Podcasts about c3 pathways

Message by Devin Burton, "Groups" as part of our "C3 Pathways" series. Message from February 11, 2024. Centralia Community Church, Centralia, WA. On your discipleship journey, you may go on a different road than your neighbor and each path is unique to the individual walking it. This is an invitation to move deeper in our relationship with God, with our C3 family, and move at a pace that fits your capacity. It's time to discover where you are as you explore the C3 Pathways.

Message by Devin Burton, "Serve" as part of our "C3 Pathways" series. Message from February 4, 2024. Centralia Community Church, Centralia, WA. On your discipleship journey, you may go on a different road than your neighbor and each path is unique to the individual walking it. This is an invitation to move deeper in our relationship with God, with our C3 family, and move at a pace that fits your capacity. It's time to discover where you are as you explore the C3 Pathways.

Message by Elmer Goodeill, "Give" as part of our "C3 Pathways" series. Message from January 21, 2024. Centralia Community Church, Centralia, WA. On your discipleship journey, you may go on a different road than your neighbor and each path is unique to the individual walking it. This is an invitation to move deeper in our relationship with God, with our C3 family, and move at a pace that fits your capacity. It's time to discover where you are as you explore the C3 Pathways.

Message by Devin Burton, "Gather" as part of our "C3 Pathways" series. Message from January 14, 2024. Centralia Community Church, Centralia, WA. On your discipleship journey, you may go on a different road than your neighbor and each path is unique to the individual walking it. This is an invitation to move deeper in our relationship with God, with our C3 family, and move at a pace that fits your capacity. It's time to discover where you are as you explore the C3 Pathways.

NEW! Watch this show on YouTube at https://youtube.com/live/iXHgu7zomfoBill Godfrey:Welcome to the Active Shooter Incident Management Podcast. My name is Bill Godfrey, your podcast host. I am joined today by three of our wonderful C3 Pathways instructors. On my right here is Tom Billington, one of our Fire/EMS instructors. Welcome, Tom.Tom Billington:Good to be back.Bill Godfrey:It is good to have you back. Been a minute, that's for sure. We're also joined across the table from us. Russ Woody, one of our law enforcement instructors. Russ, welcome from North Carolina.Russ Woody:Yeah, glad to be down, Bill.Bill Godfrey:Good to have you here. And then we've got Travis Cox, also one of our law enforcement instructors and our training director. Travis, it's good to have you here in the studio.Travis Cox:Hey, it's good to be here. Good to see you guys again.Bill Godfrey:It's exciting. It has been a minute. It feels good to be back doing podcasts again. And of course, we've upped the game a little bit. I looked, it was September of last year that we did our last podcast, so we're just shy of a year being off the air. Can you believe that?Travis Cox:Yeah. It didn't seem that long, but time flies as they say.Russ Woody:It really does.Bill Godfrey:It sure does. It sure does. And everybody's due an explanation about why that is. And the truth of the matter is, there has been a lot of changes, all good stuff, but a lot of changes over the last year and it just became difficult to keep up with. You may or may not notice if you have heard the podcast before, we are also videotaping our podcasts now, as well. They're going to be up on our YouTube channel and we're here in our brand new studio.Travis Cox:And it's amazing.Russ Woody:Yeah, it looks great. Really does.Bill Godfrey:It is so exciting to be here. But we've also moved, we are no longer in the building we were in before. We've moved to a new location. We've got new offices set up, new space. We've got a dedicated studio set up and we're getting ready to open a dedicated training center. Granted it fell a little bit behind schedule, some construction delays. It just seems like you can't keep construction on schedule no matter what you do. But that's going to get cleared up and we're going to have this beautiful training center opened up here I think pretty soon.Russ Woody:As you know, Bill, when I got here, I started taking pictures. I've been sending pictures to all my friends about how this facility looks, how professional it is, and a lot of people were saying, wow, that's quite an improvement. So it's come a long way.Travis Cox:Definitely. Definitely. When I first saw it, it wasn't what I expected, but when I saw it I said, "Oh man, this is the first class all the way." So excited to be here and looking forward to what we're going to be doing in the future.Russ Woody:Very much same. It really didn't surprise me. It seems like everything that Bill does, really puts forward every effort and it is a great facility.Bill Godfrey:Well, those are gracious words, Russ, but this is a team effort and there's a lot of people involved in doing this from picking out all the stuff. Our producer, Karla, who's behind the scenes, she and a couple of the other people picked out a lot of the carpet and the finishings and the colors and it's just really nice to have a place that we can call our own and do some dedicated training in. And with any luck, we'll get the construction back on schedule and we'll get caught up here pretty soon. So anyways, it's exciting to be back. Let's get into the meat of it. We decided to talk today about rescue task forces and some of the common challenges that we see with RTFs, being a little bit confused about what the expectations are, what they're supposed to be doing, that kind of stuff. So Tom, this was one that you kind of threw out as a suggestion and we were all like, yes, that's a great topic. So why don't you talk a little bit about what was on your mind and what you're thinking.Tom Billington:Well, Bill, when we teach a class, we usually don't have enough time to go into all the exact details, but the RTF is such an important part. The Rescue Task Force, and first of all, just talking about what it is the Rescue Task Force is, it's usually a group of four people. So usually two Fire/EMS and two law enforcement working together as a team to go into the casualty collection point and start doing the treatment and get things sorted out. But we've never really talked about how do you do that? Why do you need more than one RTF? What is your goal when you get there? How do you organize things? And I think that's just a good place I wanted to start. But definitely, I think the important part is how are we formed and why are we formed this way, I think is the important part. I may be in a situation where I'm working with law enforcement officers I may have never met if I'm in a large organization. So I want to make sure that I know what's expected of me as the medical person and what I expect of the law enforcement person as far as the medical roles go. So I think that's just some of the things I wanted to cover.Bill Godfrey:Yeah, I think that's exciting.Travis Cox:It is really important for law enforcement to know what their mission is and what the responsibilities are on RTF because sometimes that can get confusing and sometimes law enforcement thinks they're there for other purposes besides what the RTF purpose is.Tom Billington:That's right.Russ Woody:Yeah. Seen it so many times where the law enforcement personnel that are attached to that RTF don't understand that they have made a promise to those individuals that, I'm with you. They are there with them throughout the event.Travis Cox:Yeah, exactly. Exactly. When I teach that section, I like to use my Top Gun rule. Never leave your wingman.Russ Woody:That's right.Travis Cox:Never leave your wingman. And the fire counterparts are your wingmen on that mission.Bill Godfrey:And before we dive into the meat of where Tom's going with this, which I think is really important and we have not talked about before on the podcast series, even though we've talked about RTFs, we haven't talked about where Tom's want to go with this, but I do want to just remind everybody who's listening, when Tom talked about the typical two and two, that's just a typical. There's no magic to those numbers, but here's what's important. There are people on the team that are responsible for security and they're up on their weapons platform. There's people on the team that are responsible for medical and they are carrying whatever medical gear that you're going to take in and you work together. And I think, Tom, where you were going that starts in staging before you deploy is the conversation to introduce yourselves and talk about what the expectations are and the rules. Because at the end of the day, so if Tom and I are the medical element of the RTF, our job is to take medical care of the patients, but you guys are responsible for moving us safely to where those patients are.Tom Billington:It's a hundred percent team effort. It's a hundred percent team effort. And law enforcement has to know the safest route to get to where you need to get to. And then once we get there, it's up to the medical side to start doing their triage and treatment.Bill Godfrey:Yeah, absolutely. And at the end of the day, your situation, your staffing, your community, your resources, the threat that you're facing is going to dictate the size of that team and who's on that team. And there may be some communities where the rescue task force is made up of all law enforcement personnel and that's fine, but you still have to divvy up the duties. Some of them have to be on security and some of them have to be on medical. And I just wanted to set that foundation before we go into talking about the CCP.Tom Billington:Absolutely. I've seen it where you just mentioned all law enforcement personnel. Sometimes some agencies have what we call TAC medics. So you have EMS-trained folks that are capable of filling that medical function when they go down range as the RTF.Bill Godfrey:Yeah, very good. So Tom, we're the first RTF. Let's just assume for this conversation that the four of us are RTF-1. We're the first ones down range, other than the contact team who's hopefully organized the casualty collection point or at least established the location, has got some security, has got that done. But we're the first ones that are going to punch through, so let's just kind of talk from that context. You guys are going to move us up, get us where we need to be. Tom, when we punch through the door, what's the first things on your mind?Tom Billington:Literal, earlier I took my app out of my phone, the Active Shooter Incident Management checklist, the app, C3 app. It tells you right here, once I'm stood up and I know who the team is and we're going down, one of the things I need to do is make sure tactical knows that I am deploying. I work for tactical, we are on a medical mission, so I need to make sure tactical knows where we're going and they agree with where we're going. And then once we get in there and we find the safe route, we have to know what are we going to do when we're in the room. Remember, if our makeup is two medical and two law enforcement, if that's our case, and we have seven or eight critical patients, are two medical personnel going to be able to handle this? No.So the first thing I want to do when I enter that room as an RTF is I'm going to take the lead, maybe might call it the capture collection point lead, CCP lead. I'm going to take the medical lead right off the bat and say, "Hey, I need more RTFs. I need them now. Let's not mess around." I'm going to call a triage and ask for what I need specifically. I'm not going to say, send me some more. I'm going to say, "Hey, I have three yellows, four reds, I need five more RTFs at this CCP." I get a response from triage. Yes, we copy that, we'll send it. Now my next job is I'm going to start my triage. That's where the law enforcement has already done a great job, hopefully. You want to talk about law enforcement triage a little bit.Russ Woody:On the law enforcement side, when we get there-Bill Godfrey:Russ, I'm going to bump into you there for just a second because I want to clarify what Tom was saying. He was saying earlier we need to notify tactical and I want to clarify those comments. So Tom and I, as the medical element, are on the radio with triage and the RTF team actually works for triage. What Tom was talking about with the tactical is, our security is on the radio with tactical.Tom Billington:Exactly.Bill Godfrey:And you need to let them know where you're moving when we get there, that's what Tom was addressing.Russ Woody:Absolutely.Tom Billington:Yeah. We kind of refer to the tactical position that air traffic controller, that person working tactical is going to give us the direction, the route where we need to get there. And then once we get there, we're going to get our medical personnel in that room and that CCP and then let them go to work.Bill Godfrey:And when we hit into the CCP and the numbers that Tom was talking about giving, we're going to give those numbers to-Tom Billington:Triage.Bill Godfrey:To the triage group supervisor. So just wanted to make that clarification. Russ, with that, talk a little bit about what we're hoping for law enforcement who've set up that CCP to done some triage ahead of time.Russ Woody:So hopefully the contact teams that we'll talk about in another podcast, I'm sure, have met some of the goals that are going to help us. And that is setting up that casualty collection point. And in doing that, they should have provided security for that casualty collection point. So they should be there providing that and we should be able to come in with our RTF and arrive safely. We have been guiding through and once we're there have that ability to then function as the lead in that room needs us to possibly for some time. But law enforcement, hopefully, has done some triage. We're only going to go red or green given that casualty count of those particular injuries and then started possibly some of the treatments that would be appropriate for law enforcement.Bill Godfrey:And of course, you mentioned the key there is we're not expecting law enforcement to go through and do full assessments. It's a click, red or green. If they're hurt and they follow your commands to get up and move to a particular location, that's a green. And if they didn't, that's a red. Done.Russ Woody:That simple.Bill Godfrey:Yeah, it really is that simple. So when we get in there, you mentioned, Tom, the importance of taking lead. And I want to visit on that for a minute. So you and I came up in a time, and I don't know, thank God we don't touch patients anymore really.Tom Billington:Yeah, I agree.Bill Godfrey:But we came up in a time where it was common for us to be the only medic that was covering an area that was covered for four or five ambulances. And so we ran into incidents on a regular basis where you were the only medic and you had essentially four, five, six patients you had to take care of. Maybe not a mass casualty in today's sense of mass casualties, but you had to provide multi-patient care. And over the last, I don't know, 20, maybe 30 years, 20 years, certainly, we have seen the number of paramedics in the field that are deployed really, really go up, which is a great thing. But the result of that is the frequency with which they need to manage multiple patients has really plummeted. And I think it's been a little bit of a lost skill, Tom.Tom Billington:The triage part has been a lost skill. Again, like Bill said, I've done triage in the field where I had to decide somebody's not going to survive. Now when you start getting a lot of paramedics in the room, they start looking at each other. So somebody has to take the lead and that should be that first RTF, a medical officer take the lead right off the bat. And a few things when you're taking the lead is, when I come in to the casualty collection point, I'm looking around. How did I come in here? What route did I take? What would be a good area, thinking ahead, where I might be able to set up an ambulance exchange point? Is there a closer door to my right that I didn't come in? Could that be a good ambulance exchange point? I'm thinking about that also. So now I'm thinking about my triage, thinking about a possible ambulance exchange point. I'm calling for more resources. Now, I'm going to start triaging the folks and start doing some treatment.Bill Godfrey:So-Tom Billington:Go ahead. Go ahead, Bill.Bill Godfrey:I was just going to say, tell me a little bit about why you want to think about the ambulance exchange point when you're coming through the door.Tom Billington:The ambulance exchange point is one of the areas that we know in our research, a lot of time is wasted. The clock is ticking and that is one area where we can save precious minutes. And since I am the first RTF in, I'm getting situational awareness of where I'm located in the facility. I have a good idea from walking in here, oh, I know that this might be a faster route. So that way I can work with law enforcement to get security set up for AEP, ambulance exchange point, rapidly, so we're not going to be waiting on that. We don't want to wait, we're fighting that clock continually. So always thinking ahead a couple of steps.Russ Woody:And we, as law enforcement, hopefully, will realize and talk with you on that and then pass that information on to tactical or the contact teams that are there on the ground with us and they will go and push out and establish that security at that AEP and hopefully maybe a corridor in between.Travis Cox:Yeah, I was going to say that's where that teamwork starts to come in as that RTF gets in that room and the medical treatment starts to happening. That's something that law enforcement can start working on is as you come up with a suggestion for where the AEP should or could go, we can provide that intel. Is that the safest route? Is it possible that we can secure that area? All those other factors that come in from a law enforcement perspective to make sure that we're working together to get the best possible location for the AEP.Bill Godfrey:Yeah. So let's talk about that for a second, Travis. On the law enforcement side, talk a little bit, the two of you, about what's involved in actually securing an AEP. Okay, so Tom and I go, "Hey, there's an exit door right there, it backs up to a parking lot. We'd like to use that as our AEP." What's involved in you guys actually making that ready so that we can get an ambulance moved up?Travis Cox:Well, I think one of the first things we have to consider from the law enforce side is what's the status of the suspect or the shooter? Is the suspect contained? Is the suspect down or is the suspect at large? Obviously, if the suspect's still at large and we don't know exactly where he or she may be, that's going to provide a lot more security elements or security questions that we have to take into consideration when we look at a AEP site bringing those patients outside. So I know, Russ, you've done a lot of that before. And once we take those patients outside, there's a lot of risk factors we have to take into consideration.Russ Woody:Absolutely. And it does. It's a resource drain if it's an area, and terrain will dictate if you have to push out quite a ways or if you can get on the edges of buildings and provide the security that's needed there. But certainly, it has to be done early because it won't take that Rescue Task Force long to get in and that first patient that they contact that is in real dire need and us fighting against that clock to now decide to move them out. And that's going to take some time to get that ambulance into the space and make sure we have it secured for them.Bill Godfrey:And I think that I wanted to highlight that, Tom, because I think it is one of the most consistent things that we see is that we forget about getting the ambulance loading area, what we call the AEP, the ambulance exchange point, and we call it the AEP instead of the transport loading zone because it requires security. It takes time to get that secured, that area, I don't want to use the word cleared, but to check that area and feel like that you guys have it under cover. And if we've waited until we're ready to transport and now we're doing that, we just pissed away 10 minutes.Tom Billington:Absolutely.Travis Cox:So if the shooter does go active, again, law enforcement already has a pre-planned situation or pre-planned idea of what they want to do, who's providing cover, who's going to address the threat, and then we can move forward from there. So those are things that we have to take into consideration on the law enforcement side, and communication is key that we're communicating what the plan is to our medical counterparts. So as we're moving those patients, they know what to expect if we get a shooter going active again.Russ Woody:And for the law enforcement on that AEP or on that scene, that immediate action plan could be as simple as, if there is a threat that starts again, the two of you are going to stay here and continue to secure this because we've made a promise that this is secure and we've got to keep to that to that Fire and EMS side and the patients we have there on scene. And then, okay, the other two or four that are in that scene, you'll be the ones that will go and go after that active threat.Bill Godfrey:I like it. Okay, so we're RTF-1, we've punched through the door, we've done an initial triage call quickly. We've identified an area that we think is good for an ambulance exchange point. We have handed that off to you guys as our security element. You're talking to tactical and working on getting that secured. It's time for you and I to go to, we called for the additional help, now it's time for you and I to go to work, pick it up from there.Tom Billington:And that's where our old fashioned triage from way back kicks right in. We have to decide, there's two of us right now using the triage method that we're using in whatever system we're in at that time, who's going to get treated first? What actions can we take immediately to help somebody sustain better? What other quick things can we do? But then we get down to the meat and bones and say, "All right, this person needs intervention now." And that's when we start doing some more advanced procedures. We don't want to go to town on the advanced procedures, folks. We want to get them in an ambulance, get them to a trauma center, but we can do some things that can keep that clock at bay. Some airway management, maybe portal decompressions or things like that.Bill Godfrey:Basic bleeding control, tension-pneumos, that kind of stuff that we need to deal with. The other thing that I want to mention, granted, it's a little bit of a pet peeve of mine, the most common triage system used by Fire and EMS across the country is the START triage system. And I hear people tell us on a regular basis, "What's your-" "Oh, we use START." Okay. And then you ask them a few questions and you realize, they've just told you that they use START and they have no idea what the flow chart is or what the criteria is for how to classify people as red, yellow, or green. And it leaves me going, "Okay, you say that you use START, but you don't, because you don't know what the criteria are. So what methodology are you using?" And before I move on from that, I do want to remind everybody that's listening, START has no scientific basis to it whatsoever. It was originally developed out on the west coast in response to training civilians who were going to be expected to do interventions in mass earthquakes. And somewhere along the line, we adopted it in the EMS system. And yet even though we say across the country, more than 50% of the people use START, I think I've had less than 2% of the EMTs and paramedics that I've asked that have been able to tell me what the criteria are. And so it's a huge gap. The other reality is, especially in a shooting, great, I use START, I used it correctly and now I have four reds, which one's the priority?Russ Woody:The judgment of what you feel has to happen and hopefully by then these other RTFs are showing up. And so that's when you can start saying, all right, this is my judgment. I can do the best for this person for their longevity to survive. And so that's how we do it. The other RTFs come in, and again, you're not off the hook when the other RTFs come in. You start assigning them immediately to the next patients that need to be treated. But also, remember, you got to talk to triage. Triage is your boss. Triage wants to know what's going on. Triage is saying to the RTFs, "Hey, how many reds do you have? How many greens do you have? How many yellows do you have? What's going on in there? What time is it?" All those things. So again, if you're the lead RTF, you have to think about that. You need to get the color codes of what you have to triage because they need to tell transportation for the ambulance counts. So we have to get that job done also. However, do not get hung up on colors. The triage colors will change. Some will go down, some will go up. We just want to get the best count out there as possible and get these folks out of there and get them into an ambulance as soon as possible.Bill Godfrey:Travis, you and Russ have both been coaches at the tactical position countless times where you're coaching tactical triage to transport. How many times have you seen triage and tactical get wrapped around the axle over the colors not matching what they were 10 minutes ago?Travis Cox:Oh, all the time. All the time. And you got to be cognizant of the fact that they are going to change and you just have to deal with it as it changes. So again, it's about beating the clock and reducing the clock as much as you can. Not so worried about the colors of the patients, but how quickly can you get the ambulance exchange points set up. How quickly can you get those patients on the move and get them to a trauma center.Russ Woody:Not only the color code, but also just the casualty count itself is going to vary as it goes along. Just because the contact teams gave you a count of 15, don't get hung up that we've only got 13 or 14 there. Where's the other? Or we must be missing-Travis Cox:Just get the resources there.Tom Billington:That's right.Travis Cox:Just get the resources.Russ Woody:Get the resources. And don't forget-Tom Billington:Because this comes up so much, I'm going to even stress it even further. I've had instances where the RTF is saying, "Hey, we're ready for an ambulance." And triage says, "Wait, how many yellows do you have?" No, we need to get these people to the hospital. So don't get wrapped up in that. And that's another discussion for triage and transport.Travis Cox:I think it comes down to trusting the people that you've sent down range. If whoever's in that room and is telling you what they need, if you're on the outside, you're triage or transported tactical, you got to trust the judgment of those responders inside the room because they have the best vantage point of what's going on and what's needed.Bill Godfrey:I need one more rig. So sometimes just in how we communicate, I think, can probably help that up. And I do want to highlight your point and make it loud and clear that first RTF through the door has got to provide the assignments for the other ones that are coming through, whether that's one more RTF, three more RTFs. If law enforcement sets up a cordon and we dump 15 medical people in there to do ... whoever's coming in, we need to tell them what we need done. "Hey, we've got three reds over there I haven't been able to get to. We're down to the reds. I need to know which one needs to go first." And to talk about that, I've got this kind of injury. I've got these kind of vitals, and have those conversations. So if it's maybe the second RTF coming through the door begins to help us finish up that assessment and that initial care, and then the third RTF coming through the door, they say, "Tom, what do you need? It's time to start moving people." Go ahead. Go ahead, Russ.Russ Woody:That's one of the things, too, you have to be careful of. I know you've seen it, Travis, I have. Be careful, that lead in that room is vitally important to not blurring lines between the casualty collection point and turning the AEP into a casualty collection point. We want to only move them out when it's time appropriate.Travis Cox:Good point.Russ Woody:So there's not going to be any delay getting them loaded for transport and moving them out. We don't want to take all of our 15 out and have them out there exposed to possible threats or elements. So that's one thing, again, that lead is vitally important.Travis Cox:Yeah, I was going to say another thing about that lead that's so critical, and we see it in training all the time. If someone does not take a lead role in that room, you see in training all the time, at least I've seen it in training all the time, that a patient may get reassessed two and three times over when they're ready to transport, but because no one's taking lead and there's no coordination within that room on the medical side, you're wasting time there just reassessing the same patient over and over when they're ready to be transported.Bill Godfrey:We didn't tag them. We didn't put a ribbon on them. We didn't mark them. We didn't. Yeah, that's a huge issue. And I also want to reinforce that because as medical guys, we're not typically trained in tactics. And you guys have heard me tell the story about how I learned what the X was. I had a patient that was down in the middle of a hallway that had exposure to about four rooms on each hallway. It was an X intersection. And I leaned over to start trying to take care of the patient and the guy I was with, it was my security goes, "No, no, no, no. We're going to move him." I go, "No, I need to take care of him." And I lost that argument and I got moved along with my patient into a room. And they're like, "You don't treat on the X." And I go, "What the hell's an X?" "Well, that was where that guy was standing when he got shot, and that's a bad place to be."And then afterwards, they took me out to the hallway and said, "Look at all these exposures." And I think what you're saying is critical. The AEP is a safe location. The CCP is a safe location, but if you take all of your patients out of the CCP and expose them to being laying on the sidewalk, you've taken them from a less secure place, which is an interior, believe it or not, everybody's always in a hurry to get out. You're safer on the inside with security posted than you are exposed to all those elements on the outside. And so on the medical side, we have to remember not to move them until we're ready. There's either an ambulance there or an ambulance that's immediately on the way. Move those out, which requires coordination for us among the RTFs to say, "This one's going next." We should be stacking them by the door. This red, this yellow, this green are going to go next. Whatever the numbers are going to be to try to balance our load. And so our natural tendency is to try to get everybody outside, but that goes against-Travis Cox:Yeah. We're more secure inside and we can secure the place better inside. So we want that rescue unit or that ambulance either en route or on station before we start to move. Obviously, depending on how far the room is from the AEP, that's going to dictate that. But we definitely don't want that ambulance just sitting there, nor do we want patients sitting outside waiting on the ambulance. So it's a timing thing.Russ Woody:Perfect world, the ambulance would stop rolling at the same time that the patient got to the back of the ambulance.Tom Billington:Classic touch and go.Russ Woody:Perfect.Bill Godfrey:I think, you know what, that's a really good way to kind of talk about and illustrate that. And I think as we are coming up on the end of our time here, I think as we wrap this up, the big thing to just kind of reinforce is underlying is that first RTF has a lot more responsibility than just medical care for the patients they encounter. They've got to take a leadership role. And if you happen to be a medic and a company officer, great. And if you're not, suck it up, buttercup. You're the first one through the door. And oh, by the way, it doesn't have to be a medic. EMTs, I've seen EMTs do magic.Russ Woody:Oh, yes.Tom Billington:And again, we have our handy dandy right here on my phone, Incident Management Checklist. It tells me, as the RTF, everything we just talked about. So if you start getting behind, pull that checklist out. What did I forget? What can I follow up on? It tells you all these points. Stick to them to get that clock from ticking too fast.Travis Cox:And then for my law enforcement friends, when we get in there, they're part of that contact team. There's a lot we can do before that RTF gets there. So as much as we can do, we've evolved as responders, we're carrying tourniquets. Some of us are carrying medical kits, so at least minimum we can triage the room from red to greens. And so we can give some information to the medics when they do get there, and that'll speed up the process to help speed up the clock.Russ Woody:Have that security in place, come up with your immediate action plan and start providing medical if you can.Travis Cox:Saving lives is everybody's job, not just medicals.Russ Woody:It is.Bill Godfrey:It is. And Russ, I think your point is well taken. Don't forget to post your security. If you've got a contact team of three or four, you can't all do medical. It's kind of like an RTF. You're splitting your function a little bit, but don't forget where you are. So well, let's talk about any closing thoughts. Anybody have, anything else they want to add?Tom Billington:Sometimes I just wish we could take a big stopwatch and put it around the neck of the person who's the first RTF, because you can save lives with time if you do things correctly. Follow that checklist, make sure the AEP is getting set up, make sure you're getting triage done and make sure you have resources coming in to help you. You can save lives just by that timing. So it's very important and it's an important issue to discuss.Russ Woody:Absolutely. To Tom's point, we can do certain medical treatments as law enforcement and the medical personnel on scene can do certain things too, but there's some things that can only be cured in an operating room. So moving them off that point and getting them there is key.Travis Cox:I'll say this because over half of my law enforcement career, I've been in a training role and you have to train this. You can't wait to disaster day to throw together RTF for the first time. So I would encourage all those agencies out there, whether it's on special events, on smaller incidents, but you got to put RTFs together, get law enforcement and Fire and EMS comfortable with working together, comfortable with trusting each other's judgment. And then when disaster day does hit, you'll be ready to go.Bill Godfrey:Yeah, Travis, I completely agree with you. We talk about how we work together all the time on calls and we do, but there's a difference between being on the same call and being integrated into each other's teams. And what we're talking about with a Rescue Task Force is the equivalent of you guys being with Tom and I when we roll up on a structure fire and we're like, "Okay, throw this pack on, grab the hose line and come right in behind us, it'll be fine. It'll be fine. Trust us." So if we don't practice that ahead of time and we don't work on that, it's going to lead to some challenges.Tom Billington:Yeah, training is key. Training is so vital to making that concept work, RTFs.Bill Godfrey:Gentlemen, thank you so much. It's exciting to be back at it again. I'm certainly glad that we're back doing podcasts again. Thank you for coming in and doing this. And to the audience, thank you for being patient with us as we've negotiated this last year of mass changing and we've tripled the number of deliveries we're doing across the country, which is super exciting. We're doing the Active Shooter Incident Management Advanced Class pretty much every week somewhere in this country, which is fantastic. But it brought with it's some growing pains, and so we fell off the wagon a little bit. But now that we've got our studios set up and we'll get some rotations done and get caught up on podcasts, I'm looking forward to being back on the regular.Travis Cox:Absolutely. We got big things on the horizon. We hope you guys are following us on social media and keeping your eye on us, and hopefully, we'll see you in a training class soon.Bill Godfrey:Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us. And until next time, stay safe.

Episode 51: Listener Question - Who Sets Tactical?This week are live on the road with the ASIM team in New York City. Today we are answering a former ASIM student's question on "Who sets tactical with only three or four officers on duty?"Bill Godfrey:Bill Godfrey: Welcome to the Active Shooter Incident Management Podcast. My name is Bill Godfrey, your podcast host. I have with me today, three of the C3 instructors, Kevin Burd, our Director of Training. Kevin, thanks for being here today.Kevin Burd:Thanks for having me, Bill.Bill Godfrey:All right. And we got Jason Kelley. Jason, good to have you here.Jason Kelley:Thank you, sir.Bill Godfrey:Or, as we call him, Slide Deck. And we have Coby Briehn. Coby, welcome back.Coby Briehn:Thanks for having me.Bill Godfrey:All right, so today we got something a little bit different for our topic today. We actually have an audience question. The question comes from a former student of ours from an ASIM course, and he says, "I work for a university police department in a city of about a hundred thousand. Our active shooter instructors have a question about setting up tactical. If we only have three or four armed officers on duty, such as the weekends or second shifts or third shifts." And the question is, "if we only have three officers to respond, do we send in a two-officer contact team and keep the third for tactical to manage the city and county officers who respond into the campus? Or do we give up tactical to have our third officer make entry and search for the threat and let the city officer take the lead on running tactical operations?" He goes on to say, "There's been some discussion both ways. There's not a consensus." And he is asking if we could provide a recommendation and the reasoning why we would recommend that as our course of action.So, a number of interesting things here. He's concerned about the shifts where they've only got three or four officers on duty. Okay, so that's first of all. So, obviously, they got backup coming from the city and the county. I'm guessing one of the questions you guys have is, what's our response time for the city and the county? Let's assume the city's going to be right there because the university's in the city, a couple minutes, they're there pretty quick. And for the county, let's say it's a little bit longer, a little over 10 minutes for that. Before we get rolling on thoughts, does anybody have any other questions that they want to ask about it?Kevin Burd:My first question would be, what is the standard policies and procedures that they would operate under? Is everybody who's responding under the same guidance? Is it a countywide response plan? Is it three individual plans? That would probably dictate some of our answers or thoughts on this.Bill Godfrey:I think those are both great questions. And actually, I asked him a couple of those questions and he did give me some additional information. He said that they all three have some common training, but they have different policies and procedures. The university police has adopted the ASIM process. The others haven't gone quite that far. They've had to negotiate some things, so instead of tactical taking up the position and doing staging, they have tactical go to the door and control everything at the door. The other thing that I think is important to mention, is they do not have compatible communication systems. The university police doesn't have the ability to go to the city channels and the city police do not have the ability to go to the university channels. All right? Any other questions before we start talking or who wants to lead off?Jason Kelley:Oh, I'll lead off. This is Jason. I'll lead off. I guess my first concern is, three agencies on three separate channels. If you're going to place a university officer outside the tactical as that third officer, and sending to his contact teams to stop the killing. To me, that probably makes sense. So, they have direct line of communication from tactical to the interior units, additional resources responding. My opinion is, you need to then send a city and county to tactical, to that university officer, so now we have communications for additional responding officers.Bill Godfrey:All right. That's a tough call, right? I mean, you've only got three or four gun-toters to begin with, we're going to minus one to keep them outside to try to coordinate the rest of this response. Coby, what do you think? Two going in real quick with hopefully a couple more coming in a few minutes?Coby Briehn:Right. All good considerations. Off the top of my head, I'm thinking where in the building? Is it a multi-story building? That would lead me towards having somebody there at the doorway or the crisis-site entry to relay that, to follow-on responders, initial responders of, "hey, you're going to the seventh floor," that kind of thing. If you need access passes, all this stuff, getting key cards to them. They may be collecting up key cards from officers that are coming to give to other follow-on responders. You may have to put those relays in place to get officers into the multiple stories, but obviously the communication's going to be the big thing.And if, let's play on the other side of it, if they don't have communication issues or compatibility, then we're simply running individual contact teams that would have no communication, so everybody's going to self-dispatch, which is defeating the entire organizational process. I would hope there's a way to integrate that, having county, state, and city guys all in there, so the radio frequencies are in play. But the goal is to go in and stop the killing, obviously. If you can do that with two or three and then have that fourth or fifth at the door to relay it on as to what they need upstairs or down the hallway, that's going to be the best bet for me, I would believe.Bill Godfrey:All right, Kevin, what's your quick reaction.Kevin Burd:So, a few things are coming to mind here and Coby just touched on it. Where are we in this incident? And what environment are we working in? If we have active stimulus, we obviously have to address that threat, so obviously the first couple officers need to go in. And I think back to a lot of incidents I've been involved in, where we've had to integrate other teams on the tactical side to work together because we weren't sharing the same radio communication. They don't have it in place, but we need to look at, if we don't have it in place, how are we going to integrate that? By leaving somebody from university, as an example, there and the city or the county comes in, we need to integrate because we need to manage this thing at some point. We can't have teams working inside individually, right? Somebody's got to be in charge.So we need to agree...Bill Godfrey:Otherwise we end up blue on blue, we're doing duplicate work. We're missing things.Kevin Burd:Absolutely, a hundred percent. We need to organize that. And I think part of the question was too, do we lose that interoperability or communications when we go inside? Can we operate in there? And the relays that Coby was talking about has come into play in some of these incidents and we need to coordinate all that. Where are we in our priorities? Is it still an active threat or do we not have stimulus? Now we're going into the rescue part, but we have to manage this, right? Somebody has to put the brakes on and manage this scene. And if it's going to be an integrated response, multiple agencies coming, how do we integrate that communications and command so we're all on the same page to avoid those blue on blues and everything else?Bill Godfrey:Sure, sure. I'm going to step back from this question, the specifics of this question, which are very tactical in nature, and I get, and put my chief's hat on and look at the bigger picture here. To me, there's two ongoing problems that the chiefs, the chiefs at the university, the chiefs at the city, the chiefs or the sheriff at the county, that they own and need to solve.Number one, inability to operate on each other's radios. As a guy that spent a number of years working with interoperable radio technology, I can tell you from a technology perspective, we solved this problem 15-20 years ago. There is no reason, even if you're operating on different bands, there is no technical reason that you cannot have one system be connectable to a different system. That is a technical problem that can be solved, probably a dozen different ways and some of those ways of solving that are not expensive.That's to me, problem number one and one of the lowest hanging fruit and the quickest things to fix, is to get that interoperability across their radios fixed immediately. And that's an issue for leadership, that's got to work it out. And there's going to be a little bit of cost there. Who's going to bear that cost and how are they going to divvy up those responsibilities? That might even hit the elected officials or the city manager, the county manager, things like that. That's problem number one.Problem number two, is that they're not all on the same policy and procedure. A police department for a city of a hundred thousand is not a big enough police department that they're going to take care of an active shooter event on their own. They're going to have other agencies and entities from the county and every place else coming in. You need to get everybody on the same policy. Once again, that's a leadership issue, where we need to push through the politics, the relational challenges, history, the biases. We've got to find common ground and get everyone on the same page.And what I would say is, his whole question, the fundamental basis of his question of, can those first three officers go in? Or do I need to sacrifice an officer early on to stay outside? Well, you know what? If you've got interoperability on your radios and everybody's trained on the same process, all those officers can go in because the city guys following behind you are going to know how to set up command. They're going to know how to structure this. They're going to know how to carry on the response. Same thing with the county guys. The problem is when we don't have that, now you're having to make a really difficult choice, which is exactly... And I get that's exactly the debate that's going on, a really difficult choice.But what I hear you guys saying is you got to leave that guy out, that third guy out. And I agree with you because, if everybody goes in and you've got no coms, you're going to be the one isolated. You're going to have no idea what they've done, no idea how they're going to manage it, how they're going to organize the thing. And it's just a prescription for a disaster. Here's the other thing, and I think a couple of you were alluding to this. Coby, when you were talking about the key cards, how many floors is the thing? The university cops know the building. They know the layout, they know the environment, they know the keys, they know the access. They know the notification systems to put the campus on lockdown. If they're all inside, none of that's getting done.I think the lesser of the evils here, from my perspective, is you've got to sacrifice that one extra guy, the last guy, to stay out, begin the incident management process and be that expert on the building to communicate. And then those first couple of officers that get there from the city, you push them in and get them linked up with a team that's already inside. You begin to mix and match, share radios, get one of the city people that stays with the other officer outside. We haven't really talked about that.And let's jump to that. Let's take a pause. Let's assume that one of the campus cops stays outside, takes tactical and is running it at the door. Now city guys come up, they're on a different radio channel. County guys come up, they're on a different radio channel. Guys, talk about how you would see that working at the tactical level.Coby Briehn:How I could see it, sitting here thinking about it, is this question has probably been discussed, like you mentioned, for the last several years. Because if it's a university, then they have sporting events, concerts, things where they've had to work together. I'm hoping that this question has been asked. Another question that would be concerning is, if they're just having dispatch call each other and basically telling dispatch and then dispatch telling the other agencies dispatch over the phone, how things or what they're doing, if we're having... That's the relay system that they have into play. Off the top of my head, when you're having the relays and the multiple radio channel difficulties like I had mentioned earlier, essentially, we're just going into solo responder events then. And so the agencies aren't able to talk to each other and everything's going to get duplicated or missed. That's the options that you have is, it either should have been answered before you go there and have this and the best way to do it without it being answered is, you've got to have communications there to direct it and control it.Jason Kelley:Good point, Coby. To take it a step further, I see additional responding officers from the city or the county are going to link up with the university tactical positions, so you'll have basically, in essence, three tactical positions that are covered from law enforcement. Instead of that tactical transport triage three, we're going to have basically that five, tactical is going to be operating under three personnel. Exactly how we communicate from fire and EMS and law enforcement because they're standing co-located. Same thing would have to happen here. You've got three different radio channels, three people have to stand next to each other in order to communicate. Something comes over city, he can turn to university, he can turn to county, relay that information. Now he can send it out to their contact teams, university sends it out to their contact team and vice versa.Bill Godfrey:Okay. Kevin?Kevin Burd:A few things are going through my mind right now, listening to Coby and Jason talk about this. Number one, we don't want to have this problem the day something happens.Bill Godfrey:Oh boy.Kevin Burd:Training, joint training, regional training. We all need to get on the same page, which goes back to, Bill, you mentioning before about getting in the room. And one of our instructors coined that phrase, "leave the PPE at the door," right? Leave the politics, the personalities, and the egos of the door. Get inside, figure out what the larger response is going to look like, when you have these resource challenges and start gearing your training towards that, so we are on the same page and not figuring this out the day that it comes. Communications-wise, that's been answered for quite some time now. We just need to continue to have those conversations and get on the same page and knowing the environments that we're going to be working in. The university is asking this question and I don't know the answer to this. Have they had joint trainings there? Are they bringing city and county in so they know the environment they're going to be working in? Instead of, and it sounds like they are all together.Bill Godfrey:Hopefully. And are they including fire EMS, their com centers, their emergency management?Kevin Burd:Absolutely. And it actually reminds me of, from the SWAT or the tactical side, drilling that tactical position when SWAT arrives and we start to see that transition into tactical teams. As an example, I would integrate one of our team leaders in that tactical position, so they are in communication face-to-face with that tactical officer because we're working on separate channels and everything else. Vocally for me, we had that discussion, we could move over to a channel that we all share, but that's not the case and the question that's being asked right now. You may have the five headed beast instead of the three headed fluffy that we talk about in some of our trainings.Bill Godfrey:Yeah. All right, I think that's a pretty solid way to answer, provides our reasoning or rationale for it. I do want to pivot to one other piece of this that caught my attention. And that was, that they have their tactical position go up to the door and actually work the door, be door control. Now, let me say, this is of course out of my domain, so I want to come around to you guys to think what you think about that. But the one thing that does occur to me is, doesn't that assume that there's only one door that's going to be in use? And that seems a little odd, especially for large building structures like that. What do you guys think about tactical being right up at the door and trying to control people? Not having staging back away from the scene, but instead having everybody staged right up at the door, trying to organize your teams at the door.Coby Briehn:The problems I see with that are, what we are talking about is, let's presume it's a residence hall where there's going to be multiple entry points. And are the follow-ons all coming to that same entry point? Are they coming into the front door? Are they going into the side door? All that communication has to be relayed out before. I could see dispatches making the calls to other agencies of, go to the A-side, the one side, the front door, right there, and then make that the designated entry. All that communication has to happen before, without the interoperability of the radios or pre-planning of this. What's it going to look like? Well, it's going to be self-dispatch teams going in whatever door they parked in front of and then doing their own thing.Jason Kelley:Got a follow up question to that. Are they putting somebody at the door because of breaching issues or to get into the structure or the building? Or is that just simply where they're positioning their tactical? If it's entry stuff, then obviously they can solve that by either, one, law enforcement conducts actual breaches or key cards or fobs or through the locks, something like that, if that's the case. If it's not, then personally, I don't want to be that close if I'm tactical because you can get sucked into now the incident. All of a sudden, they need some resources right inside the door, and all of a sudden now, they're looking around, who do I need? And all of a sudden, now I'm interjecting myself into the problem, where if I back off, give it a bit more situational awareness and be away from that situation, I can now start managing, organizing and controlling that incident.Bill Godfrey:I think that's a really good question, Jason. And from my reading of the email, what he said was that they're doing that because they don't have the radio com issues. And so instead of using staging, everybody is responding up to the door and they're organizing there and then pushing the teams in. So essentially, they're not just doing tactical at the door, tactical is also doing staging at the door at the same location. Which to me, defeats the purpose and the value of having staging back a little way, so that you can manage your flow of resources and get them assigned. But no, from my reading of the email, they're doing that because of the lack of interoperability on the radios between the different agencies.Jason Kelley:And maybe my response to that is you're going to have to triple up all locations. So, if you're running staging, you're going to have to make sure that you have law enforcement from university, city, county, at probably staging too, to make sure everyone's communications that are getting all that information over. Potentially two thoughts on that.Bill Godfrey:Yeah, Kevin.Kevin Burd:Yeah, I think everyone's hit on it here. The vision in my head is, there's too many at that door. When everyone starts to come, how do we manage all the responding agencies and run basically the tactical triage and transport operations there? And next thing you know, you turn, you've got 10, 20, 40, 50 more people there. And how many times have we been involved, in our careers and incidents, where the command post gets stood up and it's the magnet. Everybody keeps coming to it. And I'm just trying to picture, could that impact the effectiveness of that tactical triage and transport position by now trying to run staging out of the same exact location? There'd be too many voices, too many opinions, too many people. And are we going to start to get overwhelmed with the amount that ends up there? And again, I don't know the resources that may be going there, but I'm envisioning the events, reading the after-action reports, and the tens, if not hundreds of agencies and officers, personnel that are coming to this, and now you're trying to all manage it from one location.Bill Godfrey:Yeah. I'm with you, Kevin. It's very difficult for me to imagine that actually being successful on a real event. I think it would become very overwhelming for whoever's at the door trying to do that very quickly. And the other thing I would point out is, I'd go back to what I said earlier when I put my chief hat on. This is all being driven by a lack of compatibility on a radio, so fix the radio problem. We're not talking hundreds of thousands of dollars to fix this. There are solutions that can be done in the thousands. And even some that can be done that are less than $10,000, that allow you to tie these radio systems together. So to me, there's very difficult tactical decisions here that are being forced because of some, I guess, for a better way to say it, political problems or budget problems, or just a lack of cooperation.I do want to echo though, what you said earlier, Kevin, which is, what's going on with training? And I think all of us would acknowledge in our careers, it's nice when leadership all gets together and sings kumbaya and pushes down the road, shoulder to shoulder. If you guys can't see the faces of the instructors, they're all grinning ear-to-ear right now. Like, "Yeah right, when does that ever happen?" Yeah, and that's the problem. That is the unicorn.But what I think we have all seen, is that when you put the different agencies in the same training and we start to get to know each other and we start to train together, it doesn't happen immediately, but that's when the barriers start to come down. There's a little more cooperation, there's sharing of ideas. There's workarounds that come up, things like that. I just really wanted to echo your comment on getting everybody training together, because I will say, out of my entire career, I think that has been more effective at getting all the Hatfields and the McCoys to play nice with each other, as opposed to trying to dictate it from on high. All right, any other parting thoughts? Coby?Coby Briehn:No, sir. All good, all covered.Bill Godfrey:Jason, anything else you want to add?Jason Kelley:Nothing on my end and I think we touched on it all. And I think it boils down to what you just wrapped up with, it's the training. We just all have to get together, get on the same page and figure out how does it work for our community? Because at the end of the day, are two obstacles, right? Criminal and the clock, and we've got to work together in order to save lives.Bill Godfrey:Yeah, and that, by the way, that effort to work together and deal with those two obstacles, the criminal and the clock, starts with leadership and policy guidance and solving some of these problems.Well, there you have it. I hope that that's helpful to the individual that emailed us in the question. I hope that gives some food for thought and I enjoyed this. This was fun to get a listener question that's a challenge like this. It's a really, really good question.Well gentlemen, thank you very much for being here with us today, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for listening to the podcast. If you haven't subscribed, please click the subscribe button wherever you get your podcast. I want to say thank you to Karla Torres, our producer, for putting this together and making us sound a lot more intelligent than we are. Until next time, stay safe.

Ep 50: Implementing the ASIM ProcessSheriff Michelle Cook and Police Chief Terry Nichols share their experiences implementing the Active Shooter Incident Management Checklist process and their tips for success. Don't miss this discussion!Bill Godfrey:Welcome to the Active Shooter Incident Management Podcast. It's good to be back with you today. My name is Bill Godfrey. I'm your podcast host, and I have with me today two former C3 instructors as our guest stars today, both of them law enforcement leaders, and hoping that one day when they do retire-retire, we might actually get them back as C3 instructors; hint hint, Chief Nichols, who just retired in the last few weeks. So I have with me Michelle Cook. She is currently serving as the Sheriff in Clay County. She also did ... Michelle was almost 30 years at Jacksonville?Michelle Cook:26 years at Jacksonville, yeah.Bill Godfrey:Yeah, so 26 years at Jacksonville Sheriff's Office Police Department as the operations chief, so she had an awful lot of responsibility there. Did a short stint as the Police Chief at Atlantic Beach, which was kind of a retirement job, but too easy for you. You needed something with more, and so now she's the elected Sheriff at Clay County, which is in north Florida. And we have with us Terry Nichols. Terry was the Assistant Director at Alert from the founding to, what was it? 2018, 20-Terry Nichols:2016, 2016.Bill Godfrey:2016. Left Alert, became the Police Chief in Brownwood, Texas, and then you did, what, a little over three years there?Terry Nichols:Three years there, and then moved to Seguin as chief, and spent three years there, and now I'm retiredBill Godfrey:Like a week and a half ago, two weeks ago? It's been pretty recent.Terry Nichols:It's been a month, it's been a month.Bill Godfrey:So it's exciting to have both of you here. I really appreciate you taking the time. I know the sheriff especially, you have a very busy schedule. But I wanted to have a podcast where we talk about implementing the Active Shooter Incident Management checklist and the process that goes with it. Because it sounds simple on the surface, and when you've gone through training, it's fairly straightforward, but trying to roll that out to a whole organization is a little bit of a logistics machine.And the two of you have each done this, not only in your organizations, but you've done it more than once. So sheriff, you did it at Jacksonville, then did it at Atlantic Beach, now at Clay County, and Terry, you did it at both Brownwood and Seguin. So what I wanted to just get from you guys is, what was it about this process that made you say, "This is the way I want to go," and what were your lessons learned? How did you approach it and go along the way? So sheriff, you want to start us off?Michelle Cook:Sure. First of all, thank you for having me today to talk about this. I'm very passionate about this. You've asked why ASIM, why choose this method of managing an active shooter event, and I will tell you, I'm entering into my 30th year of law enforcement, and I've worked some huge cases, some huge incidents, thousands of them, and for me, being a street cop for so long and then the leader of street cops, the ASIM process, the ASIM methodology, it just makes sense.In our industry, and Terry, correct me if you see differently, we teach young officers, young supervisors, to handle everything themselves. And on 99% of the calls that we handle, that can be done, but on a mass critical incident, like an active shooter event, relying on one person to handle everything is just unrealistic, and that's how things get missed, and unfortunately, that's how people die, is you got one person trying to handle everything.Terry Nichols:Yeah. For me, everything the sheriff said makes perfect sense, and she is spot on. Having been involved with Alert and standing it up from the get go, driving it post-Columbine, and how we were training cops, and then fast-forward several years and get introduced to the ASIM model, and realizing we had been missing the boat early on. When we started first training our officers, we were missing the management piece of this. We were doing good at going in and realizing that we have a different duty. There's no longer sit and wait for SWAT, that we had a different mission on these active shooter events.But there's a whole management piece of this, and like the sheriff alluded to, that we're real good at teaching cops to go handle a problem by themselves, and they do it 9 times out of 10, but these events are catastrophic. They are geographical in nature. It doesn't just happen in a vacuum in one little place, and it takes significant resource management being trained to do that, and that the ASIM, I was just pulled to it and said it makes all the sense in the world.Bill Godfrey:Well, it's very humbling to hear that, and I'm thrilled that you guys ... I was thrilled to have both of you as instructors and as founding members, if you will, of what we were doing a very, very long time ago. Terry, when you were at Alert, you had a hand in helping us get the pilot up and running, and Michelle attended one of the very first pilots. Wait, in fact, I think it was the very first pilot delivery we did for certification, when we did it at Seminole County, so you guys have certainly been on the road with us for a long time. Terry, what was your strategy? So Brownwood, you might want to ... Brownwood was a little more rural, Seguin's a little more suburban. What was your strategy when you wanted to implement it the first time around, and then how did that change for you the second time around?Terry Nichols:I want to back up to something that you said on the intro too, if I can remember what it was now, that it's not just an agency that we implemented these in, it was a geographical area. So it was multiple agencies.Bill Godfrey:Good point.Terry Nichols:Yeah, I may have been the Chief of Brownwood, but I had the Sheriff's Department, and I had two of the law enforcement agencies right there in the county as well, and it was very rural. If you look at Brownwood, Texas on a map, it is in the geographical center of Texas, and I tell people, "You go out to nowhere and turn left, and you're in Brownwood," and not a lot of resources out there.Our closest big city is Abilene, Texas, and that's an hour away. But I knew, A, the need when I got there. I saw the quick needs assessment that we had no active shooter training. We had nothing. We had zero partnership with our fire and EMS partners, we had a third-party EMS provider, we were not working with our Sheriff's Department who was in the same building as us, so a lot of basic leadership stuff.And it was fun to bring the ASIM stuff to us, and we did it through Counterstrike first. That's how we introduced it to the organization, but we brought in the Sheriff's Department and other law enforcement agencies in the county. And that brought us all together, where they weren't playing in the sandbox prior to me getting there for multiple reasons, but this was something we could all gather around and actually embrace.And that really helped build relationships and, "Hey, we're not that bad. Hey, the people across the hall, hey, they're not that bad. They wear a brown uniform, we wear a blue uniform." So but it's also a rule. What we had is what we had, and help was a long way away. So we introduced it through Counterstrike, and then we did ASIM and the checklist, and we recurred training on it, and it was a success.Bill Godfrey:Sheriff, your first implementation was at Jacksonville, which, contrasting to Brownwood, is about as big as ... it's a big job. What was your strategy there? I know you had to play the long game. It took a while, but talk a little bit about what you did at Jacksonville.Michelle Cook:Sure. So in Jacksonville, the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office actually, at the time, was the 25th largest agency in the country, so a large agency. And what we decided to do is offer the ASIM class to those who wanted it first, because we thought if we could get those folks who are interested in it to buy into it, then they could go out and help sell it to the rest of the agency. And that really, for us, worked out good, because we ended up with ASIM disciples, is what I call them, and those are folks who were all in, who, on the street, if somebody had a question, they could speak to what ASIM was, and the benefits of it, and stuff like that.So it took us several years. We had to get through about 1,400 people trained, so it took us several years, several training cycles, to get everybody through. Contrast that to ... Let me go back. In Jacksonville, we also had a really close relationship with the fire department, and so they were in on the training from the beginning with us, and that was very, very beneficial.In fact, I think it was in Jacksonville, we started using rescue task forces at special events, and that was a chance for us to practice a concept with our police and fire working together on all of our pre-planned special events, so when the the day did come that we had an active shooter, we would be prepared to ... and we wouldn't have to stop and explain to people what a rescue task force was, so that worked out really well.And we had the active shooter incident at The Landing, and we got fortunate that day because there was actually a fire department unit training a block away. But if you go back and you listen to the radio broadcast, and you listen, and you read the after-action reports, it was very clear that not only the active shooter tactical training that we had been practicing and training so hard for worked, but also, the Active Shooter Incident Management portion of that trained, and people fell right into place.And so it was really ... I had just left when that happened, but it was very gratifying to see all that hard work going into saving people's lives. So move forward to Atlantic Beach, again, much like Terry, a very small agency. We had 30 people total, including myself, and for me, I incorporated not only some of the fire department folks again in this, but public works. Our public works folks had a big presence out there in the city of Atlanta Beach, and so they were pulled into some of the safer jobs, and we trained with public works on these things, and safety...Bill Godfrey:Okay, well, we're not going to let you get away with that that easy. You're going to have to tell a little bit about what you did, and why, and how it worked out.Michelle Cook:So what we did is we got the public works guys because ... specifically the school, but other locations as well, we had ... Atlantic Beach is a beach town, so there's lots of roads leading in, and one of the concerns we had is that when something happened, that traffic would be backed up and blocked so bad that we would not be able to get mutual aid or fire rescue into the scene.So we train the public works guys on how to use their big trucks to hold traffic positions until relieved by a law enforcement officer, and again, they were instrumental and vital to our plan out there, and talking about building relationships and everybody being on the same page. So that worked out really good. Small agency, limited resources. We-Bill Godfrey:Did you get any pushback from the public works guys and gals, or were they pretty excited about it?Michelle Cook:Oh, they were having a blast. We also incorporated them, just on a side note, in our search for missing people. As soon as we had a missing person call go out in the city of Atlantic Beach, our publics works people would getting notified on their phones that we were looking for missing persons, and so they would also help us look for missing people. So it was really just, you go back to, if you have limited resources, if you're in a jurisdiction then you have limited resources, there are other groups that you can pull in safely to help augment or supplement your agency.Bill Godfrey:Sure, sure.Michelle Cook:Yeah, so that...Bill Godfrey:So how did your approach ... Other than the public works, what was the big glaring differences for you implementing it at Atlantic Beach, versus implementing ASIM at the Atlantic Beach versus Jacksonville?Michelle Cook:You know, Jacksonville, there was always the potential for over-convergence just from get go, just because of the sheer number of resources in Duval County. In Atlantic Beach, it was the exact opposite. How long do we have to wait until help gets here, and then how do you manage so much mutual aid? Because in Atlantic Beach, we would have Neptune Beach, Jacks Beach, Jacksonville, Mayport police, all potentially responding, all with different communication, radio channels.And so we had to make sure that when we developed our plan in Atlantic Beach, that all those surrounding agencies knew what our plan was, so that if and when something did happen, they would know what radio frequency to go to. Where would staging be? We preset all those ahead of time so that would be no question day of, and that's the value of a smaller jurisdiction, is you can do a lot of that ahead of time.Bill Godfrey:Yeah, you really regionalized your approach, which Terry mentioned even at Brownwood and bringing some of the others in. Terry, when you went over to Seguin, what did you do a little bit differently there at that one? And talk a little bit about how you stepped outside of the city to bring in your regional partners, similar to what Michelle was just talking about.Terry Nichols:Yeah, pretty much the same thing. The good news is we had a great relationship with the fire department there. It's a larger organization. I say larger. We had 60 sworn at the time, but we're a lot closer ... San Antonio's, a rock throw away, Austin's an hour away, San Marcos is close. So we have a lot of resources, and in the Braunfels real close to us if we need them.One thing that this community had lived through was Sutherland Springs. We had first responders ... Sutherland Springs was literally 15 miles, 20 miles, from Seguin, so we had first responders that actually went down there that day. So it was very close to Seguin, meaning and close to their heart. They did not have ASIM, though. They did not have any training. Most of them had been through Alert or some level of tactical training. The tactical piece of it, the sheriff mentioned, but nobody had the management piece.So I took what I did in Brownwood, and we invested in the Counterstrike and they ran everybody through Counterstrike first. Then we brought in an ASIM advance class, and that's when we really got the buy-in. There were already a group going on countywide, they met monthly. An integrated response group, it was run by the county Fire Marshal's Office, and they would meet monthly, and they would meet, and they would sit around and talk about the same thing over and over and over. And then I became chief there, and they all look at me like, "Oh my God, look what just walked in the door. We've got somebody that"-Bill Godfrey:Fresh meat.Terry Nichols:"That knows what they're doing, that'll come rescue us." So we started getting some synergy going there with that, and then the ASIM advanced that we hosted not long before I left, we were lucky enough to get really solidified, because we filled that class. It was great to see so many people.And I got a text on July 4th from the assistant fire chief saying that, "We have a huge parade July 4th in Seguin," and that's largest one in Texas. But, just what the sheriff mentioned, they had rescue task forces stood up, an IEP, the whole thing that ... I'd been walking them through, doing this slowly, baby steps, but they had done it for the parade, and he was so proud of himself, and I'm so proud of them.He said, "Look at your legacy, what you've left behind." I was like, I didn't do anything. I just came and got the ball rolling. You guys now go with it. But it's come time for both places to test, and that I think that, we'll talk about some challenges in a minute, but it's come time to start to test it. Don't wait for game day. We need to start testing these things.Bill Godfrey:Yeah, and it's funny, both of you have talked about opportunities to exercise and practice, I shouldn't use the word exercise, but to practice some of these concepts in your special events and pre-planned events, and I know that that's a huge part of socialization and absolutely a best practice.And before I move on, I do want to comment for the audience, if you're wondering why these two both had ASIM advances, they were both leaders who contacted us and said, "If you ever have a last-minute cancellation, all I need is two weeks notice and I can make it work," and that's how both of them got ASIM classes. They picked up cancellation slots that came in from others on short notice.But sheriff, I know that you started off by doing the RTFs, and the idea of contact teams in your IEPs for special events, and for the football games, and things like that in Jacksonville, but not too long after that, you took that a step further, certainly at clay county, I know you've began incorporating some of these practices into other calls not active shooter. Can you talk a little bit about that?Michelle Cook:Sure. So it actually ... the guys in Atlantic Beach started it, and it's carried forward to Clay County, and I really think this is going to end up being a best practice. And so what we've done is, on priority-one calls, where we have an active scene that's dynamic and fluid, whoever is tactical declares tactical, and they have command of the hot zone.So whether it's a burglary in progress to a store, or a fire at a house, or a gas leak, the person that's going to drive the resources to specific tasks based on an overall strategy declares tactical, and then our incident commander goes down the road and declares command, and then supports tactical.And this is really ... like I said, this happened organically in both agencies, but I think it's going to end up being a best practice for us, is this allows the men and women in uniform to use the terminology, use the concepts, and it won't be foreign to them, God forbid, if something ever happened. So they're using it on priority-one calls now.Bill Godfrey:I think that's fabulous, and the history of the fire service, and I know we all like to make fun, the fire department will set up incident command on a barking dog call. And yeah, true, but that's actually how we got everybody to understand it. When the ICS structure first started coming out in the late 70s and then rolled into the 80s, and people started stepping up and taking notice, the way we got it indoctrinated culturally was we used it on everything.Overkill? Yeah. Was it necessary? Probably not, but did it expedite the cultural integration and locking that in? And it really did. And I know we've had some conversations about the idea of morphing the Active Shooter Incident Management checklist process into something that's a little more generic, like a generic response posture to violent events or potentially-violent events, and I wonder if you could comment on that?So on the fire service, we have alarm levels. So what we send to a residential structure fire is different than what we send to a commercial structure fire, and when we escalate that and call for more resources, and so that's that standard package. And it seems to me like there might be a real good argument and a logical application for something like that, a standard response protocol for hostile events or potentially-violent events on law enforcement. What are the two of you think about that?Terry Nichols:You know, I can agree. I think that's a great best practice, sheriff, and I commend you for it. I think Seguin, we could have certainly done that in Seguin, and hopefully a little more naturally; like you said, organically. What I think we saw that the cops have been missing, the officers have been missing, is the actual practical application of ICS. Everybody's done the 100, the 200, 300, all of the classes, and we all...Bill Godfrey:Nobody shared answers.Terry Nichols:Yeah, they never share answers, but they never seen the practical application of it, and that's what ASIM brings you, or that's what the Counterstrike tool brings them, is a practical application? "Okay, I see how this is supposed to work now," but you've got to go out and now practice it, and if you can incorporate it into your priority-one-type calls or something like that, I think that's brilliant to be able to do something like that, because it just further ingrains that it should be second nature. when the big one, when that day happens, it's already ingrained in the organizational culture.Bill Godfrey:Good point. Sheriff, what are your thoughts?Michelle Cook:You know, I would agree. The challenge we have in law enforcement is ... because every call that we go on is so different, and to broad brush, saying, "Okay, all of these types of calls, you have to do this," it can be a double-edged sword. So I liked the fact that, at least in my agencies, it happened organically, and when the troops buy in, then you don't have to ram it down their throat; it's better all the way around.But I would love to see some sort of standardization, maybe at each state level, and using the lingo of each state to implement a standard hostile encounter response, or priority-one response, or whatever you want to call it. The challenge for us is, a priority-one call can be somebody shot, to a burglary in progress, to a car crash, to ... So I like it. I'm just not quite sure on how to execute it yet.Bill Godfrey:Yeah, I think it's one of those ideas that we ... Let's face it. Both of our industries are not necessarily known for changing quickly. In the fire service, and you guys have heard me say this before, we have a saying, "200 years of tradition unimpeded by progress," and we mean that. But I think this is one of those places where it's an idea, but we need to take time. I think we need to see what begins to develop organically, what works. Where's the stickiness in an organization? What types of incidents or responses does it make sense, and where doesn't it make sense?think we just have to take our time with it, but it's an interesting idea that I want to keep talking about as we move forward. So let me ask both of you this. What, if anything, when you were implementing the ASIM process at any of either of your agencies, what caught you by surprise, or were some lessons learned, or advice that you would give to other law enforcement leaders like yourself, who are wanting to go down this path? Sheriff, you want to start?Michelle Cook:Sure. My advice would be find ASIM disciples first. Let them buy in and help sell it, versus forcing everybody to go to classes right off the bat. Understand that ASIM is a perishable skill, so if you're not using it on the street for your priority-one calls, you have to find other ways to continue the dialogue.And that can include using some of the concepts on pre-planned events. For us, it includes ... we have written out manuscripts, responses, for some of our larger churches and mall, and our personnel read them. And we got this idea from, actually, the Blue Angels, and before every flight, they sit down and they verbally talk about what they're going to do during flight. And so we sit down and we verbally articulate, "If my role is tactical, this is what I'm doing. If I'm a contact team, this is what I'm doing," and that seems to keep the skills fresh.We've also put together some PowerPoints where we have little pieces moving, kind of like the Counterstrike board moving, and then we have people talking about what's happening; again, pushing the concepts out. So my advice would be find ASIM disciples, then push it out to everybody, and then find creative ways to keep the conversation going regularly. And before we get off this podcast, Bill, I want to talk about something exciting that's happening in Clay County right now as we speak, so don't let me forget that.Bill Godfrey:Okay, I'm going to make myself a note. Terry, how about you? What were the surprises or lessons learned or advice that you would offer something to another law enforcement leader?Terry Nichols:In Brownwood, I walked into, I mentioned earlier, a, I won't say adversarial community, but everybody wasn't getting along, and I used it as a tool to bring everybody together. So I thought it was very useful that way. Now see, the fire department, they got along, but they didn't work together. They knew each other, but they didn't get ... that was it. They was the fireman, we're the police officers. But I used it as a unique tool to bring everybody together, and I thought that was unique.I agree with the disciples, or ambassadors, as I often refer to them, as somebody that will go out there and carry that brand. They're passionate about it. They're just passionate as I am, as you are, as the sheriff is, and so many other folks around. Our new ... Our. The city's new assistant fire chief is one of those ambassadors. He was a hire about eight months before I left, and he came from a neighboring agency, and he is an absolute ambassador.He told me at my retirement reception, he's like, "You're part of the reason I came over here, and now you're leaving." He's relating, "I'm passionate about this Active Shooter Incident Management stuff, and you were here, and I was like, 'All right, what a great opportunity.'" I said, "Sorry, dude, it's that time. 33 years is enough time."And I have to agree with you, we did not have the practice at either organization down, like the sheriff explained. We did not have that ongoing, and I learned that the hard way in Brownwood. When we get to that story, I'll tell you that later on, that it is a perishable skill, and you've got to figure out some ways, some unique ways, to continue to get the information out and rehearse, refresh, that going on. And with the events in Texas in the past couple months, I don't think that's going to be hard to do to get that refresher stuff going.Bill Godfrey:Yeah, do you want to go ahead and talk about what you learned in Brownwood about the retention in perishable skills?Terry Nichols:Yeah, so we ran Counterstrike. We did not have the ASIM yet, but we ran Counterstrike. Everybody through the Sheriff's Department, third-party ambulance provider, the hospital, staff attended, everybody. And then a month later, we held an exercise at the school. No SIMS, nothing like that, it was all moulage. We had actually role-players, Moulage, and the hospital was involved.So we did transports, they tested their MCI surge capability. It worked great, and I think our out-the-door time for the first patient was like 20 minutes. It was remarkable. For having only done it, and we had just trained the month before, so it was great, the sad part, we had lost an officer the week before that to an off-duty traffic collision, and I almost canceled the event simply because of that. We had a lot of trauma we were going through as an organization. We didn't, I'm glad we didn't, because it really brought us all back together focused on our mission.The next year, my intentions are always great, but you're not judged by your intention. My intention was to do followup training the following year, that spring, and do another exercise at the school, change it up slightly, and get the hospital, everybody, involved. We never got around to the refresher training. This happened, the world happened, everything happened, but we still did the exercise. My fire chief had pretty much checked out mentally. He just wasn't that engaged. Our out-of-the-building time for our first casualty was like 50 minutes. It was 50 minutes.Bill Godfrey:50? Five zero?Terry Nichols:Yeah, five zero, which, to me, was absolute failure, catastrophic failure. It's like, what happened? And it was a lack of recurring training, is what boils down to. People had forgotten their roles, they'd forgotten ... they had the checklist, they had in front of them, but they'd forgotten how to do the basic fundamental things, the basic fundamental piece of this.So the good lesson learned, keeping that buy-in from those ambassadors, especially the agency heads, I would think that I could sit across from my fire chief, and I could in Seguin, and have a very candid conversation. It was not quite that same way in Brownwood, as it turned out to be. That was part of the issue I faced.The other issue is my own, I had to own it, that I did not continue to push the training. Life happened, other things happened, and I did not make it a top priority as it should have been, and we saw the outcome of that during that exercise, and I was just as mad as a hornet. I was just absolutely furious at myself, not at the performance of my troops, because they did the best they could. It was at me for not doing that refresher training.Bill Godfrey:Powerful story. Sheriff, anything that you want to add on that before I come back to what's going on there at Clay County?Michelle Cook:I'm with Terry. This is a perishable skill all day long, and you've got to find creative ways to continue the conversations. To think that you're going to bring in a class one time, and somehow people are going to retain it, that's just not going to work. You got to continue the conversations, whether it's the Counterstrike board. For us, it's reading scripts and PowerPoints, and handling priority-one calls using ASIM concepts. Also, the preplanned events, using as many concepts as we can during the preplanned event, and that's how you keep the conversations fresh.Bill Godfrey:Yeah, I completely agree. So tell us a little bit about what's going on there at Clay that you're excited about.Michelle Cook:So really thrilled about this. We were actually having these conversations before Uvalde, and Uvalde really just cemented our commitment to them. So in Clay County, like all school districts across America, our school board came up with a reunification plan, which sounded great on paper. It looks fantastic in this big ring binder that nobody's ever going to look at. So I brought in the county emergency manager, the safety director for the school board, and the school board police chief, and said, "Guys, we have our plan, you have your plan, the schools have their plan. None of us know each other's plan."So right now, what we're doing is we're hosting, I think we're up to 51 meetings. We're bringing school administrators in; the superintendent; fire rescue; the police agency if it's in a municipality, and we bring that jurisdiction in; the school resource officers; the school board police; the safety director for the school board; my patrol division; my special events division, and my traffic division. And we'll have anywhere from 20 to 30 people in the room, and we put the school up on the board and we say, "Okay, this is Clay High School. All right, so school administrators, what is your lockdown ... what is your policy?"So they tell us what their policy is, and then we talk about what to expect from us. "You're going to have solo officer response. You may see something called a contact team. What do you ... We've made an agreement on where we're going to keep extra weapons and other items locked in the school, so where is that location? How do we turn off your alarms in your school?" And then we challenge our traffic guys, "What intersections do you have to own to lock this school down?"And then to the school people, "How are we going to ... Let's talk about reunification. What does that look like?" And then we tell them, "Hey, this is what our contact teams are going to be doing. This is what our rescue task forces are going to be doing. There's a position called tactical, and if you can find that person safely and provide information on who the suspect is, where they're at, go find that person. This is what's going to be happening at the command post."So we tell them all of that, and really, what we've done is we've taken the individual school plans, we've taken the school board police response plan, we've taken the fire response plan, we've taken our plan. We've really molded it into a document, and since I've been driving the conversations from the beginning, they're very ASIM-centric. And the documents are just a few pages, and I could literally ...We've identified, for example, all the intersections in the area that we need to control. "I'm not telling you on game day which direction to push traffic, but these are the intersections that we have to control." So we have a single sheet of paper, it lists each intersection, and then how many deputies it takes to control that intersection. So if Terry's coming in for mutual aid, and I can pull off this sheet of paper and hand it to Terry and say, "You've got traffic."So we've done this with our schools. We're about 12 or so schools in now that we've been holding these meetings, and I tell you, the sense of cooperation, coordination, the understanding of ASIM, because we tell them, "You guys locking down and us neutralizing the bad guy is really just the beginning. There's going to be so much more that has to happen," and opening their eyes of what to expect from us, what we can expect from them, and we're calling it the Clay County CHIRP plan, CHIRP, Clay Hazard Immediate Response Plan, and it just gets all the special interests together in a room to talk about each individual school individually, instead of trying to cover all the schools with one giant plan.Bill Godfrey:That is so fantastic, and more than I've heard going on in other organizations. Once again, you're always on the cutting edge of making new stuff happen. So I-Terry Nichols:It is, it's brilliant. I'm sorry, Bill.Bill Godfrey:No, go ahead, Terry.Terry Nichols:It's great. It's absolutely brilliant, it really is, especially countywide. One thing I left out of the Brownwood, the exercises we did, the school district did their own little reunification exercise once we finished. So we did our piece of it, but they had staff that was working through the summer, and they worked on their reunification process. They actually brought up school buses, and took them to another facility, and worked and walked through the standard reunification method that they utilize.So again, we did not get involved in that because we were taxed already, as far as the number of bodies we were pulling from the street through the tactical piece of all this, but they were doing it themselves. So it was nice to see them doing that. I know the superintendent out there, I know he's continuing that kind of stuff. It's very important to them. Seguin will be very similar, I'd have no doubt in my mind.Bill Godfrey:That's fantastic. So here's my last question for the two of you. Just within the last two weeks, NTOA, the National Tactical Officers Association, has announced that they're endorsing the Active Shooter Incident Management checklist as a national standard. And as I said on one of the previous podcasts, for our fire-EMS audience, NTOA is to law enforcement what the NFPA, the National Fire Protection Agency, is to the fire service. How do the two of you see that changing the conversation as we try to get people aware, trained, and implementing ASIM?Terry Nichols:It would certainly help. Having their endorsement and their stamp of approval is huge. I've been an NTOA member for years, got on their training, I've been to their active assailant training, active shooter training many years ago, back in the early days of Alert. It adds a lot of validity to it, not that it didn't already have it, because it does, but you may be reaching a whole different audience that, especially for your larger agencies that have full-time SWAT teams, and they say, "If we don't do an active shooter training, we've got this stuff done, it's gone ... y'all have to solve long before we get there."But now, they get introduced ugh, or through their structure or their training in the tactical world, they get introduced to the ASIM model and the process that way now. Again, most of the country part-time teams, collateral duty, job, that kind of stuff, but your Los Angeleses, and your New York, and your Houstons, and your Austins and Bostons, and all those big places that may not get ASIM another way, may see it this way now. So I think it's a big deal, Bill.Bill Godfrey:Sheriff, how about you? How does it change things, or does it change things, for you at home there in Clay and in your surrounding areas?Michelle Cook:I'm not sure if it changes things. It doesn't surprise me, though, that NTOA would be one of the first to step up and acknowledge this. The NTOA has trained thousands and thousands and thousands of SWAT operators and SWAT leaders, and on a SWAT call-out, there's a process. And you think about, you call the SWAT team when it's really, really bad, and the SWAT team follows a chain of command, there's one talk, there's one commander.So it doesn't surprise me that NTOA would see the value of a checklist like this, and understand that the checklist is really for those dynamic, ongoing ... those calls that are happening right then when we don't have time to wait for the SWAT team. Now, with that being said, my only concern, and this is something that, as a leader, you have to be cognizant of, is the checklist is not the answer. The answer is training with the checklist.Bill Godfrey:Yes, yes.Michelle Cook:So passing the checklist and saying, "Okay, now we have ASIM," that would be my only concern, because I'm thinking firemen are probably like this too, but cops, "Just make it easy for us. Give us a checklist."Bill Godfrey:Yeah, we're all much more alike than we would like to admit.Michelle Cook:Yeah. That would be my only caution, is that the piece of paper is not the answer. It's training to the piece of paper that will help you get to the answer.Bill Godfrey:Yeah, and I think certainly in my conversations with the NTOA leadership, I think they're keenly aware of that, and we're having some very positive conversations about things that we are hoping to do with their organization to begin to push this out. I think we're probably going to start with some webinars, some announcement material, and things like that, but obviously, we've got to get into the training. You got to get into the hands-on training.And I've said this before, and I will say it again, you can sit in a classroom and you can get lectured at, you can watch a video, but until you get up and put yourself in the moment and actually practice this under pressure, you just don't get it. You've got to give responders the opportunity to practice, hot wash it, and then let them practice again, and that's when they they build the competency.I feel like it's a little bit of a trite analogy, but I've said it before, and I don't think there's anything quite better than that, you're not going to get to the Super Bowl with one practice. You've got to practice over and over again, and in a lot of ways, the quarterback on the field is a lot like tactical triage and transport, and then the coaches on the sideline are like the incident command post.Everybody's working together, but how the heck are you going to pull that off on game day if nobody ever bothered to practice? It seems obvious, and when you break it down in those terms, everybody goes, "Oh yeah, I guess that makes sense," but making it a priority for agencies, it's tough. We got, what, 20 pounds of training requirements to fit into a one-pound day? Something's-Terry Nichols:In Texas, you're about to see that get a lot heavier, because again, after Uvalde, I think you're going to see this come to the forefront at the state level. So every state has mandated training for peace officers that we all have to go through every year. You will see we will be heavy on active shooter response, active assailant response, and it'll hopefully give those agencies that already bought in, that have ASIM training, that have the knowledge of it, to give them a chance to actually go out and practice it now, to check that box with the state, as it were.And one of my leadership mentors, Dave Anderson, he says about working out, "How can you expect to go in the gym and squat 500 pounds if you've never squatted 100 pounds? So yeah, you got to practice, practice, practice, repetition, repetition, repetition. So what you said is spot on, but we've got to ... To have a piece of paper, laminated or not, just to pull out of your zipper shirt or out of your visor, is not the answer. You've got to use it.Bill Godfrey:Or on your phone. We've got it as the phone app too. Yeah, I completely agree, and the one thing I would say, in a perfect world, we would get everybody trained so competently and so passionately, and that, God forbid, the day comes that they're called upon, they would nail it and perfect it, and that would be wonderful. But a little goes a long way. A little bit of organization, a little bit of incident management, having a handful of leadership who understands the process and understand what needs to get done, to be able to organize the rest of the troops or the mutual aid people coming in, a little can go a long way. And yes, one day I would like to believe that we'll get every law enforcement, firefighter, EMT, and paramedic in the United States fully trained and competent in this material. But in the meantime, let's do a little something, because as we've seen more than once, a failure on the incident management side can just produce an unacceptable result.Terry Nichols:It's catastrophic, it's catastrophic, and witnessed recently, unfortunately, and it just ... and you're right, small pieces, and the sheriff's got it right. She's hitting it on the head, using it the priority-one calls, and get it ingrained, indoctrinated. And before we went live and started recording, I was joking with you, Bill, about, we have so much to learn from the fire service; we, being law enforcement.Yeah, we may joke all day long about this incident command stuff. There's a cat up in a tree, and y'all set up incident command, there's no one-shot. But there's something to be said for this, and I tried it. I think both Seguin and Brownwood are better ... they are today than when I got there when it comes to this type of stuff. Not just the tactical piece of it, but the incident management piece of it. I hope they are. And it was a great challenge, and I'm an ambassador of it, and hopefully we got much more to learn, even if it's one at a time, one person at a time.Bill Godfrey:Yeah, and I think, Terry, between you and, certainly, Michelle, who is a very, very strong leader in the law enforcement community, and very sophisticated and forward-looking, I'm optimistic. I think we're going to get there. I think that this can happen, and we can get it done. And I'll share this one story with you, Terry, in fairness, coming back on the other side, because making fun of the cat in the tree, I always make fun of you law enforcement guys for the 540 degrees of coverage. I'm like, "Yeah, how does that math work? It's 360, and you start over again."And I was teaching a class one day with ... and I make that joke on a fairly regular basis, which I should have known. And one of our other instructors, Adam, he was waiting for it, and as soon as I said it, he goes, "Okay, let me explain it to you, Bill. You get in the recliner, you spin around 360 degrees, and then you pull the lever to kick your feet back and you look up over your head. That's 540 degrees of coverage," and I said, "Okay, I got it. I deserve that."Terry Nichols:I owe him a beverage. I owe him a beverage.Bill Godfrey:Sheriff, you have any other closing words or thoughts that you want to offer before we wrap up for today?Michelle Cook:Just wanted to say thank you for the opportunity, and if any law enforcement leader out there, anybody in law enforcement, is looking for any ideas, or suggestions, or support, or how to lead your organization or your agency through the the beginnings of ASIM, obviously, C3 Pathways is the expert in the training, but I can definitely help people navigate the politics of it if needed. So always available to assist.Bill Godfrey:Yeah, that's very, very gracious of you. I have a feeling we're going to have people reaching out wanting your contact information. Terry, any final thoughts?Terry Nichols:I echo exactly what the sheriff said, Bill. Thank you so much for the opportunity to come to share my story, anyway, what I've experienced, but same way. I've done it in a rural community with very limited resources, and now in a larger, not near as large as the Sheriff for Jacksonville, but in a larger agency with ... And there are politics to navigate, there are egos to navigate.Bill Godfrey:Always.Terry Nichols:They're in ... I don't have all the answers, but I'll certainly give you my experience. So yeah, C3 Pathways is the point. Anybody listening or watching, reach out to C3, and if you want to talk to me directly, obviously, Bill will gladly share my contact information, and I will answer any question with anybody at any time about any issue as it relates to this, and my successes and my obvious failures as well.Bill Godfrey:Well, Terry, Michelle, thank you both so much for taking the time out of your day. I think what you've shared can be extremely valuable to those that need to walk in the same footsteps that you guys have already forged ahead, and I just can't thank you enough for continuing to support and be ambassadors, and for the work that both of you have accomplished. So thank you for being with us today on the show. Ladies and gentlemen, that's a wrap for our show today. Thank you for tuning in, and until we talk to you next time, stay safe.

Ep 49: ASIM Checklist Endorsed as National Standard by NTOASPECIAL EPISODE - We have exciting news on this week's podcast! Our guest is Thor Eells, Executive Director of the National Tactical Officers Association (NTOA). Today, Thor shares the news NTOA is endorsing the C3 Pathways Active Shooter Incident Management Checklist as the national standard of incident management of active shooter events. We discuss the importance of setting national standards for first responder training. Thor also tells us what NTOA is working on, including a neuroplasticity program to help first responders make decisions faster and more accurately while under stress.Bill Godfrey:Welcome to the Active Shooter Incident Management Podcast. My name is Bill Godfrey. I'm your podcast host. It has been a minute since the last podcast we've done. I'm excited to be back, but I'm even more excited that we're back with a very special guest today. I would like to introduce you to Thor Eells, the executive director of the National Tactical Officers Association, known to our law enforcement audience as the NTOA. Thor, welcome.Thor Eells:Thank you very much.Bill Godfrey:Hey, before we get going on this, because we probably have some audience members that aren't familiar with NTOA because we have more than just law enforcement. Can you tell us a little bit about the NTOA and its mission and where you guys are going?Thor Eells:Absolutely. I appreciate the opportunity to do so. The NTOA is a nonprofit organization we originally created in 1983 by a then-lieutenant with the LA County Sheriff's Department, who was hoping to establish an association for networking information sharing among tactical teams in the United States while they were in their relative infancy and ensuring that through this shared information and knowledge, that it would professionalize this pledging self-discipline within law enforcement.Over these past decades, this association grown now to roughly 40,000 members with specialties that now include patrol, tactical EMS, crisis negotiations, and corrections. We even now also have membership from fire and EMS as a result of the whole development of rescue task forces and the need, with these new emerging threats, for all of these disciplines to be able to work and collaborate together in critical incidents for successful outcomes. We teach roughly 200 classes a year. We have taught all over the world, and we have membership from five continents. So it has grown exponentially since the founder, John Coleman, first created the association.Bill Godfrey:Wow. That's fascinating. I didn't realize that you guys had formed back in 1983. That is pretty amazing. I'm so excited to hear you talk about the fire/EMS membership and the pursuit of rescue task force. Obviously we're going to talk about that a little bit today, but we've got a big announcement to offer today. You want to go ahead and break the news to the audience?Thor Eells:Well, happy to. We are extremely excited to be able to enter into this collaborative agreement with C3 Pathways and the endorsement and the creation of a lot of information sharing between our two entities, but particularly as it pertains to the active assailant/active shooter checklist. I think that this is really a very important and potentially impactful partnership in helping those first responders that are tasked with a very, very difficult job in making good decisions in a time-compressed and stressful environment. So I think this is just the beginning of many good things to come between our two companies and associations.Bill Godfrey:I think it's wonderful. I'm so very excited to have you guys recognize the checklist and endorse it as a national standard. I'm just blown away and so humbled by that, along with the rest of the C3 team and the instructors that have been doing training for years. It's an interesting phenomenon. We've been using the checklist and training for over 10 years now and have some 3,000 different agencies from law enforcement, fire, EMS, emergency management across the country that are using it.But this is the first time that we've actually had a national standard-setting bodies such as yourself. For those not on the law enforcement side, NTOA is essentially to law enforcement, what the NFPA, the National Fire Protection Association is to the fire department in being able to set the standards and set national standards. We are just so honored to have you guys recognize that and endorse it.I think it's a really big deal. I've obviously been gone from active duty for a little bit now, but it always made me more comfortable as a responder when I knew that the process or the procedure that I was following was a national standard. It wasn't just something we thunk up on the spot. How does that sit with you, because I know you guys got into writing the standards for originally the tactical team, the SWAT teams years ago, and it's branched much beyond that. Thor, where do you think the importance of those national standards sit with responders?Thor Eells:Well, I think they're more important today than they ever have been. I don't think you have to look very far in the news or elsewhere, your local legislators, to recognize that there is a loud human cry for standards, for some benchmark that our communities and our citizens that we serve are able to look to, to be able to better gauge, are we doing what we're supposed to do when we're supposed to do it.We talk about transparency in these things that everyone is calling for, but if they don't have something to really look at and against, it's difficult. Let's face it. If we're going very frank and honest, many of us in law enforcement and our brothers and sisters in fire and EMS get frustrated at much of the criticism that's directed our way because there's this perceived bias and/or there's this willful proliferation of misinformation, etc.But once we calm down and we get past the emotional aspect of that, and we really begin to take a hard look at it, what we realize is, well, there's really not much information out there. I had a very good friend of mine share with me once, this old adage of "If you don't tell your story, somebody else will, and you may not like it."Bill Godfrey:Oh, boy, is that true.Thor Eells:It's so true. So for us to be able to set standards that we ourselves have taken the time to objectively and very deliberately find the best minds, the best experience from all these disciplines, fire, EMS, and law enforcement, and look at our roles and our responsibilities in these critical incidents and have them provide the input on what the priorities should be, when and where we should be doing certain things when and where we shouldn't be doing other things, and then establishing a standard like that, that then can be converted into a template and/or roadmap, which enhances the probabilities of success instead of allowing just fate to determine the outcome, is exactly what we should be doing.So we, too, like you, are extremely humbled and quite honestly honored to be part of putting such a high quality, high caliber product out there to enhance our first responders' capabilities. It's really exciting to see the impact that this is likely to have.Bill Godfrey:I completely agree with you on everything you said. I think the other thing that can have really significant value to the standards is the ability to normalize the terminology because sometimes it sounds stupid. But boy, in emergency and in a crisis, when people are speaking different languages and different terminologies, it can really get in the way.The classic example of this, of course, in our business for the last, I don't know, 40 years now has been the use of 10 codes and signals day to day. But when you start to get multiple agencies together, nobody uses the same codes. The next thing you know, you've got confusion over what's going on. So standardizing that terminology.The other piece of this that just seems so incredibly important to me is when you have one of these horrible events and they are always tragic, even the ones that have the best outcomes are still horrible and tragic. When you have these events, you're going to have people responding and showing up on your scene to be part of that response that you've never met, you've never trained with. They may be from agencies you hadn't even heard of, especially from some of the federal law enforcement agencies that don't typically have a high profile. But if they're in the area, they will show up to help. If you don't have everybody on the same page, what's that going to look like?Thor Eells:Well, I absolutely agree with you, Bill. I think we know, unfortunately, through some very hard and difficult lessons learned from these tragedies. I could not echo your perspective of all of these are tragic, and we want to do our best to not repeat mistakes. Yet, we find that one of the most common mistakes is lack of communication, lack of understanding. To your point, whether it's 10 code or signals or different things, it's like speaking different languages.There's a reason that in air travel, English was selected as the single language that all airlines will use when they speak to air traffic control, so that there is consistent verbiage, terminology, etc that's being utilized, which mitigates the potential for misunderstanding and error and then outcome. We should be equally committed to ensuring that in critical incidents, knowing, to your point, that there will be multiple agencies interfacing with one another, that we are not adding to the complexity of a problem, but doing everything we can to further simplify it and then make better decisions leading to the more optimal outcome.Bill Godfrey:Boy, we are completely on the same page there. Way back when, and I know I've shared this with you previously, but for the benefit of the audience, way back when, the origin story of this checklist came from a training experience we had where things just were not going very well in the exercises. We did an analysis after the fact and said, "What's going on here?" We tried and experimented with a couple different things.Lo and behold, we found that changing up the way we were doing things and changing the order in which we were doing things suddenly had this huge impact. I don't mean like one or two minutes. I'm talking 15 to 20 minutes faster getting patients off the scene of one of these events. We realized that there's fundamentally two huge problems, two huge gaps that have been left because so much of the active threat, active shooter, active assailant training over the years that's been done has been focused on stopping the threat and obviously a critical part of the response. But very, very little of that training covered anything past stopping the threat.As a result, what we realized was we've got an integration problem, meaning law enforcement agencies working with other law enforcement agencies that they don't normally work with day to day, wasn't terribly comfortable. It wasn't really clear how we were supposed to do that and how we were supposed to integrate those together. That compounded when we looked at law enforcement and fire/EMS working together. I realize that sounds a little silly because a lot of times, we're responding to same calls day in, day out. Car accidents, things like this.But that's a different type of response and it's a different type of you and I working together. Whereas in the case of an active shooter, you and I become part of the same team. It's not like on the structure fire where you're holding the perimeter and I'm going in on the hose line with a bunch of firefighters. It'd be like you being on the hose line with us, and we have to rely on each other. We have to know what we're doing and have that model for how to work together, what I like to call the integration problem.Then the other problem that became horribly apparent is that the order in which you do things or don't do things really can impact very negatively, how long it takes to get things done, how long it takes to neutralize a threat, how long it takes to get to the injured, get them off the scene and get them transported to a hospital. What we classically call the clock problem. How does that fit with your read of what you've seen going on over the years? Because I know NTOA has been part of active shooter training certainly since Columbine, but I think you guys were doing some stuff before then, too, weren't you?Thor Eells:Well, yes. We were really very innovative, instrumental in evaluating tactics for quite a number of years. Once the tragedy of Columbine began to unfold before our eyes, it was within days that the NTOA had developed a active shooter training program. We completely revamped our perspective on law enforcement's role and what our responsibilities were and things of that nature.I do agree with you that for a long time, we had probably a disproportionate emphasis on this "address the threat" versus a more balanced approach of consideration. Okay, yes, we do need to neutralize the threat unquestionably, but there is more than one way to neutralize the threat. You can neutralize the threat by removing potential victims and not ever fire a shot or actively engage the threat. So there are different ways to approach the problem.What I think has really encouraging to see is the dialogue, the communication, the cooperation between fire, EMS, and law enforcement in recognizing that each of our responsibilities is not in conflict. In fact, they're really singular in nature, which is our primary goal is to save lives-Bill Godfrey:Yes.Thor Eells:... for all three of those specific responding entities. So we have a duty morally and ethically to find out how we're going to assist one another in being successful in doing that, and doing it in a manner in which we're not unwittingly, unknowingly creating difficulties. So we have to anticipate when we push a domino, is it interfere your dominoes or others that cause problem?I think we've done a very, very good job of improving with unfortunately, each of these incidents in an after-action analysis. We've gotten better and better. But to circle back around, the checklist is a compilation of that. It really is a huge, huge tool in helping ensure that we don't go out and reinvent the wheel in a negative manner. We don't go out and repeat these mistakes, albeit noble effort on our part. If we're still repeating mistakes that we need not be repeating, it's still unnecessary. The checklist really does a lot in helping that.Law enforcement has been fractured for years. By that, there are over 18,000 police departments in America and a little over 3,000 sheriff's departments and an unknown but significant number of federal partners involved in this equation. There's really very few standards. So there are a lot of ways of doing things when you bring two law enforcement agencies. They say city police department and a county sheriff's department. If they don't have that commonality in purpose and in function and in terminology and in tactics and familiarity, and then you add other partners to that, it makes it very, very difficult to be successful.You mentioned something about time, fighting the clock. Within the NTOA, we make a big point of trying to get people to appreciate that there's this good time and then there is bad time. In an active shooter scenario, the second the shooting starts, we're in bad time. We now have a responsibility to interrupt that cycle and get it into good time. Good time being the time in which law enforcement, fire, EMS is using to gain a tactical advantage to reduce the potential for serious injury or death and to save lives.Right now, when there's not an incident unfolding, we're in good time. So now is when fire, EMS, and law enforcement should be working together, speaking together, training together, functioning together as much as we can in anticipation of critical incidents, so that when we do come together, many of those problems don't even exist because we've already forecasted them, addressed them, and eliminated from the possibility of occurrence, through preparation and planning.Bill Godfrey:Yeah, and the all-important training and retraining. I ran some numbers here. This was actually just a few months ago. I was talking with somebody and it struck me. It's a little bit different all over the country where you are, but for the most part in public safety, it's 25 years of active duty before you retire out. There's just, at a certain point, a certain age, it's hard for the bodies to keep up with the physical demands of the job. So typical is 25 years and out.So if you factor in your attrition from retirement, from full career retirement, your attrition from some people who just leave the business for whatever reasons, your attrition for promotions and moving up or moving to different agencies, I was estimating that every police department sheriff's office, fire department, EMS agency, everybody out there is turning over somewhere around 7% of their workforce every year.So when you think about that and the importance of staying frosty on your Active Shooter Incident Management training, it is a never ending task to constantly be training the new people, coming back around, training the new supervisors and providing that ongoing refresher so that the retention is there as well, because it's not like you can do it one time in your career and hold onto it for 25 years. It just doesn't work like that.Thor Eells:Absolutely. That's very well said. That's really a very interesting number to hear. I had not heard anything like that before, but yeah, close to 10% of your workforce at any point in time is being new or unfamiliar. It would make sense that you would want be in a continual training cycle to develop the skill set necessary to function well. But I think unfortunately, as recent events have demonstrated to us in a number of occasions, that simply training alone does not equate to competency and proficiency.Bill Godfrey:Oh, yes. Correct. Absolutely.Thor Eells:We have even a greater obligation to be focused on the quality of our training as well as the critical feedback of our training is never be complacent, never settle for good enough. The standard that I tend to profess to people is any time you run through an evolution of something, if this were real, and it was your family involved, would you be comfortable with it?Bill Godfrey:That's a-Thor Eells:Every time.Bill Godfrey:That's a good benchmark. To me, one of the most critical components of the training that we do, the after shooter incident management training that we do, is the fact that we make people practice. For example, our advanced class is three days long. They're running 11 scenarios from dispatch to last patient transported. Those scenarios increase in difficulty. They increase in the numbers of shooters, the numbers of injured, all of those things, but it builds and there's repetition. Everybody rotates through the different jobs.So over the course of that three days, you get to practice. The simple analogy, and it's over-simplification, but for purposes of illustration, you're not going to get to the Super Bowl by practicing one time. You got to do it over and over and over again.Thor Eells:Right.Bill Godfrey:I think it's hard, today's day and age. Law enforcement, fire, EMS, the number of training requirements just keeps going up and up and up. But the ability to come off the road long enough to do your training is severely limited.Thor Eells:It's going the opposite direction. So as staffing through recruiting and retention is negatively impacted, the availability of personnel to attend training, and yet to meet your day-to-day obligations of service in any one of the disciplines of police, fire, or EMS, is tough. You could not have said it better.There are more competing interests in training today than ever before. It's easy to blame a chief or saying no to this and yes to that, etc-Bill Godfrey:Yes.Thor Eells:... without really fully appreciating all the different tasks that they have been given and ordered to have accomplished within said period of time.Bill Godfrey:Yeah. I don't know any chief that would actually say, "Yeah, I've got the time and money to get that training done. I just don't care enough to do it."Thor Eells:Correct.Bill Godfrey:That's just not what goes on.Thor Eells:No, it isn't. They're an easy scapegoat, but I have a pet peeve with regard to that whole thing, which is, well, we have to do more with less. Unfortunately, that has become so commonplace in our vernacular in this day and age, we've almost arrived at a point where we're beginning to either believe it or try to believe it. I'm constantly trying to argue that don't settle for that. Recognize there is one thing you can do with less and that's less.You can go talk to the most brilliant people on the planet, work whatever mathematical statistical formula you want or otherwise, that you can do one thing with less and that's less. The question then becomes, what do you want to do less of? Do you want less quantity? Do you want less quality? Or do you want less of both? But it'll be one of those three, but nonetheless, it will be less.That is something we have to be very cognizant of and do our utmost in safeguarding again, in recognizing if our training time is limited, then we need to prioritize it. We need to be very careful about recognizing what is most important. At the end of the day, no one has any problem with arriving at agreements that saving lies is at the top of the list. So when we have to pick and choose, we need to be mindful of that.Bill Godfrey:I completely agree with you. I think the other piece of that as a former fire chief, you're always having to make compromises. That's part of the job. Goes with the territory. If you're not willing to do that, then the job's not for you. You got to make decisions. You have to prioritize. You have to compromise. But I think the other piece of that, you also have to inform your boss, your city manager, your county manager, the mayor, your elected officials.You have to say, "Look, here's what we're doing. This is good. Here's what we're not doing because we can't do this. We don't have this, we don't have that. I don't expect you to act on it. I just want you to understand that. Do you have any questions about what we are, or we're not doing and why?"I think that that's something that often we forget to close the loop with the leadership to say, "We've got 1,000 hours of training requirements to fit into 120 hour bag. Something's not going to get done."Thor Eells:Right.Bill Godfrey:"Here's where we're at this year." You make those compromises. Yeah. It's a tough gig. Well, Thor, we're coming up on the end of our time. I am just so excited and so appreciative for what you're doing and the NTOA and just the support that you guys are throwing our way. What lies ahead for the NTOA? Anything coming up that you want to tease or talk about?Thor Eells:Well, yeah, we have several projects that we're working on that we're very, very excited about. One of our passions is in recognizing these critical incidents and what we train for is optimal performance in these incidents, is how do we assist in accomplishing that and ensuring that? While the ability to perform skills is important, we really believe that the crux to a successful and positive outcome is in decision-making.So we focused a lot lately on a program called brain science. It is a neuroscience, neuroplasticity program that helps people in any one of these disciplines (fire, EMS, police) be able to make decisions faster, more accurately under stress. So we're spending a lot of time looking at that and developing that and getting that pushed out into the field. We're very, very excited about that program.Bill Godfrey:That's so fascinating. We just recently, three or four months ago, recently added a module to the Active Shooter Incident Management advanced class on managing cognitive overload to avoid getting into cognitive lock. It's been fascinating to see that. The very first time we talked about it, we talked about it first thing in the morning on day one. We realized that was a terrible mistake.So then we tuned it in and put it right smack in the middle of the class on the afternoon to day two, when everybody was starting to feel that pressure. We've moved on from the simple scenarios. There's some complexity, there's difficulty, there's a lot of decisions to be made, a lot of cross-communication and it's very easy to get into cognitive overload.It's been a fascinating conversation to have with responders and talk about what that feels like and some of the coping mechanisms to recognize it in yourself, to recognize it in others and how to avoid the edge. I'd love to compare notes with you at some point on that.Thor Eells:Yeah, I'm super excited about this. I think it's just amazing in my research and looking at it. I have a son that works in special operations as a pilot, and he was the one that really helped turn me onto this a little bit. But our US Special Operations Command has adopted this and is using it wholesale. But perhaps a better example of the utility of this is professional sports are using this. Major League Baseball, the NFL, other sports.But probably the best example that I could use to endorse it, so to speak, would be Tom Brady has been using this for about three or four years. Many people would say that he's playing better now than he's ever been. He himself would say that. In fact, in one of his, I think interviews, he even mentioned that he's been using this type of training. It allows him to break a huddle and now more accurately, and with greater speed, assess the play that was called in the huddle versus what the defense is presenting to them, and then how to make the audibles to adjust, to exploit any potential weakness of that defense versus what they have, in terms of player packages, etc.When you think about it, the football game is still 60 minutes long. The play clock has not changed. But he will tell you that he can process much, much more information in a shorter period of time, or at least the staying period of time, as he did before. That's what's led to is improved performance. So I think the ability to take that and adapt it to public safety, fire, EMS and police and maximize the same potential in our performance would be a huge, huge service to our respective communities. So we're very excited about that.We're also very excited about we have developed public order standards now. So we're all way too familiar with a lot of the civil unrest that has been taking place here recently, resulting in a lot of property damage, a lot of injuries. How do we respond to that? Because what we have learned is that the tactics that we used 50 years ago do not translate to success today.Just as tactical teams were developed as a response to unique problems, we believe that law enforcement is at a crossroads, where they need to be looking at the creation of public order units and public order teams, which are their own sub specialty within law enforcement and how to interface, act, police, enforce, protect their communities in these environments. So that is probably the other area that we're excited to see, that we can make a difference in improving law enforcement's service to the public.Bill Godfrey:Well, and I can tell you from our side, our team is so excited about working with you guys on designing some of the exercise scenarios and the incident management support of that, to be able to exercise that in the class, both in a low fidelity way, and also not to give away the secret, but a very high fidelity way and a very immersive way of putting people in those roles and give them that opportunity that we were talking about earlier of just being able to practice.Thor Eells:No doubt.Bill Godfrey:Practice a couple different scenarios. Practice a couple different things. We are so excited to be working with your team on that and look forward to many more great things to come. Well, Thor, again, thank you so much for taking the time to chat today. I realize some people may be listening to this after the fact. So this is being announced on Tuesday, July 19th in 2022, if you happen to be hearing this podcast after the fact.But Thor, thank you for being here today. Thank you for the support. We look forward to working with you for years to come, to try to make a difference here for the common good.Thor Eells:Thank you so much. I really appreciate the opportunity to be here, and I appreciate the opportunity for us to be partnering with you as well. I do believe that this type of collaboration is going to make a difference.Bill Godfrey:I agree completely. Well, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for tuning in. We hope you've enjoyed the podcast. We are going to be back on track in dropping podcasts from a regular basis here moving forward. Look forward to talking to you on the next one. Until then, stay safe.

