creative ways to do things, but just drive you a little nutty.Bruce Scott:Affirmative.Bill Godfrey:And what's your joke about the three steel balls?Bruce Scott:Yeah. You put a fireman in a room with three steel balls, come back an hour later, one will be missing and they won't know nothing about it.Ken Lamb:Absolutely.Bruce Scott:And you and I ran into this when we were going to Katrina. We stayed for a long time with our task forces. And the worst thing you do is have them just standing around. They're tearing stuff up.Ken Lamb:Absolutely. I tell you, one of the things or the aspects of staging that I didn't think about until I was doing this and I had the large amount of resources is, I was working with the ops section chief, which was Travis Cox, he's also an instructor here. And he wanted to know what are my resources in staging and create that common operating picture. And that's where we started kind of really thinking of some innovative ideas where a separated command post or a separated law branch or whatever branch could understand what was in staging because they're ordering resources but sometimes in the communication there would be some hiccups and you would order 20 police officers and 40 police officers would show up.And when you talk about finances and overtime and all these other aspects that come into play, when you have these resources, you want to know, do I have what I ordered? And if I don't, what do I have? Is it less, is it more? So that they can adequately staff, whatever group or resource or strike team that they're trying to form and put in a place that they have the adequate resources for that?Bill Godfrey:How many folks did you have working with you, Ken in staging?Ken Lamb:Yeah, I had an assistant staging manager and I was able to get many of the, the resource unit leader team members over to assist with the check-in and kind of managing that flow into staging because as I had mentioned, we wanted to make sure we had a access point and an exit point so that we just didn't have officers kind of going in different ways, either coming in or leaving. And it was easier to keep accountability of folks when you had one point of entry and one point of exit. But the challenge is that you didn't want to have a large line of resources checking in and just killing time waiting in line. So we got a bunch of resources check them.Bruce Scott:Yes. The reason I ask is that, you think of the staging models and even the one where you're using where you have one law enforcement officer, one fire EMS person, but you do what you need to be successful. Right?Ken Lamb:Right.Bruce Scott:And again, instant command system allows that. If you're practitioner of the incident command system that allows that.Ken Lamb:Absolutely.Bruce Scott:It allows you to do check-in and staging, it allows you to do those things that you need to do to be successful. But Bill, the one point that I wanted to make, I think is really important. I think the mentality is, if I stop in staging, we're wasting time. And really the truth of the matter is if you stop in staging, you get an assignment, you get a task, you go down range with that assignment and task, you have the information you need to be successful, it's actually faster. And I think that's the important thing.Bill Godfrey:Bruce, I completely agree with you. One of the, and having been doing this for so long now, I mean, we've been doing the training and teaching this for over a decade. And I remember some of the early conversations with some key law enforcement figures, as we were working through processes and procedures and saying, because they kept saying, I need every gun down range. And I said, "Look, I agree, but don't you need every gun exactly where you need them when you need them?" And they said, "Well, yeah." And looked at me kind of puzzled. And I said, "If you've got 10 guns, 12 guns, 20, whatever that number is, how are you possibly going to make sure that each one is where they need to be when you need them there, if you don't organize this a little bit?" And that was kind of a breaking point. Now Robert you've in the business a long time, how many years on total?Robert McMahan:32.Bill Godfrey:32 years. And you've seen a lot in your career change. How does what we're doing now what we're training now compare and contrast to the very first one you experienced?Robert McMahan:It's a light years ahead of where we started. And you guys talk about managing resources and making sure you have guns down range where you need them. And that's very important. And we talked about the time factor here and saving time and Ken alluded to how law enforcement often has to go find somebody and what are you doing, and try and repurpose them. If you have officers in staging, when that next tax comes up, like perimeter group or reunification security or whatever it is, you don't have to go try and pick them out of the mass that's out there and try and repurpose them and figure out if they're doing something essential now, or can I repurpose them for something else they're going to be there that will save time, that will drive towards a better result in these things.And we just have to remember that from Columbine when we experienced that to today, that the way we do this has changed and it's got to keep changing it and we got to keep getting better at it because at the end of the day, we're here to save lives, but that's not the only thing we do there. We've got a whole other incident to manage. Once we've saved the lives, it's still an incident.Bill Godfrey:Yeah. It's we have to save lives and not just the traumatic injuries of the physical body, but also the recovery of those survivors. And as we've all learned sometimes painfully so, how that incident gets managed can have a positive or a negative impact on the long-term recovery of survivors, the recovery of the community, and the ability to pick yourself up and not let that define you. I remember my conversation vividly with a young lady that was a survivor of one of these horrific events. And she said, the turning point for me in my recovery was when I shifted from seeing myself as a victim to seeing myself as a survivor and this thing happened, but it doesn't define me. And I thought that was a really, really powerful message.Robert McMahan:It is.Bill Godfrey:Really powerful message. We talked just not that long ago with John Michael Keyes and about the idea I was reminded as I relistened to that because that podcast, we originally courted right before COVID in December of 2019 before COVID and I had forgotten, we were talking about reunification. We were talking about the new SAVE them programs, school safety and violent event incident management course, we're doing. And the tail end of the conversation, we got talking about this idea of an emotional responsible room entry. And I'd kind of had forgotten about that conversation because COVID just kind of derailed everything that we were working on. And I realized that we needed to pick that back up. And I know it can be a difficult challenge for us to think about as responders, but when these events occur, especially when they occur with young kids and you've dealt with the threat, you've dealt with the injured. Now it's time to start clearing and moving the kids to a secure offsite reunification.How you do that, how you make those room entries can either help or harm the emotional health of the traumatization of the kids, of those children. And the conversation we were having and this is one I think that law enforcement really needs to grapple with. And there's not an easy answer. And that's part of the frustrating part is there's not easy answers to some of these things, but how do you do a tactically safe room entry without scaring the bejesus out of a bunch of little kids? What does that look like?Ken Lamb:Right. And from my professional experience, if the threat is neutralized or you have good information to believe that the threat is not in that location, then it's a slow and deliberate room entry, which is doing clearing as much of the room as you can from the outside of the door, which means a less dominating room entry. So if we're just conducting a pie from outside the room, you're able to identify the people inside the room. You can talk to them, their emotions aren't as high because you're taking your time. And I know from my agency's perspective, that's the tactic that we adopt once the threat has been neutralized, or we have a known location for the threat is that the rest of the structure is just a slow and deliberate. We're using mirrors, we're using cameras, we're using any and all technology that we can leverage to clear the inside of that room from outside.Bill Godfrey:Interesting. I think we probably could and should do an entire podcast just on this topic and maybe do a round table of some of our law enforcement instructors to kind of talk about what that might look like. Robert, I know that you have some personal passions on this subject. You guys, Robert, you mind coming back and talking about that in another podcast?Robert McMahan:Oh, absolutely.Bill Godfrey:All right. Well, we'll get that one scheduled in the future. It was an interesting tangent from a staging podcast. I'm not even sure how we got there, but gentlemen, thank you very much for coming in and talking about this important topic. Ken, Robert, Bruce, it's always a pleasure to have you here.

Episode 24: Rescue Task ForceThis show is all about Rescue Task Force (RTF), their role in an Active Shooter Event, key tasks the RTF needs to execute, and lessons learned.Bill Godfrey:Welcome back to our next podcast. Today we are going to follow our pattern of going back to the basics here. As the country starts to get kids back into school, we're going back to the basics of actor shooter incident management. Today we are going to talk about rescue task forces, and we're going to dive in a little bit deeper than we have in the past. My name is Bill Godfrey. I'm the host of your podcast today. With me, I have Bruce Scott, one of our instructors here at C3. Bruce, thanks for coming in.Bruce Scott:Thanks for having me.Bill Godfrey:We have Tom Billington, another one of the instructors. Tom?Tom Billington:Hello, thank you.Bill Godfrey:And Terrance Weems. Terrance, this is your first time, another one of our instructors, but this is your first time doing one of the podcasts, isn't it?Terrance Weems:Yes, sir, it is. I'm glad to be here. Thank you.Bill Godfrey:Jealous of that deep bass voice he's got going on. Then also joining us by phone is Coby Briehn. Coby, thanks for coming in.Coby Briehn:Hey, thanks for having me, Bill. Good to be here.Bill Godfrey:Absolutely. Tom, I'm going to start off with you to talk a little bit about rescue task forces. It seems like a fairly simple concept. It's a medical team that has security on it that is able to go into a warm zone because they have their own security. Of course, the security kind of controls the movement of the team, but it's a medical mission. It turns out in practice, it gets a little more complicated than that.Tom Billington:Yes, it does, definitely. As we know, firefighters are conditioned where the longer an incident goes, the more dangerous it is for us, flashover, etc. A lot of us don't know that, as an active shooter, history shows that as that active shooter incident goes on, it's over pretty quick. So being educated about how the active shooter incidents from the past have turned out, it kind of helps us. Then we need to talk about what am I going to do if I'm a paramedic on a rescue task force, what's going to happen if somebody starts shooting when I'm going in this warm zone? What's going to happen if something happens where I feel afraid? What should I do? So making sure we talk to each other as a rescue task force team before we go in and then knowing what am I going to do when I enter the room? Hopefully the casualty collection point is already set up hopefully when I enter. What am I going to do as the first Rescue Task Force?Bill Godfrey:Well, that's a great introduction. Bruce, take us to the very first thing that we cover. You've checked in at staging, and you've been assigned as a rescue task force. What's the very first thing that need to happen in staging?Bruce Scott:Bill, thanks again, for having me today. I think the very first thing that really needs to happen when you get into staging is understanding that in that staging area, that staging manager's actually going to begin forming those rescue task forces, so combining that law enforcement element with your fire/EMS, your paramedics, and put those teams together and pre-form them. One of the things that we notice as we teach across the country is it's not something that's practiced. We haven't adopted it as policies. We haven't practiced it or exercised it in any way, shape, or form. So unfortunately, the first time that we actually have those introductions is on the scene. So as we pre-form those folks up in staging, your staging manager, when the triage calls for it, are ready to move those RTFs downrange with a task and a purpose. I think that's the most important thing is understanding that those teams are formed in the staging area ideally, and you have the opportunity introduce yourself to my law enforcement partners. My background is firefighter paramedic. If I was in a staging area with Terrance or Coby, we're very often going to have to make those introductions there, and we have to understand how we're going to business moving downrange. That has to happen in staging.Bill Godfrey:I think that's a great segue. Coby, Terrance, if you're responsible for escorting some medics that may or may not have had rescue task force training, you may not know you, you may never have met them, and they may be with other agencies, how important is it for you guys as law enforcement to have one or two minutes to do a quick briefing, to get the chance to talk to them?Terrance Weems:I think it's extremely important because if you don't have trust, then that person or that group of people, they're not going to follow me. They're not going to listen to what I have to say. One of the things that we do in my home area is we try to train together, so we'll do a number of different scenarios throughout the year in different times of the year. We may have one large event where we're working together. In addition to that, we have meetings regularly, so we may meet once a quarter. What that does is before an incident even occurs, we have an opportunity to build a relationship so that relationship is made. Even if I don't know that particular person, that person knows my department.Terrance Weems:Now that we have that relationship built, once we get into a situation, that helps ease all of that uncomfortableness when you're in a high-stress situation. So once you get into there and letting them know, if they know they can trust me, they know that I'm going to have their back and explaining to them that I'm not going to leave you. My goal is we're going to go in here together, and we're going to come out with however many people we need to bring out. But the five of us or the six of us that went in there together, we're coming out together. We might be bringing two or three people with us, but this five or six of us are coming out. Once they understand that, "Hey, if I tell you to move, move. If I tell you to stop, stop. If I tell you to duck, duck."Bill Godfrey:Coby, when you're doing those briefings in staging, what are the specific things that you like to cover? Is there a list that you want to hit with the firefighters and make sure they're on the same page?Coby Briehn:Not really lists. We'll do the introductions, just give them an idea of where we're going, what we expect to do. We'll guide them in. We'll guide them out. We'll guide them through the hallways to the rooms. They'll stay right not up on our backs. We may have them where they can always see our back or our feet at least so they're not right up on us so we don't look like a conga line going down the hallway. They give us a little room to manipulate walls and angles and stuff. So we'll bring them up as fast as we can to that area. Also when we're having them treat in certain areas, even though they may be focused on the medicine, which is a great thing, that's why they're there is to do some of those advanced skills going along with stuff the police can't do where they're starting to go to the [inaudible 00:07:06] routes.Coby Briehn:We may suggest something and actually want them to start moving victims out of the hallway if that's where we locate them. We call it getting off the X. It's an old LE term where if they're in a hallway, we don't like hallways because there's too many open angles, too many things that can happen, materialize right in there, but if we can just keep them in a room, then that's going to be even better where we can control what's coming in the room, what's going out of the room, and we're not exposed to all these angles. So we'll try and pull them out of that medicine hole and just suggest, "Let's move them over here," not just necessarily start the medicine but let's also do the [inaudible 00:07:47] because we don't want to incur any more damages as we're doing the work.Bill Godfrey:Yeah, that makes sense. Coby, I don't know that you remember this, but one of the first training sessions we ever did together, there were two things that you drilled into my head in that first session. One was in the pre-brief, not to actually hold on to you, but if I did, just to keep a soft touch but not grab on because if I jerked or you move suddenly, it could cause you to lose your aim.Bill Godfrey:The other one that just still makes me laugh to the day, you talked about getting off the X, I remember when we were doing the drill. I'm trying to treat a patient, and you're telling me, "Get off the X. Get off the X," I don't know what the hell the X is. The next thing I know I'm getting pulled off of what I later found out the X is where somebody was standing when they got shot. I happened to be trying to treat a patient in the middle of the T intersection with hallways and a whole bunch of doors. It turns out that that's not really a great place to be. But I didn't know that. I didn't know that till we went through that.Coby Briehn:Correct. Correct.Bill Godfrey:Yeah, absolutely. Tom, let me hand it back over to you. Let's talk. We've got our team formed up in staging. Everybody's had a chance to get introduced to each other. We've pre-briefed. Law enforcement typically, it's two or three. You're going to have one up front, one in the back, and the medics in the middle. So we're moving in. Law enforcement gets us to where we need to be. They get us to the casualty collection point, or they get us where the injured are. Tom, what does that look like?Tom Billington:Well, we go into the casualty collection point. As a paramedic, I know I'm pretty safe in that room now. I have the escort of my RTFs, but the casualty collection point has already established security at doors, windows, etc. So when I go in the room, my first job as the paramedic is take control of the medical needs in this room. Now, you may only have one other paramedic with you, so if you think one RTF's enough, it's not. You need two or three RTFs coming in there. But the first RTF that goes in that room, you take control of the room.Tom Billington:Hopefully, law enforcement has done some sort of triage. We teach green tag, red tag, and the green tag, in their opinion, is not too bad off. The person might be able to walk and talk. But the red tag in law enforcement's eyes is somebody that's very serious. So we walk in and we want to do our triage. Now, around the nation most agencies are using the START triage method, which can be sort of cumbersome.Tom Billington:What we teach is the field triage score. This was developed by the Joint Trauma System under the Department of Defense. By using 5,000 battlefield injuries from 2002 to 2008 in Iraq and Afghanistan, and this system of triage was 88% effective. It's very simple. If I have a patient, I just check the radial pulse. If they have radial pulse, I give them a one. If they have no radial pulse, they get a zero. Under Glasgow Coma, I just check their motor skills. Can they follow motor skill responses? Raise your hand, move your leg. If they can listen to my command and follow it, they get a one. If they can't, they get a zero. That's the end of that triage: zero, one, or two. You add the score up. It's either going to be a zero. It's going to be a one or a two. That's your red, yellow, green. Zero is red, one, yellow, two is green. That's a very quick method. It shows 88% effective.Tom Billington:There's one important thing to note. This was military age, mostly men in very good shape. Obviously, if you're at a school with pediatrics or you have elderly people somewhere, it's not going to also work out as good. But it's a good, quick system to learn to use in situations such as this.Bill Godfrey:Tom, I'm really glad you mentioned that because the START triage system, as you said, is the most common one used in the country. But Bruce, it's got a few problems with it, doesn't it?Bruce Scott:Absolutely it does. Number one, I think you could probably poll 95% of the fire/EMS folks that are out there in the country right couldn't tell you anything other than, "Hey, if you hear my voice, come to me," the very first part of START. As you go down the rest of that, it gets complicated. It's remembering all the aspects of it. I love the field triage score. I think it's a better way to do business especially when you're in the warm zone. You want something fast to be able to classify those injured folks. If we get outside and for some reason we're not able to get them off the field and we end up setting a treatment area, maybe we do a more detailed triage. But inside that warm zone, I don't think there's anything better than what we're teaching in the field triage score.Bill Godfrey:I think so as well. It's plagued with problems. I know it's the most common one out there. That doesn't always make it the best, and it suffers from a terrible over- and under-triage error rate that just leaves us with a lot of challenges. So we've talked about doing that initial triage, so hopefully your law enforcement team on the inside, your first couple contact teams have established a casualty collection point for you. Terrance, is that always possible? Are there going to be times when the first RTF might come up through the door and the CCP isn't established?Terrance Weems:That is always a possibility depending on the situation, but at the same time, even though it may not be as warm as you want it to be, but if we have it secure enough where nothing is getting in, there's no fire, we have whoever that suspect is, we have him pinned down, we're know where they're at, whether it'd one or two or more people and we know where they're at, we're able to provide a safe, sort of secure area for you to work on those survivors there and those that are injured so we can get them out. Even if it's a quick assessment, like you said, you're able to get them assessed, and we're able to pull them on out of there so we can to get to moving and moving them to the hospital.Bill Godfrey:Yeah, absolutely. Coby, if the first RTF is coming in and the CCP isn't set. Maybe the contact team just didn't have time or they don't have enough people to pull it off, what is that look like for that first RTF to be talking to that contact team to get that organization? We still want to do a CCP, right? We want to pick a location. What does that look like?Coby Briehn:Oh, certainly. We can back up even to the doorway coming in to the crisis sites. We would love to have the hallway cleared. We call this secured cordons to where the path to and hopefully out of the area is secured. But in certain worlds, certain areas it may not be able to happen where we've gone in or we've just been able to lock down a certain side of it. So the RTF may come in through the hallway where there's still victims in the hallway, much like an exterior mass casualty [inaudible 00:14:49], you want to start putting them in the best area possible and the same thing with what we're trying to do here is just get them into a room for security sakes and for just logistical management sakes is getting the best care to the worst injured as fast as possible doing the best we can with what we've got. Instead of them having them spread all over the place, we want to get them, like we said, put in to the fewest areas possible. There may be a time where you have one or two CCPs, but eventually we want to get them all into the area where, again, we're just doing the best we can with what we got.Bill Godfrey:I'm going to recap for us here. The call comes in to staging that they need an RTF stood up, so the staging manager picks some medical assets. They pick some law enforcement assets. They sign them to an RTF team. We get a pre-briefing while they're in staging. They get a chance to introduce themselves. Law enforcement gives them a chance to give them a briefing, tell them what to expect, who's going where, who's doing what, rules of the road, I like to call it.Bill Godfrey:Then they get the orders to deploy. They go downrange. They're going to link up with a contact team who's already going to be in there. Hopefully we've got a casualty collection point we're dropping into. So we drop into a CCP. If we're lucky, the law enforcement team, the contact team has had a chance to do at least a preliminary, quick triage: "If you're hurting, you're walking, you're able to walk, come over here against this wall. If you're uninjured, get up against this wall." You got the green on one wall, the uninjured on another wall, and the ones that are still laying on the floor that didn't move, those are the reds. So you drop in as your medical team. You get the lay of the land. You know you need to re-triage. You're obviously going to start with the ones on the floor that haven't moved. They're the reds and we're going to re-triage them between green, yellow, red, and black tag, and call for more resources.Bill Godfrey:Bruce, that's a lot for the first RTF team to accomplish, but it seems like sometimes when the additional RTF teams show up, it doesn't always smooth out. Let's talk a little bit about that hand off or that coordination that the first RTF who's already there who has a situation awareness in the room, what should that second RTF do? What should that look like? Let's talk a little bit that.Bruce Scott:Bill, that first RTF needs to take control of that room. You brought up a good point. Number one, I'm going to look around and see what I have and understand that I need more resources. Get those folks in there. That's step one to realize I need that help. Number two, give those folks direction when they get in the room, what your expectations are and what you want them to do. As another point, if you have an experienced staging manager out there, they're listening to what's going on and understanding the resource shortfalls and can already be leaning forward. As that RTF starts asking for those additional resources, they can have them ready to go. Again, taking charge of the room, prioritizing what needs to be done, getting that additional help in there. Then working with your law enforcement partners to... Coby brought up a good point. We like a single casualty collection point. They're easier to secure. But if we have multiple, that means not only means more RTFs, but that also means we need more law enforcement as well to secure that area.Bill Godfrey:Tom, talk a little bit about the... and I don't want to stereotype it here, but whoever the lead is of that first RTF, that lead medic or whoever's got that lead medical responsibility taking charge of the CCP and then directing the additional resources coming in. Talk to a little bit what that should look like and what we're hoping to see.Tom Billington:Well, again, like Bruce just said, you want to get the other RTFs in there to start treating people. But one main thing I'm concerned with with the first RTF, believe it or not, is ambulance exchange point. I need to know that one's getting set up because when we're done treating... Our first obstacle, the bad guy or the shooter is hopefully not around anymore or we're protected from that. Our second obstacle is the clock, and time is ticking. As we're treating these patients, I might look to my law enforcement partners on the contact team and say, "Hey, we came in and we noticed this was an exit out of front right to the driveway. Can you check it out and work with tactical or triage? Let's set up an ambulance exchange point there." Hopefully, they can handle that for you while you go back to work. Because, again, the minute we get these folks treated to the best of our abilities, we want them out of there. We want them in an ambulance on the way to the trauma center.Bill Godfrey:Let's pause there for just a second. Terrance, Tom says to you, you guys are working on the same RTF, and Tom says, "Hey, I know we came in through the front door and snaked through these hallways, but here's an emergency exit that goes out to this side parking lot or whatever, can we use that as an ambulance exchange point? What does that look like for you as a law enforcement officer that you need to work out? What needs to happen there before we get a "yes" or "no" and we can do that?Terrance Weems:The first thing I want to know if that area's been secured, if we have units in that area that have already swept it and made sure that that is a safe and secure area because we don't want to bring folk into an area where we can't say that it's already secure because now we've taken them literally out of the frying pan and put them into the fire. So if we can say that this is secure, I have the perimeter set, then, yes, we can set that up as an ambulance exchange point, and we can get moving on that. But if we can't say that, now I need to move a team to secure that area to make sure that we have that area secure. Once we have it secure, then we can do that.Bill Godfrey:Coby, let's say tactical gets that call in Terrance's example, we don't know whether it's been secured or not. We don't have a team out there. We obviously need some security. Let's say that you're on that contact team, Coby, that gets the call from tactical to go out and secure the