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

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

Episode 46: ASIM Basic and Counterstrike (Part 2)We are picking up from last week's topic about ASIM Basic to talk about the Counterstrike training system. Bill and Adam give some tips and tricks that will enhance your training as you run scenarios.Bill Godfrey:Today, we're going to pick up where we left off. You may remember, last week we were talking about the ASIM basic class, some tips for instructors that are either new or maybe a little rusty. We're going to pick up talking about the Counterstrike exercise system and how we facilitate that, and some tips and tricks that both Adam and I use when we're running those scenarios. There may be some people listening that are not familiar with the Counterstrike system, Adam, can you describe it for the audience?Adam Pendley:The Counterstrike board itself comes as a kit and it includes a large overhead view of a typical city or environment. The one that we typically use is the 29th Street mall, which is your typical outside, open-air, count center type mall. We also have available a school-type setting, an airport-type setting. There're different environments, it's a large overhead view and it's on a big game board, but we don't like to call it a game board because it's a training tool. In the kit, also includes some chips that act as movement for those that have been impacted by the incident, movement of the first responders, they're used in a certain way to do initial response, triage, transport, and allowing those that are taking the training to get actual inputs for a scenario that is fast-moving, but it's controlled enough that we can get to the training points we need. It starts with a large overhead view of the environment, but the kit also includes the position specific vests.It includes the staging area board, and it also includes some tools for command to use. The point is, that like a lot of the other training we do for active shooter incident management, the kit itself is really more about setting up a training environment, so you can do a tabletop exercise that has a realism to it and has some randomness to it, that allows what is happening, what the instructor presents, starts the scenario, it has a scenario go in a certain direction, but the input from the students kind of guides where the scenario ends up. I like to say a lot that the Counter-Strike board itself is more about up a training environment that focuses back on the training itself.I think that's really important for people to know, is that it's not just about, hey, moving some pieces around on a game board, it has nothing to do with that. It has to do with being able to do a scenario from start to finish that hits on the training points that are important to, not only be the ASIM process, but that are important to the agency that's using it for the training.Bill Godfrey:I think that's a really great description and overview. It gives you a sandbox, that allows you to get your students or your trainees up around the table. More than just a tabletop, it actually enables some functional role play. You can have them be in the different positions, simulate their radio calls, you're standing up the different command elements and walking through the scenario. So I think that's a great description, Adam. Thank you.Adam, let's talk a little bit, just take it from the beginning of, how do you set up your board when you're getting ready to do a scenario in the ASIM basic class?Adam Pendley:Sure. Throughout the training, throughout the four-hour block, the students will have an opportunity to do three scenarios. The first scenario is usually a relatively low complexity, typically a single shooter in one of the environments on the board that has enough room to show the movement of the responders and the movement of the survivors and those who have been injured. Typically just start with the bad guy chip in one of those areas on the mall scenario, I use the Macy's because it's got a nice amount of space to it. One of the interesting things about the Counter-Strike board is, it allows for randomness. There is a single die that represents what the shooter may do, so you roll that one single die, and it comes up with a number of people that have been shot, and you add that randomness to it.Then you call out those student numbers, the law enforcement chips each have a unit number on them, so you dispatch them to the scene. They arrive and park their vehicle and then they have a personnel chip that goes along with it, and represents them, the person, getting out of the police car and moving towards the crisis site. In that first scenario, you're really controlling the movement and making sure that everyone sees how the board works. You show, as you get to the point where you established tactical in a staging area, and all the positions that follow on, on the checklist, you walk through it slowly. The board allows for the bad guy to always, get the first move, if you will, until the bad guy has been eliminated in some way, but they can move through some spaces.Then the responders can move through some spaces. The board has a grid on it that allows for faster movement when you're indoors, slower movement when you're outdoors, because of distance. There's a lot of ways to control that movement, and what I try to encourage the instructors to understand, is that they need to have the full scenario in mind. Obviously, the students can make some decisions, that moving in a different direction, but the instructor is essentially the exercise controller, the exercise SIM cell and the exercise evaluator, all at the same time. It's also important at this point, when we're talking about things that add to success and things that might detract from the training, is to not over coach while the scenario is going on, let it unfold, make sure you're controlling the direction of that scenario, but don't provide too much input. Let them depend on the checklist, let them work it through, and then later you'll have the opportunity to add some more complexity for scenarios two and three.Bill Godfrey:I think that's a fantastic description. I love the comment about over coaching and we'll talk about that one a little bit more. One of the common mistakes, I'm going to call it a mistake, that may be a little bit harsh, but I'm going to call it a mistake anyways. One of the common mistakes I see with new instructors or instructors that are rusty, is that very first scenario, as you said, we try to make it a low complexity scenario. They get focused on trying to keep their bad guy alive or in play or, quite frankly, just trying to win. And they start moving the bad guy and you end up leaving this, just a string of casualties behind you in multiple locations. That actually is a fairly complex scenario and it's way too difficult for the first one.Responders for the very first scenario, struggling to get their feet underneath them. That's too difficult a scenario to give them. One of the mistakes and the corrections that I frequently provide is look, the very first one, keep your bad guy in one location. Like you said, using the Macy's store. Okay. Maybe I move around from one grid to the grid right next to it inside the store, but I'm not going to move all over the place. I'm going to basically stay there until they come and neutralize the threat by either taking me into custody or some other action. Have you seen that as well, Adam?Adam Pendley:Absolutely. On that first scenario, I usually almost always never leave that first environment. What I do is, you can actually slow down the responder a little bit. And you're just clear about that. You say, "Look, I realize that you would probably be able to make your way through Macy's very quickly, to address the threat. However, we're going to let some other parts of the scenario unfold", and then they understand that, right? You're controlling the pace at which that first scenario moves, and it needs to move slowly enough to see all the elements of the training, but absolutely let the first contact team make contact with the suspect. And when they reach the same grid, when they're within eyesight of each other, again, that's where the Counter-Strike tools come into play, usually have a contact team, that first one almost always has a good number, four officers on it.And they each get diced as well, and then they roll against the suspect. So with four officers on the contact team, they almost always will win the gun battle, so that the highest number out of the guns on the contact team versus the single gun of the suspect, that's how you decide who wins the shootout, if you will. That's really important, you want that first contact team to win. You want them to enjoy the idea that they've come in and eliminated the threat to save lives, right? So-Bill Godfrey:Yeah, that's the other classic new instructor mistake is trying to win, not your job to win. It's your job to lose. You just want to make them work for it a little bit.Adam Pendley:Then, after you built all these building blocks, you get to see how the board works. People understand that. It's always funny when you first are handing out, because they look like poker chips, right? The training tools for the responders and the survivors are all, they look like poker chips. Invariably you get the, "Oh, I'm all in", and all those jokes that go along with that. But then immediately afterwards, once they start doing it, they realize. I've had people comment that like, wow, I didn't realize that would be as realistic or as stressful as I expected it to be. Because, again, the training tool just provides inputs for them to have to make a good decision. After you get all that done, you do the module two, which we talked about with response integration.Now you can come back in that second scenario, everyone stay seated, and you actually call them up as their dispatch. It provides more realism to responding to an actual event, listening to the radio, since folks are responding. Now when you come in as 5th man, or when you come in as medical branch, you're having to depend on those people down range. Because at this point you shouldn't let everyone stand and look at the board. They're not learning anymore, now they're doing. When they come to their position, you may let them go to the board briefly to park their vehicle, like where they would click tactical or where they would establish staging that. But after that, they have to go a little further away in the room to actually work those positions and communicate down range, get that situational awareness that they need from those eyes and ears that are actually in the crisis site.Then that creates some additional view of them. In that scenario, typically as my second scenario, I will move through the theater, create some casualties in the theater as the bad guy, and then leave and go out into the parking garage. For the second scenario, I allow him to be contained, a little bit of a hostage scenario. Sometimes you can just say, "Hey, he is holed up behind a car", is there somebody in the car, you do not have a clean shot at him, so you're just going to have to communicate. Then that takes that first contact team and it gives them something to do, and then they have to remember to tell tactical, Hey, there are some casualties that are in the theater that still need to be secured, right? The second contact team, and there's so many training directions this can go, you don't want all of your responders all running to the barricaded subject because, while everyone's looking at the barricaded subject, there's still people bleeding to death in the theater, right?Early on, they have to separate those duties. Like, "Hey, you go back and secure the category collection point", then it teaches the importance of communication between police and fire, that you can have a secured warm zone, while you still maybe have a hot zone at another location in the crisis site. It really creates a lot of great conversations. We've increased the complexity, you allow for there to be some casualties in one location, a subject contained or barricaded in a second location. And then it gives all, by that point, every student in the room is engaged because you're having to build around a scenario that has a lot of security elements, a lot of importance about communicating where the casualty collection point is. A lot of communicating where the best ambulance exchange point is going to be, a lot of intelligence that has to be established as far as what's going on and how do we resolve this situation? So that second scenario is enough complexity to keep everybody busy.Bill Godfrey:Absolutely. I think one of the key things that we begin to build on and, and teach them, is you got to be able to do more than one thing at a time, from the management of this event, means you're doing multiple things at the same time. Now, each team may have, and really should only have, one particular mission. So as you've said in your example there, contact, one's got the bad guy pinned down in the parking garage, but contact two has got to be addressing the casualties and getting the casualty collection point back in the theater. So that idea of doing more than one thing at a time, I think is critical. You talked a little earlier about, sometimes they want to move a little fast and having to artificially slow them down.One of my favorite ways to slow them down is, like you said, you usually have that first contact team is generally going to be three or four officers. My favorite way to slow them down is to tell them they all have to talk about what they're going to do next before they move, where are they going to move and how are they going to move? And that's usually good for a three or four minute discussion, because nobody wants to be the strong headed one that just makes the decision for everybody else. it's always kind of fun to watch those dynamics. Have you seen that occur in some of the classes you've done?Adam Pendley:Sure, absolutely, and you can make them do that and get some real world experience out of it as well. That initial contact team, they can't just shoot the bad guy and then high five and that be it. They need to also do their security, immediate action plan and medical. Right? As soon as that suspect is down, the team that is standing there at the Counter-Strike training board, need to also communicate, okay, who has security? What are we going to do? If we hear additional gunfire, who's going to begin medical on these casualties, right? So, making them talk through those other training elements that many law enforcement has ever seen over the years. And then also for the fire EMS, when they arrive as the RTF, same thing, you can make them work through, discuss like, Hey, this patient has a serious chest wound.This patient has been shot in the leg and have them talk about why they would prioritize these red patients versus the yellow tag patients versus the green tag patients, and work through how they would manage the room. A lot of students like to use the room boss type training and concept. So they have the first RTF is in charge of making those decisions, those sort of things. All of that's really important. And I really liked that you emphasize the fact that you can do more than one thing at a time, and there's more than one way to do that second scenario, you can actually let the suspect escape, which that creates multiple tactical decisions that have to be made while you're still trying to care for patients. That's a good way to add complexity. The second scenario, you can have more than one suspect. The only thing I don't like about more than one suspect to add complexity, is that it's just so rare. When you talk about active shooter type incidents across the country, more than one suspect is very unusual.Bill Godfrey:I completely agree, it's almost a bridge too far in the basic class for that first four-hour block. I think it takes it level to a complexity that you just doesn't have time to build to.Adam Pendley:Right. On that note, when we talk about mistakes or things that I don't do is, there is almost zero training value in ever trying to ambush the fire EMS that are responding. I don't shoot at the RTFs. That would be a big mistake.Bill Godfrey:100%. It's negative training.Adam Pendley:Now I will say that I actually did it one time, and I had a transport officer, who was standing at the tactical and triage table, but he was not communicating with his peers. And he kept calling on the radio to have [inaudible 00:18:27] send the ambulance to a particular location. And literally, he was not listening to the fact that we had the suspect vehicle in that same parking lot that he was sending the ambulance to. And we tried to coach him, we tried to say, make sure you communicate, there's security issues there. And he kept pushing forward and pushing forward.So, as the instructor, I did actually shoot at an ambulance and we had a medic who was a casualty, but it became a great training point, but it was only because his lack of communication was so egregious that we had to use it as a learning point. But that's the only time and out of the dozens and dozens of times I've done this, these scenarios. So that's really important, I think, to add, but one of the values of letting the suspect leave the scene, because that has happened many times across the country, is you don't want, and I use this turn of phrase with the students all the time, is known bleeding is not going to stop while you search for unknown threats. So if you have no additional stimulus and you're able to secure a warm zone, then secure it and begin the treatment of patients, while you continue to do those other law enforcement things that have to be done.Bill Godfrey:1000%. I'm so glad you brought that up because I had that on my list to mention the most common, consistent mistake that's made by law enforcement, is that failure to shift gears when we go from an active threat to an inactive threat or a question mark. It's super easy if the threat is taken into custody or the threat is neutralized or subdued or whatever, but when the threat leaves or is in the wind or a ghost or the shooting stops, maybe the threat kills himself, but you don't know that, and the shooting stops and there's no explanation why. It's just this trap that law enforcement falls into a 100% of the time, to begin working and searching for the suspect and beginning clearing operation. And even though we lay out the priorities very clearly, active threat is number one, rescue is number two.Clearing is the third priority, rescue is supposed to come before that. And everybody always agrees when you say it in class, but when you give them a scenario where they've got active gunfire or active threat, and then the shooting stops and they don't know why. The way I like to do it, Adam, and I'm not sure how you do it, but the way I like to do, is I just take my bad guy chip and I pick him up, put him on the bucket and they go, "What are you doing?" I go, "Well, you've lost contact with the bad guy". "Well, what do you mean?" "Well, you don't know where he is". He may be still on the scene. He may have left the scene. You don't know he's not on the board anymore. And it just generates this element of confusion and searching.And it provides that opportunity to say, "At what point are you going to switch gears?" "At what point are you going to stop searching for this and acknowledge you've changed phases from an active threat to a war. You've gone from a hot zone to a warm zone because you don't have an active threat anymore." And I think that's a really, really important scenario. So one of your three scenarios, you've got to kind of force that issue. The other one that I think is a really good one that generates some really great conversation. You know, Adam, you mentioned earlier about the, the dice roll off in the gun battles. And, and so if you've got a contact team of four, each one of them gets a die and then a single bad guy gets the die. And so you got four rolling against one and whoever gets the high number wins.Well every once in a while. Usually at least once during a class, the bad guy's going to win the roll off. And then you take one of the responder chips, one of those law enforcement contact chips, you turn them over and you say, "Okay, that is now a casualty. You've got an officer down." And then my suspect, I almost always say, "I'm breaking contact that is your turn. I'm breaking contact and moving away." And now you look at the three or four officers that are part of that, contact team and go, "What are you going to do?" "Are you going to stay with your guy that's down?" "Are you all going after the bad guy?" "Are you going to split your team?" You've got 60 seconds to make a decision, go. And I always like hearing that conversation. How does that play out for you when you do that kind of stuff?Adam Pendley:Not only is there that decision-making, of how do you continue to pursue the active threat? Because obviously you don't want the threat to continue to go off and hurt innocent people as well, and how do you begin that officer rescue? The question then becomes, do they really lose all management of the incident? A lot of times, the officer who may be injured may not be a serious injury. It may be a yellow tag or a green tag, and then you have to make the decisions. Are you still going to stick with the RTF process and allow that officer to be transported in an EMS unit where he's going to get the best prehospital care that he can get? Or are you going to default to what a lot of law enforcement agencies do and you quickly pull up a police car, and he's bouncing around in the back of the plastic seat while trying to rush to the nearest hospital?It's one of a hundred different training discussions that come up using the board as an input when you're doing those injects during the actual scenario. It's all a great discussion to see how they sort it out, because what many of us who are listening know, is there's not necessarily a right or wrong answer for some of these wicked problems, right? You just have to make a decision and do the best you can with what you're presented with.Bill Godfrey:I completely agree, and I think this has been a great conversation. I want to just, as we, as we wrap up here, a couple of other tips for working with the Counter-Strike. So it's when you're doing the ASIM basic class, and it's the first time people are seeing it, you've got to keep it very simple. There's some rules that we have that go with how to play this and the rules of engagement, if you will. It has to do with using time on turns and other things like that. When you're doing the basic class, you rarely need to do any of that, because you're just trying to get people to understand the roles. But when you're coming back to do retraining with people that have seen it before, sometimes you need to increase the difficulty level.And one of the ways that I like to do that is to put them on a clock, where they get 60 seconds to have their turn, to communicate with each other, make a decision, decide where they're going to move, how they're going to move, what they're going to do. And it's amazing how putting them on a clock and then ending their turn at that time, really changes the dynamic and puts them under a lot of pressure to communicate very quickly with each other and very effectively. And then of course, if I get some that are really squared away, I'll adjust the time down and give them 30 seconds. Or, if they're struggling a little bit, I'll move it to two minutes. I think the rules actually suggest a 60 second clock, but the instructors should adjust that number to keep the difficulty level appropriate for the group that you're working with. Would you agree?Adam Pendley:Even in the four hour block, when you get to the third scenario, you can pick something that hits on the training needs that are important in your jurisdiction. If having more than one casualty collection point has been a point of concern or friction, use that to increase the complexity, more than one suspect. One of the scenarios I really like to use is that, because by this time they usually get it, right? So I let the initial active shooter run its course. And while they're transporting patients, I'll take that second suspect ship and create kind of a suspect vehicle in one of the parking garages. But I don't tell anyone at the board what that is. I will actually go to the incident commander, do a mock telephone call and be a witness who saw the suspect get out of this vehicle, and then watch the communication process work in reverse, because everything we've done so far has been the crisis site communicating out to command.Well, what if they get that real-world phone call that says, "Hey, we think another suspect vehicle in another location." How does that get communicated down through tactical? And how is that response? Sometimes you can even make that call, go to the fire chief, make the fire chief get that call from a witness that he just happens to know, and how does he communicate that to law enforcement? Working the process and working the communication structure that you have in place, working it in reverse, is sometimes a very good training scenario as well.Bill Godfrey:I think it absolutely is. The one other thing that I wanted to mention is, in the Counter-Strike kit, we also have these scenario cards. Now we never use them in the basic class because as I said, we're just trying to get them through the basics. But when you've got people that are coming back and using it over and over again, you don't want it to get stale and you don't want to get boring. So what we've crafted with the cards, when you've got a group that's been through the basic training already, and you're just trying to do refreshers and roll call training, or give them a quick 10 minutes scenario, 15 minute scenario, is you can hand out the cards and you can let one of the responders play the bad guy. As the bad guy, you get a goal card.This is your objective. This is what you're trying to do. And it gives you some rules of engagement. And then there's also some wild cards, if you will, that give you different things. For example, you can chain, and as the bad guy, you can chain and lock the doors. You can put IEDs in, things like that. And then on the good guy side, we've got things like the SWAT team was training down the road, they're immediately available. You have an undercover detective that is among the victims, that can take the suspect into custody. These kind of wild cards that can just dramatically change the rate and the pace of the play and increase the difficulty level of the training. But it also really works to keep it fresh. Have you got any other tips or tricks that you want to throw out for the crowd before we wrap it up?Adam Pendley:One of the other tips and tricks is we have learned over the years that the ASIM process, building that response from the ground up, applying a tactical group supervisor, and then integrating fire and EMS, works well for other types of scenarios as well. You can start your scenario with a bank robbery that then turns into a pursuit in a shooting. The scenario can be, a vehicle has crashed into a building and somebody has gotten out and has used a knife to attack folks. Even though we call it the Active Shooter Incident Management process, this process works for a variety of different types of scenarios. When you've had a real world incident that you want to recreate in a training environment, that's another really good way to use this board.I think, especially as we close, the big emphasis here is this is not a, hey, we come and do the four-hour train the trainer course, and then you have this Counter-Strike kit that then sits in the closet at the station and is never pulled out again. The way this training is the most effective is to, use it on a regular basis. It's meant to be easy. You pull it out, you set the board up, you call in a few people on duty, run through a couple of scenarios, kind of keep that process fresh in their mind, and put it back in the box and you do it again next week. The more frequently you're able to use the training tool, the better everyone is when the real world incident occurs.Bill Godfrey:The other really key thing there, Adam is, if you do it with frequency, the length of time, it takes you to run these scenarios and refresh people decreases. You can run scenarios in as little as 10 minutes, just to remind people of the process of you coming back to them. It doesn't need to pull people off the road for an hour. Ten to 15 minutes if you're just doing quick refreshers can be enough. If it hasn't been a long time since the last time you did it.Well, Adam, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us both about the ASIM basic class and some tips for instructors that are out there trying to teach this, or might be a little rusty. And then also the deep dive we did on the techniques that we use for facilitating scenarios with Counter-Strike. I really appreciate your time being here.Adam Pendley:Yes, sir.Bill Godfrey:All right. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for tuning in. We hope you enjoyed it. If you have any suggestions or questions for us, please send them in to info@c3pathways.com. Again, that email address is info@c3pathways.com. I'd like to thank our producer, Karla Torres as always for putting together these podcasts. And, until next time, stay safe.

Episode 45: ASIM Basic and Counterstrike (Part 1)We are splitting this week's topic in two parts. First, we are discussing some tips and suggestions for instructors teaching ASIM Basic classes. Next week we will continue with the Counterstrike System we use for training scenarios.Bill Godfrey:Welcome to the Active Shooter Incident Management podcast. My name is Bill Godfrey, your podcast host. I've got with me today one of our C3 instructors, Adam Pendley, who's joining us from the law enforcement side. And today's topic, we're going to talk about... We're actually going to talk about two things. We're going to talk about the ASIM Basic class and some tips and suggestions for instructors that are either new or maybe a little rusty. And then, we're also going to talk about the Counter-Strike system that we use for doing the training scenarios. And so, we're going to split this podcast into two parts. Part one, we're going to talk about ASIM Basic, and part two, we're going to talk about the Counterstrike system. Adam, thanks for being here with me.Adam Pendley:Yes, sir. Glad to be here.Bill Godfrey:So Adam, talk a little bit about some of the high points that you see in the ASIM Basic class that you think would be good things for our instructors who maybe have had a... maybe they haven't taught one in a year or so, with the gap with COVID, for those high points of what's the point? What are you trying to get home? Because ASIM Basic's a four hour class. It's not a lot of time to cover the material.Adam Pendley:Sure, absolutely. So, the basic class itself, it's remarkably low tech, meaning you could set it up in a... As long as you have enough space, you could set it up at a firehouse. You could set it up in the conference room at your police station, because the board itself does not require any sort of radios or any sort of high tech stuff. The most high tech thing is the PowerPoint presentation to present the material, which of course you can do that on any screen, a television monitor, or even in a small group setting, even on a laptop if you had to. But the modules for the presentation, there's only two modules. And module one really hits, I think, on one of the key points of what is the main deliverable for understanding the Active Shooter Incident Management process, and that is that we're fighting two things: the killer and the clock.And it starts off with that material. And when I help coach other instructors, I make sure that they emphasize the point that... like some of the other material we use, that you have people that are about to be threatened by an active shooter. And even though the active shooter, that threat, has to be dealt with, he may be the one trying to kill people. The other thing that's going to kill people is the clock, that if we don't have a good response or rapid response between police, fire, and EMS to get in, deal with the active threat, begin rescue, and continuing the clearing process, those priorities are the early focus of unit one. And then, it kind of goes into making sure that we understand the common terminology that has become the best practice across the country, and also understanding the validated ASIM checklist process.And there's a very good demonstration video that has some audio to it that kind of shows how people would arrive and work through the checklist. And then, we discuss briefly how... after you get past the initial response, how you continue through the clearing process, how you also have to think about early intelligence, PIO, and reunification. And although in the four-hour class, we don't often have time to get deep into those topics, it's certainly part of that module one discussion. So, module one is really a boiled down version of most of the talking points that we we think about when we think about the Active Shooter Incident Management process.Bill Godfrey:I think that's a fantastic overview. We shifted gears a number of years ago to focus the message on, it's not just the bad guy, it's also the clock, because you've got to get ahold of that time that it takes you to get in, rescue people, stop the bleeding, and then get them on an ambulance to the hospital. I mean, that's the other thing is, sometimes we get into them quickly and then we kind of... We bumble things a little bit trying to get onto the ambulance on the way to the hospital, so that... The thread and the clock, I think, is a huge thing. And the terminology, Adam, I... Some of the high points for the terminology contact team?Adam Pendley:Right. So, we define contact team as... A lot of police agencies understand contact team as kind of that hunter killer team that is going after the active threat. Well, in reality, a contact team is a group of two to four officers. And the number of officers aren't as important. That's a policy-based decision. But it's some number of officers that are downrange doing security work. So, it is a common term for the team of officers that may be... They may be the team that's going after the threat.They may be a team that's securing a casualty collection point. They may be a team that is securing an ambulance exchange point, or a corridor, or providing a strategy that's guided by the tactical to hold a floor, or to hold a stairwell. So, contact team... We try to broaden that term a little bit to understand it as any sort of downrange security work.Bill Godfrey:Boy, that's a very, very good description, Adam, for those that are listening. I don't think there's very many places teaching this anymore. But they used to have so many names for different teams, these trailer teams and search teams. And it just got... It made the thing way more complicated than it needed to be. And so, we split it into contact teams and rescue task forces.Contact teams focus on security problems, just like you said. Rescue task forces focus on medical problem, but they have their own security with them. Now, you also mentioned casualty collection point and ambulance exchange point. So, can you talk a little bit about what each of those are?Adam Pendley:Sure. A casualty collection point is an area within the warm zone. And what we, again... Real quickly, what we mean by that is... The entire area, when we first respond is probably considered a hot zone until we have isolated, contained, or captured, or eliminated the active threat. Right? So, once we are able to push through an area and it is no longer a hot zone, we establish those casualties, or those people that have been impacted by the event, into a secured area within the warm zone where law enforcement can begin initial care, assessing patients, doing law enforcement triage, which is simply, "Hey, this person is... A serious injury is probably a red patient. These folks have some injuries, but they're able to move around. They're probably a green patient."And calling out those numbers back to the rest of response is really important. But once you establish that casualty collection point, you are immediately ready to call for rescue task forces to respond. And of course, as many of us on the call know, that rescue task forces are a mixed discipline law enforcement and some sort of medical element working together, moving down range from the staging area to a known casualty collection point, a warm zone area. So, the security element gets them there safely. The medical element works for triage. And they make decisions about patient care once they get into the casualty collection point.Bill Godfrey:I think that's a perfect, perfect description of the casualty collection point. In a perfect world, which we do not always get, when the thing flows optimally, we're looking for the contact teams to quickly establish the casualty collection point. They're already down range. They know the lay of the land. They can look around. They understand the security implications. They know what they can and can't secure. And so, they're better suited to figure that out.And so, we're hoping that the contact teams will establish a casualty collection point, so when the RTFs move up, they're moving up to a known casualty collection point. That doesn't always happen. Sometimes, it just doesn't get done before the RTFs get down range and that's okay. But that's our goal is to get them into a casualty collection point. So Adam, talk a little bit about ambulance exchange point and how that differs from a casualty collection point.Adam Pendley:Sure. So again, once the RTF is into a casualty collection point... And to the point you made, once an RTF is there, they may have to assist with continuing to consolidate some patients into a casualty collection point, trusting law enforcement to secure that as a warm zone so we know that we have the safety measures that we need in place to begin that indirect threat patient care. But then, once that RTF... And hopefully, relatively rapidly, they do their own triage. And they start to separate a little further. And they have those red tag critical patients that need to be transported right away, then those yellow tag patients that have important care needs that may be able to kind of go secondary to the red patients, and then those green tag patients. And then also, the RTF would unfortunately separate those patients that are now deceased or black tag patients as well.But once they have that first critical patients that are ready to be transported, in cooperation with their law enforcement security element... They may have come in to the environment through the front door, where everyone else rushed in to deal with the active threat. But once they're inside, they may see a service door that's off to the back, of the room that provides much better access to ambulances, requires much less caring of the patients, and allows us to move them with a lot less effort, and again, more quickly, because we're constantly fighting the clock. And they say, "Hey, right outside this door, can we secure this as an ambulance exchange point?" And so, through law enforcement, we need an additional contact team to secure that ambulance exchange point. Law enforcement handles that. The medical side, calling up through triage and the transport group supervisors, they create a route for the ambulances to come into that ambulance exchange point, pick up the next patient that needs to go, and then pull out.And one or two ambulances at the most, kind of in a flow, go to that ambulance exchange point, load a patient, and then get on off to the hospital. What that allows for is you don't have ambulances lined up. You create a good traffic pattern. You create a secured area where you're... Once you're bringing a patient outside, obviously we're still in a warm zone. We don't have any known threats. However, once we start bringing patients outside, that adds to the security concerns. So, we want to secure that area as an ambulance exchange point, move patients out, get them onto the rigs, and get them to the hospital as quickly as possible.Bill Godfrey:Yep, absolutely. Perfect. I sometimes get asked by Fire EMS folks, "Well, wait a minute. That sounds like you're talking about the loading zone." And it is, with one notable exception. In a standard mass casualty incident where you've got triage treatment and transport, your loading zone set up, you don't have a security concern at the loading zone. The ambulance exchange point assumes that there is a security zone. You're either working on the edge of the warm zone or just inside the warm zone. And so, that loading zone, if you will, requires security. And that's why we use the term ambulance exchange point to define that that particular area for loading ambulance as one that requires some security.So, I think that's a great description. Okay. So, you talked about mod one. We got the suspect and the clock terminology, the checklist, which of course, if you haven't seen the Active Shooter Incident Management checklist, it kind of runs through the heart of everything that we do and lays out the process, and the generally recommended sequence for how to do things. We learned experimentally that the sequence matters in terms of how quickly things can get done. So Adam, let's move on to mod two. Tell me a little bit about what you're covering in module two and what the focus of that is.Adam Pendley:Sure. So, right at the end of module one, that's the time where we would get the students up and they do a kind of an initial walk through scenario, learning how to use the Counterstrike board. And we have especially tactical triage, and transport working together, command working together, and police and Fire EMS working together, the command area working together at staging. And it's very bumpy. We know, in all of our training classes, that first scenario is a little bumpy for folks to kind of digest the process and realize why this is important. So, module two picks right up with... The title is Response Integration. And it emphasizes what the students have just seen, that integrating the response at all levels is so important that even the first officer through the door, they're contributing... On a contact team, they're contributing to response integration by remembering to do that size up report, by remembering to call out the casualties that they see, because that information is so important to the follow on responders, and especially to scale the response from the fire EMS side.So, response integration starts there. Then, we talk about response integration at staging, that we need fire, police at the staging area, at the same staging area. It's so critically important, so we can do response integration through the RTF, get those steady, start leaning forward, start working together to lean forward, again, to work against the clock. And then, we talk a lot about the importance of response integration at the tactical triage and transport level. And for those that might not recall, the tactical starts with what we call the fifth man concept, that after there is some number of contact teams that are in the crisis site, that are dealing with the active threat, that someone has to stay put and begin controlling the follow-on responders and applying some tactical direction.So, that's the tactical group supervisor who's right there on the edge of the warm zone, close enough to control who goes in and who comes out, but also just far enough away that that first Fire EMS supervisor feels comfortable assigning someone to go down range and stand shoulder to shoulder with the tactical group supervisor to become the triage group supervisor and the transport group supervisor. So, that tactical triage and transport working together is the heart of the response integration, truly. And we spend a lot of time kind of explaining that. But the response integration continues further once... A little further out of the crisis site in a cold zone, you have that ranking Fire EMS supervisor, who is the medical branch director. And then, you also have law enforcement supervisors who arrive, who become the incident commander.And then, we talk briefly, toward the end of module two, how, as you're scene continues to grow, that initial law enforcement supervisor who was in command becomes a law enforcement branch. And then, there's another law enforcement supervisor who becomes the incident commander. And there's an opportunity, at this point, as we have shared jurisdictional authority, that there's an opportunity for us to create a unified command and an operation section chief. So, we kind of finish out the discussion about response integration and how important it is at each level of the response.Bill Godfrey:So, I'm curious, Adam, what sticks out in your mind as kind of... For an instructor that's been through the training and is either a little rusty or a new instructor, what sticks out in your mind as kind of the common mistakes you see on that, when they're covering mod one, mod two, and get into the Counter-Strike scenarios?Adam Pendley:I think the common mistake is to get too worried about how some of your local terminology may be a little different and that causes you to lose sight of the process. Obviously, when you're teaching anything, you're teaching kind of the perfect way to do it, that this is... You start at A, and you work through the process, and you practice... When you're practicing firearms, you're practicing in a very controlled environment and you're practicing doing it right. Obviously, the reality is that, under the stress of an actual incident, you may have to be creative. Same thing here, we should stick to the process and the way the material is laid out as closely as possible to provide that very detailed and accurate practice, so when the real world hits us, we have some things to fall back on.Right? So, I think it's a common error too, for both the students and sometimes the instructors, to worry too much about, "Well, in our policy it says this," or, "Hey, when we went to this last week, it said that." I understand that. That might get in the way. But let's practice doing it the right way first, and then make adjustments as we go. So, I think that... Sometimes, across the country, terminology gets in the way a little bit. But the good news is... What I would also say is a common success is that it's amazing how often a relatively low tech training environment creates so many new discussions.Just recently, we were delivering an ASIM Basic Train the Trainer course. And the agency that we went to had a very good, using the correct terminology, spelled out policy, but the policy was written by the fire side. And they talked a lot about staging. But they realized, during the training, that there was nowhere in the policy that indicated that law enforcement needed to come to the same staging area. So, it was a big thing for them to have that discussion and go back to the drawing board to make sure that that was included in the policy.Bill Godfrey:Yeah, it's interesting. And it's kind of along the lines of your highlight there on terminology and slight differences. One of the common mistakes I see is just that the line of communication, who talks to who, and how does the flow work? Contact teams talk to tactical. Tactical talks to law enforcement branch. Law enforcement branch, of course, is co located at the command post with the incident commander. But you'll see contact teams that just, out of habit or nervousness or anxiety, they'll call out on the radio, "Contact two to command", and kind of missing that. So, I see some of that. And I used to see that happen on both law enforcement and on the Fire EMS side as well, just some confusion over the positions. But the other kind of common mistake I see is that what we're looking to do...One of the reasons that we co-locate tactical, triage, and transport together is... They've got different missions and they're working different radio channels, but they can kind of talk and de-conflict that and work that out. But one of the things that we want to do is, when law enforcement's the only one down range, tactical owns the whole mess, security and medical all alike. But once it gets triage and transport there, and then gets the task forces downrange, that medical traffic, if you will, that medical radio traffic should dump over to the fire EMS side.But I frequently see both law enforcement on contact teams, and, quite honestly, tacticals that continue to get wrapped up in trying to carry forward the casualty counts and the medical information and coordinating a lot of things that, quite frankly, that's what triage and transport are there to do. Are there any others like that, that stick out in your mind, Adam, common things?Adam Pendley:Yeah, absolutely. And kind of as an extension of what you just said, I find it that... Again, as more law enforcement supervisors and even Fire EMS supervisors arrive, they spend a lot of time worrying about the casualty count, the number. And that number is going to change as the situation evolves. And sometimes, it's important to change their focus a little bit to how many patients still need transport, right? That's the only important number during the initial response.Bill Godfrey:Yeah, absolutely. How many do you have left in front of you.Adam Pendley:Exactly. The count of what we had earlier, we'll sort that out. And what we teach obviously, in module two, is how important that transport log is. That is ultimately the final accountability of where your survivors have been transported. Sometimes, I see a lot, where what I call just situational awareness type information, those counts, get in the way of trying to understand the forest for the trees, if you will, trying to understand the Intel that you're receiving, trying to understand the bigger picture. A lot of leadership gets really bogged down in trying to count numbers, when in reality, they should be looking at the bigger picture. So, we talk about that a lot. And then, the line of communication... What's really interesting, again, in the counter strike training environment, is we don't use radios. We actually just do... We spread folks out a little bit. And then, their voice becomes their radio.So, we usually have to get people to change from saying, "Well, I would say this, or I would say that." No, just use your voice, act as if you're on your radio channel, and say, "Tactical from contact team one, we've established a casualty collection point in this location, in the environment." Right? And what that really does, and people really start to buy into this once they do it a couple of times, is a lot of these scenarios, in the real world, you've never been to anything like it. So, your brain does not have any, any pre-programmed messages to fall back on, unless you go through this training.And then, when you go through this training, you're really creating some pre programming messages, so that under stress, you know what to say when the real world then happens. So, keeping that, trying to make people understand that using their voice as if they're talking on the radio is a really important training tool.Bill Godfrey:Yes, absolutely. I think that that is spot on. Okay. So, that really kind of wraps us up talking about the ASIM Basic class. We are going to come back in part two and talk about the Counterstrike component of it, and kind of how we facilitate those scenarios. Adam, thanks so much for being here with us. You're good to come back next week and talk about the Counterstrike scenario?Adam Pendley:Yes, sir. I'll be happy to come back.Bill Godfrey:All right. Sounds good. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us on the podcast. If you have any suggestions or questions, please email them to us at info@c3pathways.com. Thank you to our producer, Karla Torres. We'll hope to have you back next week for part two of this. Until next time, stay safe.

Episode 44: 911 Communication Center Challenges in Active Shooter Events (Part 2)In Part 2 of this week's podcast, we are continuing our topic of 911 and the dispatch center during an active shooter event.Bill Godfrey:Welcome to the Active Shooter Incident Management Podcast. My name is Bill Godfrey, your podcast host. Today we're picking up part two coming back to our topic of 911 and the dispatch center during an active shooter event. I've asked our three instructors that were here for part one to come back and join us again. We've got Ken Lamb from the law enforcement side. Ken, thanks for coming back.Ken Lamb:Yes, sir. You're welcome.Bill Godfrey:Tom Billington from fire EMS.Tom Billington:Glad to be here again. More good information to cover.Bill Godfrey:Fantastic. And Leeanna Mims. Good to see you again.Leeanna Mims:Glad to be back.Bill Godfrey:All right, so let's get into part two. Let's talk about the non 911 phone calls that have to be made and come in. I'm talking about, I need mutual aid but I don't have an automatic CAD connection so I have to call this agency on the phone. Then the agency has to check with a supervisor, they've got to call me back. I've got every supervisor in the agency calling in because they think they're important enough to get a personal briefing on what's going on, on the incident. I've got a handful of notifications I've got to make to all of the off duty chiefs that don't, well, we used to all wear pagers, but don't respond to their notifications. We're required to give them these notices. I need to call EOC, emergency management, all these activations.And then you've got the media calling in. First of all, did I miss anything in that windup? And then what are some of the tips and suggestions we've got on how to manage that volume of calls coming in and out that are not 911, but still somewhat, I wouldn't call them all essential, but they're certainly related to the call.Tom Billington:I think one of the things that I've experienced in my career is you have to have systems in place, whether it's a reverse 911, automatic paging, automatic phone messaging, where instead of calling nine or 10 supervisors, the dispatcher pushes one button, it sends a message to nine or 10 supervisors - here's what's going on. Again are you talking about like systems like Everbridge, IPAWS, all those?Bill Godfrey:Yes.Tom Billington:That way. You don't have one dispatcher making multiple phone calls. And also you're going to get the politicians and the higher-ups calling you and you don't want to hang up on the mayor, that's not always a good job. So you want to make sure that you have a dispatcher that can handle that type of pressure, a separate person, just for that. We used to call it rumor control. It's phone calls that were not 911 intentive, but they were about the incident and they needed to talk to somebody to get an update.Ken Lamb:Yeah, just to add on to what Tom was saying, I think an idea as far as who to bring in to be the conduit to some of those communications would be your local EOC. Who is going to be more than willing and able to assist in these incidents and they have the contacts established. And letting them know exactly the need to know information, as well as plugging in your PIO, public information officer, and utilizing social media to get that information out to the public. Because presumably there's going to be some intelligence that comes in through some of those phone calls from the public at least, and you want a way to funnel some of that information.And when we talk about some of those internal contacts, I think that you can solve a lot of heartburn by having a notification system, to what Tom was saying, and making sure that you're putting out that information to the internal contacts, as well as the media, so that everyone's getting the same information. Because the last thing you want to do is start providing different information to different people. You want one clear and consistent message.Tom Billington:And, Ken, a good example of that through our history is the Amber alert. There is now a system in place where somebody types in a couple of words, push a button and thousands of people hear the right information that they all agree on and it goes out. So that's a real good example.Leeanna Mims:Well, and you know in advance who some of those calls are going to be from that are going to overload your system. And you have to have those discussions with them ahead of something happening and let them know what kind of procedures that you have in place. And one way to do that is with status updates, over whatever system that you have, and making sure ahead of time they know we are going to tell you as soon as we can what it is it's going on. On certain things this is how we have it categorized or broken down. Trust you're going to get an automatic notification. You're going to get an automatic notification again when we hit certain benchmarks.And for the most part, in a lot of those calls that are coming in, if they know that ahead of time, that's going to be all that they need. They need to be able to answer questions that they're receiving. And, in some cases, depending on who it is in your system, they have reason to know. They really do. But you don't want to make 50 phone calls. And then again, what Ken brought up, too, is the PIO. Your PIO in those cases really can serve as a liaison officer in helping field those calls, help dispatch sort what is immediate and what can wait till later.Ken Lamb:And I think in the context of this conversation, when we were talking about the call center dispatch center is recognizing that you need someone to start working on all this information that's making it into the dispatch center or the call receiving center, and reaching out to either the officer or the incident commander on the ground and saying it would be helpful for you send an officer up here to start sorting this information. Or reaching out to a comm center supervisor and saying we need someone else over here to start sorting through this information. Because the reality is there's nothing stopping this information from making it to the communication center. The important aspect is having a process in place to organize it, synthesize it, go through it, find out what's necessary and what's not. And then get it to the people that need to know in an efficient manner. So that if it's important and you need to act on, you can as quickly as possible.Bill Godfrey:And I don't want to leave this without distinguishing between two things. So one is the need of the incident itself. And when I say that I mean the idea that the intelligence officer needs to be able to go through the CAD notes, go through the incoming 911, go through the incoming text messages that came through the 911 texting system, and be able to process that for any actionable information related to the incident. So that's one bucket. The other bucket and the one we were just talking about that I think is, I don't want to say this in relation of importance, but certainly in terms of volume, is the bucket of all of those, what I'll call utility calls. Calls that the dispatchers have to make to get mutual aid moving, the notification calls, the calls that are coming into them.And, Leanna, you mentioned making arrangements for plans ahead of time, and I think part of that needs to be the supervisory staff at the comm center, having some discussions with the chiefs and with their higher-ups, to let them know there's a habit of people calling in and we get it, but when we have something like this, we're going to be slammed. What can we do? Can I say to you, when you call in, I don't have time to talk, but I need some additional people here. Can you send me a couple additional bodies just to kind of handle those what I'll call utility calls. You don't necessarily need to know how to use the CAD system. Because quite frankly, if you're a field responder and you've never been in 911, you walk in and sit down one of those consoles and you're lost. You don't have a clue how to use the radio, how to use the CAD system. Quite frankly, even how to use the phone.But at least with that bucket of utility calls, someone from the chief ranks or the supervisory ranks or just some additional line personnel, can come in and begin to handle some of those phone calls. We didn't specifically talk about texting on the 911 system, so I do want to mention that before we leave it. Many dispatch centers, not all, but many have implemented the ability to receive text messages sent to 911. And some more successfully than others. Part of what I want to hit on here is dispatchers, because they're so overloaded are, I think it was Tom earlier that said how quickly can I get them off the phone? How quickly can I say we've got that information we need to get off the phone, and move on to the next one.They're moving so quickly that they might move right over a key piece of information that really matters. And unfortunately we've seen this on a couple of after actions where it was discovered that there was some fairly actionable information that could have really mattered on the scene. And it just got missed because there was one person on duty or two people on duty trying to handle all this stuff. And so it's not like anybody did anything wrong. It's just the reality of it. But I didn't want to leave this topic without kind of talking about that.Tom Billington:And, Bill, I agree totally with the texting thing. There are rural areas of the country, which we teach at, they don't have all this technology.Bill Godfrey:Or more than one dispatcher on duty.Tom Billington:Right. So they have what's called a chain letter calling where the dispatcher calls one person, a fire officer or law enforcement officer, and that person's position is responsible for calling other positions, et cetera, et cetera. And so it's interesting how even the rural areas, they're very small, one or two dispatchers, three or four deputies, maybe volunteer fire department. There are things you can do if you practice it and put these systems in place.Bill Godfrey:Yeah. I think I've heard it called call tree before. Anybody else heard it called anything else? Okay. All right. Very good. Let's move on now. Let's talk a little bit about, so we're past the initial call, so we've got the call dispatched, the units are there, we're starting to move through the incident. Maybe the suspect is in custody or down, we're at the 10 minute mark moving into it. One of the things that I wanted to take a minute to talk about was kind of the typical timeline of these things and some of the key benchmarks, including elapsed time notifications. And so I want to talk about those for a minute.Ken Lamb:Right. I think one of the first critical benchmarks is for the arriving officer to identify the hot, warm, and cold zones. And it can be so difficult to forget because of the amount of information that that person is taking in who is on scene. I mean, you just think about the chaos that's going on, the yelling, the screaming, just everything that's going on. And then trying to report back the number of casualties and survivors and whatnot, for the dispatcher to prompt what is the warm zone, what is the hot zone, to the original officer, their first arriving officer, or tactical, so that we can have a more efficient and safe approach I think is so critical. Because the last thing anyone wants is A) an over-convergence on the target and B) officers getting engaged while they're in their cars. That's terrible. And the way we fix that is for the first arriving officer and the following officers to identify those hot, warm, and cold zones. And if they haven't done it, then the dispatcher having the knowledge to prompt that information on the radio from those officers.Bill Godfrey:Yeah, absolutely. I'd be happy if they just hit the hot zone. Honestly, I would be thrilled if in their size-up report, they got a quick size-up report, and just hit the hot zone.Leeanna Mims:That's absolutely true. And keeping in mind that warm zone, we need to know where it's at, too, for establishing that casualty collection point. We're trying to stop the bleeding, right? Stop the dying. We have to know where we're going to put people. And if we don't know where those zones are, that's really the starting point of where we're going to put that casualty collection point.Bill Godfrey:Yeah. So I think right there, and this is going to be a repetitive thing, we advocate very strongly that dispatchers should have the authority and the autonomy, of course along with the training, to know what these key benchmarks are. And when they're not hearing them to be able to gently prompt, and then prompt again, and then as necessary not so gently prompt. But Ken mentioned the opening the size-up report, that first officer's report, when they get there. What are they seeing? What are they hearing? Where's the hot zone? What are they doing? Are they going in? I think those are key elements. Obviously we want to make sure that somebody is taking charge. Somebody is taking a command.Ken Lamb:And we want to know when the suspect is engaged, what is the status? Understandably, an officer that just engaged the suspect is going to be going through a traumatic event and may not be putting all the information that's needed on the radio for an efficient and effective response. So if the officer puts over the radio that they've engaged the suspect and that's all, we need to know the status. Is the suspect still mobile? Is the suspect down? Where is the suspect? And that is information that the dispatcher can prompt from the officer to really streamline that response.Bill Godfrey:Yeah, absolutely. And I think so next up after that, so we got that initial arriving officer, we want to get that size-up report. We want to get the post engagement report if there is one. Staging? Need a staging location. If we're not hearing that, we want to ask. Hey, tactical, where were you going to set staging?Ken Lamb:The staging is so important. And I know there's been a number of podcasts on staging. I'm just a huge fan. And I'm a huge fan of a dispatcher understanding the importance of staging and prompting the location. And then after that, when you have various units that are coming up on the radio channel advising they're en route, the dispatcher advising them where staging is, putting it in the CAD so that officers can find it themselves. And in the newer CADS, in our jurisdiction, they update automatically. So it attempts to keep officers off the radio asking where do you need me? If we could just get rid of the officer coming on the radio saying, I'm on scene, where do you need me? I think we've achieved a monumental goal there.But I do think in working towards achieving that goal, the dispatcher can be a critical piece by advising every so many minutes that the staging location is here, or when officers are advising they're en route, reminding the officers to report to the staging location so that we can synchronize that spot, that response, and keep people from over converging on the target.Leeanna Mims:Well, and I think with that comes along with educating dispatch as to why we want to know. Not just because it's on our checklist, but because of just that. When that staging is created, it is there to prevent that overload of coming into the scene and that convergence onto the scene that creates the chaos and things that we've seen in multiple case studies when there is no staging, no gatekeeper. And I don't know that we do the right job of helping dispatch understand why that benchmark is so key for them to hit, and why they should push if they haven't heard where's it at and what's the location.Tom Billington:And Leanna, you just touched on a very important part. When we do our trainings, we incorporate dispatchers obviously into our training sessions. And so many times the dispatchers will thank us for involving them, they had no idea why we do this. Why we have to have staging and what is a rescue task force? Why did you do that? They had no idea. It was sort of like out of sight, out of mind. Where the dispatchers are sometimes forgotten and if they're not involved, they're not going to know what is needed on scene. So a good point, Leeanna.Bill Godfrey:They ought to be included in the training all the time.Ken Lamb:Absolutely. And I think that goes back to the original point that we started this, as many of them are short-staffed. So it's a challenge of leadership.Bill Godfrey:It is. And it's a budget hit. I get that. Because now you've got to pay overtime to have somebody. And I get it. But all right, so you don't have room in the budget this year. You're working on your budget for next year, put a number in there. Make that argument to the city manager, the county manager, we've got some gaps here and need to fill these gaps with training and it's going to cost a little. And if you don't want me to spend overtime for it, then give me an additional staffing.I realize it's not the easiest argument. Everybody at this table has had to make those arguments in budget meetings and we didn't win them all. But you win some of them, and you won't win any of them if you don't try. And there, I'm going to exit my soap box.So before we leave, let's talk about some of the other benchmarks. So we got the arrival report, we got staging. What are some of the other key marks? I like the suspect down report is a big benchmark, I think.Tom Billington:Well, Bill, something on that though we hear so many times on after action reports, the suspect is down. At five minutes later, a dispatcher is giving the description of a suspect and that they're on the loose still. So we have to make sure that that information is updated to all the dispatchers to save crucial time, looking for somebody that's already in custody.Ken Lamb:Right. And I think what happens right there is that's where the misinformation comes in. Because I've seen that firsthand on an incident that I responded to where the suspect was neutralized very quickly. And those calls were still making their way into the communication center. And that information was still being put out on the radio. So it instantly started this idea of maybe there's a second suspect. So you spend so much time and resources running down the ground, whether or not there's a second suspect. And it does take some really switched on people to realize that this is the same one. And it takes a leap of faith, right? To say, no, there isn't a second suspect. But if we know the percentages, and I think that one of the awesome values in this course is walking through some of that information and understanding that 99% of these have one suspect. And knowing that ahead of time I think equips you really run this down to ground before we put this out to the officers that there may be a second suspect.Bill Godfrey:Yeah, absolutely. So I think the other one, and I'm not sure we explicitly said that, though I think somebody touched on it earlier. When we get the staging location, everybody who's not on the scene, we want to update where they're going to be to that scene, especially the mutual aid. That's one of the ones I think you make that initial request, you make that first phone call to the state police or to county XYZ telling them about an active shooter at this location. Once a staging location is set, you need to update that phone call and say send them to this location now. Update the location and that'll help avoid the over convergence.Ken Lamb:Well, not only that, but there's one thing that I think it's commonly overlooked is the ability to send out the MDT message. So you just continue sending out that message to all the responders on the MDT or MDC, whichever acronym you want to use, and you can eliminate being on the radio. You can just keep sending that message out every five or 10 minutes. So when responders log on and they're going to that call, they don't even need to get on the radio to ask, they have a message on their MDT telling them if you're responding to this incident, this is the staging location. And if you don't have an assignment, go to this location.Tom Billington:And as soon as possible, we need to tell the media where to go. That is a whole nother issue. Your PIOs, you want to tell him.Bill Godfrey:I always want to tell the media where to go.Tom Billington:They're going to call in and ask what's going on? And if you can say to them, there is a joint information center set up at the Sear's parking lot at such and such street, go there right now. They will go there. And that takes a lot more stress off the responders and people just showing up.Bill Godfrey:All right, what are the other benchmarks?Leeanna Mims:I just want to say I'm following up to what Tom just had said about the media. That's one of the calls that overloads your communication center. So if that information is out there where they need to go, hopefully that will help them, too, as far as cutting down on the number of calls they've got to filter.Tom Billington:Where's the command post? That's another big one.Bill Godfrey:Oh yeah, big one. Command post location.Ken Lamb:Yes, you definitely want to give the brass a location to go.Bill Godfrey:Somebody in command.Ken Lamb:Yes, absolutely. Who's in command?Bill Godfrey:Who's in charge?Ken Lamb:Right, because we know when we read these after actions, that's one of the biggest common after action item is - I didn't know who was in command. Well, if the dispatch knows that and they can, again, either say it on the radio or send out messages and say this person's in command, I think it clears up that. But I think another benchmark is, have you transported those survivors? Or those who have been impacted? Those who have been injured? Have they been transported off the scene?Bill Godfrey:First patient transported and then last patient transported?Leeanna Mims:What else is important through all of that too is we want to know when the scene's secure. And it used to be for fire we didn't go in at all until we heard a scene secure report. Well, now we're already there. We might be part of an RTF or wherever we are in the command structure, but we all want to know when everything has been neutralized. Whether it be one suspect, two suspects.Bill Godfrey:That's another one, suspect neutralized, suspect left the scene. I think one of the big gaps is that a lot of law enforcement agencies don't realize how important it is to relay that information to the fireside dispatch. Suspect descriptions. Suspect is down. Those are important things to be relayed over. The other one is the command post. There's nothing magic that says law enforcement has to set the command post or fire has to set it. We call out in our checklist for the law enforcement side to begin structuring that. But in some cases, fire department may set a command post location. That needs to be relayed to law enforcement so that we don't end up with two command posts. And if there's a problem with where somebody set it, then we fix it together and everybody moves. All right, any other benchmarks that are the critical ones that you can think of?Ken Lamb:I have a critical one, in my mind, that's not on our list, but that I think would be valuable. Have you co-located with fire rescue? I think it's so common.Bill Godfrey:That is on our list, Ken.Ken Lamb:But what I'm asking, is dispatch asking this, right? As a dispatcher, am I asking this of the supervisor on scene? I know we teach the importance of it. No doubt. And I hope and believe that anyone going through this course at the end of the two or three day course understand the value in doing that. I do believe that. But what I think would be valuable is if a dispatcher prompts the supervisor, the police supervisor, or the FD supervisor, have you co-located with either the police or have you co-located with fire rescue. So that we're stressing the importance of that, because it's easy to forget. You're focused on what you're trying to accomplish with your people and you forget because we don't practice this every day.Bill Godfrey:And for the dispatchers that are listening to this, I'll give you the big tip off, that they're not co-located. When whoever's in charge for law enforcement is asking you to relay things to whoever's in charge for fire? They're not in the same spot. When whoever's in charge of Fire-EMS is asking you to relay things to cops? They're not in the same spot. And that's a problem that we need to get fixed. Okay. The other thing before we leave benchmarks, it's kind of tied in and related, and that is elapsed time notifications. I want to kind of talk about that. So we recommend that starting at the 10 minute mark dispatchers, both on law enforcement and the Fire-EMS side, broadcast just in the blind real quick, the elapsed time notification. All units 10 minutes elapsed time, 10 minutes elapsed time. And then every five minutes or after, 15 minutes elapsed time, all units, 20 minutes elapsed time, 20 minutes elapsed time. And just to kind of keep that present, let's talk a little bit about why that's so important.Ken Lamb:The first thing that comes to mind with me is that you want to get those patients to the hospital within that golden hour. And unless you've gone through this course in law enforcement, that's not one of the initial concerns that you have. Initial concern is stop the killing, all right? And then we get to stop the dying. But you really don't understand the timeframe that you want to stop the dying, right? We're focused on providing that critical treatment that we can provide as police officers. But as a supervisor, you've got to start looking big picture and you understand I have an hour that I need to solve this. At least the immediate priorities, that being an active threat and the rescue. So it's a good reminder to me that I'm 20 minutes into this. Where am I at? Have I got these individuals transported? Am I working with my fire rescue EMS partners to get an ambulance down range? And I think when you ask that question, that's the first thing that came to mind for me.Bill Godfrey:Absolutely. If you're 20 minutes in and nobody's been transported, there's a problem. You need to get on it. Yeah. Tom, how about you? You got anything you want to add on the elapsed time notifications?Tom Billington:I agree totally there. Unless you take this course, which everybody should, stop the killing, stop the dying. Once that threat is neutralized or the threat may have left, having somebody remind you, 10 minutes, there's no stimulus we can find somebody. Let's start saving people. Let's start the tourniquets and let's start getting the rescue task forces and let's set up the CCP. So it does remind you. And so many times I've been on scenes in my career where I feel like I've been there for three days. It turns out it was only there for a couple of hours. So it kind of brings you back to reality check of how much time is going on. What can you shave off time to save some people? And what should you be doing?Leeanna Mims:Yeah. And I'll really pose this to Ken because it's really his wheel. I would think that on the law enforcement side, when you're caught up in the adrenaline of trying to catch an active shooter, you're not thinking about the clock. And when you hear that and if 10 minutes has gone by, 20 minutes has gone by and 30 minutes and nobody has yet reported that the suspect has been shot or neutralized, I would think that there's a whole nother thought process that you have to go through. Where has he gone? Is he still on the scene? Did he move to someplace else? And if he did, where would that might be? And really I don't know what all those questions would be, but I would think hearing that 10 minute prompt, 20 minute prompt, would help you start to switch the mindset.Ken Lamb:Oh, absolutely. And you should, as a police officer, have the ability to switch gears the entire time. You're never stuck in concrete. And that's the name of the game in active shooter response for law enforcement is being flexible. And when you don't have that active stimulus, realizing that my next important priority is rescue. So do I have individuals that I can provide that critical life safety medical response as a police officer? And for the initial responders, is it as important to hear the timeline? Probably not. The first arriving are solely focused on finding the active threat and then providing that rescue.I think the time prompts are very important to the supervisors to understand, to remind them, you are under a time crunch, you don't have all day on this. You have an hour to knock out the first two priorities. And if you don't have an active threat, then the rescue is the most important priority. So you need to start focusing all your efforts into beating that clock. And that's why I believe we start our presentation on that clock because the reality is if the suspect is not currently shooting at them, then the clock is killing them. So that needs to be our intention. And I think it's a good reminder that if the suspect is not shooting them, then the clock is our biggest enemy. So start focusing on beating the clock.Bill Godfrey:You have to keep the clock in front of everybody. It's the critical piece of this. We teach in class when you're the supervisor on one of these things, what you're listening for and looking for is active threat is neutralized. RTF's downrange. Ambulance exchange point is set. We're transporting patients. And there's an expected timeline really that you should try to have in your head. I mean, the goal is try to get everybody transported in 20 minutes. Now that's easier said than done. It's achievable. But it's easier said than done. But as I commented earlier, if you're at the 15 minute mark or the 20 minute mark and the RTF's are not down range, that's a red flag. Why? What has gone wrong? What do we need to do? I'm hearing the 25 minute benchmark, my RTFs have been down range for 10 minutes and I've got no ambulance exchange points set up. That's going to be a problem. That's going to catch up with me real soon.Because in just a minute or so, RTF's are going to start telling me they're ready to transport and we've missed that extra step. And so I think keeping that clock in front of everybody, the reality is study after study has shown when you're in cognitive overload, time plays a funny game in your head. It can get very elastic. It can seem very slow. It can seem very fast. And Tom said he can feel like he's been there three days, and it's only been a couple hours. I've experienced the reverse of that, where somebody has said you've been at for 20 minutes and it seemed like only five or six minutes has gone by. And so I think that's one of the really, really important reasons to provide those elapsed time notifications.Ken Lamb:And I'll just wrap it up on this. I also think that it provides an opportunity for every member of the team to recenter their focus. So if tactical is so focused on what's going on in the inner perimeter, inside the target, which he or she should be, then the first arriving supervisor can say 20 minutes, we don't have ambulances downrange. Hey tactical, are we getting ambulances down there? Do we have the CCP established? So it's just a good reminder, I think, for the entire team.Bill Godfrey:Yeah. And let me be clear. There may be a really good reason why that stuff hasn't happened by that timeline, but you better at least be asking the question and having it. Okay. So we talked a little bit earlier about getting additional resources in the dispatch center. And Tom mentioned the call tree a call down tree or some sort of notification. That was one of the things that we wanted to talk about. Just make sure that you've got a procedure or policy for being able to call in some additional help that can help you with move ups and community coverage, backfill, those kinds of things. Can also start going through the data with intelligence, whoever comes in from intelligence to kind of go through the stuff with you.But lastly, before we wrap this up, I want to talk a little bit about, and I hate to use the word trend, but the very real possibility that a suspect is going to call 911 and have a conversation with a dispatcher. And how our lack of training and preparing dispatchers, people can throw all kinds of reasons at it, but at the end of the day, this is happening. I want to talk a little bit about that reality and some of the things that we might suggest to make that better.Ken Lamb:Right. So I believe it occurs because there's a void in communication from when the incident starts into what we presume is a hostage taking situation or there's some time there where they have the ability to make a phone call, and it stresses the importance that our dispatchers understand what questions to ask and what information to gain so that we can get it to either the responders who are on scene or the hostage negotiators who are going to be responding, 20-30 minutes later, whatever that timeline is. To quickly spin them up as quick as possible.And I think there's really critical things such as I'm going to shoot these individuals in 10 seconds. If you don't understand the necessity of that information and getting it to the responders, that could be tragic because that will launch a group of trained responders in order to go neutralize the threat. Okay. So just having a good understanding of what information needs to make it to those responders immediately, I think is critical. And it really goes back to stress the importance of training with these dispatchers when we have these scenarios or these exercises, whether it's a tabletop or in person, so that they see the necessity to get that information. Because it seems like we plug in hostage negotiators, but we don't always plug in our communication dispatchers. And that's really important.Leeanna Mims:Hostage negotiators are trained and experienced. And, sure, it's hard to convey all of that in training to dispatchers. But I think what is critical is that we teach them what not to do. What not to do, what not to say. Because all they have to do is make one error that they don't even recognize and you don't know where it's going to send that shooter. You don't know where it's going to send them.Tom Billington:And it's happening more and more. I read more after action reports and more than ever, the bad guy calls 911. They want to give their signed declaration, or they want to say what they're doing. They want to talk about hostages. And the poor dispatcher is caught answering the 911 call, if they have not had any kind of training, like Leeanna just said, what should the dispatcher say? What kind of pointers do we give dispatchers? And obviously we know that there are training abilities to the FBI for telecommunicators on the negotiation, but also just some tips.Such as if you're talking to somebody on the phone who's a bad person, you don't want that person hearing what's going on over the radio. We're making entry or we're doing this. So just some tips about telling the dispatchers that if you do get a call, you want to seclude yourself. You want to make sure that the other dispatchers know what you're doing and they're supporting you so you're not having to do multiple tasks. There's all sorts of things, but again, it's happening more and more. And if it's not the bad person calling, it's the hostages themselves. We've had so many incidents in the last few years where somebody calls 911 and says I am one of the hostages, what should I do? And it kind of puts the 911 dispatcher in a dilemma. What should they tell this person?Bill Godfrey:I think all of that is great stuff. And I'll say this doesn't have to be something that costs you a lot of money. Most agencies have a hostage negotiator. Even fairly small police departments typically have somebody that plays that role, or they partner with an agency that does. Ask them to come in and spend a day training. Spend a day with a dispatch crew and run them through some training and some scenarios and kind of help them with it because the stakes are too high. It's not fair to the dispatchers to know that this is a possibility they're going to get put in this role and then provide them no training, no help. That's just really not, not acceptable anymore.All right. Well, I think we have come to a good place to wrap this up. I want to say thank you very much to all the listeners who've stayed with us through this two-part series. And I want to especially thank my instructors for doing this in two pieces, because we just had so much here to cover. It was more than we wanted to do in a single podcast. So thank you very much, Ken, Tom, Leeanna, thank you for being here. Thanks to our producer, Karla, for putting this together as always. Until next time stay safe.

Episode 43: 911 Communication Center Challenges in Active Shooter Events (Part 1)In Part 1 of this week's podcast, we talk about some of the challenges in the 911 dispatch center during an active shooter event. A few topics we cover are the best sense of location, radio traffic, and recognizing when the active shooter event happens.Bill Godfrey:Welcome to the Active Shooter Incident Management Podcast. My name is Bill Godfrey, your host of the podcast. Thank you for being with us today. We are going to be talking today about what it's like in the 911 dispatch center during an active shooter event and some of the challenges that go with that. Thank you for joining us. I got three of the C3 Pathways instructors with me today. Ken Lamb from law enforcement. Ken, thanks for being here.Ken Lamb:Yes, sir. Happy to be here.Bill Godfrey:All right, we got Tom Billington back in the house. Tom, it's been a minute since you were in. Good to have you back.Tom Billington:Good to be here, Bill.Bill Godfrey:All right, and Leeanna Mims, also from... Like Tom, I didn't mention. Tom from the fire service. Leeanna Mims is also from fire service. Leeanna, good to have you back.Leeanna Mims:Thank you. Glad to be here.Bill Godfrey:All right, so today's topic, we're going to be talking about some of the challenges that occur in the Comm Center in 911 and dispatch areas during an active shooter event. And I think probably ought to just start right off the bat with what some of the challenges are and recognizing that the 911 calls coming in are actually an active shooter event recognizing the event. Tom, you want to lead us off? What are your thoughts on that?Tom Billington:Well, a little background. I started out as a dispatcher in 1979 and dispatching was a paper map and a rotary phone and one microphone. So it has progressed over the years to be such an important position. I like to call the, I'm one operators, the true first responders because in an active shooter event or any other event, they're going to be overloaded immediately. They're going to have victims or survivors calling them. They're going to have bad people calling them. They're going to have texting. So it's a whole new realm that we have to deal with now. And then the active shooter incident adds a whole nother layer of issues that are going to be faced by the 911 center.Bill Godfrey:So Ken, when it comes to that first couple of 911 calls coming in, what are some of the things that jump out in your mind just from your experience in the law enforcement side and a couple that you've dealt with that might be the tip offs that the dispatchers are looking for or listening for I guess, I should say?Ken Lamb:Right, well, first and foremost is the shootings still occurring and how many individuals have been impacted because that's going to necessitate not only how large the response we have, but also where we're responding, the exact location. And what the shooter is wearing, what they look like, that information is so critical. And the common understanding that there's going to be multiple colors and the deconflict some of that information so that you understand as best as you can how many shooters are involved because oftentimes, four or five people may be calling in the same person. And if you're requesting information such as what are they wearing, what do they look like, then you can oftentimes deconflict some of that information so you understand how many shooters there actually are because that's going to be very important to the responding officers.Bill Godfrey:Sure, Leeanna, from the medical side, what are the things that you think are real the important things to get in those first few moments, those first few calls?Leeanna Mims:Yeah, so we, just following up on what Ken said, we need to know how many people have been injured if they can gather that in the front end. We need to be thinking about letting our hospitals know that it's occurring, that we're probably going to be giving them a surge of patients. So and that there's something else that dispatch has to consider obviously a little bit further down into the incident. And when we talk about all of the information that is coming into them, making sure that dispatchers are relaying what's needed for the safety of all the first responders that are going into that law enforcement, fire, medical because they're taking in a lot of information that has to be sorted and put out to those unit center responding in.Bill Godfrey:Yeah, I think all of that make sense. It would seem to me some of the most critical things to get right off the bat is the best sense of the location, especially if you've got multiple callers that are calling in with what may seem like different information, how many locations are involved or what was location trying to narrow down where the injured are, where the suspect was last seen or last known or where the shooting is going on, which often, Ken, can sound more than one incident. You got different callers calling in, but it's just a person moving around. And that sense of the numbers, how many people have been shot. And I like what you said about how many shooters, what are the suspect descriptions and things like that. Anything else, before we leave this one, anything else that is the kind of tip-offs that low-hanging front that dispatch may want to watch out for?Ken Lamb:Absolutely, so when you mentioned location, I thought that was an excellent point. And I think that point that is commonly overlooked because we just think, oh, location. Yeah, that's simple. We should be able to explain to other people an exact location, but anyone that share directions with their spouse on the phone can understand describing a location can be very challenging. So-Bill Godfrey:That's why they invented Google Maps to save marriages.Ken Lamb:.... Absolutely, so what I like to encourage folks to use is a common location language and that can be a number of things. You could get really technical and use US National Grid coordinates or dare I say, GPS coordinates even harder. But I like to simplify things and just say points of interest. So if you're trying to get a point of interest from the individual, the call taker and they can look around and say, well, there's a bell tower here or we're in parking lot next to a street lamp or we're next to a concession stand, anything that could specifically identify to streamline that approach for officers. And it would also assist in identifying the hot and the warm zones, but it will be a more specific common location language so that we can really get the resources to that area as quick as possible.Leeanna Mims:And Ken, you're exactly right about getting there as quickly as possible. And it's also about the responding units be able to determine the route that they go in. So the sooner that they can have that information in advance, it gives them what they need to help them figure out the best way to gain access depending on where the shooter is and whether or not there's multiple locations or are they moving, that tells to both law enforcement and other responders and in which way to go.Bill Godfrey:Yeah, and I would kind of piggyback on both of those and Ken, I really like... You made my eyes gloss over US National Grid. But the points of interest I think is a really good one because people immediately assume north, south, east, west, I'm in the Northeast corner of this and that actually turns out in practice to be a terrible way to describe locations. The directional indicators are just not reliable. Most people very easily get turned around. They get confused. Either don't know the area that well or they're confused about where they are. They get mixed up. It's just not a good reliable indicator.But what you're saying, points of interest, I think are really good way to do it. And Leeanna, you talked about the route of coming in. I think also the streets, especially in a larger building. I'm in the back of the building by fifth court. I'm near the alley in the rear or I'm on side street over here to give a description on what side of the building they're on or things like that. And so I think that would be one of the things I would encourage dispatchers to think about is to try to avoid, when you're trying to get those locations bend down, don't waste your time with directionals because they're not reliable from the callers or quite frankly, even with law enforcement, fire EMS in the field.Tom Billington:I mean, Ken, do you imagine responding to a shooting in a parking lot at Disney and saying, "I'm in the parking lot at Walt Disney World?"Ken Lamb:Right, super helpful, yeah.Tom Billington:I mean, there's a reason why they label the parking lots, Goofy, Mickey, Minnie and that's because it's easier to identify exactly which part of the parking lot is.Bill Godfrey:Yeah, absolutely. All right, so let's move on to the next topic. So Tom kind of mentioned this when he made his opening comment there about the overload and the overload is inevitable. I don't think it really matters how big your Comm Center is or how small it is. You only got enough staff for the typical load of calls that you've got. There's nobody wasting money putting extra dispatchers on just in case and we all know that. Most Comm Centers are barely staffed adequately as it is. Some of them are chronically understaffed. And so an event like this is going to come up and be a real kick in the teeth on overload. So let's talk a little bit about that. Tom, talk about the volume of 911 calls, especially today in the light of cell phones and how that can impact their ability to process the call and get it out.Tom Billington:Well, it should be able to... Yeah, we're finding out today with cell phones and texting that many large 911 systems overload and get shut down or break down. It's not uncommon to get thousands of calls. So like you said, even if it's a big agency or a smaller agency, there needs to be procedures in place. I know there's some smaller agencies that have procedures in place where they have a message that they give out when they answer 911. If you're calling reference the shooting on West Street, we already have units in route, things like that. How do I explain giving the 911 call or off the phone? And again, the larger jurisdictions, they have a lot more people, but usually that means there's a lot more population calling 911 and they can be overloaded immediately. So like you said, it doesn't matter on the size, but you need procedures in place ahead of time and you need to practice those.Bill Godfrey:Yeah, and you also mentioned one that hasn't come up recently that I can remember over the one things we've talked about and that is if your 911 trunk, I mean, let's face it, it's the phone company providing that service. There's only a limited capacity, whether it's a small center, a medium center or a large center, the 911 trunk coming into service, that center has a limited capacity for so many simultaneous calls. And if it gets overloaded or it fails, it's going to go to whatever the setup fail-over program is. And I wonder how many dispatchers actually know who gets their failure recalls? Leeanna, do you remember, was that part of the dispatcher training when you were on the job?Leeanna Mims:It absolutely was. They had to know and have procedures in place for what to do if we went into just various sorts of failure. I mean, there's different ways that a system can fail. And with that, echoing what Tom had said about having the procedures in place, it's critical not only for the failure, but also for success to make sure that you're able to sort those calls that are coming in to find the information in there that's meaningful because you can't just disregard all of those calls that are coming in. We've got to find a way to be able to screen it because some of that stuff that's coming in might make the difference in saving an officer's life on where they're going in.Bill Godfrey:Sure. Yeah, absolutely, it could. Ken, what about you, your job? Because you actually work at a place that's got a pretty large Comm Center, do those dispatchers have a good handle of where those calls dumped to if their trunk gets overloaded?Ken Lamb:They do. We have unit procedures and policies in place as a contingency in the event that that were to occur. And I would also stress the importance of having that contingency for the radio traffic. I mean, we had the incident in Fort Lauderdale where their radio traffic was overwhelmed and there were officers that weren't able to get on the radio because so many agencies in the area tuned in to listen to that incident. And to have a contingency in place so that if that happens because we know it has so that you can change to a different channel so that you can have the responders on scene be able to communicate and not lose critical information that's occurring because I think that it wouldn't stand or it would stand the reason that if we had an effective communication in any incident where you would lose that communication over the radio, that it would speed up our response instead of being detrimental.Bill Godfrey:Yeah, since you've segwayed over there, let's talk about the radio traffic because obviously that's going to be a huge load, not only on your own jurisdiction, but as you start to have your other neighboring jurisdictions coming in and they're jumping on your channels, the amount of radio traffic is going to go through the roof. Tom, are there anything that jumps out in your mind on how to prepare or manage for that?Tom Billington:Well, the main thing is being able to have the dispatchers, have them be able to adjust responses. Obviously on a normal day, if you have a structure fire, I know in the fire service, you may send five or six units to every structure for. When you have an active shooter event going on and other people would call 911 for other incidents, you have to be able to level that dispatch procedure out and make it lot less so you have less units on the road, less traffic. And hopefully, that's one strategy you can use. The other thing is radio discipline in training. Making sure people understand that you got to get off the radio, only important information should be transmitted and the less is better definitely.Ken Lamb:And to add on to what Tom was saying, I think that the dispatcher has the ability to recognize when an additional channel is necessary and can prompt that to the supervisor. So say for instance, we have the perimeter group that wants to be on the normal radio channel, but the dispatcher realizes we have all this information that's being shared on the regular channel. I think it would be great if a dispatcher would say, "Hey, perimeter group, group Sergeant, I can secure you a channel on a tactical channel if you would like to utilize that so you could just talk to your people and have the airspace to do so obviously in a clear and concise way." But prompting that would have that supervisor go, "Oh yeah, that would be great. So let's go ahead and switch to another channel, which would free up some airspace for some more necessary information over the normal channel."Tom Billington:And Ken, here's the challenge for supervisors. They need to start empowering these disruptors.Ken Lamb:Absolutely.Tom Billington:So many times you tell a dispatcher or ask this special, what would you do? And they might say, "Well, I'm not allowed to do this or I'm not allowed to do that." We need to let them know that when things are really busy, it's getting out of hand, they have the power and they should be assertive. They should be able to get on there and do some directives and ask some questions. A lot of times they're afraid they're going to have some repercussions from the upper leadership. So upper leadership has to let the reigns loose a little bit, let these folks do their job.Ken Lamb:Right, and so empowering those dispatchers to make those decisions I think is critical. And just as critical is us as police officers is being humble and understanding that we can't handle this on our own, we have to work together with our dispatch partners, our fire and EMS partners in order to solve the puzzle.Bill Godfrey:I think it's a good point about taking the active shooter incident and moving things to other channels where we can. As we address that in the curriculum and training, the two ones that are very good functions to carve off is the transport operation on the medical side is a nice fit to go to an alternate channel because you've got transport and triage standing in the same location with tactical sharing information. And I think that's a good one. That's a natural fit. Perimeter group is another one. Now the perimeter group supervisor ends up still having to have a second...The perimeter group supervisor needs two radios on their ear. One to talk to their troops on their separate channel and then the other one to be able to listen in to what's going on with tactical on the command channel and also be able to talk to staging. I think the one hesitation I have about dispatchers prompting that, I think it's a good idea in so much as it's coming from dispatchers, who've had some training in this material and know what are those good functions to carve off versus suggesting something that doesn't make sense and could just interrupt the operation. But even before that, I would suggest and I think this almost gets into a preincident thing is what channels are going to be used how?So we've got our regular day-to-day radio traffic and maybe that normally runs on the main channel. So when you've got your main channel with your regular traffic and then you get a big incident, who moves? Does the big incident move, which is problematic or do you move everything else, which can also be problematic? And that's not something you really want to have to figure out at the time of an incident. That's something I think that really needs to be worked out and have a plan ahead of time. But I think one of the things that you can do to carve down that radio traffic is to have that plan for shedding the load. I mean, Leeanna, what have you seen done on that for procedures to how to manage that when you get a major incident?Leeanna Mims:Of course, I mean, all of your assignments are pre-made and that's all done through policy procedure, IMS as to what channels that you're going to go to. And then another thing that gets kicked into place is a priority radio procedure, which in actuality, we should be operating in a priority radio procedure all the time where your communication is limited and you only say what you have to say in order to make sure everybody can get the communication in.But depending on what groups are running, they switched to other channels and that's predetermined what channels that they're going to go to. And everybody knows that upfront and it makes the communication a little bit seamless. But in those cases, we're talking about maybe not the initial response happens a little bit down the road because in fire, we build out a little bit slower in our command structure. And I think when we teach and talk about an active shooter incident management, the most crucial time is in the beginning.We pretty much know that in those first few minutes, that's the most crucial time versus on a fire. A little bit further deeper into the fire, that becomes the most crucial time because we're at a risk for flashover and so on. But I think maybe what we could talk about more is in that critical time, in that critical time of an active shooter, how important dispatch is, how important dispatch is in that, that realm of those first few minutes of making sure that the scene is secured and that shooter is neutralized.Ken Lamb:Sure, so I feel like we got the whole in-depth discussion on how to manage the radio because it's such a challenge in incidents like this. But when you spoke about some preplanning that could go into place as far as using which channels and how to operate on the radio, it kind of reminded me of what some instructors here put in place in my agency, Michelle Cook and Adam Penley, that a great job developing a script. And the script was how the active shooter response should go and then incorporated the dispatchers. So we all got in a room and each person had the script and it sounds really basic and you just run down the script of your position.But at the end of it, you had an idea of who was supposed to say what and when and where. And it provided I think context for a dispatcher to understand, okay, this is how this is supposed to sound and look. And if it's not, then I have a good common understanding of when I can come in and say, "Have you established a staging area? Could you use another channel?" When you have those opportunities. And I thought it was a great idea and I think one that is of value when you're incorporating your dispatchers into the Active Shooter Incident Management process.Bill Godfrey:I think one of the other things that you can do in the dispatch center to begin to cut down traffic and manage that, dispatch has already have a way of talking that, certain cadence, a certain tone and flection and they manage their stuff pretty well in terms of what they've got to say and saying it succinctly, but many, many dispatch agencies, both on law enforcement and fire EMS do an echo thing where the dispatcher echoes back what they've heard. And day in day out, that works pretty well. But when you get one of these fast moving incidents, the attempt to echo everything can tie up a lot of radio traffic and create unnecessary noise.However, there are some key things that should be echoed. So what I'm going to suggest here is the idea of selective echoing. So when you get a suspect description, when somebody says, "We're looking for this guy. He was last seen this location." That's probably a good one to echo. You get a report suspect down. That's a good one to echo. You get a report of 12 down in the lobby. That's a good one to echo. So those kinds of things. Where's the staging location? That's a good one to echo. The command post location, but not every little transmission. And that probably takes a little bit of thinking ahead of time and some selective stuff.The other tool I think dispatchers have at their disposal that the field folks don't is the ability to push the button and do the alert tone. Most radio systems, not all, but most, the dispatcher trumps everybody else in priority. So when they key up, they're the ones that almost everybody's going to hear. And those tones that they have available can be useful for essentially, it's almost like, hey, everybody, shut up and listen, when you hear those tones and be able to put them out. Any other, before we leave radio traffic, any other thoughts or tips?Tom Billington:Well, Bill, you mentioned staging. I know Ken, you did earlier also. That is a major important dispatch procedure telling everybody where staging is. Once we get the core group on scene, we do not want people showing up on scene. And the dispatcher being able to say, "Respond to staging. Do not respond to the scene. Here's the address of staging." Very important. That stops it over conversions and stops the freelancing.Leeanna Mims:And just to follow-up in what you had mentioned, Bill, emergency radio procedures is what you're referring to there and dispatchers have that ability. And if the radio traffic is overwhelming to where they can't get that critical information out that the front end law enforcement needs, especially responding into an active shooter, absolutely, that's where they have the power if you would to take control of that radio channel and make sure that only the proper information is being relayed as long as they're trained and their procedures allow them to do it. And that goes back to what Tom had said about empowering dispatchers to make those kinds of critical decisions that only they can make.Ken Lamb:Yeah, and I think everyone feels like when they get on the radio, what they're about to say is super critical and they get frustrated when they can't get on the radio. But I think everyone involved understanding that we need to share the radio traffic and we need to all make sure that the information we're putting over the radio is clear, concise and purposeful. And I feel like if everyone has that common understanding and they're all trying to achieve that goal, then there will be more space on the radio to talk.Bill Godfrey:It certainly improves with practice. I mean, we see that even in training usually day one is a bit of a cluster on the radio. And as people get used to and familiar with the sequence of events and what the important stuff is, what's not. And quite honestly, they get reminded a little bit of radio discipline, shorten it up, does that really need to be said? I think those are all really good things. Before we leave radio traffic, I also kind of want to mention, larger dispatch centers, you've already got almost all the agent. You've got all the units on common channels and things like that. And so this doesn't necessarily apply.But in medium and smaller sized organizations, it's fairly common to have mutual aid or agencies or other jurisdictions come onto your channel. Now in some cases, when you interoperate with people closely, they have your frequencies in their radios. They changed the bank, change which channel they're on and they get onto your frequency. And that's great. But in other instances, the procedure on paper is to start trying to patch channels together. We're going to patch this channel to this channel and we're going to patch this channel to this channel.By the way, just so everybody knows because you don't have the video on this, I've got three instructors shaking their heads at me no, no, don't do that. And that's why I brought this up is that on paper, patching channels sounds like a good idea. And there are some occasions when patching channels can be tremendously useful and appropriate, but I'm not sure active shooter events is one of those cases. On the technical side, years ago in a different lifetime, I served on a number of these interoperability technical groups and I know that we can technically patch.They're not all created equal. Some of them work really well. Those are few. Some of them, I'm trying to think of another word other than sucks. Some of them do not work well and just kind of... I mean, they can almost render the channel useless. So I wanted to kind of bring that up and just get the reaction. I mean, I already gave it away because everybody shook their head no. But Leeanna, you were the first one to shake your head no, what's your thoughts on patching?Leeanna Mims:Patching takes practicing the skill pretty regularly. And if you have any kind of a turnover in dispatch, it's hard to keep that level of expertise up and it doesn't always work. It just doesn't always work. My experience has been that patching just wasn't the answer and it definitely isn't going to be the answer in a situation where you're in a hurry.Bill Godfrey:Yeah, that was my feeling too. Tom, what about you?Tom Billington:Definitely the same thing. I think that it looks good on paper, but we don't practice it. And maybe once or twice a year, we may need to use it and that's the wrong time to learn how to use it because nobody's going to remember. So if it's not something you practice continually, I would advise against it. There's other ways to handle communications as far as having communications through teams, contact teams or rescue task forces all sharing one radio, things like that. But patching has never been successful in my experience.Leeanna Mims:And in some cases too with patching, you're not talking about just one agency. So your agency has to be able to know what to do with their side of the patch, another agency has to know what to do with their side. So that makes it even more problematic.Bill Godfrey:Yeah, it takes some thought, it takes some training, it's a little time consuming. As they would say up north, just forget about it.Ken Lamb:Yeah, so I have zero experience on how to patch radio channels. I can tell you that recently, we had an incident at our airport where there was a bomb threat on an airplane and we had the airport police, us and as well as the fire rescue department and a myriad of other agencies and oh, one of the fire rescue folks were like, "Well, let's patch these radio channels together." And I'm like, "That sounds like a great idea. We'll all be on the same radio channel." And it was a nightmare because everyone has... The different disciplines have different ideas of what radio discipline is.And it was next to impossible to get on the radio at that point. And it was just... And you nailed it in that on paper, it looks great, but the practical use of it is very problematic and I'm a bigger fan of comm aides or as our instructor Don Tuten calls it, go and fetch, fetch and go. That's to me, you can cut out some of the nuances of communications between different disciplines by just having someone who's a subject matter expert in your field, being with that person and just telling you what you need to know right now as opposed to all this kind of other stuff that you really don't need to know.Bill Godfrey:Yeah, before we leave this, I also don't want to leave it with... Well, okay, you said patching isn't good. What's the answer? Well, we teach in training, the place to solve interoperability problems is in staging. When you're forming up your teams, you've got, I need four cops and they're all mutual aid. Okay, do you have this channel? Do you have this channel? Do you have this channel? None of them got the channel. Okay, who has this channel? You do. All right, I'm going to put one guy in this team of four and he's got the channel and you guys are good. Go, deploy them.And so that's kind of our recommended answer is to solve that problem in staging. And if you've got a resource that doesn't have the ability to do communications, set them to the side and move on to the next one so that you fulfill your request, fulfill the assignment that you need to and then work on that problem as time moves on. All right, well, I think we're going to pause there and wrap up part one and then we've got a number of things we're going to come back to on part two of this. So Ken, Tom, Leeanna, y'all good to come back and do part two with me?Ken Lamb:Absolutely, looking forward to.Tom Billington:Oh, definitely.Leeanna Mims:Absolutely.Bill Godfrey:All right, well, thank you all for being here today with me. This was a great stuff. I'm looking forward to part two of this conversation. Karla, our producer, like to say, thank you to her for putting this together. And until next time, stay safe.