ambulance exchange point. What does that mean to you? What are you thinking about? What are you looking for?Coby Briehn:So we get the call, we'd like to say that RTFs and the medical [inaudible 00:21:14] an event to happen, and law enforcement makes it happen. So if they want to move somewhere, we make sure it's secure before they go. If they want to go out any door, we're going to send a team out there. So if I'm part of that contact team, ideally we have a perimeter unit set up. Again, if we don't, we're going to push units out, officers out to secure that area, give us a protective bubble protecting that open air exchange point right there so the ambulances just can come in. It's a clear identification for them. The routes in and out are drivable. They're not covered in mud if it's raining outside. It's not locked up, or we make sure that that lock is now taken off so we can get out, certain barricades or wherever [inaudible 00:21:59] schools or businesses just so we can give them the best and easiest route out. We're going to do all we can to make that happen but we're not going to do it, we're not going to move them until we tell them that it's good to go.Bill Godfrey:I'm guessing that that doesn't happen in 30 seconds. That takes a little time to make that happen?Terrance Weems:Just a couple minutes after that.Coby Briehn:Everything takes time, yeah.Bill Godfrey:Tom, that's why that's one of the first things on your mind when you're landing in the CCP is... because you know it's only going to be a few minutes before you're going to be ready to start moving somebody. You don't want to be stuck waiting because the ambulance exchange point isn't set.Tom Billington:That is so true. The clock is ticking. People are bleeding. They're dying. We're doing the best we can. I want to know as soon as possible, as soon as we have a patient ready to go, a priority patient or red, I want them out of there. I want them to the ambulance. I want them on the way to the hospital. While we're in there, while the rest of the rescue task forces are in there, we do a little extra treatment. Obviously, we don't want to do too much. We just want to make sure we cover the basics. We want to make sure we do wound packing, hemostatic gauze, airway, very important, little decompressions. Things like that that will compromise the airway or not control bleeding we want to handle so that we can get the person to the trauma center in the best condition possible.Bill Godfrey:I think that's a great point. I don't believe we've mentioned TECC yet but the Tactical Emergency Casualty Care, which is the civilianized version of the military's Tactical Combat Casualty Care. Is that right, Coby? I got that right? The TCCC is the military one?Coby Briehn:Yes, sir. Tactical Combat Casualty Care, and the civilian is Tactical Emergency Casualty Care.Bill Godfrey:[crosstalk 00:23:43]-Coby Briehn:[crosstalk 00:23:43] combat out for the civilian.Bill Godfrey:The TECC model, if you're not familiar with it, I really encourage you to go Google that and look it up. It's all available for free. It outlines the differences in cold zone care, warm zone care, and hot zone care. There are a few things that we would still do in a hot zone that can happen from time to time. So it's probably a little bit too in depth for us to get in on this podcast, but if you're not familiar with that, please go check out Tactical Emergency Casualty Care. That's part of what guides our recommendations about what you do and don't do. A lot of that also has to do with the situation you're dealing with. You obviously want to provide life-threatening care or any stabilizing care but also the exigency or the urgency of the circumstances of how quickly you want to move them. As Tom has said, you want to get them out quick. Tom, I kind of interrupted you there. Where are we going after that? You got your other RTF coming in. You got the ambulance exchange point being worked on. Take me from there.Tom Billington:We're making sure our medical team is doing that treatment, as I mentioned. Then it's time. We work with the contact teams, and the rescue task force all work together. Like Terrance said, you want to make sure it's secure. When it's secure we want to start moving patients. Now, we want to move the patients that are going to get in an ambulance. We're not going to start stacking patients up outside of an ambulance exchange point because that's a security issue. If I'm in charge of that room, I'm going to pick out who I think is the highest priority, and we're going to send them out to the ambulance exchange point when we're told it's prepared. Prepared means security's in place. There's an ambulance sitting there with a driver. We're going to go right up to the ambulance and load the patients. Again, obviously, we have to be careful with loading. You can't put two reds in an ambulance. So we recommend maybe a red, a yellow on the second bench, and even a green in the passenger seat of an ambulance if they're stable enough.Tom Billington:Again, we also want to make sure that we're checking with our hospitals. Can a hospital take a red and a yellow? How many reds can this other trauma center take? So those are all things that are happening through transportation. It's all constant cogs in the wheel, continually working together. So once we get our patient out there, we want them in the ambulance. We want the doors shut. We want the ambulance to leave. We don't want it sitting there. Again, the clock's ticking. Minutes equal lives. Also we don't want to have the ambulance being a big target if there's another shooter or another obstacle in the way.Bill Godfrey:Which is an interesting point, Terrance, I was just going to ask you about that because one of the things that we teach is one ambulance in the exchange point at a time, two max. We don't want more than two up there. This is not some sort of forward ambulance staging point. Why for you as law enforcement is that so important to just have one or two ambulances max downrange in that exchange point at a time?Terrance Weems:A number of reasons. One, you're a target so you want to make sure... You don't want to add any more fuel to any fire. So if you're able to limit that to one, two if needed, then you're limiting any other opportunity. Not just that but there may be a need for another ambulance exchange point in another location. So if you're able to do that and you're able to have another ambulance exchange point stood up depending on the size and the scope of your detail, that gives you that opportunity. If you bring in all of those ambulances, now you have a problem with traffic. If you think about traffic during rush hour, that would be a perfect opportunity to have a messed up traffic [inaudible 00:27:20].Bill Godfrey:Absolutely. Bruce, Tom mentioned working with the hospitals on what they can take and what they can do. Of course, that's one of the things that we really harp on in class is distributing your patients evenly to the hospitals. Can you talk a little bit about the role of the RTF and coordinating with transport on what they've got and helping transport to get those ambulances distributed to the hospitals? Can you close that loop for me?Bruce Scott:Certainly. Most jurisdictions have a method where their 911 center has the ability to poll their hospitals about bed availability. Your bigger cities have multiple hospitals, and smaller jurisdictions, you probably don't have a lot of options. But the truth is you're doing disservice to the patients if you send more patients than what that hospital can handle safely.Bruce Scott:We have one of our instructors that teach with us from Las Vegas. His brother during the Las Vegas shooting was shot in the neck. They thought it was a really great plan to just put him in the police car and drive him over to the trauma center. Well, the trauma center was a war zone. They could not treat this police officer that was shot in the neck at that trauma center, and they ended up going to another facility. Obviously, thank the good Lord, and he's fine. It wasn't that significant of a wound as it turned out. But at the time the trauma center turned him down because they couldn't provide treatment for that. So we've done a disservice for our patients if we don't get those hospital counts, have the ability to get those folks where they're going to get the best care, or we're just doing a disservice.Bill Godfrey:Because of one of the points of confusion at least, Tom and Bruce, that I can remember coming up in class is we're teaching to establish a triage and a transport group supervisor along with the tactical group supervisor who are at the edge of the warm zone, let's say. They're outside. They're taking up position, but they're kind of the quarterback, quarterbacking the resources. A lot of times we get questions about, why do you need two? Why do you need triage and transport? The answer is because it's two very different functions. You just kind of hit on that. The triage group supervisor's job is to figure out how many are injured, where are they injured, and what are the severity. The RTF is the eyes and the ears for that. So you can't keep that information a secret. You've got to be communicative with your triage supervisor and tell them what you've got. Of course, the numbers are going to be a moving target. A lot of people don't realize that. They're like, "Well, what happened to that yellow?"Bruce Scott:I was going to bring that up.Bill Godfrey:You didn't account for the yellow. Well, that yellow turned into a red.Bruce Scott:Absolutely.Bill Godfrey:So it's a moving target, and you can't wrapped around the axle about that. But the triage group supervisor, as they're getting that information, has the opportunity to work with the transport supervisor right there who can begin to game-plan behind the scenes. So while the ambulance exchange point's being set up, the transport group supervisor can get the list of the bed counts or availability, if the jurisdiction does that, and then lay out their game plan for where they're going to send the various ambulances. So that information flowing from RTF about the nature and severity of the victims and then passing it on a transport, getting those loaded and the RTFs being aware of the loading. Tom mentioned, you don't generally want to put two reds in an ambulance. No. I can remember days when it happened to me. Male: Absolutely.Bill Godfrey:It's extremely, extremely difficult to do. You don't have enough equipment. You don't have enough hands. Now, if it's the only option you got, I mean I get that. Sometimes things happen. But generally speaking, you want to balance the load of the severity in the ambulance. Then once that ambulance leaves and calls transport, we want that transport group supervisor to spread those ambulances out to the various hospitals. So we just kind of rinse and repeat as we go through that until we get everybody off the scene.Bill Godfrey:One of the best things that the RTF can do is stay in touch with triage to let them know what they still have. If triage is not getting that, triage ought to call them and say, "Triage RTF One, what do you have left? Give me an update on what you have left." Don't worry about whether the numbers add up. That doesn't matter. Focus on what's left. So we finally get all the patients transported. The RTFs make the all-critical call to triage to say, "No more viable patients remain in my location. Then where else do you need me?" Tom, let's talk a little bit about that process.Tom Billington:Well, one thing to think about is this is a crime scene, without a doubt, so the minute the RTFs are done what they're doing, you want to check to make sure if they're needed anywhere else. If they're not, we need to try to get them off there and get them back to staging. Now, most scenes you're going to want to have an RTF there with the contact team in case something else happens. That's all right. As soon as we can get another assignment, it's up to the RTF to call triage and say, "Hey, we're done. All the patients are gone. All the treatment is over. Triage, what do you want us to do?" Because so many times the RTF's just hanging out. You have people everywhere. It's a crime scene. There's still unknown hazards. So we have to make sure triage knows what has happened and then we get direction.Bill Godfrey:Yeah, absolutely. Coby, Terrance, how do you feel about that idea of...? Let's say there's three or four RTFs downrange. You return most of them to staging, but you keep one of them back downrange with you guys as you begin to stabilize and go through your clearing operations. Coby, let's go to you first. Do you like that idea?Coby Briehn:I'm not opposed to it because it's good to have them close by there. We don't need a whole... We're not going to clear them [inaudible 00:33:07] to a secondary or tertiary search with the RTF unit following along behind us, but you get to have them close by when we needed it, if we do find some of those people that are hiding from whatever made them go into the closets or the caverns of the buildings. So I'm not opposed to it. Again, it's whatever that agency that those people are comfortable with, but it's certainly a great options to have those highly-trained medical guys downrange with us. They're already there. They're going to be doing the medicine anyway, so why have them go back when we could have them right there in a secure area while we're doing that search?Bill Godfrey:I think that's a great point. Coby, I'm glad you clarified that for me because I realize I didn't really say that very clearly in the way I implied that. I don't actually mean that the rescue task force forms up with the contact team and is part of the clean up operation. Not at all. That's not what I was saying. You keep one RTF that's still downrange in a warm zone, maybe still in the CCP. But if you have a problem, you don't have to wait for them to come back up from staging. Terrance, what are your thoughts on that?Terrance Weems:Actually I'm in agreement especially if we know that that area is secure, we know that the suspect is down, we can account for them whether it'd be one or multiple people, in that instance, sure, having one with you because we know in a lot of situations you're going to have people hiding in different places that may or may not be injured.Tom Billington:Bill, also to add, again, remember, an RTF is not just medical. It's your security system with law enforcement, so those law enforcement officers have to stay with that team. They have to keep protecting us. We cannot be left alone, so we don't want to just think we're going to take the law enforcement officers from the RTF, put them in a contact to search. They stay as a team together.Bill Godfrey:Yeah, absolutely, or else you have a medic that stands in the middle of a T intersection of a bunch of hallways and 20 doors and tries to treat somebody on the X.Bruce Scott:I'd just like to say that although I certainly understand the concept, I do that we continue to struggle around the country with fire/EMS chiefs are putting firefighters and paramedics into warm zones. Then we'd have those continued conversations. Terrance and Coby bring up a great point. We're going to leave them in that warm zone for an extended period of time. That's more conversations and more understanding that has to happen with those leaderships and those agencies. Because even if you get them to buy in, "Hey, we're going to commit them into a warm zone as long as we have that law enforcement protection," as most of your fire chiefs are going to say, "and I want them out of there as soon as possible till you tell me it's completely clear." So just more training and more understanding, more relationship building that has to take place on the front end.Bill Godfrey:I think that's a good point. I guess Terrance, Coby, that would probably also depend on what the lay of the land is: the building, what you've got secured, the configuration. Yeah, okay. We get the patients treated. We get them off the scene. We get our unneeded RTFs back to staging. We break those teams down and let people get reassigned. Is there anything else that we need to address? Because we've walked from A to Z, from getting the assignment in staging all the way back to staging. Anything you left out?Bruce Scott:A couple of things and I want to make sure that we... and I'm not sure we talked about it. Say, for example, you have two law enforcement folks and two fire/EMS folks as part of that RTF, you're understanding they work for triage. I think Tom mentioned that. But understanding that your communication, your law enforcement element still talks to tactical on their radio, and your fire/EMS are talking to triage. They get their direction from triage, and they get their approvement for movement from the law enforcement side. So you don't flip over to one channel or the other just because you're assigned on one RTF. You stay on your tactical channels.Bruce Scott:Bill, the second thing I want to understand from RTFs is you're going downrange. You're not taking every jump box, every trauma kits, your respiratory box, your oxygen, your stretcher. You're not taking a truckload of equipment with you. You're moving fast and light. The things that Tom brought up, that indirect threat care that you can do, that's not dependent on taking a whole lot of equipment with you.Bill Godfrey:Yeah, absolutely. Bruce, I really glad you brought up that bit about the radio channel because that is a source of questions and confusion from time to time: who's talking to who? It seems like we got the RTF reporting to two different bosses. It's really not that complicated when you look at... The RTF is a medical team with a medical purpose. It is run and managed by the triage group supervisor, plain and simple. But the law enforcement security detail on that RTF, they have to be on the radio with tactical. They have to be listening to what's happening on the tactical channel. They have to be able to update tactical about where they are in the building and what's going on and get any warnings or be able to convey any warnings. It's essential. But that's not a problem because you're standing together, so the security part of the detail is literally standing with the medical part of the detail. You can have them on two different channels. It's always interesting to me how that comes up as a point of confusion, so I think that's great. Tom, anything else from you?Tom Billington:No. Excuse me. I'm sorry. Just as Terrance pointed out to begin with, understanding each other, having relationships is so important. I know I would go anywhere with Terrance and Coby because I know their capabilities. Now, as Terrance said, in large jurisdictions that might not be possible, but if the jurisdiction has a reputation in our training with them that we know they're going to take care of us, it's very important to do that ahead of time. You don't want to be going in cold with somebody you have no idea who they are or what they're about. The lives of the paramedics are dependent on these law enforcement officers, and you want to feel secure when you're going in there.Bill Godfrey:I absolutely agree with you. The interesting thing, I think law enforcement by and large, and when I say that, I mean damn near every officer I've ever met understands that when they're asking for a medic to come downrange, I don't think they take that lightly. I think they are well aware that they're asking for an unarmed, non-law enforcement person to come downrange and that that complicates things a little bit for them because they've got somebody who may not know the tactical rules of the road coming down into their scene, and they got to manage that. I've never met any law enforcement officer anywhere in the country in our training or travels that hasn't understood the seriousness of that responsibility and that call. I feel really good about that.Bill Godfrey:You obviously want them to stay with you and not run away and all that kind of stuff, going and chasing the bad guy in the threat. I think most of them understand that pretty well. We probably need to continue to hammer on that message. But in terms of understanding when they're making that radio call saying, "Send me the medics," I think they get exactly what that means. So I think that's a great point. Terrance, any last things from you you want to throw in or out?Terrance Weems:No. I appreciate the opportunity. I enjoyed the conversation. You all are awesome. I just want to say that.Bill Godfrey:Well, it's good to have you on the team and glad to finally be able to get you into one of the podcasts. Coby, coming over to you? Anything you want to add?Coby Briehn:No, sir. Everything sounds great.Bill Godfrey:All right. Well, gentlemen, thank you very much for your time on this one. I hope everybody enjoyed it. If you haven't subscribed to the podcast, please do so. We are on our schedule to do new releases every Monday and holding up on that well. Until next time, stay safe.

Bruce Scott is the morning show host on 94.5 Bay FM. Bruce is one of the best radio hosts I've ever worked with. He's also a great drummer - when you can go see live music again you should check out his band, Fossil Farm. I'm grateful for Bruce taking with me and opening up about an extremely painful time for him during the pandemic.

Episode 22: Complex Coordinated Attack (CCA)A discussion of Complex Coordinated Attack (CCA), sometimes referred to as Complex Coordinated Terrorist Attack (CCTA).Bill Godfrey:Welcome back everybody to our next podcast. Today's subject, we are going to talk about Complex Coordinated Attack. Now, interestingly, the terminology means a little bit different depending on where you are or who you're talking to. Some people call it CCA, Complex Coordinated Attack. Sometimes it's referred to as CCTA, Complex Coordinated Terrorist Attack. For the purposes of our conversation here today, it's all the same. My name is Bill Godfrey, one of the instructors here at C3 Pathways. I've got with me, Bruce Scott, one of our other instructors. Bruce, say hello.Bruce Scott:HelloBill Godfrey:And Tom Billington.Tom Billington:Hello, how you doing?Bill Godfrey:And Don Tuten.Don Tuten:Good afternoon.Bill Godfrey:All right, so we've got four of our instructors. Actually, this team that's with you today was part of the group that just did our new CCTA for EOC a class a few weeks ago. We've got another delivery coming up in a few weeks, but we wanted to talk a little bit about some of this. So let's start off by talking about our definition of a CCA which is more of a responder's definition, the necessarily like our research definition, and some of the challenges with that.So I'll share this with you, the way we define a CCA is, it's three or more attackers, or two or more sites, or an act of terrorism that overwhelms the local jurisdiction. Now, that sounds pretty loosey goosey on the surface, and we don't disagree with that. But the point is, is that our definition is designed for use by responders. When you're listening to the radio, you're listening to the dispatch, you're listening to what's going on to be able to say, "Huh, that doesn't sound good. That sounds like that could be a CCA." So Don, why don't you talk a little bit about the importance of early recognition, and why that matters? Why we kind of steered away from the research grade definition and went to that instead?Don Tuten:Absolutely. So first and foremost is you're going to be competing for resources, that is the biggest thing, and knowing what type of incidents or incidents are out there, and who is performing these incidents, whether they're terrorists, whether there are foreign terrorists, whether they're homegrown terrorists. To us, the intel is a big piece of it, but ultimately, we have to really gather those resources to be able to manage and take care of each one of those scenes independently as well as collectively, because they may be tied together as you know, Bill. And they're working with our federal partners, working with our local jurisdictions, making sure everybody's on the same page to be prepared, training together, ensuring that we have MOUs with each other, especially, in smaller agencies and smaller jurisdictions, where we're all competing for the same resources and having some type of understanding of who we call, when we call, and how they'll get there in some of our staging areas, that's another piece that we really see is obviously, is where we're going to bring those resources into.Bill Godfrey:Tom, you've got a lot of background in emergency management as does as, well, actually, all of us do quite frankly. But what's your thoughts on the importance, especially on the fire-EMS side of recognizing pretty early on that this is not your usual call?Tom Billington:Well, first of, these events are going to happen at 1:00 in the morning during the week. They're not going to happen 9:00 a.m. on a Monday when everybody's in the office. So it's important that our line personnel, or shift commanders, battalion chiefs, lieutenants, law enforcement, supervisors have a good idea of what a CCA or CCTA is and when to declare that it is happening. So the sooner the better, because obviously, if you have three or four different incidents going on in your county, it's going to be the shift supervisor has to determine, are these things connected, or are they just three separate issues? So that's the main thing, putting the puzzle together. If I have a shooting in one area, a car blows up in another area, and suddenly, I hear about a shooting. Are these connected? Is this a complex attack, or are they just separate incidents? So it's going to be the ground supervisor, the line supervisor to find it out as soon as possible and put the puzzle together.Bill Godfrey:Bruce, what's your take?Bruce Scott:I think the key, Bill, is that early recognition, right? So the definitions that we provide kind of allow us to say, this is abnormal, this is way out of the ordinary, this is a trigger that some things need to happen. And those things may very well be that establish of that area command, that establishment of activation your EOC, the notification of your senior officials. So having those triggers already there and putting them in the back of your head and said, these are not, this is a huge abnormality, and we need to make these triggers happen. Because as Tom alluded to that it takes a long time to start putting these resources together, and so having those definitions early on and allow those triggers to make things happen.Bill Godfrey:Yeah, it's interesting all of you have kind of mentioned now the idea of area command. Let's talk about that a little bit. First of all, let's explain what area command is, and then kind of dig into the dirt a little bit about why we felt like that was such a great tool for addressing CCAs. Bruce, you want to go into the basis of area command, that concept behind it?Bruce Scott:I sure would, because I think it's one of the most misunderstood things in the incident command system and the least trained on, right? So we touch about it. I'll touch a little on it. When we teach I3 or G300 or G400, we talk a little bit about area command, but we really don't practice it. People don't understand it. And the thing is, you can't plant a higher ICS flag and incident command flag in area command. So you put that flag in the ground and say, "You know what? We're in charge. We have jurisdictional authority." And now, we're going to begin coordinating all the efforts if it is multiple sites, if it is multiple shooters, it allows us to begin the coordinating effort at a high level of an incident.Don Tuten:And I tell you, I like to expand on that too, is because you've got to think outside of what our local responses are, you're going to get federal responses, and they need to come to one place, know where to go, especially when you have multiple sites, and then how are you going to divvy those resources out to those sites, and then give them tasks to work with those specific incident commanders at those different sites.Bill Godfrey:Absolutely. Tom, Bruce mentioned planting the flag and putting that in, but when you've got multiple jurisdictions involved which is easy to have happened and accomplish coordinate attack, what does that look like at area command? How do you make that work when your incidents or your attack across a bunch of jurisdictions?Tom Billington:This is something that has to be decided beforehand. We talk about that a lot, medium counterparts, having mutually agreements, having automatic aid agreements. Because if it's a complex coordinated attack, you're right, it could be going over county lines, even state lines in some areas. These are things we need to figure out ahead of time, and there needs to be a statement of jurisdiction, which is kind of hard to get several counties online, but it can be done, deciding ahead of time if it's hits two or three counties. Are we going to work together and do a unified area command? So again, pre-planning with your partners beforehand is important.Bill Godfrey:Yeah, I think the key element there was the idea of a unified area command, which it's not any easier than a regular unified command, which can be fun. You all can't see it but all three of the other instructors are laughing with me. We've always kind of seen that before. So the unified command concept is a great one. It's hard to do if you haven't practiced it or you got a bunch of people that are having to work together that don't know each other. It doesn't mean it can't work, but boy, it's a whole lot easier if you can meet your counterparts and leadership folks from the other agencies and other jurisdictions in training and things like that, just kind of getting that.The other thing I want to touch on an area command before we kind of leave that is a concept and talking about why you want to use it, and I think this tangents into it is, one of the differences between a gathering a bunch of incidents and making them a complex under one incident in area command is that each of the incident commanders at the individual sites retains their incident command authority.That site is their responsibility, and they're making the decisions at the call where area command is setting the priorities, setting the big picture objectives, setting the resources. In other words, Bruce, if you've got an incident, and you've got 10, 12 people that are injured and down, but there's nothing active going on right now, but you're calling for help. And Tom's got an incident going on, and he's got half a dozen or a dozen with a car through the crowd and a problem. But over at Don's place, it's just bad news.There's three or four people with automatic weapons and the killing is ongoing. Well, the three incidents, you guys might not even know about each other's existence or that the incidents are going on but area command is, and they're the ones that have to make the decision to say, "Bruce, Tom, do the best you can with what you got. We'll get you some when we can. But in the meantime, I got to push resources over to Don" on this third incident, so that was one of the things I wanted you guys to talk about.Don Tuten:Well, in staging, an area staging is a big part of that also, is you have to, once again, lean forward thinking if this is going to be an area command is going to take over, managing these two, three, four different incident sites, you have to set up an area staging as soon as possible. Everybody has to be on board to push things out, and I think a good way to practice this, Bill, is on larger, special events that are taken over two or three locations. And even in some of these different communities can practice, each individual parking could be set up as a separate incident command for instance, inside a venue. And that's a smaller way to practice how this is going to work by setting up an area command.Tom Billington:And, Bill, if I can add, we just need to remember that an area command is not an EOC, an emergency operations center, totally two separate items, two separate very important items. At the emergency operation center, usually, I know most jurisdictions takes hours to get stood up. An area command handles the problems that are right now, right here, right now, let's handle it, but we do need to get that EOC set up or multiple EOC set up in various counties.Bill Godfrey:Yeah, absolutely. Bruce, you want to talk a little bit more about that?Bruce Scott:Well, first off, I'd like to say that as you alluded to, Bill, area command has to make those critical resource decisions, right? And the only way you can do that successfully is number one, have pre-established relationships and good communications with your incident commanders, right? You have to be able to explain to them what the overall situation is and understand, "Hey, you just can't. Tom, you're going to have to wait on your resources." So it has to be an understanding and trust that's been developed. And as Tom alluded to earlier, the only way you do that is plan together, train together, exercise together, and continue to do that. Emergency operation centers do take a long time to get set up, and they can help you with those critical resource decision, not necessarily where are you going to allocate those resources but the amount of resources that you can bring into the fight from both your mutual aid partners, your state partners, and your federal partners, and help coordinate that.And one of the things I think that really emergency management brings to the table, if you would, Bill, if you order a hundred police officers, or a hundred fire trucks, and a hundred ambulances, where are they going to stay? Where are they going to eat? Where are they going to go to the restroom? How are they going to get fuel? An emergency management does a lot of that planning in the foreground and probably have logistical staging areas set up and an ability to support those resources as they come in. So I think emergency management and your merchant operation center play a key role in that.Bill Godfrey:Yeah, absolutely they do. They're complementary roles. And I think, Tom put it well. The reason for area command is we don't have time to wait. This is a right now-right now problem. As our friend, Jeff used to always say, "We got to get on it", and that's the role of area command. But the role of the EOC is to almost be shoulder to shoulder with area command and partnering on those resources. Because I think the other thing that people sometimes forget is no matter how good your comm center is, no matter how good that dispatch center is, no matter how well their staff, they are going to get overwhelmed and overloaded. And once you've stripped the resources that are available to them through the CAD system, or through the radio, now they got to go old school, and start picking up phones, and calling agencies, and calling other dispatch centers, and that's slow and tedious.And when they're already overloaded, that's hard to do. But the EOC has mechanisms in place to be able to say it, Bruce, as you said, "I need a hundred cops, and I need them. I need a 500 cops. I need a hundred engines or a hundred ambulances", whatever the case may be. That's a big request order, but they can get that done. Now, as you pointed out rightfully so, there's a lot of responsibility that comes with ordering up that many folks. So that's really kind of interesting. So let's go back and talk a little bit more now that we kind of explained how those pieces fit together. Let's talk about some of the issues that area command needs to focus on versus the individual incident commander at a site.So let's take my example that I just gave you guys. We've got three active sites that are working, and area command is having to split the decisions. Give me some examples of what the incident commander at a site has to worry about versus the area command team or the unified area command that's making the bigger picture resource decisions and things like that.Bruce Scott:Well, I'll tell you. As an on-scene incident commander, I'm only concerned about my incident, right? So if I'm thinking that there's nobody more important in the world than me at that particular incident some time, and I really think that it's the understanding of what the area command mechanism is put in place, that you have that understanding of there are other incidents going on, and then there may be those critical resource of decisions that are being made, they're being made for a good reason. I think that's the understanding of that that has to happen.Don Tuten:Yeah, and I think you put it well. As the incident commander, you're over that one incident, and you may not know, like you said, what the other incidents are until that area command comes in and explains to you, "Listen, you're one piece of the pie. There's three additional horrible and terrible incidents out there. And we have manage those resources coming in because we're all competing for the same thing." We all want it as an incident commander for a specific site, but we're given a hundred percent for that site, but we may not know what Tom's working, or what you're working at another place. In area command, gels all that together, understands what the priorities are, and then ultimately utilizes the resources and the individual strengths to handle the big picture, and what's going on as well as gathering the intel, because you may only have the intelligence of your one specific location and not know