Episode 42: Common Day One Training ProblemsOn this week's podcast, we discuss the common obstacles you may encounter during day one of training.Bill Godfrey:Welcome to the Active Shooter Incident Management podcast. My name is Bill Godfrey. We appreciate you tuning in today and today's topic, we are actually going to spend some time talking about some of the common challenges that we see on the first day of training.Our goal here is for those out there that are ASIM basic trainers, or they have a departmental responsibility for conducting some sort of active shooter training, or you're trying to do some internal training on active shooter incident management, we wanted to share with you some of the common things that we see, some of the common problems, so that you can watch out for them, and maybe try to adjust in your curriculum.As usual, I've got three of the fantastic instructors from C3 Pathways here with me today. On the law enforcement side, we got Robert McMahan in the house. Robert, how are you?Robert McMahan:I'm here in all my spectacularness.Bill Godfrey:That's fantastic. And we have Mark Rhame from Fire-EMS, Mark.Mark Rhame:Hoping some of Robert will rub off on me.Bill Godfrey:And Mr. Billy Perry from the law enforcement side. Billy, how are you?Billy Perry:Great. Thanks for having me here.Bill Godfrey:Absolutely. So let's dig in. So I thought guys that this might make the most sense to just take it in order, start with contact teams and the RTFs, and talk about tactical triage and transport, some of the challenges that we see in the command post staging, and dispatch. So with that, let's start off with talking about the contact team.Billy, you spent a lot of time as the contact team coach downrange. Tell me about the day one challenges, the stuff that the first couple of scenarios, they just really struggle with.Billy Perry:Across the board, you can watch it. And you see it, you actually can see it in their eyes, for lack of a better word, that they know what to do, they know to go through the checklist, but they don't do it. And they try to alter and try to shortcut, they get overwhelmed. You watch them freeze. They undergo cognitive freezing. And it's because they don't have enough repetitions, enough correct repetitions, and they do get mission lock because of trying to do too many things at one time.Bill Godfrey:I've listened to a number of those first size up reports that are coming out of there. I'm not often in the room when they're doing them, but I'm listening to them on the radio. How much work is it on your part on those first one or two scenarios to get a size up report out of them?Billy Perry:It is so much, and you have to say it five or six times. Go ahead and get the size up report. Go ahead and go through the checklist. Go ahead and go through the checklist. And sometimes they'll even say, and they're not being obstinate and they're not being adversarial or militant, they're just, I did. Well, no, you didn't. You may have done it in your mind but you didn't actually say it radio.Bill Godfrey:You didn't actually say it radio.Billy Perry:It is a challenge, but it happens all over. Every class, virtually.Bill Godfrey:It does.Billy Perry:It's not geographic. It's not demographic. It just is.Bill Godfrey:Happens in the face-to-face classes, the virtual classes.Billy Perry:Happens in real life.Bill Godfrey:Happens in real life.Billy Perry:Spoiler alert.Bill Godfrey:Robert, how about you? You've spent a fair amount of time doing contact coaching as well. What are the common things that you see?Robert McMahan:Besides what Billy mentioned, forgetting who your boss is, and talking back to your boss, your contact teams.Bill Godfrey:Saying command as opposed to tactical.Robert McMahan:Using the word command instead of tactical. But talking to your boss is a big thing, and giving those size up reports to your boss, and that comes through repetition of training, just like everything else we do, whether it's hooking up hoses to fire trucks, or shooting bullets down range, it takes a lot of repetition to get that down. And as the classes progress, they get better. But I think that talking to the boss is the number one for me.Bill Godfrey:How about keeping the boss, keeping tactical, updated about where they are and what they're doing? Is that a challenge?Billy Perry:Yes and no. That does vary. Sometimes they do it too much, because tactical's busy and they need to stay in their mission lane. And sometimes they don't do it, obviously, near enough. And there is a fine balance. And one of the things that we forget is this, like shooting, Robert likened it to shooting and doing the other skillsets that the firefighters have, it's a perishable skill and if you don't do it, it goes away.Bill Godfrey:You better practice. Mark, how about you? I realize you and I are a little bit disadvantaged on the contact side because we're a couple of fire guys, but is there anything that you've seen that sticks out at you that Billy and Robert haven't already mentioned?Mark Rhame:I think sometimes they over complicate it. I mean, frankly, sometimes the easiest path is the best path, and especially in the training environment. I think Billy mentioned that earlier, that following the checklist is probably the simplest road you can take in regard to this training environment. And whatever training environment you're at, there's probably some internal checklist that you need to make sure you get that stuff done, and for some reason they get off that path. They wander off into the weeds or something like that and they're starting to do someone else's job. As much as we keep telling them, say, do your job, stay on your path, you've got one boss, answer to that one boss, for some reason they think they have to talk or go another direction.I'll give you example, what a reason we keep telling law enforcement that the RTFs are built out in staging, but they're owned by triage. And it doesn't matter how many times you tell the law enforcement officer who's the staging manager, when they sit there and say, well, I need to deploy RTFs and go, no, no, no, no, you're getting out of your lane. Stay in your lane. Don't make it more complicated than it is. Get those tasks done that you're assigned to do, and your road's going to be so much easier.Billy Perry:I forgot something.Bill Godfrey:Okay, go.Billy Perry:The three priorities of work. Active threat, rescue, and then clear. And instead of ARC, they CAR, they ACR. Seriously I mean...Bill Godfrey:They forget the order. We see that a lot.Billy Perry:It's crucial, because you can't rescue until you put doofus down.Bill Godfrey:Or unless he's left the scene, because that's the other thing we see, is we clear up all this little stuff on day one, we roll into day two and they're starting to look stronger, and then we give them a suspect where there was shooting when they arrived on scene but the shooting stops and they don't know why.Billy Perry:And then they left.Bill Godfrey:They just can't get out of clear mode. They can't stop and switch gears. So, yeah, interesting. So those are all good topics for contact teams. Let's talk a little bit about rescue task forces. Mark, you mentioned that. What's the things that jump into your mind about the RTFs, day one, common issues?Mark Rhame:Well, I would say in the beginning, we'd struggle sometimes in those first couple of scenarios of getting people to lean forward, building out their teams. And then as much as we talk about it, in real world, especially, but also in training, that's when you got to get the team together, and introduce themselves, and talk about what the rules are, rules of engagement, if you will. And as much as we talk about it, we just generally don't see it when we're in the scenarios.They got to flip that mindset that this should reflect real-world, what you train, you should be doing that same thing. We'll make those assignments, people who were on RTFs, and then they just go in their own little corner of the room until they get assigned to the room. Well, that's the time they should be sitting next to each other and going, guys, here's the rules. I'm going to be one talking on the radio, here's the equipment we're going to carry, all those rules need to be done in staging, and we just don't see it that much.Bill Godfrey:Yeah, absolutely. And I think the one that sticks out to me is, you said it earlier, you can see in their eyes that they know what they're supposed to be doing, but they don't quite get that engaged with action. So they'll come rolling into the room, into the casualty collection point, and they just look around and vapor lock a little bit, they're just not sure what to do. Not sure where to start. Not sure who to talk to. Not sure who talks to who or where to start when, of course, what we always say to them is, okay, you've rolled into the casualty collection point. There's a contact team here that got this started. Let's get a briefing from them. Get them to tell you what's going on and what they already know, and then let's divvy this thing up and go to work.Mark Rhame:The weird thing is that from real-world experience for me, I always believed that it was actually easier to be in charge than it is actually to get the task and be told to go out and do something. Give you an example, that first RTF we tell them over and over again, when you come into that casualty collection point, at that point in time, you've got to take control of that room medically. And to me, it's a lot easier if that first RTF, if you come in there and go, okay, RTF twp, you got that patient there, RTF three, you got this patient over here, and give assignments to other people. For some reason, there's that vapor lock when they walk into that casualty collection point, that first RTF team, and they don't take control of that room medically.Bill Godfrey:It is something that we see get cleared up on days two and three, but it's a very common first day issue. So Robert, what about you? What have you commonly seen the RTFs, day one, common RTF mistakes as they come in the room?Robert McMahan:Well, again, it's that communication back to triage, trying to sort out and get those patient counts right. That's a crucial thing. And I find over in tactical triage and transport that they're always looking for that, and there's a lot of numbers thrown out there, and that's fine in the beginning, but eventually you got to get those numbers tied down as to how many red, greens, and yellows you have, and make sure you got the right resources to get them out of there.Bill Godfrey:Absolutely. Billy, how about you? What jumps out at you?Billy Perry:The same thing that everybody else has said. Just the trepidation and the unknowing of what to do, and that's also in the checklist. That's another thing. A poor plan vigorously executed beats no plan at all, generally.Bill Godfrey:That was Patton. Some version of that.Billy Perry:Exactly. So maybe Franklin, Lincoln, but that's a good plan. The checklist is actually a good, vetted plan. And so, I mean, if you just simply do that, it not only works in the exercises, it works in real life. I mean, it's a crazy concept.Robert McMahan:You mentioned trepidation. I see that a lot too. They get in there, a lot of things are going on. They don't know, well, am I really supposed to do that? Well, yeah, you are. Do something.Billy Perry:Look for work.Robert McMahan:Look for work. Go save lives.Billy Perry:Go do great things.Robert McMahan:Yes. Right.Bill Godfrey:Mark, you got any others that you want to throw on there, or we want to move on?Mark Rhame:In regards to RTFs?Bill Godfrey:Yeah.Mark Rhame:No, good.Bill Godfrey:All right. So we covered contact teams, we covered RTFs, let's talk about tactical triage and transport, and then I think we'll jump to staging command, and then talk a little bit about dispatch. So tactical triage and transport, you want to lead us off Robert? What are the common things you're seeing there?Robert McMahan:Communication. And first of all, it's the communication within the room at that post where tactical triage and transport are located, And generally in training, we get that accomplished early on because we're in there coaching them and telling them, communicate. They'll ask the instructor, well, where's this, or do they have security, I'm like, well, talk to your counterpart right there and ask them, because that's who's in charge of it.We get that ironed out pretty quick, but it tends to fall apart at the actual incident. We don't get those people located and that communication doesn't happen, or it breaks down.The second thing, again, goes back to controlling those units that are under your command and communicating where they're at. And many times in training, the way I coach is I ask questions. Do you know where your RTF is? Are you getting information back on actual patient counts from your RTF? Well no. Well, get on the radio and ask them. They work for you.Again, that trepidation, not ready to do it, not sure what to do, but not communicating, not keeping track of your resources and giving them direction.Bill Godfrey:Mark, what do you got?Mark Rhame:I see the same thing, but I'm going to put a little twist on this. We really, really push, and especially in large classes, that you get a scribe or an aid, you get someone to assist you. So many times, whether it's tactical, triage, or transport, when they get into that confusion state, maybe they're going to that brain fog environment, I think a lot of it is because they're trying to listen, communicate, and take notes. They're doing too much. And if they get someone else to take some of that responsibility off of them, and again, getting that scribe, that aid, taking all their notes, all they have to do is regurgitate what that aid or scribe already heard from those supervisors and they can give a cleaner direction, I think, in regard to what they're trying to accomplish and that goal.Bill Godfrey:Billy, how about you? On the tactical side, let me be specific, what are the common things that jump out in your mind for a patrol guy? So not a supervisor, but a patrol guy who the duty fell to him and he's having to step up to tactical. He or she having to step up the tactical. What's jumps out in you as the challenge for them on that day stuff?Billy Perry:Mission creep. You already have so much to do and not trying to do more than what you're supposed to do, and going over and above SIM plus I, and getting into the triage, getting into the transport, not staying in their own lane.Bill Godfrey:Reminding them, you got people for that.Billy Perry:Right. That's not your job. You got enough. You got a big job. You're busy. Don't do it. But again, that's the checklist. You're in your tactical T, you got security, you've got your immediate action, you got your medical, now your intelligence, if it's not in there, then stop.Bill Godfrey:Absolutely. All right, you guys have any others that stick out in your mind for tactical triage and transport?Mark Rhame:Well, what I don't see from, and I'll use transport as an example, is them preparing for what's going to happen next. Why wouldn't, if you're transport, call your ambulance one, of course, in our training environment it's a little easier, but you call them up and say, hey, you're my first ambulance up, when you arrive on the scene, we're already working it right now, you're going to load a red, a yellow, green. They're going to be brought to you at this location here. Be prepared. I'm going to move you up a little closer, and soon as I give you the green light, you're going to get in there and get those patients, get them off the scene.But get that communication link working very, very quickly. You don't have to wait until you're ready to deploy them. Because again, there's still so much going on at that point in time. Do it ahead of time. Get on that clean radio channel, communicate with your people, get them prepared to go into that environment, but don't wait until they tell you, well, you need to send an ambulance up to that location.Robert McMahan:The mission creep, like Billy talked about, I see tactical often trying to run RTFs. They make a call for them early on, they're asking for them, but then they're trying to deploy them, and that they shouldn't be doing that. That belongs to triage. So mission creep.Bill Godfrey:I think that's common stuff. What's interesting is, I don't feel like I see the vapor lock quite as much at tactical triage and transport as I do at contacts and RTFs. And I don't really know why that is, but it feels like they begin to engage and then they just find their way through, but like you said, they end up trying to do too much.Mark Rhame:I do see that if you, and I don't mean to place this back on law enforcement, but if a tactical officer's sitting there getting so consumed about they have to clear that entire building, and now triage and transport are locked up. They're sitting there going, no I'm ready to send my RTFs in, we got a casualty collection point identified. There are patients there. We got ambulances ready to transport them off the scene. But tactical's got into this mindset, well, I got to start clearing the rest of the building. And everything gets held up. So sometimes someone needs to walk over there and kick them in the pants and go, come on, you got patients that are dying here. Let's move up.Bill Godfrey:ARC. I was just going to say, that goes back to Billy's active threat, rescue, clear. All right, so we talked about contacts, RTF, tactical, triage, and transport, so let's talk a little bit about staging. So Mark, I know you've coached staging a lot. Day one, common problems, misunderstandings, that you see in staging.Mark Rhame:I hate to sound like a broken record, but that is a job that will overwhelm you in training and in real-world very, very quickly if you don't get help. If you think as one individual, if you get 50 law enforcement officers all of a sudden pile up to you and start checking in, and you think you can do it by yourself, you're absolutely nuts. That is not going to happen. Same thing on the fire and EMS side.You need to get someone to help you out and take your notes for you so you can be that director, that manager, that person running that site. And I see that too much that they're trying to do everything and they have people and tools that can make their life a lot easier. Again, we try to tell them lean forward, build out these teams quickly, but if you get an aide or scribe in there, you're going to be more successful every single time.Bill Godfrey:I think so too. I think the day one stuff I commonly see, of course, aside from the fact that most law enforcement agencies are not doing staging on a fairly regular basis. It's a little bit foreign to them. So it's pretty common, especially day one, to get that officer who's going to be the staging manager now with the fire department person, and they're a little bit lost. That's not uncharacteristic, and I would think it's perfectly normal and it's a great learning opportunity, and they pick up on it very quickly. But trying to understand those lines of communication and lines of responsibility.One of the big things that I see, that's a light bulb moment for a lot of people, and interestingly, I see this on the fire side almost as often as I see it on the law enforcement side, is that I'm the one that organizes the team, so I take these raw resources that are checking in with me and I organize them into the team I need. It's a contact team. It's a rescue task force. It's a perimeter group. It's whatever. I'm organizing them, but I don't come up with the assignments. I don't just make a contact team and send them down range. That ain't my job. My job is to organize individual officers into a contact team, and then when tactical calls and says, I need a contact team, you guys, you're on deck, go, and give them the task. And the same thing with the RTFs.That jumps out to me as one of those things that the first day, I don't think it's terribly clear to people, and then over the next day, that day two, they get that, okay, I understand what this job is about.Robert McMahan:Some of that is lean forward and building those teams out before they're asked for. Because if you're sitting there with 100 cops and 43 fire trucks, you should be building some teams before somebody asks for them. Because once they ask for them, that means they need them and they need them now. So don't wait for that ask, build them up first, make sure they're ready to go so that when they ask, they're ready to go.Bill Godfrey:Amen.Mark Rhame:And the other side of that is that, and I'll give you this example, a scenario we just ran where one of the staging managers said, there's just so much noise in this room. And I'm sitting there going, you're the staging manager. There's a way to control that. Tell everybody I the room to shut up. Tell everybody in the room to back up and get into areas where they're waiting for their assignment. And once they get their assignment, they can go to another location, that's where the teams are going to hold until you're ready to send them.That applies to real-world too. If all of a sudden you have 50 law enforcement officers and 10 engine companies and five ambulances hovering around you at the staging... Bill Godfrey:Physically crowding up on your space.Mark Rhame:That's very problematic, and if you don't control that environment right up front, it's just going to grow on you and it's going to get worse. So you got to own that site as you would if you're the first RTF getting into a casualty collection point, own that site and manage those people. And if it's too loud, back them off and tell them to shut up.Bill Godfrey:Absolutely. All right, we ready to move on from staging? Let's talk about command. The command post. And I'll start, this one with this preface, I think the biggest misconception about active shooter incident management, I don't know if this would be the number one, but it's definitely in the top three, is the difference between what is the responsibility of tactical triage and transport and what is the responsibility of the command post. And I think that most people, when they think of active shooter incident management, what they're really thinking about is the jobs and duties of tactical, triage, and transport, and not the jobs and duties of the incident command post.With that said, Mark, you've, I think, among the three of us, probably spent more time as the command coach, what are the big things that jump out at you day one, common issues?Mark Rhame:I think the biggest thing for me is the incident commander doesn't realize, and especially in this model using the checklist, they have people. They have people that do their job in the command post and other in positions, and how many times you see the incident commander, that person who's in charge of that scene, go, hold on a second, I got to step out and talk on the radio. No, you got a law enforcement branch stood up that is your communication link to that law enforcement side. You've got a medical branch who's going to do everything, all that communication, and give you all that information on the medical side. You should have a PIO that's developing your game plan in regard to getting the message out to the public, whether it's social media, or a real press briefing, or face-to-face.You got an Intel person who should stand up with a team and is going to get all of that background information. What happened here? You got people to do this work, and how many times you see the incident commander sitting there going, well, hold on a second, I got to take a call, or I got to get on the radio, or I got to take care of... No. You got people, let them do it.Bill Godfrey:You don't even need a radio.Mark Rhame:In fact, in my eyes, that's the most successful incident commander, takes the radio off, turns it off, whatever they have to do, and let those other people do the work for them.Bill Godfrey:I would agree with you. I think that's one of those aha moments is the sense that, I thought incident command was supposed to be incredibly chaotic and overwhelming, and one of the things that we're trying to train people is, that's not really what you're shooting for. If that's what you've got, there's something not quite right. We need to fix that. Because it shouldn't be that chaotic and it shouldn't be that overwhelming, because you do have these people that have responsibilities laid out to work under that.Robert, what jumps out at you in the command post in terms of common day one stuff?Robert McMahan:I would say it's the mission creep and getting too far down in the weeds. Again, not using the people that are supposed to be doing those things. But the other thing that I've experienced, and not so much in the training environment, because we force it here, but in real life, is not having fire and law enforcement together in that command post.We force them to do it in the training environment, so it's not a big deal there, but in real life too many times I've seen law enforcement and fire at their own command posts, not communicating. And if they need something they'll call each other up, but you need that partner with you in the command post, whatever it is, fire, crimes, whatever it is, you got to have those two representatives working together.Bill Godfrey:That's a prescription for disaster when you got two different command posts, it's, like you said, too many times. So Billy, I got a question for you. How often do you see the incident commander getting tactical? They're getting into the tactical, they're getting into the weeds, they're getting into the business of the contact teams.Billy Perry:Every class.Bill Godfrey:What are the kinds of issues that that causes?Billy Perry:Every class. Well, I think it causes a lot of issues in real life and in training. It causes a lack of confidence in themselves and of tactical. Wait a minute, am I not doing my job? Is he supposed to be doing that? Am I supposed to be doing that? It causes second guessing. And it's destructive to the train up and down the line. But it does, it happens every class. It's mission creep. It's what we were just talking about. And not maintaining the 50,000 foot.Robert McMahan:By the way, it takes time to do that.Billy Perry:It does.Robert McMahan:We're fighting the clock on this, so it takes a lot of time for tactical or contact teams to have that interaction with the incident commander when they don't really need to.Billy Perry:If only there was a section on the checklist for that too.Billy Perry and Bill Godfrey:There is.Bill Godfrey:How about that? Well, I mean, in fairness, that was why we wanted to talk about this, is because these are things that we see, they're common, not only in training, but in the real life incidents. These are common issues that we see and you can substitute different classes, different subject areas related to active shooter, and you still see these patterns repeat. Mark, any others in the command post that jump out at you?Mark Rhame:Not only what we just talked about, getting out of your lane and getting into the weeds, but the incident commander in these classes don't realize they're going to be so busy dealing with people, or should be so dealing with people, that own that business or the school administrator or the mayor. Their boss is going to call them up and they're going to, what's going on? Give me a briefing. They're going to get overwhelmed with that very, very quickly. And frankly, if they're not getting a liaison stood up to engage with those school administrator or that mall owner or manager, or that airport authority, the FAA, whoever it happens to be, whatever scene you're on, they're missing the big picture because that's what they should be dealing with.The other side of the thing is that we don't see them readily or quickly engaging their emergency manager. Emergency managers can be your godsend if you're the incident commander, they have all those contracts, those contacts, that's what their job is, to have all that stuff ready to go when this incident rolls out. Engage your emergency manager, they're going to help you out right off the bat and they're going to help you get really organized very quickly.Bill Godfrey:I think that is an excellent observation, and something that I think is a best practice is for emergency management at major incidents, they ought to be one of the responders that goes to the command post and is a liaison. I'm not suggesting, let me be clear, I am not suggesting that emergency management runs emergency management from the scene. I think that's a mistake and foolhardy, but to have a liaison at the scene who is a part of the emergency management team that can do that reach-back is pretty critical.All right, any others about the command post before we talk about dispatch? Okay, so let's talk about this one for a second. And I'll say this as a lead off, I think the most common thing I see on day one with dispatchers or communicators is really on the law enforcement side, that many, not all, but many of the law enforcement dispatchers are used to having to be what I'm going to call that default command or that defacto command, whoever the first unit is that gets there starts barking stuff, and then somebody else starts barking stuff, and they're expecting dispatch to coordinate all of this stuff, and they end up smack in the middle of it.Here in this process, we're trying to keep dispatch in that role that they're in, but get the responders to set up their own structure and command it from the scene. And so one of the things that I see and hear frequently from law enforcement dispatchers on day one is, I don't feel like I was talking enough. I don't feel like I was in the middle of it. They were telling me all of the things that I'm used to doing. I just felt a fish out of water. Robert, have you seen that?Robert McMahan:Especially on the law enforcement side, we get all these units running hot and they're dogpiling the scene and doing what cops do, and we forget to get that first line of supervision set up and actually take charge. And that's why when I was working, I told my dispatchers, here's the checklist. If you don't hear staging set, you don't hear someone taking charge, ask for that to happen. Find that supervisor that's in the middle of that say, are you going to be in charge? Are you the incident commander? Where do you want the staging? Get that off the dispatcher's responsibility to try and handle and get it in the hands of somebody that can actually manage it.Mark Rhame:I think part of the problem, Bill, is that we don't, collectively as public safety, engage our dispatchers in our training environment on a regular basis.Billy Perry:There it is. Absolutely. There it is.Mark Rhame:Because think about this for a second, you can go your entire career and never get one of these big events or maybe right toward the end of your career. Now think about dispatch though. They aren't training with us. They're not out there engaging it. And first time they hear it is probably when it actually happens and they're sitting there going, what are they doing? What's this about? We should be engaging our dispatchers in every training environment, at least making sure they understand what those benchmarks are.Bill Godfrey:I absolutely agree. It seems as obvious as the day is long, but I'd say it's the exception rather than the rule that we include dispatch. But then again, frankly, as we've commonly said, how often are we seeing law enforcement training that's not including Fire-EMS and Fire-EMS training that's not including law enforcement? I mean frankly, we've got room across the board to do that.Billy, what's the common things that come into your mind for dispatch day one?Billy Perry:Frustration over accuracy of reports. They get frustrated. And to me, that's just alien. I said, you do realize that's every day. I mean, because, I mean, callers are not accurate. Complainants are not accurate. Initial reports are generally not accurate. I mean, it's a tense and certain rapidly developing situation that is fluid and growing and changing in nature, and nothing changes, whether it's training environment, whether it's the scenario, or whether it's in real life. Once they get their head wrapped around that, then they move on.Again, like you said, the training. And even we ask in classes, have you had training in, just for example today, have you had training in hostage negotiation? They said, yes, we have. And then the question was asked, was it a local agency that gave it to you or the FBI? Crickets. I mean, who gave it to you?I think we have to have training. I thin we have to give them training. Mark hit it on the head. And I think they need to remember that just because it comes over the radio, it's just like the internet. It doesn't mean it's true.Bill Godfrey:You know what else is inaccurate is the triage numbers for the first 20 minutes.Billy Perry:Correct.Bill Godfrey:The colors and the numbers are never accurate for the first... I think the other thing that jumps out at me on day one for dispatch, and I see this on really both sides, is trying to get acclimated to the terminology. There's not a lot of terminology that we introduce that's specific to active shooter or active shooter incident management, but there is some and if a dispatcher hasn't been part of a training before, or hasn't seen or heard one of these calls, it could easily be terminology they've never heard before. What does that mean? And where does that fit in? And how do I note that?Billy Perry:I think that was even worse when we used to have, instead of becoming contact one, we became command. Do you remember?Bill Godfrey:That was... Please..I'm going to need counseling after. Thank you for that. You just threw me into PTSD.Billy Perry:Remember? Because it did.Bill Godfrey:You're killing me.Billy Perry:It caused a lot of confusion.Bill Godfrey:You think? Yeah, it did. And for the end of the day, it wasn't for a very good reason, but we did overcome it in the end. We overcome it and got the change that we needed. Mark, Robert, anything else that jumps out at you for dispatch?Mark Rhame:I see, and maybe the light bulb comes on day two into the day, of the advantage of having a law enforcement officer, especially in that intel side, embedded in dispatch immediately. How many scenes and after-action reports have you read where 30 minutes later, they're still chasing their tail? They've already taken down the known assailant and then 30 minutes later, the same description gets put out because now all of a sudden someone dials 911 because they finally got that text message from their loved one that said, hey, I saw this guy running around with a gun.Well, if someone was there to clean that mess up, to maybe say, that's probably that first person. That's not a second person. And the advantage of having that law enforcement officer in dispatch as quick as possible is going to work for everybody.Bill Godfrey:Sure. Our dear friend, Mike, had that one that had an international tinge to it. They were chasing their tails for four or five hours. They were chasing ghost reports or echo calls. And he said very clearly in the aftermath, there was plenty of information for us to realize that those were ghost, those were echo, calls. We'd already checked that stuff out, and then we were chasing our tails. But we didn't see it at the time. We didn't have it put together. We didn't have it organized where somebody was riding herd over that. So yeah, absolutely.All right, we are up on our time. Any final comments or final thoughts, day one things that are common issues you see pop up that we haven't mentioned?Robert McMahan:Not on day one, but I will say when you debrief this thing, get everybody in the room. Include dispatch, include your EDM, include everybody, to talk about the issues and problems they had. Because if you don't, you're not going to hear from them. You're not going to learn from your mistakes. So debriefing with everybody is pretty important.Bill Godfrey:And let's be honest about the mistakes. There can be some consequences for being honest about it, but that's part of our job. Mistakes occur, especially in training. And that's a place that's a good place for the mistakes to occur so we can own them and talk about them and then hopefully do a repetition.Robert McMahan:That's why we do the debriefs in our training. After every scenario we do those debriefs, talk about what went wrong, what went right.Mark Rhame:I would say that one of the things that surprises me, even to this day and age, is when we ask questions at day one in regard to... I'll give you an example here. When we ask, do y'all have an MCI plan? And you have people in the room, well, I don't know. Well, didn't you do any research, didn't you do any prep work, before you came to this environment? You know we're going to talk about a mass casualty event, we're going to have a shooter with multiple injuries, and yet it almost sounds like you're not totally sure about your own policies. The conflict in the room mesmerizes me sometimes.I get it that that brand new law enforcement officer, that brand new firefighter, EMS person, whoever it happens to be, they probably don't know all their policies and practices. They're still trying to get that, where do I show up to work this day and what uniform am I wearing? But outside of that, you would think they'd do a little bit of prep work and be prepared for this environment before they walk in there. So I think that that goes a long way, if you just sit there and open your policies and review those before you walk into this training environment.Bill Godfrey:Mark, it's interesting you say that because I think the flip side of that is just as interesting, when we're working with a group and they say, well, that's not the way we do it around here, and yet there's somebody else in the room that is one of their mutual aid responders who doesn't do it the way they do it. And it's like, wait a minute, you're pushing back, saying that's not the way we do it, except the guy standing next to you, who's going to be on your scene, it's not the way he does it.I think that both sides of that are pretty fascinating. Billy, how about you? What do you want to leave us with about the importance of the things that we learn from day one?Billy Perry:Repetition. Not just running reps, because, again, practice does not make perfect, perfect practice makes perfect. Being diligent. Being correct. You can't do it wrong enough fast enough to make it right enough. So do it right. Do it correctly. Do it professionally. Do it calmly. And repeat.Robert McMahan:To add to that, I'd say, if you go to one active shooter incident management class and you call it good, you're not going to do it well when the day comes. You need to keep practicing this. You need to keep training on this over and over, just like we do with firearms and putting out fires and driving and all that stuff. You got to keep up with this and keep training, or it gets perishable.Bill Godfrey:Absolutely. Billy said that earlier, it's a perishable skill. I completely agree. The good news is though, is once you get the basics down with enough repetitions, with some insightful coaching, and you start to get it, what it takes as an effort to maintain it is not nearly as hard as what it took you to acquire it.Billy Perry:Yes. However, just like with firearms, it changes.Bill Godfrey:Yes, it does.Billy Perry:Tactics change. And if you're not current, you're not. And I mean, we held pistols differently, we reload pistols. We have different platforms and tactics are completely different. The way we enter rooms, the way we take rooms, the checklists.Bill Godfrey:Every once in a while we change medical procedures too.Billy Perry:Exactly. And checklists and verbiage. And that's not bad.Bill Godfrey:It's progress.Billy Perry:That's progress. But I think that's the case. So you've got to stay current. You have to stay current. And if you're not you're not treating it as a professional. You're not taking your craft seriously.Bill Godfrey:All right, well, ladies and gentlemen, I hope you have enjoyed this podcast. Gentlemen, thank you for the time. If you have some suggestions for future podcasts or things that you'd like to hear us talk about or address, please send them into us at info@c3pathways.com. Thanks to Karla Torres, our producer, for putting this together. And until the next time, stay safe.

Episode 41: Micro TrainingFor this week's podcast topic, we discuss different types of micro training to help reinforce active shooter incident management methods.Bill Godfrey:Welcome to the Active Shooter Incident Management Podcast. My name is Bill Godfrey your podcast host. We're happy to have you with us today, where we're going to be talking about micro training. Things that you can do in 10 to 15 minutes during your roll calls or briefings to help people stay on top of Active Shooter Incident Management. I have with me today, three of the other instructors from C3 Pathways, Robert McMahon from the law enforcement side. Robert. Good to see you.Robert McMahan:Good to see you, Bill.Bill Godfrey:All right. We've also got Mark Rhame on the fire/EMS side, Mark. Good to have you back.Mark Rhame:Yeah, always enjoy it.Bill Godfrey:And Billy Perry, Billy it's been a little while.Billy Perry:It hasn't been. It's been a minute, but I'm glad to be back.Bill Godfrey:Oh, it's good to have you. Good to have you back in the house. All right. So I almost feel like the first thing I want to do is go around and talk about all the different names we've heard this called. So roll call training, briefing training, quick drills. What else?Robert McMahan:Seven minute training where I came from.Bill Godfrey:Seven minute training. Okay.Mark Rhame:Morning teleconference review issues. Yeah.Billy Perry:Hip pocket training.Bill Godfrey:Hip pocket. All right. So the idea here is that during these opportunities, whether it's roll call, shift change, whenever you're going to do it within your organization, to be able to take 10 or 15 minutes and kind of reinforce some of these ASIM topics. And so I've asked the instructors to kind of come up with some things that they thought would help. And some of these are things that you can do really without any preparation, without any warning. Some of them are going to acquire a little bit of planning, but not a whole ton of planning. And we're going to kind of go through them. Mark. Do you mind leading us off?Mark Rhame:Sure. I guarantee you the three, four of us sitting here at this table and the people listening probably can go to their file cabinet, go to their book, whatever they keep their certificates of the classes they've taken, and they stick them into those files, stick them into that book. And then they pretty much ignore it from that point forward for the most part. Part of the failure, I guess, in the public safety environment, whether it's fire/EMS, law enforcement, is that we do a lot of good training. We get together and we come together and say this is a good thing, but how much do we practice this? How much do we talk about it? How much do we go out there and engage our partners? Whether if you're on the fire/EMS side or your talking to the law enforcement, especially the guys you run with, girls who run with on a regular basis than a community and talk about these topics and reinforce what we're going to do when we get on those scenes.So one of the first things I look at is for fire and EMS is you need to invite your fellow law enforcement brothers and sisters out there stop by a firehouse. And let's re-emphasize what our roles are, what we're going to do when we get on the scene. When you build out an RTF how much equipment you're going to carry? Who's in command, who's going to do talking on the radio, make sure we have that radio discipline. So there's a lot of things that we can do in a very short period of time. But again, it's up to that battalion chief or assistant chief or whatever that ranking person is on that morning teleconference to say, "Hey guys and girls go out there and get with your brothers and sisters." On the law enforcement side as I'm talking about fire/EMS and let's reemphasize and talk about what our responsibilities are and what our roles are going to be in these environments. Because again, all of us has taken these classes, but how much do we practice it afterwards?Bill Godfrey:So real quick and simple Mark, you're talking about just invite your local law enforcement guys and gals that work in your area, ask them to come by pop by the firehouse 10, 15 minutes for a meal.Mark Rhame:A simple thing as open up the cabinet and show them what you're going to carry so they can actually see what your intent is when you arrive on the scene at staging, and you build out your RTFs-Billy Perry:And what your ability is.Mark Rhame:Yeah, exactly. And maybe they're going to go, "Oh, wait a second. That's too much. You can't carry all that stuff." Or maybe after the scene's been cooled down a lot the known threats are either contained or neutralized. You can bring in that scoop stretcher or Blackboards or whatever it happens to be. So that's where you re-emphasize this stuff and go over the rules of engagement if you will, in that fire/EMS side. And it doesn't take that long, just make sure everybody's on the same page.Bill Godfrey:Billy. One of the things that kind of jumps out to me as Mark says that is the idea of reinforcing that RTF introduction about rules and responsibilities and most fire guys and gals don't have any knowledge about tactics or how to move.Billy Perry:Right. And frankly, a lot officers don't either, spoiler alert. But you're right. And I think, yeah. That's all of us. We all fall into that, but yeah, I agree. And it all boils down to relationships.Mark Rhame:Yeah. That's actually a really good point though, Billy. In the class, we talk about it, and we do a little demo sometimes in the live class where we show building the teams out every shakes hands and does the introduction. But how often has someone gone out there and say, "Hey, let's practice this." The law enforcement officer gets with the fire/EMS guys and say, "We're going to be an RTF. Let's demo or practice this in the parking lot or in the station or whatever on our expectations from the law enforcement side.Billy Perry:Yeah, and we're all trainers. And we know we accept the fact that a lot of people don't understand. Practice does not make perfect, perfect practice makes perfect because if you're practicing wrong, it's not better. And you're right. And it's getting the reps in, the good reps. That's why SWAT teams serve warrants is for reps for hostage rescue. There's a lot of reasons for it. And I think that's where we need to do that in what we do in building relationships and familiarity.Robert McMahan:I think another way to do that is just on the opposite side. When law enforcement is conducting training, tactical training, invite those fire guys to come out there with you and do that with you. Practice those movements, figure out if you've got the right kit. Figure out how much you're carrying actually. You may want to adjust that kit based on that training and actually running it, communicating down the halls and all that kind of stuff. When we're doing our tactical training to make sure we're including them as well as our dispatchers to tie up that communication piece.Bill Godfrey:Now, Robert, when you say kit, what do you mean there?Robert McMahan:Well, I mean, both for fire and for law enforcement. Law enforcement's got their stuff, their kit that they put on their body armor that they get in there long guns out and that kind of stuff. The things they're carrying into that hot zone or warm zones. And for the fireside whatever those tools are that they're going to be carrying down range as an RTF to the patients, they need to make sure that that kit or whatever they're bringing is going to be right. And it's going to be manageable.Bill Godfrey:One of the things and I've talked about it before here on the podcast, that was a surprise or an awakening moment to me when I first started kind of doing this and working with some of the specific lingo. Things like the X, understanding hallway intersections, T intersections, how to keep a light touch, but not grab on when you're moving. How important are those things to talk to the fire/EMS folks about on the law enforcement side. Because I mean, if you don't have the law enforcement background that was foreign terminology to me.Billy Perry:Sure. It's huge. It honestly is. I mean it can be a total unhinging of the operation. It can be nothing and it can also be grievous. So I mean its knowledge is power.Bill Godfrey:Okay. Very good. Well, that's the first one off the board there, Mark. Billy what's on your list.Billy Perry:On my list is knowledge. And I say that jokingly. The big thing in law enforcement, and this isn't being condescending, I fall into this category as a trainer and as having been a trainer for decades, we in law enforcement used to be really, really good at the initial neutralization as Mark put it of the issue. When it came to ASIM Active Shooter Incident Management, we used to be really good at that. And we've kind of not gotten as good lately. We've had some challenges. And I think a lot of it is born of ignorance of our craft and our profession. And I think a lack of knowledge and a lack of familiarity can cause professional and cognitive freezing. And I think knowing what we do and why we do it and how we do it is huge. And I think this is one of those situations where hip pocket training can be so event changing.And we talk it where our work, the why we do it response to resistance. And you can call it response resistance, use of force, whatever. In the words of Shakespeare, "A rose by any other name," whatever. But no the statutes, wherever you are, know the statues that justify or that cover your justification of use of force and in Florida, it's 7, 7, 6, know that. Know your orders. Know your case law, you're Graham v. Connor, Tennessee v. Garner. Scott v. Harris for pursuits and whatnot but know those things. And so that way, when the drop down menu appears in your mind, you act professionally. In law enforcement we reached a level of frankly, of unconscious competency. We accidentally do the right thing a lot of times when we can't articulate why. Words mean things and we need to be quoting those statutes.And that's part of the issue we're having with a public right now is words do mean things. We can't explain why we've done what we've done, because we don't really know, frankly. And I think when you ask any number officers, why did they shoot somebody? Or why do they shoot people? Why do they resort to that? And why do they have the weapons platform that they use? They don't know. And they may use coined terms such as, "To neutralize the threat." Well that sounds good but what does that really mean? And what does that mean to the public?And, frankly, we answer to the public. As a law enforcement officer, my fundamental duty is to serve mankind, safeguard lives and property. I mean, so to protect the innocent against deception, the weak against oppression or intimidation session week has pressure on intimidation and the peaceful against violence or disorder, and on and on and on. And we need to know why we do what we do, and we do that. We implement deadly force with two things in mind, to change their behavior, whatever they're doing, stop it. And to stop the bullet because the bullets... the fourth rule in firearm safety is the arc of fire, beware of your target and what's beyond it.And handgun rounds over-penetrate a lot. And so what's behind it? We don't want to be detrimental. And that's why where I work, we have special ammunition, and we use long guns because of the lack of over-penetration and for the enhanced accuracy. And I think we need to be able to explain why, and when the public asks, "Why," because it's a reasonable question. We need to be able to professionally articulate why, because it's a great reason and it's scientific and based on physics and actual data, which is also crazy. That's the great thing about training in 2021. And one of the things I like about C3... research it, check it out. It's true.Bill Godfrey:All right. So some quick hip pocket training to talk about that decision-making process and knowing...Billy Perry:Knowing why, knowing when, being able to articulate why. And even not just in the deployment of it, but when you're standing in a neighborhood with a rifle, when somebody calls it an assault rifle or whatever, and says, "Why are you standing here with that terrifying thing?" For you to be able to articulate professionally. "I understand this may look scary but it's really not. And the reason I carry it is so that it is so much safer for your family and why endanger Sandy in the sandbox and Sammy on the swing set for somebody else doing wrong in do right zone. I can apply my rounds exactly on target and they don't over penetrate like my handgun rounds. And so while I realize it looks a little bit dangerous, sir or ma'am, it's really not. And it's a lot safer than any other platform we can use."And that's why we do it. It's not for intimidation factor or anything else. And to be able to say, because it's true and people may flame me, but I don't care. It's true. We don't shoot to kill. We don't shoot to wound. And we don't shoot the warn. We shoot for you to stop doing what you're doing and to stop our bullet at the end. And in Jacksonville, we just had one Saturday night, I guess, the ninth. And they shot him, and it stopped when he stopped. That's what is the general thing. and but knowing why and being able to articulate it, that's where this hip pocket training could be so event changing, career changing and because most civil unrest have started because of traffic stops and shootings that the public didn't understand.Bill Godfrey:Okay, Robert, what's on your list? I'm going to come to you before I throw one of mine out.Robert McMahan:So years ago, one of the sheriffs I worked for implemented a thing we call seven minute training and every day at briefing, we were supposed to give seven minutes of training on some topic. And I don't know if the audience realizes but C3 Pathways has actually provided a great list in the Active Shooter Incident Management checklist of seven minute training topics. And what I would like to see is if I were still in charge of patrol or teams, is to see my supervisors going through each of these sections. Law enforcement first arriving, tactical, all these positions and talk about what those positions do, why they're important, why they're set up the way they are. So they know inside and out the structure that has been put together and this training that's been put together and know what their roles and responsibilities are.Especially if I'm a first-line supervisor. And I want to avoid that over convergence of resources that we've talked about in the past. And I want those contact teams to get formed and to be going down range with a purpose and understand that tactical has got to control those. So all these areas that we have on the checklist are great train topics. Each segment by themselves are a great training topic for seven minutes, five minutes, 10 minutes, whatever you want to do at those roll call trainings. And they're also good at the tactical trainings that we've talked about earlier. Getting your tactical room clearing, running the hallways, all that kind of stuff, and getting your fire and EMS, and they're working those, but understanding what role each person's in, what their responsibilities are and what they need to get done. I think you got a whole checklist full of training topics there. And if you don't have one, you can go to the website and download one and get it for free. So, I mean, there's a month's worth of training just on the checklist itself.Bill Godfrey:I completely agree with you. And actually almost kind of wish I went first because now it's going to sound like I'm just stealing your topic, but I'm a basic guy, simple guy. And I think often the way the incident goes really depends on the first few minutes of how it unfolds. And if the first few minutes unfolds kind of the right direction, then there's an inertia with it that carries itself forward. And to me, one of the things that I would like to see in that five, 10 minute roll call briefing is to have scenarios. I mean, almost every place you are, you've got access to a computer screen or a monitor or a projector on the wall. Pull up Google maps, pull up a target in your area, whether it's a school or a building or a mall, or I don't care, take your pick.And give them a scenario, say, "Okay, here's what the dispatch goes out. You roll up on scene. This is what you're hearing. This is what you're seeing. Give me a radio, arrival report. Go." "Well, what do you mean?" "Well, I mean exactly what I said. Give me that 15 second arrive report, tell me... hit the items. What's your size-up report? Identify your hot zone. Take command and tell us, yeah, that you're... what are you doing? Not just taking care of it, but what are you going to actually do?" Because I think when you start with that, it forces everybody to go, "Oh wow, I really need to pay attention to this." And then once you get down those first arrival reports, then you go to tactical and do the handoffs.So like Robert was saying... one of the things that I saw that I thought was a pretty interesting way to do it. And Michelle was actually the one that did this. She laid out kind of a scenario on paper, but then split up pieces of it on little index cards. And so as they began to stand this up, she would hand the role cards, to whoever responded. So whoever was tactical got these cards and whoever were the contact team... contact one got these cards and contact two got these cards. And they each had their own little pieces of information, but they didn't know what the other ones knew. And it forced them to kind of have to communicate back and forth in those roles. And I thought that was a pretty creative way of doing it. Again, low tech, super easy. Don't really-Billy Perry:Super fast.Bill Godfrey:Yeah. Don't really even care if it's actually on the radio. I mean, just do it in your radio voice. Right? And make it happen. So to me, I think that's one of the really easy things that takes almost no planning. Pick a spot, come up with a scenario and say, "Give me your size report. Go."Robert McMahan:Yeah. And Bill, that's huge. And if you think that sounds silly, let me tell you it works. We had several officer-involved shootings where I worked and typically what you heard at the beginning was, "Oh, shots fired, scream, scream, scream." So we went into training and changed that and said, "Here's what we want you to say if you're involved in a shooting." So we incorporated it with a scenario on the range, do your shooting now and get on the radio and say what you're going to say. And it changed. Because the next officer involved shooting, we had, it changed. So this will change too. If you're doing this arriving officer reports and doing these briefings and talking it out like you're on the radio or even used radio channel to do it will change your behavior down range when it happens.Mark Rhame:And we talk about that in the face-to-face classes where I know historically for me, when I was a company officer... when I first got made company officer, I would do that as I drove around the town. I mean, literally I pull up to a building, we're going out and doing training, maybe we're doing area survey, or maybe we're doing a building survey. I would in my head give that briefing report as I pulled up to that building. And if you get in a habit of doing that on a regular basis, it becomes so much easier when you have that all that excitement in front of your face.Bill Godfrey:Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, I think that's a good skill. Record one on your phone. "I want everybody, while you're out on patrol, pick a target, pick a scenario, do a report, record it on your phone. I want to see it tomorrow at briefing. Go."Robert McMahan:Yeah.Bill Godfrey:So I think those are great ideas. Mark, you're up next. What else you got?Mark Rhame:I love the practice. And I really tried to push this when I was on shift, of doing a tailboard critique before you leave and emphasize that as a leader-Bill Godfrey:You mean after a scenario is.Mark Rhame:After a scenario.Bill Godfrey:After an incident's occurred.Mark Rhame:Yeah. And involve law enforcement. That was something that we did not do because if we would have just said, "Hold on a second guys before y'all go back in service. Can you come over here and talk. We're going to gather troops around the back of the engine and talk about the good, the bad, the ugly." What did we do good? What did we do bad?Billy Perry:That's brilliant.Mark Rhame:How can we improve that? And involve the law enforcement officers, which I didn't do. I never ever... and emphasize that your crews before they leave that scene, I don't care if it's just a single engine and a rescue that went to a auto with entrapment. Before you leave the scene, put the truck back in service and go, "Guys gather round. What did we do bad, what we do good?" And as a company officer, and as a leader, they should be comfortable enough to say, "Well, we kind of didn't like what you did there." Now there's a line to that. Of course if they're constantly telling me what I did wrong, I'd probably say, "Well, I got a problem here." But the bottom line is that those tailboard critiques, before you leave the scene to me are so important when it's fresh in your mind.Billy Perry:Because we would that all as well. So I wish we had combined them. Because we would because be doing it over... I'm serious. We would be doing it over here. You're doing it over there on the tailboard. How innovative could we have been if we'd have just-Bill Godfrey:"Ooh, let's all talk together."Billy Perry:Right?Bill Godfrey:Yeah.Billy Perry:Because we know each other. Feel dumb.Robert McMahan:You know, as cops we're taught from right out of the academy, start thinking about what you're going to be doing and start thinking about, "Oh, if I have the scenario, how do I respond? If a bad guy pops up over here, how do I respond?" So we're taught to kind of pre-think out those incidents. Well, you can do the same thing with this. If you think about, "Okay, if I'm fifth, man, what are my roles and responsibilities? What do I got to get done? I know there's people down range already. How do I control that? How do I think these things through and plan them out before the incident ever happened?" And you can do this all by yourself. Take the checklist, whatever you want and think about these things, preplan them, talk about, or think about in your mind, how you're going to give that briefing or what you're going to say on the air before you get there or before it happens.Bill Godfrey:Absolutely. I think it's a great one. Billy RTF. Hit me.Billy Perry:Use RTF for everything. Use RTF for football games. And I don't mean just NFL games. I mean, you're in high school games. I mean, use RTF-Bill Godfrey:Planned events you're talking about?Billy Perry:Planned events use them for fairs for carnivals, use them for... because again, practice and you know what make the runs, I mean-Mark Rhame:How about social unrest?Billy Perry:Yeah.Mark Rhame:They pull a permit to do a picket or whatever.Billy Perry:Sure.Mark Rhame:And you know that thing's going to go overboard.Billy Perry:And we had been doing it for that. And that's actual what I would consider a deployment of them. Absolutely. But I think do it. And so that everybody sees how everybody works. And so you understand it more. Put the white stuff on the red stuff and put the wet stuff on the hot stuff. And I mean and do what we do. Because again, it's reps if it's done correctly.Bill Godfrey:Yeah. Keep it simple. Don't miss the opportunities to do it on the easy ones.Robert McMahan:It's just like I tell officers every week I said, "Do not let a firefighter breach a door on a check welfare on somebody that you think is... don't because the worst firefighter in the house can out breach the best SWAT Reacher. And so don't let them have more reps. Don't wait tilt the Super Bowl to reach your first door seriously. I mean breach it. And the same thing with this, I think we need reps.Bill Godfrey:Interesting. Interesting. So I'm going to say for my next one, triage on a mass casualty incidents. I think by and large it's been a bit of a lost art. Now Mark and I are old enough that we're from a generation when we were the medics. There weren't a lot of medics on the road, and it wasn't uncommon for you to have to deal. You went to a four or five patient car accident, and you were responsible for all the patients, if not through the whole call for an extended period of time.And that's a bit of a lost art now is the idea of triage and kind of like the idea that Michelle had of taking up the different roles. Index cards, it doesn't need to be fancy. It doesn't need to be a bunch of stuff. Just take some index cards and write down various injuries, assessment information, and put them in a stack, give them a dozen and say, "I want those in green, yellow, red, and black piles now. Go. Sort them out, get them done." And then go through and look at them and say, "Okay what protocol did you use?" "Well, we use start." You use start. They always say that, "Oh, you start, really? Okay. So how did this patient end up in this column?"They get the walking wounded one, right? I mean, that one's easy. They could wave to me. So that's a green right. They get that one right. Starts a lot more complicated than it sounds. And so, that's a great five, 10 minute drill. You can make 20, 25 cards and mix them up and keep repeating that until they get it right. And then once they get that right, put them into a couple of different piles to simulate two different casually collection points. And then look to the company officer, "Okay, you're in charge of triage now. You're the triage group supervisor at an active shooter event. They've just called in with these kinds of injuries. What are you and transport going to do to sort this out? Who's going first? Who is going in what order? How are you evacuating them? What's going to be your loads on the hospitals, or on loads on the ambulance? Which hospitals are you going to go to?" And I think that simple mechanism can allow you to, as Robert said, you can get multiple runs of training through that and take it on through their roles.Robert McMahan:And triage is a good example of something that we train on it initially. We go out and buy a whole bunch of those tags and the sheets that go with it. And in fact, we even took it farther, One of the departments I worked for the longest period of time We had those numbers that matched the triage tag that went on the ribbon on their arm that matched the run reports. So we can think that we're actually tracking these patients so we can get some good data, which frankly we didn't do. But the bottom line was that if you're not doing it on a regular basis, if you're not training on that a regular basis, when you need to use it doesn't work. Frankly, it's kind of a mess. Am I supposed to tear this off and put it in my pocket? Do I tear off this part and put it on the ground where they're at? It's raining, it's windy, that little piece of paper just went away. What do I do with these numbers? I mean, who's keeping that log, all that stuff-Bill Godfrey:My yellows are red, my reds are yellow.Robert McMahan:Yeah. And all that stuff looks good on paper. And it looks good in that trauma bag that's there that we got triaged tags. But frankly we don't do it enough to be good at it. I mean really that the bottom line.Bill Godfrey:It's funny, a number of years ago... so Florida adopted what they called the statewide standard triage tag. And then they immediately began updating it, evolution after evolution of the different form came out with these different little tweaks. And we were doing an MCI class at an agency and held up the tag and said, "This is the state standard triage tag. And you should have all of these on your vehicles. And one of the company officer goes, "Well, that's not what's on mine." "And well, it's supposed to be it."Anyways, this went back and forth until we finally said, "Okay, timeout, all break. Everybody, go down to your vehicles and pull one of your tags off." And not a single one of the tags on any of the vehicles that were there matched not one of them. And the EMS supervisor was so beside himself, not happy at all. He then over the next several days went and did a physical inspection of every single station. He found over 20 different triage tags in use. 20 different triage tags from the old-Robert McMahan:And one agency. And one agency.Bill Godfrey:And one agency from the old World War II met tags all the way up to this modern... So it just goes to show you can't ever do it too much. Robert, I think you're up for the next one.Robert McMahan:I want to say this first for all you command staff out there. Hear me out here. Okay. Tabletop exercises in command staff. Now I'm not talking about the four to eight hour day that we have to do annually with our emergency manager to check the ICS training requirement box. I'm just talking 10 to 15 minutes. And here's why it's important because you're going to come on scene. You're going to want to take over this. And we tend to over-manage these things we'll get down too far in the weeds. And that's because we don't understand what all the rules are doing.So if you can throw a 10 minute tabletop exercise together. It doesn't have to be fancy. You just get the matboard out, draw it out and start talking it through. Talk about what all these functions you... use this training tool again, that C3 has put out and go through these things so that you're competent too because there's nothing worse... you're your men, the downrange folks, they know you're not competent at this when you show up and you mess it up. So put yourself in there and spend that time doing some tabletops, just for command staff. You got all those staff meetings that you got to go to. You just won't turn some of it into some useful time.Mark Rhame:Are you saying that the rest of it's unuseful time?Robert McMahan:Yes. I'm retired, now. I can say that.Bill Godfrey:It's funny. I mean, you talk about flying under flags of false color. There are often, and this is true on the fireside, EMS side, as much as it is on law enforcement side. There are people that get promoted through no fault of their own. They get promoted, they get the job, and they haven't had a level of training that necessarily makes them comfortable with managing the incidents. Maybe they didn't have a chance for that much experience. Whatever the case may be. Certainly, this has been an issue the fire service has been grappling with because you don't run as many fires as you used to. So how are you supposed to get all this experience and know how to do all this stuff? And every once in a while, and depending on where you are, that sometimes it's more frequent. Every once in a while, you run across somebody who always has something else to do when training's there and what it comes down to is they're afraid of being exposed for not knowing what they're doing.But the reality is, I mean, the silliest part of that is that everybody works for them, and everybody works around them already knows they don't know it. You're not hiding anything. Just get up and go to the training because everybody... It's not a secret. Everybody already knows that you don't know this stuff. So go to training and make yourself vulnerable. I think that line folks have way more respect for somebody in leadership who will commit the time to show up at training, participated and not be afraid to make mistakes in front of the troops.Robert McMahan:And you talked about not being comfortable managing these incidents. Nobody's comfortable managing these incentives.Bill Godfrey:Yeah, no kidding.Robert McMahan:Nobody wants this and the stakes are high. Nobody wants to have that on their shoulders. So you're not alone. Get in there and train and know what you're supposed to do.Bill Godfrey:I think the only people that desire to be an incident commander are people who haven't had to actually do it at a crappy incident. Because people who have had, know that they don't really want to do it again. Mark, what do you got?Mark Rhame:Well, I would say that in sort of touching what y'all just said is that, in my eyes, a great leader in an organization is someone who will engage their people on a regular basis on these five or 10 minute little training environments. Let's use the example of like a battalion chief or an assistant chief in a fire department when they're doing rounds and going around the station. And they were there visiting and maybe it's a social thing, maybe it isn't, but they take the time to say, "Hey, for the next 10 minutes, so let's just talk about this issue. Let's talk about arrival reports, size up reports." And challenge the people that are there engaging them in conversation and get them to be a better place in regard to their leadership capabilities. So in my eyes, whenever I see someone who is a good leader, someone who can engage other people in these short little conversations and training environments.Bill Godfrey:And challenge them.Mark Rhame:Yep, exactly.Bill Godfrey:Wherever they are. Billy? You got anything left?Billy Perry:Just to reiterate the ASIM can't start until we neutralize the threat. And until we take control of the scene and have it under control, and we have to be proficient in that. And once we have it done, it's not over. We don't pack up our trucks and go. It's not over. It goes on throughout all of prosecution through the whole completion of the case. So that's where our professionalism, that's where our professional competency, where our conscience competence, needs to come into play. And we need to be able to do that efficiently, effectively, and professionally every time.Bill Godfrey:And I think that applies for everybody up and down on all the disciplines and all levels, whether it's in dispatch in law enforcement, fire/EMS, line level, supervisor level, emergency management, I think that applies to everybody. And it doesn't auto-magically happen. You got to make an effort and actually work at it. Well, guys, we're coming up on the end of the segment here. And I know that we still had a couple ideas. So I'm thinking about maybe we do a part two. But I was also thinking, it might be interesting to hear from some of our listeners on some of the things that they've done and some of the ideas that they may have on doing some quick drills or quick training, hip pocket training, roll call training, things like that on both the law enforcement and on the fire/EMS side.So I'm going to invite those of you that are out there listening to this, send us a couple notes. Send us some ideas that you might have, whether it's things that you're doing or things that might've popped into your head that you think would be a good idea, or you'd like to see your organization do. And let's revisit this. And in a few weeks' time, let's do a round two of this and have some more of those ideas. So everybody, if you would please send those into info@c3pathways.com. Once again, that email address is info@c3pathways.com. Robert, Mark, Billy, guys, thanks for coming in. Great to have you here. Another good round. Everyone, I appreciate your time and hope that you found this useful. Thanks to Karla Torres our producer for making us sound great. Because if you heard one of these things raw, you would know she does a lot of work and until next time stay safe.

Episode 40: SSAVEIMIn this podcast with John-Michael Keyes from the I Love U Guys foundation, we talk about school safety and violent event incident management.Bill Godfrey:Welcome to the Active Shooter Incident Management podcast. Thank you for being with us today. We have a special guest today. I'm excited to welcome back to the fold John-Michael Keyes with the "I Love U Guys" Foundation. John-Michael, thanks for taking the time to join us on the podcast today.John-Michael Keyes:Oh, thanks for the opportunity, Bill. I always look forward to conversations with you.Bill Godfrey:It is so exciting to have you back. We got some really, really great comments about the last series you and I did, which ironically, we had recorded just before COVID shut everything down.We'll talk a little bit more about that, but I know I'm catching you literally after you've just finished the last day of your briefings. How did it go? Well, you know what? Tell everybody what the briefings were about. I'm anxious to hear how it went.John-Michael Keyes:Yeah. We started, I think almost 10 years ago now, holding an annual conference. We did it in the summertime. For the first several years, we held the conference at Columbine High School. Part of my goal with that was a special ... Not everyone can do that, and so we were delighted that Jefferson County School District and Columbine let us use the school to conduct a school safety conference.We kind of outgrew the auditorium there. It's an unusual conference, because we get a lot of first-person accounts. It feels a little different than many of the safety conferences you may have attended.Bill Godfrey:John-Michael, I'm curious. On the briefings, is there one highlight that really sticks out in your mind that was very moving or thoughtful or meaningful moving forward?John-Michael Keyes:Absolutely. Oddly enough, it's a repeat. Carly Posey is the mission director of the “I Love U Guys” Foundation. Her family story is both difficult and inspiring. She had two kids at Sandy Hook who survived the shooting. The story of the aftermath and their journey, and dealing with active killer event survivors is truly inspirational. I've seen it a half a dozen times. Even seeing it again yesterday, it gets me. Certainly, the virtual audience was moved dramatically by Carly's presentation.Bill Godfrey:I can only imagine it would be impossible not to be moved. I've seen you do yours, I've lost count, but it's well over a dozen times. I don't know how you get through ... I can't get through it with dry eyes. It just doesn't work for me. It's always a very emotional and moving topic.Any highlights that you've got planned for the next set of briefings, which is what the mini set in the winter? Am I remembering that right?John-Michael Keyes:Yeah. We started doing a winter briefing. It was a unique venue. Jefferson County School District in Colorado has 160 schools. The safety and security director there, John MacDonald, did something that I've not seen anywhere else in the country. He successfully stole an elementary school. He convinced the school district to turn the power on for a weekend of training. Having that physical school facility is essential in training for active killer events. He just forgot to have them turn the power off.Bill Godfrey:Conveniently forgot, right? Yeah.John-Michael Keyes:Actually, as the school district saw the benefit of it, they began training, not just Jefferson County public safety, but law enforcement, fire and EMS from around the state and then the country. Navy SEAL team has been there.They secured long-term funding, and it got rechristened the Frank DeAngelis Center for Community Safety. What was Martensen Elementary is now a full-on public safety training venue. I think last year, I looked pre-COVID, they had something like 70 different agencies doing nearly 200 days of training in that building.Bill Godfrey:That's a lot. That's the kind of stuff that really, really makes a difference, I know. Wow. Fantastic stuff. Well, hey, congratulations on getting the briefings done. I'm really happy that things went well, especially with the virtual challenges. But you and I are here to talk about a new program that we're doing together called SSAVEIM, School Safety and Violent Event Incident Management. You want to tell the group, tell the audience what this is about?John-Michael Keyes:Yeah. We developed the Standard Reunification Method in 2012. It was based on practices that we saw around the country in how districts could successfully reunify students with parents, with accountability, and accommodating for psychological first aid. It started gaining some traction. In 2016, we released version two.It was some time after that, when I saw a training of the Active Shooter Incident Management, ASIM, and the Counterstrike method of functional exercise in a classroom environment. It was fascinating to me. You and I got to talking, and I said, "Wouldn't it be cool if we did something like this for reunification?" I'm pretty sure it was during dinner, and perhaps a drink, because you agreed.Bill Godfrey:It's funny how those things ... Yeah. For the audience, if you ever end up at dinner with John-Michael, watch out. It comes fast and furious. Yeah.But I think it was a really great thing. We did it in a couple stages. As you mentioned, we first modified the Counterstrike training system to support being able to do full functional reunifications with students, and the paperwork, and the attendants, and the teachers, and the role players, and the responders and everything else.We began working that into the course that we do, our ASIM courses. We've got a suite of those Active Shooter Incident Management courses. We also built that into our simulation system that we use on the road for doing the advanced class. There's 3D first-person point-of-view system we can use for doing reunification, and then also the Counterstrike.It wasn't very long after that that you and I were talking again. I believe the usual dinner setting was where it occurred. We started talking about ... I think I was asking you some questions. We were having some dialogue about some challenges that we were hitting in the reunification when we were running these exercises in these scenarios. Do you remember that?John-Michael Keyes:Absolutely. That was one of the things that...Your professional career, Bill, that fire chief occasionally comes out, and seasoned incident management, that practical crisis management where your boots-on-the-ground experience over your career, you pointed out some weaknesses in our methods.I was delighted. The foundation is committed to constantly evaluating and evolving. You proposed some modifications to the practices that we've incorporated in version three of the Standard Reunification Method. That's going to be officially published here in the clear near future.Bill Godfrey:You're not getting away with clear near future. No, no, no, no. We're pinning down a date. Next week, right?John-Michael Keyes:Say again.Bill Godfrey:I said next week, right?John-Michael Keyes:It does have a publication date.Bill Godfrey:Good.John-Michael Keyes:We've got it ready to go on the website.Bill Godfrey:Fantastic.John-Michael Keyes:We're excited about that.Bill Godfrey:Yeah, as are we.John-Michael Keyes:The changes were simple and deliberate, and made the process better. The ability to incorporate that into SSAVEIM, and some of the joint development then in the setup and the execution of that, has, A, been entertaining, but, B, I'm really excited about the product.Bill Godfrey:Oh yeah, me too. I cannot wait to see this roll out in a large scale way. We actually did the pilot delivery right as COVID was cranking up, and obviously, had to set everything aside. Now, we're back to doing face-to-face stuff, and so we're beginning to ramp this back up, and beginning this push, which is why you and I both wanted to talk about it.I think that the interesting thing here is the natural evolution. As you mentioned, it's very important to you and the foundation to constantly revisit and say, "Okay. What can be better? What can be better? Is there a better way? Has things changed? What have we learned?"That's the same way that our group approaches the Active Shooter Incident Management. Threats don't stay the same. Things change over time. Things evolve. You have to look at what have we learned, what are the new practices.You were so gracious in accepting some of the feedback, and then we truly worked together on those changes and those edits. That led to the conversation about, "Hey, what do you think about putting together, not just a hands-on class, but a hands-on class that takes school people," so school administrators, teachers, security personnel, "and puts them in the room for the same training with our first responders," police, fire, and EMS, "so that they're learning together, and we're doing these functional hands-on exercises together?"That's how SSAVEIM got born and came together. SSAVEIM basically has three modules to it. The first module is the Standard Response Protocol. John-Michael, you want to recap real quickly for everybody what the SRP levels are?John-Michael Keyes:Yeah. When we started down this path, what we saw was there wasn't common language between students, staff and first responders in a variety of crisis. A lot of schools were still using codes or response levels. We're pretty committed to the fact that codes don't work in a crisis. We found some specific language: lockout, lockdown, evacuate and shelter. Those were the initial four actions of the Standard Response Protocol.Well, we introduced that in 2009, and then iterated and iterated. Today, the Standard Response Protocol 2021 is five actions. We added another action: hold in your classroom or area, and we changed the term lockout to the term secure. We did that to avoid confusion and increase precision.It doesn't sound like a big deal, changing one word. In all honesty, I think the foundation staff had bigger heartburn than the rest of the world, because everyone else said, Oh, finally," rather than complaining.Bill Godfrey:Yeah, yeah. But it is a lot of work.John-Michael Keyes:Yeah, it is a lot of work and seems to be everywhere. But for SRP 2021, the five actions are hold, secure, lockdown, evacuate and shelter. We released that, gosh, it's COVID time, so somewhere before or after COVID started. The programs are being used, in our estimation, in over 30,000 schools, districts, departments, and agencies around the country.You touched on the premise. The premise is that we need to get school folks, and administrators, and public safety all working together, all on the same page. To bring SRP into the SSAVEIM training, absolutely essential. To bring the Standard Reunification Method where, once again, we need the educators, we need public safety, we need administration, and we need to get the parents in the mix sometimes too.Bill Godfrey:Yeah. The SSAVEIM class is three modules. We start off module one is the Standard Response Protocol. We do a very brief lecture, if you will, on that. Then we get everybody up around the Counterstrike boards, and we give them a scenario. The public safety responders stand back. The school folks are up around the board. We say, "Okay, here's the scenario."Obviously, this scenario is based around a typical type of threat. Then the school folks have to decide what is the appropriate response to that. Is it going to be to secure the campus, or is it a lockdown? Then they put the campus in that condition. So they're actually interacting with the chips on the board and other things to collect up the students, put the campus into the appropriate condition. Then we do a timeout.So we run it. It happens real fast. A bunch of hands reaching in and grabbing, and moving kids around, and getting classrooms locked, and all that kind of stuff. Then we take a pause.Then we come back for module two. Now, module two is ASIM the Active Shooter Incident Management checklist, where it is ... We go through that for the public safety responders, but also for the school people to understand what all has to happen on the public safety response side, and the criticality of the sequencing of some of that, and how that matters.We run through that relatively short lecture, get everybody back up, back over to the board, where it's in the condition where they left it earlier. So we're going to pick it right back up where we left off. But now, the public safety people are coming up around the board, and the school people are looking a little more at that transition that happens in real life. "Okay. We've placed our campus in lockdown. Here come law enforcement. We see fire and EMS piling up in the parking lot. What's this going to look like? How's this going to work?"So then that exercise unfolds, with public safety leading that part of it through the neutralization of the threat, which may mean taking the threat down or the threat leaves the campus, whatever the scenario calls for. Then the rescue and transport of those that are injured. We run that scenario until the last patient is transported. Then we call a timeout.Then we go back for the third and final module, which you've already alluded to John-Michael, which is the Standard Reunification Method, where we talk about the importance of going through that process. You want to highlight a little bit about that?John-Michael Keyes:Yeah. What we've seen in the past is school districts often have a what we call Plan B regarding reunification. Plan B is to wing it. Okay? It doesn't happen often enough, but when it does happen, it's important that we do it well, that we account for students and staff, that we accommodate any potential psychological first aid, and that there's a process in place that manages the experience of parents as they're effectively standing in line waiting to get their kid.The Standard Reunification Method is based on practices that are proven in the field in accomplishing those goals of managing parents expectations and experience while waiting to get the kids, methods to accelerate that process and still accommodate for any trauma demands that might be there.We've got paper versions of it, and a number of software vendors have incorporated this into an automated system where we can leverage some of the computer system technology that exists.But the whole point is let's get a parent back with a student with accountability, and let's have a process to attempt to quickly identify any missing students, and a mechanism to provide support for parents if students are missing.Bill Godfrey:Spot on. So we do that lecture, which, again, doesn't take a long time. It's fairly brief and to the point. Then we get everybody back up over to the boards. This is where it really starts to get interesting, because now, for the first time, you've got public safety, who is controlling the campus ...Sometimes that's a little bit of a shock to some school folks to realize that law enforcement has got their campus secured, and you're not just going to pop your head out of a classroom and go walking down the hallway, that there's a series of events that has to unfold here.One of the first challenges is just trying to get everybody to understand who is responsible for what, and how to self-organize themselves into the incident management system that is going to unfold this thing the rest of the way. That's an interesting dialogue that happens right off the bat is to get people in those roles, and then figure out exactly what you're going to do.It's always fascinating to me to watch, John-Michael. I don't know if this has been your experience too. You sit and you listen to the lecture, and you look at people's faces, and they're nodding their heads. You know, intellectually, they get it. But then 10 minutes later, when they get up and try to put hands on, they suddenly have a whole bunch of questions that just things weren't necessarily that clear to them.So as we begin to work through the process, it seems like the second problem that comes up is the school's plan to reunify is to use some part of their existing campus, the gym or their ball field, at which point, law enforcement looks at them, goes, "Yeah, no. We're not doing that.""It's a crime scene. We're not having the parents come here. We can't manage that, secure the ..." So all of a sudden, now, you're talking about an offsite reunification, it seems to me, about half the time. What's been your experience on that? On the plans that you've seen, is about half right, that think they're going to use their own campus?John-Michael Keyes:Yeah. It's a result of principals, at the school level, are kings or queens of their domain. They live in that environment, where that's the case all the time. In an active killer event, suddenly, they don't own their building. Control's been transferred to law enforcement.I always enjoy asking folks what the name of the school is. You said it. It's Crime Scene, and the name of the parking lot is Crime Scene. We aren't going to be reunifying our students with their parents in a crime scene.Principals, they've gotten to that position by going through the educational administrative process, which gets to that king or queen of their domain. The good ones recognize fairly quickly, "Yep. This one's bigger than me."Bill Godfrey:Yeah. It's funny. I can't help but remember you and I doing that training for my daughter's school. My daughter was in a private school. She has since graduated, and now off to college. But we did an early version of this class, when we were still prototyping it and working through it, for her private school.I will never forget that conversation with the superintendent. We said, "Okay. We're going to do reunification." He goes, "Well, we're going to use this part of the campus." "No. You're not." "Okay. We're going to do an offsite reunification. We're going to use this church." "Okay. Have you called them? Do you have a plan?" "No. We'll do that."John-Michael Keyes:"Do you have a key?"Bill Godfrey:Yeah. "Do you have a key?" Then it was, "How are we going to get them over there?" "Oh, we're going to get the buses." "What buses?" "Our buses." "Do you mean the buses in the parking lot? The buses in a crime scene?" He's like, "What's the problem? We'll just move them ..." "No."Then, "Where are you going to get the staff?" "Well, I'm going to pull these teachers and these administrators." "You mean the ones that are on lockdown in your campus?"All of a sudden, it was like he was so dejected a little bit, but it was important, because I think for the first time, he and a number of the other members of their team realized, "We've made an awful lot of assumptions about how this is going to go. It turns out, we've made a few incorrect assumptions."John-Michael Keyes:Humans really learn efficiently by making mistakes. That's one of the things in our training, we do try to talk about charters and privates, and really, really encourage fostering a relationship with the district that they're footprinted in.Talk about a cantankerous response. They don't like that answer, but they come to a grim realization that this is one of those areas where that strong relationship with the surrounding district is going to be essential for a successful reunification. Fostering that relationship, I'm thinking that reunification is the vector that's going to allow those relationships to blossom.Bill Godfrey:Absolutely. You know what? To their credit, they took serious and quick action to change number of things. For example, the SRP, they implemented that a week later. They made policy decisions, and rolled out that training to all of the staff. They since have started this informal network amongst other private schools in the area that are going to work together to share those responsibilities.I just love that the conversation didn't stop. They've carried it forward. They're continuing to do it. I'm sure you remember Mike Armstrong over there was working very hard with a lot of that stuff. Really, really proud of the work that they've done. So SSAVEIM.John-Michael Keyes:Bill, that's the sign of successful training. Successful training doesn't end when the course is over. It's just the first step in moving forward and advancing all of this stuff.We've had great success from the foundation's perspective. Absolutely the Counterstrike methodology and SSAVEIM and ASIM result in, "Okay. Step one was to do this, but now there's a path ahead of us and some visibility into following the path." If that isn't the result of our training, then I don't think we've done our job well.Bill Godfrey:I completely agree with you there. To give people a sense of ... What I've described, those three modules, that's the morning. We break for lunch. When we come back from lunch, after lunch, it's all scenarios.So for the rest of the afternoon, we just run scenarios from start to finish, rotating people through the different positions, giving different types of incidents, different types of scenarios and outcomes, so that people have some repetition to work through this, so that the things start to make sense. That light bulb goes on or that aha moment clicks.By the end of the day, when we wrap up, they've laid their hands on three or four full exercises that they've run, functional exercises, where they've seen this process repeat and play out. It really makes sense to them.John-Michael Keyes:We leveraged one of the lessons that we learned when we started doing this. It was actually the briefings at Columbine, when we did our first functional exercise in reunification, and actually had the district bring a school bus so that we could transport our, quote, students around the parking lot from the impacted site to the reunification site.We were doing it at a conference with 350 or 400 adults, so we had to simulate students and parents. We came up with a mechanism for that. Had an adoption ceremony.One of the greatest critiques was that there's a lot of moving parts in this. None of it is complicated, but there's a lot of parts, and they're happening at distances sometimes. Folks wanted to see it a couple of times from a couple of different perspectives.What we've done with SSAVEIM is allow that repetition and the ability to see it from different perspectives.Bill Godfrey:Absolutely, absolutely. I'll tell you, to take it a step further. The thing that was really exciting to me, as you and I were finalizing the curriculum and how we were going to do the delivery...It is a one day, eight hour course. But after we got into some conversation, because it does take two instructors to do this, and obviously, there's some costs involved, we decided that what made more sense was to do this as a train the trainer, so that we don't just come out and do a single delivery. You can, but our real focus is on getting trainers out there, coming out and doing this as a train the trainer, getting your staff, your team up to speed, ready to continue on.Because no matter how many people you have in the class, it's not everybody. Then you've got turnover. Just like the school has turnover from people retiring, or promoting up, or just leaving the workforce, it happens too on public safety. You go three to five years, and the guys in the field aren't the ones in the field anymore. They've promoted up. They're in charge of things, or they've moved on to other jobs, and you've got this retraining thing. So that being able to offer this as a train the trainer I just thought was critical.John-Michael Keyes:Absolutely. We've been talking public safety, and I had this niggling suspicion that there was a parallel universe out there. It turns out that public health is having some of the same conversations about reunification as public safety and education. The train-the-trainer model allows us to not only bridge turnover, but perhaps bridge the gap between public safety and public health.Bill Godfrey:Interesting. Interesting. Now, are you seeing that in several different states, or is there seem to be a center to it?John-Michael Keyes:I've seen ... Short answer is kind of, sorta kinda. I sat in a conference call with emergency managers, primarily emergency planners from the hospital perspective. There was an absolute need for a method, and they had no visibility into how to do it.We also bumped into an interesting organization out of Arizona that has done some work in this, but again, they've been focused on the public health side, the hospital side of things, because hospitals face some of the same challenges in reunifying when there's a flood of people that come to the hospital, and managing that intake response when a large mass casualty event may occur.Bill Godfrey:Absolutely. That was actually one of the stories that came out of Pulse after the action report came out. That's a tongue twister. They did not make an attempt to manage reunification at the scene. A lot of reasons why. But they ended up having to manage reunification at the hospital. It wasn't necessarily purposeful or deliberate.The hospital itself began to take on the responsibility of trying to do it, only, they really didn't have a plan for it. They, like you said, it was the Plan B, just wing it, and got through it. So I think that that's really an interesting thing.I suspect if we talk to Brandon out in Vegas, to some degree, there was a component of that that went on with the hospitals out there in the 1 October attack.John-Michael Keyes:Yeah. Here's one of the things that I've noticed regionally. We've done training nationally across the country. East of the Mississippi, I am more likely to have some public health folks in foundation training than west of the Mississippi. The East Coast especially, and Northeast into Pennsylvania, I've done more trainings where there's a third of the audience that's coming from the public health side, because the hospitals want to know what's going on. They want to be able to support that mass casualty event. It was fascinating to me to make that observation, that there's a regional awareness to this that differs around the country.Bill Godfrey:Yeah. I think it just reminds us that no matter how far we make it, there's always more work to be done on this. Fascinating.I don't want to leave the discussion, though, without talking about the other thing that I'm super excited about, which is not just that we did this as a joint course, or that it was jointly developed by both C3 and the “I Love U Guys” Foundation, but also we worked out a way for people to be able to get the course from either one of us. They can procure it directly from C3 or through the foundation, which opens a lot of opportunities, depending on where the funding's coming from.In some cases, grant funding, with the work we do with Homeland Security, is a little bit easier to write up and document our direction. But you've got the ability to have a lot of donation funding that flows through towards the foundation's not-for-profit mission.John-Michael Keyes:Yeah. We've been able to offer all of our materials on the website at no cost. We don't even charge you an email address. Now, we'd love to hear from you, so it doesn't mean that you can't give us an email address, but it isn't necessary to get any of the materials.But development and distribution of materials does cost money. Part of our sustainability model relies certainly on service revenues through training. But we also have a program that we call Partner With Love. You are a mission partner in our Partner With Love program. You're a mission partner that's contributed to the foundation both financially and, more importantly, intellectually. That joint development has totally transformed and advanced some of our programs.But we have other mission partners that are strictly commercial. We feel very strongly that that partnership between commercial, nonprofit, government and community, nothing else comes even close to matching the power of that. So we've got the ability to perhaps find some funding, if resources are constrained, through the foundation to get SSAVEIM courses delivered.Bill Godfrey:That is such an exciting, exciting, exciting thing. I still continue to pursue our channels for securing some DHS funding. We're not really having much luck with that at the moment, but I'm never going to give up the faith, or never give up the fight. I think it's worth keeping it ever present. But in the meantime, it's important to get the material and the information out there, and continue to make a difference in both of our missions to save lives.John-Michael Keyes:There are clear next steps after an initial training session. That next step is a SSAVEIM course. The next step is let's do a hands-on exercise and move people around space. Just the traction that's happening, especially as we're coming out of our 18 months of isolation and silent weeping tears, that we want to get together in person, and do some of this type of training. There's a strong hunger for it.Bill Godfrey:I completely agree, completely agree. I'm excited to see where it goes. I'm excited to see where it goes.John-Michael Keyes:Bill, this has been a fascinating journey. I can't let us leave without one more acknowledgement. Reunification, if you think about, it is a deliberate process to move people through a space, with accountability and identification, to give them something. That would be just a heck of an acronym, okay?But we learned this when school districts were going and starting to do the stay at home orders. They still had to deliver materials to students, or meals to students who were free and reduced lunch. It turns out that reunification, these methods could be used not only to get a student back with their parents, but a lunch back with their student when the school was closed down.We developed the Standard Distribution Method. If I recall, the shutdown orders came March 13th in Colorado. We released beta one on the 25th, with video and operational guidance for that. Your contribution to the operational guidance, that product wouldn't exist without C3 Pathways and your efforts, and your team's efforts in assembling some of that stuff.As a side note, one of our board members, Pat Hamilton is the chief operating officer at Adams 12 Five Star Schools. State of Colorado tapped him on the shoulder to do a mass vaccination site. He called me up and he said, "You know what? Public health is handling the actual jab, but we're in charge of moving the people around. It's kind of like a reunification. There's still an identification process, got to move people through the process." He was able to do reunifications with a fraction of the staff, using these methods, than the state was without them.Bill Godfrey:That's fantastic. I appreciate your very, very generous and gracious words there. It was absolutely our pleasure, and the pleasure of the team that worked on that effort for you, to be a part of it. We were honored that you called and asked, and we were honored to get it done.If I remember correctly, that was a Friday night phone call. Because I seem to recall we worked that over the weekend, and had to deliver it to you by Saturday night or Sunday morning, if I'm remembering this right.John-Michael Keyes:Well, the shutdown orders came March 13. The first release, the video, the operational guidance, the graphics, all of this stuff, released the first version on March 25th. Mass guidance was on the horizon then. We saw the handwriting on the wall, so to speak, and we ran through beta two, new videos and new stuff, and mass guidance occurred officially from CDC on April 3rd. We were online April 5th for beta two.So early phases of shutdown, and your team did a ton of work, certainly our team did a ton of work, in making that happen very quickly. It was really relevant at the time.Bill Godfrey:Yeah. It was good to be a part of it. Right in the beginning, there was a lot of, "What can we do? How can we help?" So it was exciting to us to have something to sink our teeth into.Well, as always. John-Michael, I have immensely enjoyed this conversation. I really appreciate you taking the time. I know it's been a long week wrapping up the briefings, and I know you're tired, but once again, you bring a level of enthusiasm, and I'm just very, very appreciative and thankful for you and the time that you continue to commit to these causes.John-Michael Keyes:Bill, thank you. As always, we've been on the phone longer than we thought. I love talking. I love the relationship with C3 Pathways and then the personal relationship with both you and your team.Bill Godfrey:Well, absolutely, I appreciate it. I look forward to the next time we can get together face to face.Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for tuning in. We hope you enjoyed it. If you have any questions about this podcast or any of the stuff that John-Michael or I talked about, please feel free to reach out to us. You can call the office, send us an email info@c3pathways.com.Thank you for being with us. If you have not subscribed to the podcast, please do so. Thanks again to our producer, Karla Torres. John-Michael, take care. Everyone, stay safe.

Episode 39: ASIM IntermediateSheriff Michelle Cook shares her experience hosting the Active Shooter Incident Management (ASIM) Intermediate course remotely for Clay County (FL) on the NCIER Campus virtual platformBill Godfrey:Welcome to the Active Shooter incident management podcast. My name is Bill Godfrey, your podcast host. We appreciate you tuning back in with us this week. We have a special guest, one of our instructors who has been on a little bit of a leave of absence, Michelle Cook. Now, most of you will remember, if you've been with us for a long time, Michelle's done some podcasts in the past, and was a police chief up in the north Florida area. Not too long ago, she was elected sheriff in Clay County in the north Florida area, and is taking the time to talk with us today. Kind of catch us up, what's going on, and tell us a little bit about her experience with the Active Shooter Incident Management, intermediate class. Michelle, welcome, and thank you for taking the time to join us. Michelle Cook:Thank you, Bill. I appreciate you inviting me back on. Bill Godfrey:So, being sheriff, it's an elected position, a lot of work with that. Was it as much fun as you thought it was going to be? Michelle Cook:The campaigning, or the actual job? Bill Godfrey:I'll let you answer that anyway you want. Michelle Cook:Sure, yeah. Campaigning was tough, but I'm truly a committed public servant that wants to do right by the officers on the street that protect us every day. So, that was my motivation to run, and since winning the election, and being in office now for just about a year, the ability to bring the great training, and looking out for the deputies that serve on the street, has really been my driving force for going into work every day. Bill Godfrey:Well, I know you're very good at it and have a passion for this like nobody else I've ever seen. We certainly miss you here on our side of the fence. I look forward to the time comes that you slow down a little bit and kind of come back to the fold. So, I thought it'd be fun to have you on to talk about our Active Shooter Incident Management, intermediate class, and your experience with hosting that. Now for the audience, the ASIM intermediate is our two day version of the class, which obviously we used to do face to face, but because of COVID, we developed a new platform that would allow us to do this hands-on training remotely. So, the ASIM intermediate two day is now available remote, and not in Zoom or Microsoft Team meetings, but in our own platform that we built, so that we could still do hands-on live scenarios. So sheriff, I thought it'd be fun to have you kind of share with everybody, what, from your perspective, led you to want to do that, have the class, tell us the story. Michelle Cook:Sure. I'm going to take you back to 10 years ago, when I started getting involved in the Active Shooter Incident Management classes, and they were in person, and they were so valuable. I saw the value, and was actually able to apply the principles in the active shooter incident management class to my work, and teaching the officers and the deputies that I work with, the principals of thought and action. The more I saw the principles working, the more I bought into this training. Michelle Cook:So, when COVID struck and really took training, came to a halt for all of us. As a police leader, I knew that I could not go out there in the public and say, "Well, we had to stop training because of COVID." That is not acceptable in my line of work. So, when the ASIM intermediate came up, and you guys talked about this virtual platform, I will say I was a little hesitant. I'm a 30 year veteran, I believe in the old school sitting at a desk hands-on, but I realized, Bill, quickly, that really the technology is the wave of the future. In talking to my younger deputies, they were not fearful of a virtual class. Now, I will say some of my older deputies were hesitant, but we pushed forward anyway. I can tell you from sitting in the class during the virtual delivery, it was absolutely spot on. It really provided the ASIM principles in a virtual platform, and the training was fantastic. Bill Godfrey:Well, that's wonderful to hear, and I'm relieved. Honestly, I was a little nervous when you said you wanted to host this class because you're a perfectionist like me, and a stickler, and I thought, "Oh, please Lord, let everything go right." So, I was a little risk, but Michelle, from your perspective, how would you describe that platform and the experience to somebody who's never seen it? Because that's always a challenge for me trying to describe it to folks. Michelle Cook:Yeah. It really is a challenge, but the the way that I would describe it, or the way I do describe it to people is you have an active shooter incident. You have a critical incident, and we do as a profession, we've done so well at training how to tactically respond, and take the bad guy out. But active shooter incident management is so much bigger than that. So, through this virtual platform where you have everybody has a character that acts, and interacts with the other characters, you're able to learn the principles of the incident management. It's less about clearing a room, and more about taking command and control of the scene. With the virtual platform, you're able to learn these principles, and practice these principles, all while sitting at a desk. Bill Godfrey:I think that's a great summary. I might have to borrow some of that for some of the materials, when people ask for the explanation. I appreciate that. Michelle Cook:I won't charge you. I won't charge you. Bill Godfrey:Sheriff, one of the things I thought was kind of interesting, you had what, 30, 30, 40 people in the class from your side? Michelle Cook:Yes. Yes. Bill Godfrey:Then we had about, I don't know, it was another half dozen, or dozen, from across the country that all joined in. You made an interesting choice, which was even though this was a virtual delivery, you made a choice to pull all of your people to one central location. So, we had this group up at your place that was taking it together, and then these a half dozen other, a dozen other students from across the country that were all remote. How did that work? What led up to you to decide that? Michelle Cook:Well, Bill, that was a purposeful, deliberate decision, and there was a couple of reasons I did it that way. Number one, my county, we have four different law enforcement agencies in my county. Plus our two different fire rescue agencies in the county. So, by bringing all of these people in a room, even though they were working virtually, we were able to establish, re-establish, and build relationships. That was lacking a little bit in my county, is the working relationship, so bringing them all together. I also purposely planted some, what I call ringers, in this class. These are guys who truly understand the ASIM concepts, and are champions of the concepts, and so during break, I encourage these guys to lead the informal discussions. "Hey, what did you think about that?" "Hey, didn't that work out well?" So, really reemphasizing the concepts through the informal conversations that would occur at each break. Michelle Cook:So, although the technology, bringing everybody in one room, there was a draw or pull on the technology side, it really worked out well for us because now we're back to some traditional training, and my trainers who were in the class are ensuring that they include these other agencies that they've never really thought about before in our training. So for me, it was very purposeful, very deliberate because what I saw that lacked in my county was some working relationships, and making sure that I got buy-in by planting some ringers in the room who can continue the conversation. Bill Godfrey:That's really interesting. I knew you had a couple of strong people in the room that were taking the class, but I didn't know that you had kind of purposely planted, as you said, some ringers. What made you feel so passionately about that? That's an interesting idea. Michelle Cook:Well, policemen love training, they hate training all at the same time. Here we were introducing some new concepts, for many of these, in the class. At the same time, we were doing it virtually. For many in law enforcement, especially, guys that have about seven years on or more, they're still afraid of the technology. They're still concerned that there's a training value on using technology. So, I wanted to make sure that I did not have a strong personality in the middle of this class, throw his hands up and go, "This is BS. This is dumb. This is not worth it," because you're informal leaders in the class can really drive how people feel about the training. Michelle Cook:So, by planting some informal leaders that were ringers, I purposely drove the conversation to the positive, and then people who had questions about what they learned, or what was said, they naturally gravitated to these leaders, and said, "Well, tell me why this happened. Why do we have to go to staging? Why can't we self deploy from another agency?" And those conversations happened. So the guys that really understood the concepts, were able to, again, really drive home the purpose, or the principles, that were being taught on this virtual platform. Bill Godfrey:That's really interesting. Now I'm curious, because we did have a number of other students that were from different places in the country that were in that same class, interacting with your team, and the folks that you had on that location. Did you hear any feedback, or reactions, about what it was like working with people from different states in the class and in the responses? Michelle Cook:Yeah, it's interesting because there was some conversation, a little bit of a conversation about lingo and tactics, and the pace of response for some of them. For me, that really gave me an opportunity for a training point. I said, "Guy, those guys are from out of state. We don't have to worry about them responding to our incident. However, if we don't all work together as different agencies in the county, if we don't get all on the same page and train together, and have the same concepts, and use the same principles, when we haven't an active shooter incident in our county, we're going to see the same thing from those agency members. That's why we have to train together." So for me, it was really a point that I could drive home to everybody that was in the classroom because I had other agency leaders in there, "Hey guys, this is why it's so important to train. Those guys that were out from another state. We may be in the same county, but if we don't train together, we're going to experience what we experienced in this virtual platform." Michelle Cook:Now, let me say this though. The overall general feeling about working with guys from out of state was phenomenal. I mean, apparently whatever group was in there was really sharp. My guys were commenting on how really sharp they were. So, that was a plus, but the little nuances of not training together, were apparent. Again, for me, it really drove home the point. We can't just think that because we're all in the same county, we're going to respond the same. We have to train together. Bill Godfrey:Yeah. It's a really interesting perspective. I remember from your class, so one of the students was from Portland police, and there was a scenario where one of your fire department people, and I'm not really sure if it was with your county fire department or one of the other ones, but the Portland police officer was in the tactical position, and your firefighter was in the triage position. He just kept saying over and over and over again afterwards, he just could not get over the fact that he just spent 45 minutes running a live active shooter scenario with a guy that was literally across the country for him. I mean, I don't know that it could be much further, Florida over to Portland- Michelle Cook:Mm-hmm (affirmative). Bill Godfrey:... and they just ran it seamlessly. They were talking to each other like they were standing next to each other. They worked it together. It was a common language, and he just couldn't get over that this guy that's literally across the country in three hours, and three different time zones away, and they're working this incident together. I thought that was a pretty fascinating perspective. Michelle Cook:Well, but I think that speaks to the comprehensive, yet simple principles of Active Shooter Incident Management. It really does, kind of like ICS. If you have the basic principles, it's very simple, as long as you stick to the simple but comprehensive principles. If the guy in Portland happens to be on vacation in Florida, where you have an active shooter incident, he can jump right in seamlessly. I think that that's the value of the class and making sure that your class is diverse with people that could potentially respond together. The great thing about the virtual platform is you can do it virtually, so we can have people in neighboring agencies, neighboring county, all very realistically could respond to an incident with us, training with us. Bill Godfrey:So, I got to ask what were some of the good comments, and some of the negative comments? Because I'm sure that you heard both after the training. What was some of the good and bad that you heard? Michelle Cook:So good, absolutely was understandable, realistic. Boy, I could use this. I could use it on other calls that are critical in nature. Easy to learn. They loved the scenarios. They thought the scenarios were very realistic. Michelle Cook:The downs were, some of my old timers, didn't like the technology. That's understandable. I've told you several times, the technology sort of scares me too, as a 30 year law enforcement officer, but I go back to two things, and I would tell these guys this. Yes, you've been on 20 years. Yes, using a virtual system is a little bit cumbersome for you, but two things. One, younger deputies, younger officers, younger firemen, younger dispatchers, they're not scared of the technology. They've grown up with technology. Michelle Cook:The other thing too, as a long-time trainer, what I've realized, and what I've come to understand, is that different people learn from different platforms. So whether it's a tabletop, a real life exercise, or virtual training platform, the more ways that you can present the concepts on different platforms, the more opportunity you have to connect with your students, and the more opportunity you have to really drive home those principles and those training points that you want to get to. So my younger deputies loved, they thought they were sitting at home on their X-Box. They love the technology. The older guys, not so much, but they understood why we were going that way. Bill Godfrey:Well, I would expect to hear that. It would surprise me if you didn't have some of the old timers that didn't really care for it. I laughingly joked just a few weeks ago, during one of the classes, we had a support call come in, and I was on the phone with somebody trying to walk them through an issue they were having with their computer. And I go, "Well, just hit your escape key." And they go, "What's an escape key." And I thought, "Well, all right. I've just gone around the bend here." Bill Godfrey:So, I get it. There are people that are a little bit uncomfortable with it. I think the other piece of this is, and I'm really curious to see where this goes, but during COVID I know I got sick and tired of these virtual meetings, and the idea of one more virtual training. I think everybody just got accustomed to logging in and zoning out. I'm going to sign in. I'm going to turn on my video and my microphone for just a minute. I'm going to say hi to everybody, and then I'm going to mute my video and mute my microphone. Then I'm going to move on to another task, but I'm going to get credit for this class. People got used to that and really kind of developed a bad habit. Of course in this class, you can't do that. There's- Michelle Cook:No, you can't do that at all. Bill Godfrey:Yeah. You're engaged. It's like being in the classroom. You're present. The instructors are walking up to you asking you questions. You are moving around working through the scenarios. Yeah. We do get some surprise, I guess, but what do you think? Where do you think we'll go, once we get to the other side of COVID? We were forced to use all this virtual remote stuff, and now everybody's sick of it, so there's kind of a backlash, and at some point next year, I think it will kind of settle in. Where do you think we'll settle in on this? Michelle Cook:I think we'll settle with a leaning towards virtual. Again, I'll go back to the fact of, there's a couple of things. One, this is a different way, from a management standpoint, a relatively easy way, inexpensive way, to get good solid training in. Again, with the younger deputies, they grew up playing these games. ASIM intermediate is not a game, but they grew up playing these sorts of games, using technology, and they're not afraid of it. Michelle Cook:So, I love the idea that it's, again, another training platform that resonates with a lot of people. I think good police leaders, good fire leaders, good EMS leaders should really consider a variety of platforms when bringing in such an important topic like this. Because understanding that some of your members are going to like the hands-on in person training. Some of your members are going to like the virtual training. Some of your members are going to like another training platform that's out there. Really, I think it's a great opportunity to utilize different platforms that present the same concepts, because, again, it just really deepens and further seeds the embedding of this process of this response into the core your agency. Bill Godfrey:I think you're probably right. It's a fascinating topic, and I'm not really sure where it's going to go. Obviously, we have restarted our face-to-face deliveries as well, and we are going to maintain the virtual platform. In fact, we've got a couple of other classes that we're going to be rolling out on it. We've got some EOC training classes that are planned, and hospital active shooter course, and a couple of other things that are in the works. So, we're going to make use of the platform moving forward, but I'll be curious to see longterm what that impact is. Bill Godfrey:So, let me shift gears a little bit, Sheriff. You took over a county law enforcement agency. You're the big boss. The buck stops with you. Your agency, and your county or region has adopted the Active Shooter Incident Management checklist process, if you will. You've had this preliminary training, which obviously didn't hit all of your people. I know you've got way more people than that. So, what's next? Where are you going to go from here? Michelle Cook:Well, for us, it's a couple of things. Again, deliberately putting some ringers in the class that really appreciate and understand the processes. We're continuing to push it out. In fact, my training division, which consists of several SWAT guys, and the SWAT guys, anything that's active shooter, your SWAT guys tend to give it credibility if they've bought into it. So, that was part of the deliberate processes, getting those guys to buy in. So, they're continuing the training. When they go out and do the traditional room clearing, and suspect mitigation training, and when they're out there doing that, they're implementing the principles that they learned in the ASIM intermediate into our routine training at our agency. For me, we're going to continue to push those principles and concepts out. Michelle Cook:I will tell you at my previous agency, where I was a chief of police, they even went one step further. The guys on the street, in any hot call or priority one call, they would use the ASIM principles. The person in charge of the hot zone declares themselves tactical, and he will say if staging was needed, he would set up upstaging, or she would set up staging. So, whether it was a robbery in progress, or burglary in progress, they carried it one step further out there. I'm hoping to see that with my new agency, sort of organically letting that happen. I think we're heading that way, but as a police leader, continue pushing the principles. Michelle Cook:I tell people that management is a perishable skill. If you don't have a plan, a training plan, to continue pushing it, people will lose that skill. So for us, it's the informal training, the formal training, and then reaching back out to seek new pathways every couple of years, and bringing the training in for a refresher, so to speak, is where I'm headed with it. Bill Godfrey:It's so interesting to hear you say that. I can't remember if it was last week or a week before, but just in the last two weeks, we had a podcast episode where the whole episode was about other uses of the ASIM checklist, besides just active shooter. To me, it's one of those funny little secrets that we chuckle about because it is what you just said. The ASIM checklist process is a standardized way of approaching these things, and it doesn't have to be an active shooter call for it to be very useful in laying out the roles. Michelle Cook:Absolutely. I mean, my folks used it in a robbery to a bank in progress, we've used it on house fire calls, just to avoid over convergence, who's in charge of the hot zone. We're evacuating due to a fire, not due to an active shooter, but still a lot of the same things are happening. Again, as a long time police practitioner, and two decades on the street, so to speak, I absolutely, without a doubt, 100% believe, and have seen, the ASIM checklist principles applied to other hot calls. When they're using it for those other calls, when the big call does come in, when the active shooter incident does come in, they're not looking for their checklists in the car, so to speak. It is in their mind because they've been using it on the hot calls already. Bill Godfrey:I think that's wonderful. I always knew you were a law enforcement leader with a lot of vision. I know I've told you that before, and you always roll your eyes at me when I say it. You're probably rolling your eyes right now. Michelle Cook:Probably. Bill Godfrey:It was decades ago that you saw through some of the, for the benefit of the audience, I say frequently to people, and to the other instructors, FEMA and the fire service did a horrible disservice to law enforcement. When we convinced you that ICS meant an 18 Wheeler semi-truck of paperwork is going to back up to your scene, and vomit paper on your scene. That's really not what ICS is about, but I mean- Michelle Cook:Right. Bill Godfrey:... it was at least two decades ago that you kind of saw through that and said, "Wait a minute, there's something of value in here for law enforcement." So, you've been a practitioner of it for a very, very long time. Michelle Cook:Absolutely. Bill Godfrey:You're not a Johnny come lately. You've been doing this a long time, but let me ask you this, we'll wrap up here on this final closing thought. What would you say to your fellow law enforcement leaders who are the sheriff, the chief of police, the deputy chief, chief deputy at the county Sheriff's office, what would you say to them about how to get started and make things a little bit better? Maybe they've done some contact training. They've done a little bit of move to the threat training, but not a whole lot beyond that, haven't done any integrated stuff with their fire EMS agencies. What would your advice be to them? Michelle Cook:Well, the first thing I would tell him is I think you're morally, ethically, and legally obligated to move beyond just dealing with the suspect. Police leaders can't say, "Well, I taught him how to shoot the bad guy, but all these other bad things happened because we weren't prepared." Study after study, after action report, after action report show and prove that the incident management is really where things fall. Unfortunately, people die because scenes are not managed correctly. So, as a police leader, as a fire leader, as a EMS leader, you have an obligation legally, morally and ethically to take the next step, which is the scene management, the active shooter or critical incident team management. Michelle Cook:I'll say this, and I've said it before, because again, I was on the street for 20 years. I was the commander of our SWAT team for three years. I led a patrol division for a number of years. The principles at ASIM are simple, comprehensive, and they work. If you, as a police leader, are not moving your team to the next step of scene management, when it does happen in your jurisdiction, you're going to be the one at the end of the day that has to answer for why your folks messed up. And it's not that they messed up, it's that you didn't take them to the next step of training, Bill Godfrey:Sheriff Michelle Cook, thank you so much for taking the time to join me today, and to talk about this and share your experience. I know I speak with fondness from the other instructors. We miss you. We look forward when the time comes that your life slows down a little bit, that you can join us doing some of the training classes, but we know in the meantime, you're doing very, very important work on the other side. So, thank you for carving the time out to, to make this happen. Thanks for being here. Michelle Cook:Absolutely, Bill. I appreciate the opportunity. Thank you, sir. Bill Godfrey:Absolutely. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for joining us for this podcast. We hope you enjoyed it. If you have not subscribed to the podcast, please do so wherever you're consuming your podcasts. I'd like to also give a shout out, thanks to our producer, Karla Torres for putting these things together for us. Until next time, stay safe.