how it ties into the other locations.Bruce Scott:Right, and I think that's what Bill is actually alluding to. The intelligence that we're gathering at our incident merge with the intelligence that you're gathering from your incident, be able to put those pieces, big picture together are we see some commonalities.Don Tuten:Absolutely.Bruce Scott:And again, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you, if we can start predicting, and get out of a reactive state, and move into a proactive state, and maybe prevent that third or fourth incident from happening because we're doing a good job of gathering intelligence and sharing of information.Bill Godfrey:That's a perfect segue was where I was going to go. Tom, imagine you're the area commander, or you're part of the unified area command team. We've got three incidents. One's at a train station. One's at a plane, an airport, and one's at a bus terminal. What are you thinking is the area command? Each of the incident commanders were up to the weeds. We're in the weeds up to our necks, trying to deal with our individual incidents. What are you starting to think as the area commander? What are the thoughts running through your head? What are some of the community action steps that you might be taking that we would never even think of as incident commanders?Tom Billington:This is where the big hat comes in and being every command. You don't only have to know what's going on now, what's coming next, and do I have resources what's coming next? If I have transportation hubs that are being attacked, do I have another railroad station, another airport they have to consider? Do I want to make sure I pre-positioned resources elsewhere where attacks may happen? What is my intelligence telling me? I need a good area intelligence, as Bruce said, to give of the other three incidents that are going on, to see what commonalities are. So these are the things that Eric Mann has to think about. Yes, I need to support my three incidents that are ongoing. But what is getting ready to happen, when it happens, how am I going to respond to it?Don Tuten:And nationally, I mean, transportation is one of those things that as an area commander, you have to, once again, think about, yeah, not only is the transportation sector in my area where these three events are, but this could be an ongoing national event, and that area commanders starts pushing up to their state and federal resources. We may be one of three or three or four sites of a national attack that's coordinated that we may not know about. So important for that area commander to work well with those federal and state partners and push that information up just like an incident commander would.Bruce Scott:And I think it's also important to note that if local jurisdictions fear that they may be next, your normal way of getting those resources and that help that you thought they're going to hold onto that help. So again, that early recognition, that early cry for help, potentially, we'll get your assistance quicker, because typically, local communities will hold onto their resources and not send them to help anybody else if they think it may happen there.Bill Godfrey:Yeah, exactly. For example, you know, if we have the situation we just described as pretty clearly attack on transportation sector, as the area commander, I might be thinking, okay, what other transportation hubs do we have? Do I need to preemptively, you know, if we've got a commuter rail system, do I need to preemptively put a law enforcement assets at each rail station? Do we need to shut the rail station down? Do we need to shut the bus lines down? Assuming the airport has been closed, how many passengers have I just stranded? And boy, that's going to keep EOC busy, trying to figure out how to house 5,000 people, 2000 of which left their ID, wallets, and cell phones in their purses, and carry on’s, and drop luggage that they ran away from. So there's all of these community... I've never really figured out what the right phrase is. I want to call them like these community reaction phrases.But there's a lot of stuff that the EOC does, but at some point, as Tom said, somebody with the big hats got to make the big, hard decision that is going to involve, shutting down services, tying up a lot of resources. I mean, even if you don't shut down your rail system, let's say you've got a commuter rail system, if you've got a station that's been attacked, at the very least your rail traffic's not running through that station, so now you've got to do a bypass for your hundreds or thousands or you know.Don Tuten:You're affecting the communities where they left from where they're going to next. And everybody in ancillary all the way around, this is going to have to stop a hundred miles, 50 miles short of there, as well as those flights that may be in the air that when this happened, they're now having to be diverted that you're going to have to work with your federal partners, especially when it comes to transportation.Bill Godfrey:So just to kind of recap this, the idea and where we're kind of focused on the training is, again, from the field responders and EOC perspective of not just one incident or though, or it could be a very complex singular incident, again, if it's three or more attackers, or two or more sites, or an act of terrorism that overwhelms a local jurisdiction, we're recommending that you establish an area command. And in some cases, in fact, some of the scenarios that we run in training, we've got the one that's one of my favorite, it's the three attackers at an outdoor mall. And so it's a single site, except it's not because as soon as you start chasing the intel, you realize that there are witnesses telling you that there are potential suspects, at least persons of interest that have fled the area. They fled to the airport, the license plate reader gets a hit on that.Now, we've got to chase these, question mark, are they suspect persons of interest down? There's an airport involved, we've got the crime scene. We're going to start working the ID of these attackers. Now, we're going to have potentially multiple crime scenes. All of that has to get coordinated somewhere. An area command is a great tool. If you get a manhunt, you could have a really, what's a fairly straightforward attack. I can't believe I just said it that way, but you can have an attack that on the surface doesn't ride to a complex coordinated attack. But because you have people that fled the scene or are in the wind, and now you've got a manhunt, that's a great example of when area command can be very helpful, is you managed to coordinate that.So that's why we're kind of suggesting that now. Given that we've been talking about complex coordinated attack in this conversation, we want to wrap it up by talking a little bit about civil unrest, and how those incidents can actually be managed with this same process, the same layered approach of the incident sites. Don, how about you tee this one up for us and kind of talk us through it and we'll take it from there.Don Tuten:Obviously, if anybody's been watching the news for the past 12 months, civil unrest has been a challenge for all agencies, all communities. It's the unfortunate part of our history of America right now. But the biggest thing for law enforcement, for our emergency responders is, as soon as possible, getting that intelligence out. The sooner you get the intelligence on the amount of people, the locations fostered with your pre-planning, that hopefully every community is doing now on what resources they have to combat this along with training, that's the biggest piece of it. I mean, there's so many different facets to civil unrest versus working in the community with the different community groups and trying to tort this versus the radicals that come in that just want to cause havoc in your community. But I think civil unrest unfolds the same as it does for CCA or CCTA.You have to have those established relationships ahead of time. You have to have plans. You have to know who is going to be, who is going to run that area command position. What the communications are? Which liaisons, with all the different agencies that are going to work together? And then obviously, have the common goal of sorting this no matter where it goes. Because as you know, civil unrest, when some of these groups, they're doing the same thing. they're going to two or three different places and locations at one time trying to overrun our emergency services.Bill Godfrey:Yeah, and the scary part is, is that you may think you know what the plan is but sometimes you don't.Don Tuten:Absolutely.Bill Godfrey:Sometimes you don't know where they're headed. You get a protest, you get a fixed protest that isn't supposed to move and then does, or you get a second one that pops up, or you move in to disband the first protest, cleared an un...Don Tuten:Unlawful assembly.Bill Godfrey:... unlawful assembly. Thank you. You declared an unlawful assembly and you break that one up, but in the process, they all just moved to a new location.Don Tuten:Yeah, it so hard for law enforcement because while we want to protect their civil rights, at the same time, these same people unfortunately want to cause havoc for everybody else. So it's such a hard subject for law enforcement. And I know my brothers and sisters in firefighting and emergency management go through the same thing because they're all being taxed. They're all going through the same pains that we all are so.Bruce Scott:Yeah, just real quick, we talk about, if you know these things, don't plan on what you think is going to happen. You need to be planning and thinking what might happen, right? And it allows us to hopefully, put those resources in place. At least the ability to mobilize those resources earlier and faster. A question for you, Bill, if you don't mind me throwing one to you, why do you think that... What's your opinion on the resistance to this whole area command concept? And again, I kind of like you to speak to it from a political or appointed leadership position. Why do you think some, as a first responder be say, "I want to set up area command, and I want to order 500 resources", in anticipation of something that might happen.Bill Godfrey:You know, I think it's a couple things. I think it's two fold. One is the question mark in your mind as the leader as the area commander, who says, "Man, 500 law enforcement officers, can I actually make that decision? Do I have the authority? Am I putting my city or county or region on the hook for half a million dollars? How does this get paid for?" Those can be pretty scary and intimidating things. And so if you don't really know where you stand or you can't just say, "Okay, I'm not necessarily sure what the downstream consequences are going to be, but this is what needs to be done right now, and I'm going to make the best decision I can, and if there's hell to pay afterwards, then there's hell to pay afterwards."So I think part of it is that, it's a little scary for leaders to pull the trigger on some of that, and to say, "We need this much help", or "I think we might need this much help." Because in the mind of a leader, "Okay, I need 500 officers." And they end up in staging, and don't do anything, and we never deploy them because we didn't need them.Don Tuten:It's expensive insurance policy.Bill Godfrey:It sure is. And you know what? You really can be criticized, but I would also say, Don, you mentioned it, if you've been listening to news the last 12 months, you might've heard of these things called field hospitals that have been set up and torn down and set up and torn down all across the country over this last year as we've battled COVID. Not very many of these field hospitals ever saw patient one, and the ones that did see him didn't see very many, and those were very expensive insurance policies.But at the time there were leaders in place that said, "I think this is what we need to do, and we need to move forward and make it happen." So I think part of it is that reluctance to just put it on the line and say, "We're going to do this." The second part, which I don't really think is directly related, but maybe tangentially related is the political implications of it. And I got to admit when I was active duty in the fire service, I was just as bad. I was the poster child of territorialism and this is our district in our zone, in our area, and it was terrible. I cringe when I think back to the way I handled some of those things. And then you get a perspective, of course, after you've retired, left active duty that goes. Well, maybe it wasn't such a good idea to act like jackass, but I think that's a piece of it too.We in the industry, in the first response industry, police, fire, EMS, all of them, there's a competitive spirit, and to a degree, that competitive spirit is healthy and good. But at some point, you got to get over that. You've got to be able to work together. And sometimes the problem is in the field, but my experience has been, that's pretty rare. Most of the time, the problem is in leadership. It's higher up, and sometimes it's not even in the fire department or the police department, it's at the city government level or the county government level. They just don't like each other or can't get along. The best way I've seen to fix that is just training. You do joint training and bring everybody together.Bruce Scott:And relationship building.Bill Godfrey:Absolutely.Don Tuten:That's number one, relationships.Bill Godfrey:Absolutely. So yeah, thanks for putting me on the hot seat, Bruce. I appreciate that. Tom, you got anything you want to throw in here?Tom Billington:I just realize that leadership positions, you're not always going to get the pat on the back. There's going to be times when you go for it on fourth down and you don't make it and you're not going to be very popular. So you have to realize there's going to be good times, bad times. That's why you have to know who you're reporting to, that will they trust your decision tomorrow? What would the Monday morning quarterback issues be? So it's not easy, but you have to do it. Somebody has to step up and lead.Bill Godfrey:You know, I think Tom, you just made me think of something that I didn't say that I think probably needs to be said. As a leader, as a fire chief, or a police chief, or an EMS chief, or even the emergency manager, I think the most important thing that you can do is have a joint sit down with your city manager, county manager, whoever the top bosses you report to, especially if it's a civilian, and sit them down and say, "Look, these are our procedures. These are our processes. This is how this works. This is how this unfolds. These are the things that we're going to do, and this is why."Because if you tell them ahead of time, it's a lot easier. They know what you're doing. They know what to expect. When a reporter shoves a microphone in their face, they know how to answer the question, and give you a little bit of breathing room, and give you the benefit of the doubt. All right. I wonder what comments we're going to get from this podcast.Bruce Scott:That'll be interesting.Bill Godfrey:Yeah, yeah, to say the least. Well gentlemen, any parting words before we wrap up?Tom Billington:No, not at all.Don Tuten:No. Thanks for bringing the, you know, to the forefront that obviously, area command is a big part of all of these things that we talked about and I hope people take it to word, and train for it, and do their best to try to implement it whenever possible.Bruce Scott:And practice it.Tom Billington:And build your relationships with your partners, and your superiors, and make sure everybody knows what you're going to do, so it's not a surprise.Bill Godfrey:Absolutely, and Bruce, I'll echo on to the practice. If somebody tells you that you can't practice this anyways, other than a tabletop bologna, pick up the phone and give us a call, We'll tell you how we do it. It's not a big secret. We're happy to share, and we're happy to help you. If you need help doing it. You can practice live, functional, and even full-scale scenarios for the command and control element of a CCA. We do it every week in the training classes that we provide. Well, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for taking the time with us today. We hope you enjoyed it. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to email them to us. If you haven't already subscribed to the podcast, please do that until next time stay safe.