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 37: Other Uses of ASIM ChecklistA discussion about uses of the ASIM Checklist beyond active shooter events.Bill Godfrey:Welcome to the Active Shooter Incident Management Podcast. My name is Bill Godfrey, your host of the podcast. We're happy to have you back with us. Today, we have three of the instructors with us to talk about the uses of the ASIM checklist beyond just Active Shooter. We have, as many of you know, the Active Shooter Incident Management checklist which lays out this process. But just because it's titled Active Shooter doesn't mean that that's the only thing it's usable for. We're going to talk a little bit about that today. I'd like to introduce you to the three instructors that are with us. We have Terrence Weems from the law enforcement side. Terrence, good to have you back in the house.Terrance Weems:Thanks for having me.Bill Godfrey:Absolutely. We have, of course, Adam Pendley also from the law enforcement side. Many of you know Adam. Adam, good to have you back.Adam Pendley:Happy to be here.Bill Godfrey:Of course, the inimitable Mark Rhame from the fire EMS side like myself. Mark, good to see you.Mark Rhame:Thank you, Bill.Bill Godfrey:Alright. Again, as we talked about in the opening, we titled it The Active Shooter Incident Management Checklist for a lot of reasons, but it's usable for more than just Active Shooter events. Adam, why don't you open us up and start talking about it in a little bit generically and then we'll roll from there?Adam Pendley:Sure. One of the things about the ASIM checklist is a validated process of building an incident management from the ground up. So many of us in law enforcement, fire and EMS over the years have trained on the incident command system. We go to the standardized FEMA classes, but oftentimes, we see the final org chart. We see this managing an incident from the top down model. You see all these positions filled out and what you find is that doesn't work in the field. One of the good things about the ASIM checklist process is we build a response from the first arriving unit that then builds from there. Additional units arrive, they start becoming teams, and then group supervisors arrive, and then incident command arrives, and you have branch directors.As an incident unfolds, more elements are added from the ground up. Here's the point, is that the Active Shooter Incident Management checklist can be used for other types of rapid response on the law enforcement side and especially any sort of rapid response that involves an integrated response with fire EMS. As we're arriving to a violent incident, it could be a robbery in progress. It could be some other type of crime of violence. The idea of having the initial contact teams stabilize the scene, having a tactical group supervisor come in and start managing that inner perimeter and managing those follow on resources, teaming up shoulder to shoulder with fire and EMS, and then having the higher command come in and be part of the command post and all the elements that we talk about in the ASIM checklist, the staging manager and intel and PIO all fit in, in the same way in almost any type of rapid response from law enforcement, fire and EMS.Bill Godfrey:Things like mass shooting, I think that's a no brainer.Adam Pendley:Right.Bill Godfrey:Violent attacks, whether it's with an edged weapon or something else. Vehicle through a crowd?Adam Pendley:Sure. Absolutely. Because anything that either has the potential for multiple injuries or has multiple injuries, you're going to follow the same process. I think it's important to follow that process even on those different types of incidents an all hazards approach because if you only pull out the concepts of Active Shooter Incident Management, just for Active Shooter, you're going to be rusty. Fortunately, we see a lot of these across the country, but we don't see them all the time in each of our jurisdictions. Right? You have to find other opportunities to keep those skills strong.Bill Godfrey:Almost like a generic response process, Adam, is that what you're thinking? Something along that for a subset group of calls on the law enforcement side, this should be the default response?Adam Pendley:Sure. Kind of like your standard response model where you know that if you have something that's either in progress or that has just occurred, that is a violent scene with multiple injuries...Bill Godfrey:Like a drive by or something like that?Adam Pendley:Sure. A drive by in any sort of... Even if it's a domestic violence in progress or something that might involve a hostage barricade situation. There's a lot of examples of this that we could talk about where there's opportunities to really engage each element of the Active Shooter Incident Management Checklist.Bill Godfrey:Interesting. I'd like to revisit this idea of that of setting up a default response process, maybe that's a good idea for another topic. Let's go around. Mark, what are the things that are on your mind? What pops into your head about other uses of the ASIM checklist process and where it might be valuable?Mark Rhame:Well, the first thing I think of is that nine times out of 10, the boots on the ground are going to do an incredible job. Every single time, they go out there and they get the job done. The weakest link, as far as I'm concerned, what I've seen in my career is generally the command staff is where it fails and they fall apart. It's because a lot of the things we're exposed to, those big events, maybe once in a lifetime, you get involved in something like that. Maybe you trained on something, maybe you read about it, but you don't practice it enough. You don't get involved in some of those environments. When we talk about using the ASIM checklist for other environments, it really does put us all in the same stage or platform where when we have these big events, we're ready to perform.As I see us responding to more and more of these domestic disputes, this civil unrest, these environments where we're having what looks like some type of domestic terrorism against our communities, against what we consider the norms, I think it really behooves us as public safety responders to step up and utilize a process like ASIM to respond to those events. Again, as I said before, generally I see the command side of the response to these big events as the weakest link. Again, those law enforcement officers that go in there to that threat, they're going to do their job. The fire EMS people, give them good direction and equipment. They're going to do a great job out there and they're going to perform to the standard we expect, but if our incident command side of that picture doesn't get their act together and do it right, it's going to screw up the whole environment. Again, utilizing the ASIM checklist for more than just an Active Shooter incident will make us better in the whole, as a public service or a public response to these types of environments.Bill Godfrey:You're talking almost like what Adam was saying about having a default response process, but it's not just a law enforcement response process, it's an integrated one. It runs across the disciplines. I don't know that I've ever seen or heard of anybody else doing that before. I definitely think that's one worth coming back and revisiting in a future podcast. Terrance, what jumps out at you as lessons learned or places where you think this process could be helpful in your walk of life?Terrance Weems:Yeah. Actually, one of the things that my agency we try and do with everything, anything outside of a normal day-to-day event, we utilize NIMS for that. But in looking at the ASIM model, one of the things that comes to mind immediately is a multi-vehicle crash with a ton of injuries and some deaths where the road, whether it'd be an interstate or county road, is shut down. Now, you have opportunity to put this into effect, actually building, as we said before, from the ground up. That first person arrives, sizes up the incident. They know what they have, and at the same time, they don't know what they have. All they see is a scattered mess.Bill Godfrey:You mean like one of these big, massive pile ups that we hear about on the news from time to time?Terrance Weems:Right. Few years ago, we had one on I-94 up near the Michigan State line, a number of vehicles, semis, and all of that. But what took this to the next level, it was like 12 degrees.Bill Godfrey:Ouch.Terrance Weems:One thing that we forget about is cellphones generally don't work very well and the battery life dies when it's extremely cold, plus you have all of the vehicles out there. Your batteries on your portables are dying and things like that. What this does is this gives us that opportunity to build from the ground up now, putting into place, everything that we need. I think that's outstanding. Even with the reunification and getting RTFs out and everything that we teach, it is able to be utilized even in a situation like that. You wouldn't necessarily think about it in that manner, but it's very helpful because again, using it as a general response to just about everything that you're doing, and if you're doing it all the time, you're practicing it all the time. When something huge happens, you're able to follow through.Bill Godfrey:It's really fascinating. I wouldn't have thought about using that process in terms of one of those big, massive pileups, but you're right. There's a lot of overlap there. There's a lot of things that fit and help. Alright. What else? Adam, what else is on your list?Adam Pendley:Terrance brings up the idea of RTFs and the integrated response and it really strikes me that you don't want to wait for a violent active shooter type event to get and teach fire, EMS and police to move together, to carry equipment together, to find the safe path in and out. Even at the crash site, fire, EMS, they know their job. Like Mark mentioned, they're going to do a great job, but we've already assessed the scene when we first arrive. We know where the injuries are, and so us working together as law enforcement to work with EMS and work together as an RTF to move into that scene is really important. But another great opportunity to do that in an even less stressful environment is any of our communities that have special events. We all have carnivals and fairs and parades and sporting events and arena events in our communities. In all my years of working special events, every time you have a drunk person that's down, that is going to be treated by EMS, you're going to need a law enforcement officer there. Right?Bill Godfrey:That's true.Adam Pendley:Every time law enforcement responds to a fight, they're going to probably need medical there at some point. Right from the start in our planned events, we can schedule RTFs to work together. You have the rescue task force that's already assigned, and they're at various locations throughout the event. When an incident occurs, they can learn to move together. They can meet each other. They can learn about each other's equipment and about each other's processes. That way, God forbid three days from now, we have an active shooter event at a warehouse, we've already learned to do that. It's staging those officers and fire and EMS that are working together as an RTF, maybe they've done this before, and maybe they move into the scene more effectively.Bill Godfrey:That's a really interesting idea of deploying it at a planned events or special events. What are some of the ones where you've seen... You guys have the NFL games up by you and I can recall you mentioning that you've deployed that on that before. What are some of the other types of examples you've got?Adam Pendley:Actually, just this past week, we had the opportunity to... It was announced that our city would be the location of a big college party crowd sort of thing, and we expected an additional 10 or 20,000 folks to be down at our beach area. Again, we anticipate there to be crowded streets and lots of drinking and possibly fighting and things along those lines. One of the...Bill Godfrey:They do seem to go hand in hand.Adam Pendley:Yeah, absolutely. Part of our incident action plan was teaming up our bike officers with some bike or some mobile med unit teams on the fireside. We called them on the incident action plan, we called them RTFs. We had them strategically stationed throughout the beaches' area, so they could provide that rapid response and work together. In that environment, it provides immediate security to the medical, but it also provides medical for the opportunity, again, to work together. We meet each other in the less stressful event so it's easier to put that together during the active shooter.Bill Godfrey:It's interesting. It also provides an opportunity, I assume to get everybody used to the terminology, the idea of the teamwork and who talks to who and who reports to whom and whatnot, all those things?Adam Pendley:Absolutely. Yes.Bill Godfrey:Okay. Cool. What about civil unrest? That's been in the news a lot recently. It has a very apparent rise or what at least would seem like a rise in mass shootings, lot of generalized violence we're hearing about on a fairly regular basis, a lot of civil unrest. Is there a role there, do you think?Terrance Weems:Oh, for sure. Generally, if you look at it, depending on what stage you go to, you'll have a number of, let's say protests to those civil unrest situations. A lot of them are pre-planned. However, those that arise out in the middle of nowhere, you're going to have one or two officers responding initially. Now, that gives you that opportunity to put this plan in place right then, so you have that opportunity because although it's not an active shooter event, it is escalating. You're going into an unknown, but this event, generally when you get into the civil unrest, it generally doesn't... The fire don't go out rather quickly, but it continues to escalate until it blows up.Unfortunately, we have seen it happen last year and even a few this year, but putting that plan in place, it helps. Just like Adam was saying earlier, if we do it on those small events, you're building those relationships. I think that's the most important thing to get the different disciplines together, trusting and believing that they're going to be able to support one another.Bill Godfrey:That's really interesting. You know what? I see the fit on the civil unrest that comes up unexpectedly. On the planned ones, Adam, and I know you've had your hand in a lot of these from the management side and having to put together incident action plans for the planned events. When it comes to the idea of demonstrations or potential civil unrest, things like that for a planned event, when you're putting together an IEP, I assume you would distinguish in the structure the difference between the function of a contact team that would be deployed if things go sideways versus... I don't know what you guys call them, forgive me, because law enforcement obviously is not my background, but the guys that are working in the line.Adam Pendley:Field force.Bill Godfrey:The field force. If you were pre-planning the event, how would you mix that ASIM org chart, if you will, that Active Shooter Incident Management checklist structure with the field force? Have you done that before? Have you got any ideas off the top of your head?Adam Pendley:Oh, sure. A field force is just another team structure underneath the law enforcement branch. You would have a field force group with multiple teams underneath there, very similar to the perimeter group. In the law enforcement branch, under the ASIM checklist, they're responsible for the tactical group supervisor and the contact teams that are underneath there. In a civil unrest sort of way, you may have a forward deployed teams that monitor various protest locations or counter protest locations and they're your initial contact teams. If they need more resources, they would call that up through tactical who would get approval from law enforcement branch and the incident commander and those additional resources could be deployed. It still falls under that same structure that we build. Essentially, we're still building it from the ground up.Because even for a planned event, you're going to look at those locations that you know you're going to have events at and you're assigning the right number of resources to each event with those additional resources available. One of the things that I know Mark can probably attest to is, is that you know that the fire department is going to get calls during that time. We always talk about clock. You have to beat the clock, right? If they're going to respond in a rapid manner, they don't want to have to leave the station and go stand by somewhere. It's better for us to think about, "Why don't we pair law enforcement right from the start?"Mark Rhame:One of the sidebar issue outside of the medical response using RTFs, is we talk more and more of fire as a weapon. When we think about the civil unrest issues, these planned protests, why don't we even talk about tagging up law enforcement with fire in a strike team type of an environment that is similar to a rescue task force concept, where we take a fire engine with a couple of law enforcement officers who are ready to respond to those fires that pop up in these civil unrest environments? For fire, we tend to sit there in stage and we wait and we wait and we wait until they clear out that whole area.But what if we built out those teams ahead of time, not only on the EMS side for our rescue task force, but also the strike teams for that fire as a weapon environment that we can get in there and quickly start using maybe deck guns, deluge guns or something that are more unstaffed where we just dump a ton of water on that particular fire, and then get out of that environment and leave law enforcement to continue to work on that social unrest environment.Bill Godfrey:Instead of a rescue task force, a firefighting task force?Mark Rhame:Exactly. But again, we're going to include law enforcement as part of that component. Instead of just fire coming in there and going to do their job by suppressing that fire, we engage a law enforcement component with that fire engine or engines, and they respond in there as a team. Again, those law enforcement officers, as we do with RTFs, don't leave their wingmen. They stay with those people throughout and protect them. That gives fire more confidence that law enforcement has got our back. We can do our job. We can concentrate on that suppression activities and don't have to worry so much about those protestors that are there in the background.Adam Pendley:Yeah. We actually had a lot of success with that in my area during 2020. That would be part of the assignments. We would assign a law enforcement element to each of the firehouses that was in the area that we knew would be affected. That was their job. They stayed at the fire station. Now, the only bad news is we introduce law enforcement officers to recliners but...Bill Godfrey:You're just jealous.Mark Rhame:Well, we just give them applications. They can come over.Adam Pendley:Right. But all joking aside, whenever they were toned out to any event, because remember, we've talked about this many times as well. The other stuff that's happening in your city is still happening. You're still going to have responses to other types of medical emergencies, are responsible... If you get dispatched to a dumpster fire that is in the affected area, was it set on fire on purpose because of the civil unrest? Pretty much all of those calls for service out of that station have to have a law enforcement element along with them.Bill Godfrey:That's really interesting. I think that in itself probably is a whole nother podcast to talk about that topic and talk about that concept.Mark Rhame:Bill, you can take it a step further. When we talk about our response to hurricanes, tornadoes or whatever it happens to be, when we know that somewhere along the line, there's going to be some looting. There's going to be some kind of a crime environment when we're trying to go out there and check these buildings to see if the occupants are still there, if there's anyone that's injured in this collapsed structure. If we engage law enforcement with fire and EMS with these rescue teams, then we can take care of all of this stuff at the exact same time. They can go out start doing their windshield surveys, checking these structures. Law enforcement's making sure that no crimes are taking place, involving their individuals in regard to get witness statements, if there were crimes involved when they're going through. We can expand this thing out continuously when we talk about public safety response, incorporating fire, EMS and law enforcement in teams.Bill Godfrey:It's funny as you described that, it almost sounds like we're talking about an all hazards integrated response.Mark Rhame:Yes.Adam Pendley:Yes, exactly.Bill Godfrey:Interesting. Adam, you mentioned one a little earlier that I'd like to jump back to, and that was hostage barricade you kind of threw out. Can you talk a little bit about that? Can you and Terrence talk a little bit about some of the challenges that come up in those types of incidents that would warrant that integrated response?Adam Pendley:Sure. I think that type of incident mirrors the ASIM checklist process very closely because you get that initial dispatch of an active scene of some sort. If a hostage barricade started as an argument and are armed argument of some sort, it turns into a hostage barricade, that initial arriving units are going to essentially form a contact team, give a size of report, engage if they're able to or contain if they're required to and call for additional resources. I think if you have an additional contact team that's going to cover the rear of the building, other contact teams or an apprehension team that's responsible if the suspect gives up or tries to escape. You have multiple teams down range, and now you have a lot of resources already at the crisis site. Just like it's very true in the active shooter environment, it's important for somebody to stay put and now become that fifth man or that tactical group supervisor, the tactical person to now manage how everyone else...Because the worst thing that you can do at a hostage barricade situation is to have everyone show up at the front door, right? Because you're going to potentially aggravate the situation. You're going to have too many people trying to do one task. Again, having that fifth man or tactical manage the responses and set a staging area becomes critically important. Then, all the follow-on resources after that, you're going to have fire EMS come to your staging location in case the hostage barricade goes poorly. You're going to have negotiators. You're going to have intel. You're going to have a lot of additional follow-on resources as you also continue to build this response.You have that tactical a little further down range. Hopefully, you can get a triage or a fire EMS officer to work side by side with tactical, again, to make those decisions about, "Hey, if the hostage taker goes active, we're going to do this. If they release hostages, we're going to need this." There's a lot of close integration down range. Then, the integrated response to the command post also becomes critically important.Terrance Weems:Extremely important. One of the things that you want to make sure that we're doing is communicating the need, making sure that we have the resources that we need in each one of those situations because just like you said, once you have that hostage taker, who knows where it's going to go from that point? Having all of your ducks in a row, even before you need them just means that that experience is going to be that much better and most likely have a positive outcome.Bill Godfrey:It's a fascinating topical area that frankly, Mark, I don't know about you, but it's not one I feel like we had a whole lot of training with for those particular types of events. It's fascinating to hear you guys describe that. The one other area that I want to talk about before we leave this topic is the idea of area command. While it's a component of the Active Shooter Incident Management curriculum, in the intermediate and the advanced class when we talk about complex coordinated attacks and how to manage those, one of the things that we always say in class is that, "Hey, this area command tool can be used for more than just this thing."When you've got complex investigations that are crossing jurisdictions, you've got a manhunt. As we sit here today, we've had yet another tragedy with a police officer being shot. There's an aggressive manhunt on for the suspect not too far from where we are. Talk a little bit about that idea of area command as a tool that can help us more effectively manage these events and how we can use it, what we can use it for, and the benefit of it.Adam Pendley:Well, from the law enforcement perspective, I think you already hit on that. We talk about a lot in active shooter events that you have the minimum of a three scene, or you have the crisis site itself, the transportation the suspect you used, and then also where they live or where they came from, but that expands even further. We've seen incidents where we know a single suspect has committed a violent act in more than one place. It may not necessarily even just be an active shooter type event that they have committed acts in multiple places or like you mentioned, this manhunt situation that is, by its very nature, going to cross multiple jurisdictions. We can all look back at the after-action reporting on the Boston marathon. We know that we had a very serious crisis site at the scene of the run that involved bombings, that required multiple patients being treated and ultimately where it started, they ultimately have the jurisdictional authority because that's where the original crime was committed.But then, you had another officer shot in a different jurisdiction. You had the suspect. You shoot out with the suspect and yet another jurisdiction and ultimately the capture of the final suspect in yet another jurisdiction. An area command, a concept can become very important to manage those critical resources. That's what we talk about all the time. You have these multiple sites. You only have so many SWAT teams. You only have so many armored vehicles. You only have so many specialized canine units and such. You can't just chase your tail every time a new location pops up, that everything heads that way. You have to be very deliberate about managing those critical resources. I think there's opportunities to practice that on a more regular basis.Mark Rhame:Bill, I've set up several area commands and it's not directly related to what we do in regard to ASIM, but it does explain how an area command does function. One of the examples I try to give in class is that we had a tornado touchdown, multiple places on the east side of our county. The typical dispatch was full compliment, which was in that particular time, was [inaudible 00:29:18] companies, a rescue, a battalion chief, and an EMS captain to each one of the sites. We ended up having four sites within a couple square miles of each other. The problem with that as a shift commander is that, that one event basically stripped down my entire command staff from my county. Right then and there, it was gone. I said, "I can't do that. There's no way I can do that. I have to control this environment as a shift commander."I stood up an area command and reduce the response to each one of those events down to one engine company, one rescue, and then held a battalion chief with me at the area command posts. Now, I know this doesn't follow the practice we utilize in the ASIM, but it does make sense when you talk about controlling your response, your resources to those particular events. I stood up a lot of area commands in regard to brush fires. Because again, if you sent a full compliment brush fire with a structural exposure to multiple sites after a lightning storm the night before, you're going to strip down your resources very, very quickly. Area command has a vital role in our normal day-to-day responses when we have multiple events popping up in a geographical area and standing up that area command gives you that advantage of control and the resources that you want to leave for that next event that might be right around the corner.Terrance Weems:Right. Not just controlling the assets that you have, but actually obtaining assets that you need. There used to be a time when I was growing up where you did things in your own community, whether good or bad, you didn't necessarily venture out. Now, in regards to violent crime and that sort of thing, people are crossing borders. Borders mean absolutely nothing. Within an hour, I have two states, Illinois and Michigan that I can get to. People traverse right down through, up and back. One of the things that I recognize is the need for that area command because when you need equipment, you need bodies, you need those assets, one police department, especially if you're in a small rural area, you're not going to have the ability to get what you need outside of an area command.Bill Godfrey:I think it's a fascinating topic. To me, one of the key points that I think we always try to hit home on when we talk about complex coordinated attack, which is the idea of three or more attackers attacking a single site, two or more sites under simultaneous attack or an act of terrorism that overwhelms a local jurisdiction, that's the definition we use. The reason we use that is because it's from the responders' point of view, what does this call sound like and how should we respond? That's where I'm going with this. We've had numerous incidents across the country where an attacker was mobile and attacked several different sites, often crossing jurisdictions. You've got those 911 calls coming in. You got the first hit over here and that's a car accident with a couple of people shot and then three or four minutes later, a mile down the road, mile and a half, you've got some more people that are shot.You got another shooting coming in and then four minutes later, it crosses into another jurisdiction. We had one of these that just occurred a few weeks ago where a suspect killed several of his relatives in a home, went to the local police station and began attacking that with a semi-automatic rifle. Then, after shooting up the police station and trying to kill a bunch of people there, broke contact. A few minutes later, began shooting up a park with a bunch of kids that was right next to a school. Imagine, you're the 911 operator working that particular day, and you're getting these calls, that's going to sound like simultaneous attacks. That's going to sound like a complex coordinated attack. At the very least, even if it is the same attacker and they just went mobile, you got three complex crime scenes and close range to each other. As Mark said, that's going to strip your resources if you do the same thing for every one of them, and you got to get control of that.Adam Pendley:Absolutely. I think it's again, part of the process you learned in the ASIM incident management process is that you don't send everyone to the first site. Right? You have to control... We have to have the organizational discipline to certainly get what you need to address the initial act of threat, but then manage everything else from there. That's why the fifth man concept is so important, tactical, and we stress it over and over again, the importance of staging, so you are not over committing too many resources to that first site.If you practice that on a multitude of different types of incident responses, both police fire, and those responses that we do together, and that's one of the things that's been my fear when we talk about complex coordinated attack is so many agencies across the country have done a fantastic job preparing for an active shooter event, that the first time they have something that sounds like that, they send everyone. Everyone from the patrolmen to the chief and the kitchen sink all pour into that first site. Without following this control of resources managed response, you have too much at the first site and you're not prepared for that second, third, fourth site, whether it's a mobile suspect who's on a spree or whether it's truly a complex coordinated attack. Either way, if you over commit to the first scene and don't follow a process, you're going to be left flat-footed.Terrance Weems:Right.Bill Godfrey:I think that's a fabulous wrap up and a great place to end this. Gentlemen, thank you very much for your time. Ladies and gentlemen, I hope you enjoyed the podcast. If you have not already subscribed to the podcast, please click subscribe wherever you consume your podcast materials. If you have any questions for us or suggestions for future podcast topics that you would like the instructors or any of our guests that we bring in from time to time to talk about, please send that to us at info@c3pathways.com. That email again is info@c3pathways.com. Until next time, stay safe.

Episode 36: IntelligenceA discussion about the Intelligence function in Active Shooter Incident Management (hint: it's not just a law enforcement issue).Bill Godfrey:Welcome to the Active Shooter Incident Management Podcast. My name's Bill Godfrey, your podcast host. Thanks for being with us today. We are going to be talking about intelligence related to active shooter events and active shooter incident management. I have with me today three of the C3 Pathways instructors. We've got Stephen Shaw from law enforcement. Steve, thanks for being here.Stephen Shaw:Thank you for having me, Bill. Good afternoon.Bill Godfrey:Absolutely. And we have Adam Pendley, also from law enforcement. Adam, good to have you back.Adam Pendley:Thank you, Bill. Glad to be here.Bill Godfrey:And our newest C3 instructor joining us. Been around ... I won't say how long, Leanna. That wouldn't be kind. Leanna Mims, a retired fire chief, like myself. Also a paramedic. A lot of years in the business and just recently retired from some service at the state and has joined our team as our most recent instructor. Leanna, thanks for being here with us today.Leeanna Mims:Glad to be here. Thank you.Bill Godfrey:Absolutely. Okay, so as we get to talking about this topic, let me set the stage. So if you're familiar with any of our literature in the active shooter incident management program, you know that part of the ICS structure that we stand up is the intelligence section. Now, technically, it's called the intelligence investigative section, or the intelligence investigation section depending on how you want to label that. And in real life, in one of these events, that section gets quite large. It gets heavily staffed with a lot of people. And if you also have an event that has to do reunification, reunification is a branch under the intelligence section. So there's a whole lot of stuff that goes on.But we're going to focus today really is just a conversation around intelligence in a general sense. So if there's some intel purists out there, please forgive us. We're going to use this in a general sense and kind of talk about some of the things that relate to it. And the first one I'd kind of like to start off with, gang, if it's all right with you is dispelling the notion that intelligence is really just a law enforcement function, but really there's more to it. Adam, you want to start us off?Adam Pendley:Sure. I think it's interesting. We talk around the country about the active shooter event. We obviously never want to give any honor to the person that is committing this terrible act. And we even say that when the officers are first addressing the active threat, we don't care what the motivation is. We don't care that the person has issues. We just have to stop that active threat.But the truth of the matter is, very shortly after getting the active threat engaged, there are investigators and those that have to ... Command has to worry about what is the nature of this attack. Is our entire community under attack? Is this a one-off domestic violence type incident? And just like saving lives is everyone's job, figuring out what happened at the scene is also everyone's job. So those first responding officers are going to be getting immediate feedback from witnesses that, "Hey, that was Joe. He just got fired yesterday and you've got the right guy." Medics are going to be transporting survivors of the incident, and the survivors are going to be telling their story about what they saw and heard. Others that are helping on perimeter, even the PIO and others that are involved in the event are going to be getting a lot of information very quickly that becomes the job of intelligence to piece all that information together to try to figure out what is the nature of this attack and how can we either prevent an attack that might be happening, or at least begin our investigation immediately. And it feeds into all of those things.Bill Godfrey:Leanna, Adam mentioned a couple things on the fire/EMS side in terms of patient care. What are some of the things that jump out at you that really the fire/EMS service needs to be concerned about and watching for on these things?Leeanna Mims:Right. And I agree. For a long time, we believed that intelligence was strictly a law enforcement function. And that's just so far from the truth. The intelligence that you can bring in changes everything that you do strategically, tactically, and when you're talking about looking at a global picture of that, everybody is going to be trained on what intelligence is. And if you have some sort of a program that does do that, such as an ILO, an intelligence liaison officer program, and all of your people are trained in that, then they know what they're looking for and when to bring it back. No matter what type of situation that you're working in.And the other piece of that that we sometimes take for granted is we don't always pay attention to what the media is reporting. We pay attention to what we're telling the media, what kind of statements we want to go out, but a lot of times, the media can work so much faster than any intelligence resources can that we might have on scene. They have just as many contacts as we do, and from local to local, state to state, even internationally. So they can start getting answers and digging quickly, and if you don't have somebody monitoring that media, there could be things out there that are being told that you haven't picked up on.So with that, I'll leave it to somebody else to talk about the key spots to be able to monitor that probably within the dispatch center if you're talking about an active shooter event, which that's primarily what we do here. But if somebody is in the communications center and working as an intelligence officer, intelligence liaison, there might be some things there that they pick up from the media that they could relay back that helps with the response and helps law enforcement. And I'll defer that as to what that help could be.Stephen Shaw:And, Bill, talking about intelligence not being a law enforcement specific job, one of the questions that comes up a lot, not just for active shooters but for just calls in general that law enforcement responds to, what information is important? And the answer is, at some point, all of it is important. So if you have people that are responding to an active shooter specifically, there's going to be a lot of information that's coming in at a very fast rate. Your firefighters, your medics, even some of your emergency managers may be gathering some information that they need to be empowered to pass up to someone who is putting all that information together. Because whether it's for intelligence for the scene that we're working currently, as far as are we going to have another incident, are we going to have a second suspect or whatever, at some point during the investigative process, all that information is going to become important. What did you see? What did you hear? What were the statements made? Any of that information is going to be used later.So our response partners who are maybe not law enforcement need to understand that all that information is important to us, and they don't need to be afraid or shy about sharing that information with the command post or with the investigators there.Adam Pendley:Right. And so I think those are both great points, and I think what its key during the initial response that we're talking about is that there has to be mechanisms in place at the scene. So that intelligence section ultimately, like Bill said when he opened us up here, is that it's going to be a large function. You're going to have lots of different people all working together to try to gather that intelligence information. So when you train to this, you have to have a mechanism in place for all of these sources of information that you've talked about to bring those pieces together and paint that larger picture. So I think that's really important.Bill Godfrey:I think this is a fascinating line of thought, and I want to chase it down a little bit. So one of the things that we so often say, I think, in every class is at these events, at a minimum you have three crime scenes that you're going to have to look at and investigate. Adam, Steve, one of you, let's talk a little bit about that and then dive into that a little bit.Adam Pendley:So I think the three scenes, you have the crisis site itself, right? And there's a lot of focus on that, especially early on. But the moment you're able to take the first breath from that, you have to realize that the suspect arrived at that location in some form of transportation. So that becomes a focus, especially if there's a vehicle there at the scene. There's a lot of information that can be gleaned from the suspect's vehicle.And then the suspect lives somewhere, so where the suspect came from. Oftentimes, we've seen in many of these incidents where the suspect has already committed some sort of terrible act against a family member or something back at home, and we've also discovered that when you finally do make it to the suspect's residence, that they have bomb-making materials and other things along those lines. And, again, it branches off into multiple areas of intelligence from there.Stephen Shaw:And one of the things that a good intelligence section will really help out with those three incidents is figuring out who this person is, what their background is, or have we already dealt with this person at some point. Has another agency dealt with them that we've not even heard about? Because the chances of all three of those scenes being in the same jurisdiction are fairly slim. A lot of times, they come from neighboring towns, neighboring counties, or maybe they'll come from the same county, but they're in a city and they live in an unincorporated area. So now we're having to deal with the Sheriff's Department, whereas a police department is responding to the actual scene.So has someone else dealt with this person, and what did they see? Did this person make some statements that they have bomb-making materials? Do we have purchases somewhere? And then when we're already dealing with something as resource intensive as an active shooter event, that intel can really help an incident commander determine where do we need to focus the most resources. Because if we have someone, and we had this situation locally where we had someone who was suspected of making IEDs. That eats up a lot of manpower, especially if you and your jurisdiction do not have enough people to lock down, like Adam was saying, a crisis site, a vehicle, a person's home, and now we have to evacuate it. So what are we dealing with? And that's where this intelligence section can really tie all that information together to equip incident commanders with the best information possible so that they can put resources where they need to go.Bill Godfrey:The one that pops into my mind really is, I think, the Aurora incident in terms of the residence because it was so incredibly complex with bombs and bomb-making materials and booby traps, and ultimately involved a very significant coordinated effort by a lot of people, including fire/EMS. And I can even recall the imagery of them using the ladder truck to try to access the building in some unusual ways, and some of those. It's really fascinating how deep this can go and how quickly. But you don't really have to go it alone, right? That's fair to say?Adam Pendley:No, absolutely. Like most of the positions that we talk about in active shooter incident management, you're building a team. These are leadership positions, and you're building a team. And so there's a wealth of resources that are going to either be summoned to the scene or are going to realize events as its going on that have investigative responsibilities at the local, state and federal level. And we need to prepare for what information do we need their help.I always say that if you're in the command post, and somebody walks up to you and says "How can I help," and you don't have an answer for them, then that probably means your scene is getting smaller. We should always be able to delegate some big piece of this intelligence function to those teams that are not only in the agency that has jurisdiction, but all those assisting agencies that are coming. You should be able to find something to help them process this immense amount of information that's going to be coming towards you.Stephen Shaw:And a lot of that team building should be done before the incident ever even starts. How do we share information with each other, even when it comes to stuff as simple as break-ins in the area? How do we share information with our neighboring agencies? And we say it all the time, not just with intelligence but with everything, the first time that you meet somebody face-to-face should probably not be in the command post. And we talk about that in the class. So having those relationships built ahead of time, knowing who can I call to get information, who can I call to tap into a resource that I don't have available to me right now is really important and needs to be built before the incident ever even starts.Bill Godfrey:So I want to pull on that thread a little bit in terms of sharing information, because, Leanna, I think one of the classic complaints certainly on the fire/EMS side, though I've heard it even inter-agency on the law enforcement side, but on the fire/EMS side is there's known information that isn't shared, that isn't put out there. Can you talk a little bit about the intelligence liaison officer program that you worked on? What was some of the reasons that you wanted to do it, and did it help close the gap? Did it help solve the problem in that sharing of information from your perspective?Leeanna Mims:So really where our ILO training came from was from our fusion center. It was driven by our fusion center. And once you could get everybody understanding that intelligence is not just a law enforcement aspect, they start looking a little harder, and paying a little bit closer attention. Just like we did in the initial post-9/11 world.And with that, just going back to what I was saying earlier about using the media as your friend when it comes to intel. We were working a scene, and just to clarify, it wasn't a shooting, but it was a mass casualty. It was multiple homes involved. And it was the media that was able to help clue us in as to who was home, who wasn't home, and how many people were actually involved that could probably be either in need of help or deceased. But that was through their tracking and their sourcing. And, honestly, they could do it faster than any of us could working a joint command on scene, even with all of law enforcement and everybody there and the resources that we have. They're getting to a story.There was one recently locally. There was a shooting, and I just found it ironic that the media was on the scene with the shooter's ex-wife, I believe it was. It was either ex-wife or ex-girlfriend interviewing the same day that it happened. And I just thought that that was pretty ironic. What information could she provide, and does law enforcement have that yet? I wouldn't know that. I would hope so, but in that circumstance, and watching things the way we do, I wouldn't necessarily count on it.Adam Pendley:So, Bill, I think Leanna makes a great point about recognizing what suspicious information looks like. Law enforcement-wise, we've spent years training officers to recognize suspicious activity reporting, right? And so I think the great point there is that same type of training should be shared with others that are going to be responding to the scene. Again, piecing this intelligence together becomes everyone's job if they know what to look for. So if they know what to look for when someone is making a statement at the scene, they know what to look for prior to an event ever happening. That they go to the elderly woman's house, and while she's being treated for high blood pressure, she's talking about how her son stresses her out because he's always in the basement. He's always looking at violent material online. He's always talking about getting guns. He's always talking about how he's going to go back and he's got a revenge fantasy against a previous school or a previous employer.If everyone who is involved in these types of scenes in the public safety response can recognize what to look for in advance, but also recognize what's important after they've responded to the scene, I think those conversations ... To Stephen's point, those conversations have to happen before a crisis occurs.Bill Godfrey:I completely agree with you, and I think it makes perfect sense. Before we go any further, I do want to just also clarify while we're talking about the intelligence liaison officer, understand that that terminology can shift depending on where you are in the country. I've heard it called the terrorism liaison officer, the threat liaison officer, TLOs. There's probably three or four other acronyms that right now I can't even think of them. So just from a generic position, I think it's interesting, Leanna, that your experience has been using those to try to help educate everybody what to look for, because the context of most of mine have been these positions in and around the fusion center to have access to the information and kind of decide what does need to be shared between disciplines and between agencies.So I would like to visit on that for a little bit. Do you think that's still a problem? Are we still having a problem sharing information from one law enforcement agency to another, whether that's federal, state or local? Are we having a problem sharing the information to the fire and EMS agency? And is that problem a purposeful one, meaning we discussed sharing this with the fire department and we decided it was too sensitive and we weren't going to? Or nobody even thought to bring that up in the topic? So let's go around the table here. What do you think, is that still a problem today? Steve, let's start with you.Stephen Shaw:It's tough to say if it's a problem because every area is different, and I think if you have those systems built ahead of time, I'd say probably not. But if it's not something that you're sharing information regularly, then, yeah, it probably is.And I think especially, and we fall into this trap as law enforcement too, we don't a lot of times share it with fire and EMS. Does fire and EMS need to know that we have a ring of people that's stealing catalytic converters? Who's to say that they don't need to know that? Because they see stuff just like we do. They're out driving around, and they might notice some information there. How does that tie into active shooters? Again, it's about relationships. I already have that relationship established where I'm in the habit of sharing information with everybody that could possibly be involved with my crisis scene ahead of time. We know each other ahead of time, and, again, we've just gotten in that habit of sharing information.A lot of times, people, civilians, are more apt to let fire and EMS into their homes and give them information that they wouldn't normally do with a police officer. So to Adam's point, like he's saying, somebody's talking about, "My grandson disturbs me because he's down in the basement," and all that kind of stuff. A lot of times, that information may not be shared with a cop where it would be shared with a firefighter.So it's tough to say if it's an issue. I think it's really regionally dependent. I think we could probably do a better job in my area, I know, sharing that information with non-law enforcement entities. But I think it depends on what systems you have built ahead of time.Bill Godfrey:Adam?Adam Pendley:Yeah. So what I would add to that is I know that we need to train to it, and so a lot of times in law enforcement active shooter response training, we spend a lot of time dealing with tactics, entering rooms, addressing suspects, so on and so forth, but that's where the conversation ends. And I think it's important to also continue with the exercise and training in what if this person we're dealing with has information? Pocket trash. Information about another attack. You have a witness who, during the tactical training, gives information to the officers or to a firefighter or to a paramedic about what they saw, what they did. So we can train to this idea that you're going to get pieces of information from all over the place, and I don't think we do that.So I think we fail in training across the country as far as making that part of the training, and so I think that's why it's so important that on the checklist we have intelligence and investigations as part of that initial response. So we train to it when we're talking about the initial response to active shooter.Bill Godfrey:Leanna, what's your take?Leeanna Mims:Right. But if you put the right exchange system in place, and, again, that can be linked through a fusion center, then you, for lack of a better way of looking at it, you have to trust how you set that exchange to work as to what gets released by how you want to prioritize it to fire, to law enforcement. There's some things that we, as fire, we don't need to know. But if it is something that is going to present a danger to us in a response situation, then, yes, and you want to trust that whatever training and relationships and exchange program that you have in place is going to do that.And that's when we're talking about just day in, day out exchange of intelligence. When you're working an active scene, it's a different scenario. As that intel is coming in and coming in quick, it's got to be considered by tactical and by command what is going to get relayed to who. And that really is under the control of law enforcement, and trust that they're going to relay what is going to be necessary to keep you safe, but they also know that they can't relay anything that is going to jeopardize the outcome to be any worse than what the situation might already be.Adam Pendley:So, Bill, listening to both Leanna and Stephen, it actually also reminds me of the fact that our fusion centers, they work very hard to make sure that they're putting out the information that we need. And I know people that work in fusion centers, and the bulletins themselves offer an opportunity for feedback. So if the product needs a different type of information because I think the other thing, we can drown in our own information. There is so much out there.Bill Godfrey:Or there can be, I guess I should say.Adam Pendley:So, again, part of those pre-conversations is ... And do that feedback. Everyone that I've ever known that has worked in a fusion center, they want to produce a product that makes a difference. And so it's incumbent upon us that are receiving that information to provide feedback, to say, "Hey, this part was useful. This part wasn't so much useful." And build that in advance, and say, "If we start sending you pieces of information at an active scene, this is the right now, right now information that we need. We need to know who this person is and where they lived, where do they come from, what other vehicles do they have, and what are their immediate associations. Those are the kinds of things that we need to know right now." And I think massaging that information into something that's useful in a rapid, tactical way is going to be important as well.Bill Godfrey:It's interesting, we've talked several times about fusion centers, and I'm sure that there's a lot of our audience that knows what a fusion center is and knows where their fusion center is. But I don't know that that's the case all across the country. Let's take a minute to talk about, first of all, how do you find out who your local fusion center is if you don't know it? What are some of the resources that we can go to? And then what should they be sharing with the fusion center early on, and what kind of things should they be looking for back from the fusion center?Adam Pendley:So I think obviously in most agencies or in least your partnering agencies, you're going to have someone that has received that training as an intelligence liaison officer or works as an analyst or has those networks in their personal connections that they can reach out to the person. So it just begins with networking. So someone in your organization has reached out, they have someone in their professional network that works in the fusion center network or works in an exchange of some sort, or your federal agencies may have a representative at the joint terrorism task force, or one of those other organizations that begins that networking. And then just reach out, because, again, that's the way networking works. That's the way these fusion center exchanges work is they need more members, they need people that can both provide information and, again, benefit from the products.Stephen Shaw:I think, to Adam's point, even if you don't know personally somebody who works in a fusion center, we all have connections. We all have contacts. And, like he said earlier, most people that work in a fusion center, they want that information out there. They want a good product, and it's always been my experience and, Adam or Leanna, tell me if you disagree, anytime I've asked, they've been more than willing to give me whatever they've got.So if you don't know who that person is at your agency, or say you're just an agency that doesn't have somebody, reach out to somebody from another agency that you know. Say "Who is the person at your agency that deals with the fusion center?" And you may not even call it a fusion center. It may be called something else in your area. But reach out to that person and say, "Who is that person that you know?" And then get in touch with them yourself, and they've always been more than willing to share information, because that's their mission is information sharing. That's what a fusion center is, it's information sharing. It's collating and pushing out intelligence.As far as what we're looking for, that varies. I could be looking for crime trends. I could be looking for ... One of the things that my state and a lot of other states have gotten into recently is behavioral analysis. Can I get any information from that? How do I pass that information along to them so that it can be put out somewhere else? So reach out to those contacts. We all have them and we all have professional connections. Reach out to those and see what they have available for you.Bill Godfrey:I think the other really good value that a fusion center can bring to especially small or rural communities or smaller law enforcement agencies that may not have experienced these larger events, or may not have a lot of depth in their intelligence bench, if you will, your fusion center that covers your area, and there's, I think to my knowledge, we have a fusion center that is designated to cover every part of the US. There's a network of them. But if you don't know how to do something, chances are pretty good that the fusion center either will, but I can almost guarantee you, at the very least, they're going to know somebody to call that's going to know how to do that. If you need some high end analysis, or some in-depth, super wacky gadget-y stuff, whatever, the fusion center may be a source of access to connections and information and people that may be able to fill that out.And I mentioned this earlier, how do you find your local fusion center if you don't know it? A good place to start is at the DHS website. You can obviously google it, but DHS.gov/fusion-centers is a good starting place. You can also just google "Fusion center near me," and there's a pretty good chance that it's going to pull up the one closest to you, but not necessarily obviously ... Google knows a lot. I don't know that it knows everything, but, in any event, there's ways to find out.And most fusion centers, and Leanna, I think this was your experience when you guys were setting up your ILO, most fusion centers have both emergency lines and business lines. So Monday through Friday, 9:00 to 5:00, you can call them up and tell them what you're concerned about or what you're working on. Leanna, was that your experience as well as you were setting your program up?Leeanna Mims:Yes. Yes. The fusion centers, they can be a training resource for you. And, again too, another piece of that for some agencies that aren't sure where to reach out to, many times your local emergency management office can steer you to them, because many times your fusion center is pretty tied in at that level.Bill Godfrey:Okay. So the other thing before we leave fusion centers that I kind of want to plant this idea is everybody needs to practice. Everybody needs to practice. When you're doing your training scenarios, your hands-on scenarios where you're actually running this stuff, whether it's focused on the incident management piece or just gathering information, or when you're doing this, if you're going to try to use your fusion centers, call them up ahead of time and see if they'll participate with you as part of your exercise, as part of your scenario. My personal experience has been very positive in getting most fusion centers to agree to participate. They've usually been pretty enthusiastic about doing that. You do, as an exercise controller, have to be very careful to make sure that you don't inadvertently create what appears to be a real world thing out of something that you're exercising, but there's plenty of ways to control that. Any other notes on fusion centers before we move onto a couple of other items?Adam Pendley:No, I think we hit it pretty well. Again, I would just add that during the training scenarios, you can write up just index cards with pieces of information. If you're going to have moulage patients that you have spread about your scene, put a card with each of those, and see how well that information is fused together through your intelligence process.Bill Godfrey:Yeah, absolutely. You can put together a package for the fusion center that gives them a lot of background if your trainees actually just think to call. So I think that that's all good stuff.So the one other thing I want to do before we leave this is I want to talk a little bit about if you're the intelligence section chief at the active shooter event, you're assigned to that role, that process of getting started and beginning to collect the information. Now, you all know as instructors and those that have been through our courses are familiar with our intelligence worksheet, if you will, that lays out a way to begin collecting data. I know there's some sensitivity for intel what they classify as information versus what's vetted and what's not, and I don't meant to trip up over that. But, basically, as you're collecting data pieces, little pieces of information, to be able to collect them and organize and begin doing some of those associations.Adam, can you talk a little bit, and Steve, I'd like you to weigh in on, too, what does that look like and who is going to get the job most of the time? Is it going to be an investigator typically that's going to be the first one staffing it?Adam Pendley:Sure. I think early on, it can be that next available resource. But, quickly, you're going to want a trained investigator in that role. But like we've demonstrated during our conversation today, you're going to be overloaded almost immediately. Especially to Leanna's point about the media is already putting information out there because somebody has tweeted from the scene while it's happening, or maybe even live streamed it. So the intelligence function is already a little bit behind. So you know you're going to have that immediate overload. The investigator is going to have to build a team. That team is going to have to work to start piecing those pieces of information together, and we know there's certain catch points where information is gathered.Our dispatchers across the country do a fantastic job of logging information into their CAD system as it's coming in from multiple callers, so we know that's a great source of intelligence information. We know that the tactical group supervisor working with triage and transport, they're going to be getting information that comes up from the teams that are down range. That's a great source of information as well. And then the reason on the ASIM checklist that we put reunification under the intelligence and investigative section is because, as we get uninjured people, witnesses out of the scene, we know that they're going to be interviewed and they're going to be provided a great deal of intelligence information as well.So the short answer is it's going to go to a trained investigator who is going to have to build a team who is going to have to rapidly collect pieces of information that are coming from multiple sources.Stephen Shaw:Yeah, I agree. Having that investigator there, I think as someone who is used to working with intelligence, someone who is used to working with a fusion center or who is an ILO or TLO or anything like that.One thing, I don't know if we've talked about it right now but I know we talk about it in class is we're getting information, are you sending someone to your dispatch center? Are you sending that investigator to your dispatch center? Because a lot of times, that's where you're getting your first best information from people is people are calling 9-1-1. And also if you have someone, and I'm not just talking about an investigator or whoever it is that happens to be gathering your intelligence at the time, calling dispatch on the phone. Actually be there in the building with them if possible because now you're getting information from everywhere that it could possibly come from. You're getting 9-1-1 calls. You're getting radio transmissions. You're getting radio transmissions from possibly multiple agencies, and they have all that CAD information that they can pull up. We've got a suspect vehicle, they can run that. Has this car been stopped somewhere else before? They can run that history there, right?So if we don't have enough resources to dedicate five investigators to different areas, maybe just send that one trained investigator to your dispatch center. And like Adam is saying, have that person build a team. So send that trained investigator to a dispatch center and have him or her work with their team who has officers or other people in other areas gathering that information and sending it up to them.Bill Godfrey:I think that's great. I think that's great. And, Steve, I'm really glad you mentioned the piece about getting somebody over to the dispatch center. We touched on dispatch and the importance of that, and I think we forgot to mention that when we did our first pass. It's a key element. In fact, it's one of the things that we teach in the class for whoever gets the intelligence section. The first thing they need to do is get a rundown of what dispatch knows, because they're in a position to hear and record a whole lot of information.Stephen Shaw:And I mentioned it as I was talking about, and I skipped over it, but we talked about training other people to know what to look for for intelligence. That also includes your dispatchers. What do we need to be listening out for? So when they're getting these 9-1-1 calls, and they're getting those radio transmissions, are they hearing information that they know is going to be key that they can document somewhere? So getting them involved also in your training as to what to look for is crucial.Leeanna Mims:And just in followup to what Adam was saying about how fast everything is happening from the scene, the tweeting, the social media, the news media, it gets ahead of you. And it can overrun your resources. A lot of times in some areas, something we did with the media is if they wanted to be up front on the scene, we did a media school that was taught by our PIOs. With that, there's a component where you talk to them about intelligence, and help them to understand it. And I think that if we all maybe learn as we have resources to use that broad brush, we can turn the media around to be another resource for us in that intel.And, obviously, we've got to make sure that they understand what the difference is between reporting and feeding intelligence. And we all have those media agencies that we work with that really do a good job in wanting to help with the community.Bill Godfrey:The local media.Leeanna Mims:Yes. Yes. Yes, exactly.Bill Godfrey:I think you're right on the money there. Most professional PIOs that I know of go out of their way to build relationships with their local media, and it's an absolutely essential ingredient. And I think most local reporters equally go out of their way to build relationships because it's very much a two-way street. And so I think that's a great resource.The national media, out of market, not so much. They don't really necessary care about your local issue or your local concerns. And I won't address what I think they do care about, but the local media, I think, is a very different case. And in the early part of the incident, that's who you're going to be dealing with. For that first 30 minutes, an hour ... I don't know that you get much more than an hour before you start to get some of the others to land on you. All right.Leeanna Mims:And I think for a long time, from the fire side, when we heard the word "intelligence," we thought secrets. Those two words went hand-in-hand, and really now when we heard the word "intelligence," what we should be thinking about is safety and success.Adam Pendley:Very good.Bill Godfrey:Yeah, that's a really, really great point. In fact, I'm going to stop right there and leave it the last word. Because we aren't going to top that. Leanna, thank you very much.Leeanna Mims:Thank you.Bill Godfrey:Thanks for being here today. I hope you enjoyed your first podcast with us. Look forward to having you back for more. Adam, Stephen, thanks for being here today. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for listening in. We hope you enjoyed it. If you have not subscribed to the podcast, please click your subscribe button on whatever device where you consume us. If you have any suggestions, questions or comments about the podcast, please send them to info@c3pathways.com. That's info@c3pathways.com. Until next time, stay safe.

Episode 35: Rural ResponseA discussion about how small and rural communities can respond and structure their response to active shooter events.Bill Godfrey:Welcome to the Active Shooter Incident Management Podcast. My name is Bill Godfrey, your host of the podcast and today's topic we are going to talk about active shooter response and active shooter incident management in smaller communities or rural communities where there's not a lot of resources. I've got with me today three of the C3 Pathways instructors. We've got with is Joe Ferrara, who has not been in for a while. Joe, it's good to see you back here. Thanks for being here.Joe Ferarra:Good to be back.Bill Godfrey:Absolutely, and we've got Adam Pendley from law enforcement. So Joe's with fire, I guess I should say that, fire EMS. We got Adam Pendley, one of our law enforcement instructors. Adam, good to see you.Adam Pendley:Yes, sir. Nice to be here.Bill Godfrey:All right. So guys, the question of the day is, and the discussion point that we want to have is for those communities out there that are smaller communities, or rural communities, that don't have a lot of depth and resources, how can they still respond to these events and structure their response in a way? And what I'd like to do just so the audience can kind of follow along is kind of follow the checklist process in terms of the flow of the thing, which is going to lead us starting off with contact teams. So Adam, talk to us about some of the challenges when you have a limited number of officers, how do you stretch those resources for your contact teams and to do the security work needs to be done?Adam Pendley:Sure. I think for initial response to an active shooter event, that initial contact to address the threat, one of the things we find when there's less officers working in a geographical area is this idea that there's an increased chance that you're going to have a solo officer entry. So we'll start there. Across the country, many departments are training to the idea and adjusting policy to the idea that we may have to have a solo officer entry to at least put something down range to stop the killing, to get the suspect's attention off of the innocents and maybe toward the officer so they can address that threat. So solo officer entry is a conversation that all departments, but especially those that might not have as many resources on duty at a particular time of day or in a particular geographical area, they have to consider solo officer response.Then as that additional officer arrives, that linkup procedure and understanding how do you turn it from a solo officer response into that first contact team. And of course, when we use the term contact team, in a perfect world, we want that to be three, four, or five officers. But a contact team might just be those two officers. Both of them who are doing the security work with their weapons platform, facing the threat, eliminating the threat, somebody available to talk on the radio, and somebody... The two of them being able to kind of get that 540 degree security with each other, an extra set of eyes is always important. But that might be the entire size of your contact team. And as additional officers arrive, maybe from another jurisdiction, they know to form up as a second contact team that may also only be two officers.So I think it's important to be creative and tactically sound and realize that as we attend training and exercises, just be cognizant of the fact that how do we change our training to address making entry into a building with just one or two officers, and how does that change the tactics a little bit. With time, more officers will arrive. And so, how do you transition to building some additional teams on top of that?And then that gets us into our discussion, which I know we've discussed quite a bit, about the fifth man, that tactical group supervisor. And it's not always a hard number. In some instances the third officer arrives, might have to stay outside in and coordinate the resources that are eventually going to arrive instead of having all resources inside. Or some communities that we've worked with their plan is to have all on-duty resources go inside and then as additional resources arrive, hopefully one of them can extricate themselves from inside the scene and then come back out to kind of take that fifth man function. So it's very jurisdiction specific on how you get creative.Bill Godfrey:So Robert, I'm curious, Adam's talking about reducing the contact team size, which obviously I think makes sense when your resource is constrained. What are the implications for that in training? When you're trying to train your law enforcement guys how to work in contact teams is there a difference in the way you need to train them and in the tactics that they need to use, if it's just a couple of them?Robert McMahan:Well, I think the biggest difference is we're actually doing it in training and working through what it looks like to have smaller numbers of officers on a contact team. And often our rural small jurisdictions don't get the same amount of training because they don't have the trained dollars. But when you're looking ahead towards this kind of incident, you've got to make that sacrifice somehow to get that training done so they know what they're doing. Officers that are responding in these hot situations that don't have that trainer are more at risk to getting injured or killed and not solving the situation without that training. So trainings got to be the first thing that to be addressed in these.Bill Godfrey:Okay. So we've got a couple there on how to reduce some of the team size, looking at solo officer entry and reducing the team sizes. I think everybody can kind of nod your head and see that. Do we still need a tactical, do we still need a fifth man when we're resource constrained? What do you think?Adam Pendley:So, yes, absolutely. The thing that is very important to realize is that the call for help has gone out so more resources are coming and if you only have three or four deputies or police officers that are on duty and they're all inside, and we know from experience that many of our buildings, especially in rural areas, once you get inside a building, the radio doesn't work anymore. So now you have follow on resources that are entering blindly if they don't have someone outside as a guide or a gatekeeper to what's going on. And a lot of our radio systems, you'll have a car to car type function that would work well so you can have two or three officers inside and that third or fourth officer that's outside that can use that car to car frequency to establish what's going on inside to establish a strategy of some sort.So when those mutual aid officers finally arrive, or even from a callback situation, we know in some communities, they have a plan to call officers at home and they quickly throw on a gun belt and there and out the door they go to the scene. And when that officer arrives, they really do need that tactical direction. So I'm not comfortable sacrificing the tactical group supervisor in these situations because I've said this many times, one more gun inside the crisis site might not be nearly as valuable as managing the 10 more guns that are on their way.Bill Godfrey:That's a really interesting point. And Adam, it kind of reminds me of the one group we work with. It was a very rural county out in the Midwest, and on a good day, they had three law enforcement officers on duty, four if you counted the sheriff, if the sheriff himself happened to be there. And they actually, after they went through training with their volunteer fire department, came to an arrangement with their volunteer fire department that all of the armed officers would go down range as quickly as possible to try to deal with the threat, and it would be the fire department's responsibility to take care of all the outside stuff, to get all the incident management positions stood up and kind of coordinate all of those other items on the checklist that needed to get done.And then as soon as the officers that were down range felt like they had just a little bit of stability on controlling the threat and it was warm enough, they would then have one officer back out and go grab the medics to kind of bring them in. I thought that was a pretty... I thought it was pretty creative, and quite honestly, a fascinating look into the mindset of a rural community who's used to having to rely on each other and make things work. I mean, I can think of any number of city or metro agencies where the idea that law enforcement would delegate those tasks to the fire department would just be crazy. But I don't know. I thought it was pretty interesting way. Robert, how does that strike you?Robert McMahan:There's a lot of things that can be done to spread the workload to maybe some unconventional areas. Everybody's got some form of road and bridge that can be brought into help control perimeter as far as access at least, maybe not the security element, but they can provide that access control to the scene and around the command post and other areas. You've got civilians within your community that may be formed into groups, that may be able to be accessed to help out with some things like a reunification program.You could get reunification on the school side, but you can also get some pieces of that from various civilian groups that come in and help staff some of those positions. So, they've got to be creative in how they can fill those things with maybe some non-commission personnel in some of those areas. And planning ahead is a big part of it because in a lot of rural areas, there's wildlife officers, there's forest service officers that we don't normally think about in these responses, and they may not even be on the channel to hear the call for help. So in the planning part of it, if they're thinking about, "Hey, there's these types of officers out in the area that we can maybe call in on." Think about calling them early on in the response.Bill Godfrey:Interesting. So before we get too far afield, down range on the other stuff, because you mentioned a couple of things I want to come back to, but before we get there, I obviously want to jump over to the medical side. So we talked a little bit about that initial law enforcement [inaudible 00:11:06] and the contact teams, but Joe, I'd like to tangent over to the medical side, and to me it seems there's a couple of challenges or potentially a couple of challenges here from not having enough staffing because you're a small or rural community, you've got limited access to the number of medics that are on duty. But also I've seen an awful lot of rural communities where the fire department is volunteer, doesn't have medical capability, they've got an EMS system that works very well for them, but then there's some challenges there because how do you operate when the medics are downrange, but then you also have to do transport. So Joe, can you talk a little bit about some ideas and thoughts on how to make those resources work and how to kind of plan ahead?Joe Ferarra:Sure. So the interesting thing about rural America is, as compared to the metropolitan areas, where you already mentioned that in metropolitan areas we tend to operate in silos, where we do our police, we do our fire, we do our EMS. But when we get out to rural America, the great thing about it is it's a whole community approach, everybody works together, whether that be volunteer fire, or a small fire department working with either a partnered private EMS agency, or a countywide EMS, and then working with law enforcement.And take that one step further, or one other layer on top of this, in many small communities, we have public safety officers that are triple certified as police, fire, and medic, and we'll kind of circle back to that. But in the basic concept where we might have two paramedics on an ambulance and we have however many volunteer firefighters that would show up for that incident, let's just say four them show up on an [inaudible 00:13:00] initially, we're going to have to be really creative because we don't want to put those non-medically trained personnel down range with a security component and ask them to do advanced triage. But we also don't want to lose our personnel and our ambulance because the key to an ambulance on an active shooter event is that is our mechanism to get to the hospital. And without that, we're going to lose time... Great, we have an ambulance, but we have nobody in it.So smaller communities, I think working together, maybe using your fire department as your drivers for the ambulance so you can free up one EMS personnel from a two person unit, and having one paramedic stay with the ambulance, and the other paramedic now get with law enforcement as a rescue task force, and there's your security component and your medical component going downrange and taking care of the patient, ultimately getting them into the ambulance and transport them out of there.So there needs to be all those partnerships looking to mutual aid agreements, looking to other parts of the community. And like I said, I applaud rural America because I think they do the best job at the whole community approach because they have to, they have to have all those pieces. They don't have resources to throw at it like a metropolitan area does.Bill Godfrey:It's interesting, Adam mentioned earlier the idea of doing callback, and I'm kind of reminded that most volunteer departments work that way. How realistic is, do you think, [inaudible 00:14:32] on the EMS side, on the medical side, I shouldn't necessarily just say EMS, but on the medical side for a rural community or a smaller community that's got limited resources, to be able to set up some sort of callback program. Is that going to work fast enough, you think, Joe, to get some medical help?Joe Ferarra:I think so. I mean, for the most part, depending on the model, let's say it's a public utility model or it's a third service EMS. Certainly there's depth there because they're working in shift work similar to how fire departments work so it should not be too much of an issue to have a depth and a callback list. And then if it's a contracted third service or contracted private ambulance, depending on the size of the company, I mean, they could have regional and statewide resources that can be there from a callback perspective.Certainly counties also should work with their emergency management because let's not forget the certificate and need process that occurs in EMS across this country. If I want to be a ambulance provider in that community, and maybe my business is normally transporting a patient from the hospital to the nursing home, the law usually requires, and it's going to be different by jurisdiction, that that ambulance be available in time of emergency. So there are other resources and that's where it's key to tap into your emergency management because they have the reach out to all those other agencies that can assist with that patient transfer.Bill Godfrey:Okay. So let's just kind of recap where we're at. At the basic response level we've got to have on the law enforcement side some certified, armed law enforcement officers to deal with the situation. And on the medical side, we need some trained medical people that are trained and equipped and certified to whatever level the community wants, to also be available to go deal with the situation. We've talked about a couple of ways to stretch those. So let's shift gears and talk a little bit about how to manage this and some of the ideas, robert, you started going down that road a little bit, on some of the ideas for some of the additional ancillary rules that we know need to be filled. Where do we go with that, Adam?Adam Pendley:Sure. I mean, once you get outside of those... That are downrange in the crisis side, there's still a lot of jobs to be filled. So let's take the command post for example. So you have your contact teams and medical and RTF doing their job. You have some sort of tactical in place, tactical triage and transport. It's ideal to have someone handling the triage group function and the transport group function separately, but that might have to be combined into one function so that you have that one fire EMS person downrange making those decisions.But at the command post level, and that's really where you can leverage a lot of help. In many areas there's three or four law enforcement officers that are helping with scribing and helping with talking on the radio and helping doing some other things, same thing on the fire EMS side, they have a trained firefighter that's in there helping scribe and manage resources and keeping the incident commander informed. When reality, you may only have the ability to have an incident commander from law enforcement, a medical branch director from fire EMS, and then you have to train in advance to the point that Robert made earlier is these are training opportunities that you have to develop during a policy development and training and exercises, find those people that can be trained to do those jobs.If I were running a command post in an area that has a fewer resources available, I would reach out to my civilian staff and train them on how to help as scribes in the command post, how to use the radio, how to make resource requests, how to go to the dispatch center and help answer extra calls for service that are coming in. And not necessarily calls for service, but all those calls for information that are going to be coming in. So every part of your civilian staff that works, in not only your agencies, but in the city and public works, like was mentioned, they can all be trained up to do those ancillary jobs when they're called to duty.Bill Godfrey:Yeah. And Robert, I think you were kind of going down this road when you were talking about the perimeter responsibilities, certainly for the outer perimeter. And I know we've got one of our instructors that worked in a smaller community and she had a fairly creative way... I've worked out a deal with our public works department to respond with the garbage trucks and the dump trucks to be able to quickly close down the roads and be able to isolate an area. And while that didn't get used on an active shooter event, it did get used on a bank robbery quite effectively. I mean, are there some other ideas that stick out in your mind about where to get some other resources and be able to kind of backfill some of those ancillary roles?Robert McMahan:So one area that communities can consider is, sometimes they're called CERT teams, civilian emergency response teams. Other agencies have community safety volunteer programs. And if you don't have them in your rural areas, it's something that you could think about starting up getting your community involved and trained to do certain roles like traffic control and other various needs within that emergency response.Bill Godfrey:Yeah. I think that's a great idea. Joe, you got any that jump out in your mind?Joe Ferarra:Yeah. One that jumps out at me and you mentioned CERT, there's another area and this is through the health department. So if the emergency management or the agency directors work with their health department ahead of time, many health departments across the country have what's called MRCs or medical reserve corps. And these are made up of, they may be retired nurses and doctors in the community, or even current and practicing ones. And they're actually in a response mode. So there's a potential there, and I'm not talking a response mode of eight minutes, advanced life support on scene, but they're going be able to support the operation. So imagine being able to get some doctors and nurses to the scene, and that's where your health department and that where it is key to work with emergency management because they have those connections.Bill Godfrey:Yeah. And I guess in some ways... You mentioned the medical reserve corps. I mean, if you're in a smaller or a rural community, it's not just at the scene you're going to have the problem, your local hospital's going to have the problem too.Adam Pendley:Absolutely. And so that all ties into that personnel recall as well, that we mentioned earlier, and also your emergency management. So on both of those, remember, even if you have resources between on-duty and mutual aid that you're able to handle the incident, all of those resources are now pretty much out of service. It's a very stressful event, you may have officer involved shooting protocols that you have to follow.And that happened in an incident that I was involved in, it involves civil unrest. We had a lot of units tied up responding to the civil unrest, and as a responding agency assistant chief, the calls I started making was for emergency recall right away because all of those units were now going to be out of service for a long period of time. And so getting that process started early is very important, I think, when you have a limited number of resources.And then secondly to that is, again, another early call, if somebody can remember to make it very early on in the incident, is reaching out to that county emergency manager because they're going to also be able to bring some of their staff in to help with a lot of the administrative type stuff. But they have plans for trying to call in additional resources. So it's a way to get all of those things started very early on. So somebody has to make that decision and make that call very early to get that going.Robert McMahan:So another area that I just thought of is a lot of rural communities have some kind of incident management team, which could be another call-up resource to come in and help out with this kind of thing. And as I was sitting here, we were talking about hospitals and their resources in these communities. Remember, in some of these communities, and I lived in one before I got into law enforcement where the hospital was 60 miles away. And so it's going to take time to transport patients to that hospital, a lot of time, and so we might think about having that agreement with that hospital to fly resources to the site to get some more advanced care on the site until we can get patients transported that far away.Bill Godfrey:Yeah. That's interesting. I mean, there's a few... I'm not aware of any here in the US, but certainly overseas, there's a few models where they have physicians and physician staff that are either assigned to the medical helicopter, or are available immediately to be deployed to the medical helicopter. It's really interesting. What strikes me about this conversation is we're talking about a lot of ideas here, and I think there's a lot of really good ideas about how to do this on the response side. But the thing that really catches my attention is, I'm not sure that you're going to do a whole lot of this at the time of the incident. This has got to be done before the bang. We're talking about a lot of planning. Where's the best place for that to occur within the community. If we've got some firefighters or some police officers, or medics that are working and serving rural America, who do they turn to to say, "Hey, listen, we need to work on this a little bit?"Adam Pendley:Well, I think mainly that work has to happen together. That's the first thing is you got to get everyone at the same table at the same time, but I can tell you from a law enforcement perspective, I've been called many times by local entities in the community that want to host an active shooter exercise. But that almost always involves some tactical officers demonstrating what it would look like, what gunshots would sound like as they're running down the hallway. And then we begin to treat a couple of patients, but then that's the end of the exercise.The reality is is we need to think about everything else that's going to need to be done. And that's where the conversation really begins because honestly, most law enforcement officers in this country are ready to do the tactical part. And yes, we need training, but that's not where we need the exercise and the policy development. We need the policy development in making sure that all of these creative ideas can happen without somebody standing there and saying, "Oh, I can't do that. The policy doesn't allow it." Or, "I can't help drive that ambulance because state law doesn't allow it." That's where you have to dig deep now to answer those questions. So when you ask a public works person to use his truck to block traffic at an incident, does his union contract allow him to do that? Those are the kinds of questions that you have to dig deep and get the answers to now so you're prepared to be that creative on scene.Bill Godfrey:Joe, what's your thoughts? You're working as a medic in a rural community, where do you start?Joe Ferarra:So Adam already mentioned that it starts with the agencies, but I'll take it one step further in that. In every community and in our great country, there's a comprehensive emergency management plan. And the purpose of that is to plan for emergency response. So we start with emergency management, emergency management has the relationships, hopefully already, that they put together to design a response plan. And then you work through all the iterations of that, that may involve, "Okay, well, if the governor declares this a disaster area, can we override XYZ regulation and deal with these things?" But in my book, that's clearly a comprehensive emergency management plan function.Bill Godfrey:Robert, what about on the political side or the management side? Is there an opportunity with a city manager, or a county manager, or the mayor, or the elected officials to ask them for their help in opening doors and kind of greasing the wheels? What are your thoughts?Robert McMahan:Yes, absolutely. And these are key people that have got to get involved in this on the front end, before the bang, as you said. And figure out how they're going to enable the resources that they have to respond to this. And where the agreements are, are they in place with the hospital 60 miles away? Are the agreements in place with other resources that they've got to have to answer this kind of call?So those political leaders, sheriffs, and I'm not even thinking chiefs of police because we're talking so small here, but maybe there is a chief of police, town marshall, county managers-Bill Godfrey:County judge.Robert McMahan:... county judge, all those things need to be brought together to figure out what these legal issues may be and what these logistical issues may be to get these agreements in place. And so everybody knows what needs to occur and that it can occur when this happens.Bill Godfrey:So guys, let me ask this bottom line question. So no question, this is a difficult challenge for a resource constraint community, no question about it. But bottom line, fixable and doable?Adam Pendley:Absolutely.Bill Godfrey:Joe?Joe Ferarra:Yes, absolutely.Robert McMahan:Absolutely.Bill Godfrey:Yeah. And I think so too. In some cases you've got to be creative and it may not be easy to get buy-in from everybody, but I think there's a common need here. And it seems, if you're willing to commit to a little bit of work and plan ahead of time that it can come together.Robert McMahan:Absolutely. Those pieces that we teach in active shooter incident management that need to occur, these communities need to come together, these community leaders need to come together and look at that, realize what their shortcomings are, and figure out, "How are we going to get this done?" And it may not happen when that bang goes off, it may not happen as quickly as we want, but it can happen and we need to plan ahead on how we're going to do that.Bill Godfrey:Absolutely. Well guys, thank you so much for taking the time. I will say this, I'm kind of reminded a little bit here on the 10 part series we did on the 10 questions that the mayor or the city manager should ask their police chief or fire chief together to talk about that. If you're out there in a rural community or a resource constraint community, and you're trying to kind of figure out where to start that political conversation, you might want to revisit some of the series of those 10 questions the mayor can ask the police chief and fire chief because there was some good stuff. They can arm you with the kind of things that you can approach your elected officials with. And if you get their buy-in, they can really begin to open doors. If they didn't have relationships and couldn't open doors, they probably wouldn't have got elected in the first place. But just a thought out there for our listeners.Robert, Adam, Joe, thank you so much for taking the time to come in guys and talk about this very important issue. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us for the podcast. If you haven't subscribed, please do so on whatever device that you consume your podcasts on. If you have any suggestions, ideas, or questions, please email them to us at info@c3pathways.com. Until next time. Stay safe.

Episode 34: 5 Common MistakesA discussion about five common mistakes in active shooter events response and active shooter incident management.Bill Godfrey:Welcome to the Active Shooter Incident Management Podcast, my name is Bill Godfrey, I'm your host of the podcast. Today's topic we are going to talk about five common mistakes in active shooter events response and active shooter incident management. I've got with me three of the instructors from C3 Pathways, Stephen Shaw from law enforcement, Steve thanks for coming it.Stephen Shaw:Thanks for having me, Bill.Bill Godfrey:Absolutely. We got Tom Billington on the Fire EMS side, Tom good to see you again.Tom Billington:Good morning.Bill Godfrey:And Robert McMahan from the law enforcement side, Robert good to see you.Robert McMahan:Good to be here again, thanks.Bill Godfrey:You doing well today?Robert McMahan:I am.Bill Godfrey:All right, fantastic. So today's topic, five common mistakes. And I'm going to take these in the order of how the response goes and not necessarily which ones are the biggest sins if you will. But the first one I want to talk about, and Tom I'm going to ask you to highlight on this one a little bit, is dispatcher training. Dispatchers can do a whole lot to help you in these events and can help you avoid mistakes if you provide them the training, and this is one that obviously has to be taken care of pre-event. We teach our guys on the ground, our responders on the ground what the benchmarks are that we're generally looking for which is the contact teams are downrange, our threat is neutralized or there's no active threat anymore, we got our RTFs up, they get an ambulance exchange point established and patients start getting transported, those are kind of the key benchmarks we're trying to get them to look at. And it's important for dispatch to know about those, but there's some other key benchmarks that dispatch probably wants to hear to make sure that we're on the right track. Tom, tell us a little bit about those.Tom Billington:Definitely. We have to remember that the dispatchers are the eyes and eyes for all of us, Fire EMS, law enforcement, and so dispatch needs to make sure that they are telling everybody what's going on. A big thing's staging location, if a staging is established, where is it located? Who has established it? And we need to make sure that again, law enforcement, fire and EMS know that information, it's put out there, because eventually we want everybody to report to staging and not to the scene. And so getting that information transmitted as soon as possible is very, very important. It's important that benchmarks such as when the first arriving officer arrives on the scene, obviously that's an important benchmark to note. When our contacts teams have entered or made contact with the bad guy or bad people, things like that, having those notes and benchmarks and again transmitting them not just to law enforcement but to fire, the fire guys need to know also, "Hey, the bad guy may be down," or, "Hey, there's shooting going on," or, "Here's the description of a bad person." So things like that, again, just remembering we're all on one team and sending that information to both sides and continually updating it.And you also want to make sure that we have the elapsed time noted and transmitted to both sides. It's important to know after about 10 minutes letting everybody know, "Total scene time 10 minutes folks." Then, "15 minutes folks, 20 minutes folks." Because many times I've been on incidents that last several hours and unless the dispatcher will remind me of how long we've been there, I kind of lose track of time. And we are dealing with not just the bad guy but we're going against the clock trying to save lives. So having that reminder from dispatch, that cue that so many minutes have passed, is an important part of dispatch.Robert McMahan:When I was working, we had this active shooter incident management training and I included our dispatchers in that and I encouraged them to keep that checklist at their work station so that if they weren't hearing some of those things going on, like if we didn't establish staging early, they know what we needed, I encourage them to ask, "Where would you like staging? Where would you like the command post?" To help us remember to get some of those benchmarks done and help drive that incident towards success.Stephen Shaw:And a lot of times on scene, those conversations are happening face to face or maybe over the phone but they just don't make it to dispatch, and it's up to the first responders to make sure they're putting that out to the dispatchers to that they know that so they can relay it to other people.Bill Godfrey:So Tom let me make sure I recap those ones that you hit. So we want our dispatchers to be familiar with the benchmarks, and as Robert said really, really important that they are empowered to know if we're five, seven minutes into the incident and nobody's said where we want staging, probably need to ask about that. Do we have a command post set up or it's not clear that we do or we don't have a location. Updating information on the suspect.Robert McMahan:I think that's important for the cops too because we're typically driven towards getting to the bad guy, but we also have some rescue responsibilities in there and being reminded that, "Hey, we're already 10 minutes into this and we haven't started getting RTFs downrange," or whatever it is that helps rescue those patients, get them to the hospitals, that will kind of help put a little gas on our pedals to accomplish some of those things that help that.Bill Godfrey:Yeah, what we're looking for is all patients transported by the 20 minute mark, and that's from the 20 minute of the initiation of the incident, that's a pretty aggressive timeline and if you start wasting minutes here and there, you're not going to hit that 20 minute mark. So that's I think a really great role for dispatch is to keep that clock every present in everyone's mind. All right, so for the dispatcher training, including dispatchers in training, providing them some education on the checklist, giving them some benchmarks, empowering them to be able to say to whoever's running the scene, "Where did you want staging set up? Can you advise your command post location?" Those kind of key things.And I think the other one, and I want to hit on this, is that it's really important for the law enforcement dispatcher and the fire and/or EMS dispatcher if you've got three of them, they need to coordinate that back channel stuff a lot. So as information gets updated on the law enforcement channel, it needs to get passed over to the fire EMS side and vis versa. It's entirely possible that fire might get to the area and set up a staging location and if they do we can shortcut one of the other issues which is having more than one staging location, we can shortcut that by dispatchers passing that to the other discipline and kind of coordinating that. All right, so that's number one, dispatcher training.Number two, getting control of the incident early as part of that initial response. And this really involves the idea of the fifth man, of getting somebody in that tactical position early in the first few minutes. Robert, you want to talk to us a little bit about that?Robert McMahan:Sure. The biggest problem I think we have in law enforcement I think is getting our arms around the incident and having some control early on. And every one of them I've been to, there's always a whole bunch of cops running in to take care of the bad guy and they're trained to do that, but somebody's got to get control of that early on so that we can organize our response and be more effective at it. And I think one of the key issues I've seen is upper law enforcement command buying into and trusting this fifth man concept or the tactical operations group. And typically what I see is they don't trust a line level guy to be that fifth guy or to be that tactical supervisor early on in the incident. This position is not about who has SWAT experience or who is the best tactically minded person, this is about getting some control over the contact teams and at least tracking where they're going, what they're doing, so they don't run into each other and have a blue on blue and organizing effectively their response. So they're covering the campus and getting to the threat and starting to provide those security measures so that we can get other things done like get RTFs in there.I think part of what lends itself to that problem is unfortunately upper law enforcement command doesn't attend a lot of these trainings, and they don't have confidence in what's being trained or they simply don't understand it or don't know it. And I think as upper law enforcement command, if we would dedicate ourselves to this type of training so that we can understand the process and trust the process, I think it would help out to resolve that issue.Stephen Shaw:Robert's talking a lot about that fifth man, that tactical position. And that's one that's really key for something like this. There's a big gap between your incident command and your actual officers who are running contact teams or RTF or perimeter. There's a lot of stuff that happens in the meantime, and that tactical position really helps that incident commander to take a lot of stuff off his place to say, "Now I can deal with these higher level issues." Politicians or upper management or whatever the case may be, and let that tactical person deal with the boots on the ground. It's a tough balance because we're so programmed from an early stage, you to the academy, we talked about teamwork, you're working at a team but essentially you're expected to do this job by yourself. You ride around in a car by yourself, you show up to work by yourself, you go to calls by yourself, you stop cars by yourself. And then for this, we're asking you to say, "Look, just pull the reigns back a little bit and see if there's something else that needs to be done."And it's tough to balance because you want to get in there, you want to address the bad guy, you want to start treating people but at some point once you have enough people there to address that issue, at some point we have to slow down and say, "There's some other issues that need to be resolved here." Some things we'll talk about later like our priorities. Maybe my priority if I'm there 10 minutes into the incident my priority might not be to go after the bad guy, my priority might be to start securing some areas so that I can start treating people. But there's got to be somebody there who's got a higher level view of what's going on this scene to say that, because it's tough for me as a responding officer to look at this big picture and know what to do there. And it's just something that we have to work on in training and also in just our day to day is, incident command is not something that law enforcement does a lot of, we do it but we just don't call it that so we're kind of unpracticed at it. But it's very, very crucial especially when it comes to something as complex and rapidly evolving as an active shooter or a terrorist attack.Robert McMahan:Yeah, Steve you and I talked about this just a little bit before the podcast and that we exercise this tactical concept with our SWAT teams and you and I had similar experiences with that where you had a tactical leader that would be running different elements of that swat team, well it's the same concept here only we don't have the luxury of time to wait for that guy to get there and somebody's got to step in and take charge of that early on.Bill Godfrey:I think those are really, really good points. And the other thing that I don't want to let get by here is, Robert, you said it doesn't necessarily have to be the tactically minded guy in the first few minutes, we just need somebody to kind of get it organized, and the whole point of this is saving time. It's not that you can't have the first 30 officers rush in and wait for the lieutenant to show up or the sergeant to show up and begin to organize it. You can do that, but it's not going to be as fast as if you organize it before you've got 30 people there. If you can get some organization to it and at least as those guys are going, those guys and gals are going in, get them organized into some teams so you can make some assignments, you can do more than one thing at a time, you don't have 30 people committed to standing over the bad guy that they're neutralized. You've got a couple teams that are committed to that, you've got some other teams that are working on some other things, and so really it's not necessarily about you can't do it the other way, you can, it's just not fast.Robert McMahan:The longer you wait to get this done then the more people you have down range looking for the bad guy or doing other things, the longer it's going to take you to organize this and get your arms around it and start to accomplish those other benchmarks that you need to do.Stephen Shaw:And it's inefficient. A lot of things happen twice, a lot of areas get cleared twice that don't need to be cleared and then we're leaving other things that have not been done yet. So like that crowd of 30 people running around, it can do one thing very fast but we're trying to accomplish 15, 20, 100 things during this incident and they all need to be done so it's just incredibly inefficient if there's nobody running all those teams.Bill Godfrey:Okay, so common mistakes, we're going to rehash them. Not getting our dispatchers the training they need, number one on our list. Number two, failing to get control of this thing early and that's one that falls to law enforcement because they're the first ones in there. And then the number three item is staging, either not establishing staging, having more than one staging area, waiting too late to establish it. Tom, walk us through that reasons about why we need to have one staging area and then Steve and Robert I'm going to come to you guys to talk about how law enforcement can really benefit from using staging. But Tom, can you talk a little bit about why we need to have one staging area?Tom Billington:Definitely, Bill. Before I became involved in the active shooter realm, fire rescue we always had our own staging, we did our own thing, and this new active shooter realm that we live in today, it isn't just fire rescue it's fire rescue and law enforcement and other agencies together. And obviously staging is not just a place to park, it's a place to plan and to deploy resources. So it's important that we have all those resources in one staging area, meaning the law enforcement and fire and EMS folks are together so when we go to set up an RTF or rescue task force, we're all together and we have a law enforcement person doing staging that knows the law enforcement lingo, knows the qualifications of the personnel that are at staging. So it's a one team thing that we have to do together. Having separate staging would add so much time and confusion to the incident, it would be terrible.Bill Godfrey:So Steve, how important is it do you think for law enforcement to not just have one staging area but to be in the staging area with fire and EMS?Stephen Shaw:I think it's incredibly important. A lot of times you're law enforcement, you may know some individual fire fighters, you may know some individual truck teams or something like that at your location, but for something like this you may have people from outside, you don't know these people, you don't know what they have. And if you're paired up on an RTF with these people then you need to get introduced to them, you need to know that like Tom said we're on the same terminology, we're using the same language and all that. So it's extremely important and it even comes down to making sure that our own gear is squared away. It's difficult for me to pull up in my patrol car right in front of a scene and there's something going on, shots being fired or something like that, I have to get my own stuff squared away, my plate carrier, my rifle if I have one or whatever kind of other equipment I have, an active shooter kit or whatever the case may be. That staging area, once we get into the incident a little bit, maybe not when there's shots being fired, but that will help me get my own gear squared away so that I can deploy to that scene effectively.Robert McMahan:Yeah, we've talked a lot about RTFs in the training and I've literally seen, and I've been to three active shooter events at the schools, I've seen the medical side of RTF stood up in staging without a single cop to put with them. And there were hundreds of cops on scene, and so I think that's a tragedy because the RTF has got to get into there and start providing advanced medical treatment and getting people out to the hospital. But the other thing, and I mentioned hundreds of cops on scene, every one of these that I've been to we have an over convergence of law enforcement on these scenes, and I don't care who you are as fifth man, you can't control hundreds of cops by yourself and you can't control them after they're on scene running around doing things and they'll be in there doing things for a long, long time and you won't even realize what they're doing or who's there.And so the staging area is so incredibly important for us as law enforcement to embrace because it's going to help drive a successful incident, it's going to help take time off the clock and it's going to provide us resources to provide other functions that we need to do, rathe than try to figure out, "okay, which 50 cops can I pull out of there to go do this?" You have them at staging, you can make an assignments, assign a supervisor to them and just pass that off to someone to get done.Stephen Shaw:And with that over convergence of cops, like I was saying earlier, those cops are mostly going to be in cars by themselves and where do cops park? Wherever they want to. So now we have people that are bleeding out possible and we can't get ambulances in there to transport them out because we have police cars parked all over the place. That staging area allows us to consolidate vehicle, maybe if we're on RTF we just get on a fire truck and then we don't have to worry about all these vehicles that are everywhere. So we can open up parking, we can open up routes for ambulances, or we can open up routes for additional responders if we need to.Tom Billington:We're going to see, Robert just backing up a little bit, a big issue also with hundreds of law enforcement officers is accountability and I think staging is an important part for accountability especially for law enforcement. Fire rescue systems usually have good accountability systems where we can usually track down where the firefighter last was if there's an issue or they get lost, but if we have a lot of law enforcement officers down on the scene and we don't know who they are or where they are, we lose accountability, god forbid one of them is injured or killed, it may take forever to find them. Staging is a good point to start having accountability of sending teams knowing what frequencies they're going to be on, knowing where we sent them, and so we have a better way to account for them if something goes bad.Bill Godfrey:I think all of this is fantastic stuff. The other thing that it makes me think of is just the general function of staging is to get your crews assembled and assign them a task and purpose. Robert, you were kind of eluding to you need the guns downrange but you need them downrange doing what you needed done at the time you need it done, and if they've already gone downrange trying to get them to disengage and change tasks is difficult to do, especially if you don't even know they're downrange. So the key ingredient for staging and one of the reasons for having everybody together is some of these teams and things that need to be done are going to require cross-discipline integration, we got to put fire EMS with law enforcement, put some teams together and give them a task and purpose. Give them an assignment so when they go downrange they're working on what needs to be worked on when it needs to be worked on.Robert McMahan:That's correct.Bill Godfrey:Yeah, so I think that's a huge issue. So when we talk about staging, I think there's several actually sub-bullets under staging is one, we need to stop the over convergence because it just slows us down in the end, it takes us longer to get things done. We need to have a single staging area, not multiple staging areas by discipline, one staging area so that the crews can quickly be organized and then we have an effective method for assigning tasked purpose and sending those resources down range.So to recap us here on our five common mistakes, number one is failing to include our dispatchers in training and making sure that they're prepared to help us in one of these events. Number two is going to be getting quick control of this thing early on from the law enforcement side, so command and control, which we have obviously through the fifth man concept. And then our third one that we just talked about is staging, the importance of staging, the role that that plays.So number four is going to be having more than one command post. And it feels weird to even say that out loud, but it has happened so many times. Robert, let's start with you. What are some of the problems that crop up when you have more than one command post?Robert McMahan:Well, when you don't have fire and law enforcement hooked together, things start happening and you need the resources that the other one has or you need collaboration on what we're trying to accomplish downrange with both disciplines. And when you don't have them together, you can't do that. And I was involved in a shooting event where an officer was killed, he was missing for a while, and we didn't have law enforcement and fire together in the command post, and when we got the officer rescued, those medical resources weren't available immediately as quickly as they should have been at that point because we weren't working together. And we can't have that, that's just inexcusable. It's inexcusable on both sides. And so especially in a complex event like this where you've got a lot of patients and you got both disciplines working together to accomplish certain things like rescue task forces, you got to have them together or passing information about patient counts, where ambulance exchange points are, it's a multi-discipline event that requires the marriage of those disciplines to work together to get this done.Tom Billington:You know Robert, I've been on many scenes. I was actually on a scene where there was four separate command posts and it turned out that they were just meeting places for people that knew each other to drink coffee and it's really unfortunate. And so it's so important to get the folks together in the one command post or at the command post location to work together, because that's another issue. I've been in the command post with other agencies, other fire agencies and they were doing something opposite of what I was doing, which was my fault to. And so again, it's not just a room that's air conditioned that has coffee, it's a workplace whereas a team we need to put our heads together and come up with the priorities of what we're going to do down on the field. It's just so easy to get caught in your silo if you're in a separate facility, but also when you're together it's also easy to stay in your group at the corner and not work amongst each other. So it's important that we pull these issues out ahead of time and work together in these command posts.Robert McMahan:I can also tell you where it works well, it really works well. I had a fire chief in Castle Rock Colorado, Noris Croom, I'll just shout out to him, we worked really well together. When Noris and I showed up on a scene, we knew how to work together, we had that relationship and we developed that relationship prior to the incident, by the way. But we married ourselves at the hip and whatever we were working I would as Noris what he needs, he would ask me what I need and we had that working relationship and it was just amazing the difference when you have that relationship and you have that marriage of disciplines together.Tom Billington:Well, the big thing is, you just said his name, that says it all right there. When you know the person beforehand on a first name basis, the command post and command operation will go so much smoother, so it's so important, good point Robert.Stephen Shaw:One thing that I've actually seen this happen on two different incidents that we had, law enforcement will set up a command post like 50 yards away from the incident and the fire, they're just not comfortable with that. And this is like a shots fired incident. So we have to be careful as law enforcement that when we're establishing our command post that it's not right up on the scene. Because this happened on both of the incidents that I saw, fire pulled up, asked dispatch, "Where's the command post," dispatch told them, fire gets there, looks at it, says, "No way, Jose." And they backed up a block down the street and they just started running their own thing. So we had separate command posts that were trying to work together but they just weren't in the same location. And what happens is, communication becomes almost impossible. You're trying to call people On the phone or trying to call people on the radio where there's a million other things going on and if you're not right there together shoulder to shoulder where I can just tap my fire counterpart on the shoulder and say, "Hey, this is what we need," like I said it just gets almost impossible.Robert McMahan:You know, we've seen sadly a number of very significant consequential active shooter events where they ended up, for one reason or another, with separate command posts, whether it was just the way the scene unfolded, the order in which it got done, and they didn't fix it. And I think that's one of the things that almost ought to be a mistake of its own. Look, some of these things are going to happen, you're going to end up with more than one staging area by accident, okay fine, fix it. You're going to end up with somebody who set up, the battalion chief calls up the command post because he didn't like where the law enforcement was. Okay, fine, fix it. Get into one command post. Mistakes happen, that's the nature of the beast, it's what you do with it. Don't let that go on. Just because you've started there, doesn't mean you need to finish there. We talked about this just recently in another podcast, the pain of fixing the problem as soon as you recognize it is nothing compared to the pain of trying to suck it up and continue to make that mistake work.And I think that's a big one that really needs to be a strong take away here is, you need one command post for all the reasons that everybody here just talked about. And if for whatever reason it doesn't start that way, fix it.Stephen Shaw:And to kind of circle back to one of our other issues when we were talking about gaining control early with that tactical position, if I'm a law enforcement incident commander, and I realize that maybe I'm in the wrong location or just for whatever reason my fire people have set up a command post in another location, it's a lot easier for me to tear myself away from that incident for five minutes to drive down the street to meet up with them if I have somebody I trust, like Robert was saying, that's downrange that has eyes on it that can run that scene for the few minutes while I'm gone. So I think that's where getting control early and trusting your people and equipping them becomes super important. Like you were saying Bill, if we realize we're making a mistake, it's a lot easier to fix when we have people who can fill those holes for us.Bill Godfrey:Yeah, that kind of makes me wonder Steve and Robert, the situation Steven was just talking about where the command post ends up set up across the street from a shots fired scenario, is part of that happening because in those cases they're not delineating the role of tactical as being separate from the role of command? And the command post is actually really more the tactical?Stephen Shaw:I think that's part of it. It's not a new concept, like Robert was saying we use this all the time in the SWAT world, but a lot of time when somebody starts directing traffic, for lack of a better word, they essentially become the defacto incident commander in law enforcement's mind. We have trouble delineating that there's two different things. You can think of tactical as a forward operation, we're running contact teams, whereas a command post is more of a high level, big picture controlling, kind of a cliched term, but this 30 thousand foot view that we refer to a lot of times.The other thing I think is we in law enforcement when it comes to things like shots fired or something like that, we have a different level of risk acceptance than fire does and it's because we deal with it a lot more. And it would be exactly inverse if we were dealing with a structure fire. Firefighters are way more equipped to deal with that and have way more knowledge and experience to deal with that, whereas we may be, I don't want to go there, firefighter may be telling us, "Oh no, it's fine. Look at the level of smoke," or whatever. So I think for us, we look at it and we say, "We're down the street, bullets are probably not going to get here." It's just a different mindset I think.Robert McMahan:Yeah, I agree. And the big problem, like you were eluding to Bill, is command typically tries to do things that are, they're trying to direct tactical operations and they really shouldn't be doing that. They're getting too far down in the weeds and they're not looking at the big picture and how to support the incident and how to support the resources own range.Stephen Shaw:Law enforcement is not used to trying to manage an incident that they can't see with their own eyes. And it's difficult to not like Robert's saying, and the reason why is because you're trying to direct every single little thing and it's hard to do that when you can't see it and it's just something that we have to tear ourselves away from there and think there's other stuff going on that we have to focus on. We got to leave somebody else in charge of this stuff, they can see it, they can run all this little stuff, I need to think about the big picture.Bill Godfrey:You know, that's really not dissimilar from the fire service and the fire service experience. I don't know what the number is, but it's well over 90% of the fire service operations are run in a single tier, the battalion chief is directing everything, whoever the incident commander is, directing everything from the curb where they can lay eyes on it. The number of times that you're actually running a fire operation where you cannot see the incident and you can't see what's going on are very few and far between. And while there are a number of people in the fire service who have experience doing that and are quite good at it, they're the exception, not the rule. The bulk of the time it's very, very similar, so I think that's something we actually share across the cultures between law enforcement and fire/EMS, is that pull to be watching the thing, to be up close enough to see it.Tom Billington:I think what Bill said earlier needs to be said again, fixing things, it's so important. I remember as a young firefighter/paramedic, we had a warehouse fire and it went on for hours and we had messed up, there was firetrucks parked in the wrong place, there was hose everywhere. And one of our district chiefs showed up, one of my mentors, and he said, "All right, this isn't going to be pretty, let's shut it down and move everything, do this, do that." And we did it. And while we were doing that the fire reared up again. Once he got us in order of where we needed to be, we put the fire out. And it was a hard decision, a lot of people were saying, "This is crazy, look what's going to happen." So Bill, that's such a good point, it really takes a strong leader to say, "Okay, we agree, we screwed up, let's fix it," and then do it.Bill Godfrey:I think that's a great point, great point. Okay, so let's recap where we're at. Our list of five common mistakes. Number one is failing to get dispatchers the training that they need to be able to help us in an active shooter event. Number two, getting control of the event early, which is predominantly going to fall to law enforcement, just the nature of the beast. Number three, staging. Not getting staging set up, not having one location and avoiding the over convergence. Number four, separate command posts.And then our final one, number five, is failing to shift gears when our priorities need to change. So as we set this one up, I'll just remind everybody the priority is, number one the active threat, number two is rescue of the injured, and number three is clearing and return the scene to a time of safety. So active threat, rescue, then clear. But what we see sometimes, law enforcement can have a difficult time shifting gears and moving from the active threat to rescue when there's a question mark about the bad guy. So when the bad guy is neutralized, in custody, down, whatever the case may be, those are usually pretty clean transitions, not really where the problems occur. But when the shooting stops and we don't know why. Did the guy kill himself? Has he left the scene? Is he still on the scene? Is he still at large? We don't have answers to those, there's no closure to it. That seems to me to be one where law enforcement struggles a little bit because the tendency is, "I got to find the bad guy, I got to find the bad guy, I got to find the bad guy." And we can lose valuable time and minutes in shifting gears. Robert, is my perception off there that that's a challenge?Robert McMahan:No, that is a challenge. And it's difficult for us because we want to go stop that threat and so much of our training, especially early on is we're always looking for the next bad guy, that there's going to be one more, there's going to be one more, there's going to be one more. But remember what drives us during dealing with the active threat is stimulus. What are we after here? Where are we going? What's driving us? And when we run out of that stimulus it's hard to shift gears. But we also have to remember we've got another mission and that's rescue. We're battling the clock, not just the bad guy. And we've got to shift gears in order to start dealing with patients and start to help them. I think part of what happens with it is we don't have control of it early on like we talked about it earlier, and there's no one there to say, "Okay, let's shift gears." It's okay to keep looking for the bad guy, but we also have some areas that we've already been into that we know that we have patients.So we can start organizing those contact teams and their roles a little bit better and say, "Okay, contact one you've got this area. You've got patients there, secure that area and let's start working patients there. Contact two, you don't have any patients, so keep searching for the bad guy. You can organize this thing and control it in a way that helps us shift gears and helps us with that change in response when the stimulus goes away.Stephen Shaw:Yeah, I agree with what Robert's saying about having somebody there to drive that shift. I think under stress, people are going to do what they're most comfortable doing and cops are most comfortable hunting a bad guy. We're not as comfortable treating patients or counting patients or really if the one thing that we pretty much probably have in common is every mission is important. It may be extremely important for me to hold a stairwell, but for me and my cop mentality, if I feel like there's a bad guy out there and somebody tells me to hold a stairwell, that's going to be a tough pill to swallow.There was a debriefing that I went to a couple weeks ago about an incident that happened a couple years ago out on the West Coast where actually they had two officers that were killed on a traffic stop. And the incident commander there had just gotten promoted out of investigations, and really, really recently gotten promoted out of investigations. And so under stress she did was she was comfortable doing, which was investigating the scene. She started canvasing the neighborhood and stuff like that rather than searching for the shooter. So I think that's one thing that if we have that tactical person there when we have a pause, shooting has stopped, we're not sure why, we have a pause, there's got to be somebody there to say, and this again tying it back to staging where we know who's there, we don't have an over convergence, we have somebody there to say, "Hey, contact team three, I need you to stop searching and I need you to start securing an area so that we can start counting patients or we can start bringing RTFs in."It's really important, and like I said just under stress people resort back to what they know. Cops don't know treating people for the most part, now there's a lot of departments that have started offering that training and what not and I think you're seeing some good results from that. But for the most part, we're just not comfortable doing that, we're comfortable hunting a bad guy and that's what we're going to resort to if there's nothing to drive us into another priority.Bill Godfrey:I think that's true. And Tom, chime in here as I say this, but from a medical side, so when you look at the statistics on the data of these active shooter events, the median number of people shot in these things is four, two of which are killed. So the typical active shooter event, we're actually talking about a small number of patients and occasionally it can go over that and occasionally it goes way over that. But those are the exceptions, not the rule, you're usually talking about a small number of patients. And I kind of feel like if we can just get one contact team that focuses on getting the casualty collection point set up or just whatever needs to happen, whatever that contact team stuff is that goes on, whatever they need to do to get it ready to receive the RTFs, then the RTFs, can push in with their security and take care of that. Tom, do you see the same thing?Tom Billington:Most definitely. And I think again that comes with training. Many times in these classes I'll talk to a law enforcement officer and I'll go, "How many tourniquets do you carry?" And he goes, "Well, I carry one." And I go, "What's that for?" He goes, "My partner or me." And I go, "Well what about somebody that's injured." "Well, no." Again it's just training that while maybe you have the opportunity to save a life and if it's just one or two people, the contact team that focuses on that can make the difference between life and death, that one small point.And again, getting the RTF in there as soon as possible, we're waiting on the contact team to tell us it's safe, to tell us that that yes they have a casualty collection point. So we want to get in there soon. The sooner that the contact team does that for us, again we're cutting time off the clock.Bill Godfrey:So I want to ask, Steve, Robert. One of the things that we advocate when we're doing our training and we kind of tell people this, is that, "Hey, when you go back home and you're doing this training, make sure that your scenarios include one where the bad guy just goes South. The active threat is a ghost and you don't know why." To force during training people to face that and deal with that and get that muscle memory of, "Okay, I haven't had anything else go on for, fill in the blank, and it's time for us to shift gears or start thinking about doing something different." How important do think guys that actually is in the law enforcement training?Robert McMahan:I think it's hugely important. And I've conducted some of these trainings with you and I see these guys in training really have a hard time slowing down looking for that bad guy when that threat's gone silent. And they really want to keep looking. But it's not serving the purpose. And here's the thing, if that bad guy's doing other stuff in other areas, we'll know it, we'll receive that driving force information whether it's hearing the shots or more calls to 911.Bill Godfrey:Yeah, more witnesses calling 911.Robert McMahan:We will know as soon as that starts, and then we can go respond to it. But in the interim, and I think most events don't go that way, if the bad guy goes silent they're gone, they've gone silent for a reason and they're usually not a threat anymore, but in the interim until we figure out where they went, we do have patients to take care of and we're against that clock. And we say it over and over and over again in this training and in the podcast, we're up against that clock and we're about saving lives.Stephen Shaw:The training side of it is hugely important. Again like I said, people revert back to what they know and what we're really talking about is the evolution of active shooter response. Pre '99, active shooters were a SWAT problem and then Columbine happened and for 10 or 15 years it was all about pushing patrol to get in there and address the bad guy. And we got really, really good at getting in there and addressing the bad guy.Now we're seeing the evolution shift to, all right we're addressing the bad guy but there's all these other things that have to happen and the first thing that has to happen after addressing the bad guy is addressing all the people that the bad guy's hurt. Because we talk about our victims and our survivors having two different enemies during this event, and one is the bad guy and the other one is the clock. And the first ones that are in there are going to be police, so their first medical intervention a lot of times is going to be a patrol officer, and it could be just a patrol officer securing a room and getting a number to someone so that an RTF can come in and maybe like Tom was saying having an extra tourniquet on you. Maybe having a few extra bandages or something like that. But something has to be done, some sort of medical intervention to help to stop that clock or to slow it down.And so I think again like I said, we're participating in the evolution of the response here from SWAT to patrol and now we're looking at the medical side. And so I think the training side of it you have to enforce those principles, you have to enforce that thought process that just because we're not hearing shots, there's still something I can do rather than just make a room entry.Bill Godfrey:I think that's a fantastic summary. So guys, I'm going to wrap this up with just summarizing our list of the five common mistakes. Number one is failing to get dispatchers the training they need so they can help us. Number two is for law enforcement to get control early on via the fifth man or some other type of method if they don't like that one, but get control of this thing earlier. Number three, staging, one staging area to stop the over convergence, make sure we got a task and purpose to get people organized. Number four, having separate command posts, can't have that, need to fix it. And number five, failing to make sure that we include in training the training for officers to recognize when they need to shift gears from the threat to rescue and not skipping over rescue to jump right into the clear.Gentlemen, thank you so much for taking the time to talk about this, again these are not the only mistakes that we see by far, but these are five common ones and I thank you for coming together to talk about it.Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for listening to the podcast, if you have not subscribed please hit the subscribe button to make sure that you don't miss out on any future podcasts. And if you have any suggestions for topics, send them to us. Info@c3pathways.com. 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 32: Command Post vs Tactical, Triage and TransportAn important discussion on the fundamental difference between the work that gets done at the tactical, triage, and transport area versus the work that gets done at the command post.Bill Godfrey:Welcome to the Active Shooter Incident Management podcast. My name is Bill Godfrey, I'm the host of the podcast and I'm here today with three of the C3 Pathways instructors I got with me on the law enforcement side, Ron Otterbacher. Ron, thanks for coming in.Ron Otterbacher:Thanks for having me.Bill Godfrey:Absolutely. We also got Don Tuten, coming in from Jacksonville. Don, how you doing?Don Tuten:Hey Bill, doing great. Thank you.Bill Godfrey:And a familiar voice to many of you Mark Rhame, like myself on the fire EMS side. Mark, how's it going?Mark Rhame:Very good. Thanks Bill.Bill Godfrey:Okay. So, let's start off talking about what is the fundamental difference between the work that gets done at the tactical, triage, and transport area versus the work that gets done at the command post? Ron, why don't you start us off.Ron Otterbacher:Tactical operations, which I include triage, transport and tactical, they are focused on the tip of the spear, they're going after whatever the situation they face at that time, whether it be to provide Rescue Tack Force support, whether it be to stop address the driving force where in fact the command operation has got a broader perspective and they're looking at things well beyond that, how it may affect the community, how we communicate, what we want people to do, how we notify our political oversight group, which is so important in these situations. So, just their perspective is a little different, we all want the same end but how we go about it and we also understand that we don't just say, okay, tactical you go do what you want because there has to be some oversight.Don Tuten:Yeah. And I agree with that. And tactical, triage and transport is utilizing those resources that are currently on duty. They're utilizing what they have to make that problem go away. They're not looking at the command side of that broader cold zone answers to questions on political payment, how much of this is going to cost? What additional resources you're going to need that the tactical triage and transport is how do we fix this now, utilizing the resources that we have while operating in this hot and warm zone.Mark Rhame:In addition to that, the command post keeps the heat off of that tactical, triage and transport group because you do not want the police chief, the fire chief, the mayor, elected officials, their supervisors, coming to the scene and wanting to interact with those tactical, triage and transport individuals because they've got a right now, right now, problem, they're dealing with everything in that hot and warm zone and that's what that command post is going to do. They're going to deflect all that stuff and take care of it in addition to what Don and Otter said.Bill Godfrey:So Mark, why not just have the command post deal with all of it and just add some people to the command post? Why do we need to put some layers in here?Mark Rhame:Because it needs to be a true separation between the two. I mean, as I said before, tactical, triage and transport are dealing with all that stuff in that hot and warm zone. They are dealing with things that are right in their face and if they don't deal with them right now, right now, people will die. I mean, that's the bottom line. They've got to take care of those issues right now. The command posts can reevaluate stuff, they can look at it as Ron said as a broader picture, broader view if you will, and they can maybe make more calculated decisions based upon, what's going to happen an hour from now? What's going to happen 12 hours from now? And what do we need to accomplish those goals? But again, we've got that tactical, triage and transport, they're dealing with the things that are right in their face right now, which is that threat and all those people who have been injured.Bill Godfrey:So Ron, talk to us a little bit about what goes into deciding or what should go into deciding, I guess I should say where tactical, triage and transport should establish themselves and position themselves versus where we parked the command post.Ron Otterbacher:Again, as you look things out, I'll answer it probably in a different way though. The hardest transition I ever had professionally was going from being a tactical operator to being an incident commander because it was entirely different. I was used to being right there, taking care of the right now, right now, stuff and then I had to focus beyond the right now, right now stuff. It's a situation where the tactical operations whether it be triage, transport, whether it be the tactical group, they're using the tactics that are down there. Your command post representative may not be familiar with all the tactics so he has to count on the people that are downrange and say, these are our options and the commander weighs out those options say, okay, I agree with this house safe, can we do this? And they simply make a logical decision or at least the most logical decision they can make with the information that they're provided.Bill Godfrey:Don, you got any insights you want to add on that?Don Tuten:Yeah. I just want to say that the tactical, triage and transport and like Otter and both Mark said, is there downrange handling the right now, right now problem. They're not thinking about the little things like, is there a school in session? What am I going to do with the kids getting off the school bus that is two blocks away? What am I going to do about the library that's around the corner that's open 24, whatever the case may be. They're worried about that threat, that threat going mobilized or continuing, diminishing that threat as soon as possible. And then transporting those victims, if there is victims on scene, out of there as soon as possible and not the impact that it's having on the community. That is the command responsibility is diminishing that impact on the community, as well as supporting this incident and the first responders there, if this is an elongated event.Mark Rhame:But also think about it, if you didn't have two different groups dealing with this incident and you have a school administrator or that owner of the mall or that airport official administrator who comes to the scene and you've got this person, who's the tactical director or the tactical person and they're dealing with the right now, right now problem and now all of a sudden they got this person in their face asking them questions and saying, Hey, when are you going to reopen the mall? When are you going to allow me to bring planes back to the airport, all that stuff. They don't have time for that, they got to deal with that threat and all those people who are injured and clear in that building, that's why the command post can separate it and deal with those other issues in a more sterile environment, if you will in that cold zone.Bill Godfrey:Okay. So, tactical, triage and transport are handling that downrange piece, the hot zone and the warm zone. How close should they be? Because they're obviously, want to be close to the problem not in the problem but close to the problem and tactical is going to be the first one there, right? They're going to tactical is going to stand up a for triage and transport does, what goes into picking a spot?Don Tuten:I think tactical, triage and transport number one, they all work together. They have to be in a position where they can evaluate the scene whether it be visually, whether it can be within close proximity but they have to get a common operating picture that is clear to them. They can't be miles and miles away because then they're operating off communication and we all know what happens with communication. So, they have to have that visual, they have to see what's going on, they have to make determinations based upon their experience and the resources that they have. So, they do need to be in that warm zone area, they need to be in an area to where they can obviously, they can redirect if possible but they have to be close enough to actually make those tactical sound decisions on like I said, doing tactical work, as well as removing patients.Mark Rhame:Plus you got to give them the option if they choose to do so of doing a face to face direction on the contact teams or RTFs or any of the teams that come into that location. Have them come to their location and say, this is where I want you. Here's a map, here's where you need to go and go forth and conquer. If you're a mile away, you're not going to be able to do that, you're not going to be able to give them that face to face direction.Bill Godfrey:So, we're talking about them being edge of the warm zone?Don Tuten:Yeah. I think depending on your location of your incident would dictate a lot of how far away that edge of warm zone is, but I think that's a fair valuation.Ron Otterbacher:I think, where you can say fairly safely ensure that your triage and transport can be there with you and doing a relatively safe fashion because we surely don't want to put them in a kill zone and because we want to be close and maybe we should be, then we put everyone in harms way. We've got to weigh the two out and make the best decision for the operation.Mark Rhame:Consider that if you neutralize that initial threat, you don't know because you haven't cleared the rest of the building out. Is there another threat? Is there something else right around the corner? Is there a secondary device? So, obviously you don't want to stick that triage and transport person so close that they are in harm's way. Obviously, we don't want to send anyone into that area let them be in harm's way, but obviously that tactical officer has that advantage in the very beginning. So, whatever place you decide, you've got to have that ability to hunker down, hide behind something large but it's close enough that you can get that visual and give direction.Don Tuten:And be fluid based upon the intelligence coming back out of that incident, be fluid. Be fluid to make adjustments.Bill Godfrey:So Ron, I think if I was reading between the lines on where you were going with that, tendency might be for the tactical group supervisor, maybe to get a little closer than triage and transport might be comfortable with?Ron Otterbacher:And I think it's got to be a marriage and it's got to be a marriage that works. You may have to, if your tactical, you may have to back off a little bit from what you're more comfortable working with because triage and transport may not be as comfortable working in that area. So, it goes back to being a marriage. We're a team, there's a reason we [inaudible 00:10:32], there's a reason we want them hip to hip. And so, we'll want to do it in a safe fashion or a safer fashion as we can do it. That I've seen tactical commanders that want to be right at the front door and this isn't the time to be right at the front door probably.Bill Godfrey:Okay. So, I'm going to call out some tasks that would need to be done. You guys tell me whether it's tactical, triage and transport or whether it's the command post. We need more contact teams to do whatever?Group:Yeah. Tactical. Yeah.Don Tuten:Absolutely.Bill Godfrey:We've got one or two RTFs but we need more RTFs so we need more manpower?Mark Rhame:Well, the build the RTFs is going to be the responsibility of direction from triage but to get the assets to staging, that is what our medical brands should be looking at those asset management. Do we have enough pieces and parts and do I need to order more of them?Bill Godfrey:Okay. But in terms of you get a call from downrange it says, I need more RTFs or I need more medical people. Who's handling that problem?Mark Rhame:Triage.Bill Godfrey:Okay. All right. And what's some other good examples that fall in the gray zone. I'm just trying to give some illustrations of the differences in the roles. What some of the other things that tactical, triage and transport would be handling?Mark Rhame:Well, one may be perimeter. Where you may think that that's a job of tactical really that's what that command posts with the law enforcement supervisors is going to make a determination. Do I stand up an inner and outer perimeter? Think about it for a second. If tactical right now is just trying to figure out, is this the only threat? Do I have more intel that's coming in that says, there maybe someone else in the structure because we've taken down the initial threat. They shouldn't be worrying about where the perimeter is being set up, that's what the command post can do because they're in that sterile environment and they can make a rational decision based upon the intel they're getting and send those teams in from staging.Don Tuten:As well as your federal response. Your guys that are downrange right now at tactical, triage and transport, when you get these outside resources coming in, they need to be vetted to some extent, what do they bring to the fight? And your command post has an opportunity to do that? What are your resources? What are you bring to the fight? And where can I best utilize you within this situation?Ron Otterbacher:I look at it where if the tactical command person is focused on where I'm putting perimeter units, my focus is wrong. I've got other people to do that, I've got other people to take care of that, my focus should be right downrange, what's happening right there again, are we talking about a driving force? Is it to stop the killing, stop the dying. That's where my focus should be. I've got other people, if I'm doing my job as tactical commander that are responsible for those other things and I need to understand that.Bill Godfrey:So Ron, you've used the word focus several times here, and I think it really is fitting because part of the reason that we've set the structure up the way we have is so that nobody ends up with too much focus. Nobody ends up spread too thin. What are some examples you've seen where somebody takes on too much? They're maybe a little bit outside their lane without realizing it and they're getting themselves overloaded. Can you give some examples?Ron Otterbacher:I think we see it everyday when we do these exercises is people want to run everything. They don't realize that their focus is to contact team downrange, the RTFs, the ambulance exchange point and anything beyond that is beyond our focus. I look at it as shooting at a target. If I'm shooting a rifle at a target, my focus, if I'm going to shoot well, although I've got an 18 inch target, my focus should be about a quarter inch. And if I go beyond that, then my angle [inaudible 00:14:37], is far greater so my shot's worse. But I've also got people on my side that are focused with everything else downrange so if something else pops off over the left, they've got it in their sights and I don't have worry about it.Don Tuten:I don't think there's any incident where one person can handle it all. And I think at the end of the day, our focus is we work together with all aspects of emergency services and public safety. I think we all have the best in our fields, no matter where you're at. And if we don't rely upon those, then we're doing ourselves and our community a disservice, if we're not utilizing those resources that are the best in their field.Mark Rhame:But If you want to dig down to some of the important issues but they're the boots on the grounds decisions who makes a decision where the casualty collection point is or where the ambulance exchange point is. If the command post is making those decisions, they have no visual acuity. They have no clue what's going on inside of that building and they are not going to be the best source for that information. That's got to come from those people who are actually inside that structure, relaying that back out to tactical, triage and transport to approve what they've come up with and then to say to all those responding units, this is where you need to go because this is where it's been established. If command post is trying to make those decisions, they're probably going to come up with a wrong answer 99.9% of the time.Bill Godfrey:And you guys were in the fire service, you guys were chiefs, how many fires did you fight from your office on structure fires at the guys were downrange? And was that successful or not successful?Mark Rhame:How many times did we try to put out a fire on the radio?Bill Godfrey:Right?Mark Rhame:A lot.Bill Godfrey:Correct.Ron Otterbacher:Getting back to what Mark was saying just a second ago. We tell everyone to paint a picture. The only people that know what's actually happening in this whole thing are the boots downrange, everyone else is guessing. And like he said, if we're guessing as a command component, that this is the best place to put someone we're in error. We've got to count on the people that are downrange that are actually seeing what's going on to let us know, wait, if we put our ambulance exchange point at this location we don't have to care, our patients is far. We don't know we're guessing. So, that's critical.Mark Rhame:But on the flip side of that, we wouldn't expect tactical, triage and transport to determine where's a good place for reunification. We don't expect them to take out a map book and go, ah, let me think of this place, let's make some phone calls and see if they will accept all of these witnesses survivors at this location and build out how we're going to do that. No. They are dealing with things that are right now, right now problems and the command post has got to handle that sterile, clean environment in that cold zone.Bill Godfrey:Yeah. That's not their job. One of the ones that popped in my mind, is it a specific example, and I'm wondering if any of you can think of any others that I see on a fairly regular basis. When the incident first kicks off, there's a heavy role for law enforcement obviously, and tactical, it's a tough job and it can get overwhelming very quickly. One of the things that we train on is how not to have that happen.But once you get the triage and transport group supervisors up with you, and you've got your RTFs downrange, all of that medical traffic, all of that medical information that's coming across the law enforcement channel should really almost die down and go away because it should be going on the fire department channel or the EMS channel or the medical channel.And I see fairly often, they just miss the opportunity to do that transition and we end up, instead of the medical traffic, basically disappearing from law enforcement and shifting over to the EMS channel, you end up with duplicate medical information coming across both channels. So, that's one specific one I've seen. Can you guys think of any others?Ron Otterbacher:No. And I think a lot of the times we see that is because we forget to stay on our own lane. Most of the time that happens because law enforcement tries to drive what's going on in the medical side and you turn them say, wait, this person next to you as a medical person, anything that has to do with medical stuff, they take care of it. Stay focused and same with triage, transport. If I'm tactical, I should just say, Hey, my guy is saying they need to extra RTF. That's all I should say, nothing else.I don't care as far as tactical how many reds I got, how many greens I got, how many yellows I got, someone's taken care of that. I know they're taking care of it. And if they need my help, they turn and say, Otter, I need some more cops down here and I send them more cops. We got to make sure again, getting back to focus. What is your focus? If I'm tactical, my focus is the tactical side of things, if I'm triage and transport, it's the medical side of things. And we need to maintain that.Mark Rhame:But also I see in the, where we don't have that true separation of duties, when you get a medical branch command posts start asking who transported what patient to what location? Well, we already have someone doing that job. That's transport. And you go into the command post and you look on their board and they're writing those notes that you know the transport supervisors already doing.That's their responsibility, they own that lane, same thing with deploying the RTFs. You've got medical branches hearing that RTFs are being built out and staging and all of a sudden medical branch from the command post says go ahead and deploy the RTFs and you're going, no, no, no, wait a second, that's not your job. That's not your lane of traffic. That's triaged job, let them do their job.And for me, it's a very simple concept from the command post, if you have people doing that work for you downrange in that hot and warm zone and there's two things the command can do wrong in that environment. First off is micro-managing. All of a sudden they try to get into their world. To me, if that individual's not doing their job, you need to replace them or support them otherwise, get out of their business back off and let them do their job because that's why you put them in that position.Bill Godfrey:And Mark, I would not only echo that but the word that I would also add is over driving. Sometimes it's not necessarily micromanaging, it's, you don't need to be on the radio that much, you're asking questions that are not appropriate, they're not timely, it's not stuff you need to know right now, you're asking questions that's in their job and their business, you're just over driving it. They're down there, they have a job, they should have your confidence to do the job and if they don't then replace them and put somebody else down there. But you can't do your job and their job.Mark Rhame:Yeah. In fact, I would say most successful command posts are silent command posts. They're listening, they're taking care of their own jobs but they're not getting on the tactical channel unless there's something they have to take care of, they're not getting on that medical channel or that transport channel, they're letting those people do their jobs. Again, either let them do their jobs or support them or replace them.Ron Otterbacher:Most times we see a situation go sideways, especially in these exercises is because of that same thing. We've got someone from the command post trying to overdrive everything and the way we fix it is, we tell them, turn off your radio. You've got someone here that will listen to the things that involve you but you're not. It doesn't matter if you're incident commander, doesn't matter if you're medical, doesn't matter if you're law enforcement branch, if you're overdriving the situation, oftentimes the best way to fix it is, shut off the radio. We've still got someone that's listening and taking all the calls for that person, just this person isn't on the radio talking all the time.Bill Godfrey:Okay. So, let's flip to the other side of this coin and when I say that, I mean, let's get to some of the situations where the command post should step in because something's not getting done or they're not hearing something get done. Now, on the medical side and then I'm going to ask Don and Ron to chime in on the law enforcement side and maybe give some examples. On the medical side, Mark, what I'm thinking is we always teach, you're looking for a handful of benchmarks, you're looking for the report that the threat's neutralized, RTFs are up, AAP is established and then ambulances are transporting patients.And so, one of the things that when I'm doing the command post coaching is saying, look, you're listening for these benchmarks, if you hear the threat's neutralized and five minutes goes by and nobody's talking about RTFs, that's a call on the radio to say, medical branch's a triage, where are you at on your RTFs? And maybe there's a very good reason for it, but let's, tell me what that reason is? And if the RTFs have gone down range, and nobody's talking about an ambulance exchange point, and I'm not here in transport talking about moving ambulances, same thing. It's like, all right, medical, you need to find out, get an update on what's going on with that because we should hear them out. Are there any others, Mark that jump in your mind on the EMS side?Mark Rhame:When you mentioned that issue about the medical branch inquiring, thinking why aren't the RTFs moving down range or why aren't the transport units engaged in going into the scene and start moving those people off the scene? What I see that becomes a conflict is that we've got some issue going on between tactical, triage and transport. There's a conflict there, there's maybe a little in-fighting, maybe Tactical is holding a ground and saying, I'm not going to allow you to bring in your triage or maybe that triage person is a little reluctant to send people in even though tactical is telling them they got the green light-Bill Godfrey:The whole thing a warm zone. If the whole thing's not a warm zone, we're not-Mark Rhame:Exactly.Bill Godfrey:We're not going to move.Mark Rhame:And that's where the command post probably needs to ask that question, is this the right person for the job? Do I need to get support in there or do I need to give them some recommendation? The clock's ticking, that's the enemy, that's red is our primary enemy, but that clock is going to kill those people. So, if they see that this scene is not moving in an efficient quick manner, especially after law enforcement says that the threat has been neutralized or contained and RTFs are being held in place, you probably need to ask the question what's going on over there?Bill Godfrey:Yeah. And then, now the flip side of that is there can sometimes be a very legitimate reason.Mark Rhame:Yes.Bill Godfrey:Something we've missed in the command post and tactical and triaged are having a conversation about, well, we still got a threat over here, we're not ready to move them up or, and sometimes there's a very good reason for that. So, Don, Ron, what jumps out at you on the law enforcement side where the law enforcement branch needs to step in on the radio to get something clarified from tactical?Don Tuten:Yeah. The biggest thing, Well, there's two ones that just stick out to me right away. That's one, there's no longer a threat. What are we doing for the intelligence piece now? Where are we putting the investigators moving down range to start getting the information out, doing the back check on what happened? How it happened? how are we messaging this? And how are we putting our message together to notify the community? And then I guess there is a third one is, what are we doing with the people that are not affected within this area? How are we setting up a reunification? If this isn't moving fast enough. Where are we to do this? How are we going to message those parents and those loved ones?And those are the things that are time sensitive, that when you're handling the right now, right now problem, you're not thinking about that as tactical, triage and transport but as a commander an incident commander, you should be thinking about it because it's just a matter of moments before you start getting those telephone calls in and setting up those hotlines and all the little ancillary things that as these events evolve, unfortunately around the country that make the news because the first thing is the news comes on and wants to answer all of those questions versus, how was the suspect killed? Doesn't matter. They don't care about that. They want to know how have you lessen the impact on our community.Bill Godfrey:Ron, what about you? Anything that jumps out.Ron Otterbacher:Right. I think the benchmarks aren't that far apart. If you hear they're sending RTFs and you're saying, okay, did they establish an AAP? I want to hear at the same time where my people downrange are saying, I've got security for the AAP. I better hear that. I better hear once I say the bad guys down, okay now, where is your casualty collection point because now we've got to send the RTFs to a location. We don't just send them to a building, we got to give them a specific location, specific route to get to that location.So, we're listening to similar thing, we just understand different responsibilities for those similar things. So, I don't think our benchmarks are that far off, they're all co-located and that's why it's so important to work co-located. Because we could turn around and say, if I'm tactical, I can turn around a triage and say, okay, we've got the AAP set, it's here, I've got security on AAP, you're good to start sending in your ambulance, so transport starts sending in ambulances. It's just all that communication.Bill Godfrey:Absolutely. And Ron and Don, have you guys seen occasions where okay, the rescue operations going fine. So we've dealt with the threat, priority number one. Priority number two is to deal with the rescue. Rescue operations move, and it's unfolding, it's good but you've got a tactical that may not have shifted gears to start with this clearing operation simultaneous with this rescue operation. You've got another 50 cops in staging, you've got plenty of people to put together some more teams. Is that one where sometimes there might need a little prompting from the command post to say, Hey, what are you working on this? What's your plan?Ron Otterbacher:Yeah, absolutely. You may have to look at it. But again, as we focus on what our driving forces at that time, my priority is getting the injured people out, providing security for the uninjured people that are there and then we start clearing. But we can do a lot of that, like you said, in conjunction with each other but I don't want our zeal to finish clearing. We always talk about the plus one factor and most of the time, plus one factor is not there. So, I don't want their focus to be clearing, when in fact we've still got people we're trying to move off the scene and I don't want to compromise security for that to say we cleared.Don Tuten:And I think we as a nation-Bill Godfrey:I'm sorry, before we do that, can you explain the plus one theory because not everybody listening may know.Ron Otterbacher:Okay. Well, we talk about plus one theory is we've got one bad guy, so there's always got to be another one. We've got a bogeyman behind the counter. We've got a boogeyman somewhere else and it could be a boogeyman, but most of the time there's not. And we waste valuable time and we talk about the clock being one of the threats we have to deal with to save lives, we waste time because of that. Still in the mentality more of a lot of law enforcement is, before we can send anyone downrange to try start saving lives is, we've got to clear and make it safe. And we've had to change this paradigm shift that we had to go through and we all have to understand that.Don Tuten:Yeah. And I think Otter brings up a good point and I think we're at that shift. And I think this class talks about it, I think this class shows a cohesiveness behind it, I think with the education of the clock is the enemy, not just the bad guy downrange. And it's funny because as we teach around the country, we're starting to get the seriousness of how fast these cops want to move these patients off scene as well. So, I mean, it's phenomenal through a tragic event that we're re-educating ourselves in our response.Bill Godfrey:So, if I'm hearing the two of you correctly, our priorities are threat rescue clear. We don't want to get into the clearing phase unless we've either number one, got the rescue well in hand or we've got capacity to do the two things at a time. But if it's going to jeopardize the efficient rescue, then we don't want to get into it. Is that-Ron Otterbacher:Absolutely.Bill Godfrey:Am I saying that right-Ron Otterbacher:And we may decide because we've been so involved in everything that's going on, whether it be going after the bad guy, treating the patients, getting them transported, we may decide as we go to clear that these people may not be the best ones to do the clearing, let's bring in other resources so they can be focused, they can be fresh and they can take care of going from there.Bill Godfrey:All right.Mark Rhame:Well, one other issue that and this is a law enforcement lane, so I'm really going to pose that question back to you guys is that we don't want that tactical officer to be chasing every single little bit of intel that's coming in because they could be chasing their tail all day long. I mean, that's what the command post has an intel officer standing up, and they're trying to clear and clean all that information and relay all that information, that good information to that tactical officer, so they have that awareness and presence and the ability to send their contact teams in there.But the worst thing to do, if you're the command post is every time you get a social media hit, every time you get an intel blast, every time dispatch gets another text message or 911 call, they send that to the tactical officer and it's not cleaned, it's not sterile, they haven't reviewed the information to see if it's valid or not. But I mean, from a law enforcement perspective, I would think that'd be very problematic if tactical got all that stuff, all that information.Don Tuten:We've seen multiple information that's never been vetted and that's one of the things we talk about is putting the investigative piece and intelligence up in communications. And I'll stick to the communications because that's one of the biggest ones as you get multiple calls come in that have a variance of the same information that gets put out as 10 different pieces of information or suspect information or suspects. And it ends up being the exact same. And we've seen it at different places where this is a long elongated events, too.Bill Godfrey:It reminds me, we have one of our instructors that was the incident commander at one of these events a while back, and there was an international flavor to it. He was chasing ghost reports or echo calls of the shooter man with a gun, people still injured, a guy was seen last seen here, last seen there. Four hours after they had neutralize the threat, four hours later they were still chasing that stuff. And one of the things he said is he readily recognizes looking back on it, there was plenty of information. Had they had somebody going through it, there was plenty of information to say, that's a repeat, we've already done that, we've already checked that, we've already cleared that and not chase his tail so much. So, that's a really interesting comment Don.Don Tuten:And that's a piece where your incident commander should be forward looking to say, look, we don't need to be chasing our tail. We need to put the right people in the right positions and let's get ahead of this thing.Bill Godfrey:So, that's a great jumping off point to talk about some of the things that are unique to the command post. So, what are some of the tasks that command really needs to be looking out for? So, I think, we've covered the downrange stuff and frankly, I think everybody gets that anyways. What's some of the stuff that's going to come up to the command post that they're going to need to deal with? Mark.Mark Rhame:Standing up PIO, the community message. Remember standing up PIO is not a one way directional message or whatever, PIO has got to look at social media hits. They got to look at what's the information they're hearing out there in the field and give that back to the command staff so they can properly address that when they get into a press briefing. But also remember we talked about that initial press briefing is controlling the environment. I think I've heard Ron, say this numerous times that if you don't get the message out quickly and you don't control the message, it's going to be mismessage, they'll be chasing that message all day long, if not days, if not weeks. So, PIO is a very important and vital thing you need to stand up as quick as possible as a command post.Don Tuten:I'm going to say the intelligence piece as well as the reunification. There are so many things once again, that they need to get together and find the right resources to get those things handled. They can't be handled downrange by tactical. So, the intelligence piece that obviously feeds the PIO and then the reunification piece.Ron Otterbacher:I'm going to speak of something we don't like to talk about necessarily and that's a political oversight. We have to brief either the chief of police, the Sheriff, the Mayor, the Governor-Bill Godfrey:The Feds.Ron Otterbacher:We had everyone. And it's not what we like to do, but it's something we have to do and a lot of times the only person they will talk to is the incident commander. So, we've got to be prepared for that, we got to understand that we may have a press brief but our press brief may not be the same thing we give some of these people but we also understand if we go too far out on a limb with these other people, they're going to turn around and go right to the press and leak everything that we just told them in confidence. So, we've got to understand what we're dealing with and how to deal with it in a professional fashion.Mark Rhame:And one other issue that probably doesn't get addressed in training enough is that the command post also has to think about what is the cost of this thing? Because if you're a tactical officer, if you're the triaged or transport, you going, just keep giving me stuff. I want that, I want this. But the command post has got to look at the bigger picture. Is there a price tag to this? And I mean, literally, is there a price tag to this? And they've got to look at and say that for our organization, we got to re-evaluate that request. Maybe we can't do exactly what they're saying but here's what I can give you.Bill Godfrey:And I think the one I'm going to mention since Ron stole mine, I think the one I'm going to mention is that transition planning for what's the next step?Ron Otterbacher:Next operational period.Bill Godfrey:Yeah. And I hesitated to call it the next operational period because it may actually just be a few hours in, but you're going to have to transition. Once you've dealt with the threat and you've got the patients transported, you've got to get the uninjured off to reunification, family assistance center stood up and get the messaging out, messaging to the community. So, all that's the first couple of hours. Then what? You've got to begin to get to work on your investigation. You've got to begin, what is the long-term recovery in this facility? How long are we going to have operations going on? Are we going to be here overnight? Or we're going to be here for several days-Don Tuten:Tip lines.Bill Godfrey:Several weeks? Do we need fencing to lock it down? And I think all of those things are absolutely responsibility to the command post and if they're neck deep into the tactical piece of this, it's two hours before they ever start thinking about this stuff.Ron Otterbacher:Sure. Absolutely. Yes.Mark Rhame:And also you need to consider emergency management standing up and assisting the command post. How about dealing with your local communities and letting them know what you're dealing with because they may be dealing the same thing and you don't know it. How about your state notification site? How about your fusion center? Those discussions need to take place at the command post.Bill Godfrey:Well, and speaking of emergency management, we don't like to see the incident commander have to get involved in doing the callback and move ups for covering the rest of the city or the rest of the county. That responsibility should fall to somebody else but it takes some coordination, it takes some communication and emergency management has obviously a huge role, not only in the incident but also in the continuity of operations for that community, that's had a lot of their resources sucked down by this incident.Don Tuten:And the recovery.Mark Rhame:Yeah.Bill Godfrey:Absolutely.Mark Rhame:Debriefing your people, rehabbing your people, backfilling your troops, I mean, all that falls on the command post. You cannot expect the tactical, triage and transport to be even thinking about those issues. They're dealing with the stuff right in their face right then.Ron Otterbacher:I also think something a lot of agents are doing now is create an incident management teams to respond to all of these situations. So, the incident commander doesn't have a single focus. Anytime I responded to something, I had an incident management team that responded. And if it went into another shift, I had a relief team that responded too. So, it gives you those extra resources to help you with what's focused on use, but they've also have that relationship with the emergency management folks that, as their requests and extra resources for you, it allows them to know where those resources are going and everything else. So, it all works together.Bill Godfrey:Yeah, absolutely. Well, gentlemen, thank you very much for this conversation today. And for those of you listening, I hope you've enjoyed it. If you have any suggestions for future podcasts or some questions that you would like us to address, please send them in to info@c3pathways.com. That's info@c3pathways.com. And until 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.

 Contact information for Dr. Metz:Sara Metz, PsyDPublic Safety PsychologistCode-4 CounselingFacebook (@code4counselingllc)Code-4 Counseling YouTube channel videosEpisode 30: Emotional Responsibility for Each OtherAn important discussion on emotional responsibility for your fellow first responders.Bill Godfrey:Welcome back to our next podcast. Thanks for joining us. You're back with the Active Shooter Incident Management podcast series. Now a few weeks ago, we recorded a podcast on what we called an Emotionally Responsible Room Entry. And that subject came up specifically from one incident where responders made... Well Robert, how would you put that?Robert McMahan:There was a lot of dynamics during some of those entries that were causing problems for people that were in those rooms. And we got some negative feedback from some of the students and teachers following that incident.Bill Godfrey:So essentially that podcast, which if you haven't heard it, please go back and give it a listen, was about how to make some adjustments to the way we handle these calls so that we're not scaring the hell out of kids, not to put too fine a point on it. But that's not what we're here to talk about today. At the tail end of that podcast, we drifted a little into talking about the emotional responsibility for each other as responders. And if you've heard that podcast, you know Harry and Robert were on that with me and I've asked them to join us again. Harry, thanks for being back again today.Harry Jimenez:Thank you, Bill, happy to be here.Bill Godfrey:And Robert, thank you for coming in again. I know you've already said hello to the group. But we have also asked a special guest to join us by phone today. So on the phone, we've got Dr. Sara Metz. Now Dr. Metz is a Public Safety Psychologist. She's also the owner and founder of Code 4 Counseling in lone tree, Colorado. And Dr. Metz has quite a bit of experience. Dr. Metz, thank you for taking the time out of your schedule to join us.Dr. Sara Metz:You bet, thanks for having me.Bill Godfrey:Fantastic. Dr. Metz, just to kind of get you oriented, so Harry was talking about his experience at the Sutherland Springs church shooting, which is I'm sure you recall, involved a lot of kids, and Robert was talking about his experience at the STEM school shooting that they had in Douglas County just before he retired. And it got a little emotional and reminded me of some events that we've had that hit a little close to home. So as a place to start out, I know that you've handled counseling for a lot of these types of events. What are the things that we need to be watching for and paying attention to both short-term, immediately, in the medium term and in the longterm?Dr. Sara Metz:So with our responders, responders are very well-trained tactically to go into an environment like a church shooting, like unfortunately a school shooting and handle that tactically. Unfortunately, oftentimes the training doesn't really address... one of the things that we see causing the most distress to them is the feeling of helplessness. They at their core want to help people, it's why they go into this, they have a heart for service. And when they go into an active shooter scenario and they see the fear and the distress they, unfortunately at times, may have to walk past victims who are asking for help because they're clearing the scene, still looking for the active shooter. There's a lot of complexities to these incidents and the emotional toll that takes on them, isn't necessarily well addressed in the training.And again, it's the sense of helplessness that they don't always have language for what that is doing to them. They believe that the quote unquote trauma of the event that gets to them and oftentimes they think, "No, I did okay with that, but something's still stuck with me." And often when we really peel it back, it's feeling helpless, not having been able to necessarily help in the way they wanted to, dealing with kid victim is always its own beast. So there's definitely certain parts of these tactical events that aren't really addressed in training and really take a pretty big toll emotionally, on these folks.Bill Godfrey:Dr. Metz, when you're dealing with responders, and I mean both male and female, is there a bit of the typical responder, tough guy persona that gets in the way?Dr. Sara Metz:Absolutely. And what's interesting when you say gets in the way in terms of, there're well when they're doing their job, but then they have a hard time putting that down. That armor is great for them. Civilians, we benefit from them having that very tough exterior, but as I've learned in 15 years of working with responders, a lot of them have a soft mushy center and they're big, giant hearted people. And again, that big hearted-ness about them, they aren't trained how to use that. They aren't trained how to show self-compassion as they notice psychological injury in themselves. They don't really even know how to help each other, they want to and they definitely give each other hugs or a slap on the back saying, "Hey, are you good?" But then they don't really know what else to do. So again, it comes back to that tough exterior, is well-trained into them, it's the deeper, more complex layer that they get a little stuck.Harry Jimenez:Doctor, this is Harry. I echo what you said but also, comes to mind the fact that even if we somehow understand that we may need some help, we fall back on the persona of toughness. We don't want to look weak, we don't want to be that guy in the squad that people will talk behind you and say, "Well, I'm not going to roll out with this person, or I'm not going to call out this person to back me up because I'm afraid that this person might snap." And there's a stigma in law enforcement and in my case, law enforcement and military service. We leave with this stigma that we have to be tougher and we have to be strong, and that gets in the way of understanding what's really happening on... What else? Robert, what do you think?Robert McMahan:Yeah, it does. And I personally battled that for a while before I got help because I needed to get help. And I've seen a number of things that put a bunch of stuff in my bucket, as we say. But Dr. Metz, you and I worked together in Colorado when I was still there and we worked through a number of these things. Why don't you tell us about what are the first steps to start taking care of these responders after an incident?Dr. Sara Metz:Yeah. I think Harry brought up a big point. I know Robert, it's something that you and I have both really seen your agency in Colorado tackle over the last couple of years. That stigma is something that's been there for generations, it's certainly been there for a very long time and I do think that the stigma itself is really that first step. If we're going to get responders to seek help, we have to normalize that and we have to celebrate it. That has to become something that is part of the culture, it's part of the common language people say, "Hey, you've gone to talk to the doc, good for you. You haven't made an appointment yet, definitely do it. I got mine on Tuesday." That sort of language is something that has never been a part of the culture, I get that. I've been, like I said, doing this for 15 years.I would say in the last one to two years, we've had some really amazing responders step forward, military personnel as well, to really start to lead from the front and show what that would look like to bulldoze past the stigma. And that takes folks who are really willing to be vulnerable, who are willing to say, "I know there's been a stigma, but screw it. I'm doing it anyway." And that has really done wonders for the culture. And we've seen fairly quick change. Responders are not, one who change quickly, they don't like change. But seeing folks really step forward that they respect, that the agency's respect, the culture respects, and those folks saying, "I'll share my story, I'll start. Here's what I went through. Here's what worked for me and I will advocate for and respect anyone who follows the path of recognizing when they're struggling and they will seek help." And that is step one. Once you from the top down, really start to see that be advocated for, folks are much more willing to say, "All right. Well, I guess I'll give it a try." So step one is beating that stigma piece.Robert McMahan:Dr. Metz, when we were working together in Colorado, when we had critical incidents, including just officer involved shootings or whatever it was, we always called you out and your staff to do a debrief, and to talk to those responders after the incident. Is that enough? Or do we need to be doing more?Dr. Sara Metz:No. I would say it's a great step, but it goes back to, it depends on what the culture thinks of the debrief. I've seen plenty of folks walk into a debrief and say, "I just got to sit here and I don't give a shit. And I'm not going to talk," because they believe that stigma is still present. "I'm not going to say anything. I'm not going to out myself." I will say the agency that you come from, I just did a debrief for them what, two days ago. Gosh how many people were in that room? I would say at least 20 folks who were involved in a critical incident, an officer involved shooting for that agency, 20 folks in the debrief. Every single one of them talked, every single one of them was willing to say what they had experienced the day of the incident, whether it was adrenaline dump, they weren't able to sleep, they hit the wispies, they snap at their kids when they got home, they talked about that.And they talked about four days later, which is when we did the debrief. They talked about the signs and the symptoms that were still present. And they talked about the things that were fading and healing naturally on its own. And as a group, we were able to talk about those signs and symptoms, normalize it for folks, "Hey, you're still not sleeping? Hey, I'm not sleeping either. All right. Well, here's some ideas. Here's some things we can think about to see if you can get that to heal on its own." But that dynamic took years to create, that took a long time for folks to really respect the process.But I would say there are definitely agencies now in Colorado and around the country, that are creating the right environment for those debrief to go well, and are also educating folks on all of the different things that they can do to take care of themselves. Whether that's wellness checks, whether that's in-service training that specifically highlights psychological stress injury, whether it's family night, getting the families involved, that they understand this shared language. There's so much that goes into a successful well integrated wellness program within an organization.Bill Godfrey:Dr. Metz, that's really remarkable what you're describing there. And it's encouraging to know that there are agencies that have been able to cross that bridge and deal with this a little more head on. You mentioned that our culture isn't very quick to change, and boy that's not an exaggeration. We have a saying in the fire service, "200 years of tradition unimpeded by progress," and we mean that shit.Dr. Sara Metz:Oh yeah, you do.Bill Godfrey:But on the lines of the symptoms and I may be off base here, but my personal experience. Now, Harry and Robert are both law enforcement, I'm from the Fire-EMS side. But my personal experience is that the immediate after, we're usually pretty there for each other. So Harry, you and I were telling the story in the earlier podcast about, when you were driving home for Sutherland Springs late at night, I was already in bed. And got the phone call and I knew, I got up got out of bed and we were on the phone how long?Harry Jimenez:I think I called Bill right after I left the scene. And I've been in the scene for probably 12 hours and I'm heading home and it was about an hour drive. And I think we spoke all the way until I pulled into my driveway, and he was making sure that I made it home.Dr. Sara Metz:Wow, that cool.Bill Godfrey:Yeah. So I guess where I'm going with that is, my personal experience and that may not be fair, but my personal experience is usually the immediate after the event, we're all kind of they're checking each other, but then I think we fall down. And I wondered if you could talk a little bit, it's a two-parted question. Number one is, in the near term, the days and the weeks that follow, what are the signs and symptoms that we need to be watching out for in each other? And then the second part of that is going to be, what are the things, if someone's reluctant to get help, reluctant to acknowledge that it's been an issue, what are the things that we as their peers can do? I'm not talking about supervisory intervention, but what are things that we as their friends and peers can do to try to help them see that they need it?Dr. Sara Metz:I think those are both great questions. I'm going to actually start with the second one first, and then I'll circle back to it here in a minute. But Robert will laugh at me because he knows where I'm going to go with this.Bill Godfrey:He's actually sitting here already chuckling, he's got this big smile on his face.Dr. Sara Metz:Yeah, he knows where I'm going. I promised him I would try to behave on this call. But this is where I think there's a little bit of tough love that needs to come in to this profession. I often hear that sort of thing. "Well, what if someone is reluctant?" Bullshit. Go to the doc because it's the right thing to do. You guys don't use that excuse for anything tactical. "Oh, I'm a little hesitant. Oh, I'm a little uncomfortable. That makes me nervous. I'm scared to do that," is not part of the culture. And yet it is so often the thing that prevents them from coming in the door. Now it's our responsibility as clinicians to create a safe space for that and to understand the culture and to do the work, to be culturally competent, to serve responder population.But I would say with all the love in the world, to my responders out there, "Get your butt in there, get checked out because it keeps you at the top of your game. And if you have a bad fit, a clinician who doesn't get it, or it doesn't feel like the right fit? Find one who is a good fit." And that's where responders, one of the things they can do to take care of each other is, everybody get out there, find clinicians that are good and share that information with each other. "Hey, you know what? I had a really great session. You should go see so and so." And have there be variety, have there be male clinicians, female clinicians, folks who specialize in EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) versus talk therapy versus this, that, the other thing.But the more clinicians are available and the more responders will not feel shame and we'll share that information with each other, I think is my answer to the second part of that question. Now to the first question of, what are the signs and symptoms that folks should be looking out for? I think there's some really common ones. And what I typically will tell folks is, the body is actually fairly good at recalibrating itself over the course of a few days and a few weeks, what typically hinders that process is shame and judgment. So for example, if someone in the first few days, or first week or so, they go through a critical incident, they're involved in an active shooter scenario, for example, and they are having a hard time sleeping, they really want to drink because they know that will calm their system. They're moody, snapping at their kids, snapping at their partner... Go ahead.Bill Godfrey:By the way Dr. Metz, you had three guys shaking their heads up and down, yes, When you mentioned the drinking part.Dr. Sara Metz:Yeah, absolutely. It's a big one because unfortunately it works. So we know it works. The problem, it does so much damage to the system's calibration. It's trying to numb a system that would work if you gave it a chance.Bill Godfrey:That's interesting.Dr. Sara Metz:And part of that is letting your system be uncomfortable. Your system is looping and it's anxious and it's got adrenaline still sparking through your system, that's all normal. It's wildly uncomfortable and I don't dismiss it as, "Oh, just get over it." It is wildly uncomfortable, but alcohol and substances is nodding that, which doesn't allow the system, the human body that is actually very brilliantly structured in so many ways, it will recalibrate if you let it, but you have to let it do it in its own natural time. So when folks drink to try to numb because they're so uncomfortable, what we know the alcohol does is, it makes it so you cannot get REM sleep.REM sleep is where your system during your sleeping hours is going to, again, recalibrate. It moves experiences from the front of the brain, into the memory center, which is where we block them, because it means you remember it but you don't re-experience it. If you're drinking in the evenings or right before bed, that alcohol in your system locks the door to that process. So those experiences stay at the front of the brain, that's why things like flashbacks and re-experiencing happens, because it didn't get moved to the memory center. So we need that process to work and so we really encourage people, just give it a week or two, see if your system naturally recalibrates on its own. Watch for the increase in alcohol use, try to keep that out of the picture, watch for the moodiness, watch for the restlessness and the difficulty sleeping. Those are some of the pretty normal things that we see after a critical incident, but oftentimes they will say it on their own.And even if they don't, all that tells us as clinicians is that, "Yeah, go in and get a checkup." And it may just take some verbal processing or looking at it from another perspective, some additional coping strategies. Those are things we can certainly provide someone if they are not matched, really kind of moving through the process on their own in a week or two. But back to Harry's point a while back, it's shame and fear of judgements that prevents people from doing that. They think, "I have to just figure this out on my own. If I say, I'm not healing on my own, people won't think I'm a good partner. They don't want me as a car partner. They won't want me to back up. They won't won't walk me on their crew." What we have to help people recognize is, "We'll get you there, you're not going to live in the red forever. We'll get you back, but we need to know what those symptoms are so we can help you."Bill Godfrey:It's really fascinating listening to you explain that. And I mean, I've been a paramedic for over 30 years and knowing the physiology doesn't mean you take it home and into your brain. And something you said kind of-Something you said kind of made me think about something my therapist once threatened me with a baseball bat over. And he said, "Damn it, sometimes you just have to sit with those uncomfortable feelings."Dr. Sara Metz:Yeah, so true.Bill Godfrey:If you keep pushing them away and you never process them, is that kind of a little bit related to what you're talking about here?Dr. Sara Metz:Absolutely, it is. And again, I really try to encourage responders to recognize, you all are well equipped to be uncomfortable. You do it all the time in environments that you choose to be uncomfortable in. You go into burning buildings, you go into hoarder house for medicals, you go through the maze, you put the gas mask on, you guys go into critical incidents of shootings, there are a million and one scenarios where you guys will put yourself in uncomfortable situations and you believe that it's worth it. But for whatever reason you guys, hate, all humans do, this is not just a responder thing, but people hate to be uncomfortable when it comes to their feelings and it comes to processing their experiences. If responders would go into it with that same level of, "All right, I just got to hunker down and be uncomfortable because it's serving a purpose," they would do a lot better.Bill Godfrey:You just need to set your office on fire and then we'll show up.Dr. Sara Metz:There you go.Bill Godfrey:I'm sorry, that's a terrible idea. Just for the record. That was a joke.Dr. Sara Metz:... wow, how have I never tried that? I have South Metro just down the road, they'll come in a heartbeat.Bill Godfrey:Robert, you were getting ready to jump in and say something, I'm sorry.Robert McMahan:Yeah, Dr. Metz, we've been talking about how to deal with these things and making sure that we get our officers and first responders in to see a clinician. If we do that initial debrief, and typically after a shooting, we'll send an officer in for a one-on-one with a therapist and oftentime they come out okay. But you and I saw a number of first responders months after the incident, where issues started cropping up. Can you talk about that a little bit?Dr. Sara Metz:It is a great point, because we often will see things start to bubble to the surface right away. However, it is very, very common and very, very normal for those symptoms to take months, sometimes years to fester. I often will describe psychological stress and compare it to an infection. Sometimes an infection again, without a paramedic on the call, probably somewhere else, but sometimes you'll notice it fairly quickly-Bill Godfrey:Just for the record, I used to be, I don't do that stuff anymore. For the last-Dr. Sara Metz:I knew this stuff back in the day, all right.Bill Godfrey:The last patient I touched was when a space shuttle went up and that guy died. I'm not the guy to touch on it, I'm the guy that goes send for the defibrillator.Dr. Sara Metz:Again this comes back, yeah I talk about it all the time, shame and judgment. Prolong when people will get help, if you take that piece out and simple have someone say, "Well, I was doing okay and now I'm not, I guess it's time to go to the doc." They go to the doc, they say what their symptoms are and they get the help they need. It's very normal. It really is fine. Honestly, the other side of the normal spectrum is that, it's absolutely fine if someone does absolutely fine forever after a critical incident. Every now and then I'll have a responder come into my office and say, "Everyone is telling me that this, even though it's not bothering me now, it's going to." And then they get anxious thinking, "So this is just going to be the spawn, it could go off at any point I feel in my head at any moment?" No, live your life.If it pops up, it pops up. If it doesn't, it doesn't make you a psychopath. If you're fine, uou're fine. It's great to be able to articulate why you're fine, so you have an understanding of what strategies seem to be working for you, but if you're fine, we're not going to try to poke the bear.Harry Jimenez:Doctor, Harry here. When you were talking about what type of things to look short-term, mid-term, long-term, I felt that you were describing me. Just to put in perspective, military with five combat deployments and then law enforcement for over 30 years. What you're saying is exactly the way I felt, after multiple deployments and law enforcement and loosing an officer under your watch and being involved in critical incidents and saving someone's life and not remember how the hell that happened. I thought, "Okay, I'm visible, everything's fine." And then one day, hill came down crashing on me and the first thing that I did was fight. Fight not because of the shame or the stigma, but was fighting with myself. "How come this is happening now, since I've been good all these years?"And it took me a couple of clinicians to finally, like you said, find the one person that I felt that could understand me, if you may, in my own whatever crazy designation I gave to that. And there were two things, first he told me, each one of us experienced the same incident in an own personal different way. And that was a very significant to me because sometimes we as first responders, we look to the left and to the right and if the person that you know that responded is not going through what you're going, you might start trying to cover it and push it down because you don't want to seem to be weak or weaker. And when he told me that, "No, we all going to feel it and understand it and react in own personal way."And the second one which goes with, I remember now, because you mentioned about the alcohol, he told me, "Harry we're going to go back to not only this incident, but we're going to go back to every one of these incidents that we know that you are dragging for years and you have not face." And I thought he was insane and I immediately refused, I said, "No, I don't want to re-live that." And he said, "Oh, on the contrary, you still live in it." He told me a story and I don't know if you have heard this and if you do please tell us more about it. He said, "When the first person start deciding that, AA, Alcoholic Anonymous, it was a good idea, a lot of people laugh to the whole idea. Because they say, 'So you're going to get a group of drunks together to talk about drinking, that makes no sense.'" And talk to us about that.I mean, that was my experience. I was like, "No way I was going to re-live this in my own brain, thinking about it." And he helped me... basically the same analogy, he got me around with other people that were coping with their own incidents. And in a way allows you to free yourself.Dr. Sara Metz:Mm-hmm (affirmative), totally agree.Bill Godfrey:It's fascinating to know how parallel our lives have all been, even though we didn't know each other until the last few years that we've been teaching and training. And Dr. Metz, I'd like you to kind of comment on this and if you'll forgive me, I'm going to do a little bit of wind up here with it. I went through most of my career, some ups and downs, but I did not really struggle with any one particular thing. But what has been a challenge for me, and the best way I can give this example is the idea of institutional noise, it's not typically one gunshot that makes you go deaf, it's not wearing hearing protection while you go through thousands of gunshots or it's not being around a jet engine one time without hearing protection. It's being around them all the time. That idea of that constant repeated exposure. And Dr. Metz, are you by chance familiar with the Enneagram?Dr. Sara Metz:Mm-hmm (affirmative), I am.Bill Godfrey:Okay. So I'm an Enneagram eight. And for those that don't know what it's about it-Dr. Sara Metz:You're and eight aren't you.Bill Godfrey:Yeah, don't worry about it, I'll just say this. It means that I tend to be a fairly strong personality and aggressive, and that's cover for not wanting to reveal vulnerability.Harry Jimenez:I will never have guessed that.Bill Godfrey:I know, shocking. Exactly. And now I cry at a double mint twin commercial. It's just these moments of just uncontrollable sadness that lasts for a second, second and a half, two seconds, three seconds. We'll be teaching the classes that we teach and there's some sensitive material that we talk about and some things that we cover. And there's particular modules that I don't like to teach, because about 50% of the time I get choked up doing it and I don't want to get choked up in front of the class to do that. And I'm not really worried about somebody making fun of me for getting choked up because, screw them if they don't get it. This is serious topics, and we're talking about kids dying and things like that. Is that a real issue? That it's not necessarily one horrible... in other words, it can be one horrible tragic event, but can it also just be a career of shit?Dr. Sara Metz:Yeah. And most likely, it's probably a combination of both of those. Absolutely, are there folks who have been through really significant pin point events that they can point to and say that, "That has stuck with me all this time and I've never fully been able to process through it," absolutely. We also do see folks who are 20, 25, 30 plus years into their career and they may say exactly what you're saying, that there's not a specific event that they point to, but they're tired. They're burned out, they're tired. They feel they've lost compassion for people, that usually takes about 30 seconds on the job of, "Oh, I don't like people at all." So that sort of thing-Bill Godfrey:Yeah that was me at 3:00 in the morning every time.Dr. Sara Metz:Real quick, like nope I've decided I hate humans. Those sorts of things absolutely happen. And we still have to look at the whole human and figure out how to help them. Are there specific events that we need to reprocess? Is there just more burnout, tired, that sort of repair that needs to happen again. Think of it in terms of muscle aches versus a broken bone. A broken bone, we have to do something very specific with, muscle aches where the whole system is just, "I don't really know what's going on I just feel icky." We can treat either one, we just would treat them differently.Robert McMahan:And Dr. Metz, I think for me I hit about that 28 year mark, and then we had an officer killed in the line of duty that we worked. And I didn't know what was happening to me, I was depressed not real bad, but it was getting worse. And about a year later, you were in our office talking to our command staff about wellness programs and you started to talk about some of this stuff and I went, "Holy crap, that's me." I think you remember that day.Dr. Sara Metz:I do.Robert McMahan:And I grabbed you and we went to my office after that and we started talking. As a result of that, I spent many hours on your couch after that. And I'm not ashamed of that and we don't need to be ashamed of this, and we got to get over that shame and stigma. For me, when we were talking through those things, the analogy we used with me was that, my bucket got full, and you can only put so much crap in a bucket. And I think it's that cumulative stress and cumulative effect of seeing all those things, that one day you just reach a capacity where it starts to really affect you.Dr. Sara Metz:You do. And so often people again, will tell themselves, "Well I was handling it just fine. What's wrong with me now that I can't when handled it just fine all those years?"Robert McMahan:Oh, that sounds familiar.Dr. Sara Metz:Yeah. And what people forget, to Robert's point is, just because the bucket wasn't full didn't mean it wasn't filling up. And at a certain point, once it's full, everything is skimming off the top. Anything you put in there, it doesn't fit anymore. So if you wait until it's completely overflowing, yes of course we can still help, but that's just the point at which it overflowed. It doesn't mean that whatever you were doing was working for all those years, it just means there was room in the bucket for it. And oftentimes unfortunately, once the bucket overflows, we gotta deal with what's right at the top first. But then we probably are going to have to go back through the years and really process some things that may have happened years ago, that they were sitting at the bottom of that bucket waiting to be dealt with.Bill Godfrey:Dr. Metz, quick question on the bucket. If you wait until it overflows, and then you deal with the overflowing stuff, is it possible for people to deal with the overflowing stuff and never empty the bucket and just be one marble shy of overflowing again?Dr. Sara Metz:Well, they can, I don't recommend it. I say, clean that shit out. That's like going into the dirtiest closet in your house and saying, "I shall clean for five minutes and then shut the door again." Clean the damn closet out. And again, it requires you being uncomfortable, but it's work that ultimately does benefit the person.Robert McMahan:The concept of that bucket makes me think that, if we are getting to these first responders earlier in their careers, taking care of these things, even if it's not bothering them so much, but we need to be taking care of that early on so that bucket doesn't fill up so fast.Dr. Sara Metz:Very much so.Robert McMahan:Yeah. And I think one of the ways we can do that is by, as peers remembering to reach out to each other in the days, weeks and months after those events, and checking in on each other. What do you think about that?Dr. Sara Metz:I completely agree. And I think this is where too, teaching the language to the young guns who are just starting out in law enforcement, in the fire service. Teaching them the language makes it so much easier for them to speak this fluently throughout their career. The folks who've been doing this, the older school generation, they didn't learn the language and so they are more likely to be struggling with a lot of this and feeling they're floundering and really struggling at the tail end of their careers or post retirement. But the ones who are really willing to lean into this, step forward and learn the language, have such incredible value to give back to the younger generation, because once they learn the language to be able to check in and share those experiences with the younger ones, it's so hugely valuable.Bill Godfrey:So Dr. Metz, we need to obviously get wrapped up here, but there's one last area I want to go into just briefly before we wrap up and close out. So I opened by talking about how we kinda got to this conversation, which was wrapping up that other podcast. And Robert, I don't know if you remember what you said to me not five minutes after we quit recording that other podcast, do you remember?Robert McMahan:No, I don't.Bill Godfrey:You said, "Damn, I wish I would've just said get help, it doesn't make you weak."Robert McMahan:Yeah. And thanks for reminding me of that. If you're listening to this, you've probably been to some event, you've been to some traumatic scene, and it doesn't have to be a full blown active shooter event, all these things take a toll on us. But you also know people that have been involved in events and you have anniversary dates that we remember from the really bad ones. And so, if you have those people in mind and those anniversary dates, reach out to each other and take care of each other, and please get some help if you need it.Even if you don't think you need it, it doesn't hurt to check in once in a while with a therapist, just to get a checkup. We go to the doctor for checkups and that's okay, this is okay too. And I think if we would do that as a first responder profession, we would as Dr. Metz said, stay at the top of our game.Bill Godfrey:As in, you can't always tell when your own bucket is full.Robert McMahan:Exactly.Bill Godfrey:Yeah. This has been a great conversation, Dr. Metz, I cannot thank you enough for taking the time out of your schedule to share with us your words of wisdom and your thoughts. And I want to give you the opportunity to have the closing words here.Dr. Sara Metz:Oh gosh, no pressure. Well, I will say that Robert is just one of the coolest people I've ever met. And so I appreciated him asking me to join the three of you today and I enjoyed our conversation and if there's anything else that I can do for the podcast or for you folks, let me know. But I echo what Robert said in that, take care of yourself and take care of each other. And a big part of doing that is staying tactically fit, ready to go and staying psychologically fit as well. And if you're willing to put the effort into that, there's a lot of us out there that are absolutely willing to step into your space and help you thrive in your career and thrive in your retirement.Bill Godfrey:We spend our careers trying to save lives, let's make sure we save each other too.Robert McMahan:That's right.Dr. Sara Metz:Agreed.Bill Godfrey:Well, Dr. Metz, if you'd like, I can list your counseling group in the show notes. I'm not sure if that's something you'd like me to do or not for people to reach out-Dr. Sara Metz:Sure.Bill Godfrey:... to you for some additional information or maybe even information about how they can get a program started somewhere in their locale. And again, thank you so much for taking the time. Robert, Harry, thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us for this episode. Please, if you haven't subscribed to the podcast, please do subscribe to the podcast and until next time, stay safe.

Episode 29: Staying in Your LaneA discussion about staying in your lane during active shooter events and what that means.Bill Godfrey:Welcome back to our next podcast. Today's topic, we're going to talk about staying in your lane for active shooter events and what that means. Thanks for joining us today. My name is Bill Godfrey. I'm the host of your podcast, one of the instructors here at C3 Pathways. I'm joined with us by three fabulous other instructors, Robert McMahan.Robert McMahan:Hi Bill. How are you doing?Bill Godfrey:Good. Good. Good to have you here, Robert. Thanks for coming down. We have Adam Pendley.Adam Pendley:Yes, sir. Thank you for having me.Bill Godfrey:Thanks for being heard, Adam. And Mark Rhame.Mark Rhame:Thank you for having me.Bill Godfrey:All right, guys. So today we're going to talk about staying in your lane, which really is our way of talking about span of control and why that matters. And it's not because it's just an ICS NIMS thing, there's actually a really, really practical fashion here. Mark, why don't you start us off kind of give the overview and talk about why that matters and we'll go from.Mark Rhame:Let me first talk about the fire service as it relates to span of control. It is very easy if you have too many units or too many personnel that are working directly under you and you've exceeded what we generally consider a span of control, whether it's units or personnel, to lose control. I mean, literally not know where they're at, accountability goes out the window.So when we bring it over to ASIM, Active Shooter Incident Management environment, when we break down our teams, and we have a tactical officer who's handling all the contact teams, and a triage officer handling all the RTF, send a transport officer handling all the ambulances, it makes the scene so much cleaner and easier to control if you only talk and direct those teams that are reporting directly to you. Now, I know there'll be overlap occasionally if a portable radio goes down or someone has to step out of the room, someone else has to actually answer their radio, but span of control and staying in your lanes is so important for this to be successful in our environment.Bill Godfrey:I think that's a great summary. And I'm reminded of course, I think everybody who has been through ICS101 remembers, the recommended span of control is three to seven with optimal allegedly being five. What I've found over the years is that that depends on a couple of things. It depends on how experienced you are as an incident commander. The more you've done it, you can handle more folks. But the downside of that is it also depends on the severity of the incident, the seriousness of the incident and how fast moving it is. Adam, what do you think on that?Adam Pendley:Absolutely. I think what also is important and dovetails into span of control is also unity of command. So when you arrive in an incident scene or you are given an assignment, it may be different from your day to reporting structure. And so knowing who you work for and who works for you is very important. And to Mark's point, helps clean up the communication on the scene because rather than people randomly screaming things into the darkness on their radio, they are reporting directly back to who they work for.So as contact teams are doing their initial size up report, as they move through towards the stimulus of the act of threat and they're calling out injury counts and what they see and how they're engaging, they have somebody to report that to once the tactical group supervisor is in place or once the fifth man concept is engaged. So as the incident continues to grow, each element of the incident has that unity of command, who they're reporting to and I think it cleans up the communication and makes for better situational awareness for everyone.Bill Godfrey:And Adam, before we leave that for a topic, because I know unity of command versus unified command is often a confused topic. Can you address that real quickly?Adam Pendley:Sure, absolutely. So unity of command is just that you know who you work for and who works for you so that if you imagine visualizing it on an organization chart, so what does my box report to, or where does my lane go? Who does it report to?Bill Godfrey:Who's my boss?Adam Pendley:Exactly. Unified command is at the top of the structure where you have more than one entity that has jurisdictional authority over an incident or an event. So they're working shoulder to shoulder with equal responsibility to set objectives and to command tactics.Bill Godfrey:Fantastic. Thank you for that. So let's take this apart piece by piece. Robert, let's start off with the contact teams and kind of talk about what is the sweet spot of size for a contact team. When does it get too big, their roles, who they're talking to, what's their mission task purpose. Let's talk a little bit about that.Robert McMahan:So the contact teams partly depends on how many you got at the time to put together especially early on in the incident. But generally speaking, I think a contact team of about four, maybe five at the most is going to be about the right size. Many times as we start the incident, we've got a one contact team and he starts joining up with the second and third officers as they come in. But if you get them too big, they're going to be stumbling over each other and it creates a lot of confusion. And it puts a lot of people in one space when you might need resources in other areas. So it might be wiser to split those out into a little bit smaller groups, but you don't want to leave them too small that they're unable to support themselves.The contact teams have got to get inside and number one, take care of that threat and then start working towards getting patients to hospitals. And so their role does not stop when the bad guy or the threat's down. They've got to take up the call to help get injured patients out to the hospital.Bill Godfrey:So you're talking about SIMs, Security, Immediate Action Plan, Medical?Robert McMahan:Exactly. They've got a huge role in providing security so that the RTF SIMs start moving in. But they can do a lot of things in providing patient care before those RTFs get there. And I think that's a whole another topic, but it's not just threat work. It's not just security work, but it's also providing medical care so people can survive long enough for the RTF to get there and get them out to the hospital.Bill Godfrey:Fantastic. Adam, you mentioned it earlier. So let's use that as a transition point, talking about the contact teams reporting to tactical. So let's talk a little bit about that task and purpose of the contact team and what they need to report to tactical. What's the kind of information flow that needs to go. What do they need to tell and what does tactical need to ask?Adam Pendley:Sure. I mean, one of the things that's very important is obviously we need enough of a contact team to Robert's, point to address that active threat, but we can't have every resource rush into the scene. So one of the things that's very important is, and again, being kind of to use a NIMS ICS term it's expandable and flexible. So you ensure that you have a contact team or two that's sized appropriately for the situation that's addressing the act of threat. And then right behind that someone, a law enforcement officer, it can be an officer, it could be a supervisor, stays on just the edge of the warm zone, right at the edge of the crisis site to become the tactical group supervisor. Which is the first step toward applying some incident management to what you have going on.And that tactical group supervisor is going to need to hear the location of where the contact teams are working. What they're seeing and hearing. What additional needs they have. Do they need an additional contact team to secure a casualty collection point, where is the casualty collection point? What are those numbers? And then communicating with dispatch to make sure that the fire rescue side knows where the location of tactical is so ultimately we can move down a triage group supervisor, and a transport group supervisor.So we get to this point where right at the edge of the crisis site, you have tactical, triage and transport working together to manage everything that's going on on the inside of the crisis site. And those that are working inside the crisis site, the contact teams initially, ultimately the RTS, they are the eyes and ears of tactical, triage and transport. So if you think of it in that way, that that's the reporting relationship, that's the lane that people are staying in and that's the information that you need that ultimately gets reported out.Bill Godfrey:So, great summary on tactical. One of the questions that may be in some people's minds is how do you become tactical? And it's kind of a volunteer position? Is it not? I mean, we always teach about the idea of the fifth man, the fifth arriving officer, we don't necessarily mean the literal fifth. Robert, can you talk a little bit about that before we go on to talking about some of the other elements.Robert McMahan:Well, it's driven by necessity. But generally we're talking about the fifth man. As you said, it doesn't have to be the fifth man, but somebody has to get there and take that position to start directing and controlling the scene and controlling those resources.Bill Godfrey:Somebody has got to stay outside.Robert McMahan:Somebody has got to stay outside. That gives people inside somebody to talk to and get orders from. And that is very, very helpful. Part of the topic here is about staying in your lane. There's nothing more frustrating to a line level person who's trying to take on a task or perform a task and especially in a chaotic environment, like an active shooter event where they're getting multiple orders from multiple places. And so this cleans that up to where they can get their orders from one place, they know who they answer to, and they can listen to those orders and those orders only.Bill Godfrey:Fantastic. So what's the area the tactical owns? When we look at the overall incident, we've got the downrange part where bad stuff happened, ultimately we end up with these hot zones and warm zones and colds and what does tactical own?Adam Pendley:So I think they own essentially everything that would be considered the warm zone and the hot zones, and it is. It's like a bubble. They can move. If you were pursuing stimulus or where the active threat is, the hot zone may shift a little bit, and you may be able to create a warm zone where you can secure a CCP and begin the idea of bringing a rescue in, remembering that your priorities are active threat rescue, and then continuing to clear. But an answer to your question, the tactical group supervisor is responsible for all of that inner perimeter work. Everything that would be considered part of the crisis site, both the hot zone and the warm zone.Bill Godfrey:Fantastic. Okay. Now I want to shift us off a tactical a little bit and jump over to staging because in the process of how the checklist lays out, the unfolding events. You've got your first arriving officer, the second, third, fourth would link up, you got your fifth man, you're going to get additional contact teams, you got a tactical in place, you've got that basic command structure in place. Then we need to start getting staging organized. So, Mark, can you talk a little bit about process for the staging function and blending it together with law enforcement, fire EMS, and some of the different ways that can unfold.Mark Rhame:Traditionally, fire departments utilize staging. In fact, I don't know a single fire department that doesn't utilize staging in some fashion. It might be an active shooter event or some threat event, or it could be a structure fire. It could be pretty much anything in our response portfolio, if you will, that we utilize staging when we don't want to bring in the assets that we don't need immediately. Maybe we we're going to use them a little later on. Maybe we're just trying to figure out how large this event is and how many assets we need to get onto that scene. Or maybe that incident commander sitting there going, "I'm probably going to dismiss these people, but right now I'm just going to hold them away from the scene."So from a fire department perspective, we've been doing staging for years and years and years. In fact, the very beginning of my career that was something that we practiced and did. So when you fold this into an active shooter event and we're bringing in law enforcement, and I know from my law enforcement brothers and sisters, this is kind of that, "You want me to do what?" That's that, "No, I come into the scene."What we try to get across to people, whether they're law enforcement or fire EMS is that staging is not about slowing down. And if you're really get that stuck into your head, and you are the staging manager, you're kind of messing up there. This is about getting organized and getting those crews onto the scene as quick as possible, but in an organized manner that you have accountability. The worst thing that we want to hear from public safety is we have a blue on blue incident. When we look at some of these after action reports, where we get a lot of officers just respond directly into the scene, and there's a lack of organization, especially in the very beginning, it's kind of a mystery to some of us that you don't have a blue on blue. You don't have two officers just accidentally take each other out simply because they just didn't realize the other team was that close.So staging again is where we're going to get organized and we're waiting for that officer in charge of that group. Whether it's tactics in charge of contact teams. Whether it's triaging in charge of RTF or it's transportation in charge of the ambulances, when they're ready to deploy those units. Again, there would be nothing worse than having us self-inflict wounds on ourselves, because we just didn't get organized. We didn't have accountability. And that person who's in charge of didn't direct them into the scene.Bill Godfrey:I think that's a great summary. One of the things that often comes up is, "I don't want to have everybody in just one staging area. I want law enforcement over here. I want fire over here. And I want EMS over here." Adam, you're shaking your head. Let it rip.Adam Pendley:Absolutely not. I would say nationwide, we have worked very hard to consistently train a Rescue Task Force concept. It's a mixed ad hoc unit of police or a security element with fire medical. You can't do that if you're not in the same stage area. It is impossible to form up RTFs if we're not sharing the same staging space. But I also wanted to extend off what Mark was saying. Staging is a gear up and go location. It is not a place where you sit down, have a cup of coffee, sign a...Bill Godfrey:No. That's rehab folks.Adam Pendley:Yeah. Or camp.Bill Godfrey:Or a cup of coffee, that's rehab.Adam Pendley:Right. Exactly. And also I'm going to share a secret. Law enforcement does a lot more staging than they think they do. All across the country, if we are responding to a violent domestic incident, we will call the other unit, the backup unit and set a location to meet, and then go in together. We do that all the time. If we're going to serve a warrant, we will go to a nearby location, meet up, brief each other quickly, and then go serve the warrant.So we do a lot of staging that we just don't call it that. And so all that we're talking about, the importance of staging, this is on a larger scale, and we have to trust that our brothers and sisters that have already gone in to deal with the active threat, it's much more important for us to organize the follow on resources. Gear up and go correctly with a strategy than it is to just try to pour guns randomly into the scene.And the same thing with tactical. Working with my colleagues and doing training, I say, "Look, one more gun inside the building may not do any good when one more gun standing just outside to manage the hundred of guns that are coming could be much more effective." Same thing in staging. Rather than everyone rushing to the scene, we think that more is better and it may not be. It may be that we need you to do some other jobs that are really important to keep the suspect from escaping. To handle corridors. To handle casualty collection points. And again, to form those RTS. That is critically important to actually treating patients. And we can't do that if we're not meeting up in a staging area together.Mark Rhame:Yeah. Bill and I would add this to that, that we have a lot of tasks to get done inside there, like getting our patients out. If we don't do that we're doing a disservice to the patients. And it's a whole lot harder to organize that and do that effectively and quickly when all the resources that you need to do, run inside already. Because it creates a giant mess. And you're going to take a whole lot more time getting that done than you would have if the resources would have staged and got their assignment to an RTF or whatever, and then went in with the task and purpose.Bill Godfrey:100%. If you're a regular listener to the podcast you know just a few weeks ago, we had a podcast that came out where the entire subject was talking just about staging. And Robert, if I recall right, you shared a personal story about ending up with staging in two different locations. Before we move on from staging, can you kind of share that with the audience, for those that may not have heard this?Robert McMahan:Yeah. We had a active shooter event and we ended up with fire staging and they did the appropriate thing, but then we staged separately from them.Bill Godfrey:Meaning law enforcement staging a separate enforcement?Robert McMahan:Yes. Law enforcement. Yes, law enforcement staged separate from them and we never got that connect together. So what happened was the RTF that were trying to form up on the fireside never got a security element with them. And fortunately, we were able to adapt and overcome that, we got patients out quickly to the hospital and safe people, but that's an example of what can happen if you don't have that in place. And as a consequence, when we saw the RTF standing there ready to go, they wouldn't come with us until they had a security element. They would not deploy, and they're not supposed to. They need that security element to take care of them.Bill Godfrey:Okay. So we've got staging set up, we're good to go. On the fire EMS side, medical branch has made it way to the command post. We hope by this point. We've got our leadership, first fire EMS, supervisor, medical branch, hook it up at the command post. One of the first assignments that we've got to do at a staging is to get a triage group supervisor and a transport group supervisor assigned and get them moved up to the same spot tactical is. Mark, talk a little bit about that, and then Robert, I'm going to have you kind of talk about the security piece of where fifth man has picked their spot and how that can play together.Mark Rhame:Exactly. The medical branch also when they get to the command post, obviously are going to get their briefing from their counterpart on the law enforcement side, and they're going to get their briefing in route from dispatch. So they're going to have some good intel and a good idea what's going on. But as you said, Bill, their priority number one, that medical branch, is to stand up triage and transport. And that's that engine company or maybe that captain or whatever they've responded and it's at staging. And you're going to call your staging manager and say, "Stand up a triage and a transport group supervisor for me. Hold them in place, until we know that the environment where tactical is, that fifth man is, is safe to bring them up. So we're waiting on that safe environment before we deploy them."Bill Godfrey:So Robert, take it from there and kind of talk about some of the implications for where fifth man happens to choose their spot and what that could mean for triage and transport, having to move up to them.Robert McMahan:So tactical or the fifth man is going to set up, generally where we call at the edge of the inner perimeter, because he owns everything inside there. And it's got to be an area that's fairly safe. And generally we put that demarcation between the cold zone and warm zone. It may sometimes be just a little bit inside that warm zone but we've got to be cognizant of our own security needs there and the security needs of triage and transport as they join us. But it's also going to be a place where you can get some eyes on what's going on. I think it's a pretty crucial piece for that a tactical officer to have some eyes on what's going on. He's not going to be able to see everything, but he's going to be up close enough to see this thing and have some comfort about what he's doing.Bill Godfrey:Perfect. And if tactical is in an area where they don't feel it's safe for triage and transport to move up to them, then one of two things has to happen. Either tactical needs to move back a little bit, or we need to get some law enforcement to escort triage and transport up to tactical. So Mark, pick that up from there. And then let's walk through... let's talk about triage. So triage and transport get side by side by tactical, first thing they're going to get from tactical?Mark Rhame:A briefing. We get a briefing from our partners there. The triage and transport is going to get a briefing from the tactical officer and figure out what is that person's mindset? What is a tactical person looking at and what information do they have? Have they already established a casualty collection point so we can safely bring in those RTFs into that environment?So once that tactical officer says, "Yes. We've secured this. The threat is neutralized. There's no longer a threat in the environment where the patients are, that casualty collection point and law enforcement has secured that environment." That tactical officer will give the green light and say, "It's good now to bring in your RTS." And that's when triage is going to call over to staging and said, "Send me RTF one and RTF two." Or whatever the number of RTF teams that they need to send initially into that environment, that's already been secured by law enforcement.Transport is just standing by right now. They're listening to all the intel there. They're getting good information about how many patients there are and their criticality. And they're trying to develop their transportation plan because they can start their plan. They just can't deploy anything. How many units do they need? What's the bed count on the hospitals? What's the best routes for them to go into that scene and come out? But they're not ready to send anything in until all of that area secured and the RTFs give the green light along with the contact teams.Bill Godfrey:Yeah. So the interesting thing is that we started this topic with stay in your lane. But tactical, triage and transport is really an area where we can help each other. So if law enforcement has, let's say that in the mindset of the tactical officer is that, "We're still searching. We're still searching. We're still searching." You know, triage may have to step up and say, "Well, have you secured any areas that we can get in and begin treating some patients?"And while you stay in your lane, like tactical is focused on the law enforcement security inner perimeter, triage is focused on finding and getting treatment to those most critical patients and transport wants to get them to the hospital. So that's their lane. But we can really help each other if triage is able to maybe get tactical to focus on, "Hey, you're still searching in buildings nine, 10, and 11, what about building one where he started? Can we secure that now as a CCP? Can you help us get in there." And so there's a real partnership there I think that helps.Robert McMahan:And it doesn't stop tactical from telling triage, "What is the number count? What do they have right now?" So they can tell staging, "Go and stand up all those RTFs and have them ready, because remember we're leaning forward. We're ready to send those units in. We're not going to build them after you give that intel. We're not waiting for tactical to give the Intel to triage and say, 'Well, this is our number that we got at this location.'" And then triage turns around to staging and goes, "Oh, now let me start building our RTS." Nope. We're leaning forward. We're building them out before they're asked for, and they're ready to go in. That's all about not slowing down the process.Bill Godfrey:And that's one of the huge ways we take time off the clock.Robert McMahan:Exactly.Bill Godfrey:One of the biggest ways we can take time off the clock. Okay. So we've covered contact teams. We've talked about tactical. We've moved on to staging. Let's talk a little bit about the Rescue Task Force. Mark, what does this look like? Of course it starts to get organized and staging, but walk us through that process and if you don't mind also talk about the briefing that needs to happen as well.Mark Rhame:Yep. So as we set up our staging, and again, that's a process that we're going to identify, where is that location? Let me back up and say that for fire and EMS, we're probably going to get to a location and stage probably for law enforcement does, but can it can work either way, frankly law enforcement could get there first and set up a staging location. But here's the success in this is if you contact dispatch and tell them where you're at and make sure the other disciplines come to your location.Let's say for example, fire EMS shows up first, they establish a staging location. They should notify their dispatch where it's at, and have law enforcement come to that location. So we have a joint location. And at that location, you're going to stand up staging managers. And each discipline has to have that staging manager that controls this environment. There, we're going to build out those teams. Obviously, the priorities are going to take precedence. So if contact teams are needed, those law enforcement officers are going to go toward that direction because there's still a threat. And that it has to be neutralized or held in place.But the RTF's, when we start building those out, we're going to mix those with a discipline of fire EMS people and law enforcement. For our example, we talk about two fire EMS people and two law enforcement officers, just a medical mission that works for triage, but with those law enforcement element in that RTF, they're still communicating with the tactical side. And this is very, very important because if another threat emerges, that RTF with that law enforcement presence has to be able to take shelter somewhere, because obviously we don't want to put our fire EMS people in danger.So we're going to build those out in staging. And in staging, that's where we determine who's in charge? Who's in charge of this group and it's for our RTF's on the medical side, it's a medical mission there. It's going to be one individual in the fire EMS side that is in charge of that medical mission. And one of the law enforcement officers so we have a good radio discipline environment will be the one that talks to the tactical side. Now we've got some radio discipline. And that's where we introduce each other. We talk about how much equipment we're going to carry in there because remember we got to be lean and mean in the beginning.And then once RTF's are ready to be deployed, triage who stand there right next to tactical, and tactical will say, "It's a warm environment. The threat is neutralized." Or, "The casual collection point has been secured. You can start sending your RTF's into building nine." That's when they're going to deploy it from staging. That RTF is going to go to that location, knowing full well those fire and EMS people have a law enforcement protection envelope going with them. And that's very important that this team stays together. The wingman don't leave their crew members. We stay together. Again, being a medical mission, that RTF is reporting directly to triage. But again, we're not going to lose the communication link with the tactical side, because again, there's law enforcement officers with this RTF.And this is how we can safely duplicate some of our process because remember triage, tactics, and transport are standing right next to each other. They're talking to each other. They should have the exact same game plan and know exactly what's occurring no matter what teams are being deployed. But that RTF, being a medical mission is only working for triage and that's the mission to go in there. They're looking for those patients, they're going to start to treat them more aggressively and more advanced. And then they're going to come up with their routes of getting them out of the scene to an ambulance exchange point and get them transport off the scene and where our transport officer is going to take control.But again, that's where this whole span of control and direction from leaders within those groups are directing their own lanes and not crossing over to the other side. If you set it up this way, it should be successful and you should have a seamless or are less chaotic environment. Having the RTFs report directly to triage makes sense because it's a medical mission.Bill Godfrey:Great summary, Adam, before we leave this, can you provide the example of a typical law enforcement briefing? Let's say the four of us are about to be assigned an RTF. We've never met before. Mark and I are the fire EMS side. Robert, you and Adam are the law enforcement side. Can you lead us through that briefing real quick?Adam Pendley:Sure. And the first thing I'm going to do is offer an insurance. We are going to be moving here from staging to a known casualty collection point where there are security measures in place. When we move, you stay between the two officers. Make sure you travel light on this first movement of RTF. We're not necessarily going to be able to bring a stretcher this time. Show me what gear you're having, make sure you're able to carry it. We're going to move. We're going to move in a steady, direct way. Stay behind us. If we hear a threat, we are not going to leave you. We will find a place to shelter and we will... if the threat comes toward us, we'll address a threat, but otherwise we will allow the contact teams to address the threat. And we may have to evacuate back to a staging. But there should be no reason for that. We're moving from staging to a known casualty collection point. Do you have any questions?Mark Rhame:And Adam, on the fire and EMS side, Bill and I will determine which one of us is going to be in charge. Only one of us will talk on the radio to triage. That way we have some radio discipline, and we're going to convey that to you to make sure you understand that I'm in charge. Bill's going to be working for me and I'll be the one talking on the radio to triage.Adam Pendley:Sure. And again, the goal is you know what the medical mission is, you're hearing where the most critical patients are, you know where to go. It's my job to get you there safely.Mark Rhame:Exactly.Bill Godfrey:I'm so glad you added that last point, because that is such a critical, critical piece for folks to understand. Is the RTF is a medical mission, and the medical folks are in charge, but they don't control the movement. Law enforcement controls the movement. They control the how, they control the when, they control the speed, and they have veto authority to say, "Yeah, we ain't going there. I'm listening to the tactical radio and that's a no-go area for us."Mark Rhame:It's kind of a relationship to the fire side when we have a structure fire or any other event where we stand up a safety officer. That safety officer generally, generally, always has veto power over the incident commander. They can say, "Stop. This is not safe. We're not going to progress any farther than this." And of course, you're going to have the discussion with the incident commander. But again, that safety officer has that ability. The same thing with law enforcement on that RTF.Adam Pendley:It just popped into my head and it's worth sharing here too though that again, we may be meeting each other for the first time at staging for this particular mission. But again, law enforcement and fire EMS, we work in warm zones together all the time. And we already do this naturally. And what I mean by that again, in our jurisdictions, if we have that drive by shooting and you have two injured in the middle of the road, fire and EMS is going to naturally stage at a nearby location. Law enforcement is going to go in. Put security measures in place, either radio or escort fire EMS to that crime scene. And we're going to together, fire EMS is going to treat the patients and we're going to continue to work the scene. At that point, that is still a warm zone. It has not been converted to a cold zone investigation stage. That is a warm zone where life-saving is still taking place.Bill Godfrey:Yeah, what's the guarantee that the drive-byer isn't going to drive back by?Adam Pendley:Absolutely. And we have those security measures in place. And while I understand that many jurisdictions have invested in additional equipment for fire EMS, oddly we don't use that additional equipment in these violent roadside incidents. But because something has been labeled as an active shooter, we tend to get in our own way sometimes and trying to form up these teams, and understand that, "Look, law enforcement is here, security measures in place. We've dealt with the active threat. Let's go. Let's move in." So it's just worth pointing that out.Bill Godfrey:So, we've covered the contact team. We've covered tactical. We've covered staging. We've got a medical branch at the command post, triage and transport stood up. And now we've covered Rescue Task Force. Let's talk briefly about perimeter and how that fits. And then I want to transition a little over to the command post. Robert, tell me a little bit about that call from the command post to staging that says, "Give me a perimeter group supervisor," and how that can sometimes differ than the way law enforcement does it day to day normally with a perimeter.Robert McMahan:Perimeter group supervisor is going to take that group of officers and formally put them in places along that perimeter and harden it up, so to speak. I think kind of the difference is normally on, let's say you get a domestic where somebody flood the house, incoming units fill those perimeter assignments based on where they're coming from and what they think good locations are. But this is a little more formal process that's a little more designed to contain that bigger incident and provide that security measure that we need in place so that we can clearly identify those warm zones from the cold zones. The perimeter group is not working for tactical. They're working for the law enforcement branch supervisor, and that's an important distinction. Again, keeping in your lanes and so people know who they're answering to, and have that clear mission and clear boss to get orders from.Bill Godfrey:Just to clarify and make sure I'm saying this right. So perimeter is working for law enforcement branches at the command post, not working for tactical. So they work in conjunction with each other, but tactical is not responsible in any way for the perimeter.Robert McMahan:That's correct.Adam Pendley:Right. So just to extend on that, it's a big chunk of the incident command is responsible for, but they can also take it off their plate. They can ask staging to assign a perimeter group supervisor, and based on the number of resources that are available at that time, that person is now responsible for creating a perimeter. Command or the law enforcement branch director that's working in the command post, should not be leaning over a map trying to do X's and O's for a perimeter. That's too much in the weeds. You need to delegate that.I also heard somebody express it this way one time, which I think is a really good way to understand why it's a command function. You want to create a crisis Island. So you want to create a perimeter that keeps the inner perimeter safe, if you will, for tactical, triage and transport to do their job. So you want to isolate it so it doesn't get interference from anyone coming in from the outside, and it also doesn't get any potential suspects, any potential injured folks that need care from necessarily leaving the crisis site unless they're addressed with the resources that they need.Bill Godfrey:Because I hear you guys talk about the inner perimeter and the outer perimeter, so we're actually talking about two different perimeters, all reporting to the perimeter group supervisor.Adam Pendley:Yes.Bill Godfrey:Is it fair to say that, I'm probably overly generalizing this, that the inner perimeter's main job is to contain and capture anything coming out and the outer perimeters job is, yeah, a secondary catch point. But mainly it's to isolate the incident and keep people from coming in that we don't want in. Is that fair?Adam Pendley:Yes. That's the exact way I would describe it.Robert McMahan:Yeah. And it helps control the ingress and egress of vehicles, equipment, media, all those kinds of things, even parents that are trying to get to the school and pick up their kid. We want them to go to certain places too. There's a lot of reasons for that control. You can only imagine the number of people that are going to start flocking on that thing once information starts getting out about the incident.Bill Godfrey:Okay, fantastic. So we've covered contact teams, tactical, staging, triage, transport, Rescue Task Force, perimeter. Let's jump over to the command post and talk about medical branch, law enforcement branch, and the incident commander. Just in our training today, Adam, you were in the command post as the command post coach. Talk a little bit about those roles and what their lanes are.Adam Pendley:Sure, absolutely. So like Mark mentioned earlier, in these types of violent incidents, police, fire and EMS will all be dispatched at the same time. And we know that those initial law enforcement officers are going to race to the scene. And we expect that ranking fire EMS supervisor to understand that they are going to need to take over the medical branch. That is the position they're going to request. And leaning forward, they're hopefully going to find a good location for the command post and ensure that they link up with that first arriving law enforcement supervisor.So we know that tactical can be the fifth man, and it can be almost any rank. But that first arriving law enforcement supervisor is going-Bill Godfrey:After the fifth man.Adam Pendley:... after the fifth man, is going to hopefully go to that command post location. And not, hopefully we need to ensure that they go to the command post location and verbally brief with the medical branch and start that shoulder to shoulder communication at the command post. And that first arriving law enforcement supervisor after fifth man, ultimately is the incident commander, gets a briefing from tactical and start speaking to medical branch about resource needs, about the direction the incident is going, the location for these things. And then they start listening for benchmarks. And it's key to understand that command is not going to go down range and take over from anyone that's doing a job down range. That takes up too much time. And it takes people that have situational awareness out of the game. You're going to add a layer.Keep tactical, triage and transport doing what they're doing, ensure that they have what they need and that it's getting done. So you're checking off that that benchmark is happening and then-Bill Godfrey:They're closer to the problem. So they're in a better position with better information to make those decisions about that downrange piece?Adam Pendley:...Absolutely. Right. So you're going to waste time and you're going to lose situational awareness if you go too far and you try to take over the work that's already happening. Because you also have to keep in mind at the command post, that a lot more stuff is coming. A lot more tasks have to be done. A lot more outward things need to be considered.And one of the ways I like to phrase it is, tactical, triage and transport is working on what's happening now. The command post should be working on what's happening next. So that first law enforcement supervisor gets their briefing. They become the incident commander. And then as in most organizations, there is going to be another higher ranking law enforcement supervisor who's going to arrive. They may be on call. They may be in the office, but somebody else is coming. And that second law enforcement supervisor will ultimately come to the command post as well. Get a face-to-face briefing and we'll assume command.But here's the key. Again, you're not replacing that first law enforcement supervisor. That first law enforcement supervisor now becomes the law enforcement branch. You have a law enforcement branch, a medical branch, and now you have an incident commander who now has a team working for him or her. And that incident commander is able to remain the thinker, if you will. The one who has to make decisions in the command post and medical branch will continue to answer for medical, continue talking to triage and transport, those entities that are working for medical branch.Law enforcement branch will continue to communicate with the perimeter group and continue to communicate with tactical. And the incident commander, hopefully, is just making decisions with the team and not trying to get into the weeds. Because, now that incident commander is looking forward to additional things like assigning a PIO, getting intelligence section started, dealing with elected officials worrying about all the other stuff that's about to come down on the command post. So, if you build this command post right, you have an incident commander who's able to keep their head up out of the mud, make good decisions while having a team that is actually managing the incident.Bill Godfrey:I think that's a fantastic synopsis. Mark, we've got everything built out, command structures in place. Now the police chief, the fire chief, the sheriff show up, they want to establish a unified command. It's a good move. How does that work? What does that look like? Who changes positions?Mark Rhame:Like all these positions, we're going to get a briefing. So those leaders are going to get to the command post. They're going to get a briefing from the people who are already been there and established. And then they're going to create that unified command environment. But they're going to point that person who was the incident commander to the operational section chief, and allow them to continue to run the scene while the unified command now talks about or looks at planning issues and down the road issues commanding the entire environment, but allowing those people who are already there to continue their jobs. They're not going to go away. They're going to maintain their positions. A title may change from incident commander to operational section chief, but their job and their role is exactly.Bill Godfrey:And they continue to work through medical branch, law enforcement, branch, and nothing down range changes or is affected.Mark Rhame:Exactly.Bill Godfrey:This is a change just within the command post.Mark Rhame:Exactly.Adam Pendley:Absolutely. Usually, when I'm in the command post, I even encourage that same person to talk on the radio. So when someone down range is calling command, it can still be the operation section chief or the law enforcement branch that's answering for the command post because they're working together. The worst thing that you see happen in a command post environment is that you have those high ranking chiefs and directors that are trying to talk on the radio. When I coach the command post, I usually even try to take their radio away from them. They cannot concentrate on the constant radio chatter and still try to think about those issues that are coming towards them from down the road. They have to be able to think about those issues and let the team continue to manage the incident. That's the only way to cut down the chaos in the command post.Bill Godfrey:Okay. So to recap us. We got the contact teams. We've got tactical stood up, staging, triage, and transport are in place. We get our Rescue Task Forces, they're moving down range. We've got a law enforcement branch, a medical branch working at the command post. They're talking to the operations section chief, if we've moved a unified command, otherwise they're just talking to the incident commander, and then we've got unified command.The one piece that we have not talked about, which is where it starts and is arguably the most important part of this is dispatch. And Robert, I know this is a passion for you. So tell us a little bit about that key role of dispatch at the beginning of the incident and then how they can save us from the things that we always forget.Robert McMahan:Yeah. I always include dispatch in our trainings, whatever we're doing. Whether it's active shooter or just moving, running and gun as law enforcement calls it. But dispatch can save us a lot of times if they're aware of the functions and things that need set up. And if they don't see it, ask for it. My favorite example of that is, tactical is supposed to set the staging area. And I tell my dispatchers, "If you haven't heard where that staging area is supposed to be set right away by tactical, ask them. 'Where would you like to set the staging area? Where would you like to set the incident command post?'" They can help us lean forward and get some of these things done right away.Adam Pendley:So as dispatchers, I'm sorry, in day-to-day work, they answer everything. So as law enforcement arrives, even as fire EMS arrives, there's a lot of communication back and forth with dispatch. Once we get the structure in place and we have the lanes built and people are communicating to tactical, and to command, and to medical branch, dispatch doesn't have the traditional role anymore. They're still copying. They're going to be documenting a lot in CAD, but the actual communication and decision-making is going to be happening at the structure that we've put in place at the scene.But here's the trick. There are still going to be new information coming in. Like there's still delayed calls. There's reports of suspicious people. There's reports of possible suspects-Bill Godfrey:Flood of 911Adam Pendley:...a flood of 911 calls that will continue for hours. People looking for family members and all those sorts of things. Those types of calls are now directed to command. And here's the good part for dispatch. Day-to-day they have to remember who's in charge of a certain part of the incident based on their call number and the things that we do day-to-day. Once we set the structure in place, "Dispatch to command, I'm getting a report of this. Dispatch to command, We need a call on this."Mark Rhame:And Robert, you hit the nail on the head in regard to dispatch being involved in training. We've been to so many sites where dispatchers are so excluded from training, and policy meetings, and talk about tactics and stuff like that, that they have no clue what's going on. And frankly, they're blind to what we're trying to accomplish. But then you see those dispatchers who were involved in training from day one. They go out there and they do ride a longs. Maybe they sit down with the incident commanders every once in a while and talk about what they're trying to achieve, what their goals are. And you see that they are so far ahead of the curve when we talk about having dispatchers making sure that we are getting the job done. Maybe they have their electronic checklist in front of them, or they're checking them off and reminding the scenes that, "You didn't get that done." Or, "Where's that location at?" Which is probably more politically correct on the radio, that, "You didn't get it done," because obviously that doesn't sound good.But the bottom line is that the dispatchers save us. I mean, they save us a lot. And here's the amazing thing. Even as an incident commander, I don't know how many times I'd have the dispatcher supervisor call me up when things sort of settled down and sort of give me a briefing of what I missed. Because they knew I missed something. Because I didn't reply, "This happened and did you catch that?" Because our dispatchers save us all the time, but you got to include them in the very beginning when we start talking about training.Bill Godfrey:I think that that is spot on. Just today we were doing a training class and the area that we were training was largely a rural area. Now it was mixed. There was a bunch of jurisdictions, but largely rural. And our dispatchers were all from a fairly small dispatch center that only has two people on. And they're going to get inundated and overloaded. I thought the most interesting question that came up was, we know a lot of times we've got our main channel, that's on a trunk or a repeater or something along those lines, but they've got these fireground channels or the law enforcement has these tactical channels, these talk around channels, local channels that they go to. And I said, "Well, do you guys monitor those?" "No." "Do you have the ability to monitor them?" "No." "Okay. So what's the plan on an active shooter? Is everybody going to stay on main or are you guys going to switch to these tactical channels and they're going to reach back to you?"And the three dispatchers said, "We have no idea. We don't really know what would happen." And then we brought that up in the debrief and you've got two chiefs of police and the sheriff from the area that we're in there and said, "That's a gap, and we need to have a conversation about that and have a plan that's going to work for our community within the limits of what their radio system would do." It is amazing. It is amazing, amazing, amazing what you can accomplish to further your mission by including everybody in training across the disciplines.Robert, Adam, Mark, thank you so much for being here today. I know we ran a little bit long folks. Sorry about that. Our normal target is about 30 minutes, but we hope you enjoyed the podcast. If you haven't subscribed, please click the subscribe button. If you've got some questions or suggestions, please send us whatever questions, suggestions you have, info@c3pathways.com. On behalf of the instructors, thank you for taking the time and until next time, stay safe.