Melanie and Kevin are each remarkable coaches on their own, with Melanie serving women and Kevin serving men.  Individually and together they have reached incredible levels of success, yet both of them are most proud, and most gratified, by having created the relationship they share. Listen in as they bring depth and authenticity while describing the steps they took, and the inner stance they live by, which has lead to the most amazing relationship. Follow Melanie: https://www.facebook.com/melanieannlayer.alphafemme https://www.instagram.com/alphafemme/     Follow Kevin: https://effortlessalpha.com/ https://www.facebook.com/kevinbrucescott Stay Updated with Alexandra Stockwell Join The Intimate Marriage Community https://www.facebook.com/groups/hotmarriage   More Info About Her Programs:   The Aligned and Hot Marriage: https://www.alignedhotmarriage.com/   Desired: https://desires.alexandrastockwell.com/desired/   Read Alexandra's Book, "Uncompromising Intimacy": https://amzn.to/2ymI3Hl   Follow Alexandra: Facebook >>> https://www.facebook.com/alexandra.stockwell.7 Instagram >>> https://www.instagram.com/alexandra.stockwell.intimacy/   More Information: www.AlexandraStockwell.com

Melanie and Kevin are each remarkable coaches on their own, with Melanie serving women and Kevin serving men.  Individually and together they have reached incredible levels of success, yet both of them are most proud, and most gratified, by having created the relationship they share. Listen in as they bring depth and authenticity while describing the steps they took, and the inner stance they live by, which has lead to the most amazing relationship. Follow Melanie: https://www.facebook.com/melanieannlayer.alphafemme https://www.instagram.com/alphafemme/     Follow Kevin: https://effortlessalpha.com/ https://www.facebook.com/kevinbrucescott Stay Updated with Alexandra Stockwell Join The Intimate Marriage Community https://www.facebook.com/groups/hotmarriage   More Info About Her Programs:   The Aligned and Hot Marriage: https://www.alignedhotmarriage.com/   Desired: https://desires.alexandrastockwell.com/desired/   Read Alexandra's Book, "Uncompromising Intimacy": https://amzn.to/2ymI3Hl   Follow Alexandra: Facebook >>> https://www.facebook.com/alexandra.stockwell.7 Instagram >>> https://www.instagram.com/alexandra.stockwell.intimacy/   More Information: www.AlexandraStockwell.com

Antisemitism is a threat the Jewish community lives with daily. Indeed, the history of the Jewish people in the Diaspora is inseparably linked to personal, religious, and civil antisemitism in every generation. In this episode, Ty talks with The Friends of Israel's Bruce Scott about the history and theological roots of antisemitism.

Melanie Ann Layer has built a multi-million dollar brand through working on herself first. In her programs she often shares the story of how she and her fiancee Kevin Bruce Scott met and built a life together. This is your opportunity to hear Kevin's side of the story, and to hear both of them describe the essential beliefs and ways of being that allow them to live a life of joy, fulfillment, luxury and purpose.   Follow Melanie: https://www.facebook.com/melanieannlayer.alphafemme https://www.instagram.com/alphafemme/   Follow Kevin: https://effortlessalpha.com/ https://www.facebook.com/kevinbrucescott https://www.instagram.com/effortlessalpha/   Stay Updated with Alexandra Stockwell   Join The Intimate Marriage Community https://www.facebook.com/groups/hotmarriage   More Info About Her Programs: The Aligned and Hot Marriage: https://www.alignedhotmarriage.com/   Desired: https://desires.alexandrastockwell.com/desired/   Read Alexandra's Book, "Uncompromising Intimacy": https://amzn.to/2ymI3Hl   Follow Alexandra: Facebook >>> https://www.facebook.com/alexandra.stockwell.7 Instagram >>> https://www.instagram.com/alexandra.stockwell.intimacy/   More Information: www.AlexandraStockwell.com

Melanie Ann Layer has built a multi-million dollar brand through working on herself first. In her programs she often shares the story of how she and her fiancee Kevin Bruce Scott met and built a life together. This is your opportunity to hear Kevin's side of the story, and to hear both of them describe the essential beliefs and ways of being that allow them to live a life of joy, fulfillment, luxury and purpose.   Follow Melanie: https://www.facebook.com/melanieannlayer.alphafemme https://www.instagram.com/alphafemme/   Follow Kevin: https://effortlessalpha.com/ https://www.facebook.com/kevinbrucescott https://www.instagram.com/effortlessalpha/   Stay Updated with Alexandra Stockwell   Join The Intimate Marriage Community https://www.facebook.com/groups/hotmarriage   More Info About Her Programs: The Aligned and Hot Marriage: https://www.alignedhotmarriage.com/   Desired: https://desires.alexandrastockwell.com/desired/   Read Alexandra's Book, "Uncompromising Intimacy": https://amzn.to/2ymI3Hl   Follow Alexandra: Facebook >>> https://www.facebook.com/alexandra.stockwell.7 Instagram >>> https://www.instagram.com/alexandra.stockwell.intimacy/   More Information: www.AlexandraStockwell.com

After watching a video of an aircraft being pushed pushback truck, Vic had to get to the bottom of this. Listen as he chats to pilot, Bruce Scott.

Nicky Piper fought for a world title three times. He was defeated by Nigel Benn, Leeonzer Barber and Dariusz Michalczewski but won the Commonwealth title and beat the likes of Bruce Scott and Noel Magee and fought Crawford Ashley, Carl Thompson and many more. A member of MENSA, Piper became known to another generation of fans as an analyst on Sky Sports. Here, at his home in an idyllic Welsh village, Piper discusses the missing ingredient that may have earned him that elusive world title, the nagging regret he still lives with but the contentment he has found in retirement. Boxing Life Stories is now on Patreon. You can get access to research, unseen photographs from Boxing Life Stories, go behind the scenes of the podcast with Tris Dixon and even get some episodes early. You can help support us through another 100 episodes and help us to grow by visiting http://www.patreon.com/trisdixon Boxing Life Stories is bought to you by HANSON LEE who were voted “The UK's Best Specialist Insurance-Sector Recruitment Firm for 2020” in the Corporate Excellence Awards. ‘Not only do we find the best people, we’ll help you retain them.' Discover more at HansonLee.com (http://hansonlee.com/) ’ AND DELCO SAFETY COMPLIANCE, who are a leading provider of professional fire, asbestos, and safety services to businesses nationwide. They offer one expert point of contact for all of your fire, health and safety compliance needs. Find out more at www.delcosafety.co.uk (http://www.delcosafety.co.uk/)   Follow Tris on twitter @trisdixon and instagram @trisdixon 

Finding solid financial footing , its a task that many struggle with especially within this economic and financial climate.This week on the MillionDollarConvos podcast we navigated through this changing financial world with Bruce Scott , who at the age of 21 acquired the title "Chartered Accountant", one of the youngest to ever attain such a title in Jamaica. With a wealth of experience in finances and accounting, Bruce was more than capable of informing us on the intricasies and normalcies of the sometimes convulted financial world , offering some crucial advice in how to navigate it.We also took a stroll down memory lane , revisiting his past and his journey to becoming a prodigy in the financial sector here in Jamaica, as well as becoming a Christian and an altruistic family man.Here is a link to soft copy versions of some life changing books:https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-7jLdwCRRFsMjJUWmF4VDU0Vlk/view?usp=drivesdkThis is the a link to coursera for those interested in doing the Personal Financial Planning Course(Florida International University):https://www.coursera.org/The music used in this podcast belongs to its respective owners and is not the property of Hustlehouseja.