Episode 28: Importance of the Public Information OfficerA discussion about the Public Information Officer and why it is critical in Active Shooter Event ResponseBill Godfrey:Welcome back to our next podcast. Today's topic, we are going to talk about the public information officer and the role of media and press briefings and social media, oh my, in an active shooter event. Thanks for joining us. My name is Bill Godfrey. I'm the host of the podcast. One of the instructors here at C3 Pathways. I've got, joining me today, three of the other instructors, Harry Jimenez.Harry Jimenez:Hello, Bill. Thank you for having me.Bill Godfrey:Thanks, Harry, for being here. I appreciate it. And we've got Adam Pendley. Adam, thanks for being here today.Adam Pendley:Thank you. Glad to be here.Bill Godfrey:And of course, somebody that's familiar to our audience, Mark Rhame. Mark, thanks for coming back in.Mark Rhame:Thank you for having me.Bill Godfrey:So years ago, when we first started this process and began working on active shooter incident management and actually for several years of the first generation to the checklist, PIO wasn't on it. And we finally hit a point where we were like ... And the reason for that was ... I guess, I should explain that. The reason was the checklist was predominantly focused around those actions that you needed to tend to in the first 20 to 30 minutes. And we just, at the time, didn't see PIO as being one of those immediate actions that was necessary. But this wonderful little thing called social media changed all of that. And number of years ago, we added PIO as one of the early actions. And Adam, if I remember correctly, you had an active shooter event that you were on where social media played a huge issue very early on in the incident. Can you tell us a little bit about that?Adam Pendley:Sure. The incident itself actually involved an online gaming event. So the shooting was actually streamed live as part of the event. Of course, that live feed went silent very quickly. But then immediately thereafter, hundreds, if not thousands of people that were watching this event started tweeting and commenting about what they just saw. So we had information making it out to the mainstream media about an incident that occurred at this event even as first responders were arriving on the scene initially.It was a very exact example of how you're already behind the information curve when you're on scene. With that event not only being streamed live with social media, but like all events, everyone carries a phone. Kids and adults that are at these scenes. They see things, their live streaming. And I think we just saw that again recently in one of the recent active shooter events that there was a young man that was streaming live as law enforcement was arriving. So there's a lot of information that is already being broadcast, that is already being twisted, that is already behind what the real information that a law enforcement needs to get out quickly.Bill Godfrey:And while that's a great example of it happening and there may be some listeners that are thinking, “Okay, yeah, but that's a one-off. You're not going to typically have a livestream event, sporting event or some sort of venue where you've already got press and media and everything else.” But Harry, Mark, I'm sorry, yeah, Harry, Mark, Adam, when we think about school events, you got typical school size, what? 500, 1,000 kids, pretty easy, just about everywhere, whether it's elementary or high school, and almost all of them walking around with cell phones. An event goes down, a lockdown goes down ... I don't know, my daughter certainly ... My youngest daughter who's finishing up high school certainly has left me with the impression that they know the difference when it's a drill and when it's not. And I got to imagine the amount of traffic that goes out. What do you guys think? Is that pretty reasonable issue?Harry Jimenez:Absolutely. We've seen it in the recent school shootings. It just takes a minute to realize that you have videos of sounds of the shooting, the actions inside the classrooms, and even the evacuation when police arrive. All of this have been captured on videos and have been uploaded in multiple social medias throughout the last couple of years. And once again, like you said, in the beginning, when we put together this checklist, social media was not as prevalent as it's been in the last, you call it, last 10 years. There's been an explosion, growth exponentially in the multiple, different venues.Mark Rhame:And I agree. I mean, the majority of my career there was a no cell phone. No one carried a phone around with them. So when an event occurred, there was no instantaneous messaging to their loved ones or friends telling them something just occurred at this location. And I'm not law enforcement, I'm Fire EMS, But I've see it when you have events nowadays when it gets flooded. The scene gets flooded with civilians responding to their loved ones. They are curious. Maybe they want to be that remote media person so they can post it on their own blog. We're seeing that flood of people coming to the scene. Where in the past, we probably didn't worry about that in the initial 15-20 minutes because there wasn't that impact. It didn't occur.So this is a new world that we're dealing with in the last 10-15 years with these cell phone, live feeds. And law enforcement have to set up their parameters very, very quickly. Otherwise, their scenes' going to get flooded and it's going to be very difficult to control.Bill Godfrey:So I think we've done a pretty good job of explaining the reason, the need. You can't control this. You can't stop it. There's no policing it. You're not going to prevent. It is going to be out there and out of control before you even get your first arriving units on scene. You might get two or three on scene, but it's going to be out there really, really fast and you're going to have to contend with it. So I think we've made our case there.Let's talk a little bit how to manage this. Now, of course, in the ICS system, the public information officer is part of the command staff, reporting to the incident commander. Now, our recommendation is that when you stand up that position, you actually stand them up as a lead PIO to organize a JIC, a Joint Information Center.Harry, talk a little bit about your experience from the tragic one you dealt with and give people a sense of the scope of the media and why it can't just be one PIO.Harry Jimenez:Thank you, Bill. The incident Bill's speaking about is Sutherland Springs shooting in November 2017. In the initial hours, being in the rural area, we have the local media. Couple of channels showed up. People that you deal with mostly, you know them. Immediately, they basically made it all the way to the crime scene. It took a little bit of conversation and because you know them, they're willing to work with you and move a little far away and allow you to create a parameter and secure that crime scene.However, after the third hour, then you start getting a lot of older news outlet. Some of them national outlets. And those national outlets can't care less about your local community. They do not care about your crime scene. They do not care about the local community or how they feel or what's happening. They want a shot. They want to be able to interview somebody. They're going to be pushing a microphone in front of people and-Bill Godfrey:They want their ratingHarry Jimenez:They want their ratings. And like Mark was saying, if you don't set up that parameter fast in the initial time, you're never going to be able to gain it again. We saw in Sutherland Springs, by the time that we have our number four, we were almost basically pushing back two dozen cameras and reporters.By the time that we were able to set up the first official press conference in which we were ready with several public information officer from some of the public officials, they bring their own public information officers, we have to get everybody inside the location, set up a briefing, determine the message that we wanted to get out as incident command, as law enforcement to the community. And once you agree over that message and control the information. You have to feed the beast, right? You have to give them something, but you have to be careful what you give them because whatever piece of information you give to the press, they're going to run with that. And you have to be accurate, you have to be knowledgeable of what you're saying, and you don't want to damage the investigation.Then it comes the twist. In our case was the governor's office calling saying, “Governor Abbott's going to show up.” Now, you have to stop all that movement and put the 50 or 60 news outlet that now you have there and try to find a location that you can move them away from your crime scene to be able to have that conversation. Not an easy task. It takes a lot of up of political capital, if you may. You have to ask for a lot of favors. And sometimes, you have to have a good state troopers that push back that parameter.Adam Pendley:Sure. Bill, the thing that's interesting here is we've described how far behind you are even before the incident has gotten underway. And then Harry's talking about how big it's going to get. And so I think the interesting thing that jurisdictions need to consider is, what do you do in that immediate, to get ahead of it quickly? And I think if you take something from the ASIM program that we teach. If you have a scripted message that you can train multiple people on how to give out that information, that has standard language, a standard quick numbers, standard tactical information. Meaning, strategy for us. Where do we want people to go? Where is reunification? Where is the media briefing location?So some standard things that are in a script that whether it's Sunday morning, like in Sutherland Springs, 1:00 o'clock in the morning for a late night supermarket shooting, or any other time in between, you may be waiting for your PIOs to get there and you need to get something out quickly. So I think developing a quick script that any on duty supervisor or even anyone from your partner agencies, Fire EMS can get out quickly so you're ... Stop the gap between, you're already behind the curve and onslaught that you're about to see.Bill Godfrey:Mark, something Adam mentioned, with the timelines and getting the message out. Talk a little bit about the importance and the challenge of pulling together that initial briefing.Mark Rhame:I would say that it has to do with how critical that environment is. Because, of course, let me revert back to my fire rescue environment, my history of my time on the job full time, is that we were all about that critical message going out very, very quickly. Because if you don't, what's going to happen is ... I mean, the media is going to seek other sources of that information, and most of it's wrong. And the problem then is your spending a lot of your time beyond that, correcting the message they sent out. So if you can get ahead of that curve, get that message out quickly.I can tell you historically, for the department that I spend the majority of my time in, we up trained or trained all of our battalion chiefs and above, our combat troops to do that initial message while they were still on the scene. We did not want them to pack up and go home without meeting with the media that arrived on that scene and have that battalion chief to run that scene or assistant chief to run that scene and give the initial message. Basically, we used a template.They were trained on what that message should be and should not be, what the information you don't want to give them initially, but that template gave them enough information. And it was so successful that after a while the media was using our basically first briefing verbatim when they published it. When you see that, you're going, “Well, it's working.” Because they didn't vary from what we were saying.Harry Jimenez:Absolutely. Having a template saves you a headache. It keeps you on on topic. It keeps you on the theme. It keeps you with the information that you want to provide, but at the same time, allows you to protect the investigation. If you do not give anything to the press, they're going to fill the gaps with whatever they want. So this is a unique opportunity for first responders to provide the message that we want out.One of them, “The scene is safe. Stay away from this area.” Reunification, we want to tell them, “Don't come here. Don't look for your loved ones or your friends in this location. Here's the other location. Here's the alternate location where we're going to have reunification. Here's the phone number to call. If you want to help, go to this location and provide your help there.” There's going to be an outpouring of support, but you don't want all these people converging in your crime scene. You already have hundreds of cops and first responders that are going to show up. And depending on what the location, like Adam was saying, if it's a school or it's some kind of a function, there's going to be already a lot of people there and they're going to be bystanders. So you want to be able to use that. That's the template.There is a video, which if you have the time and you want to see how not to conduct a press conference is after the Fort Hood shooting, the commanding officer on that base decided to do the press. And instead of sticking to a information and a template, he just went off the cuff. And hour and a half later, he was still talking and he was just all over the place. And it's a terrible, terrible thing to do because you may have affected negatively a lot of people including people that didn't know that their loved ones were injured.Mark Rhame:But I'll give you the flip side of that. If you don't tell the press or the media some initial information, they're going to seek out their own information. And let me give you an example. And this isn't an active shooter, but it was a structure fire that weighed a fatality. And the initial engine company arrived, hooked up to the hydrant, laid out their line, and it was dry because the hydrant was dead. Now, the crew didn't know this. Obviously, they wouldn't have laid into that hydrant, but the incident commander chose not to talk to the media because of that incident, that hydrant being dead and there was a fatality at this structure fire.The press took that on their own, started interviewing the bystanders, the local residents, and created their own story. And we spent days, not only trying to correct that initial 5-10 seconds media blast. It was on the lead story for the next couple days. But we had to address every single politician now that thought that we failed in our mission when in fact it wasn't our fault. It was actually the utility that shut down that hydrant. We just weren't aware of it. So if you're not ahead of the curve, you're going to be behind and it's probably going to be days where you correct that issue.Bill Godfrey:We talked a little bit about the template and as I think Adam mentioned, we have one that we cover in the ASIM class. Adam, I'm going to ask you to role play this with me. I'm going to read off the template as if I'm PIO and then let you do the part of the incident commander.Hello, I'm Bill Godfrey, public information officer for this incident. Names and titles of the speakers will be provided in written form after the briefing. Before we start, let me stress that all information we are about to discuss is preliminary and subject to change. Again, this is an ongoing investigation. Everything is preliminary and subject to change.At approximately 1:30 today, one suspect began shooting multiple people at the First Street Mall. We have one suspect who was neutralized. There is no active threat at the scene. We want everyone to avoid the First Street Mall area. At this time, we have approximately two dead, five injured, and more than a hundred survivors. We are working hard to reunite survivors with loved ones and provide information to families as quickly as possible. This is a complex incident and it's going to take time. We have survivors assistance en route to aid survivors. Investigators have begun their work to understand what happened. We do not believe other assailants are at large. We are investigating whether anyone else was involved in the incident, but we do not believe other assailants are at large. We will release updates on the investigation as approved by the incident commander. I would like to introduce the Incident Commander, Adam Pendley, who will briefly answer a few of your questions.Adam Pendley:Our community has experienced a tragedy today. This is an extremely difficult time to families, to survivors, and the responders. We are heartbroken, but as responders we have important duties ahead of us. We must secure the scene, provide quick and accurate information to those affected, thoroughly investigate the incident, and begin the recovery process. There is a lot of work to do, so I am only going to take a few questions.Bill Godfrey:And Mark and Harry, I'm going to ask you guys to shout, or not shout in the mics. We don't want to hurt anybody's ears. But ask Adam the questions as you would normally do in training, and then I'm going to eventually cut that off.Mark Rhame:I've got a question for you. Is there any other threats in the city that you're aware of?Adam Pendley:We are not aware of any additional threats at this time. We know this scene is safe, but we do not have any reason to believe there are additional threats at this time.Harry Jimenez:We heard that there were some casualties. How many people died and were there any injured? Were they taken to the hospital? Which hospitals?Adam Pendley:We are not going to release which hospitals at this time, but there are two dead and five injured at this time. And again, we are working to get the best information possible to those families as quickly as possible.Mark Rhame:What's the name of the shooter and what was his motivation? Why did he do this? And is there any other people that he's been working with that you're aware of?Adam Pendley:Most of that information is still under investigation and not able to be released at this time.Harry Jimenez:Yes. We would like to know, was an AR-15 used and was this weapon legal?Bill Godfrey:Okay, that's all we have time for. I'm going to cut off our press conference. Our Incident Commander is still very busy. We're early in the incident. He needs to get back to the command post. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your time. We'll be back in 30 minutes with an update. We'll give you more then. And that's it.That's an example from our template that we have in the class, where we would typically do that preliminary read in. Now, sometimes, you may not be able to get the incident commander to the podium with you, but I will tell you, it only takes a few minutes. They don't need to take a lot of questions but just to show that face and have that power team between the public information officer, and then somebody representing the incident commander if it's not the incident commander himself. Maybe the deputy incident commander, but put a face to it let. Let the PIO manage the press and know when to cut it off. That's the biggest thing that we see in training in a regular bid is you get somebody that gets out there, they a misstep, they misspeak, they get themselves into trouble.Adam Pendley:One of the things that on that note that I have found to be very helpful is again, in the same template, there is a list of commonly asked questions and how to respond because no comment is bad. There are the same number of general questions that the media will typically ask of these types of events. And so it's okay to be honest and straightforward and say, “That information is still under investigation, we are not going to release it at this time.” As opposed to no comment. That looks evasive. So it's very helpful to also script out some commonly asked questions.Bill Godfrey:Yeah. And we've actually done that as well. I was just going to say, Adam, that's a perfect segue into this. Let's talk a little bit about some of the frequently asked questions that we heat at these things. Harry, do any of them stick out in your mind from your experience?Harry Jimenez:Usually they want to know name and address of the shooter, anybody that helped him. And then after that first part, I call them, they go into the crazy, which is the type of weapon that was used. Was his weapon acquired legally? Do we know where it was purchased? And then more bizarre are the ones that go into, “Oh, we're going to talk about Second Amendment issues here.” And there's no way to win on those. So those usually stick out.Mark Rhame:Yeah. That's why I think the PIO managers got to do their job by briefing that incident commander, and making sure they know that there's going to be some hot topic questions they got to be prepared for. It maybe that it's still under investigation, as Adam said. But again, what's the hot topic right now? Is it immigration? Is it gun control? All that sort of stuff is probably going to be surfaced. And as a PIO manager, you got to be prepared to hook that person or have a scripted response ready for them, because that's their job. They should be seeing the social media trends, what's being asked out there. They should be seeing people actually blogging right now about that incident you're going to address, and you got to be prepared for those answers, because they're going to ask them. They're going to give you those questions that you don't want to respond to and you got to figure out how are you going to respond to it.Bill Godfrey:Yeah. One of the most important pieces of advice I had a pre-seasoned reporter give me one time, talking about doing press briefings. They said number one ... Well, first they said ... I'll deny telling you any of this if you ever say it. Then they said, number one, you do not have to accept the question as it was asked or posed by the reporter. You do not have to accept that posit. Because often, they will structure question in a way where it's a got you question no matter. For an example, “When did you quit beating your wife?” There's no way to win that. And so just because they asked the question, you don't have to answer it.And then of course, I like what the politicians do. They don't really care what question you ask, “Oh, I'm so glad. You should have asked the question that I wanted you ask, so that's what I'm going to answer.” And the next thing, you're sitting there, looking at them going, “Wait a minute, that has nothing to do with what I asked.” Well, you know what? That's that's sometimes how you have to handle these things, know where to pivot.But a couple of the ones that stick on my mind that I think come up often is, “Have you identified the suspect?” We've got three answers there and I kind of want to walk through these and I want take a second to talk about one of them. The one answer is, “We are working on it.” Or, “It's under investigation.” Another answer is, “Yes, but we're not releasing that information yet.” Don't leave them any place to go. And then the third one, and this is one I'd like to take a minute to talk about why. The answer is, “Yes, we will provide that information to you however, we will not give one ounce of notoriety to the suspect by using their name in our briefings. We ask that you join us in preventing that notoriety by minimizing your use of the suspect's name in your reporting.”Now, we all, sitting around the table, know why that is, but let's talk about that a little bit. Harry, what's the history behind that?Harry Jimenez:Absolutely. What we see every time that we have one of these events that hurts a community, we have the press immediately start broadcasting the name of the suspect, of the shooter. First of all, you're giving them what they want, the attention. Many of them, that's what they want. They're doing it for the attention. And number two, you have the copycat. What we have seen is every time that we have one of these incidents, you have the potential of other individuals just looking at how much attention and press and the name, glorifying the actions. That might be just the little bit of push that they needed to actually go and do what they've been thinking about doing.Adam Pendley:Sure. And we've seen from previous incidents that some of these shooters have expressed the idea that they wanted to outdo ones that have come before. And so it's that recognition that negatively reinforces what they intend to do. But I think in addition to that, every time a survivor hears that person's name again, they get re-injured from the original attack. And that's just what the attacker wanted, is to put that hurt out there. And if we can, in any way, intercept that, I think it's not only our duty as first responders, but it's also our duty to ask the media to honor that.Bill Godfrey:Agree. Let's pivot to a slightly different topic. Another favorite question that seems to come up a lot is, “Was this terrorism?” It's interesting, the connotation that that takes on. I know my wife and I have this rather fruitless discussion almost every time it comes up. “Oh, that was terrorism.” Well, no, it's not quite that simple. Here's the answer we have for, was it terrorism?Understand for law enforcement, terrorism has a specific legal definition. A determination of terrorism is made by the Attorney General, not by local law enforcement. We will not speculate. Next question.Harry Jimenez:And that is outstanding because I'm going to mention the most recent incident that we have. Someone rammed into one of the barriers in the Capitol, in the U.S. Capitol. It was immediate that the name was released. Immediately, the press went to do what? Google search of the individual; Facebook account, snapshot of whatever the person was posting. And before the casualties were removed from the area, they were already talking about motives and the attribute motive on the fly. Just because a posting or a name or-Bill Godfrey:You mean they were speculating?Harry Jimenez:Exactly. Go figure. The press will never do that. That doesn't help anyone. This is just completely bizarre because they take a lot of liberties writing about what it is, but if you sit down and talk to some of the reporters and ask them, “Can you define terrorism for me according to the Attorney General of the United States?” They're not able to.Adam Pendley:And on top of that, if you are too quick to call it terrorism and then those agencies that are legally responsible to investigate terrorism are unable to take the case because it does not meet their definition, now you have created a conflict that didn't need to be there.Bill Godfrey:And you mentioned the definition of terrorism. That's another one in our FAQ. Terrorism is defined in the Code of Federal Regulations as “The unlawful use of force and violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof in furtherance of political or social objectives.” Which is kind of interesting when you think a lot about what's going on the last year and a half for that definition, but I don't want to linger there.Mark, any of the questions or FAQs that kind of stick out in your mind?Mark Rhame:I think the thing that gets me when we talk about it or I see something on the media, we talked about this in class, is that we're good I think, at controlling our own environment. If you're the manager of the PIO, you're the lead JIC manager and you're briefing your leadership team, if they're going to get in front of microphone of what you should say and what you shouldn't say. Of course, they can go their own their path, is when you get the elected official up there, and Bill, you talked about that earlier, that goes down their own path. And then you're you're sitting there going, “I'm going to be spending days trying to correct this because that is not what occurred. That is not what we're dealing with.”Again, I think it's very important that JIC manager, that lead PIO really get with your people and try to establish kind of that rules, how we're going to play this game. Again, the incident commander could take their own path. They really can overrule you and say, “No, that's not what I'm going to say.” And again, the politicians are going to try to go down the path that pads their side, if you will, depending if they're on the left or the right. They're going to pad their side and take their direction. But again as that lead manager of the PIO, you really need to do your job and try to control that environment the best you can.Bill Godfrey:Absolutely. And so I want to come back to dealing with the elected officials and the briefings on that. Before I do that though, I want to share with the group, Mark and I have since learned this for a while back, but something that came a little surprise to us as Fire EMS folks, is that there is information that law enforcement will deliberately withhold. I don't mean they'll just say, “We're not discussing that.” They won't even acknowledge that they know or aware of things and will purposefully sensor, if you will, what is allowed to be released and be briefed. Adam, can you talk a little bit about that kind of stuff and why that is?Adam Pendley:Sure. So if there are outstanding suspects, the manner of injury may be part of the case that only the shooter would know. And sometimes, we wouldn't release that. And then of course, from a Fire EMS perspective, talking about the nature or number of gunshot wounds might just seem like a commonly released information and it interferes with the law enforcement investigation. So that's a real issue, but that comes back to the idea of trying to quickly establish a joint information center where you have all agencies speaking one voice.Harry Jimenez:And that's very important, Adam. And you mentioned before that we have to be honest working on passing information to the press, but it has to be accurate. It has to be timely. And if we make a mistake, we have to correct it immediately. But it's important to prepare everyone. It doesn't matter what their rank is. This is one of those situations where somebody in that JIC has to take that position of, “Here's the information. Incident Commander, you're going to approve this.” And if the incident commander doesn't approve it, it doesn't go out. And those are the inner battles. This is the reason why we recommend that you take all the public information officers from each of the entities, be it the [inaudible 00:33:09] entities, the state and locals, all the politicians. Bring them inside a location away from the command post and hash it out, have that conversation. Make sure there's an understanding. And then there's only one statement, one voice, one message, approved.Bill Godfrey:And let me clarify, he's saying put them into a room and lock the door and don't let them come out until they all agree to a message that the incident commander has approved, that they're all going to go from. Adam, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt you.Adam Pendley:No, that's okay. And I think that's also important to have that conversation before the critical incident happens. Because once emotion takes over, the elected official for that area is going to want to release information because they want to show that they're engaged and responsive, but they need to understand that it's important for them to work with the one voice concept as well.Bill Godfrey:And Mark, that brings ... Go ahead.Mark Rhame:But you also don't want to alienate those people even though they have their own message. Because if you alienate them, they're going to go ahead and give their own message. So somehow you got to bring them into the fold and get them involved in that common message. Because otherwise, you're going to be competing messages from different entities that you didn't bring in. Like Harry was saying earlier, you got to bring them together. You got to come up with that common message that's going to go out in the field, especially that initial one.Harry Jimenez:And what I have done in the past is I make sure that, manage the egos, right? I get everybody involved. Once we have the PIOs agreeing on the message, we make sure that the one person talking, maybe the most senior ranking individual or if it's law enforcement, whoever has the jurisdiction, and then stand right behind them or around that person to wrestle those politicians, those city officials, county officials. So everybody has an opportunity to be in front of the camera, but you have one person talking. In that way, that balances out what Mark was saying, trying to acknowledge, yes, you're important, yes, you have a message to say, but everybody is together. Just the fact that you're standing next to that individual talking, it's telling the press, “We're all in this together.”Bill Godfrey:And that brings me back to where I was going before, when you talked about briefing the elected officials, whether that private briefing to the elected official is done by the liaison or done by the PIO, what do you share with them? And here's how the conversation typically goes, “How many dead are there?” “No, we're not disclosing that.” “I know. I won't say it. How many dead are there?” “Well, we're not disclosing that.” “I understand that, Chief. I want to know how many dead and how many kids are involved. I understand. I'm not going to discuss it at the press briefing. I'm not going to disclose that.” And then you tell them, and then the next thing you know is it comes out.And I will say honestly, I don't think it comes out deliberately. I don't think they do that deliberately. It's stressful. You stand up in front of that podium with all those bright lights snapping on and people shouting questions at you and all the noise. It's very easy to get rattled and confused. But if they know, it's going to come out. And so the incident commander ultimately ends up needing to make a decision of, are we going to hold the hard line and not tell them no matter what? Which can have some downstream repercussions. Or, are we going to go ahead and disclose that and then take the chance that, like Mark said, we're going to have different message just come out and things like that?So I'd like to hear each of your thoughts and opinions on that. Mark, why don't we start with you and we'll go around the table?Mark Rhame:It's an incredibly emotional press conference. I mean, frankly, for any one of us, especially if you were on the scene initially and were involved in that carnage, involved in that active shooter environment, and especially ... I always go relate back to kids for some reason. That's that thing that clicks. But when you see someone that is young in age that has been taken before their time, that's difficult to get there in front of a microphone much less in a normal situation where you're standing in front of the press. That's that emotional trigger that may be very difficult to handle.But when you're talking to a politician or some other leadership and you're still having a scene that's under investigation and you're trying to put all the pieces together and you're not ready to release that information, my personal opinion is, and it's kind of easy for me to say this, sitting in front of microphone in this sterile environment, but you don't release the information to him. Because as you said, Bill, more likely they're going to slip up or they're going to tell when their staff members, and guess what? That staff member has a friend in the media that it's going to get released. That unknown, reliable source that they're starting to quote.So if you don't want it released, don't tell anyone. You know, “It's still under investigation.” You know, “We're following our policy.” And here's a little thing you can do for your politicians and of course, you'll have to play everyone exactly the same is that, “Sir, ma'am, you're my favorite, you're going to be the first person I'm going to call. You're that person I'm going to call first because I know you're going to get the right statement out and- ”Bill Godfrey:You never did that, did you?Mark Rhame:No, not at all. Then of course, you call them all at the same time, put them on speakerphone, and you know.Harry Jimenez:This cannot be the first time that you're saying this.Bill Godfrey:Adam?Adam Pendley:Sure. And I think in that conversation, you may have to go one step further and say, “The reunification and the care that the next of kin needs takes time and I think it's unfair to release information to others before we take care of them.” And so I think if you're able to give an elected official that one more true, not sentimental, but the true heartfelt reason why that information should not be released right now, I think that might be able to defuse that conversation.Bill Godfrey:I like that. It's kind of an emotional speaking point to come back to that even they could repeat ...Adam Pendley:Right.Bill Godfrey:...to say why they're not. Harry?Harry Jimenez:For me, I actually have to appeal to their feelings, right? So in my incident, they were asking all these questions: how many, their ages, the sex, how many impacts, how many times they were shot. And we allow them to ask because we have them all together once we decided the message. And of course, remember, my incident happened in one county. The church was in one county, one city. The shooter was neutralized in the second county or the second city and he live in the third county in a third city. So we're dealing with three county judges, three district attorneys, three city mayors, three chiefs of police, and then the governor showed up. What can possibly go wrong?So when this questions came up and they were trying to break their own people based on, “I am who I am. You need to tell me.” I appeal into the, “Sir, we are in a recovery mission right now. There are a lot of families that have been impacted by this tragedy. You are a public figure. You are the glue that's going to keep this community together. We need you, I need you to help me get this message out. I really need you to go with this piece of paper that I'm giving you and help us start the healing with the community and helping everyone. And we'll get to those numbers, but right now, we're really behind. We need your help.” And when you appeal to their help and their humanity, mysteriously, they like it. And they will go off, they will go off that piece of paper. But because they don't have that information available, they don't commit it.Especially if you have a politician that is a lawyer, then appeal it with the law. “Here's the crime scene. Here's the information we have. This is what we need to protect. You understand this, you're a lawyer, you are a prosecutor. I really need you here.” And that tends to work out. It worked out for us and we were able to control a lot of that information going out.Bill Godfrey:I like it. Three different perspectives and three great tips. I might add going in there. All right. We're running a little bit long guys, but there's one more place I want to take us before we leave this one. And that's on the social media and the idea of not only mining social media to figure out what misinformation is trending and at what point does the incident commander need to react to that and have the Joint Information Center prepare a message to counter that in this information, but also let's talk about the role of the Joint Information Center in mining that social media for witness information, for intel, for what might become evidence, the videos and things like that. Adam, can you lead us off on that one?Adam Pendley:Sure. I think the main thing to keep in mind is that most agencies have gotten really good at using social media to get out a message, but it shouldn't just be a one-way loudspeaker. You have to be able to listen at what's coming back as well. So not necessarily to respond to every of crackpot remark that is made in the comment section however, there could be very good information in there. And then of course, investigators are becoming more and more adept at actually looking at the social media both before and after, obviously, to figure out the motive and stuff. But again, when you're broadcasting information, it cannot just be a one-way voice into the darkness.Mark Rhame:I agree with that. I mean, I'll take that one step further in regards to that crackpot person who's going onto your site, is that don't respond to him. Because you respond to him, that's a never ending battle that everybody's going get engaged in. Frankly, they make their statement. It's public record. It's on your site. Leave it alone. We all know there's going to be people out there with their own conspiracy theories. You can't stop. There's no way you can stop that. The only thing you can do for an organization is get ahead of it and only tell the truth. If you make a mistake, correct that mistake and own the mistake. But make sure that you're telling the truth out there.And social medias, as you said before, Adam and Bill, it's a two-way street because that JIC, that lead PIO's got to tell the incident manager what they're hearing. If you're not telling them what you're hearing out there, what is the hot topics, they're going to be put on the spot and you're responsible for that because you knew better. So if you hear something, tell your incident manager or incident commander and say, “This is what we're hearing out there. This is what the trends are. You're going to get this question. Be prepared for it, or don't respond because it's under investigation, but it's up to you.”Bill Godfrey:I think that's a great point. Harry, if you were my lead PIO coming in and you said, “Hey, there's a couple of posts here that are saying, claiming the officers executed the suspect, that he was trying to surrender.” Or something like that. I'm probably not going to get too excited about that. Like Mark, I think I'm going to probably park that under the heading of the conspiracy theory and not worry about it. You walk back in 20 minutes later and say, “That post is now trending. It's got you know, 10,000 views. It grew legs. There's a group talking about starting to go protest at City Hall.” That's a different animal.Harry Jimenez:Completely different animal. And remember, that lead PIO, among his or her responsibilities are to prepare that incident commander or that public official. That is part of their responsibilities, to get them ready, to make sure that they know and say, “Hey, here's the possibility this topic is coming.” And if it's something that is trending like that, we need to correct that immediately.Mark Rhame:Actually, this doesn't address what you're talking about, Harry, but I think this is an example you've brought up in the past in regard to a press conferences, in regard to live feeds. Can you talk about that? Didn't you have an incident where someone actually did the live Facebook feed or something like that, and how can we be prepared for that?Harry Jimenez:Yeah. We're talking about social media, and this is another thing for preparing that public official like Bill was saying or that incident commander. There's never an off the record with any reporter ever. Because now with social media, right there after approaching you to talk, they're broadcasting live. You have a Facebook Live, you have Zoom, you have two different platforms that they're going to be broadcasting at the moment. And there's never that off the record. On the country, that can get you in a world of trouble because if you're not aware that they were broadcasting, you don't even know how many hundreds of thousands of people are actually listening and watching you in that interaction. And that can take sideways the whole situation.Mark Rhame:It's not like the old days, where they set up a camera, put a microphone in your face. Now, they're just holding that phone in front of your face like they're talking or something or being prepared. They're live feeding.Bill Godfrey:Mark, I'll take that a step further. So a very dear friend of mine and in North Carolina was relating to me that exact incident. They were getting ready to do a press conference. They had a fairly graphic scene. Fairly horrible incident with some fatalities. It's fairly somber. They're getting ready to do a press conference. This is, I don't know, probably three or four hours post incident. They're lining up to do the gaggle and the reporters are getting their cameras together. They're getting their microphone setup. They're setting up their tripods. And the reporters are kind of almost joking back and forth a little bit with the folks, and he didn't even notice the tripod that had the iPad setup that was pointed at it that was live streaming on Facebook Live the entire thing. And it captured conversations that were never intended to be public. It captured off the cuff comments. It captured some of that...Quite frankly, as responders, this stuff is tough to cope with and responders are kind of notorious for having a dark sense of humor because what the hell else are you going to do? You got to find a coping mechanism. It was unfortunate. It was unfortunate. It's very frustrating. And the reporter never gave them a clue, not a clue. Almost, I don't want to say baited them, but I don't know what else you'll call it.Mark Rhame:Set them up.Adam Pendley:Sure. And I think I also just on that subject, you've seen a trend years ago when you guys were in the fire service, it was almost against the rules to show a graphic picture of an injury. Car tags were blurred out, things like that. The media was really cooperative at protecting the public from such images. That has trended the other direction now. Even on mainstream media channels, you often see more graphic things that you would have never imagined. So it's just something to think about for as we set up our crime scenes as well, that we have to protect the scene from being broadcast in all its unfortunate goriness.Bill Godfrey:Absolutely. All right. Let's get this one wrapped up. Final thoughts? Mark, anything?Mark Rhame:I think it really boils down to [inaudible 00:48:43] size of your organization. If you're going to have someone appointed as your PIO, this is something you got to train. You got to actually get with the incident commanders before that incident occurs and talk about your parameters and how you're going to handle this. Because when the big one hits, there's a lot of motion there and you need to be prepared for that ahead of time. And I would tell you again, from my history, the department I was with the longest period of time where we engaged our battalion chiefs and above to do that initial press briefing on auto accidents, on structure fires, and stuff like that, it got us prepared to be engaged to the media in the right direction. So I think training and getting all of your people that are going to be in those roles involved ahead of time is going to make you a winner, is going to keep you ahead of the curve.Bill Godfrey:Adam, final thoughts.Adam Pendley:Real quick. I think the media is on a deadline all the time, and so they're looking for something to write and say. And if we give them something that's clear, consistent, and accurate, they'll take that instead of making things up.Bill Godfrey:Harry?Harry Jimenez:I'm going echo Adam. They have a 24-hour cycle to fill and they're going to go for anything and everything, so have an outline, a template, be clear, be honest, and practice.Bill Godfrey:Gentlemen, thank you so very much. It was a great conversation. I really enjoyed it. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for tuning in. If you have not subscribed to the podcast already, please click the subscribe button wherever you listen to your podcast or consume them. Until next time, stay safe. We'll see you soon.

Episode 27: Emotionally Responsible Room EntryRoom entry tactics are a delicate topic in law enforcement, but this discussion is about considering the impact of a full dynamic entry on children. You don't want to miss this!Bill Godfrey:Thank you for joining us on our next podcast. Today we are going to pick up on a topic that we briefly discussed a few weeks ago in the staging podcast. It was an odd place for it to come up, and we want to revisit that a little bit. My name is Bill Godfrey, I'm the host of the podcast, one of the instructors here at C3 Pathways. I've got three of the other instructors with me today, Harry Jimenez?Harry Jimenez:Hello Bill. Thank you for having me.Bill Godfrey:Thanks for being here Harry. We have Robert McMahan.Robert McMahan:Hi Bill.Bill Godfrey:Hey. And Kevin Burd.Kevin Burd:Hi Bill.Bill Godfrey:All right. So we've got today, aside from myself, a law enforcement group, because this by and large is a law enforcement topic for the most part. And the issue is this, you have an active shooter event at a school or some other venue where kids are involved. It could be teenage kids, but we're really focusing on those younger kids, middle school and elementary in this topic. The threat has been dealt with, it is either neutralized or no longer on the scene, the patients have been transported and we're at a stable state. We still need to clear the campus. We need to come up with a way to move the kids in an orderly fashion from the rooms or the locations where they're at, to transportation ultimately to be moved to an offsite reunification center.Bill Godfrey:The problem is that we don't always shift gears when we need to, and we start kicking in doors and doing very, very aggressive room entries that ended up scaring the kids even more than they've already been traumatized. And in a couple cases, this is really caused some issues for kids, that quite frankly weren't exposed to the threat, didn't see it, didn't witness it, didn't hear it, had the bejesus scared out of them from a very, very aggressive dynamic room entry coming in hot and heavy. So today we're going to talk about the impact of that, and maybe are there ways to avoid that, are there some ways to do that a little bit better. Now, to set the stage, because Robert I want you to tell your personal story, but to set the stage here for all of those that are listening.Bill Godfrey:My understanding is talking about how to do room entries with law enforcement, is about trying to get firefighters to agree on which nozzle is the best. There is no right or wrong answer, everybody's got an opinion and nobody's right except the opinion that I'm advocating for has got to be the right one. It's like a lose, lose zero sum game. So I don't want to get hung up necessarily in that, but I'd like the three of you, as we go through this conversation, to talk about what are the kinds of things that you could do? What should we be aware of? And Robert, if you would set the stage for us, because you personally experienced this on an incident, where you were the IC and responsible for it. Set the stage a little bit about what happened, to the degree you feel comfortable talking about it. Again, we don't need to name the incident specifically.Bill Godfrey:And what the implications and the outcome were, and looking back on it, what you would have liked those officers to do instead.Robert McMahan:Sure Bill. A couple of years ago I was involved in a school shooting, and once we got the incident stabilized and we knew we had people in custody, there was still a good degree of campus left to be cleared, and to get those students out in an orderly fashion, like you said. And I think that's key, the word orderly fashion. And we had officers that were continuing to clear in a hard dynamic mode. And many of our campuses are taught to lock down and stay locked down in place, so there wasn't good communication prior to the incident about how we would approach those classrooms and get them to come out. So they were not coming out. And incidentally the officers ended up doing some very hard breaches and causing a lot of damage to those doors, and doing a dynamic entry and pointing weapons at kids and yelling all those law enforcement commands that we give when we give those kinds of entries.Robert McMahan:Some of the feedback we got after the incident was that our students were scared of us, they were traumatized. And I think we lost some credibility with the community when that occurred. And we need to remember that we don't want to victimize any more kids or create any more victims or have this kind of effect on the students and teachers, because we in the end want them to know that we came there to rescue them, to take care of them and not create this kind of trauma.Bill Godfrey:Robert, what were the age ranges? I mean, were we talking elementary school, middle school? Do you recall the age ranges?Robert McMahan:This was, I think, six through 12. So it was-Bill Godfrey:Pretty young.Robert McMahan:Some of the younger kids there, definitely all the way through high school students, and even the high school students didn't take a while. They really were pretty shocked by what occurred, as we were.Bill Godfrey:So Kevin, I know this is a passionate topic for you as well. And while you're retired now, you were a SWAT team leader right up until when you retired and went down. Have you dealt with this before? Has your team addressed that? Have you seen this come up in training with tactics in law enforcement discussions?Kevin Burd:Yeah, absolutely. And I learned early in my SWAT career that tactics are intel driven and our environment dictates our tactics. So dynamic entries, really even a SWAT perspective have faded away. We still train in them, but our tactics are intel driven. So if you approach a door and there's no stimulus that you have to do a dynamic entry, why are we doing a dynamic entry? Because we're talking about most schools with fire rated doors, steel frames, industrial door locks and jams. If nothing is giving me a stimulus or actionable intelligence that something bad is going in there. And then look at the other side too, what are we training our kids to do with lockdown drills?Kevin Burd:In that same perspective, having the opportunity to attend... I don't think I'm being unrealistic, I've probably been a part of well over a thousand lockdown drills, because the state I came from, they were mandated to do 10 security drills a school year, four of which being lock downs. So I got to observe all those. And we're trying to build those relationships and give teachers insight of what it might look like post-incident.Kevin Burd:So we come up with ways, we build that relationship with that law enforcement officer, "Hey, this is the police, were coming in, nothing to be alarmed." I'm not trying to take a tactic away from law enforcement. If something is still active, yes, we have to do what we have to do. But what's the statistics tell us, typically it's a single shooter, right? 99.9% of the time. If nothing is happening, why do we need to create a crisis during the crisis, and potentially traumatize the children that are in that room. And when I talk about that intel, if I'm responding to a school and I know it's an elementary school and there are five to 10 year olds, 11 year olds or 12 year olds, do I need to enter that room and take control the way we train a lot of those tactics while the incident is still hot, if you will, right?Harry Jimenez:No, absolutely. And you have to understand that dynamic entry is never pretty. As we train as law enforcement we're used to the big bang, and as a breacher, it doesn't matter how you cut, it's going to be noisy. I'm ready for it. But when you're training, you're sitting on the other side of that door, and you feel that strength and that noise, that dynamic entry. It doesn't matter which part of the country you are in, you're going to traumatize, especially small children. And Kevin, you mentioned the statistics. We know the 98% of the time, it's a single shooter. And if the shooter has been neutralized and there's no driving force, exactly what you said, why there's a need for a dynamic entry? Even as we train as law enforcement officers, we tend to have an adrenaline dump in our system.Harry Jimenez:And when that happens, as law enforcement, because we're human beings and we have seen over and over how we are attack because of feelings. Well, as a human being, responding to a school environment where you expect children, you get some physiological and some psychological response. And your physiological response is the tunnel vision, losing your hearing. And then you have that mindset of what's it going to be, is that tiger behind the door? That tiger's going to attack me. We need to reevaluate those entries. We need to reevaluate. And many of the new SWAT operators are going to the training. But there's many of us out there that learn the old way, and we have not evolved into the new mindset of understanding what is an emotional, responsible entry.Robert McMahan:Yeah, I like to think of it in the term of discretion. Officers are given a lot of discretion and we need to be discretionary in how we're entering these rooms, and certainly taking control of the room, but we don't have to do it in such a hard fashion, that we're creating this catastrophic event for students that didn't need to be. And certainly be ready for that other line that might jump out, but be discretionary about how you do it.Bill Godfrey:Let me ask this question for the three of you, because I introduced Kevin as having some SWAT background and experience. Is it different from someone who's had SWAT training versus your typical patrol officer or deputy in what they know or what they learned or their performance level in being able to execute different room entries? Can you guys talk a little bit about that? Is there a difference there, and how does that play out?Robert McMahan:Well Bill, I think it depends on the training obviously. And across the country we're seeing officers get very high-end training to do room clearing. And I think that's been the standard raised by these active shooter events. Not realizing that we have street officers, patrol officers, responding to the scene, they're the ones going to be making the first entry. So we're giving them those kinds of training and equipment to make... They're coming in with the hard tactical vest and rifles. So they are getting that training and they have the ability to make that type of entry as well as the SWAT guys.Kevin Burd:Yeah, and I agree. We have to have the tools for the toolbox, right? But again, where are we in the incident, and what's the intel telling you, what environment are you working in, and what tool are you going to use for that moment, right?Robert McMahan:Absolutely.Kevin Burd:And I agree 110%, you got to be discretionary. Law enforcement, your discretion is a major part of your profession, right? So we have to give them the tactics for the first two minutes, five minutes, seven minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, right? When we have a driving force, when we have a stimulus and we have to use those trainings. I am a big supporter of, I feel that SWAT teams should be assisting in the training for patrol, right? Because that's where the tactics come from. But we just can't be narrow minded, if you will, and only train in those hard dynamic entries of when the potential of bullets are going to start flying are right there, right?Kevin Burd:We have to also look at, this is going to be a prolonged event. And again, looking at the statistics and the data, these events might be over in 10 or 15 minutes. So if there's no driving force, there's no stimulus for 45 minutes or an hour, why are we-Harry Jimenez:Why are we breaching the door?Kevin Burd:And going in. Now, again, I'm not trying to take away anything safety wise. You can still use those tactics, you can still use... and law enforcement will know what we're talking about, the angles. We can do a... whatever you want to refer to it as, cutting the pie, slicing the pie, threshold evaluation, combat clear, whatever you want to call it. We can still get into that room effectively with some cover possibly, depending on the environment, and not screaming and yelling and pointing rifles at five and six year olds.Bill Godfrey:Kevin, you reminded me of something that one of our other law enforcement instructors brought up when we talked about this a couple of weeks ago. They mentioned doing, if I remember correctly, they called it a threshold evaluation from the hallway through the door, pieing it off or something. Is that what you're-Kevin Burd:Yes.Bill Godfrey:Can you guys talk a little bit about what you mean by that? I certainly know that the fire EMS folks that are listening are not going to know what we're talking about there, because it's a little bit fuzzy to me. But I don't want to take it for granted that all our law enforcement folks that are listening are necessarily going to know what we're talking about. Can we address that?Kevin Burd:Yeah, sure. So when we talk about a threshold evaluation, it's actually an interesting conversation because having the opportunity to work with a lot of schools, there's different trains of thought on what actions they're going to take within the classroom. As an example, on the classroom door entering into the room, some schools prefer to have some type of covering there during an incident, some leave it open. Like you said before, there's different... We can debate tactics, right? Tactics are like ice cream, everybody's got their favorite flavor, okay?Harry Jimenez:It's true.Kevin Burd:As an example, if there is no window covering, we can do a threshold evaluation, if you will. The door can still be closed, we can see into the room. I don't like throwing percentages. You hear a lot of times, "Oh, I can see 30% of the room, 70% of the room." We can get an idea of what the room looks like by clearing that window, by basically doing a slicing the pie motion, if you will, through the door, looking through the window and see what we're entering into. Same thing when we opened the door, right? I'm sure by now most schools across the country have something in place where if an incident occurs, a lockdown occurs, there is a master set of keys or fobs or something along those lines. At this point, hopefully you're having that conversation, law enforcement can open that door. And same thing, you're just gradually moving across that door to see what you're entering into.Bill Godfrey:You're talking about from the hallway?Kevin Burd:From the hallway, right? And again, what we did locally in our training was, "This is the police, were coming in." And we can do that kind of... I don't want to paint the wrong picture, not a slow and methodical, but kind of a slow and methodical entry into the room so they can clearly see a uniformed police officer. Because again, with our school resource officers and the folks we're putting in those schools, we want to build those relationships and trust that at the end of a lockdown, you see a uniformed officer come in or someone that looks like a law enforcement officer and the impression that I think it gives, especially the younger kids is, everything's going to be okay now.Bill Godfrey:Robert, was that a challenge for you on your incident? Did you have some non uniformed officers that were doing those entries?Robert McMahan:No. At that point they were... Well, yes. There were some non uniformed officers, there were some training uniforms, but the gross of those officers were in uniform at that point. And that's another sidebar. If you're going to go to these incidents, put something on that identifies you as an officer because that can create a whole other problem for students and other responding law enforcement as well. But I think what Kevin was hitting on is, as you start to enter that room and look at that room, just some simple communication might be the thing that gets you to realize what's going on in that room. If the teacher and students can respond to you before you even entered that room that they're okay, then they're probably okay and you don't need to do a hard dynamic entry. If they're all laying on the floor looking in the corner, then you might have a problem.Bill Godfrey:That's what the FBI calls a clue?Robert McMahan:Yes, exactly. So there's a lot of things that can be done to calm this thing down and to keep it calm and maintain that order and restore order, rather than more chaos.Harry Jimenez:Now, as a former operator, I need to defend my breachers and my dynamic entry special response team guys.Bill Godfrey:That's all right. I'm going to talk about which nozzle I prefer. Go ahead Harry.Harry Jimenez:It goes beyond that group of officers either conducting that door threshold evaluation, looking from the hallway, bridging the door. Perhaps many times what we have missed is actually some kind of control and order, but not from the actual officers responding, but somebody in command. And this is the part that the active shooter incident management is so important, because now you don't have... We started the conversation saying the scene is safe, there's no driving force, all the survivors have been transported to hospitals. Now, we have a crime scene. We're going to what we call the third phase, right? We have the threat, rescue, and now we're going to the clearing. If we're clearing, if your command structure have received some kind of active shooter incident management, they will understand the concept.Harry Jimenez:There's no driving force, there's no need to be breaching. Because it's not only going and creating some emotional and mental scars for those children, which is going to happen if you have somebody pointing with a gun. I work on the cover many years, and I remember every single time that I have a gun pointed to my face, and it leaves a mark. And if you're at a tender age it's going to leave more of a scar mentally and emotionally. But how many times we have watched on TV the video, when we have officers in the parking lot emptying a classroom, emptying a school, and all the children are running, no order, running with their hands in the air scared, and it's a mess.Harry Jimenez:And it makes you wonder, why are you doing this? Everybody's transported, there's no threat, why are you doing this? Why are you creating these images that we can watch over and over and over? And it just makes you wonder, if not the officer responding to the scene but actually that chain of command, they may need to consider some active shooter incident management training.Bill Godfrey:Harry raised something that made me think about it, he mentioned crime scene. So we've been focused on talking about the room entry, which is what we wanted to do. The idea of this emotionally responsible room entry. But I think this sense of emotional responsibility goes a little bit deeper. For example, we're going to empty this school out room by room. We need to move these kids either to an assembly area in preparation to moving them to an offsite, or what I actually prefer is to move them straight to the bus, get them on the bus and get them off the site if you can coordinate that.Bill Godfrey:But let's talk a little bit about the other piece, and that's the route of travel that you're going to take them, because number one, it is a crime scene, and do we want to take them past or through the areas where there's blood on the ground, there might be fatalities. How often does that get thought of before we start emptying rooms? Are we being deliberate about saying, "Okay, we're going to take these rooms and go this direction, but on these rooms we're going this way, because we want to avoid..." Robert, what's your thoughts on that? Is that something that's come up in your discussions in training? Or what do you see is-Robert McMahan:Absolutely, you're hitting right on it? And you can take students that maybe didn't even hear the shooting, weren't a part of it and traumatize them just by walking them through or by that crime scene. So you can choose your routes and do this in an orderly fashion. Like you said, take them right out and put them on the bus. And even before you leave the classroom, in a previous podcast we talked about staging and accountability. If you can have those students, they're still in their classroom with their teacher because they locked down. You're clearing, you find them, you talk to them, you can get a roster of the students right there. You know who they all are, they've got their teacher and you can take them as a group in an orderly, calm, fashion, down a different route that doesn't go through the crime scene, and put them on a bus and not create any more trauma for them.Robert McMahan:And I think it's more than just a thing that we should be thinking about it, I think it's a responsibility to those children and to those families to handle it that way in order to help them. I mean, otherwise we're not helping them. I mean, yeah, we're getting them off the scene, but we're not doing all we can to help them through this event. Because even kids that haven't been directly involved in it are going to be traumatized because it happened on their campus, it happened at their school and that's going to bother them. We don't need to add to it.Bill Godfrey:I think that that's so very true. Harry, I'm reminded of the dinner we shared with our dear friend Lindsay Webster, who was a survivor of an active shooter event. And we were talking about various topics related to that. And that was when it really... Something that she said really brought home this sense of seeing a person that's been subjected to this, seeing themselves as either a victim or a survivor. And Lindsay talked quite eloquently about that. I remember that ride home with Harry. We were riding back to the hotel, and we must have spent 30 minutes in the car talking just about that, because she said her emotional healing, separate from the physical, but the emotional healing for her didn't really come into play until she got to the point where she quit seeing herself as a helpless victim in this thing, and instead started seeing the incident, "Okay, this is something that happened to me, but it doesn't define me. I'm a survivor." And moving past that.Bill Godfrey:And it really resonated. And I think there's a little bit of this in that, isn't there?Kevin Burd:Yeah, absolutely. And we have a great relationship with the I Love U Guys Foundation. And one of the things they talk about with recovery is recovery starts when the crisis begins, right? And I actually like to think, to go back to what Robert and Bill you brought up, is really recovery starts before the crisis begins because we have to plan for the incident and plan for that recovery before it ever happens. Does that make sense? And with having that crime scene in mind and not introducing trauma to someone that may not have been there, they're going to be traumatized one way or another, right? Because it happened on their campus, right? And I relate it to fire drills. We run fire drills at all of our schools and we've been doing it for years, right? And I knew growing up, if I was in the second grade, I would come out, I would make a right, I'd make my first left, go out that door, and there you go. But you have to have plan B in place also. So that is just not the only way it can happen.Kevin Burd:So if we have that scene, to the best we can, we can not put those students through the areas where something happened. Maybe there's no way around it. There might be that situation, but we have to think about that ahead of time and also make that part of training, right? You run the fire drill. Obviously we're not going to set a fire, but let's put a barricade at the end of the hallway during one of the drills and say, "You can't go this way." It's like the deer in the headlights, right?Harry Jimenez:Now what?Kevin Burd:This is the way we always go.Harry Jimenez:Now what? What do I do?Kevin Burd:Yeah. And we have to introduce that into the training for when... Yeah.Bill Godfrey:So we're talking about, loosely this idea of emotional responsibility as responders dealing with these events. How do you ensure that your incident changes gears? Because that seems to me to be, you could remind people, you can tell them about it in training, you can go through those emotions, but it seems short of somebody saying, "Okay, all stop. Timeout. Here's what we're going to do, here's where we're going to go. Everybody slow down, calibrate yourself, calm down." I don't know. I don't know how to say that, Robert, but you've been in that position.Bill Godfrey:I mean, because you've responded to three active shooter events in your career. All three very, very different experiences. What do you think, if you needed to go be the incident commander of one, how would you be able to effectively shift that tone and shift gears of the whole incident when you've got your troops and the city next door and the county next door and mutual aid from alphabet soup agencies you didn't even know existed? Have you thought about that? How do you do that?Robert McMahan:There has to be a point where that gets announced, "Okay, we're moving into this phase." But you cannot do that effectively if you don't train it first. And everybody's got to follow the training. We talk about it throughout the ACM class, stay in your lane, but you got to do these things. We talked about it even with the staging thing, about over convergence of resources. It's great to train to go to staging, but if people don't do it you're going to have over convergence of resources. And it's great to train on a response that's emotionally appropriate for the circumstances. But if you don't follow the training, it's not going to happen. So it falls on every officer from the youngest, newest officer on scene to the incident commander. Everybody's got to make sure that training occurs, and make sure that they understand the transition that has to take place when it's announced that, "Hey, we're moving into this phase of our operation."Harry Jimenez:Absolutely, Robert. And it takes somebody to pump the brakes. You have to pump the brakes. You have to understand that the adrenaline rush going through the door, threat is down, all the survivors have been transported. Somebody has to call it and say, "Okay, now we have the rest of the people to take care of, all the rest of the students, the rest of the teachers, but also the rest of the responders." In my experience, everybody's running on adrenaline and fumes. And at some point somebody had to realize, "Okay, let me call all the responders and make sure that they're also doing okay." Because that is a responsible thing to do.Harry Jimenez:I said it once, I'll say it again, somebody in that chain of command needs to be familiar and have been through an active shooter incident management, because you cannot practice what you have never even seen. And unfortunately there's a lot of jurisdictions out there that they send their officers to training, but the command staff is enabled to understand what happens after the last viable patient is transported. How do we transition to that next phase? And until that command staff understands it, sometimes the brass is going to push back, and those are the incidents that we see the children running with the hands in the air, through the parking lot screaming because nobody's in control.Kevin Burd:Agreed. Get on the air, somebody, pulse check, right? If you're pumping 175, 200 beats a minute, and we're 20, 30 minutes into this and there's no stimulus, there's no driving force, it's time to take it back. The stress response we talk about, right? And start thinking clearly. Get out of that tunnel vision, get out of that auditory exclusion. But it's also important to incorporate that stress into training, right? Because training without stress is like drinking decaf coffee, it tastes good, but what do you get out of it at the end of the day, right? But at some point during that incident it's done and over with, we need to pump the brakes and start thinking rationally and making clear, concise decisions.Bill Godfrey:Is this potentially an opportunity to rotate some crews out when we change phases? If you get a staging area stood up, which is one of the subjects we talked about just a few weeks ago on the podcast. And it's critical to success of one of these things. You're not really going to be short of resources, because everybody and their brother is going to come, whether they were invited or not, they're going to come. So you've arguably got enough law enforcement that should be in staging to be able to organize three, four or five more contact teams, and to brief them on exactly what you want. Is that something that perhaps we should consider as a... I don't want to use the phrase best practice, but as a better practice to say, "When we're making that shift, let's take those initial officers and rotate them out, let them take a break, and put the fresh officers in, who can go in with clear instructions of what's intended and what the plan is, and begin moving the kids." What are your thoughts?Robert McMahan:I think that's a great idea. I think the role of tactical is probably the best place to start to pump the brakes and to get control of those contact teams. And even if you can't switch them out right away, at least contact each contact team individually and say, "Okay, we're moving into this phase. You understand that? Slow down." But absolutely, if I were tactical I'd be looking at getting those contact teams that were in the heat of battle, so to speak, or dealing with a lot of casualties, rotated out for some other teams that haven't been on that adrenaline high, that can come in with a fresher perspective, if you will, and a little slower cadence to respond to these rooms.Bill Godfrey:Sure. So Harry, I want to go back to something you said just a couple of minutes ago. You made the comment, "Don't forget to check on your other responders. We need to take care of folks." And most of our listeners don't know, like Robert, have also responded to active shooter events. I'm guessing the one that sticks out and was the toughest was the Sutherland Springs shooting. And I remember that night when you called me on your way home. Now, just to remind everybody it was daylight when that thing occurred.Harry Jimenez:11:35 AM.Bill Godfrey:And it was late at night when you called me because I-Harry Jimenez:Past midnight.Bill Godfrey:Yeah. I got up, got out of bed and I knew the first thing I asked Harry, first thing I said to you was, "Are you okay? How are you doing?" And of course the answer was, "I'm fine." And I knew he wasn't, and I got up and got out of bed, went in the other room and we were on the phone probably an hour. And I don't know that I ever shared with you, but I was worried about you for quite a while. So I think it is important to talk about that. Is there anything that sticks in your mind that would be a good suggestion for leadership or responders to be able to reach out and help each other just informally?Harry Jimenez:Just like Robert mentioned, there comes a time, probably when you're running tactical or the first level supervisor realizing, "Hey, everybody got transported. We don't have a driving force." Look at the board and realize how many people have been transported. And unfortunately we have to assess how many people are still on the scene. And at that point when you start counting and you realize we need to activate EOC because we need a refrigerated truck because we have too many bodies, that is a good point to start looking at swapping people. Get those first responders, fire EMS, and law enforcement, those that where they're putting hands on patients, pull them back, make sure that they're okay.Harry Jimenez:As law enforcement, as all first responders, we tend to work in adrenaline and nobody wants to accept that sometimes a crime scene is too much, especially depending on the crime scene, and the worst thing in the world is to see a child. So that's the moment that we need to be thinking about swapping people and getting a fresh crew there, control the scene, get the perimeter under control, get a new command staff, if you may, for that next phase of the recovery to process the scene, to start dealing with the family members of the survivors, the family members of those that did not survive.Harry Jimenez:And in my experience, you're going to see everybody and their sister with a camera just land on your scene. And it takes a toll dealing with county officials, city officials, family members, trying to set up some reunification locations and family supports services. And realize that all of a sudden you're trying to deal with your emotions, and at the same time you're trying to do your job. It can get really heavy. It can be a lot.Bill Godfrey:Robert, how about you?Robert McMahan:I think there's two other things we've got to watch for in that concept. And one is our cops don't want to go home. They don't want to quit the incident, so to speak. They want to work it all the way through. And if you're one of those first guys in, or you're in the thick of things, you probably shouldn't be staying there longer than necessary. And we do need to rotate you out, because you're not fine. You may think you're fine, but you're not. And the second piece of that is, we often have our star player, so to speak. We have our star detective that we want to be leading this investigation. And I have seen in some of these shootings where that star detector was actually one of the first guys in the door.Robert McMahan:So he's already been exposed to that trauma, and then we want to run him through the investigation and they don't get a break from that. And that can affect a lot of things in the response and in their investigation letter. So we need to be thinking about rotating all the people, and we may have to give up a star player later on in that recovery phase, because they were an initial responder to begin with. We got to take care of those guys too. They can become victims of this as well, and we got to watch for that.Bill Godfrey:And there's star players from other agencies. I agree with you. And I don't think it's just unique to police, I think fire and EMS are the exact same way about not wanting to go until it's done. In fact, to me, on the fire EMS side, that's one of the warning signs. When they don't want to be relieved and don't want to go back to quarters or returned to service, to me that's a red flag waving in the face. I had a peer who was a responder on one of the more horrific events. I don't want to say which one. But a lot of us missed the signs and he killed himself.Harry Jimenez:And this is a good point to whoever's listening out there.Robert McMahan:Bill, we talked about this a while back, and it's important to remember that we're there to stop the killing, stop the dying, but you also got to take care of your first responders after the incident. Because if you let them be victimized by this, and they will, they're going to be hurt, they're going to be injured in an emotional, mental health way. But you can't let that injury go unchecked, you can't let that bleed. You got to get them help. And they may say they're fine, make them get help anyway. Because if we stop the bleeding and stop the dying for the civilians and don't take care of the first responders, we've done our first responders an injustice. And you will lose first responders if you don't take care of them.Bill Godfrey:So we started off talking about a very narrow topic, and that was the idea of emotionally responsible room entries, but clearly the idea of emotional responsibility in responding to these events extends well beyond that. And at every level and every rank how we handle the incident while it's unfolding, how we progressed through the phases, how we clear, how we move people, doesn't have to be just kids by the way. Lindsey was a grown adult woman, accomplished and successful and it was tough for her, as it is for Christina and everybody else who has to recover from this. And I think in the final phase of that, we've got to be emotionally responsible, again at all levels. From leadership and all the way down to the line ranks about making sure we're all okay and checking out on each other.Harry Jimenez:And with that, somebody out there is going to be listening to this podcast. And whoever you are, you may need to ask for help and you're too hard headed to ask for help. It's okay. It's okay to ask for help. Don't kill yourself from the inside out, because you can still do a lot of good to others. So take the first step.Robert McMahan:Yeah, I'd like to echo that Harry, it is okay to ask for help. I've done it. I had a 32 year career and I've done it and I'm okay. I'm okay now. But you can do it too. So leaders all the way down first-line officers, take care of each other.Harry Jimenez:Amen. Same here.Bill Godfrey:Well gentlemen, thank you very much for your time today and talking about this difficult topic. And I appreciate the honesty and the candor as I know our audience does as well. So Harry, Robert, Kevin, thank you for taking the time today and for being here and discussing this important topic. Ladies and gentlemen if you have not subscribed to the podcast, please do. We release a new podcast every Monday. If you have some suggestions for topics that you would like us to cover, please feel free to either email us those ideas at info@c3pathways.com. We're here on a regular basis picking these things apart. We do from time to time have some guests on here as well. And of course our email address and phone number is always available if you need anything from us or we can do anything. In the meantime, stay safe.

Episode 26: CommunicationsDispatch, Radios, Face-to-Face, Chain of Command, and MoreBill Godfrey:Hello, welcome back to the next installment of the podcast. Today, we are going to be talking about communications and we are going to be talking about all kinds of communications, radio communications, face to face, chain of command, who talks to whom and more. My name is Bill Godfrey, I'm the host of the podcast with me today are three of the instructors from C3 Pathways. We've got Mark Rhame.Mark Rhame:Thank you for having me.Bill Godfrey:Glad to have you here Mark. Kevin Burd.Kevin Burd:Hello, I'm glad to be here as well.Bill Godfrey:And we have Billy Perry.Billy Perry:Hey, good afternoon. And thank you for having me.Bill Godfrey:Okay. So we are going to start with where it begins from the beginning, which is right at the radio dispatch, which I think is going to lead us right into talking about some radio discipline stuff. Mark, lead us off. What are the things that jump out at you right off the bat, when we have an active shooter event, we get that initial dispatch. What are some of the things that go wrong right off the get go?Mark Rhame:I think, when we build out the teams, it's very important that we have an understanding who's talking on the radio. There should be a leader in each of the teams and that person's the one that talks on the radio. If you have a four person team and all four of them are trying to talk on the radio at the same time, there's no radio discipline. And we're just clogging up the radio. And think about what you're going to say before you say it. That's very important because it's too much, you get someone there that keys up their radio and they're humming, and they're saying things are not necessary. So I think it's all about trying to get that radio discipline right up front and make sure that we have one individual in those teams that's doing the communication. And that way we can keep the radio communication down to a minimum.Bill Godfrey:Billy, I've heard you talk before and sometimes quite eloquently about radio discipline or the lack of, and I believe I've heard you use the phrase diarrhea mouth.Billy Perry:Right.Bill Godfrey:Can you explain that a little bit?Billy Perry:Yeah. I know the fire services doesn't have this issue, but in law enforcement we have people that feel like it's their own personal communicatory platform and they launch into these soliloquies or diatribes that go on and on and on and on and on and they're unnecessary and meaningless frankly. And another sign that I gleaned from one of my mentors is words mean things. And don't say anything unless you have something to say. And honestly, I think in law enforcement do work, then talk about it. And I think that's something that's important. And I think one of the things that you were talking about when we’re setting things up, knowing what needs to be said and what your actual procedures are and what the policy is for what we're doing, we're talking about an active shooter incident here. That's why we're all here. And we know who's going to be there, everybody.And that's why we have to have ground rules. We have to understand this is not your normal everyday call. So if you use codes and signals and things that's probably going to go out the window and you need to know how to shift gears. That's the professionalism component that I hit on with regularity. "Well, that's not how we always do it." Well, congratulations. This is where we're professional, we're shifting gears, we're not in your standard run of the mill call. Now we're in the super bowl. Let's shift gears and let's know what we're doing and what our policy is and how to more effectively communicate this to enhance the survivability of the incident for everybody.Bill Godfrey:Kevin, what are your thoughts on radio discipline? What jumps out in your head?Kevin Burd:Yeah, I'm going to piggyback on what Billy just said. When we're responding to the scene and we get on the radio, first thing that we've run into a couple of times is, we don't want to switch channels, right? In the middle when you are focused and you have that assignment, that purpose and task, and you are going into the incident, the last thing you want to hear, and I've heard this come on the radio a couple of times asking you to switch over to a different channel, but if you're involved in the incident and I don't know if Billy, if you have a thought on this, I don't want to look for a radio channel in the middle of going in, right? I'm going to stay on that primary channel.So that's one of the things I've seen where we've had dispatchers or somebody get on, and this isn't a negative thing they're trying to coordinate it, but the person that's focused understand what they are dealing with and what they're going through or about to go into and we don't want to switch channels, but then we want to communicate out, try and keep it short, concise, right? One of the things that we've talked about from my law enforcement experience is no more than a couple of points 20 or so words. And it can be said in a few seconds, get on, say what you have to say, communicate what you're doing, where you are, what is happening around you, right?Billy Perry:Almost like the checklist.Kevin Burd:Yes, exactly, right?Bill Godfrey:Clear, concise with confirmation.Kevin Burd:Yes, exactly. Yup. And that was one of the biggest things that I've seen. And I think goes back to the diarrhea mouth on the radio. We don't need to hear a minute and a half or two minutes of the, "I love me speech, and this is everything that I'm doing right now." Because there's other people, everybody's coming, right?Billy Perry:Right, everybody.Kevin Burd:And we need to all be on the same page and get that air time, that radio time when it's the most important.Mark Rhame:Frankly, what saved a lot of that airtime environment in my career, especially toward the end of it is the timeout feature. It saved that one individual who, for some reason, thought that they own that radio channel and wanted to talk the fire out from a fire perspective. When you get that timeout feature, it killed him and remind him that, "Hey, you're done right there." So as you say, clear, concise with confirmation, it's the only way to go. And know what you're going to say before you actually key up that microphone.Billy Perry:And that again, to reiterate, have something to say.Mark Rhame:Yes.Bill Godfrey:Yeah, So what is the responsibility of supervisors day to day. Just regular day-to-day stuff. Because it's not like they were the perfect communicator before and they suddenly got diarrhea mouth on an incident. These are people that have a pattern of doing this. What's the responsibility of the supervisor or is there any day to day to correct it before it becomes an issue? You get somebody new on your shift, whatever. What are your thoughts?Billy Perry:I think it falls not only on the supervisors, but also on the peers. I think we train and groom each other, if we're doing what we're supposed to be doing. And I think peer pressure is pretty strong. And I think that's an issue that we're encountering throughout the country. Throughout the nation, there is a paradigm shift in the law enforcement continuum. And that's a whole other podcast, frankly, working on that. But I mean, I think they definitely have a responsibility to groom them because we're training for this. This is the Superbowl, this is the worst of the worst, the bad. And so everything culminates in this and...Mark Rhame:But what might also help too, is that we all read after action reports, but pulling the dispatch tapes in your own organization and listen to what just occurred and critique that in a positive way. You can actually correct probably a lot of those behaviors by just listening to yourself because when you're hearing yourself, you're hearing that mindless rambling, if you will. And we all have to come to that conclusion that we're all in the same boat. I mean, I've done it, I know probably everybody else has at one time or not in their career when they just rambled on and rambled on and someone else couldn't get onto that radio channel. So sometimes pulling that dispatch tape and listening to yourself and your crew might help out some.Billy Perry:That's a whole 'nother podcast, just debriefs. Just who does debriefs and who doesn't do... does honest and open ones, but you're right. I think that's huge.Bill Godfrey:So we've got radio discipline. Let's talk a little bit about how we cut down some of that traffic, how span of control plays a role in that, and the idea of a chain of command and who talks to who. And I want to make it clear that we're not suggesting this rigid chain of command just because. The whole idea is to split up the span of control so that we can reduce the amount of radio traffic and make it a little bit clear. Kevin, what are your thoughts on that? How big a deal is it that when those contact teams are going downrange, that we actually get some sense of a team assignments. And we have a leader that's speaking for the team, as opposed to everybody on the radio, things like that. Talk a little bit about that from your perspective.Kevin Burd:Yeah. So one of the things we tried to concentrate on in our trainings was, if you were assigned to that contact team one, and let's say it's a three or four officer element, one person be the radio one person be the voice, unless somebody else had to go on. You had that discussion as part of that assignment going in. So that way we have that one person working the radio, and if a second contact team goes in and does the same exact thing, we're cutting down on possibly eight officers, getting on the radio at any given time, and we have those two communicating directly with one another, right? Same discussions that we have in our trainings here about having a scribe and a radio work in the tactical position, the command position it's for a reason.It's so, certain folks have certain responsibilities within these teams, these elements, and that can be one person's responsibility so we're not having to think and get three or four people on at the same time. And that starts, I think in my mind that radio discipline, if you will, because we're identifying, who's going to be on the radio and could it change? Yeah, absolutely. Tactics are intel driven and the environment dictates the tactics, right? Things are going to change as we go through. But if you have those assignments, you can start that communication process. Hopefully it then builds out. So when the tactical position comes up, now we have somebody that's going to respond on the radio to that tactical position, we have a direct line of communication between those positions.Bill Godfrey:Billy, have you seen this go wrong in some instances that you can talk about where the opportunity to organize into some teams or just some small units, as opposed to everybody being an individual where you've seen that go wrong and what the implications of that are?Billy Perry:Thankfully the implications weren't as horrific as they could have been. However, and I hasten to add, one of the challenges that we have in law enforcement and I'm very blessed that our agency doesn't do this. We do not let good luck reinforce bad tactics.Bill Godfrey:So just say that again.Billy Perry:We do not let good luck reinforce bad tactics and we do have open and honest debriefs when we do own the fact that we build this up by the numbers, let's undo this, let's learn from this because the only thing worse than no debriefs is a debriefs where you think everybody was perfect and you end it with a bunch of high fives. That's disingenuous and so-Bill Godfrey:And rarely called for.Billy Perry:Right, right, right. So, yeah, I've seen it. And the biggest thing is, know who should talk, like Kevin said, and let's take RTFs, take RTFs. Who's talking is the fire talking, is police talking? I mean. And the answer is actually both at specific times. That's the answer. The answer's yes.Bill Godfrey:Yeah, exactly. And that's a question that comes up on a fairly regular basis.Billy Perry:It does, and it's a good one. And if you don't train it, you don't know. Now how often should the police officer and RTF talk? Rarely, real rarely. But when there is something for them to say, it needs to be said. And I think that that's know because you don't know what you don't know. And the big words mean things. Words mean things, and you have to use nomenclature, I hop on it repeatedly. Professionalism, know the nomenclature of your equipment, know the nomenclature of your units, know the nomenclature of your org chart in your procedures, in your policy for what we're doing here. Because there's a huge difference between tactical and a tactical team.Bill Godfrey:Yes, yes. There is. Mark, before we leave this specific topic that Billy just brought up, can you talk a little bit about that confusion in the rescue task force about who talks to whom, who reports to whom, the mission of the team. Can you address that?Mark Rhame:Of course. And let me review the hierarchy there first, before I get into who talks to who. Remember we have a tactical officer standing next to a triage officer staying next to a transport officer. They are joined at the hip. They are talking to each other face to face. So it does not make any sense for that RTF, which is a medical mission with a law enforcement support, going into that environment where that law enforcement officer with that RTF hears the fire EMS person talking to their direct supervisor, the triage officer and tells them something, and then the law enforcement officer does the exact same thing, same communication to the tactical officer. That goes against what we're trying to tell them, because those individuals are talking to each other face to face, triage, tactics and transport. So that triage officer, soon as they get that information from their medical side of that RTF, should turn around to the tactical officer and the transport officer and said, "Let me update you on what they just said." If they didn't hear it direct. And that way we cut down on that communication duplication. And that's how these RTFs and how this whole hierarchy system works in that active shooter environment.Bill Godfrey:It's interesting. In the first few moments you've got law enforcement officers at downrange, and they're going to be providing some patient information, some medical information, counts severity, things like that. But once the rescue task force gets downrange that medical radio traffic should be coming off of the law enforcement channel and getting moved over to the fire EMS channel. Law enforcement should be enabled and empowered to focus on that security mission and that law enforcement mission and allow the fire EMS that are part of that rescue task force that's downrange with them, carry that medical stuff so that they can keep eyes up. Kevin, how often have you seen that turn into an issue, both in real events and in training where we don't end up cleaning that up.Kevin Burd:Yeah, now unfortunately it does come up and we are all type A personalities, right? We want to be in charge. We want to do good stuff.Bill Godfrey:What do you mean?Kevin Burd:We want to do the right thing, but we don't have to do all the work to accomplish what we-Billy Perry:We want to do the right thing, but we don't have to do everything.Kevin Burd:Exactly, exactly. So if we can shift that communication with the medical, what we're talking about, over to the medical component on the RTF and they contact or communicate with triage tactical, that's one less thing you have to do. You don't have to do everything. And that's why we integrate these positions, right? And I know as part of communications, most jurisdictions out there, fire and law enforcement are not on the same radio channel. So it's another reason why we do it. So as you were just saying, we can communicate, we can lean over to our right or left and say from a tactical position, "Hey, triage or transport, this is the information I just heard." Triage and transport can just turn over their shoulder and say, "Hey, tactical, this is what we just heard. This is the information we have." We don't need to continue to go on the radio and bog down the communication systems that we have.Billy Perry:The police officers that are on the RTFs are listening to the law enforcement channel and they're telling their fire and EMS compadres, "This is what's going on. They're keeping them abreast.Kevin Burd:Which is important information.Billy Perry:It's Super huge. And when we said they should both be talking and they should, the fire is transmitting all the patient information, the law enforcement component, anything law enforcement related, we just got more intelligence. They should put that out, and the reason being so that all the other LEO can hear it because it's on the LEO channel. If they engage obviously post engagement, they should say, "Hey, we just engaged this, just to let you know." And that should go on law enforcement... just again, to let the rest of law enforcement know. But that's it, everything else, there's a security element for the fire and EMS the end.Kevin Burd:Exactly. And you said it before, they don't have to probably be on the radio that much. Every once in a while, we're going to want to know from the tactical position, "Hey, you okay?" "Yeah, We're good." "Where are you at?" "I'm here." Right? Very basic-Billy Perry:And our department has known this is good news, if we don't check in and we're good to go. And people say, "Well, then if you get lost, we'll do doom on you."Mark Rhame:At least you have friends with you.Billy Perry:Exactly. You're not by yourself. You know what I mean?Bill Godfrey:Do you pack a lunch when you go on these things?Billy Perry:We do actually, we call them journeys in the hundred acre woods. And honestly this is going to shut down things, but that's what we do here. After we go through the checklist and I'm teaching a basic active shooter class on Thursday and Friday, and we tell them, "Once you go through the checklist, this is what you're here, we're done." And honestly, if it's [inaudible 00:18:37], we may even turn it off. We know what we're doing and we'll turn it back on in a minute after we've engaged actionable intelligence and everything else, instead of [inaudible 00:18:47] because who's coming? Everybody.Mark Rhame:And I think that's part of the problem is that, and we go back to this type A personalities, there are people that think there's something wrong if they're not talking on the radio, if they're not keying up their radio and talking. And frankly, sometimes your success should be measured by how quiet you are and it's a good scene. If you're the incident commander and you very rarely get on that radio because you have a good team working for you, you got to Pat yourself on the back because you probably did an excellent job. And it might've been, you just selected people that did the right job, you communicated directly to them, not over a radio, talked face to face because that's probably the more appropriate way to do it. You don't have to be on the radio to get the check mark, that's the bottom line.Billy Perry:And it's not only how often are you on the radio, but it's how are you on the radio?Bill Godfrey:Yeah. So let's take that and tangent into the paradigm shift for a lot of our law enforcement dispatchers. So, and to compare and contrast on the fire EMS side, fire and EMS hardly ever does anything alone. It's not a one-person job. You're always bringing friends, usually a lot of them and-Billy Perry:You ride together.Bill Godfrey:We ride together safety in numbers. There's teams that are pre-organized. And generally speaking that behavior of one person talking on the radio sometimes works. There are certainly exceptions and fire can make a mess of radio traffic just as fast as anybody else. But one of the things that's uniquely different culturally between law enforcement and fire is the role that dispatch plays as the incident begins to unfold. So on the fire and EMS side, you'll typically have an incident command that's set up very early, it gets very active and most of that information is running internal to the scene.It's the incident commander talking to the troops that are there on the scene. But we see very often as we roll through the training and we get law enforcement dispatchers that come in, it's very clear that they're used to having to play that coordinating role on a regular basis. And so Mark said, "You've got to remember that it's okay not to be on the radio." And I hear dispatchers say to me, almost every class, "I feel like I'm not doing my job because I'm not talking, I'm not coordinating." And sometimes you've even got to pull them back a little bit to say, we're trying to get them to stand up their structure-Billy Perry:Silence is golden.Bill Godfrey:Yeah. Kevin, you and Billy, both careers in law enforcement, how big of an issue has that been in the career that you've seen, do you see it changing now? Is it still a cultural issue? Go.Billy Perry:Well, like I was saying, I was groomed early that if you're out of control in the radio, you're out of control in the car, you're out of control there. So everything was super succinct, super calm, super measured and report what you did. Don't tell what you're about to do. And if you found yourself saying what you were about to do, you're wrong. Unless it was going to be, "I'm going in to engage and I'm done." Tell what you did and, "I'm okay, and here's where I am." Does that makes sense? And I was raised on that early and I think, staying controlled, staying professional...And again, like I was saying, knowing to shift gears, are we coming out of signals and 10 Codes, or are we going into plain talk now because of the alphabet soup people that are here? Every three letter agency and every other jurisdiction and every other everything is here, and just knowing how to shift gears and how to navigate that. And again, less is more and what are we focused on? We're focused on saving lives. And if what you're saying, isn't helping save a life, shut up.Kevin Burd:Yeah. And coming from an area where there were smaller jurisdictions, smaller police departments, 10 officer departments, 15 officer departments, and not the amount of critical incidents that some larger departments, larger jurisdictions have, that is where I saw the radio communication really start to deteriorate. Because they didn't have the experience of having a lot of those high level, high stress incidents, and they felt as if they weren't saying something on the radio, they were doing something wrong.And half of the radio broadcast, if you will, that went out, really, they didn't need to be said. They were out of control, which was an indication. Yeah, exactly. So there were times where, even in my career had to intervene if you will, and literally take command so we could calm it down and get everybody back under control. And again, with the smaller jurisdictions and not having that experience, it could tend to deteriorate very quickly.Bill Godfrey:How often do you see law enforcement agencies today that still are, I don't know if rely is the correct word, but they're still relying on dispatch to be that hub of a temporary command because nobody on scene has grabbed it?Billy Perry:I'll answer that with this, get on YouTube and watch officers that are getting beat to a fare-thee-well screaming on a radio. Nobody's going to jump out of there. I've watched hundreds of those videos. I'm sure you have too, and I've never seen any human pop out of that microphone and help fix anything. So I think they're looking not only for leadership from that microphone, I think they're looking for assistance from that microphone, and I think they are looking for the answer from that microphone and spoiler alert, the answer is within you. And if you have not prepared for this... again, I've said this every time it's no different than finances, failing to plan is planning to fail. And if you have not prepared for this...When people say my life flashed before my eyes, that's true because your mind is going through any event that you've been through, any training that you've had that you can call on that was similar to this, that will get you out of this situation. And if there's nothing in there to draw from it, you experience cognitive freezing. It's real and it's physiology. And that's what happens and you're screaming into that radio and I think they're looking for somebody to help them. And this is where we as agencies and we as departments and we as senior officers and this leadership and these supervisors, have to step in and what you were saying going, we've gone full circle back to where we were, and then we have to prepare for this. This is what we're preparing for.Kevin Burd:Yeah. And for me, I saw it on a regular basis, also coming from those smaller jurisdictions with a one central county-wide dispatch where law enforcement fire and EMS all came out of one dispatch center for the entire County. Everyone got on the radio expecting dispatch to take care of everything they needed immediately.Billy Perry:Yeah. Absolutely.Kevin Burd:So I agree, hundred percent.Billy Perry:I'm telling you.Bill Godfrey:So, still a little room for improvement there.Billy Perry:Smidge. It's in the triple integers. Again, it won't take you but seconds to find 10 officers breathing their last breath and saying their last words on that radio instead of fixing something. Seriously, I don't care how good you are at something, you're better at it with both hands. And if one of them started doing that, telling somebody that you're whatever, don't. And again, that's one of those times, if it's not saving a life, don't get on the radio.Bill Godfrey:So let's change gears here a little bit and switch us over from talking about the human side of this, radio discipline, radio behavior, the culture of the disciplines. And let's talk just briefly, I don't want to do a deep dive in this about some of the technology pieces and the technology challenges. We've all seen during the course of our careers, the technology come that would solve interoperability problems. In fact, for a number of years, I worked on a whole bunch of interoperability projects nationally. And I can say with a hundred percent confidence that our continued interoperability problems are not technical. They are people related. Lack of cooperation, lack of training, lack of sharing information.Billy Perry:Lack of understanding of the technical aspect.Bill Godfrey:There you go. Let's talk a little bit about how do we... So that's the world we live in. It is what it is not going to get fixed overnight, but if you're part of that, you should fix it. So how do we solve that in the incident? Mark, what's one of the strategies that you've seen for addressing real time, in these critical events, when you've got mutual aid agencies, agencies that are maybe operating on different frequency, different channels, things like that, how do you keep moving the ball down the field without getting wrapped around the axle and without losing the ability for everybody to communicate?Mark Rhame:Well, I got to say that the first thing is, this has got to be accomplished before the alarm goes off. It's got to be done in training, it's got to be done in getting together with the agencies you've run with on a regular basis and make sure that everybody understands how we get to that radio channel, how you switch to another group on the radio, how you accomplish all those things we're trying to do, because when you're in the heat of the environment, that's the wrong time to be discussing this. It isn't going to work. And in fact, you'll probably make it worse by trying to accomplish it at that time. So it's got to be done ahead of time. It's got to be done in those training environments and realize that sometimes we have limitations. We can't get everybody on the same page sometimes and we just got to figure out how we can to accomplish the goal.We used to talk about when we've built out RTFs or contact teams and they're with mutual aid units, maybe people you've never met in your entire life and you're standing there and staging, you've built out your teams and getting ready to get deployed, and you're coming up with that, "What's the radio channel we're going to use?" And then one guy or girl, whoever it is in your group says, "I can't get that radio channel." Work around it. Guess what, that person's not going to be talking on the radio, someone else is. And we understand that. We understand it right up front that that person can't be part of the communication link. They're still part of the team, they're a valued part of the team, but they can't talk on the radio because simply they can't match up with us.Kevin Burd:Yeah. And I agree a hundred percent and been involved in some of these and I'm sure Billy has as well, where we've, depending on the type of incident you're responding to, I know we're talking active shooter, you're not going to have time to get into a position. Like if we're doing a slower, more methodical search where we can take somebody from two different agencies have them hip to hip so we have both radio communications going in, but then you have to take the tactical position or that command position and have those radios next to each other also. So the same message is getting out to both. And we've been involved with that on a couple of times and quite frankly, it has not worked out well at all.Bill Godfrey:And I know that I've seen on a number of occasions, even when there has been planning ahead of time, and there's an interoperability plan and we've got these radios that are capable of 200, 300, 400 channels now between these different banks and the different channel settings. And I know that everything is set up, but when you ask somebody to switch to that channel... Say that again, Billy because-Billy Perry:They know how.Bill Godfrey:They don't know how to switch, they don't know where it is.Mark Rhame:That little laminated card that they got? It's in the car.Billy Perry:they're like, "What is a flight?"Bill Godfrey:What's a bank, a group, a channel? I don't know what that... How do I... I push buttons?Billy Perry:I don't want to go anywhere. I don't want to fly. I just want to talk.Bill Godfrey:Yeah. And here's the other thing, what we've seen, sadly is that half of them don't know how to find the channel and the ones that do find the channel, often their radios don't actually work because there was some programming error or somebody changed something or a little left-handedBilly Perry:The flash that they didn't get-Bill Godfrey:Yeah, some flash programming update they didn't get left hand's not talking to the right hand and you end up with a mess and it almost forces you to have to solve some of this stuff in staging. Doesn't it Billy?Billy Perry:Yes, it actually does.Bill Godfrey:How much does it impact you as a law enforcement officer on a contact team and your mission, if there's four of you, three of you, four of you, five of you, whatever, and only one guy has the radio that actually is on the channel with tactical?Billy Perry:We can totally make that work. I mean, it could impact it obviously, but we can make that work. It's suboptimal, but it a hundred percent doable. I don't want to do that because you know me, I'm from the department of redundancy department and I want all the radios to work. But that's just me. But yeah, I mean, is it going to impact your mission efficiency? Of course, of course, because two is one, one is none. I mean, that's a truism, but I think it is what it is. And that goes back to the professionalism component, again, is your equipment up to up to date? Is your equipment squared away? Do you have the equipment that you need, including are your radios flashed? For police that's an issued item generally for you all they stay in the station, right?Mark Rhame:Not always. When you get up to a chief level, normally you have an assigned radio that's yours. But you're exactly right in regard to the station level. Engine companies, rescues, radios are assigned to seats.Billy Perry:Right. And as a bomb technician, we worked closely with the fire department for the hazmat, for the meth labs, for the white powder calls and all that. And the way we communicated was through cell phones, frankly. We would say, "Hey, we've got a call. Are you on your way?" Which hazmat unit it was and that's, again, it's through relationships and through communication. So...Bill Godfrey:A lot of very interesting challenges. Well guys, we have to wrap this up as we're running out of time. So let's go around for, I'm going to say not just final thought, but what's the biggest thing in your mind that gets in the way of that good radio communica... I hate to use the word good, that effective radio communication. So final thoughts and then one thing for effective radio communication.Billy Perry:Final thoughts. One thing for effective new communication is calm demeanor, being in control, slow, measured, and regular words. And I think the same thing, it's not just on the radio, we hear it here. We'll hear somebody say, "Who's the room boss?" And if you don't know what a room boss is, and some people don't, I think you need to be able to articulate what it is you're wanting. Don't use catch phrases, don't use super cool terms because everybody may not know what it means. Use plain language, and let's talk and that's for the radio and for face-to-face communication.Kevin Burd:And I'm going to piggyback right on Billy because I was going to say the plain language. How many times did we run classes where they're using 10 Codes, Q codes, whatever they're using. But in those instances-Billy Perry:Signals.Kevin Burd:Signals, when everybody's coming, it's got to go to plain language so everyone understand what is going on. And the one thing I'll add on to is if your communication goes down, you better have the discussions about plan B. What is going to happen next?Billy Perry:By that you mean when your communication goes down.Kevin Burd:When your communication goes down, because it's going to happen, right?Mark Rhame:You're in Florida when you get a hurricane?Kevin Burd:Yeah. It's going to happen, right? So have that plan B and maybe that plan B, we've run trainings at schools and some radios don't penetrate through schools or larger buildings, you may have to go to the face-to-face or the sneakernet. Find the person that's in the best shape because they may have to start doing some running so we can make sure we know what's going on in there. So just have that plan B in the back of your mind also.Mark Rhame:Yeah. And we had plenty of buildings and our first do that you could not communicate once you go inside that door and you got to have that runner or plan B. And hopefully you're surveying your area. I know for fire and EMS, that's a little different than maybe for law enforcement, where we were pretty much going into the buildings in our first do. Now does that solve the problem? No, because you may get dispatched to the other side of the county or the side of the city and in enter building you've never been in your life, simply because that wasn't where you were stationed. But you have to have that plan B you're exactly right, Kevin. One thing Bill before I answered that is that, remember when we get in this class, especially when we talked about active shooter incident management and usually it's the day two or day three when we get into complex coordinated attacks when we have multiple scenes going on at the same time.It's really important that you clearly denote which scene you're on. And I say that over the radio. So to give you example, let's say you have an incident going on at your international airport and you've got one going on at your train station. It would be [inaudible 00:37:08] if you're the incident commander of one of those sites to say airport command or train station command or use actually that word. In my career, it's happened a couple of times. Fortunately I wasn't on either scene, but I was the supervisor for that shift where we had two significant scenes going on at the exact same time, and for whatever reason, units responding, went to the wrong channel, started communicating with the wrong command.One actually happened when we were landing a helicopter on an entrapment. That was about a mile apart from two entrapments that were going to exactly the same time and the helicopter landed on the wrong scene. Simply because they got LZ instructions and they got landing instructions, but frankly they never called out the location they were at on the radio, with the incident commander, because I guarantee you that helicopter pilot would have known that was the wrong intersection if they would've said it. And they came in and landed and the crews are going, "What are you here for?" And they realized it was the wrong scene.So I would tell you that, making sure that you clearly denote what scene you're on when you have multiple events going on in your community probably would help out a lot. The other thing is that, as he's talked about Bill, how we can clean this up, as I said this before is that, think about what you're going to say before you push the button. There's nothing worse than pushing that button and then taking up dead space on that radio. Think about it for a second and then push that button and give that clear, concise, communication. And that really paints that picture in a very, very short environment.Bill Godfrey:I think for mine, I'm going to do a linked too for training, but training where there's leadership that's paying attention. I think there's a lot of ills that can be fixed with training. Familiarity with your equipment familiarity, with your mutual aid groups, familiarity with other agencies. All too often, while I think most agencies do a lot of training or at least I would hope that they do, we're not terribly good about always inviting the agencies next door, the other groups, the other discipline, and trying to do some joint training. And I think those are always great, great, great opportunities to address these issues. To be familiar with the equipment, to know what are the radio channels that we have in common, what can we share? What can we do? What works, what doesn't work?And I think the leadership piece of that is, leadership needs to not only encourage that training, but frankly insist upon it, that it gets done, and then pay attention to the problems and actually follow up, fixing them. So if you've got people that are at the training that are long-winded, diarrhea mouth, using 10 Codes when you're supposed to use plain language, if you've got people that are making mistakes during the training, it needs to be corrected. And that's not always fun when you're a supervisor, because you end up looking like a jack hole, because you're on people for what they think is fairly minor issues. Well, sorry, not sorry, that's part of the job of being a supervisor. It's part of the job of being a leader.And I think the other piece of that is when you have those training sessions and you get the information and feedback that, "Hey, there's a problem. This system doesn't work with this system. They don't have our channel. We can't talk to them. Fire and police don't have a channel in common that they could use if they needed to. We run with this other law enforcement agency and because ours is on an encrypted system and theirs isn't, we can't communicate and talk and well, we're not going to unencrypt it and we're going to..." Oh my God, get over it.The time is passed, we got to work together. And that takes leadership and it takes training. So I think that's where I land on that one. All right. Any final words? Everybody's shaking their heads giving me the thumbs up. So I think that's going to wrap us up. We went a little bit long on this one. Sorry about that, ladies and gentlemen, but thank you for being a part of the podcast and I hope you enjoyed it. Please if you have not subscribed to the podcast, please click the subscribe button. We are releasing podcasts every Monday. Until the next time stay safe.