What I learned from reading The Difference Between God and Larry Ellison: God Doesn't Think He's Larry Ellison by Mike Wilson[1:06]  You want to know what I think about Larry Ellison? Well, I suppose he had some private sort of greatness but he kept it to himself. He never gave himself away. He never gave anything away. He just left you a tip. He had a generous mind. I don't suppose anybody ever had so many opinions, but he never believed in anything except Larry Ellison. [1:45] That was the way Ellison's mind worked. He was like a search engine gone haywire. [3:01] I asked Ellison how he had seen his adult life when he was a kid. What he thought was going to happen to him. “You mean did I anticipate becoming the fifth wealthiest person in the United States? No. This is all kind of surreal. I don't even believe it. When I look around I say this must be something out of a dream.” [3:57] Ellison is the Charles Foster Kane of the technological age. He is bright, brash, optimistic, and immensely appealing, yet somehow incomplete. [4:31] He worked in the computer industry for several years but never had a job that suited what he saw as his superior intellectual gifts. [6:08] The stockholder who benefited the most from Oracle's performance was Larry Ellison, exactly what he intended. Ellison started the company because he wanted to be his own boss. And he stayed in control throughout his tenure at Oracle always holding onto enough stock that his power and authority could never be seriously challenged. [7:57] To him there was now power greater than the human mind. [8:23] What Larry reminds me of is a truth that Benjamin Franklin hit on 250 years ago. He says his mind was much improved by all the reading he did. There were very tangible results in Benjamin Franklin's life when people found his conversations more enjoyable because he was a more interesting person to talk to—that led him being able to raise money for his business. It helped him close sales. Larry Ellison is very much the same way. [8:53] When hiring, Ellison valued intelligence more than experience. He often looked for unruly geniuses instead of solid, steady workers. [10:52] If he hadn't made me rich, I'd probably hate him because he is obnoxious. He is not nice to people. [12:39] He was capable of chilling selfishness and inspiring generosity. He could dazzle people with his insights and madden them with his lies. He was a fundamentally shy man who could delight audiences with his colorful speeches. He was known for his healthy ego and often seemed deeply insecure. Many people learned to accept Ellison's contradictory nature. [14:01] In 1970 sales of packaged computer programs amounted to only $70 million for the entire year. [15:55] There is a book called The HP Way. I did a podcast on it (Founders #29) [16:20] The Oracle Way was simply to win. How that goal was achieved was secondary. [17:18] Ellison's early life left a lot to be desired. He was never very happy with the humdrum facts of his life so he changed them. Beginning when he was a child, and continuing into his days in the Forbes 400, Ellison lived partly in a world of his own invention. [18:15] He wasn't going to be smothered by the dreary circumstances of his life. He was going to leap over them. [20:13] Larry reads a lot of biographies. One person he admired the most was Winston Churchill. He had a lot in common with Churchill. Both were mediocre students. Both desperately sought the approval of their fathers to no avail. And both were witty, insatiably curious, and charming when it suited them. Reading about Churchill reassured him that even ‘gods have moments of insecurity.' [22:30] A description of Larry in his mid twenties: Ellison was extremely hard on himself. He had a mental image of where he should be and what he should be and he was not able to attain it. [25:19] He has incredible intelligence and he applies it with incredible intensity. [26:44] The subject he liked best was himself. He was forever telling people how wonderful he was, how smart he was, and how rich he was going to be. [29:50] For Ellison Oracle was a holy mission. [30:33] There was a problem. A sheet rock wall stood between the offices and the computer room. Scott said, “Larry, we need to hook up these terminals. How are we going to hook them up?” “I'll show you how.” Ellison replied. He grabbed a hammer and smashed a hole through the wall. Bruce Scott came to believe that Ellison's entire business philosophy could be summed up in that single act. Find a way or make one. Just do it. [32:41] Ellison could not have dreamed up a more amiable and helpful competitor than IBM. Think of the marketing of relational technology as a race, with Ellison and IBM as two of the main entrants. IBM taught Ellison to walk, bought him a pair of track shoes, trained him as a sprinter, and then gave him a big head start. How could he lose? [35:14] He was practicing. He was working. He knew there was a problem and he fixed it. [35:47] The idea that somebody else might take away Oracle's business was poison to Ellison. He understood the importance of locking up a large share of the market early. “How much does it cost Pepsi to get one half of a percent of the market from Coke once the market has been established?” he once asked rhetorically. “It's very expensive. This market is being established. If we don't run as hard as we can, as fast as we can, and then do it again twice as fast, it'll be cost prohibitive for us to increase market share.” [36:14] Larry put marketing first and everything else second. Average technology and good marketing beat good technology and average marketing every day. [39:17] My view is that there are only a handful of things that are really important and you should devote all of your time to those things and forget everything else. [40:46] I was not terribly forgiving of mediocrity. I was completely intolerant of a lack of effort. And I was fairly brutal in the way I expressed myself. [41:16] Kobe Bryant: I had issues or problems with the people who don't demand excellence from themselves. I won't tolerate that. [42:30] The guy that was in charge of Oracle's advertising in the early days of the company: My ads attack like a pack of speed crazed wolverines and have the same general effect on your competition that a full moon does on a werewolf. [44:00] Larry fundamentally believed that his company was going to be more important than IBM. You can't imagine how far fetched those ideas sounded. He would say he was here to become the largest software company in the world. People were taken aback. [45:32] Larry goes against consensus. Every single on of his advisors told him sell equity, sell equity, sell equity. And Larry just had a fundamental belief that that would be a mistake because the equity is going to be worth a lot more in the future. [46:21] There are only two kinds of people in the world to Larry. Those who are on his team and those who are his enemies. There is no middle ground. [48:03] Even when he was feeling his worst Ellison remained an optimist. A man who couldn't help looking forward. He lived in the future. [49:34] He was terrified he would fail, confirming his father's dark predictions about him. There was a note in his voice that you didn't usually hear with him—just scared, worried. [56:30] I am very competitive, and sometimes, when somebody does something really great, I get upset because I just feel like that isn't me. And my reaction to Steve [Jobs] wasn't competitive at all. I felt what he had done was so wonderful, and I was so proud of him, and I love him so much, it was almost as if I had done it. I didn't feel the least bit competitive. The wonderful thing about loving somebody else is that it can expand your ego in the best sense. If they do something great, you feel terrific about it. [57:38] The only things that are important in our lives are love and work. Not necessarily in that order. We work because work is an act of creation. We identify with it. Both love and work conspire to deliver some kind of happiness. If we can get reasonably good at both of them, we are in really great shape. [58:21] He's got the same problem the rest of us have. He has to engage in an enlightened pursuit of happiness. To figure out what makes him happy. Human beings are builders. He is going to have to find something he really wants to build. He is going to have to have some idea and create something out of that idea. —“I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested, so my poor wallet suffers.”— GarethBe like Gareth. Buy a book. It's good for you. It's good for Founders. A list of all the books featured on Founders Podcast.

What I learned from reading The Difference Between God and Larry Ellison: God Doesn't Think He's Larry Ellison by Mike Wilson.If you want to listen to the full episode you’ll need to upgrade to the Misfit feed. You will get access to every full episode. These episodes are available nowhere else. Upgrade now.Notes and quotes from Founders #127:You want to know what I think about Larry Ellison? Well, I suppose he had some private sort of greatness but he kept it to himself. He never gave himself away. He never gave anything away. He just left you a tip. He had a generous mind. I don’t suppose anybody ever had so many opinions, but he never believed in anything except Larry Ellison.  That was the way Ellison’s mind worked. He was like a search engine gone haywire. I asked Ellison how he had seen his adult life when he was a kid. What he thought was going to happen to him. “You mean did I anticipate becoming the fifth wealthiest person in the United States? No. This is all kind of surreal. I don’t even believe it. When I look around I say this must be something out of a dream.”  Ellison is the Charles Foster Kane of the technological age. He is bright, brash, optimistic, and immensely appealing, yet somehow incomplete.  He worked in the computer industry for several years but never had a job that suited what he saw as his superior intellectual gifts.  The stockholder who benefited the most from Oracle’s performance was Larry Ellison, exactly what he intended. Ellison started the company because he wanted to be his own boss. And he stayed in control throughout his tenure at Oracle always holding onto enough stock that his power and authority could never be seriously challenged.  To him there was no power greater than the human mind.  What Larry reminds me of is a truth that Benjamin Franklin hit on 250 years ago. He says his mind was much improved by all the reading he did. There were very tangible results in Benjamin Franklin’s life when people found his conversations more enjoyable because he was a more interesting person to talk to—that led him being able to raise money for his business. It helped him close sales. Larry Ellison is very much the same way. When hiring, Ellison valued intelligence more than experience. He often looked for unruly geniuses instead of solid, steady workers.  If he hadn’t made me rich, I’d probably hate him because he is obnoxious. He is not nice to people.  He was capable of chilling selfishness and inspiring generosity. He could dazzle people with his insights and madden them with his lies. He was a fundamentally shy man who could delight audiences with his colorful speeches. He was known for his healthy ego and often seemed deeply insecure. Many people learned to accept Ellison’s contradictory nature.  In 1970 sales of packaged computer programs amounted to only $70 million for the entire year.  There is a book called The HP Way. I did a podcast on it (Founders #29)  The Oracle Way was simply to win. How that goal was achieved was secondary.  Ellison’s [early] life left a lot to be desired. He was never very happy with the humdrum facts of his life so he changed them. Beginning when he was a child, and continuing into his days in the Forbes 400, Ellison lived partly in a world of his own invention.  He wasn’t going to be smothered by the dreary circumstances of his life. He was going to leap over them. Larry reads a lot of biographies. One person he admired the most was Winston Churchill. He had a lot in common with Churchill. Both were mediocre students. Both desperately sought the approval of their fathers to no avail. And both were witty, insatiably curious, and charming when it suited them. Reading about Churchill reassured him that even ‘gods have moments of insecurity.’  A description of Larry in his mid twenties: Ellison was extremely hard on himself. He had a mental image of where he should be and what he should be and he was not able to attain it.  He has incredible intelligence and he applies it with incredible intensity.  The subject he liked best was himself. He was forever telling people how wonderful he was, how smart he was, and how rich he was going to be.  For Ellison, Oracle was a holy mission.  There was a problem. A sheet rock wall stood between the offices and the computer room. Scott said, “Larry, we need to hook up these terminals. How are we going to hook them up?” “I'll show you how.” Ellison replied. He grabbed a hammer and smashed a hole through the wall. Bruce Scott came to believe that Ellison's entire business philosophy could be summed up in that single act. Find a way or make one. Just do it. Ellison could not have dreamed up a more amiable and helpful competitor than IBM. Think of the marketing of relational technology as a race, with Ellison and IBM as two of the main entrants. IBM taught Ellison to walk, bought him a pair of track shoes, trained him as a sprinter, and then gave him a big head start. How could he lose?  He was practicing. He was working. He knew there was a problem and he fixed it. The idea that somebody else might take away Oracle's business was poison to Ellison. He understood the importance of locking up a large share of the market early. “How much does it cost Pepsi to get one half of a percent of the market from Coke once the market has been established?” he once asked rhetorically. “It's very expensive. This market is being established. If we don't run as hard as we can, as fast as we can, and then do it again twice as fast, it’ll be cost prohibitive for us to increase market share.”  Larry put marketing first and everything else second. Average technology and good marketing beat good technology and average marketing every day.  My view is that there are only a handful of things that are really important and you should devote all of your time to those things and forget everything else.  I was not terribly forgiving of mediocrity. I was completely intolerant of a lack of effort. And I was fairly brutal in the way I expressed myself.  Kobe Bryant: I had issues or problems with the people who don’t demand excellence from themselves. I won’t tolerate that.  The guy that was in charge of Oracle’s advertising in the early days of the company: My ads attack like a pack of speed crazed wolverines and have the same general effect on your competition that a full moon does on a werewolf.  Larry fundamentally believed that his company was going to be more important than IBM. You can’t imagine how far fetched those ideas sounded. He would say he was here to become the largest software company in the world. People were taken aback.  Larry goes against consensus. Every single one of his advisors told him sell equity, sell equity, sell equity. And Larry just had a fundamental belief that that would be a mistake because the equity is going to be worth a lot more in the future.  There are only two kinds of people in the world to Larry. Those who are on his team and those who are his enemies. There is no middle ground.  Even when he was feeling his worst Ellison remained an optimist. A man who couldn’t help looking forward. He lived in the future.  He was terrified he would fail, confirming his father’s dark predictions about him. There was a note in his voice that you didn’t usually hear with him—just scared, worried.  I am very competitive, and sometimes, when somebody does something really great, I get upset because I just feel like that isn’t me. And my reaction to Steve [Jobs] wasn’t competitive at all. I felt what he had done was so wonderful, and I was so proud of him, and I love him so much, it was almost as if I had done it. I didn’t feel the least bit competitive. The wonderful thing about loving somebody else is that it can expand your ego in the best sense. If they do something great, you feel terrific about it.  The only things that are important in our lives are love and work. Not necessarily in that order. We work because work is an act of creation. We identify with it. Both love and work conspire to deliver some kind of happiness. If we can get reasonably good at both of them, we are in really great shape.  He’s got the same problem the rest of us have. He has to engage in an enlightened pursuit of happiness. To figure out what makes him happy. Human beings are builders. He is going to have to find something he really wants to build. He is going to have to have some idea and create something out of that idea. If you want to listen to the full episode you’ll need to upgrade to the Misfit feed. You will get access to every full episode. These episodes are available nowhere else. Upgrade now.