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.

Episode 23: Contact TeamsA discussion of Contact Teams, the role of the first arriving law enforcement officers, and the professionalism required to shoulder the immense responsibility of responding to an Active Shooter Event.Bill Godfrey:Welcome back to the next installment of our podcast. Today, we are going to be revisiting a subject that we have not talked about in years on the podcast, and that's contact teams. Today I have with me, Billy Perry, a retired detective and EOD from Jacksonville Sheriff's Office. While he was there, also part of their SWAT team, their dive team, the Marine unit. And even though he is technically retired, not really...Bill Perry:Not really.Bill Godfrey:Not really...Bill Perry:Not really.Bill Godfrey:... because you're still training with them...Bill Perry:I am, 36 hours a week.Bill Godfrey:... on an almost daily basis. Also joining with us, we have Harry Jimenez, who retired from Homeland Security Investigations after 30 years with DHS at the federal level, and is now serving as the deputy chief for Dimmitt County Sheriff's Office. Harry, welcome. Thanks for taking the time.Harry Jimenez:Thank you, Bill.Bill Godfrey:All right, so Billy, I know that this is a subject that is passionate and dear to your heart. Why? Why so?Bill Perry:I think this is a very difficult topic. It's a challenging topic. It's one that we approach with great reverence, with great seriousness, with great thought. And we want to come at this from a position of knowledge and a position of seriousness and with as much reverence as we can muster for it. And it is the contact team. And what does a contact team do and what is their primary job? And in any active incident, our two objectives is to stop the killing and stop the dying. And our community, the law enforcement community, for a long time was really, really, really good at that. And we're still okay at it, but we're we're having challenges or we're have been some times when we have been less than... Suboptimal, we've been suboptimal. And I think with this, and part of it is we're going through and institutional inertia paradigm shift, frankly, where I think some things are changing. And at the end of the day, we have a responsibility to stop that and there are challenges with that.Bill Godfrey:You say suboptimal. Without getting into specifics of incidents, can you give me some examples of the types of behavior you're talking about that's not really what we want.Bill Perry:Well I think, and we were talking about it-Bill Godfrey:Or the reverse of that, Billy. Give me the examples of what we do.Bill Perry:Right, exactly. That's where I was going to go with that. You read my mind. We were just talking about it, Harry and I, and one of the things is knowing what our mission is. And that's part of the issue is, as law enforcement we've had mission creep. And what I mean by that is, we're social workers and we're real estate landlords, and for we're civil people and we're traffic crash investigators, and we're... And the list goes on and on and on.Bill Godfrey:Like the MacGyver of law enforcement. Mental-Bill Perry:Oh, my god. Mental health counselors, absolutely. I mean, we're like a multi-tool. And the problem that is, we do a lot of things okay, but we don't do anything really, really good. And the one thing that differentiates us from everybody is our ability to go in and stop the bad guys, to stop the killing. And we say that, and we say that we're not flippant about this by any means.Bill Perry:And the other challenge that we've had with law enforcement is a... I don't even know that it's a watering downright diminishing of our professionalism, or if we got stagnant or where we are, and we want to be treated like professionals. And I say this to the people that are trying to all the time, but what are we doing to improve our professionalism? And are we acting like professionals? And do we know? And I ask every officer, not just every officer supervisor, not just every agency head, ask every officer, do you know what your state statute is for justifiable use of force? And they don't call it a response resistance. They call it use of force. In Florida, it's 776.Bill Perry:Do you know what your order is for response to resistance, because most departments and agencies do call it that. Do you know what your weapons platforms are? And do you know what the nomenclature is for every round that you fire and why you use it and what it is, because that's part of the professionalism component. And I say all that, and you say, well, what does that matter? It matters a lot. And I think if you don't know your orders, if you don't know your statutes, if you do not know... If you can't define immediate, imminent, right off the bat and use them in a sentence, then you're behind the eight ball. If you don't know these things that we're talking about... I mean, when it comes to a response to resistance or through periods of time, we have a duty to use force.Bill Perry:We can use force and we can't use force. And I say that all the time to people. And I'll say them again for you in a better order. We can't use force. If something happened and we cannot use force in this response to resistance. Then there may be another instance where you can. You can use force in response to resistance. And number three, you have a duty to use force. And if you ask, "Well, when's that duty to use force?" Well if you have something with... Here's another term that if you don't know, you need to rethink some things. If you're receiving actionable intelligence and you do not act on that, that's a problem. Because that's what our one job. That's what we can do that nobody else can do. Fire fighters can't do that.Bill Perry:I mean, you're not equipped for that. And we're not saying be cowboys or cowgirls or cow people. We're not saying go in and be loose cannons. Not at all, not anything, not to be reckless. And it's dangerous, but if you have actionable intelligence, you've got to make an entry. You've got to go in and do things. And alerts, and I know our department, the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office, 100%. If you're there, it's one person and you're there, we make one person entries. Alert says that. And if that's something that your agency doesn't do, that's something you need to take up with your agency. But we have to go in and do that. We have to stop the killing. Once we stop the killing, then we stop the dying.Bill Perry:And we had to undergo another paradigm shift a while back about the golden hour. And we didn't know anything about the clock. And Harry will tell you, we would high five. Man, we've done okay here. But now we know, now is when the work really starts. Well, if you impede that, if you impede that golden hour with your slow response to that, man, that's a challenge.Bill Godfrey:Yeah.Bill Perry:And that's where we lose ground with it, because...Bill Godfrey:Well, it's one of the key elements that we address right at the very opening of our classes is to get everybody focused on the reality that it's not just about the bad guy. Yes, we have to stop the threat. We have to neutralize the threat. Absolutely, that's critical. But that's not the only thing that kills people. The clock kills people, time kills people. And the example we say in class is, what good does it do to get the bad guy quickly if the bullets that he fired are still killing people because they're bleeding to death because we failed to get that medical point. But because I don't want to get us off on a tangent necessarily into the RTFs a little bit. Harry, Billy mentioned this idea of getting in and getting down range and dealing with it. And yeah, you said it's dangerous.Bill Perry:It's dangerous.Bill Godfrey:It is. Police officers are going to get shot at. They can get killed by getting shot. Firefighters can get killed in a burning building. Paramedics and EMTs can get killed by COVID or AIDS or anything else. So we all have these jobs and we know the potential is that there is deadly consequences that can come our way. And we're not flippant about that, not at all.Bill Perry:Not at all, not at all.Bill Godfrey:Not at all. It's just one of those realities that when you pin on the badge, whichever badge you're pinning on, you come to terms with.Bill Perry:Michelle Cook said it well.Bill Godfrey:Yeah. Yeah, she did. Harry, what are your thoughts on this?Harry Jimenez:Absolutely. I'm with Billy. Let's start with the last point. You're a law enforcement officer. The day that you strap that gun to your waist early in the morning to go to your beat or in the middle of the day because you have a night shift, you know the responsibility you have and you need to understand what are your authorities, when do you need to act? And many times, and as we go around the nation talking to law enforcement officers and all the first responders... And we asked them, we have these conversations. We say, "How do you feel? What's happening in your neighborhoods, in your communities?" We understand that many officers may find themselves... If they don't understand what are their authorities and responsibilities with that weapon, in a case of an active shooter, for example, going through that door, being solo entry or coming in with two or three officers or creating a contact team right outside the door to go in and engage and neutralize that threat, they're going to hesitate. And hesitation is going to kill you, and it's going to kill more people because those bullets are killing.Bill Perry:Active shooters are a different animal. And the reason I say that is because they are. It's completely different than anything else we do. And I think one of the big myths that has been propagated in law enforcement is, and we hear it all over, we hear everywhere we are, is, well, the most important thing is that I go home at night. And no, it's not. No, it's not. Nobody told you to do this. You went through a lot to do this. And the law enforcement officers code of ethics, when I learned it, it was 256 words. Now it's a little bit more, they've altered it a little bit. But nowhere in there does it say anything about you going home at night. Your daughters go home at night. Your sons go home at night. My daughter goes home at night. And honestly, the active shooter time is a weird time, because if you as a law enforcement officer are taking fire, it's actually good.Bill Godfrey:Because they're not sure they're not shooting at someone else?Harry Jimenez:Innocent people.Bill Perry:And I mean, that's an uncomfortable reality. And they go, "Are you saying I get shot at?" No, but I'm saying if you are, it's better than... But I mean, it just, it is what it is. And again, we're not being flippant about it. We're just being real. And you have got to know, you've got to know what constitutes actionable intelligence, especially in your jurisdiction. Because ours is very free and open and it is gunfire, it's brass, bodies and blood. It is calls for help. It is moans. It is intelligence that a forcible felony is taking place in a room with them. All that. We're going to make entry, I'm telling you. I know we will. I mean, and I think we owe that. We owe that to our community. And I think we have to know those time periods and we have to know our job and our craft, and we have to take it so seriously. And it is such a serious and a sombering and a sobering topic.Bill Godfrey:Yeah, absolutely. Billy, you've got a very, very strong SWAT and technical background. And Harry, I introduced you as Homeland Security Investigations, which belies your tactical background. And I don't want to share all those details publicly, but you're not... You wore a suit nice, and I have to tell the audience, the first time I met Harry at a training exercise, I had met him at the pre-brief and the safety briefing the night before, and he's a fed and a full suit. And the next morning he's in tactical gear with a shotgun slung over his chest. And I thought, okay, this guy's not the fed I'm usually seeing to. But Harry, when we think about tactics, and I'm going to ask both of you this, is safety in numbers? I mean, if you're the only guy there, you go in. I get that. I get that. But what about the second, the third guy, the fourth guy showing up, is there safety in trying to link up on a team? Maybe. Okay?Bill Perry:And one of the rules for learning and for what we do, where we are, is to stay together, communicate because it's always good to have a friend. And I say that, and I say that honestly, and I say that very candidly. And I think it's one of the things about C3 is we address the hard issues, frankly. And I think it's real, and I think it's one of the things that lends to its validity. And frankly, why I'm here and I think why Harry is here too, because we do talk honestly and candidly and forthrightly about things and we do address the tough subjects. And every firefighter's not the same and every police officer is not the same. Every school teacher is not the same. Every nurse isn't the same and every doctor is not the same. And so, yeah, man, I mean, there may be four officers and you're like, "Oh, I won the lottery today." And then there may be four officers are like, "Hey guys, block traffic." I mean...Harry Jimenez:Can you control traffic? Can you set up a perimeter for me?Bill Perry:And that's a hard truth. And those people that are real, that are listening are like, yes, that is so true.Harry Jimenez:Billy, but that's the reason why, this is the reason why. It's true. We all know it. And I know the listeners are going to be thinking, I can identify who's that guy in my department.Bill Perry:Yeah, exactly. And if you can't, it's you.Harry Jimenez:But the reality is that's the reason why it's so important that the professional development component-Bill Perry:The professional component, I agree, absolutely.Harry Jimenez:Because you have to continue growing.Bill Perry:Knowledge is power.Harry Jimenez:You have to be able to, when you arrive to a door and the shots have been fired and you and I are the first two officers and we need to link up, we might not need to talk. If we have trained together, if we have the basic threshold, here it is. This is my baseline of training. We look at each other, we know what we need to do, we link and we do God's work.Bill Perry:Absolutely.Harry Jimenez:However, If you're not training, if you don't know your codes, if you don't know if you are rightfully using your firearm, you're going to hesitate. And hesitation is going to cost lives.Bill Perry:And it's more than that. And it has to be able to be performed in an autonomous environment. This is a line level. I mean, you think about it, the most basic law enforcement officer runs around with a firearm on every day. And you don't have to call every time, "Hey, I'm about to be in a shooting. Is that good?" You don't do that. I mean, you need to be able to operate autonomously, and the same thing holds true in these situations. And you can't be ordered, don't make entry. This has to be something that you have to equip your people with to act on an autonomous level, competently, professionally and efficiently. And that leads us back into the other arenas. I mean, and I say this to the people I instruct all the time, what's the percentage of shots being fired that miss? Zero, because every round hits something and we're responsible for 100% of it.Harry Jimenez:100%.Bill Perry:And we should be, and that's okay. And we don't get the luxury of spraying and praying. We have to-Harry Jimenez:But the problem is that you go to some departments, and the first thing that they answer to that is, "Well, each bullet has a lawyer attached to it." That's hesitation.Bill Perry:It is.Harry Jimenez:That's doubt.Bill Perry:And honestly, and it doesn't. And we were talking about this the other day, or actually last night. A lot of people go, "Well, there's liability in this." Well, the liability is not really what you think it is. And anytime somebody says that in a class that I'm in where they're like, "They're a liability." All stop. Stop, break at your Google machine.Bill Godfrey:Folks, he's not kidding. I've been in class with him where he's done it.Bill Perry:All stop. Break out your Google machine and find the last time somebody was successfully litigated for that. It doesn't. The liability lies where you don't really think it does, and it's much more common since the applicated than people think.Harry Jimenez:And of course, we're talking about contact teams, we know that if we have to get to a point where we have a situation and we're rolling in and we arrive, you might be the first person going through the door. You might be by yourself. But at the same time, we hope that more officers come to respond to that call for help. And it can be from different jurisdictions, it can be detectives in plain clothes.Bill Perry:[crosstalk 00:16:23].Harry Jimenez:Exactly, so you want to be able to say-Bill Perry:Good job, by the way, San Bernardino.Harry Jimenez:Yes, shout out. So we have one, two, three, four officers. We teach and we try to get them anything from two to four officers to start creating that contact team. Because you're moving together, you'll be able to put hands on patients.Bill Perry:Sure.Harry Jimenez:But most of most important is, you want to stop the shooting and stop that threat.Bill Perry:Here's the thing. And I introduced this, I taught a class last Thursday and Friday, and we were talking about the clock. And I could see the light come on when I said, "You do realize that the clock, that golden hour didn't start when you stopped the bad guy. The golden hour started when the bad guy started."Harry Jimenez:Yeah.Bill Perry:So see, that's the thing that we-Bill Godfrey:The clock starts when the bleeding starts.Bill Perry:And that's what we lose sight of. We think, once we engage them... No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, and that's it. And again, and we say it, who our enemy is and who we're fighting, and it is bad. Now, all this to say that we can't have 19 individual, well-meaning, lone wolf soldiers running around.Bill Godfrey:I was actually just going to ask you about that. So, I mean, we've talked about being the first guy, being the officer through the door. Let's go a little deeper in the stack, second, third, fourth. What does that look like?Bill Perry:Second, third, and fourth, hopefully they're going to get there about the same time. Now, we don't do the diamond stuff anymore. I mean, we do different movements and whatnot, but we do train on that in our agency. And if you don't, if you're not training... It's like finances. If you're not planning, if you're failing to plan, you're planning to fail. And I'll say something with this, and frankly, this is one of those things where you really can't afford not to invest in this for your agency. And I don't mean just the management side of it, I mean the boots on the ground side of it too. And that's part of the challenge that we're seeing. But I think with the second, third, fourth, hopefully they're going to be there with them. Once we get in the fifth or sixth, somebody needs to start driving this train.Harry Jimenez:Oh, absolutely. You're expecting that fifth person... We call it the fifth man.Bill Perry:We do call it the fifth man.Harry Jimenez:And of course, the way we teach, we allow the communities to adapt too. It could be the six, seven, eight, nine.Bill Perry:That's what I was going to say, because everything we do in law enforcement is a tense and uncertain, rapidly developing situation. Everything's fluid, dynamic, it's a it's ever changing.Bill Godfrey:Can you slow that down and say that again? Because when they go to transcribe the podcast, they're not going to know what you just said.Bill Perry:Tense and uncertain, rapidly developing situation that is fluid and dynamic in nature.Bill Godfrey:Thank you.Bill Perry:You're welcome.Bill Godfrey:Carry on.Bill Perry:My southern-ness catches up sometimes. So anyway, at the end of the day, somebody has to drive that, and the king doesn't always wear the crown. And again, if Tactical Tammy is the one that shows up as fifth person, you're like, "Thank goodness she's here. She's going to be the one that goes in there and eats this." I'm not going to pull her aside and have her drive the train if... Does that make sense? Admin Andy is right behind her and he's an amazing person at doing the other... It's fluid and it can move.Harry Jimenez:And the main thing is, we understand that, like you say, we don't want 10, 15, 20 lone wolves running around the school or running around a building or running around a mall. Like what happened in El Paso, you have everybody responding to the Walmart shooting. Well, somebody there pumped the brakes, call dispatch, say, "Okay, I got tactical. I have at least four officers inside." Let them know on the radio. And you can ask tactical, "Send me the next four officers to my location. I'm going to be at the corner off the parking lot." So you can then, that person makes another contact team and starts slowing things down.Bill Perry:Absolutely. Let me bring up another thing before we forget it, discrimination. That's another thing that we are sorely lacking in law enforcement today is discrimination. And I mean, discriminatory shooting. A lot of agencies have a five step discrimination process, whole body, hands, belt, waistline, immediate area and demeanor, looking at the whole body, the hands the belt, about what's on demeanor. I mean, because we're not just looking for guns. Because a lot of good people have guns. Lots of good people have guns.Bill Godfrey:In Texas, almost everybody carries.Bill Perry:Right. Regardless of what you-Bill Godfrey:I didn't think you were allowed in Texas if you didn't have one.Bill Perry:Right. Inconvenient truth, it really does. And so a lot of good people do have guns. A lot of retired off duty officers, a lot of people that are really good and they do fix things, the White Settlement Church.Bill Godfrey:Absolutely.Bill Perry:I mean, there's absolutely there's a lot of things that happen.Harry Jimenez:Sutherland Springs.Bill Perry:Sutherland Springs, exactly.Harry Jimenez:[crosstalk 00:21:14].Bill Perry:So, I mean at the end of the day, so that's why you don't just look for gun and then engage it. Because you need to look for the whole body, the hands, the belt, waistline. You're looking for markings, looking for demeanor. You're looking for all that. Well, we do six. We do a face, whole body, hands, belt, waistline and demeanor. And the reason being is because I can go, "Harry, I'm done." I don't have to say, "Wait a minute, man. I'm looking at your whole body, your hands, your belt, waistline and demeanor." So but I think that's something we need to do. And the reason I bring that up here is because when you're moving through, just because you see somebody with a gun, it doesn't mean you need to service them, because you need to discriminate them. And this is something that if you're not teaching your department... Now this is libelous. This is something that is liability ridden.Bill Godfrey:Oh, that's okay. I'm thinking about all the letters I'm going to get on this podcast, but go right ahead.Bill Perry:You're welcome. It's all true and defendable.Bill Godfrey:Amen.Bill Perry:Right. The Safety Priority Matrix is defendable in court. It used to be called the Priority of Life Scale, now it's the Safety Priority Matrix. Again, professionalism. But I think when you're moving through, you need to be able to discriminate. You need to be able to link up with your initial contact team because they're going to be owning that position where the bad person is. That way you can start. They're going to own that. And that's great. And then we're going to start looking for other survivors and then we start clearing the building after we set cordons and we set up CCPs. If you don't know what a CCP is, if you do not know what an AEP is, if the most junior grunt officer that you've got does not know CCP, AEP, RTF, and imminent, immediate, all these words that I've been saying, step it up. Then end.Harry Jimenez:And not only that, you bring an example about discrimination, and it happens. And this is another conversation that we have as we go around the nation teaching these classes, especially in the advanced. We provide the students with several scenarios. And many people approach us and ask us, "Well, the shooter stopped shooting. Can we shoot the bad guy?" Because somewhere along the line in their training, they're being told that if the individual is actively engaging, they can put the tread down. And they miss the whole picture that that person has the means to do harm, had a gun.Bill Perry:Hence, eminent and immediate.Harry Jimenez:Eminent and immediate. They have already their capacity, capability and intention...Bill Perry:And propensity.Harry Jimenez:... to conduct violent events and hurt people. And they just turn around and start babbling and calling names. And many officers stop in their tracks thinking, can I service this individual?Bill Perry:And if you can, if that's what's needed or it doesn't, if they will allow us to take them into custody, I'm all about taking them into custody. Let's take them into custody.Bill Godfrey:It's amazing how often that is happening now. Yeah, I was going to say, that is a shift we've seen in the data over the last few years.Bill Perry:That is a shift.Bill Godfrey:We have fewer that are committing suicide. The rate of suicide is... Well, nosediving is too strong a way to say it, but it is substantially decreased. And the one that's increased is the ones that are being taken to custody and the ones that are fleeing.Harry Jimenez:No, absolutely. And if you look, if you look, yeah, the numbers of suicidal, suicide... Ending by suicide on active shooter was like a third, and it went down in the twenties. But what went up was the fact that they're now engaging the responding officers.Bill Perry:Yes.Harry Jimenez:They might be barricading. They might be moving to another place. Which takes us to, if you have a good tactical person and understand that that individual moved to a second floor, you still have people dying in the first floor, but you can still conduct saving lives on the first floor.Bill Perry:If we have people that service and handle it.Harry Jimenez:Exactly.Bill Perry:Yeah, I think that that's 100% true. And I think one of the other paradigm shifts that we've had to explain to officers is if they do escape, which that's another one, that's a win.Bill Godfrey:Yeah, because they're not killing people.Bill Perry:They're not killing people right now. And we have a whole slew of really aggressive, crazy detectives for us that are going to go find that person. And I mean, they're really good at it. They're going to find them. And I mean, let them go do that, but mission accomplished. We've stopped the killing. We've stopped the dying.Bill Godfrey:You've raised an issue that I want to talk, but before we run out of time. I want both of you to talk about it a little bit. So if you have an active shooter event, you make your entry, team, no team, whatever the case may be, you neutralize the threat because a threat's presenting, that's pretty clear, cut and dry. And of course, our priority is number one, stop the killing, neutralize the threat. Number two, rescue number three clear. Can you talk a little bit about those instances where it was an active shooter event, but you get there, you've made entry and the shooting has stopped. You don't know where the bad guy is. You don't know whether he is self terminated, left the scene, holed up, hostage, barricade, but the shooting has stopped.Bill Godfrey:And one of the things that we see so often that is very difficult, it happens in training, happens in real life, is that ability to switch, to say, okay, we've gone from an active threat to not an active threat. There may still be a threat and present, but now it's a question mark. Can we talk a little bit about that process and that transition and changing gears and moving to the rescue?Bill Perry:Well, advanced is the basics mastered. So all we do is we revert to SIM, we set up security, we have an immediate action plan in the event they do come back or we get more actionable intelligence, and we do medical. It's seriously that simple.Harry Jimenez:Absolutely. If you don't have an active threat, you don't have the driving force that we call it, right?Bill Godfrey:Which you were calling actionable intelligence.Harry Jimenez:Exactly, actionable intelligence. Now you have body armor, you have weapons, for your partners, you can make an area secure enough, make that a warm scenario. It's not hot anymore, bullets are not flying, and you can take care of the people that are bleeding. You need to save lives. And you're going to have the rest of the time to search and find that shooter. If he went away, you're going to get an intel. If it's barricaded, you're going to find out, but you cannot stop and be inactive because when you stop, the clock is ticking. People are bleeding, people are dying.Bill Perry:You know what I liken this to, and Adam Pendley is the one that addressed that initially likened it this way to me is, it's a normal shooting in the city.Bill Godfrey:Explain.Bill Perry:It's on a bigger scale. I mean, we have a lot of shootings where we are, and the shooter's generally not there when we get there.Bill Godfrey:Weird.Bill Perry:And the shooter's generally not there when y'all get there in the ambulance.Bill Godfrey:That's right. But you know we would be there.Bill Perry:Right. But you get there, there's nothing stopping him from circling around and coming back.Bill Godfrey:Right.Bill Perry:But we don't think about that. It's no different, but you've got officers there and we're setting up security. We have an immediate action plan, even if it's ad hoc.Harry Jimenez:And we're applying medical.Bill Perry:And we're doing medical. So honestly, as soon as we don't get actionable intelligence, we're pushing. If we're pushing and we're pushing and everything's quiet, we don't have actionable intelligence, then we're going to set up the corridors, the cordons, the CCPs, the APs. People know what that means, and then start rescuing and then start because the clock is running. That's what you have to understand. The clock has been running since before you were dispatched. Let that sink in. Before the radio call went out, the clock had already started.Harry Jimenez:And our job is to save lives.Bill Perry:Period.Bill Godfrey:One of the things that I've seen happen in training, in the scenarios that we're running, and I love to see it, because you meet a lot of officers who haven't really, I guess, mentally walked through this issue of changing gears. They're expecting to find the bad guy, and now we don't really know. We haven't found them and we don't know what's going on, but we've got to change gears. But what I love to see, and I love when I see the students, the participants of the training, when they hit this reality that, okay, contact team one and two are going to support the rescue and the medical operation, and we're going to get some RTFs down range.Bill Perry:If you don't know what an RTF is, fix that.Bill Godfrey:Yeah, and then contacts three and four are going to be working on clearing. They're going to do some more work to look for bad guys.Bill Perry:Or are there other survivors that are hiding?Bill Godfrey:Exactly.Bill Perry:You're clearing for survivors.Bill Godfrey:And finding that. And by the way, if you're wondering about the terms, I'm with Billy. Hit the website because we define all that stuff there. But CCP is a Casualty Collection Point. This is a point inside your downrange area, your threat area, where you set up security, you get a secured room and it becomes a warm zone. It may be in an island of a hot zone, but it's a warm zone where we can assemble casualties and provide treatment, and then ultimately work on evacuating them out. The AEP, the Ambulance Exchange Point, this is an area where we do the handoff from the rescue task forces that are working in the warm zones to the ambulance. And it's not always in a cold zone. And sometimes we need, in fact oftentimes, we need to secure that Ambulance Exchange Point so that we can operate.Bill Perry:And if you're really good and efficient, they're close.Bill Godfrey:Exactly, because carrying people sucks.Bill Perry:Right up there with the root canals and alimony.Bill Godfrey:But here's the reason why we do that is the clock. Again, if you set up a shuttle operation, you are burning precious minutes. And not two or three, but 10 or 15.Bill Perry:On a clock that has already been running before you got notified of the incident.Bill Godfrey:Yes.Bill Perry:Before you ever acknowledged, before you ever made your way there, before you ever did anything, that clock has been going. I'm going to hammer that home.Bill Godfrey:Absolutely. Harry, final thoughts. We've got to wrap up.Harry Jimenez:We're here to save lives. We owe to our communities that we secure and protect to be professional, to maintain continuous education, to get ready for that day. We hope that you have a 20, 25, 30 year career and you never have to encounter that day, but you need to train for that day because it's going to be the time that is going to kill people, and you can shave seconds, precious seconds from that time.Bill Godfrey:Absolutely. Billy?Bill Perry:Unfortunate truth, sometimes response resistance, some times the judicious application of force saves lives. Sorry, not sorry. It is what it is.Bill Godfrey:There it is. Well, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for listening in. Gentlemen, thank you for being here.Bill Perry:Thank you.Harry Jimenez:Thank you.Bill Perry:And thank you for addressing this seriously sensitive subject that we have crossed over as a community and as a nation.Bill Godfrey:We've got to talk about it.Harry Jimenez:Thank you for the opportunity. Thank you so much.Bill Godfrey:And I realize to a certain degree, there's probably a dozen different things that we've talked about or said here that could be pointed to and said, "Hey, it's politically incorrect." And I get that, but that doesn't change the reality that people get killed if you don't do the job.Bill Perry:They're dead.Bill Godfrey:If you don't take care of business, people end up dying. And we didn't end up in this business to just watch people die.Bill Perry:Fact. And one of my heroes has a saying, "There are things worse than dying." And my omission, to me, would be much worse than something else.Bill Godfrey:Yeah. Billy, Harry, thanks for coming in today. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for being with us today. Please, if you haven't subscribed to the podcast already, please hit the subscribe button. Make sure that you get notice of that. If you have any questions for us, please reach out through the website or give us a call at the office. Until next time, stay safe.

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.

Episode 21: School Safety and Violent Event Incident Management (SSAVEIM)John-Michael Keyes Interview - Part 2Bill Godfrey:Okay. So I am going to tangent and take us to talking about our new course that we're doing together jointly with C3 and I Love U Guys Foundation, SSAVEIM, and that is School Safety and Violent Event Incident Management. I'm so excited that we're going to get this. You and I have been working on this for such a long time. It feels like an eternity, and we're finally going to get this released and have it out here in the first quarter of 2020. I'm very, very excited to have that step forward and come forward. Do you mind talking a little bit about what it meant to you and how you see it all fitting together?John-Michael:Well, one of the things we've been really good at is classroom instructional materials development training and actually conducting those trainings. Getting that functional side of things is, I think, where C3 pathways has excelled. And integrating the Counterstrike tool into a reunification scenario, where we can go hands on, where we can get more functional with it, has been an extraordinary addition to how we looked at training and instruction. So I think the first step in that was the brilliance of taking the Counterstrike concept and saying, let's move that to a reunification. Let's put educators around the table, not just first responders, and it's been a tremendous addition to how we're going to be conducting some of our trainings in the future.Bill Godfrey:Yeah, I'm and I'm really excited about it. For the benefit of the listeners, the SAVEIM class is intended to be an eight hour class, a single day that is for a mix of responders and school administrators together. So we want some law enforcement in the room. We want fire EMS in the room, some emergency management. But we also want a very healthy showing of school administrators. We expect the typical class size to run right around 50 people. About half of that would be school personnel, whether that's a mix of school leadership and teachers and administrators along with a good selection of law enforcement and fire EMS personnel, the responders, some 911 and emergency management mixed in. But in that eight hour day, what we're planning to do, and John-Michael, I'm sure you're going to chuckle, because we had these conversations and it was certainly hard to get there.We're going to try to walk through in the morning. So the first four hours of the class we're going to walk through the standard response protocol. We're going to walk through the active shooter incident management process and then the standard reunification method. That's a lot of material to cover in four hours. On top of that, as you said, we're going to get up and get around a board and begin to walk our way through this. So we're going to do a relatively brief lecture on the standard response protocol. We're going to get everybody up around the board, around a board that's a school environment, and say, "Okay, here's the situation, which is the correct version of the standard response protocol that you want to implement. Show us how you're going to implement. Where are you going to move these kids that are in the halls and out of position and that kind of stuff, and basically get the school into either a lockout, or a lockdown configuration probably more likely.Then we're going to go back to the lecture and talk a little bit about the ASIM process, the actual shooter incident management process, which addresses the integrated response from law enforcement and fire EMS. Show how that stands up, fits together. We're going to pause from the lecture, move back to the board. So we're going to take this school that's now in lockdown and begin to apply in a just a walkthrough way that initial response from law enforcement, fire EMS, to then manage that event from the responder point of view.Then once the last patient is transported from the scene, we'll take another pause. Go back to lecture to talk about the standard reunification method and then come back to the board that now the crisis event is over, but we've still got all of these kids that need to be accounted for, moved safely to the reunification site, a reunification site that by the way has to be set up and organized. And then reunify the kids with the guardians, with the custodial parents and guardians, and track it all.Then we're going to break for lunch because everybody's going to be brain dead at that point. We're going to break for lunch and when we come back in the afternoon, we're going to spend the entire afternoon running scenarios from start to finish so that we get some repetition and people can really begin to apply and under understand these processes. I'm just so excited that about doing that as a joint venture with you.John-Michael:Working together with a lot of America between us, from Florida to Colorado, we did manage to get stuff done. The level of effort from your side of the house was absolutely tremendous. I think I occasionally poked a finger at it as you did the heavy lifting.Bill Godfrey:Well, I think that's an undersell, but I appreciate it. You did an awful lot of work in the background, including helping us with some of the classroom materials and the slides, and shared an enormous amount of the information. I mean, the bulk of the course is really about SRP and SRM. The ASIM, I mean if you split it into thirds, you've got kind of two thirds of it. So I think you're selling yourself short by saying you only poked a finger at it. You had a lot more to do it within that. So that's exciting.John-Michael:It is. It's very exciting. I'm watching my mail carefully this time of year. I understand one of the Counterstrike kits is on its way.Bill Godfrey:Yeah. I knew I wasn't going to get through this without being accountable for that which by the way, just to back at you, what's the date that has the new version of School Reunification Method (SRM) will be released?John-Michael:Yeah. It went from Q4 to Q1.Bill Godfrey:We do have all of the materials now. We had a little bit of a production hiccup with the student chips that we're using as part of the Counterstrike, but that has been solved. We've rerun that. We've got all the materials in-house. In fact, the young ladies that do our Counterstrike production are here today, including my daughter Abbey, and they are working on building boards and putting those kits together. So I am actually hoping to have one to send you. It's not going to get there as a Christmas present, John-Michael, but it'll be there for New Year's present.John-Michael:Spectacular.Bill Godfrey:Unless of course that white stuff that comes down in Colorado messes with shipping. That's not my responsibility. But yeah, other than that.John-Michael:Yeah, evidently shipping is a little tight this year, this time of year as well.Bill Godfrey:It is. It is. I'm actually very, very excited to get one of the first production. I know you've seen a number of the prototype versions that we built and you and I did a class together where we kind of beta tested some of this stuff and learned some, some really, really good lessons, got some great feedback. So I'm really excited to get one of the production units in your hand.John-Michael:I'm looking forward to it, Bill, and it is the right time of year to get it.Bill Godfrey:Absolutely. So I wanted to ask you about any other new I Love U Guys stuff, but I want to revisit something because you skimmed over it pretty quick and I'm not sure that our listeners may have caught that. And that is the software work you're doing to customize some stuff. Can you back up and revisit that a little bit and tell everybody what you're up to there because I think that's pretty exciting? And I think it's going to be pretty interesting to our emergency responders that are out there.John-Michael:One of the things that has been a fabulous training tool as well as an execution tool are our reunification operation kits. Part of the materials there, we've got a handful of binders that a school district or agency can assemble on their own. We provide the files and a manifest and schools and districts put it together themselves. But I also realized that most everyone on scene has one of those things in their pocket that's got a screen on it. So we are hoping to be able to deploy some of that training material, the job action sheets, electronically in a self-contained web blob if you will. It's called a progressive web app.The benefit of those is we can host them on the website and folks can just download them, save them to their home screen. It looks and feels just like a little application. But the benefit of that is that we can from the website perhaps provide for some customization so that they can create a customized progressive web app that's got the reunification operation kit in it. We're excited about that. I've got some code in the mix right now. Just before I started this call, I managed to break one piece of it. But the foundation is moving more and more towards that commitment of, sure we'll deliver you a PDF at no cost. Absolutely there are books available. But we want to be able to deliver electronically so that it's phone first and phone friendly as well. That's one of our big pushes for the tail end of this year and going forward into 2020, is mobile first content delivery.Bill Godfrey:It's just such a fabulous idea. As you know, you and I have talked about this on several occasions. We've got a phone app that we built for our checklist that's available both in the Android store and iPhone as well that we make available for free and doesn't have commercials on that. It is for those of you out there that have never been part of developing something like that, it is not a small task. It is a lot of work to develop phone apps that are being distributed in the store. There is a pretty regimented process that you have to go through, not only to get them built, but to get them approved and released. It takes a big commitment. It takes a big commitment. I really admire not only that you guys are moving that direction on the foundation, but some of your ideas for being able to customize it are pretty exciting.I'm very anxious to hear what your feedback is on the progressive web app tool as you and I have talked about, because it is a big undertaking to not only publish a phone app but to maintain it and take care of the inevitable tech support problems that come up. We don't get those calls too much anymore, but when we first released it there were a number of phone calls that came in, and you've got to be responsive to those and fix those things. So it's a big effort. I admire that you're doing it.John-Michael:Well, one of the things that's different between progressive web apps and full-blown app development is that it stays in our wheelhouse. It's HTML, Java script at the end of the day and there's less development energy necessary than going down the full app development path. I'm crossing my fingers and hoping that's so anyway.Bill Godfrey:So other than the new web app and some custom software, do you guys have any other new stuff that you've got going on at the foundation? I know you've added some new staff members and team. What other new stuff you got going on you want to tell everybody about?John-Michael:Well, we'll do one more quick one. And that is earlier this week we were filming our training video for the municipal version of the Standard Response Protocol (SRP).Bill Godfrey:Oh wow.John-Michael:And the City and County of Denver has gone into a curriculum usage agreement and we have developed custom materials from a municipal perspective. That book is out. It's not on the website yet. But we're very excited about it extending beyond K-12, higher ed, et cetera. So municipal version of the SRP, and that carries some different environmental challenges and perhaps some more adult conversations.Bill Godfrey:That's is really exciting. Congratulations on that John-Michael. I know you've had that in the works. So that's very, very exciting to hear that that went out. I know from what you told me offline that that was well received out there. So I'm very happy for you.Under the topic of odds and end there were a couple of things that didn't fit any place else. One of the things I wanted to remind you of and talk about real briefly was this phrase that we coined called an emotionally responsible room entry. For the benefit of the listeners, there's been a number of events, not just one, there's been a number. But there was one in particular, and I don't want to name it, but there was one event in particular that happened at a school. The event, the threat, was dealt with very quickly. The injured were rescued very quickly by all measures, a phenomenal initial response. Just a phenomenal initial response.But then in the follow on, things kind of went a little sideways. The school had gone into lockdown. All of the doors were locked. And instead of pausing and regrouping and getting organized and getting the keys and coming up with a plan, responders began to kick doors in and forced doors and make full tactical weapons up entries into every single room when quite a bit of time had passed from the actual cessation of the active threat, the act of violence. This was a school that had some younger kids, and in the process we probably added some trauma, emotional trauma, to kids that probably wasn't really needed.It made us step back and take a pause and say, Okay, how do we convey that to responders to say, "All right, the threat's done. The injured had been transported. You've got a perimeter. The situation's contained. Let's take a deep breath, come up with a plan for clearing and moving the kids off campus to the reunification center." And this term emotionally responsible room entry. Can you talk a little bit, and again I don't want to highlight where the incident occurred. But can you talk a little bit of more in a general sense about some of the outcomes and what you see as good guidance to responders going forward?John-Michael:It's really interesting. There's a few cops in the country who've been directly involved in multiple active violence incidents at schools. Two of them are actually here in Colorado. The conversation there is very interesting, because somebody who's been through this once, or twice, or three times has a different perspective. They are very tuned in to their impact on the students during the event. And there's two outcomes there.It's a positive impact or it's a negative impact, and they totally get the challenge of, Are there more perpetrators? But they also recognize their history, their data, and their intel. And rarely is that the case. Often we can just take a deep breath, slow down, and let's not go overboard going into that room, especially if it's seven year olds. So the conversation we were having with law enforcement, we're in a unique position to do it, and it's a little tentative, although occasionally I might get a little firmer in my push on this. And that is I want everyone safe. I want that scene secured. And everyone knows that it's secure. But we can be a little more gentle with our teens, our tweens and our kiddos.Bill Godfrey:Yeah, you mentioned seven year old and it just gave me an empty pit in my stomach and made my heart sink a little bit. I can tell you on our side, we're having a lot of conversation internally about can we develop some formal tactical guidance on how to do an emotionally responsible room entry. How do we do that in a tactically safe way, or a moderated way so that you're prepared for a threat should one present, but the entry itself is not as frightening and threatening to those in the room. I can't say that we have an answer for it yet. I'm very encouraged by the nature and the tone of the conversation. I will tell you one of the challenges is there's no universal agreement in law enforcement on how to do a room entry to begin with.One of the funniest ways to get cops to fight with each other is to get them to pit one room entry against another and then stand back and watch the fireworks, which is sometimes entertaining but it's certainly not helpful on this topic. But it has slowed us down a little bit because nobody really agrees that there is a best way. And I think that probably is because there probably isn't one best way. There's probably a bunch of different ways that need to be selected based on the situation, the tactics, the building, the intel, all of those things going on. The experience of the team. Is your room entry being done by patrol officers or a SWAT team? That makes a big difference.But I'm encouraged by the tenor of the conversation going on. We're actually in the process of reaching out formally to some of the tactical associations, the national associations, and asking them if they would join us in working on this. And not to say that there's only one way, or this is the right way or the wrong way, but just to give some guidance to say you can be reasonably safe, tactically safe, and still do it this way, which is not so frightening to kids. And here's an example or two of what that could look like. So here, take this and go practice on your own, and just keep it in the back of your mind.John-Michael:Absolutely. You hit on it and we're sensitive to it as well. That is giving folks in that profession, you got to do it this way, is a problematic thing.Bill Godfrey:Yeah.John-Michael:But adding the notion that there's a consideration, is one that we're very, very attentive to and anytime there's law enforcement in the room we bring it up, and typically it starts like that. Who are my cops? Who are my cops with kids? Now let's talk about those kids. And not one of them has said to me yet, "Yeah, I want them coming in with all their guns a blazing." And it's a consideration.Bill Godfrey:Yeah. It's funny, one of our instructors, when he teaches our hostage negotiation module, he always says, "How many people in here are married? How many people have teenage kids? Congratulations. You're already a negotiator." Do you have any other odds and ends that you'd like to just throw out there for the good of the group?John-Michael:We've been busy. I'm very excited. I love going out and training, but organizationally we are shooting for a cap this year that's a little less than last year and that'll allow me to get some more of the production side of things done.Bill Godfrey:Yeah. My recollection is you spent almost 250 days on the road.John-Michael:2018 was very busy. 2019 was busy.Bill Godfrey:Yeah. Yeah. As another fellow weary traveler, I'm excited to hear for both the foundation and for you personally that you're going to try to moderate that a little bit. I know it takes time. It takes time to shift gears, but I'm excited for you.John-Michael:We've got some tremendous adjunct instructors. One of the conversations that came up was, "Well, it's not a John-Michael presentation." Well I can't do a Stacey presentation, and she brings her experience as a patrol deputy and how lockdown drills looked from that perspective, as well as her experience as a hostage negotiator, to our training tables. So it's trainers like her. We are delighted with the folks that are out training for us now.Bill Godfrey:That's fantastic. That's fantastic. Well, John-Michael, I think that's probably a pretty good place to wrap this up. I cannot thank you enough not only for being our first guest on the podcast series, but just taking the time to talk with us, to share our listeners, and to share your material. For those listeners that don't realize this, John-Michael and the foundation shared the SRP and the SRM material with us and allowed us to include it in our textbooks, in our classes, for no cost. He just says this is good material, this is the right thing to do, and made that available to us and gave us permission to do that. I just cannot thank you enough for the support you've given us in the past, and the continued support that you give us moving forward.John-Michael:We can't move the needle alone, Bill, and it's truly partnerships like this that start to embrace the collective impact of working together. The partnership between nonprofit and commercial organizations is stronger than either one alone.Bill Godfrey:I agree. I agree. It takes everybody to do it. Well, John-Michael, thank you very much. And to our listeners out there, thank you for tuning in. Please come back and join us on our next podcast and until then, be safe.

Episode 19 Back To Training: What's New and What You Can Do NowWe're back with updates, what's new, and how you can get great training now!All:We're back!Bill Godfrey:Hi and welcome back to our next podcast installment. We have been silent for a little while. It's been a while since we've done our last podcast, but that's not because we haven't been ... We've been quite busy. We're not sitting around on our hands. And that's what we're going to talk about today, is just kind of catch you up on everything that's been going on here, and talk about some of the new stuff that's happened and where we're heading with it.Bill Godfrey:Today I have with me three of the other instructors from C3 Pathways; Billy Perry, we have Don Tuten, and Mark Rhame. My name is Bill Godfrey, your host, and today we are going to kind of catch you up on what we're doing. Guys, thanks for taking the time to join us. I appreciate you all being here.Billy Perry:Thanks for having me here.Mark Rhame:Awesome. Thanks for the opportunity.Bill Godfrey:Absolutely. So, been an odd time with COVID.Billy Perry:Definitely been challenging.Bill Godfrey:Yeah. Yeah. No kidding. A little bit for all of us. And I kind of, for us, the way I always describe it ... and you guys have heard me say this ... is I break it into this idea of phase one and phase two. Phase one of COVID, "Eh, we'll hunker down for a month or two. This'll blow over and we'll go back to being normal," and phase two was, "Yeah, that's not going to happen. We need to shift gears and do something different." So let's talk about that.Bill Godfrey:So, since we kind of had our face-to-face training shut down, we've actually got a number of new courses that we've put out, and a whole new training platform. So the first one I'd like to talk about is SSAVEIM. SSAVEIM is our School Safety And Violent Event Incident Management course. And Mark, you were there for the pilot delivery that we did up in the Jacksonville area. Can you talk a little bit about the class and what your experience was?Mark Rhame:Well, I think the amazing thing to me was that it was a class that had a lot of teachers, school administrators, along with a cadre of law enforcement officials and fire and EMS. So what it gave the school principals and teachers the opportunity to see is why we do this. I think that was one of the biggest things I took away from that class, is that they didn't get why we did so much and why we did that particular activity at an event at their school, and when we got done with the class, it pretty much opened their eyes. They said, "Now we understand it. We understand how we're part of this procedure, this policy that you're going to enact if there's unfortunately an active shooter event at our school."Mark Rhame:And it's something that opened my eyes too, because I figured that they had been training on this, they had been talking about the threats and the active events that might happen at their school, the possibility, but I think this class really gave an opportunity for those teachers, those administrators to actually see it in practice, and how they are really an important cog in that whole wheel, if you will. Because without them, we're not going to be successful. We need them to be part of the response, if you will, and making sure that we get these people in a safe environment so we can do our jobs.Bill Godfrey:Yeah, I saw a lot of the same things. There was a lot of the eyes wide open when we got to the ... It wasn't really so much about the process of getting the bad guy ... I think they kind of generally got that that's the priority ... but I think they were a little bit surprised by how much it took to get the injured off of the scene, and I saw a lot of eyes really wide open once we got the bad guys taken care of, the injured are off the scene; now we've got to figure out how to move the kids from the classrooms, doing an offsite reunification. A lot of them thought, "No, we're going to use our own school." Why does that now work out too well, Billy?Billy Perry:Right. It's a crime scene, and there's a lot of things going on there, a lot of moving parts, and yeah, it's just not practical.Don Tuten:And you have an influx of parents trying to get there, you have a lot of traffic issues obviously, you have emergency personnel coming and going nonstop, and it's just ... It's not the way we do business to make things flow and to make it [inaudible 00:04:17] There's a lot of challenges with that that I think, you're correct, it opened their eyes on a lot of things and it had them reevaluate their plans, as well as taking this training and understanding that this is opportunity for them to not only learn something from this class, and how police and fire work, but also how they can tailor their plans to help them better prepare around our tactics and around our procedures and how we make these things go away.Mark Rhame:Yeah, and Bill, I think there was a lot of misconception that they had, as you stated earlier, about ... as Billy said, this is a crime scene. They can't use that school for their reunification purposes, and when we talk about reunification, we can't use them either, because they were involved. They are witnesses. Or maybe we want them to be the ones that stay with their kids so that we can have accountability. So that portion of it, on the reunification side, they just didn't get it. They thought, "Oh, well we're going to be part of the process." Well no, actually you're not. You're part of the initial assault. You're going to be involved in being either the witness, or you're going to be making sure those kids get into a safe environment, because we've got to have accountability. And I don't think they understood it, but I think they did when we walked out of there.Bill Godfrey:Yeah, I thought so too, and of course I don't want us to spend too much time talking about SSAVEIM today, because our next couple of podcasts ... we've got a two-part series coming up with John-Michael Keyes from the I Love U Guys Foundation talking about the SSAVEIM course, which was a partnership with I Love U Guys ... and talking about reunification as well, but ... So I know here in Florida we've been back to school for a while, but across the country, it's kind of all over the place; some are back, some are going back, some are in between, some aren't going back. Do you think we've been pretty lucky, given the tenor and tone of what's going on in the country, that we haven't had any events at schools in this year?Billy Perry:Absolutely.Don Tuten:Yeah. I think that with anything that challenges school or business and everything going on right now, we've lost focus on ... I won't say lost focus; maybe we're not as clear focused because these kids are out of school, for the most part, and I think now is the time for people really to start thinking, "Okay, this is why we train. This is why we do this." And just because the majority of kids may not be in school right now, and as they're coming in, we really need to stay focused on that continuous threat that's out there wanting to harm our kids.Mark Rhame:And I also think there's an enhanced level of stress and depression going on right now.Billy Perry:That's what I was going to say, Mark. I agree.Mark Rhame:You know, from school kids to teachers. I mean, I've got friends who are teachers who say it's not unusual to lose a teacher who just can't take it anymore. They're leaving the profession. And the kids are stressed out. So we've got a new faction of stress and depression and anxiety coming from the COVID environment from this last year that we've been through.Billy Perry:And I will say we've lost focus, but I mean, I think we have. I think we're all on a powder keg. We're sitting on a powder keg with all the things that we were talking about; with the depression, with the cabin fever, with the being isolated, with the can't go to movies, you can't go to bars in certain areas. I mean, I think everybody's really frustrated.Don Tuten:Well, COVID's become the headline unfortunately—Billy Perry:Absolutely!Don Tuten:And not safety of and response of [crosstalk 00:07:34]—Billy Perry:Right. And everything we're doing here, they're perishable skills. They're no different than shooting—Don Tuten:Absolutely.Billy Perry:They're no different than driving, they're no different than life safety. They're perishable skills, and the longer we stay away from them, the more they degrade and erode.Bill Godfrey:Yeah, absolutely.Mark Rhame:And I think it's been put on the back shelf. I mean, frankly this isn't the issue people are talking about right now until it happens again. When it happens again, it'll go to the front of the line.Bill Godfrey:Yeah, and you know, to a degree I kind of understand the put it on the back shelf for a little while, but I think that's why it's important to start talking about it again. Let's not wait to get back to that until a tragedy happens. Let's ... All right, we had to take a pause, we had other things to do. COVID was a really big deal, and it was hard on responders, but let's not forget we've got to ... even if life hasn't gone back to normal, we've got to re-normalize getting back to training and doing that.Billy Perry:I'm a fighter, and I equate it as fighting multiple attackers. You address the immediate danger first, but that doesn't negate the danger that's [crosstalk 00:08:41] address the immediate danger ... COVID ... now let's address the other danger, which is the normal stuff that we have. That hasn't gone away.Bill Godfrey:Yeah. Absolutely. So, let's tangent away. For those of you that are interested in learning more about SSAVEIM, School Safety And Violent Event Incident Management, tune into the next couple of podcast. I think you'll find it a fascinating conversation with John-Michael Keyes, which ironically we actually recorded before COVID really took hold, but they're still very appropriate to take a listen to.Bill Godfrey:So let's talk about our latest training platform that we created for being able to do hands-on training remotely. That was the big topic we were all talking about as instructors. Everything we do involves hands-on training. How in the hell are we going to do that remotely? And the answer was we needed to build our own platform to do it, you just couldn't ... What we need to do, we couldn't do in Zoom or Microsoft Teams, and so we did that as part of this campus project with the National Center for Integrated Emergency Response ... NCIER ... so we've got a NCIER campus now as this tool to be able to put everybody into a training environment.Bill Godfrey:So when you sign in, you literally join into this grand lobby ... which I've got to tell you guys, I'm a little spoiled, but I love those floor-to-ceiling windows that overlook Biscayne Bay and Miami. It's just ... Every time I sign in, it's just so calming.Don Tuten:It's a perfect training environment. It's a perfect training environment that I'll tell you is unreal, and I would encourage everybody to go to YouTube and look at some of the information on NCIER through C3 Pathways. It's a great place to work. It's phenomenal, and the technology is second to none right now.Bill Godfrey:And Billy, I'm going to actually throw this one over to you, because you were one of the very first instructors who I called up and said ... because you lean so heavily into the hands-on training component. And I called up and I kind of pitched this idea to you that was bouncing around in my head before we had started on anything, because I figured your reaction would tell me what I needed to know. Do you want to tell people what you were thinking?Billy Perry:I'm like, "This is beyond challenging." Yeah, I had a more skeptical view. I was the skeptic. Yeah.Bill Godfrey:Well, absolutely. Absolutely.Billy Perry:100%. Because I was afraid that ... because I've seen the Zoom meetings and I've seen that from other agencies and things, and where people log on and leave and go do other stuff and come back and say, "Yeah, that sounds great," and then gone again. Go for a run, whatever. Literally. That's not hyperbole, that literally happens. But you've built things into that. Because I was the skeptic of this.Don Tuten:And this program is so interactive—Billy Perry:It is.Don Tuten:You can't do that.Billy Perry:Right. Right.Don Tuten:This is a video game ... and I hate to use that analogy—Billy Perry:I do too.Don Tuten:Because it's not ... but it's the highest quality that you can have, minus a video game, based around training.Billy Perry:Well, Bill did what I didn't think could be done.Don Tuten:That's amazing.Billy Perry:No, he removed anonymity.Don Tuten:Yeah.Billy Perry:Because in all the other, in the Zooms and everything else, you have anonymity.Don Tuten:Right.Billy Perry:This one you don't have anonymity.Don Tuten:No.Billy Perry:I mean, because when we walk up to you with proximal mics, when we walk up to you and go, "Hey. What are you doing?" and you don't answer, we turn you off. And you come back and you're like, "Oh my gosh, I've been turned off!" Yeah.Mark Rhame:Well, how many of us are going through our careers and we have to get re-certified every single year, every two years, and it's the same old course?Billy Perry:Right.Mark Rhame:You take something on a video. As you said before Billy, you bring it up and then you walk away. Do you really pay attention to it? Maybe you do so you can take the test at the end. But this has everybody involved. Everybody is involved in the scenarios. It's not just a lecture, it's not just a PowerPoint, it literally is involvement in multiple scenarios that reinforces what we just talked about.Don Tuten:It's some of the most realistic training I've seen, without being face-to-face, in anything. And there again, I'm not a gamer, I'm not a videographer on stuff, but I was amazed when I sat down and thought, "Man, I am in this room. I am interacting with this instructor and I'm a thousand miles away."Mark Rhame:And especially for those people who have taken the Asim Advanced. This is a great complement to the Asim Advanced. Because you could actually still get your incident management training in a remote platform. We don't have to band to that. We can keep going [crosstalk 00:13:14]Billy Perry:Plus, these are perishable, and it gives you reps.Don Tuten:Well, and everybody's on the same playing field too, whether you're an emergency manager or a police officer or you're a firefighter. Personally I think this allows people to communicate a little bit better than wearing their stars, bars, and egos on their shoulders. When we're face-to-face and we go through that, now everybody's on the same playing field. You know your job. And I think, Bill, you've built a program here to where we haven't lost the value of that training. Personally I think the communication's a little bit better on this, because everybody's within the close proximity of the rooms that you built.Billy Perry:I think ... and openly and admittedly and laughingly we say I was the biggest skeptic. I don't think it's going to replace face-to-face, but I do think that it is an absolute ... I don't think it's going away, though, after COVID. I think this opens up venues to people that couldn't do the other, and I think this is huge. I think this is an opportunity for training.Billy Perry:All training is not good training. Good training is good training. And this is amazing training.Bill Godfrey:And I certainly appreciate the compliments, but remember, this was a huge team effort. I mean, we—Billy Perry:It was a heavy lift.Bill Godfrey:It was a heavy lift. We did the programming and the coding. For those of you that don't know, C3 has a bunch of programmers and developers that we use because we've been into simulation technology pretty heavy for years. We did the bulk of the programming in 60 days, and then spent another 30 days kind of debugging and fixing things. So a total of 90 days to develop this thing, which was an insane schedule. We kind of all knew that, but everybody knew what we needed to get done. We brought six of the instructors on board to be kind of our anchor instructors and give us feedback. Billy, you saw some of the early versions that were really rough.Billy Perry:We've come a long way.Bill Godfrey:Coming a long way, but I've also got to give a big shout out to [Jay Darren 00:15:03] up in Wisconsin, and [Terry Nichols 00:15:05] out in Texas, who agreed to be the first couple of pilot deliveries on this platform and kind of be the guinea pigs. There were still a lot of bugs in those first couple of classes, but it was amazing because there was still training going on. Even with the challenges, just the attitude of the participants was fantastic, and it allowed us to learn what we needed to learn to get to where we are now, which is a much more stable platform and much more ... So it was a team effort, and shout out to those guys.Bill Godfrey:I think the other piece that bears mentioning is that we're not done building this platform yet. We just added, in the last few weeks, the computer-aided dispatch system for our dispatchers. Many of you know that we've had that capability in the advanced class for the dispatchers, to be used in a CAD system and be dispatching and talking to the units on radio, but we've added that into this capability as well. So in the NCIER campus, we've got not only the breakout rooms where we're actually running the scenarios and doing the downrange tactics and the command post, but we've got a dispatch center and an EOC setup that has the computers that lets them log into CAD.Bill Godfrey:So there's a lot of adventures to come ahead, but let's talk a little bit about the two-day active shooter incident management class. This is our Asim Intermediate class. The certified version is PER352. Many of our listeners are probably aware of the advanced class, the three-day class, which is PER353.Bill Godfrey:So what's your takeaways about what we've had to change? What's the good and the bad with the two-day version versus the three-day? I mean, obviously there's the obvious one ... the three-day advanced class is taught face-to-face and we're not doing that now. In fact, we don't really know when DHS is going to let us start doing face-to-face classes again, but it's going to be a while. So we're doing the intermediate now. But what are your thoughts on it?Don Tuten:I can tell you on my behalf, I think that there's a lot less time learning the system in the two-day class, and how we're delivering it right now. I think the information is there, I think it's ... The information hasn't changed whatsoever, but I think it's less learning on the student on how to manipulate some of the simulations. I think it's easier ... for lack of better terms ... on this platform, it's easier to teach somebody, and the main reason is is because the way that this has been created, it's so user friendly, personally you get a lot better learning objective out of it. I mean, you can still write on the boards, you can still put vests on, you can still ... the proximity talking when you talk and move around.Billy Perry:[crosstalk 00:17:53] talk to each other.Don Tuten:Exactly, talk to each other. You have a radio still, with seven channels, that you can go to different channels. You got staging, you ... For me, it's less moving parts from the face-to-face, which there's pros and cons to that; because we like having, when we do the longer class, people actually being able to move around, but I think under these conditions, this is one of the best ... personally, I just think it's the best of two worlds, of not having anything versus face-to-face and having three days and how do we put that information into two days? I don't know, I encourage everybody to go, once again, on YouTube and look at some of the different trailers for this, and you judge for yourself. You judge for yourself.Billy Perry:My biggest positive for me is accessibility. I think that more people can get to it because you don't have to travel, you don't have to fly to somewhere, you don't have to be boarded, you don't have to pay for a per diem, you don't have to do all that. You can do it right there. And I think it's more accessible for somebody from, especially a small financially strapped department, especially these ... That's just me.Mark Rhame:I'm going to step away from the technology side and say that it's a great introduction and usage of the check list. That's one of the things, a stumble block when we get into the Asim Advanced. We go through that first day generally, and you're looking at people and they're still kind of lost. They're going, "How does this system work?" Day two, they get it, they're starting to run with it, and by day three you can almost not even coach them. You can let them go because they get it.Mark Rhame:And this platform does the same thing in a two-day process. We introduce that checklist, the validated checklist that they can utilize in their own department if they choose to do so, and it does it in a two-day period, allowing us to step up scenarios in a two-day period from the very basic in the very beginning all the way down to a complex coordinated attack at the very end. And again, in a two-day period in a remote training platform. So it works.Bill Godfrey:Yeah. Interesting. You know, one of the most telling things to me was the breaks. And I don't know about you guys, but my ability on Zoom and the other platforms is about, honestly, 15 to 20 minutes and then I'm drifting. It's hard to focus past that.Billy Perry:That's on a good day.Bill Godfrey:Yeah, that's very true. And we thought that was going to be the same here. In fact, the very first delivery we did, we scheduled in very, very frequent breaks and some of the feedback we got almost immediately is like, "Hey, can we skip that? We don't need a break. We're good to go. Let's just keep pushing." And we've seen, with comfort, with student comfort and positive student feedback, 45, 50, 60-minute sessions. We had one the other day we did for the City of Baltimore on their final kind of mack daddy scenario. The scenario ran a solid hour, the debrief ran probably 30 minutes, and everybody just wanted to go right through it. They were like, "No, we get it. We want to talk about it. Let's just move through it."Mark Rhame:Well, I can see it also in the PowerPoint presentation. When you're talking to this group of ... and it's avatars, it's their avatars out there in the audience. When you ask them a question and say, "Hey, does anyone experience this? Jump up and down if you do," and you're seeing the whole room of people jumping up and down, and you can walk up close to them and said, "Lieutenant Jones, tell us about how your department does this." And that person has the ability in a remote training platform to tell an experience of their own department and what they've been through, how it applies to what we're talking about at that point in time. And you're not going to get that in another remote training platform. This one is totally different.Don Tuten:No, and I think this sets people up for that advanced training also once they go through this, because in the advanced, they've had the opportunity to go through how some of this stuff works and then how we communicate, and it's a little bit easier communicating over the computer versus some of the communication challenges that we have in person.Don Tuten:But by that three-day course, building in the PIO piece that's a little bit more robust, and having to write the information for the PIO, having to get the emergency manager to actually go get the information or have a liaison give them the information, and doing that on scene. So it's not a negative, it's the positive negative, for lack of better terms. When you go to that three-day course is ... Now you have the baseline of the two-day course. Move into the three-day course. Now you're getting a little bit more of the complexity of actually having to communicate back and forth.Don Tuten:I don't know, I think this is an easier way to communicate. I think maybe that some of the time restraints that maybe the three-day takes is people getting used to the communication piece. But I think that's good training as well, because that's realistic.Bill Godfrey:It is real world.Don Tuten:Absolutely.Bill Godfrey:There are communication problems on real-world events.Don Tuten:On everything, right.Mark Rhame:In fact, I would say even more so. This sort of mirrors that.Bill Godfrey:Yep. Absolutely. So, the other thing I want to talk about before we wrap up today is the other new class that we've come out with during this period that we've put onto the NCIER platform, is our CCTA class for EOC. So this is a complex coordinated terrorist attack class for EOC. Who wants to describe it? I mean, I know you were all there teaching that first delivery he did.Mark Rhame:Well, it's applying what we do in our Asim class, and we bring in the emergency managers in the community, the people who work in those ... And it sounds insulting when I say support roles, because it frankly is not. They're in leadership roles and they're in their own communities. But bringing in that next phase of our response and our emergency management response.Mark Rhame:Now, I have to tell you that not every community is the same. We've taught in some classes where the emergency management, when they stand up their EOC, they frankly become a level of in charge, if you will; part of that incident command structure. And then you have some other communities that when they stand at their emergency operation center, they become more of a support role; assisting the incident commander, the law enforcement officers, and the fire and EMS personnel responding to this environment.Mark Rhame:So we have to adapt to those classes of those people we're talking to, but it really does allow the emergency managers to show what they have to offer in their community. Because a lot of times we talk about it ... You know, you talk about to an incident commander ... whether it's law enforcement or a firefighter or an EMS personnel ... about what they do when they stand up their incident command structure, but do they really get engaged about that support roles; the other pieces and parts in their community that are going to make them successful? And that's what emergency management's going to do for you.Don Tuten:I think the biggest thing for the first responders is they get to interact with the emergency managers where a lot of times they're not face-to-face, they're passing up information and the education that those first responders are getting on exactly what these emergency managers do. And then conversely, the information that the emergency managers get on the challenges that law enforcement and firefighters go through in, one, handling the challenge that is out there for them to do; two, passing up the information; and then three, closing that loop between all of them. And I think, I don't know, personally I wish I would've had this class 20 years ago just to know that this is what emergency managers do, this is what they can bring to the table, and this is where my information is going to ultimately in a complex coordinated attack.Billy Perry:Right. It illuminates the fact that there are challenges, A, and B, here are the solutions to the challenges. I think that's the big thing. And that's one of the things about all of this that we've been talking about. These aren't procedures, they're not plans, they're not tactics, they are solutions.Don Tuten:Yeah. And I'll tell you, you bring up a good point, because there's a lot of things that first responders ... We will do the job that we're asked to do, but we forget about the fact that, listen, these emergency managers are worried about, "Where am I going to put these people, and what resources do I have to call?" And it's good for the first responders to see some of those challenges so they can be forward-thinking and forward-leaning after taking this class and knowing some of those challenges that are going to be coming up, whether it be—Billy Perry:It's the same thing as the educators in SSAVEIM.Don Tuten:Absolutely.Mark Rhame:And the emergency managers also see the value of crossing jurisdictional lines and asking for additional assets and resources, whereas a line firefighter, EMS personnel, or law enforcement officer probably doesn't see that. They don't see the big picture of where does this stuff come from, and who asked for it. Who's paying for it, frankly, because there's a lot of things that are happening in the background that they don't see, and this class allows them to see that, "Oh, that's how that happens. That's how we get those assets from the local community next to me," or maybe the state assets or the federal assets. And that's what your emergency managers have the capability of doing for you.Don Tuten:And the contacts. And the contacts they have prior to an incident happening on—Billy Perry:All the contracts they have.Don Tuten:Exactly. Buses and, I mean just, it's amazing.Bill Godfrey:Well, and I'll be the first to say it; we learned a lot of lessons on that very first delivery for some things that we needed to adjust to hit the bullseye a little bit better. We needed some additional facilities within the NCIER campus, we just didn't have some of the tools that we needed and some of the support material that I wanted to have to keep the scenarios flowing and involve the emergency managers a little bit better. And so those adjustments, we've already made some of them. We've got some pretty massive expansion that's planned for the campus; a whole new EOC add-on that's going to be coming in the very near future that I think is going to be pretty exciting.Bill Godfrey:So, this about wraps up our time. Gentlemen, thank you very much for taking the time to be with us today. I hope you enjoyed it. Please don't forget to tune in to the next couple of podcasts with myself and John-Michael Keyes from the I Love U Guys Foundation, talking about our partnership and reunification and the SSAVEIM course. And also don't forget to subscribe. We are back on our stride. We're going to be pushing out the podcasts regularly. Our goal is to get up to a one-a-week schedule. If you're interested in getting into the Asim Intermediate class, those classes are funded by DHS, so they're no cost to the participants. So if you're an emergency responder out there in the US, it is no cost to you to be in this class.Bill Godfrey:There is a little bit of a process to go through, but you can certainly reach out and contact us. We have classes that are ... I cannot believe how much the schedule has filled up. We've got classes going on every week. In a couple cases, we've got two or three classes happening a week, so there is a lot of activity going on. But please, by all means, feel free to reach out to us. Either give us a call at the office or send us an email through the website.Bill Godfrey:And special thanks to our partners, our training partners, both at [Alert Antiques 00:29:03] and the NDPC at FEMA DHA for providing that support and that funding, and encouraging us to build this platform. I think there were a lot of people upstream of me, Billy, when we've hatched some plans that had the very very similar reaction to you and they weren't really sure we could pull it off, but I'm excited to be where we are.Bill Godfrey:So come along with us for the ride, and if you haven't subscribed to the podcast series, please do that. In the meantime, stay safe and we'll talk to you next time.

Episode 18 #10 Overall, what are the gaps in our preparedness?10 Questions for the Mayor to ask the Police and Fire Chief SeriesQuestion 10: "Overall, what are the gaps in our preparedness?"Bill Godfrey:Thank you for joining us and welcome back to the final instance of our podcast series that we've been doing, on 10 questions for the mayor or the city manager, county manager to ask their police and fire chiefs. Today we are going to be looking at kind of an overall summary, what are the gaps and our preparedness, what are the common problems we see? My name is Bill Godfrey, I'm one of the instructors with C3 Pathways, retired fire chief. Joining me today is Tom Billington, also a retired fire chief and one of the C3 instructors, Stephen Shaw, a Sergeant with Chapel Hill, North Carolina and one of our C3 instructors, Ron Otterbacher, retired division chief with the Orange County Sheriff's office and an instructor and Don Tuten with the Jacksonville Sheriff's office where he's the chief over Homeland Security and also one of our instructors.Good afternoon guys, thank you for joining us for this final one. So Tom, I'm going to start off with you. What are the big gaps? Let's kind of work this down. You know, the first one that comes to my mind, is just the very basics of agencies that just are not really even working together on the ... you know, across the disciplines or across jurisdictions because it's more than just your jurisdiction. Let's start there and kind of work down.Tom Billington:Well, you're absolutely right. One of the big issues is, if you have individual fire departments, where you have a Sheriff's office and a separate police department. A lot of these organizations or separate animals’ company, a lot of these organizations have their own plans. They have their own silo, their own little box, and they're not communicating with each other, which is very dangerous. In addition to that, even if you have single agencies, you still need to involve your dispatch, emergency management, school board personnel. Everybody has to work together and come up with one plan that everybody agrees on and trains onBill Godfrey:So Tom highlights, Don, the importance of the one plan. And of course everybody here all knows that we recommend that literally there is one plan. So you know, normally a police department's going to have its set up policies and procedures and a fire department is going to have its set of policies and procedures. We're saying that this is one case, where there should be a single policy and procedure that is literally the same piece of paper co-signed by the police chief and the fire chief and the EMS chief and whoever else needs to sign. Why is that so important?Don Tuten:You know, the main reason why that's so important is if leadership changes and that document has not been updated or is in transition to being updated, that an understanding is already been established on how things are going to work. The second biggest one is the leadership within these organizations. Your mayors, your city council people, your commissioners, basically you're showing them that you have a unified front of all emergency services, as well as your outlying private and public sector entities, your schools, your hospitals, that they have taken the initiative to come together, create a plan that is acceptable for all. We're not going to deviate from that plan and that we're all working together to solve the incident or the challenge within our community.Bill Godfrey:Steve, your agency, not nearly as large as Don's agency, so if you had an event, you got others coming, everybody in the world is coming and in some cases people, agencies that you may not know or work with. What kind of issues does that pose and how do we solve that?Stephen Shaw:Well, one of the biggest issues is obviously going to be communication. One of the ways that we kind of tackle that in our area, is when we updated our radio several years ago, we made sure to get a radio that was on the same system as pretty much every other law enforcement or first responder agency, basically within driving distance. And so what that does is even though everybody's on separate channels, we can all at least monitor our own channels and our dispatch center can monitor everybody's channels and we can at least communicate that way. Another issue is going to be with self-deploying officers and things like that. How are you going to keep accountability of those resources that come in? And so, what we discussed is basically just having a way to ... instead of having them come and just go somewhere, you use them for something like a perimeter.They're not going to be on our channel, they're not going to be familiar with their way around town. They're not going to be familiar with our buildings, but we can still use that person for a perimeter or go on a rescue task force, something like that. So we always have to think about how are we going to use these people. And then, I mean again, the biggest issue is just going to be communication. We talk a lot about policy, but really they just need to understand that we have our own systems in place, our own practices, and we try to reiterate that to everybody that's going to be coming and helping. And then when we have exercises, we try to invite everybody. Anybody who's around, we try to invite everybody, Hey, come on. Even though you're a a county over or a couple of cities over, come to our area, participate in this exercise so that we can kind of see what everybody's doing and make sure that everybody's on the same page.Bill Godfrey:Yeah, making sure everybody gets invited to training together and exercising together is a key element. Ron, talk to me a little bit about the challenges with, you know, the fire service has been using ICS (Incident Command System) for a long time and in many ways has got a pretty rigid reliance on ICS (Incident Command System). Whereas law enforcement, in some cases like in Don's case, their agency embraced it years ago and has done a lot of work, but there's other law enforcement agencies that don't use it at all or use it a very little. How much does that play a role here in trying to let us all inter-operate and work together?Ron Otterbacher:It plays a huge role and the reason for that is as we teach across country, we see that some agencies don't necessarily embrace ICS (Incident Command System). Others do it, like Jacksonville does a great job of it. There's agencies all throughout the country that do a great job with it, but having that understanding of how to operate next to each other, and again, you may be co-located, but we don't want you to be co-located with your own silo next to each other, we want you to be able to work together. We often talk about unified command, although unified command in a lot of examples is not necessarily unified, it's co-located command that has no focus, that's the single focus and that's probably the biggest thing we see is when we talk about unified command or working together as a command structure, you've got to understand what's going on. You've got to communicate.Bill Godfrey:It's interesting you mentioned that. I mean, you and I and Tom were or are old enough and we were on the job when unified command kind of was added to ICS (Incident Command System) and invented, if you will. And back then it had a very specific meaning of, you know, when more than one agency had a legal authority to be in charge of, of an incident and somewhere on the streets over the last, I don't know, 10 plus years, it seems to have come to mean that the law enforcement guy runs a law enforcement show. The fire guy runs a fire show, the EMS guy runs the EMS show, they stand next to each other and somehow magically they share information and that that's going to make everything okay. And, and we always, you know, we, we talk about that in class and we demonstrate on a regular basis why that's an ineffective way to do it. Unified commands got great value, but you've got to use it as the tool that it was intended to be and still speak with one voice. How big of an issue do you think is and you know how many people have that misunderstanding and you think it's that common and big issue?Ron Otterbacher:I think it's getting better, but yes, I think it's a common issue and it's not just within the public safety sector, it's other partners that we deal with that just they've got the belief that if an incident happened at their location, they would be running the incident and everyone else would be just kind of assisting them when in fact that's not going to be the case. The understanding of what goes on is critical.Bill Godfrey:So Tom, I'm going to bounce over to you. You've spent a lot of years as an emergency manager in wearing dual hats as the fire chief and the emergency manager. A lot of experience with natural disasters as well as some manmade ones. How do you make sure that your policies and procedures are de conflicted with your mutual aid partners? How do you, okay, great. So you got the fire department, you got your fire chief, you've got your police chief in your city who is on the same page. And they've signed off on a joint policy. Now how do we make sure that and what's the process for making sure that we work with the mutual aid agencies to de-conflict those policies and make sure that we're, if we're not all on exactly the same page, that we're on a close enough page that we can inter-operate together.Tom Billington:Well, Bill, that's an excellent question. Actually in my organization about 15 years ago, we were involved in just that issue. It took a lot of work, but we were able to get eight separate jurisdictions from different counties in different towns to all agree on a mutual aid plan or an automatic and mutually plan that talks about what each agency does when they come into your area, what medical protocols they use or don't use, what the indemnification is. It took a lot of work getting everybody in the same room, but in the end it really worked really good. It clears up any misinterpretation on the various policies. And of course that comes with meeting with people, talking to them together. And it really, it was successful. We were very proud of it.Bill Godfrey:What role in your mind, Tom, can the county managers, city managers, mayors potentially play, what in a helpful way, what role can they be? How can they be advocates when the inevitable politics rears its head and you're having trouble getting agency A to work with agency B or a, you know, get everybody on the same page. What, how can the city manager, the County manager, the mayor help their police chief and their fire chief get this done.Tom Billington:Actually the same way we talked about emergency responders doing it. They need to be connected to the mayor or city manager or County manager of the County next to them. They need to be involved in tri-county committees, knowing each other, working with each other. I know that in my county we had a really good relationship with the several towns and cities that were within our area. We had the local emergency planning council, which had all these key players, the County managers, mayors represented on them. And so just keeping your feet on the ground and then working with these various other organizations rather, elected officials and mayors and county administrators. It's just the way to go.Bill Godfrey:Okay. So to wrap us up here, I'm going to come around to each of you and say what's your number one thing that you think that you see with your experience as an instructor, your experience in the field. What's the number one issue that you would identify that is a common gap. And I'll start off cause it makes it easier on me cause I don't want you guys to repeat. I'll start off, the one that I see that strikes me the most is this misconception that managing an active shooter event is all about what happens down range in the hot zone and the warm zone and while that obviously is a key critical piece, there is so much more to it that if you don't manage is still going to send your incident sideways and slowdown that clock and delay the time that it takes to get the injured people out and to a hospital. And so my big one is this, that managing one of these events takes a whole lot more than just being focused on the downrange hot zone and warm zone. Don coming to you.Don Tuten:For me personally, I think we fail to include our city leaders in our plans and informing them what our plans are working in unity with all of our partners and by doing that it raises questions. So when an event does happen, unfortunately it may raise some questions where there's uncertain or somebody's not sure with something. So I think we need to educate, inform and train with, for lack of better terms, our city leaders, our city managers, so they understand that what is going to happen in that critical event is agreed upon by all as well as informs them on kind of the roles of each one of the agencies.Bill Godfrey:Tom, how about you?Tom Billington:My big one is boxes. Everybody has their little box, they stay in and they're not getting out of the box and meeting their counterparts or the people in the next county or the next organization and that is so harmful and I've seen it before where you're on an incident in a command post with two agency personnel and you don't even know their name or they don't know your name, there's no excuse for that. We have to get out of our boxes, meet, talk, work together, train together and know each other and a first name basis.Bill Godfrey:Steve.Stephen Shaw:Well, from an instructor perspective, one of the things that always worries me and the kind of a term that makes me cringe as an instructor is full scale exercise. And the reason I say that is because full-scale exercises have a very valuable place when it comes to active shooter training, a critical incident preparedness. But where I see a big gap is we have these full scale exercises and then there's no follow-up to the things that we learned from the weaknesses that we displayed or the strengths that we displayed during that exercise. And a lot of that comes from, especially in my area, there's not a lot of big agencies like where Don works. It's all smaller agencies. And to commit the manpower, the resources and the time to run one of these events and then follow it up with several training scenarios after that really leaves us a lot of gaps. We identify these areas that we need to improve, but then we don't follow up with the proper training or policy implementations that we need to cover those gaps in the future.Bill Godfrey:Ron, over to you for the final word.Ron Otterbacher:I think unification of response plans is an important direction for us to go. I think that we, even within a city, usually a fire department has a different response plan than the police department does. If you go beyond your city or your county, then you've got six or seven different response plans and we need to figure out how to unify those response plans. So if I've got an officer responding from two counties over, because it's that big a scene, they all know this is the same response plan we've gotten no matter where you go in that area, in that region, in that state, if it has to be, but it doesn't look like these situations are letting up. So we've got to do better at managing these situations and the only way you can do that is by developing plans that everyone understands, everyone abides by. And that's how we all operate.Bill Godfrey:Well-put. Gentlemen, I can't thank you enough for your participation in this final podcast of the series, and I want to say a special thanks to all of the instructors that have participated in all 10 of these particular podcasts on this very, very important topic and thank you to the listeners for taking the time to go through this. Look forward to seeing you in our next podcast.