In part 2, of this two part episode, we address the question, “Can we trust our Bibles?” As we discuss the manuscript history, Scripture's testimony of historical facts, the English translations, and the supernatural nature of the Bible, we conclude that, yes, we can trust the Bible. It is the very Word of God! Resources used for this episode: New Testament Reliability - by Wretched.org and Dr. James Whitehttps://store.wretched.org/product/new-testament-reliability-digital-download/new-testament-reliability-digital-download Why Trust the Bible? by Greg Gilbert https://www.amazon.com/Trust-Bible-9Marks-Greg-Gilbert/dp/143354346X/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1589643434&sr=8-1 The Books and the Parchments by F.F. Bruce https://www.amazon.com/Books-Parchments-Original-Languages-Transmission-ebook/dp/B07F3JL14F/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3BSIS6U5GUTE2&dchild=1&keywords=the+books+and+the+parchments+ff+bruce&qid=1589643651&s=books&sprefix=The+Books+and+the+Parchments%2Cstripbooks%2C154&sr=1-1 The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable by F.F. Bruce (Scott mistakenly said "The Reliability of the New Testament") https://www.amazon.com/New-Testament-Documents-They-Reliable/dp/148370274X/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=the+new+testament+documents+are+they+reliable+by+f.+f.+bruce&qid=1589644000&s=books&sr=1-3 The New Testament Cannon by Michael Kruger https://www.ligonier.org/store/the-new-testament-canon-dvd/ The Cannon Revisited by Michael Kruger https://www.amazon.com/Canon-Revisited-Establishing-Authority-Testament-dp-1433505002/dp/1433505002/ref=mt_hardcover?_encoding=UTF8&me=&qid=1589644533 Why Believe the Bible? by John MacArthur https://www.gty.org/store/books/451009 Why I Choose to Believe the Bible by Voddie Baucham https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbkqLKqTEp8

In part 1, of this two part episode, we address the question, “Can we trust the Bible?” As we discuss the manuscript history, Scripture's testimony of historical facts, the English translations, and the supernatural nature of the Bible, we conclude that, yes, we can trust the Bible. It is the very Word of God! Resources used for this episode: New Testament Reliability - by Wretched.org and Dr. James Whitehttps://store.wretched.org/product/new-testament-reliability-digital-download/new-testament-reliability-digital-download Why Trust the Bible? by Greg Gilbert https://www.amazon.com/Trust-Bible-9Marks-Greg-Gilbert/dp/143354346X/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1589643434&sr=8-1 The Books and the Parchments by F.F. Bruce https://www.amazon.com/Books-Parchments-Original-Languages-Transmission-ebook/dp/B07F3JL14F/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3BSIS6U5GUTE2&dchild=1&keywords=the+books+and+the+parchments+ff+bruce&qid=1589643651&s=books&sprefix=The+Books+and+the+Parchments%2Cstripbooks%2C154&sr=1-1 The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable by F.F. Bruce (Scott mistakenly said "The Reliability of the New Testament") https://www.amazon.com/New-Testament-Documents-They-Reliable/dp/148370274X/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=the+new+testament+documents+are+they+reliable+by+f.+f.+bruce&qid=1589644000&s=books&sr=1-3 The New Testament Cannon by Michael Kruger https://www.ligonier.org/store/the-new-testament-canon-dvd/ The Cannon Revisited by Michael Kruger https://www.amazon.com/Canon-Revisited-Establishing-Authority-Testament-dp-1433505002/dp/1433505002/ref=mt_hardcover?_encoding=UTF8&me=&qid=1589644533 Why Believe the Bible? by John MacArthur https://www.gty.org/store/books/451009 Why I Choose to Believe the Bible by Voddie Baucham https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbkqLKqTEp8

Episode Six of Meet The Grower Podcast takes you on Luke's adventure to relax with The Body Magician. The hospitality industry is renowned for its high pressure and long hours so we decided to introduce our customers to ways of relaxation with Bruce Scott.  Bruce has 25 years of studying martial arts, massage and movement (Yoga, Chi gong & Feldenkrais) to name a few, and has developed the ability to tune in to where your body is at and see the potential of where it could be.  Tune in and relax chef!  

Episode 49 hosts Bruce Scott, better known as 'The Body Magician'. Bruce is a unique practitioner with over 15 years of training in a spectrum of alternative skills and martial arts. We listen to his story of being ill as a teenager, how he overcame this and learn how what he did propelled him into a completely unplanned career. Bruce works with clients from all walks of life to facilitate movement, awareness of their body and uses every skill he has learnt to facilitate relaxation.

Bruce’s career is a great example for everyone in the trade. The audience of this podcast is quite diverse ranging from people just trying to get into the trade to those in an executive roll. Bruce started digging holes for power poles almost 30 years ago and now is an executive for a major power line contractor. Bruce’s story isn’t linear. He has had a few setbacks but through each setback he pushed himself further forward. Linework provided Bruce the opportunity to travel the world. He’s stood in awe in the presence of silverback gorillas in the Congo, sat at the foot of the pyramids of Egypt, and bobbed around in a cage as great whites swam within inches. Each setback in his career could have been the end but he wouldn’t accept it. He’s a lineman and this industry is his passion. Enjoy episode 027 of Powerline Podcast. Please don’t forget to like, leave a comment and share these episodes with everyone that you know in the industry. Episode sponsor is: Tallman Equipment @tallmanequipment 

My friend Bruce Scott has had an eclectic career. Everything from being Johnny Cash's Bodyguard to being a Pastor. He now says he is doing what he was born to do... Helping non profits organizations raise money through impactful events. Bruce shares so much in this episode that every entertainer and entrepreneur needs to hear!

The EVOLUTION of Masculinity… How can you have everything you want in life? Why do relationships keep failing? Why do businesses fail? These are questions asked everyday by plenty of souls that find themselves in an unfortunate circumstances. Many of those souls are male. For a man in the modern age, life can be confusing… Especially in the online world, it can be a confusing dialogue of reverting to our “roots” as an evolutionary being vs. evolving with the time and becoming more in tune with our feminine energy. What's the right answer? That's what Kevin Bruce Scott and I are here to talk about! Kevin realized some time ago that HE was at the crux of his life's failures… That his failed relationships and businesses had only HIM at the root cause. Kevin made a commitment to change his mindset, focus on becoming a man of his word, and connect the dots along the path towards connecting with himself. Nowadays, he helps other men do the same! Let's chat! Kevin is hosting a coaching platform starting September 1st! If you wanna learn more, just go to this link: https://www.effortlessalpha.com/thewordofman

John Suhr joins us for our last installment of this hang out session with Troy, Bruce & Scott. We learn more about John, his likes & dislikes, Jim Kelley & lots of gear talk. Thanks John Suhr for the hang mate! GuitarWank podcasts will never be the same.Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/GuitarWank)

Contest winners on Facebook, GuitarWank-on-the-Road, Your questions answered and Bruce & Scott get a little sensitive over listener criticism (boo-hoo).Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/GuitarWank)

The scariest episode yet: #13! Bruce & Scott answer listener questions and conclude that size does matter!Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/GuitarWank)

Tom and Derek get the broadcast fired up with the latest look at motorcycle news and events happening around the Northwest. We answer the question - Why a Sound RIDER podcast? Then we interview Tad Haas and Gaila Gutierrez about their motorcycle home-sharing business, MotoStays.com. We also interview Washington State BMW Riders club co-presidents, Dan Muir and Eric Bell about the future of the club. Cameo's from Bruce Scott, Ellen Palms, Seattle Cycle Center Sonny and more.

Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 79, in which you will hear the complete 65-minute interview Patrick Rands did with me about my music, in June 2006.   I drove up to WZBC Radio studios outside of Boston on a beautiful early summer afternoon for the interview by Partick Rands on his "Test Patterns" radio show on WZBC (Boston College) Radio.  With my 1972 LP, Twice Upon a Rhyme, re-issued in mini-CD by Big Pink/Beatball Records in December 2008, and to be re-issued in a vinyl re-pressing by Whiplash/Sound of Salvation Records in November 2010, I thought this interview, in which Patrick played 14 of my songs (many rarely heard before) to be especially significant.   A complete playlist and links to the music on the Web follow below ... I had first come to know Patrick after his review of Rhino Handmade's Come to the Sunshine compilation CD in 2005 - the CD has my group The Other Voices (aka The New Outlook) singing "Hung Up On Love," a song I wrote with Mikie Harris, produced by Ellie Greenwich & Mike Rashkow, and released on Atlantic Records in 1968.   Patrick played "Hung Up On Love" and a dozen other recordings that I wrote, sang, produced (or all three) on our show in 2006.  As a special coda, I performed my new song, "Lime Streets," for the very first time at the end of the show.  I had written it just a month before the interview. Patrick was good enough to lend me his daughter's cool little keyboard for my rendition - it was my only instrumentation, so I was practically unplugged.   A complete list of the songs played on the show follows.  Patrick has a nice 'n' easy interview style, and I really had a good time.   Among the secrets revealed for the first time on the show:  how Ed Fox and I wrote "The Lama Will Be Late This Year" (and who, exactly, was 'Hawaiian Herb'?) . . . .the real reason that jazz-man Boris Midney left the Soviet Union  . . . what song got in the way of The Vogues releasing their recording of my song, "Unbelieavable (Inconceivable You)", on Reprise Records? . . . . and how old was Linda Kaplan when she wrote "Skyscraper" with me in the late 1960s? ( well, a lot younger than when she later wrote the famous "Toys 'R Jingle" . . . . "I don't wanna grow up . . . .") And the playlight is as follows:   1. No Olympian Height(s) - recorded by The Other Voices (The New Outlook), Paul Levinson, Stu Nitekman, Ira Margolis (Stu singing lead), song written by Brute Force, produced by Ellie Greenwich & Mike Rashkow, 2nd single released on Atlantic, 1968   2. Hung Up On Love - recorded by The Other Voices (The New Outlook) - Paul Levinson, Stu Nitekman, Ira Margolis (but Mike Rashkow singing lead) - song written by Paul Levinson & Mikie Harris, produced by Ellie Greenwich & Mike Rashkow, B-side of both May My Heart Be Cast Into Stone, and No Olympian Heights, singles released on Atlantic, 1968 (included on Rhino's Come to the Sunshine CD, 2004)   3. Picture Postcard World - recorded by The Definitive Rock Chorale - studio group with Ellie Greenwich, Toni Wine, Ron Dante, etc - song written by Paul Levinson, produced by Ellie Greenwich & Mike Rashkow, released on Decca, 1968   4. Unbelievable (Inconceivable You) - recorded by The Vogues - song written by Paul Levinson, produced by Dick Glasser for Reprise, 1968, but never released   5. Sunshine Mind - recorded by Donna Marie (who sang in the Archies) - song written by Paul Levinson, produced by Jimmy "Wiz" Wisner, released on Columbia, 1968   6. Love Colored Glasses - studio demo recorded by Mikie Harris, written by Paul Levinson & Mikie Harris, 1968   7. Teacups and Tapestry - studio demo (artist unknown), written by Paul Levinson and Boris Midney, 1969   8. Skyscraper - studio demo by Linda Kaplan (later wrote "Toys 'R U" jingle), written by Paul Levinson & Linda Kaplan, 1968   9. Ring Around My Rosie - recorded by Protozoa - song written by David Fox, produced by Paul Levinson, Ed Fox, and Herb Abramson, Buddah Records, 1969   10. Merri- Goes-Round - recorded by Trousers (studio group; Bruce Scott singing lead) - written by Paul Levinson & Ed Fox, produced by Paul Levinson & Ed Fox, released on Wizdom Records, 1969   11. Not Yet Ready to Say Goodbye - recorded by Paul Levinson, with Ed Fox and Peter Rosenthal (Paul singing lead) - written by Paul Levinson & Linda Kaplan, produced by Paul Levinson & Ed Fox, released on Twice Upon A Rhyme LP, HappySad Records, 1972 (musicians on this album also include Don Frankel, Jay Sackett, Alan Fuhr, Boris Midney)   12. The Lama Will Be Late This Year - recorded by Paul Levinson, with Ed Fox and Peter Rosenthal (Ed singing lead) - written by Paul Levinson & Ed Fox, produced by Paul Levinson & Ed Fox, released on Twice Upon A Rhyme LP, HappySad Records, 1972 (musicians on this album also include Don Frankel, Jay Sackett, Alan Fuhr, Boris Midney)   13. Alpha Centauri - recorded by Peter Rosenthal (home demo) - written by Paul Levinson & Peter Rosenthal, 2000   14. Lime Streets - live performance by Paul Levinson, written by Paul Levinson, 2006    And you'll also hear nice medley of New Outlook folk rock under some of the interview near the beginning...   Links to the music on the Web:   on iTunes ... Amazon ... eMusic my MySpace music page ... Facebook fan page ... Reverbnation complete lyrics to the songs on Twice Upon a Rhyme links to reviews and news about Twice Upon a Rhyme Shindig Magazine Jan-Feb 2011 review of Twice Upon a Rhyme