Episode 17 #9 What is your comfort with schools' Violent Event and reunification plans?10 Questions for the Mayor to ask the Police and Fire Chief SeriesQuestion 9: "What is your comfort with our public and private schools' Violent Event procedures and offsite reunification plans?"Bill Godfrey:Welcome to our next podcast. We are continuing our series, 10 things for the mayor or the city manager, county manager to ask their police and fire chief together. Today, we're going to talk number nine, what is your comfort with our public and private schools, violent event procedures, and offsite reunification plans. My name is Bill Godfrey. I'm one of the instructors with C3 Pathways and a retired fire chief. And, I'm joined today by Don Tuten, chief with Jacksonville Sheriff's Office. Don's in charge of Homeland Security. Steve Shaw from Chapel Hill, North Carolina, a Sergeant with the police department there, also one of the instructors at C3, as is Don, and Ron Otterbacher, retired division chief from the Orange County Sheriff's office and also one of our C3 instructors. Welcome, guys. Thanks for being here.So, as we talk about this today, I kind of want to set the stage a little bit. In many states now, public schools are required to not only have emergency plans, but to have reunification plans, which has some interesting bumps in the road as we found out through practice. But, the other one that kind of surprised me a little bit was the situation with private schools. They're not necessarily subject to exactly the same regulations and requirements. I was, my daughter in private school, and I mentioned this in podcast series eight that when I sat down and talked with them about their procedures, there was a little room for improvement.We've worked on that and closed the gap, and I feel really good about that, but it made me wonder how big of a problem is this, not just with the public schools and the plans they have, but private schools who may have done little or no planning and never really even thought about doing an exercise? Don, tell me a little bit about what you guys do in your region there in North Florida. How do you approach that? What do you see as the things that are common between the public schools, and what's different with the private schools?Don Tuten:So, one of the things that we identified was, we got together with our private, or correction, our public school system, which has their own police department and has their own school board. What we did was, we partnered with them to take on that responsibility in our area on the law enforcement side for private schools, so we take care of any issues with the private schools. What we do is we meet with them. We establish contact with them, also with our community affairs, our intelligence unit, and our community affairs unit works very closely with the private schools. We do meet biannually with them. We make sure that everybody's on the same page on what their plans are. We emulate the same plans that the school board system is using, the public school board system is using, but the different challenges are, as we also partner, have a private partnership with churches as well as some of our community affairs folks to ensure that our public bus system is going to work for the private schools if they have an incident there.So, we basically have a plan in place. We're utilizing some of the same resources that public school program uses, but we're accepting that responsibility within my agency to ensure that that's going to continue to flow. And, we train with them, and we meet with them, like I said, on a biannual basis to ensure that that plan is still in effect and it is practiced.Bill Godfrey:So, Steve, obviously Don is from a very large organization. Yours is more common. I don't want to say it's a smaller organization, but it's more of a common size for police departments. What do you guys do in your region? How do you approach it?Stephen Shaw:So, we don't have as many resources as what Don has in his area, but one of the things that we do try to incorporate into all of our school response is the SROs that we do have, before the students come back at the end of a summer break, they will meet with all the teachers, and they will basically have a presentation and kind of a walk through. These are the procedures. These are the things that that you need to be thinking about. If we have an event, this is what a lockdown looks like. This is what you can expect from the responders, which is another important piece of that.Then, as the year progresses, as they have lockdown drills, as they have any kind of bomb threat drills or anything like that that they do throughout the year, we will try to invite patrol officers, investigators, people from other agencies like the neighboring jurisdictions to come and participate in these drills so that they can, A, see the layout of the school, B, see what's happening at that particular school, and kind of interact with some of the teachers and some of the students there. But, that's for public schools. For private schools, this is a little different. We don't have SRO's (School Resource Officer) in private schools, so we have to really take the initiative in our area to reach out to these schools to make sure that they're kind of on the same page as the public schools are, and that the officers are as aware of the private schools as they are the public schools.So, it creates a little bit of a challenge because some of these schools are ... A lot of times they kind of show up, and we have a new Montessori school in town for example, and we didn't really know that it's coming. It just kind of shows up. So, we have to really make sure that our people that are out on the street, patrol officers, community services people, anybody who's out there is kind of identifying these locations and taking the initiative to reach out to them, introduce themselves. Hey, I'm officer so-and-so. I generally work this area, just want to kind of introduce myself, see what you have going on. And, again, making sure that we're all on the same page as far as what we are telling them our response should look like.Bill Godfrey:That's really interesting that you've got your patrol officers kind of going out and making that first contact. Has that produced success for you guys in the area and enabled you to be able to follow up and help, either help them or work with them to get some meaningful plans that have been effective?Stephen Shaw:It does help, but again, it's one of those things that's subject to change. A patrol officer's primary function is to answer calls. So, if they don't have time, if they don't have time to introduce themselves, then that gap may go unfilled. So, it's really up to us as an agency. The ones that are there that look at the active shooter instructors, the community services people, the people who are planning these events, the emergency management people in town, they really have to make sure that we're on top of getting in contact with all of these places.Bill Godfrey:So, Ron, something Steve mentioned a second ago on, he was using the example of Montessori schools. As you and I have talked offline a few times, there's in some cases with the reunifications, offsite reunifications, some real challenges with age of kids, special needs kids, in some cases infants, daycare centers that are taking care of very, very small children. It's not really just a question of being able to throw them into a vehicle and move them. I mean, you have to worry about things like the car seats, and having the supplies that the kids need, and all that kind of stuff. What are some of your experiences in the work that you've done with schools over the years and some of the exercises that you've picked up on?Ron Otterbacher:Absolutely, and it's not just the private schools and Montessori. It's any school, because you have public schools that are heavy with special needs children, and you've got to be prepared for that. It's different than your regular elementary school, because you may need 15 special buses to take them away from there. The other thing you've got to do is, we talk often about off-campus reunification areas, but so many campuses still are unifying their people on campus. So, you've got to get out, and you've got to talk to the schools. You've got to check their plans. We started similar to what they did up in Chapel Hill, but we'd have our SRO’s (School Resource Officer) go review the plans, and if they had any issues or questions, then we'd have staff go and help with that issue. But, there's a lot of things to think about. It's not a simple thing, and until you exercise those plans that they have in place and figure out if they'll work or not, then you may not be successful.Don Tuten:I want to say one thing also, just a catalyst on what both of them said is, another opportunity is to have that information with the special needs and any other special challenge schools to put that information within your CAD system and your dispatch system. There's ways with the CAD systems now that you can put that information in so the responding officers, even if it's a newer officer writing that area, that information would come up on the call screen of what those challenges are within that school, how many kids there are, how many are special needs so they can start getting those resources en route as soon as possible.Bill Godfrey:I think those are all great points. Ron, in fact I believe you and I were working together when we ran into the school who brought us their reunification plan, which was a great plan that called for the kids to be reunified on their own football field. That was actually where in close proximity to where the shooter had fled. It was interesting. Of course, for those of you that may not know, we certainly endorse and support the I Love U Guys Foundation's standard response protocol and standard reunification method. We've looked at just a myriad of different programs out there, and it hands down, bar none is the best one out there, which is why we use it and teach it and support that method.But, I know when John-Michael Keyes who's the lead over at the foundation came down to do the training for my daughter's school, one of the interesting conversations is, with public schools there's usually a district or a school board or some sort of downtown office that's going to have personnel that can come out and facilitate the reunification offsite. Whereas with a private school, it's usually just that one campus. I know that was a pretty stunning conversation for the superintendent in my case to realize that it wasn't realistic that his staff was going to be able to go run that reunification site, and that his buses that were in the parking lot of the school weren't going to be leaving, because that was going to be part of what's been shut down, and that he was going to have to find some other community partners to work with, either another school or the local school board or emergency management to actually manage the reunification for them, because they weren't going to be able to do that. Have you seen that be a common issue across the country?Ron Otterbacher:Yes, I have, and I think that's why it's so important to exercise your plan, is because although you may have school board downtown, I don't know that in most of the plans I've seen, they called for them to go down and run reunification. Its usually teachers are going to go with the students, and they're going to account for them wherever they go. So, that's why it's important to sit down and discuss it ahead of time. There's no pressure on us today to discuss it. When an incident's happening, the pressure is immense, and we're setting ourselves up for failure if we haven't practiced it.Bill Godfrey:I completely agree with you. It's such an important thing to do, even in getting the school principals, and if there is a district office or a school board, getting those representatives to kind of understand what their role is in the incident management of one of these events, that you're not going to just kind of go off and do this separate thing. The kids have to be moved in a secure and safe way. There's going to be security issues at the reunification site that law enforcement is certainly going to be engaged with.There's accountability issues for the kids, releasing them back. Law enforcement is going to want to interview everybody to figure out who saw what and who knows what. Yeah, custody issues. There's a whole lot of stuff that that goes on with this. So, I think your comment is right on the money, that it's not only important to have these plans, it's important to actually take the time to exercise them and, to some degree, I don't know. Don, wouldn't you even say it's important to some degree include the parents so that they have some idea of what to expect if you're going to do one of these things?Don Tuten:Absolutely, and I think that works on several levels. Number one, it gives them the opportunity to understand what is going to take place if an event does happen. So, it pre-educates them on what is to be expected by law enforcement, what is to be expected by the school, as well as what is to be expected of them, the parent when they do arrive at that reunification location. And, some of the question is already answered, so hopefully, and we all hope that this does not continue to happen, and we don't have another event, but hopefully if something does happen, it helps increase their awareness of how safe their children really are when it comes to the reunification process, how professional it is going to be run, and it speeds up the process on getting the kids back.Ron Otterbacher:I agree. I think it's important that we bring them into the fold, so they have a knowledge. If they don't, the unknown is what causes fear. If they don't know what's coming about, it's going to increase their anxiety and fear level. By increasing that, it's going to increase the probability that something will go wrong, and there'll be some sort of confrontation. I think the more you can give them, the better they'll be.Stephen Shaw:Bringing in the parents, it's just like when we talk about integration with other agencies. I think a lot of it begins with ... We don't need to necessarily wait for a crisis event to practice our reunification. One of the things that we deal with in North Carolina and the South is tornadoes, ice storms. If we have a significant weather event that shuts down a school, we can start to practice some of our reunification methods at the school, let the parents know this is how we're going to get you back together with your kids. It doesn't necessarily have to be an active shooter event for us to start working on some of these methods and ironing out what our issues may be.Bill Godfrey:I think these are all great points. So, guys, if I wrap this up and summarize it, our big gaps that we commonly see is a school that doesn't have a plan, or they've got a plan, but there's flawed assumptions in the plan that they're going to use their own campus or use their own people and facilities, don't exercise the plan, and to some degree, we may not have told parents what to expect. Did I miss anything. Ron?Ron Otterbacher:The one thing I would add to it is reunification is beyond schools. Businesses need to have plans. Any group of people that are together need to have a plan for reunification if something goes awry.Bill Godfrey:Absolutely, absolutely. Gentlemen, I can't thank you enough for taking the time. I hope those listening enjoyed it, and I invite you to come back and listen to our final podcast in this series, which is going to be just an overall summary of what the gaps in our preparedness are and some of the things that we can do about them. Until then, stay safe. We look forward to having you back soon.

Episode 16 #8 What are you doing with community partners?10 Questions for the Mayor to ask the Police and Fire Chief SeriesQuestion 8: "What are you doing with community partners regarding Active Shooter Hostile events?"Bill Godfrey:Welcome back to our next podcast. We are continuing our series on 10 questions for the mayor, the city manager, the County manager to ask their police and fire chief together. Today we are covering topic number eight what are you doing with community partners regarding active shooter hostile events? Today I'm joined by Tom Billington, retired fire chief, Stephen Shaw, Sergeant with Chapel Hill, North Carolina, Ron Otterbacher, retired division chief of the Orange County Sheriff's office and Don Tuten, Chief over Homeland Security at Jacksonville Sheriff's office. Welcome guys. Thanks for joining me. My name is Bill Godfrey. I'm one of the instructors at C3 pathways along with the gentleman I just introduced, also a retired fire chief. So Ron, let me start with you because you've got an interesting perspective from the hospital side as well as just decades of law enforcement experience. Talk a little bit about what are the things that we should be doing with our community partners and what in particular you think are the relevant things with hospitals?Ron Otterbacher:The big thing is you need to talk to them. There needs to be some adequate discussion and then the private entities or the community partners need to understand what law enforcement or fire or EMS may need should we have an active shooter event. Some of those things is do you need to create a go bag? The go bag should contain such things as your floor plans for your buildings, your keys, your access control cards. If you've got video capabilities, do you have access to view those video capabilities while the incident is ongoing? Is it a permanent position or do you have an iPad this hook to your video systems that you can, the first responders as they're moving through the building have access to that because not every place they go in a building will they be able to be accompanied by someone from your business.Bill Godfrey:Interesting stuff. Steven, I'm going to tangent over to you is just a little bit some of what Ron was talking about with the go bag planning and the response planning. You of course have a fairly sizable university in your region, right in your backyard. Talk a little bit about some of the challenges with that large student population working with the university. They have their own police department that's there on campus. Talk a little bit about working with them as a community partner in this.Stephen Shaw:A lot of times what it takes is working together ahead of time on just regular incidents, regular calls. Can we communicate over the radio? Do we know who we are? Can we navigate around campus? Can we navigate around town? A lot of this stuff is pre-work that is done before we have a significant event and then as we're planning these significant events, we need to work together on our exercises. Are we training the same things? Are we teaching the same principles? Do we have the same line of thought as far as reunification, as far as intelligence gathering? Can we use each other's facilities? All of these questions need to be asked ahead of time and a lot of it takes place on the regular call level as far as when we go to traffic crashes, can we communicate with each other? If we have a crash that happens on campus, but our jurisdiction responds to for whatever reason.Bill Godfrey:I'm curious have either one of you, Steve or Ron worked out, beyond the idea of a go bag, any type of prearranged access plans for responders. I mean obviously we don't want to get into specifics here on a general public podcast, but what are the types of things that, if you've got a large, and I'll call it a campus facility, just using that generically, whether it's a large business, a large hospital, a large school, university, large church, what are the types of things that those folks should do to prepare for receiving responders and having access beyond just the typical go bags? Where do they keep the go bags? Can you guys, Steve, you want to talk a little bit about some of that again? Avoid any specifics to those facilities, but just in a general sense?Stephen Shaw:Well, one of the things that we try to do is, especially, so say for example, a new apartment building, a lot of times they will have secured doors that have punch codes for a password or something like that. What we try to do is they have to pass that information usually along to the fire department per codes and so what we try to do as our community services people get up with the fire department, get up with those entities so that we have access to those codes ahead of time. If it's not a code, is it a key and something like a Knox box? Do we have access to the Knox box so we can get in there, finding all that stuff out and then if we have access to floor plans, can we get that information again, in my area, the fire department generally has access to floor plans of new construction. The same with the university. Do we have access to that ahead of time and our people in the field that deal with that kind of stuff? We try to remind them to try to gather that information as much as possible. So it is put out to responding officers and also to incident commanders for an event.Bill Godfrey:Yeah, it's a really interesting comment. Tom, I'm going to come over to you. Can you talk a little bit about the general idea of Knox box. Not everybody listening may actually know what that program is, but certainly something in the fire service generally has been doing for years and address a couple of those things that Steven just mentioned.Tom Billington:Yes. In the fire service, the Knox box program is a key vault that either holds keys, so you can enter a facility 24 hours a day, seven days a week or it may have some codes in it that you can access coded doors and it's usually accessible by a County fire departments and even law enforcement if they share that information. And so it's a good way to make access 24 hours a day, seven days a week to these facilities.Bill Godfrey:And Tom while you're talking about it, what are some of your perspectives from the fire and EMS side on the community partnerships or the outreaches? What are the things that when you were a fire chief concerns you about this that you'd want to meet and talk with folks about?Tom Billington:Well, most of your county managers as mine did know that the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) requires a local emergency planning council, which has, you're supposed to have politicians, responders, hospitals all involve meeting to discuss plans. As a County manager, I would want to know are we using the LEPC (Local Emergency Planning Council) to talk to these partners about an active shooter plan? How are we all responding together as a community or a county? And so if you have a LEPC (Local Emergency Planning Council), which you should, hopefully this is an issue or these issues are brought up here on a regular basis on that committee.Bill Godfrey:That's a really interesting perspective. The getting the LEPC involved, which then loops you in with a whole bunch of community partners. Don, you've got some experience with some fusion centers and I know that not everywhere in the country is necessarily covered by one, but there are a number of them that are pretty active. Is there a role here for the fusion centers? Do we need to work with them ahead of time? How does that fit?Don Tuten:Absolutely. So most places around the country do have fusion centers, either on the state level or local level and both. The local levels will talk with the state levels as well, but the local fusion centers, primary contacts are within each one of those agencies. For instance, I know locally where I'm at, our fusion center works directly with our critical infrastructure unit on some of the same things that our other guests have talked about and in conjunction with specifically keys and plans, we put critical information into our CAD system and also share it with our fusion center. For instance, some of the critical infrastructures within our areas may have products that they produce that have certain standoff distances if there is a fire or if there is an explosion or certain security concerns if somebody were to break into that facility. That information is shared with the fusion center who then works directly with our intelligence community, pushes that out in a pretty timely manner and in fact has the access also to push that out to our patrol officers while they're on scene or conducting an investigation at a specific location.Bill Godfrey:Don, speaking of pushing out information, I'm curious when we have some of these tragic events that have occurred frankly in the world, not just here in the US but where there's targeted attacks, whether it's terrorism or religious attacks. Do you reach out to the community partners and kind of brief them out, obviously, I know you can't go into specifics, but can you talk in general detail about what you would see as being best practices for sharing information or talking to those community partners?Don Tuten:Absolutely. I think each agency has to have that community element, whether it's run through the intelligence side of things through the investigative side of things or through community services within that agency to foster those relationships with your leaders of churches, synagogues, a mosque, as well as the school system as well as private schools. A lot of times private schools get overlooked because nobody wants to take that responsibility on. So that's one thing they have to be made a part of the team for lack of better terms. And it's incumbent upon the agencies that oversee those areas and provide services to them to engage in that two way communication in a timely manner, especially after a significant event in the world to foster those relationships. And then the most critical is maintain those relationships even in times when there's not a critical incidents going on around the country.Bill Godfrey:You know, it's really interesting you mentioned private schools, which some of you who work in the office with me or know this, but too long ago, my youngest daughter attends a private school and I had a conversation with the superintendent about their plans and their level of preparedness. Now granted I'm biased and obviously pay great attention to these things. Let's just say there was plenty of room for improvement which we went to work on right away. And to the school's credit, they did a 180 almost overnight and really implemented some, great cutting edge stuff. Is that a problem across all our communities? I mean, Steve or how are you guys up there in your area? Do you see that same problem where your private schools or your daycares and churches may not have the level of planning that the public schools do?Stephen Shaw:The biggest reason is because the state schools basically fall under state guidelines. State guidelines have requirements for SRO’s (School Resource Officer). They have requirements for where they keep information as far as floor plans and keys to the school. Private schools don't have those same guidelines and so we see a lot of variants. Some of them want to be prepared, they just don't have necessarily the tools to get there. So we see a lot of variance there. So it's up to individual agencies. It's up to the schools themselves to make sure that those people are educated, that they're current on best practices. And that's one of the things that we try to do with our community services people is try to reach out to these places and make sure that they're getting up to date on lock down procedures, what information they should have, do they know what to expect from responding officers in the event of an active shooter or any sort of critical incident. Making sure that they are aware of best practices surrounding how they do reunification, how they keep track of people. All that stuff comes into play and it's important and it does vary, especially for private schools.Tom Billington:And then Steve, if I could jump in. I know in my community there's a big issue with charter schools which received funding from the state but don't necessarily fall under the same rules and we found that some of the charter schools in our community do not have the same plans as the public schools, and so that's another group that needs to get together and talk about how they're going to work together.Bill Godfrey:Interesting stuff. Ron, I'm curious, I know I said this in the last one. Obviously you've got a lot of background with schools, but you've spent years running patrol. Who needs to go knock on the door of the school and make that initial contact? Is that something that we should be encouraging more at the line level trying to build those partnerships with these private schools, with these churches and talk to them about the issue? How do we get that done?Ron Otterbacher:Absolutely. Most of the public schools have SRO’s (School Resource Officer) or DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) officers, whatever there may be assigned to those schools, which is no problem. We can't negate the fact that the private schools may not have it and we've got to do community outreach. Maybe your community policing groups can go out there and talk to them. There are all kinds of groups that can do it. If for some reason the agency doesn't feel it's right for them to step in there, there's also organizations throughout the country that will help and those planning such ASIS International, which is American society for Industrial Security. They've got people that are trained and board certified. Actually they can go out there and help with those assessments too. So if the agency doesn't feel that they should be the ones stepping in, they should have community partners in those organizations. They can step in and also help in those areas.Bill Godfrey:Interesting stuff. And I know on the fire side we're having some really serious conversation at the national level about the fire safety codes and the alarms in schools and the fire alarms being triggered and some of those not necessarily being the greatest plans for some of these hostile events. And we're trying to work through those. And unfortunately that's going to take time and there aren't necessarily easy answers in that. Gentleman, I can't thank you enough for taking the time to join me this afternoon to talk about this topic. And if you're listening, I hope that you will return and join us for our next in this podcast series, we'll be coming up to question nine where we're going to dive in a little bit more into schools, specifically both public and private, to talk about what is our comfort level with not only their violent event procedures on campus, but also their plans for offsite reunification. Hope you'll join us next time. Thank you.

Bill Godfrey:Hello, and welcome back to our continuing podcast series on ten questions that the mayor should ask the police chief or the fire chief together, or any elected official, city manager, county manager. My name is Bill Godfrey, I'm one of the instructors with C3 Pathways, a retired fire chief. With me today, I've got Don Tuten, he's chief with the Jacksonville Sheriff’s office, over see's homeland security. Don, thanks for joining us today.We also have Ron Otterbacher. Ron is a retired division chief with the Orange County Sheriff’s office. Ron, thanks for taking the time to join us. Good to have you here.And last but not least, we have Joe Ferrara, retired fire chief, paramedic from south Florida, from Martin County. Joe, thanks for being here today.So guys, our question today, we're on number seven, which is how will public information and social media be managed real time during the response? You know Don, I think I'd like to start with you. Is this really a problem?Don Tuten:It is, and this is something that we try to get ahead of in the very beginning, and we practice this by using our PIO's (Public Information Officer), getting together in JIC (Joint Information Center), even for all of our preplanned events. So they all know each other, they all have the opportunity to work together, so when we do have that major incident go out, as you know Bill, information moves at the speed of light because everybody is on Twitter or Facebook Live. And when there's multiple messages being put out over social media, it's really imperative that the city entity, whether it be police, fire, a combination of both, as well as the mayor's office, have one message that is put out, and the correct information in a timely manner, because such misinformation gets put out so quick. Unfortunately, your media outlets, as well as unknown information gets put out there to parents, let's say if it does involve kids or other businesses, we want to get that information out, the true information out as quick as possible and be as informative as possible in a timely manner.Bill Godfrey:So Ron, I know that you've done a lot of work with schools over the years. Are there any particular challenges on that front with social media and you know, the kids having cell phones and instant access to the parents? Has that impacted our response at school events?Ron Otterbacher:It absolutely has. We've got to remember that most of the kids, especially in school events, their number one focus isn't dialing 911, it's dialing mom or dad. They want to get the information that either their okay or they're in trouble. We've got to manage that information and we've got to understand the flow of that information, because it may tell us that I've got 25 people sending messages from the gymnasium of that school, and that'll tell us we may have a pocket of people that are sitting there waiting to be rescued in some fashion. So it's all critical. Used to be, the school wouldn't allow use of cell phones, but they even recognize that it's so important, especially in these types of situations. Now everyone lets them have the cell phones in the schools.Bill Godfrey:So, before I jump over to EMS, does this have implications for you guys at the perimeter line when you're trying to get security wrapped around an active shooter event? Don, Ron, what are the implications of... You know, I'm a parent. In fact, we all are, and I know every time I get a message from my daughter that even when it's a drill it gives me that anxiety level. And the natural reaction I think of most parents is to try to get to their kid very quickly, but how does that turn into a challenge for us, or does it?Don Tuten:You know, it does and it doesn't. I think it's imperative on each agencies dispatchers as well as command staff to work properly with that police information consortium, whether it be through the Joint JIC (Joint Information Center) or the PIO (Public Information Officer), to push that information out over the radio to those officers working the perimeter to give that information so when you do have walk ups of, "Hey, this is where you need to go, this is a reunification place, this is the information to call, either a hospital, this is the online information that we're updating by every minute," and that's the information that we have to inform our officers and our EMS folks and those people that are on the perimeter to be able to push out. And if we fail to do that, then we're just slowing the timeline on getting that information out.Ron Otterbacher:Parents are a lot like the media. If you don't control the media, the media will control you. If you don't control the parents, they will control you, because they are going to get to their children, the word they’re in trouble. And if you're not prepared to handle them or give them an assignment, tell them where to go, start getting ready for the children to arrive, then they will be trying, however they can, get into where the target area is.Bill Godfrey:Interesting. It really is fascinating how much the impact of social media and cell phones have really changed the emergency response. Joe, let's talk a little bit on the EMS side. You know, one of the challenges, obviously, for us on EMS is we've transported people, where are they, and try accounting for them. Talk a little bit about some of the challenges and pitfalls and maybe some of the potential ways to help or solutions.Joe Ferrara:So this is where integration is extremely important. I know Don spoke earlier about the PIO's (Public Information Officer) working together in a JIC (Joint Information Center), and of course, and especially from the city manager's perspective, that city manager should be asking the PIO from the police agency, the PIO from the fire agency and there may even be a city PIO, that they all work together and that they all work together and craft one message, and it is approved through incident command. That is paramount to this process so that the fire department is not going off with one set of information, and the police department is going off with another set of information. Maybe we haven't talked or integrated and maybe private information is being share that shouldn't be. Certainly fire and EMS is well aware of privacy issues, but as fire and EMS, are we aware of investigative issues that law enforcement has? Maybe it's not a good idea to release certain information because it's sensitive intelligence. We won't know that as fire and EMS, unless we partner and integrate with law enforcement. And law enforcement won't know what patient information to release or not to release, unless there's integration between the two.Bill Godfrey:And I think one of the classic challenges is, you post the hotline phone number, and you get phone calls from people who are purportedly concerned family members, how do you vet that? How do you determine that there's a reasonable probability they are who they say they are, and then provide information about their loved ones or provide information about where the hospitals have transported, or which hospital the patients have been transported to. One of the frustrating parts of that is that you can't always take people at face value. I know one of our other instructors talked about the Southern land Springs shooting and his own personal experience with really what borders on almost unethical conduct on the side of the press in trying to get access to information and trying to figure out who had gone where and then sending reporters to the hospitals, which created some tough issues.So it's certainly some tough challenges. You can't just post names out there on social media, but you've got to be able to kind of correct the misinformation and of course for EMS, you got to walk that fine line on privacy, as do the hospitals. Don, Je - I'm sorry. Don and Ron, have you guys run into any really good ways of approaching handling security at the hospitals or how to handle identifying who's there or who isn't there? Don?Don Tuten:Yeah. So in my agency where we're at, the watch commanders automatically that work those areas where there's trauma centers are, they train and we unfortunately have events that involve police officers as well as larger events that we had. For instance, the mass shooting at the landing, we actually send those officers there to manage a scene that is a whole separate scene. And what they do, is they work with our PIO's, they're given the information on where family members can go to, what credentials or information they need to bring with them, for us to be able to release that information.The city where I'm from, we also have our services division that works with survivors as well as victims, and then we utilize them by working together to vet the proper people that come in to release the proper information at the right time. And then we also, like I said, by having the officers there, we have that security element in place to ensure that runs smoothly.Bill Godfrey:You know, something you just said in there made me think, the NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board), who is of course responsible for investigating plane crashes and those issues, has call centers that are designed and trained with people for asking those kinds of questions and vetting those information. Probably a good model for us to look at as responders, but I think the moral of the story is that, not only do you have to manage the message through your joint information center with all your PIO's on the same page, but you've got to have a plan for dealing with social media real time as the event is unfolding. The PIO is no longer an after thought that's an hour later. The PIO has a role almost as quick as the incident kicks off in communicating that information to the public. Final thoughts, Ron?Ron Otterbacher:And remember it's important to use your resources. If you've got a regional fusion center, use that because they can monitor the social media traffic and they can help you get ahead of it, because if you don't get ahead of it, you're going to be trying to catch up the entire time.Bill Godfrey:Joe, final thoughts?Joe Ferrara:Yeah. I think it's really important not only, you know, we already talked about integrating the PIO's into a JIC, we talked about how to deal with this at a hospital, but the really important thing for police chiefs and fire chiefs and city managers, is have policies and have joint policies that address these. Have good solid social media policies in place, because not only are the people at the scene going to use social media, your responders are. And unless you get in front of that and control that with a policy and proper training, the information is just going to run wild. So, my advice to those chief officers is to get those policies in place, especially on social media and release of information, and practice it.Bill Godfrey:I think that's a great point, alright. Gentlemen, thank you very much for taking the time to talk out to talk about this one. We're going to wrap that one up there, and we hope y'all will join us for the next series, which is our question number eight, what are you doing with community partners regarding active shooter hostile events? Thank you very much for joining us.

Episode 14 #6 What joint exercises have you done and what is planned? - "10 Questions from the Mayor" Series10 Questions for the Mayor to ask the Police and Fire Chief SeriesQuestion 6: "What joint exercises have you done and what is planned?"Bill Godfrey:Welcome back to the next in our podcast series. We are in the middle of our mini-series, talking about 10 questions that the mayor or city manager, County administrator want to ask their police and fire chiefs together to kind of help them understand what their preparedness level is for responding to an active shooter event.Today we are going to talk about question number six, chiefs, what joint exercises have you done and what are planned for the future? My name is Bill Godfrey. One of the instructors with C3, a retired fire chief. I have with me today, Pete Kelting, Lieutenant with Seminole County Sheriff's office, also one of the C3 instructors. And we have Tom Billington, retired fire chief and one of the C3 instructors. Tom, you want to lead us off?Tom Billington:Sure. I think that the city manager or mayor needs to be prepared, because a lot of your fire chiefs may say, "Well, we don't have any money." That's not an answer that the city manager or mayor wants to hear. There are so many opportunities out there for fire chiefs and emergency services managers to try to find funding, whether it's grants, whether it's partnerships, whether it's using private vendors who sponsor things.That's what you want to hear as the city manager, that your fire chief has gone out of the box and doesn't just say, "Well I don't have any money." They're coming out of there saying, "I've tried these avenues here. Here's what we're doing and here's how we're going to fund it." That's the answer. Nothing's worse than somebody just blaming things on money and it happens so often. It's an easy way out.Bill Godfrey:It occurs to me, I probably ought to set the context because this question very much dovetails with our previous question, which is what joint training have you done and what's planned? The difference between training and exercises, training, you're trying to build up the skill levels. Exercises you're trying to evaluate whether you've pulled it all together. For the most part in this question, we're talking about full scale exercises. These things can get quite large. They require a lot of participation from your agencies, from mutual aid partners. They require people to take the time to plan them out. They require sites to facilitate. They can be monsters and they can be expensive.So with that as the context, Pete, talk a little bit on the law enforcement side. What should the mayor want to hear from the sheriff and the fire chief when they're asked this question? What are the joint exercises you've done and what do you have planned?Pete Kelting:Yeah. That's a great question, Bill. I think a mayor or elected official asking downward what their agencies have done for training and how they're preparing starts with their yearly budgeting of training and that they start from the ground level of what they're going to do individually as an agency. Then offering that, I think in one of the other podcasts we talked about that our training opportunities are offered across jurisdictions, just starting from the local level of it, from law and fire, that we train together. Then we build upon that, that those trainings then merge into trainings with other counties, other cities.As we look into our regional effort, then we move outside of our own budget constraints and we plan together. We look at what funding is available to support these type of exercises, tabletops, full-scale exercises. It's very important that we keep our eye on the ball. And most agencies are eager to train that way, their training committees and the folks leading the effort for training look towards that avenue, to be able to move from individual training inside their agency to regional and multi-jurisdictional training supported by the funding that's out there. So it's extremely important that we keep our eye on the ball and train in that in that way.Bill Godfrey:Pete, I know you've got quite a bit of emergency management experience and background. Can you talk a little bit about the role that emergency management can play both in helping plan these events and staff these events, but also in securing grant funding? Because I'm sure that there's fire chiefs and police chiefs that may not be aware of how much the emergency management lane can help in getting this stuff done.Pete Kelting:Absolutely. The emergency management function is an integral part of sustaining a training program, across all hazards, not just active shooter but all hazards, in the sense that we have regional airports, we have colleges, we have schools, we have malls, we have all sorts of locations that your emergency management function and your EM coordinator can assist you with, with planning and reaching out to the community and integrating our training responses with the community responses.There's churches out there that, now there's accreditation standards for certain community places that they want to have that training at their location, at their venue. So it's really been a great thing for all of us to work together with our partners and again, with emergency management, who are resourced deep. They are able to reach out and get the people that can assist us in putting those training exercises together.Bill Godfrey:Yeah. Fantastic. Tom, I know you've spent well over 20 years responsible for emergency management and probably can offer some insights on the fireside. But also touch on the State Homeland Security opportunities in of grant funding and resources that can help you plan some of these things.Tom Billington:Right. Again, if your fire chief or emergency manager is not reaching out to these people, in the state emergency management or FEMA, there's usually UASI funds, which is the funds that come from the federal government that usually come into areas that could be considered targets. In Florida, I know Miami, Orlando, Jacksonville, those type areas, there's a lot of funding. You have to go find it.To touch on what Pete said, your emergency manager usually knows where those funds are or where they could be found. We go to fire chief conferences and they talk about fire chief stuff and union stuff and funding opportunities like Pete just mentioned, you really don't hear a lot about. So touching base with your emergency manager to find out where the funding opportunities, what's out there, very important. Next thing again, joint exercises, does that mean fire, EMS, police? Joint exercise means a lot of things. Sometimes we consider our professions as being islands, but we're not an Island.As Pete started to allude to, we want to make sure that joint exercises include the private sector included utilities, include courthouses, hospitals, and also these are other facilities that may have some money to help out, so 911 one systems and so again, beating the bushes, working with your local partners, finding that funding. You can pull it off.Bill Godfrey:It occurs to me as we come to a close on this one, this one's not a terribly complicated topic. Again, the mayor, when he asked this question, the answer you want to hear is, "Well, we've done this, this and this. And we've got these on the books and this is where we're going. We're working on funding for this." I mean, that's the obvious part.But I think the other thing that's important for mayors and city managers, county administrators to remember, especially in more suburban settings and in rural settings, your police chief and fire chief may or may not have had the opportunity to be exposed to some of these funding mechanisms. I mean, there's so many different grant avenues and so many different funding mechanisms. It can be hard to know where they are and where to look.So the mayor, the city manager, they may need to help their police chief, their fire chief kind of understand where some of these opportunities may be, support them by sending them to some training sessions on funding, or even putting the city in a position to kind of help them go get that stuff. Gentleman, I can't thank you enough for taking the time to come in this afternoon. Pete, thanks for being here.Pete Kelting:Thank you for having me.Bill Godfrey:Tom, thank you for taking the time to participate.Tom Billington:Thank you.Bill Godfrey:Everyone, thank you for joining us and please come back for our next one. Our next question in this mini-series, which is how will public information and social media being managed real time during the response? This will be an interesting topic, I'm sure. Until next time.

Episode 13 #5 What joint training have you done and what is planned? - "10 Questions from the Mayor" Series10 Questions for the Mayor to ask the Police and Fire Chief SeriesQuestion 5: "What joint training have you done and what is planned?"Bill Godfrey:Welcome back to our podcast series. This is the next installment. We are currently on a mini-series here, talking about 10 questions that the Mayor or City Manager should be asking their police chief and fire chief together. Today, we are going to be talking about question number 5.Chiefs, tell me what joint training you've done and what is planned? My name is Bill Godfrey, one of the instructors with C3 and retired fire chief. Have with me today, Adam Pendley, assistant chief with Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office. Also, one of the instructors with C3. Welcome, Adam.Adam Pendley:Thank you.Bill Godfrey:And we have with us, Joe Ferrara, also retired fire chief, like myself. And one of the instructors with C3. Thanks, Joe, for coming in.Joe Ferrara:Thank you.Bill Godfrey:So, as we get ready to talk about this, one of the things that I often find myself having to stop and backup and make sure everybody is on the same page, is that there is a big difference between training and exercises. And that so often gets lost. I see people, very frequently, spin up these large exercises, these large, full scale exercises, calling them training. And that is really a very, very difficult venue and environment in which people can train or learn. Full scale exercises are more for testing or validating whether or not your training is actually worked.So we have split this into 2 different questions. And our focus here is on the training that would build you to, ultimately, exercises to full scale. So here, we are talking about joint training. Adam, what should the mayor want to hear when asks the police chief, the fire chief, the sheriff, what joint training have you done and what's planned?Adam Pendley:I think what you're going to want to hear is that there's opportunities that when one agency or the other establishes training for those that might be involved in the management of an incident, that everyone is invited. Across disciplines, but also across different jurisdictions and a different management levels within your agency. And what I mean that is, is that police agencies have training that specific to their line level officers. When you have firearms training or tactical training or defensive tactics training, that is going to be very law enforcement centric.The same thing with the fire/EMS side. If you have training that's operational in nature, it's going to be very unique to that discipline. But, when you start talking about the type of training that's necessary to manage events, whether its even as simple as the Incident Command ICS300 type classes or Active Shooter Incident Management, those classes should not be closed to one agency. Those classes should be, you should invite all of those that are going to be involved because when the day of the incident comes, those are the same people that are going to be coming to assist. So training is really that first opportunity to bring everyone into the room, have the same curriculum, work through problems, and meet each other. That training is a great opportunity to really meet each other.So the answer should be, that we have opportunities to schedule, that when we offer a training, we send it out as a training announcement to everyone that is in that jurisdiction or in that region, so that we can all train on the same sheet of music, literally.Joe Ferrara:Yes, Adam, I certainly agree with that, that when an agency has a training, that it needs to go out across the disciplines but also within the agency. It's great to say, okay everybody needs to get ICS300 or everybody's got to have this or we're going to have this kind of training. But has management done that as well and is management, even within the organization, included all aspects into that training? So, as an example, from the fire chief on down, and has the fire chief reached across agencies within his city or within the county, if we have a large scale event, if we have a large scale disaster, public works is going to need to be trained, engineering departments need to be trained. Post disaster eventsSometimes, being from Florida, we deal with hurricanes so we have a lot of experience training across disciplines but are we really sure that every aspect, I can remember the days EOC exercises and the training leading up to them, law enforcement agency would send somebody on the training day. Fire department would have people there, public works would have people there. But then when we would have the exercise, post training, the same people weren't there. Are we ensuring, as leaders, that everybody across the board is trained on our expectations? And specifically, an active shooter event, there are many opportunities so, at the line level, why can't Company A or Fire Station A, the company officer has a training drill that night, and maybe it is on Rescue Task Forces. Call the deputies or officers on that zone, and say, hey guys come on over. That is joint training on what we are going to be responding to.And it doesn't have to be about Rescue Task Forces, it could be, maybe they invite law enforcement over to the fire station that day and say, hey we want some training on domestics and how we're going to approach that. Or the role we are going to have as fire fighters and medics on a crime scene. There's a big gap there. How many times did we stumble over something and screw up a crime scene when we should have had some company level training on that. So yeah, joint training, across the board.Bill Godfrey:I think you really hit the nail on the head. One of my frustrations, like the one that you just identified, you have some people show up to the training, and then when you go to do the exercise, the people who show up are completely different and haven't had the training, which is very frustrating. If its worth doing, you need to do it for everybody.But one of my other frustrations is, this over reliance on classroom training on presentations, lecturing, even in some cases, e-learning, without getting into the hands-on to reinforce it. Lecture, didactic material, even e-learning, can provide a great foundation for background, but you need to reinforce that and bring that home with some hands-on. And the hands-on needs to build in complexity. I am not saying it's easy. Its time consuming, it's difficult to schedule, it can be expensive, sometimes it can just be hard to figure out how to train it safely with the numbers that you've got. But there are ways to do it. Somewhere, somebody has already cracked the code on how to get that done. You just kind of have to be committed to it.Adam, what are some of the creative things that you've seen done, in terms of how to take it from the classroom, from e-learning, from lecture and provide some of that, like Joe saying, some of that hands-on. Whether its formally organized or informally organized. You got some examples?Adam Pendley:Well, actually, and he hit on a couple of the examples. From a law enforcement perspective, as a Watch Commander, I would often have an offsite roll call at a school or a mall or some business, where you do a walk through and you don't set it up as an exercise, you're not pulling guns out. But you're walking through and game planning how we would work through the problems that this location offers. And the same thing, we would call our local fire station, that has that territory, and have them meet us there for that roll call and do a walk through and just talk to each other. And discover that, hey on the back here they have this door barred and we don't have a key to it. How would we get past that problem? So again, just in your daily activity, you can incorporate training and planning and preparedness into actionable things that you can do on a daily basis.And then, like Joe mentioned as well, not only do you want to do that at the line level, but your management needs to get involved as well. As a City Manager, you would want to know that your chiefs of your departments know that there are outside resources available. The National Preparedness Domestic, The National Domestic Preparedness Consortium, that has multiple training officers over, training offerings over 6 different types of disciplines across the country that are free to send first responders to and that we don't have to reinvent the wheel. We can use a great deal of resources that are already offered by FEMA and by the training consortiums that are out there that focus on specific needs that we have in our communities.Bill Godfrey:I think that's a great answer. Joe, how about you. Any creative things that jump into your mind that you think of managing, like the fire department has some interesting shift challenges with the 1 on, 3 day off schedule for most. What are a couple of the creative things that you stick out in your mind?Joe Ferrara:Well, and you mentioned the shift challenges. There is also challenges with how training is paid for. We always hate to get on that topic but there is a financial aspect to it. Are we doing it on duty? And if we are doing it on duty, what are we doing about service coverage? So those are some challenges that chiefs need to deal with. And if it’s not on duty, there's overtime issues and all those things that come in to play about whether training is paid for, whether it’s' voluntary, whether its mandatory. Beyond that, it’s important for chiefs to remember to include other disciplines, besides just fire and law enforcement. Or just local law enforcement. I would think you want to reach out to your state police partners. Every response zone have state police partners there. So are they working and training with them. What about your health department? Are you pulling your health department and those assets in, your hospitals? So there are many other partners to think about when we talk about what are the impacts on these joint events.Adam Pendley:And I want to jump in there, Joe, because you mentioned a couple things that are really important that hit that help with the funding issue. We've seen around the country and we've talked with some of the others that help instruct this course, that you have your private sector, often times, is very eager to, to offer space or money or support for your training activities because they get to be recognized as helping in the community, that if they help us provide some space or funding for some active shooter training that crosses all the disciplines and the private sector, that they show that they are supporting the community as well. I would say, one of the way, one of the creative ways to get past the challenges of funding, is remember that you have your private sector partners that are willing to step in and help and offer money and offer space and resources.Bill Godfrey:I think that's a great example. And it’s funny, as we sit here recording this podcast, we're in Indiana at Valparaiso University, who is hosting one of our ASIM classes and provided just this beautiful ballroom and space, and everything that we needed, in terms of facilities and access. I think that's great thing. You know what, I think the other thing that needs to be mentioned is, the fire chief, the police chief, the sheriff shouldn't be afraid to go to the county manager, the city manager, and the mayor and say, "hey can you help us with some corporate partners? We want to be able to do this. We need these kinds of facilities to train in. Can you help make some introductions and some connections?"To me, I think it really does, for the city manager and the mayor, I think it comes down to this simple, when you ask the question of your police and fire chief, how does each of your disciplines, I'm sorry, what joint training have you done and what is planned, that they look each other and they're able to talk about it and talk about what they're doing together. That they're not looking at you with a dumb look. If they're, if they've got some answers, then you're probably on your way. I hate to make it sound that simple, but in a way it kind of is. It gives you a good barometer of whether they're talking and working together well.I think that's a good place to wrap this one up. Gentlemen, thank you very much for coming in on this one. Everyone please join us for our next in this mini-series, where we are going to talk about a very similar question, what joint exercises have you done and what's planned?

Episode 12: #4 How does each agency use ICS jointly and individually on a routine basis? - "Questions from the Mayor" Series10 Questions for the Mayor to ask the Police and Fire Chief SeriesQuestion 4: "How does each discipline (i.e. law enforcement, fire, EMS) use ICS individually and jointly on a routine basis (i.e. regular calls)?"Bill Godfrey:Welcome back to our next podcast. In this series, we're in the middle of talking about the 10 questions that the mayor or city manager should ask their police chief and fire chief together. Today we're going to take number four, which was how does each discipline use ICS individually and jointly on a routine basis? So the mayor, the city manager, county administrator, can sit down with the police chief and fire chief and say, "You know, folks, tell me, how are you guys using ICS on a daily basis? Where are you using it together? How does it fit? How does that work?"My name is Bill Godfrey, one of the instructors with C3, retired fire chief. I have with me Billy Perry, a retired detective from Jacksonville Sheriff's office, also a bomb tech. Billy, welcome.Billy Perry:Thank you for having me, Bill.Bill Godfrey:And we have Tom Billington, retired fire chief, also Tom and Billy, both one of the instructors at C3. Tom, welcome.Tom Billington:Thank you very much.Bill Godfrey:So Tom, let's lead off. So you know, fire is known pretty well across the country for using ICS on a daily basis. So that's kind of a given. Where are the opportunities that you see on the fire side for wrapping that together, using it jointly with law enforcement?Tom Billington:Well actually I can give you a good example. When I did a stint as fire chief in Virginia, we had the annual horse races same day as the Kentucky Derby and they were attended by about 6,000 people. And before the horse races, we actually did a joint command briefing with state police, county sheriff, local police, EMS, fire, and again the city manager and county personnel also.And then during the races we would implement ICS positions including the city manager and the county mayor as what their role would be should something go wrong. And actually one year before I arrived there, there was a tornado and they put their plan into place and it worked very good. So having the incident command system, everybody involved, not just fire, not just law enforcement, but everybody at all levels involved, very important.Bill Godfrey:So Billy on the law enforcement side, of course you hold a unique perspective, you've done it for a long time, you're very comfortable interacting with all levels in the ranks within the organization. As we travel around the country, we constantly run into law enforcement officers that they feel like they're too low on the food chain, ICS doesn't really apply to them, that that's something the major does or the deputy chief or something like that. What's your take on how does ICS fit on a daily basis for law enforcement, and where could you guys use it more than maybe you do?Billy Perry:You know, that's a great question, and basically where we can use it more than we do is everywhere. And I say that because I was forced to take it and I mean that, I was forced to take it, I was forced to take the NIMS classes, 101 and on up as a young SWAT guy and then as a bomb guy. They made all the specialized units take it and I really didn't understand why. And then as I started really exploring the professionalism of my career and seeing how it was used and where it was applicable, and when you realize what the main purpose of it is and it's to be more efficient, to be more effective, and to better serve our community. I don't say that lightly, I take that very, very seriously.And I think that once you realize that the purpose of doing this is to be more expeditious in the utilization of resources and the implementation of tactics, and it makes sense. And to be a more effective and higher trained professional in what you do in your craft. I know that Tom being a chief and you and your time at the fire department being a chief and you treated it not only as your profession, but as a craft and I've done the same thing.I think that we need to do a better job of teaching the lower echelons and rank of how important it is and how it is used. And even if you don't realize you're using it, you are using it. When you set up an emergency apprehension team and somebody takes command, that's ICS. When you recognize the brilliance of some of your leadership, like we had Michelle Cook that initiated putting rescue task forces in at special events and putting two firefighters with two officers for RTS for special events, for the Jaguar games, for Florida, Georgia games, brilliant. Brilliant. Because it just dovetails in, it cuts out a step of hesitancy, if that makes sense.Bill Godfrey:Yeah. It was a way to socialize the concepts into the organization and breed familiarity, breed the comfort.Billy Perry:Absolutely. And they're just dispatched there because one of our other instructors, Adam Pendley, says generally when you're at a situation like that, when you're sent to a fight, you generally need a medic, and if a medic needs to go to something, they generally need police officers. So if you're already there together, hey guys, then we're all there. We show up at the same time. We fix it, it's more expeditious, it's more efficient, and it's more economical frankly. Because we're ready to redeploy to another emergency or maybe a more important emergency or more vital. It's a better use of resources.Bill Godfrey:So Tom, and I think you'd agree with me on this, because Tom and I were both on the job when ICS began to come into the fire service and began to get adopted and there was some challenges in the beginning, there was some resistance. The thing that seemed to really kind of get us over that inertia and over that hump was when we started using it routinely, when we started using it on the every day. And Tom, I think you would agree with that as well. Where are the opportunities for sergeants out there working the streets every day, you know, the corporals, the FTOs, where are the opportunities for them to use ICS on a smaller scale for themselves in a way that can begin to breed that familiarity and that comfort with its use?Billy Perry:Well everywhere. I think... as my mind hearkens back, we were taking as a patrol squad, we're picking up a homicide suspect and the sergeant would put a technical officer in charge and say, "Listen, I want you to run this operation," because that's one of the tenants of ICS is who's the most qualified. So they would do that. And the same thing with scenes with specialized units, whether it's a bomb call out, whether it's a SWAT call out, who's got initial command. I think the supervision, the frontline supervision, just reminding this is actually ICS.Because it's no different than community oriented policing. We were doing community oriented policing, we just didn't know it was called that. And I think that a really good patrol officer is actually doing ICS, just doesn't know it.Bill Godfrey:Yeah. We say that in the class all the time that law enforcement's been doing ICS for a very long time. When the first police officer shows up, they're the ones in charge. When the sergeant shows up.Billy Perry:He's in charge.Bill Godfrey:And when the Lieutenant shows up.Billy Perry:He's in charge.Bill Godfrey:And that's ICS.Billy Perry:In a nutshell.Bill Godfrey:It really is and I feel like in some ways the fire service bears some responsibility along with FEMA that we've presented it in this overcomplicated way and it really doesn't need to be that way. What about other types of calls that patrol is going to routinely do? Any other examples?Billy Perry:Absolutely. A great one is perimeter. If you set up a perimeter that's a great example, because everybody needs to know where everybody is to prevent blue on blue, not just to have a good perimeter but to keep friendly fire fratricide from happening. And you have an overreaching supervisor that's on that, that's the ICS command system. Realizing it or not, they're actually in charge and they're over that perimeter and that's their job. I mean it's virtually everywhere.Bill Godfrey:So Tom, from your perspective on the fire side, where are the everyday opportunities to do an integrated command where we've got fire and law enforcement working already a little close together? I mean for example, you know a car accident where you've got injuries, roadway obstruction. Is that a missed opportunity that we could begin to have everybody working together a little more closely than we do?Tom Billington:Yes it is. However we've got to remember one thing. We have to make sure we're training our people. We can't just tell our line people, okay start doing ICS. We have to tell them how to do it together jointly, or how to do whether it's a car accident, whether it's domestic, what are the roles of each person and how do you put it together?I remember when we started ICS in the fire service, we used to tell people our paramedics, you're on a medical call, that's ICS. Who's in charge? The paramedic. Who's doing all the logging of the information on your command board? Well maybe the EMT. There's always some sort of chain of how things happen. There's so many opportunities out there, but we have to make sure we train our personnel. Like I've said before, the officer on midnight shift or the firefighter 30 miles away at an out station, he or she if they're going to buy into it, have to be trained and have to understand why they're doing it and how to do it.Bill Godfrey:You know, Billy, I sometime just said what made me remember, we did a class out in Texas, the three-day class and midway through the class there was a paramedic and an EMT that left class at the end of the day and went back on shift. And during the night, they had a call out to a shooting where the shooting suspect was not in custody, was believed to be at large in the neighborhood.But the patient had been shot very close range with a shotgun in the belly, you know, fairly nasty, and they were calling for the medics. And the medic supervisor who hadn't been in the training was saying, you know, it's not safe, it's not clear. And one of the police officers who was also in the training had come back to where the medics were and said, "Hey, let's do an RTF so we can get you up and get this guy out." And the female medic who had been in the class said, "Yeah, we got this. We can do this." And the supervisor was like, "No, I'm not really comfortable with this." And she said, "No, we got this. We know what we're doing."And on this kind of routine shooting call, they used the simple RTF concept to get the medics up in and out in a little bit safer fashion. Is that a missed opportunity in a lot of our communities that unfortunately are experiencing this violence, you know, the shootings and stabbings, the domestic calls? Is there an opportunity for law enforcement and fire to work a little more closely together, maybe use that RTF concept on a little more small scale?Billy Perry:Absolutely. And I think it even happens... I've been on a training exercise in the last year of my employment, which was just in 2017, where I had a captain that said, "No, we're not going anywhere until it's cool." And I'm like, you're a captain. You have to know this stuff. And I think that we do miss these training opportunities.And I think that not just training opportunities, but I think we miss real world opportunities and I think the sooner we get this out and the sooner we make it uniform across the board, I think it's better. But I do think we miss that. And I think that the only answer from my minimal scope is more integration.Bill Godfrey:So Tom, bottom line, the mayor, city manager, county administrator, sitting down with his police and fire chief and asks this question, "How does each of your disciplines use ICS individually and jointly on a routine basis?" What's the answer that they want to hear?Tom Billington:Well, the answer should be Mr. City Manager or Mr. Mayor, you probably already know because we include you in this training. You're a part of ICS and here's our joint training, here's our joint procedures and how we do things and here's how we've done it and here's what we do to implement it.If the city manager or mayor doesn't know what ICS is even, then it's not happening. It has to be top to bottom. Everybody should know what it is and practice it.Bill Godfrey:Bill, your perspective, bottom line. The sheriff's been called to sit down... The sheriff and the fire chief get called to sit down with the mayor's office and talk about this. What's the answer that the mayor should want to hear from the sheriff and the fire chief?Billy Perry:We actually had pretty good integration and I think that he would hear that frankly, and I think it happens. We've gone, we've enumerated in depth what happens on a routine basis from the specialized units, man it's really strong from the SWAT and from especially the bomb side from the hazmat with white powder calls, with WMD calls, with meth calls. That is ICS personified.I mean, if you ever want to see what it looks like, that's it. Straight down to the whiteboard, you know that has a dry erase board up there and everything else. So I think what they're going to hear is... And I think that the current mayor we have now, Lenny Curry, is going to go, "ICS, yeah, absolutely." And same thing with the sheriff and the chief. With Sheriff Williams and Chief Wilson, I think they're going to know.Bill Godfrey:Fantastic. Gentlemen, thank you very much. We'll wrap this one up here today. Please join us for this continued series on our next one, which is to discuss the question of what joint training have you done and what is planned, which is separate from the question of what joint exercises have you done and what are planned? Thanks gentlemen.Billy Perry:Thank you.Tom Billington:Thank you.

Episode 11: #3 How does our Policy Fit with Mutual Aid? - "10 Questions from the Mayor" Series10 Questions for the Mayor to ask the Police and Fire Chief SeriesQuestion 3: "How does our joint response policy fit with our mutual aid partners’ response policies?" Bill Godfrey: Welcome to our next podcast installment. We are in the middle of our mini series about the tem questions a mayor, city manager, county administrator, can ask their police and fire chiefs together to try to help them understand where they are at a preparedness level for an active shooter event or a hostile event.Today with me, I have Joe Ferrara, retired Fire Chief and Pete Kelting, Lieutenant with the Sheriff's Office. Thanks guys, for coming in today to talk about this next question. My name is Bill Godfrey, also a retired Fire Chief and we're up to our third question. How does our, meaning our agencies, how does our agency's joint response policy fit with our mutual aid partner's response policies? Guys, where do you want to pick this one apart? Pete Kelting: You know Bill, across the country mutual aid is what agencies rely upon to be able to sustain resources in events or incidents where it takes multi jurisdiction, multi agencies to see to conclusion the event. Most jurisdictions abide by some sort of state statute or agreement ahead of time for mutual aid, but with saying that our policies and our training have to be able to support our response.So it's important to know both formally and informally where we're able to respond efficiently together, where we've trained together, and that can come from relationships between and chief and chiefs, sheriffs and sheriffs, just to be able to support each other throughout an event early on. And if that event becomes more complex, the scale and complexity of it starts to drain resources that then more formal requests can be made through state requests or even from county to county through the state, the point of contacts. But we have to be able to see where each agency is comfortable with the training, where the liability falls on each other's actions and responses. So it's very important that both our mutual aid capability and our policy and training are all on the same page so that we're ready to respond if that event happens in our area. Bill Godfrey: Absolutely. Nobody ever does one of these things alone. Even the largest agencies, nobody ever does one alone. Joe, where's your opening on this one? What strikes you? Joe Ferrara: Well, I certainly agree with Pete and yourself that nobody does this alone and these things need to be linked, but I think you take the term mutual aid and as fire chiefs, and I'm sure police chiefs and sheriffs think the same thing, it's always that thought in the background that yeah, we're just going to request mutual aid and it's going to show up. I don't think it's that easy because I need to be 100% sure as an agency executive, especially if my county administrator or city manager asks me what we're going to do about mutual aid and what are we going to do about the policies. I need to know that that policy matches ours.The only way to do that, and Pete, I think you mentioned it already, is those relationships need to be built in place. But to further that, I think we need to look to some level of regionalization and whether there be groups formed or whether there are task forces formed in a region that counties, cities, and even state agencies are training together. They're sitting down and looking at policies and even to the degree of when policies are developed, are they developing them jointly? Are they developing them as an agency?And I hate to use the word silos with these, but that's what's happening. So you as an agency develops your policy and then you wait until you call dispatch and say hey, I need some mutual aid and then the next county north you comes and helps you out, but at that point do you as a chief really have any idea that that agency's policy is going to match yours? And what's the authority? Do those personnel, when they cross that geopolitical boundary, do they use their authority in the jurisdiction based on their policy? Is it based on my policy?So those conversations have to occur and the only way to do that is for the respective fire chiefs, the respective police chiefs, the respective sheriffs to sit down well in advance of an incident. Don't wait for the incident for this to happen and decide, look, if it happens in your county, our personnel are going to be trained on your policy. If it happens in my county, our pers, my personnel are going to be trained on that policy.Those decisions have to be made and if you don't have that answer for your manager at that time, I think it's going to be a little uncomfortable because if that basic answer of mutual aid can't be dealt with and what we're going to do with the policies, then I think if I were in the other seat as a city manager, I wouldn't have much confidence in those personnel across the desk from me if they couldn't tell me what they're going to do about mutual aid and policies. Bill Godfrey: I feel like we'll want to say amen in the church. Pete, you and Joe have both been around in the business a number of years, a lot of years, and you've seen a lot of challenges as have I. The agency that can't get along with the agency next door, you know, whether it's the same discipline or even different disciplines. What are some of the techniques that you've seen or maybe even used in your time to try to help break through some of that and get the dialogue open so that you can start working with your neighbors to move towards being on the same page? Pete Kelting: You know Bill, I think post 9/11 we've come a long way. You hear that quite often that both law and fire discipline have established relationships that have made great strides in training and response, but we still have some work to do. It's all about relationships. It's about making sure that we're staying in touch with our partners in fire and our partners in EM and that we're a part of the trainings and the think groups and the working groups across the state and across the country at a local, regional, and national level so that we have those abilities to discuss things that are working great and discuss things that are more of a challenge, and we still talk about communication and inner operational radio networks.We talk about being able to have equipment that responds in a certain fashion from a self agency owned asset to a regional asset. Those conversations in those work groups, in those summits, in everything that involves building relationships, have to continue. If we step back from that then we're just doing ourselves a disservice.I can't emphasize enough, you got to be able to be comfortable in relationships, working on the road, being able to step into a fire scene or fire personnel step into a law enforcement scene without feeling like they're stepping on somebody's toes. There's no jurisdictional battles that there's ... Not the us versus them mentality. We've got to work together to be able to respond efficiently. So relationships is truly important. Bill Godfrey: Joe, same question for you. Joe Ferrara: Well, I hate to be basic on this, but I think it all boils down to, you know, in this day and age and the challenges that we have as leaders of organizations, if you can't get along with a jurisdiction that's either within your county or an adjacent county or an adjacent city, you've got some real problems in leadership. To quote probably one of the simplest and greatest human beings, let's put a sweater on and let's talk about Fred Rogers and won't you be my neighbor? I hate to be silly about that, but really it's that basic. Bill Godfrey: Well, you know, sometimes it is and look, let's acknowledge that we've all been around the block a few times and we've certainly made our share of mistakes as well as having our share of successes, and sometimes there are pretty good reasons about why you have difficulty getting along with the neighboring jurisdictions. They can be legitimate operational reasons, but that doesn't remove the need to work through that. That doesn't remove the need to be able to find a way forward to get on the same page.And Joe, as you said, sometimes it is about ego and I hate to say it, but all too often that ego, that competition, tends to kind of get in our way. And it's worth noting, when you look at prior incidents there really has been a demonstrated need for having to work across boundaries. You know, the suspect that started this thing in our jurisdiction doesn't live here. His residence is in neighbor A's jurisdiction, we're transporting to hospitals in three or four different jurisdictions, and now we've got security problems, overload problems, providing for the families, the follow on stuff that goes with the events. You know, we've got to work through that.But the other thought that occurs to me that I'd like you guys to weigh in on here is that we're talking about the ten questions that the mayor, the city manager, county administrator ought to be able to ask the police and fire chief, but isn't this one where when the police and fire chiefs, EMS chiefs, when they feel like they've done everything that they can to try to break through and they're not making forward progress, shouldn't they be able to privately sit down with their mayor, their city manager, or county administrator and say I need your help. I need you to work with leadership in this other jurisdiction because we're hung up here and we need to find a way forward. We need some assistance in getting through this beachhead so that we can make progress on this very important suspect.Joe, what do you think? And Pete, I'll come to you with the same question. Joe Ferrara: Bill, I totally agree with you, but the the only sticking point there is from the perspective of that police or fire chief, if the city manager is asking the question about this mutual aid and there are all these barriers, as a city manager, let me just jump on the other side of the table. I'm going to ask why am I just hearing about these barriers now, Chief? Why haven't you come to me earlier? Yes, that fire chief, that police chief, should be astute enough to use their political partners, their elected officials. If jurisdiction A is having a problem with jurisdiction B, I hope that would have been resolved a long time ago and if we're waiting for when this question is asked, that's going to be an uncomfortable seat shifting moment for that chief officer, I believe. Bill Godfrey: Yeah. Pete, your viewpoint working with an elected sheriff, and I don't necessarily mean specifically where you're at now, but from your background and your years on the job you've had to deal with elected officials and across the different boundaries. How does that play out for you for one elected sheriff trying to help you break through the bottleneck with a another elected sheriff? Pete Kelting: You know Bill, I think we look at our service to our citizens when we have these conversations about are we in line to respond the most efficient way with a successful outcome, when we're having these uncomfortable conversations about are we prepared, are we ready, is the policy correct, is mutual aid support what we're trying to do. We often say if a citizen was looking in the window or listening into our conversations right now, would they be excited about where we're at? Would they feel comfortable that our agency is ready to respond if it happened right now?And so we have a saying in our agency, "Seek to understand before being understood." You've got to look at what each other is trying to accomplish and know that our end game, our end result, is service to our citizens. We have to be out there and be ready to stop the killing, stop the dying, in an active shooter incident and if we don't have these conversations and challenge these questions to our elected officials, to our county commissioners, our city commissioners, our city managers and so forth, where are we really in line to support our citizens? Bill Godfrey: I think that's a really good point and I have to admit, when I was on active duty I was driven to do the best job that I could and to provide that high quality of service to our citizens, but when it came to working with our partners, I wasn't always the most flexible, easy guy to work with. We had a lot of reasons for why we did things the way we did them and that didn't always make having conversations easy with our partners. And I look back on that and I think that there was a lot I could've learned there and probably reflecting on it could have done a lot differently.Hey Joe, you got anything else that you want to wrap this up in a bow for us? Joe Ferrara: I think that, again, I'll go back to in today's day and age with the challenges we have as agencies, with the limited resources, we all get up every day when we go to our jobs and we want to do the very best for our citizens, but at the end of the day, if we're not getting together with our partners, with the other agencies that are going to respond to us, because let's face it, I don't care how big you are, whether you're New York City or whether you're a small rural town, you cannot operate in a vacuum. You cannot do it without your partner's help.And I will reach out to my brethren, to my police chiefs, fire chiefs, sheriffs, if you're having those challenges today, you owe it to your citizenry to get over it, to work through it. There is nothing, nothing that should stop you from providing the best level of service and if you can't through those issues, then like I said, elevate it to your elected officials, your city/county managers, but be prepared for that to be an uncomfortable process if you have to do that. But chiefs, work through it. It's the right thing for your citizens. Bill Godfrey: And that's the bottom line. Hard stop. I think we're going to leave that one right there. Ladies and gentlemen who are listening, thank you very much for joining us. Please come back for our next in the series when we come back to our fourth question, how does each discipline, meaning law enforcement, fire, EMS, how does each discipline use ICS individually and jointly on a routine basis with each other on regular calls? So tune back in for that one. Stay safe and take care of each other.  

Episode 10: #2 What is our Joint ICS structure? - "10 Questions from the Mayor" Series10 Questions for the Mayor to ask the Police and Fire Chief SeriesQuestion 2: "What is the integrated Incident Command System (ICS) structure (i.e. org chart) that you’ve developed as part of the joint response policy?" Bill Godfrey: Welcome to our next installment in our podcast series. We are doing a mini-series here for mayors, city managers, county administrators called Ten Questions to Ask Your Police and Fire Chief. Our first podcast, we covered the question of, can you show and review with me our joint a hostile event response policy? So today's question on this one, what is the integrated incident command system structure, in other words, the Org Chart, that you chiefs of police, fire, EMS, that you chiefs have developed as part of the joint response policy?My name is Bill Godfrey, one of the instructors with C3 Pathways, retired fire chief. I have with me today Adam Pendley, assistant chief with the Jacksonville Sheriff's office, also one of our instructors. Adam, thanks for coming in. Adam Pendley: Yes, absolutely. Bill Godfrey: So one of the things that, and this one is actually kind of a simple question for the mayor or for the city manager is, show me the Org Chart. If the police chief and the fire chief can slap down an Org Chart in front of them and say, "Yeah, we've worked it out," then you're probably in pretty good shape. But if you get a blank stare or you get some squirming in the seat, then you probably need to drill down and ask some more questions. But talk a little bit about, Adam, on the law enforcement side, some of the places where we need to be linked up ahead of time to establish the lanes and the lines of communication. Adam Pendley: Sure. This is kind of an extension of that first question about policies, but visually speaking, an Org Chart that actually shows a unity of command and a span of control is a good area to see immediately whether you're still working in silos. If the fire, EMS department has an Org Chart that does not include any police representation, or vice versa, the law enforcement Org Chart does not have any medical branch represented in its Org Chart, then that might be a red flag that your agencies are still working within silos.But if you have an Org Chart that shows that an active shooter event, especially early in the event, is primarily going to be a law enforcement event with some very important tasks happening as you move into operations lower in the Org Chart, but you have a very well-represented medical branch that's working on triage and transport, but that in the Org Chart it shows that it's okay for the medical branch to work for the law enforcement agency that has jurisdiction for the active shooter event, that shows some level of cooperation. It shows that you're not working in silos. You're willing to work well with each other. Bill Godfrey: I agree with you. I think, to me, one of the first places that I look is when we talk about rescue task forces ... For those that that may be listening on our elected official side, the rescue task force is a combination team made up typically of some medically trained people, EMS, so EMTs and paramedics, that are escorted by a security detail, usually law enforcement. So what you're commonly seeing is this rescue task force, which is a mixed discipline team of law enforcement and fire EMS personnel, now, their job is to go down range and take care of patients that have been injured. So their job is medical, but there's a security component to it.One of the first questions that I ask people when I'm talking to them, especially on the fire, EMS side, is explain to me how your rescue task force is structured. Who's talking to who? What are the lanes of communication? So you've got a law enforcement element on the team. Who are they on the radio with? You've got a medical element of the team. Who are they on the radio with? How does that fit? How does that roll up into the command structure to where ultimately you've got an incident commander or a unified command, which I think is where you were going with what you were commenting earlier. I think we want to hit on that before we wrap up this question, but to me that's one of the very telling places to look is have you really integrated that rescue task force and those lanes of communication. Adam Pendley: Sure, absolutely. I think if you're at a table having that conversation, and you're a city manager and you're having that conversation with your chiefs, the Org Chart helps you walk through those questions. So show me where do the rescue task forces work, who are they communicating with, and so on and so forth. But I think also it allows you to open up questions like, in our emergency plan, what delegation of authority do you need to make this work? Do we need to have an understanding that, at least early in the event, it may be driven by a law enforcement incident commander? But as the incident progresses and the active threat has subsided and you're moving more into rescue and clearing and reunification and survivor services and family assistance, that maybe the command box of the Org Chart expands a little bit, and it becomes a true unified command, a little more long-term.Org Charts are just great to drive a conversation and illustrate, again, unity of command, and that is who reports to who, who do I work for, and who works for me, but then also span of control. As the event expands, where are we going to place resources so they're the most effective, where you're not overwhelming a single agency or a single incident commander and you have that shared authority? So once a city manager walks through that Org Chart with his chiefs or her chiefs, they can understand what delegation of authority is needed and where all these pieces are going to fall into place. Bill Godfrey: Absolutely makes sense. I think the other thing that the Org Chart allows the mayor or the city manager to look at is, where are the linkages? So you mentioned unified command, and we often talk in our classes about the difference between unified command and unified management. Unified command is a very specific term that has a specific definition within the National Incident Management System and the way we use it. We see a lot of of national guidance that says, it's got to be unified command.On the streets over the last, I don't know, 10, 20 years now, unified command has kind of morphed from what it was originally intended to be into this notion that each discipline is going to kind of run it's discipline directly, and that they're just going to share information in the command post. Of course, as we've seen in training and exercises and in studies that we've done on the real life incidents, that's a disaster in the making.If you stovepipe your communications, whether it's stovepiping vertically through the command post or stovepiping all the way through dispatch, when you don't have your two command posts together, there is a breakdown. It slows communication down. It introduces errors and mistakes that occur, and it's a breakdown.So one of the other things that I would say is when you're looking at the Org Chart, ask the question, show me where we're working together. Where are we working laterally across the disciplines? You should see two, three, four touch points across the org structure where we're working together and talking together and sharing information before it gets to that unified incident commander level.That, of course, is what we call the idea of unified management is where we have come together across our disciplines to really work this thing together as opposed to stovepiping it by discipline through unified command. I think, to me, that's another really important touch point, especially given some of the national guidance we've seen come out recently. Adam Pendley: Yeah, absolutely, and it's a starting point. I think it's fair to say that there's an asterisk here, that your Org Chart is going to change based on the size and scope of your incident. I say frequently in training scenarios that you should let how much incident you have drive how much ICS you need. You should never let how much incident command system you're using drive how much incident you have. What that means is that your Org Chart is going to develop as the incident develops.However, if you're sitting at a desk in a pre-planning sort of way, an Org Chart can be very telling as far as how the agencies are willing to work together.Like you mentioned, Bill, the touch points across laterally and to make sure that everyone is a unity of effort and unity of management moving in the right direction. So I think those are great points. Even if the astatic Org Chart does not necessarily become part of the policy, as you discuss the policy, you can draw out an Org Chart so you can ... It's just another visual way to identify gaps as the process develops. Bill Godfrey: I think it's a really good point. This one, gang, is not really a complicated topic. Again, I think it's a pretty straightforward way for the elected official, the city-county administrator, to be able to evaluate a very technical area where they may not have the background, but at least they can get some understanding of how much preparation has been done and how much everybody's going to be working together.Adam, thank you for taking the time to weigh in on this one. This one's going to be short and sweet. Please join us again for the next one. Our next question up is, how does your joint response policy fit with our mutual aid partners' response policies? In other words, what good does it do us to have a great policy that we've trained on if it doesn't match up with our neighbors? So tune back in for that one. Thank you. 

Show Transcript:Episode 09: #1 Show me our joint Active Shooter Response policy - "10 Questions from the Mayor" Series10 Questions for the Mayor to ask the Police and Fire Chief SeriesQuestion 1:"Chiefs, please show and review with me our joint Active Shooter/Hostile Event Response policy."*Bill Godfrey: *Welcome to our next installment in our podcast series. This time we're going to be doing something a little different. We're actually going to be kicking off the beginning of a mini series where we're going to talk specifically about the topic of what kinds of questions the Mayor, the City Manager, or the County Administrator should be able to ask their police and fire Chief together, and really be able to judge what their readiness level is to be prepared for an active shooter event or to judge where they may have some gaps. We're going to take each one of these questions, 10 questions here, as a separate topic. Our first question in this series is," Chiefs, can you show and review with me our joint active shooter hostile event response policy?" To talk about that tonight and got with me, Tom Billington, retired Fire Chief. Welcome, Tom.*Tom Billington: *Thank you.*Bill Godfrey: *We got Adam Pendley, Assistant Chief. Adam, thanks for coming. We've got Pete Kelting, Lieutenant from the Sheriff's Office. Pete, thanks for being here. Of course, my name is Bill Godfrey and retired Fire Chief myself. So with that, Adam, let's start with you. Why is this such an important question for leadership of a city or county to be able to ask the police Chiefs and fire Chiefs, why the focus on a joint policy?*Adam Pendley: *Well, I think this is probably one of the first indicators as to whether you actually have true integration between your fire police and EMS services in your town or community. If someone has taken an effort to sit down together and write a policy that is literally on the same sheet of paper that avoids contradictions, it avoids assumptions or disagreements or agreements about what another agency is going to do, if you haven't sat down and had a workshop and put those agreements on paper to de-conflict the issues that the different agencies can have, then that's kind of indicative that maybe you are agencies that share the same community haven't been talking to each other as much as they should.*Bill Godfrey: *Pete, tell me from your perspective, how important is that that the law enforcement agency and the fire EMS agency, the medical agency, actually have a shared policy that's been written together and signed off by the leadership?*Pete Kelting: *Well, Bill, that's a great question because policy supports training, it supports purchase of equipment and it supports the end result of what we do together and disciplines. Being able to work with your partner from fire or EMS or emergency management and know that our training efforts and our purchase of equipment all are supported by policy and that we have the goal to manage incident the same so that it alleviates any type of hurdles as we move forward going down the road.*Bill Godfrey: *Tom, what Pete's talking about raises kind of an interesting challenge. Pete's of course from a Sheriff's Office and I know you were fire Chief of a county department for many, many years. In that context, the fire Chief and the Sheriff aren't necessarily in the same chain of command answering to the same person. What's your takeaway on that? Is it still, you think, important to have a shared policy and and why?*Tom Billington: *Good point. A shared policy is badly needed. However, traveling around the country, there is no one size fits all. This policy can not be something that you go online and download and change the names. It is a policy that the law enforcement and fire or EMS agencies have to actually sit down together, come up with responsibilities and how to operate. It's an important time to get with your counterpart and figure out things beforehand. As Pete was saying, very important.*Bill Godfrey: *Where do you start the conversation? If you're the fire Chief and you've got, whether it's a city police Chief or county Sheriff or some other type of law enforcement entity that you're going to be working with, and I guess we guys, we'd probably need to talk about mutual aid and the importance of that as well. Tom, how do you start that conversation?*Tom Billington: *Well, the first thing is, as the fire Chief, he better know the police Chief or Sheriff by first name. You better have that relationship. If not, you need to build that right from the start. You need to be able to go in his office or her office and vice versa, shut the door and say, "Hey, we have something we have to work on here.", and make sure you approach it that way and start the ball rolling. I guess the relationships are so important to build beforehand.*Bill Godfrey: *It really does come down to that. Adam, it reminds me as we're sitting here talking about this, I recall you were actually a part of a training incident we had where in a training session, the law enforcement agency was talking about the EMS teams going down range and the EMS team said, "What are you talking about? We haven't trained for that', now for the benefit of the audience, this was quite a number of years ago now, and the law enforcement folks said, "Well, it's in policy." It turned out that it was in the law enforcement agency's policy, and the fire department, it was news to them. Talk a little bit about that surreal moment.*Adam Pendley: *Sure. That's absolutely true. Through training law enforcement has received, again, you talk about certain assumptions are made and if those assumptions are not shared with your fire EMS counterpart, you may find yourself standing alone. I'd like to add that in many communities, we already have a structure in place to have this workshop together and start sorting through these policies and we do it with natural disasters. In my area in Florida where I'm from, we already have management from the various agencies involved sit down in a pre planning sort of way and put together a comprehensive emergency management plan for natural disasters. I would think from kind of back to the original question, the City manager or some executive level person who's in this community might ask, "Have we done a similar process for a crime of violence, for an active shooter event? Have we had that same level of comparing notes together to come up with a shared policy that we do with other natural disasters that we have in on the rest of the country?"*Bill Godfrey: *Pete, something Adam just said made me kind of click and thinking about this. He made the comment about, "We make assumptions in our policies." I know I've seen more than I would care to admit, fire policies that law enforcement shall do this, we'll do this, shall do that and never vetted with that law enforcement agency, never signed off. How common is that on the law enforcement side? What do you see at the county level, at the city level with those kinds of assumptions that people put in their policies that weren't cross-checked with the people that they're assuming they're going to execute?*Pete Kelting: *Well, we certainly hope that we are sharing information and writing policy together, but that is common, Bill. You find that from local jurisdictions, from cities to county Sheriffs, from Sheriffs to state police and other fire agencies around our region, that if we haven't worked together ahead of time to vet those policies to know that we're again, going to train in the same dynamics when it comes to response to these incidents, is crucial. I think there's committees going on now as we know through NFPA and being able to look at standards. Not only do you have the standards nationally, but you also have cultural issues in a sense, are training ways of things. We always have joked in the past a little bit about the East coast versus the West coast of how things are done. They're done differently across the country, but I think we're making great strides and coming together on training committees, on think groups through safety summits and so forth where we know we need to sit down, look at each other's policies, write them if we don't have them, vet them and make sure that we're all on the same.*Tom Billington: *If I can jump in Pete because there's two things that you said make sense. One is, you want to see the fire Chief and the police Chief or Sheriff's signature on this thing, both of them. The other thing that happens so many times that we want to make sure does not happen with this policy is, when you ask the patrolman on midnight shift or you asked the firefighter who works at a station 10 miles away, "Tell me about your active shooter policy" and they say, "I have no idea what you're talking about." This is something that it can't go on the shelf. Everybody has to know about it and it has to be drilled and trained as so.*Adam Pendley: *It's interesting that you say that because I think it's also important to include your nongovernmental organizations and your private entities that might be involved in these things as well because I can give you a recent example where, again, this was more of a natural disaster example, but every week, we got everyone at the table to start discussing policies and how they would approach the plan. We had some special needs folks who ran some facilities and it was in their policy that law enforcement would transport anyone that has a need to a special needs shelter. Law enforcement had to step up and say, "We would not have the resources for that. That's something you're going to have to be responsible for." So the same thing is going to happen, if you're successful in getting people to sit down, what's everyone's kind of touched on is, wanting to sit at the same table to make sure you de-conflict each other's policies and that you come up with a shared policy that matches industry standards. Like Pete mentioned, you get a better outcome. You're prepared for when that day comes.*Bill Godfrey: *Pete, I'm going to point this one to you. I think we've all talked about the importance of having a joint policy. It's just the easy way for the Mayor, the City Manager, the County Administrator to be able to know that those policies had been de-conflicted at the very least, as police Chief and fire Chief were on the same page. What should the Mayor, City Manager, County Administrator key in on when they run into the inevitable situation that the police Chief, fire Chief, EMS Chief, walk in, sit down for the meeting and say, "Well, here's our policy." "Well, here's our policy.", and they say there they're not going to do a joint policy, that this is fine and doesn't need to be a joint policy as we're discussing? What are the things that the Mayor or the City Manager, what do they go look for that tips them that there's still problems?*Pete Kelting: *I think when you see that trainings aren't happening together, when you have full scale exercises being conducted in regional settings and agencies aren't participating because they don't believe their policy fits that or they haven't trained to that, if they're seeing that their agency's not purchasing the right resources, that they just don't seem to have the awareness of where the active shooter response from an agency is headed across the country. You look at the recent incidents and the after action reports are clear, when we can learn from previous incidents where we can improve. Time and time again, often that failure to train together, that failure to participate in exercises, failure to support the agency through purchase of equipment, and stay on top of that readiness, that operational need to be responding to an incident, we all, you hear it again, we all say that it's never going to happen our jurisdiction, but look what's happening. It is. It's happening in our jurisdictions.*Pete Kelting: *We've got to be ready, our mayors, our Chiefs, our Sheriffs got to work together. They've got to support us with budgets and equipment and training and joint policies.*Bill Godfrey: *I think that's very succinctly put and focuses on the right thing. Well, gentlemen, let's wrap this one up here and I thank you very much for your time. For those of you that are still listening, we got nine more questions to go, so please tune in for the other nine part in this series of 10 questions that the Mayor, City Manager, County Administrator should ask their police and fire Chiefs. Thank you.

Episode 08: Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) Discussion of IEDs - Improvised Explosive Devices (aka bombs) in Active Shooter Events. Bill Godfrey: Welcome to this next discussion in ongoing podcast series talking about active shooter incident management. Today, we are going to be talking about the impact of improvised explosive devices in the presence of active shooter events. I have with us today to join the conversation Billy Perry, retired detective and bomb technician from the Jacksonville area. Welcome, thanks for coming in Billy. Billy Perry: Thank you for having me. Bill Godfrey: And Tom Billington, retired fire chief from the south Florida area. Tom, thanks for coming in.Tom Billington: Thanks for having me.Bill Godfrey: I am Bill Godfrey, also one of the other instructors. Tom and Billy, both instructors here with C3 on the active shooter incident management course. Billy, let's start off with you on the bomb tech side. What is the real threat of bombs to us from a practical point of view in these active shooter events? Based on what we've seen and what's going on, what is the threat? Billy Perry: I'm glad you're asking these questions, Bill. Bombs and IEDs are becoming much more prevalent in our world. When I say "our world", I'm talking about our world in the law enforcement fire community and especially in the active shooter realm. They are becoming more frequent. They're becoming more sophisticated. They're becoming more reliable and, as a result, more dangerous. One of things that we like to say is "bombs have the right of way". You can't negotiate with them. They're an inanimate object and they're something to be concerned with. In our curriculum, we talk about 50 pounds and less being a device that we're concerned with. Where I came from and our jurisdiction, we were responsible for everything under 100 pounds under water. That's a lot. 50 pounds of explosives is a significant amount and will do a lot of damage. Ignorance reigns supreme and to be frank, when I was involved in the explosive breaching side as a S.W.A.T. guy, I was very cavalier about explosives and I was terrified of a dirty bomb. Then, I found out that a, once I learned about explosives, I realized that I wasn't afraid of a dirty bomb. I could fix that with a whisk broom and dust buster, but conventional explosives now, I'm mortified of. They terrify me. We have to be concerned about that. We have to be concerned about secondaries because bombers are like knife fighters. If you have one knife in law enforcement, you always look for another one and a third. The same thing with bomb. If they do one, they like to have two. Redundancy. Like I said before, they come from the department of redundancy department. You want to be cognizant of that. Just be careful with them. Bill Godfrey: Interesting segue in that, they come from the redundancy department is kind of funny, but I guess in many ways true here. From the active shooter events that we've seen and from the security information you're privy to, what are the kinds of things that guys that are operating on the inside should be looking for? If they have a bomb or they seize, if there is a bomb present, somebody brought an IED to the thing, what are the sizes? What's the range of the threat that they're looking for? What's the size of the package the device triggers? Any common stuff there? Anything to keep eyes out for? Billy Perry: Absolutely. They're the normal ones and we've seen all of them in the instance such as the Boston bombing, such as the San Bernardino incident. They've had the triggers from electric. They've had, when I say "electric", San Bernardino was a Christmas bulb which ran off of a battery. They had a remote-controlled, San Bernardino, remote-controlled car. The Boston bombers made grenades out of elbows, galvanized elbows. We have to be very cognizant of all those. They're usually hand-portable, but they are still very formidable devices. Bill Godfrey: Got you. As we're a contact team or a rescue task force, both of them, they're moving downrange, they see something that just doesn't look right, what are the steps? What's the initial action? Billy Perry: Great question again. I'll tell you, in our curriculum we say IED and tell where it goes on the checklist. We talk about that, where is it and talk about what it is. Where I come from, we were not super smart and what we had to do is, because I'm one of us and I can say that and we keep things really, really simple. We use the word "bomb" because nothing else can be mistaken for "bomb". The only time that we use the word "go" is in response, or in regards, I should say to "bomb". We say "bomb cover" or "bomb go". If we are moving down a passageway, a hallway or down in a area and we run into a device and by running into, I mean we see it, the point man sees it. No matter what size it is, we're practicing a 540 scan, 360 around, 180 degrees up and down and if you see it, immediately stop. Just like the military has a 5-25-5 meter immediate area scan, 25 meter area scan, we do the 5 foot scan and the 25 foot area scan to look for other things, but we call out "bomb cover". If the bomb is a distance from us, we say "bomb cover" and we move to cover creating angles and air gaps. [inaudible 00:05:33] one person will hold on it, not necessarily looking at it because what are we covering? The bomb. If you can see the bomb, the bomb can see you. You've got to remember a bomb is a gun that fires in a 540 degree arc. It doesn't miss. We want to make sure that we keep that away, but we're still paying attention for actionable intelligence and stimulus. If it's coming at us, I should say, like if the bomber comes out or the shooter comes out and throws something towards us, that would be "bomb go" and we're going to move past it. Is this moving toward us? We're going to move past it towards them and continue the assault. Bill Godfrey: Tom, I want to bring you into the conversation at this point. We've got a group of injured. There's a contact team that's either in the area or passed through the area because we've seen this happen in some incidents across the country. We're working to provide some medical, emergent medical care to the patients and then get them evacked out and then we find a device. What's the impact, because on the rescue task force for medics being downrange, we talk about them being in a warm zone, but obviously if we're in the vicinity of what we believe is a bomb, that makes it a direct threat environment. Suddenly, it becomes a hot zone. What's the course of action? Tom, from your perspective, you've got medics downrange. They're already in there. You've got patients that need to get evacked out. Lo and behold, turn around, there's a backpack, there's a thing, there's a whatever. What actions are they going to take? What do you think is going to happen? Tom Billington: Actually, this is a good discussion point. Usually before we activate the RTF, law enforcement will tell the EMS or fire crew, "Here's what's going to happen if somebody starts shooting". It might be a good idea to have the conversation, "Here's what we're going to do if we see something suspicious. That way, it doesn't take the fire or EMS personnel off guard. If somebody says "bomb", I know that right away can make a firefighter go, "Oh, what do we do now?" Obviously, having the conversation beforehand is very important. Again, making sure we have relationships with our law enforcement, very important. Again, if I was on the scene with Billy and we're looking at something that was maybe a device and he gave me direction, I would listen to it because I trust him wholeheartedly. I know his abilities. We need to make sure that the fire community is meeting with these experts not during, but way before an incident occurs. I think those two things alone will really help the fire or EMS folks be able to handle a situation when it comes up. Bill Godfrey: Billy, that scenario and what Tom is describing, I think it makes a lot of sense. They're in a room. They're in a casualty collection point. Lo and behold, you're working on five, six, seven patients and here's a device. Here's an honest goodness believed to be legit device. What are the things that they can do. What are the things that they can do to try to make themselves a little safer, make the patients a little safer short of the obvious of grab them and get them out of there? Are there anything, other things that they can do? Billy Perry: If it's a small room, we're going to get them out of there. We're going to have to move them. Space is your friend. If an area will provide you cover from rifle fire, it's probably going to be okay for distance from a bomb. It's going to be better than obviously nothing. Space and good cover and angles. Multiple angles are even better, not in a confined area, but we're going to, if it is a very small device and again, all devices aren't the same. It's hard to pack ourselves up. Again, I don't want to overemphasize them, but I don't want to downplay them too much either. If you look at a hand grenade that's a small amount of composition B, but man, the amount of damage that it does compared to a block of C4, that's amazingly devastating, but a pipe bomb with black powder, let's say, is going to be a significant event, but it's not going to be anywhere near the same because you've got a low explosive versus a high explosive. If they are in a closed area, obviously bunkering it, the device without touching it and that. I think, for your RTF, I think if your initial responders and everybody are pretty switched on, they're going to be looking for that because I know we train for that. We train to look for that. They're going to see something that's out of the ordinary. Again, there's a huge difference between something with a radio antenna coming out of it like the car in San Bernardino and a pipe bomb with a fuse that's burned, you can see the burn marks that it didn't go off. There's a huge difference between the two because the one is probably not going to happen obviously, or it would've, and then there's the other. Then, there's the other types of devices that you're worried about, but go ahead. Bill Godfrey: I want to try to get you to clarify something because I know what you mean, but obviously on a podcast when we're just talking about things, it's sometimes a little hard to explain because you've mentioned several times angles. Can you be a little more clear on what you mean by angles for the people that are listening? Billy Perry: Absolutely. When you encounter a device, you want to create angles. You want to move in a 90-degree angle from it, like if you can go down another hallway, if you can go around the corner of a building. Again, multiple angles are even better. You don't want to be in a room or a house with it if you can or a building if you can. You want to get out. If you have to stay in it, you want to create as much air and angles from it adjoining rooms and areas as you can. Again, if it's bomb cover, we're going to have one person that's going to stop and provide cover being responsible for cover downrange without staring at the device. Somebody else is going to be moving to look for an alternate route, just try to find another way around it and move on, but if we get stimulus, if we get actionable intelligence, we're going to move past that device frankly with the exception of possibly a PIR, a passive infrared or a motion detector no different than you have on a flood light or a motion detector on a burglar alarm. Those are different because those are pretty effective. We're going to be very cognizant of those. That's going to require another entry.Bill Godfrey: Best case scenario: You spot it, call it out to the team, fall back, find another way around it and then continue to execute your mission. We haven't talked about [inaudible 00:12:23] yet. Guess let's put a tag in that one and come back to it.Billy Perry: Okay. Okay.Bill Godfrey: The idea of angles, we want to get around corners. Part of that is the blast wave. Is it also the fragmentation that you're trying to get away from? Billy Perry: You're trying to get away from ... Bombs injure us and kill us in three ways: Heat, fragmentation and overpressure, or the shockwave, the overpressure, the changes in pressure. They're all dangerous. They're all bad. You're a firefighter, you know. [inaudible 00:12:49] burned, we don't want pressure and we definitely don't want frag, which is a bunch of baby bullets or big bullets even. That's why distance and cover are important.Bill Godfrey: Okay. With that said, let's talk a little bit about marking it. If you come upon something, and when we say "come upon it", let's just be clear, we're not talking about it is at your feet and you've closed on it to six inches. That's not what we're talking about. You've seen it 15, 20, 30 feet down the hallway as you're coming up on something. Billy Perry: Hopefully.Bill Godfrey: Hopefully. We hope.Billy Perry: Right. Hopefully. Bill Godfrey: What's the kinds of things that are effective for marking it to alert other crews not to go down there or alert it that that's, there's something unusual there? Billy Perry: We really emphasize glow sticks. We really do. Green and red glow sticks. We emphasize those and we emphasize everybody having a bag for active incidents and having those in there. We recommend, if you mark it with red, that means it's something along the lines of a PIR or something that's command-detonated with an antenna. Don't go past that. Don't go past that. We recommend something that is green and red combined, link them together for something that has a fuse that's burned. This is probably not going to go off, but don't tarry here. Move by. If you've got to move by, we'd look at it and I've always said, "Just move. Don't sit and look at it. Don't waste time. Look at where you want to go and go. Don't look at the bomb. Don't mess with the bomb. Don't mess with it. Just let it go. Hopefully you ignore it, it ignores you and you move on." Then, green for something that a bomb tech would put down saying, "This one has been mitigated, trip wires." Be cognizant of that. That's another thing to look for. Look for the initiating mechanism. If you do see a device, look and see if you see any wires or fishing line or anything like that. Bill Godfrey: Okay. I'm going to tangent a little bit here and ask a harder question. This scenario I'm about to give you has come up a number of times in training that we've done and it's been interesting seeing responder's reactions to it. In some cases, there's been the threat of a vehicle-borne IED, which you make an interesting point about the distinction between a bomb in a vehicle and a vehicle that is a bomb. I'll let you explain on that a little bit as well, but the threat of what is believed to be a vehicle-borne IED that has an exposure to people that you need to rescue and as quick as you're going to move, it's going to take time. You've got 15, 20, 30 people that need to be rescued. No matter how you chalk it up, that's going to take a lot of time and a lot of people. Tom, recall back the scenarios we've seen where people have used firetrucks as shielding between where the casualties are and between where this potential vehicle-borne IED. On the one hand, firetruck, big red truck, made mostly of aluminum, which is not necessarily that good, but also there got a lot of water sitting in the middle of them. Billy Perry: That's what I was about to say.Bill Godfrey: Talk a little bit about what are the strategies. Tom, I'm trying to remember how many times we've seen that now. Is that a good strategy? Are there better ideas? How do you handle ... Tom and I are on the medical side. What are we supposed to see with these patients that are in a hot zone that are exposed to this thing? We can't diffuse it. We can't make the bomb go away. We can't get rid of it. What do we do? Billy Perry: You're on the right track. Absolutely firetrucks are amazing cover, so are garbage trucks. They really are. They're big, heavy, they deflect pressure waves. They're really, really good, but those, but while you're putting those in place, be moving as many as you can. We have to move them. [inaudible 00:17:00] whatever, we've got to move them, got to get them out of there because we're not going to move the car obviously, because another thing that we don't do when we have a device, even in a movement area, like with an active shooter in a building or in an office complex or whatever, we're not going to change the environment. We're going to leave the environment where it is and we're not going to change the lights. We're not going to move it obviously, which that brings me to another good point. Let's put a pin in that one, or about touching bombs. We're not going to change the car. We're not going to move the car out of the way. We're not going to move that. The point you were talking about is, there's a big difference between the pipe bomb in the backseat of a car, that's not a car. That's not a VBID, that's not a car bomb. That is a bomb in a car. Putting something like 50 pounds of explosives in the backseat, something that uses the car as the case or as the actual mechanism for transport, that would be a car bomb. There's a huge difference in them. If you look at Secora, New Mexico, you'll see that requires a lot of space, but you also want the cover as close to the patients as possible because the pressure waves [crosstalk 00:18:10] Bill Godfrey: That was one of the questions I was going to ask is: Do we want the cover closer to the vehicle or closer to the patients? Billy Perry: Closer to the patients because the pressure wave will go over them.Tom Billington: Joining on what Billy just said about the shockwave and making sure we have the barrier as close to the patients as possible, something for the RTFs to think about and again, as Billy said, we're not going to be worrying about [inaudible 00:18:32] and things like that. We need to do rapid extrication. Time is going to be our friend. We've got to hurry up, get the people out of there. For treatment, we also need to be sure that our medical people understand the injuries that can occur from a bomb, such as the shockwave. In Hollywood, when a bomb blows up, people hit the ground, they stand up and go back to work. That's not the case here. Our patients who may not look like patients right away after the shockwave hits them, in a short amount of time will start having serious internal injuries and other things that will start occurring. We have to make sure we're trained up on how to handle these incidents, even if they don't look as severe right away, thinking about the future. Bill Godfrey: You think it's something, the pulmonary injury from the overpressure wave, those kinds of issues? Tom Billington: Right.Billy Perry: Absolutely.Tom Billington: Right. Billy Perry: The traumatic brain injuries that you don't see that manifest themselves over time. Bill Godfrey: Yeah. I was taught the rule of thumb was, if somebody is close enough to a blast that they got knocked down, got their breath knocked out of them or had any indication of fluid out of the eyes, nose or ears, that was an automatic trip to the ER to get screened even if they said they were okay. Billy, is that still consistent with training that you're getting now? Billy Perry: Absolutely. Just a couple of pounds of overpressure are really detrimental health-wise. Distance, let's talk about distance. One of things about explosives is a foot, one foot between, let's say just as arbitrary numbers, ten feet could be injury and eleven feet be absolutely unscathed, depending on the explosive that goes off. You could be ten feet away and actually have a minor injury, eleven feet, you're completely unscathed. It's just that. Distance is your friend, but you're not going to outrun it. That's another one of the things.Bill Godfrey: You're not going to dive in the bathtub and get away from it.Billy Perry: You're not going to dive in the bathtub from the toilet and get away with it. Not going to happen because you're not going to move it 20,000 feet per second, which it is for a high explosive, so you've got to be cognizant of that. What I was going to talk to you about too about the bomb, about not changing the environment, we're not going to touch them. Never, ever, ever touch a bomb. Never, ever, ever, ever, never touch a bomb. As a result of that, keeping in continuity with tactics, we don't ever, ever, ever touch a bomber because a bomber is bomb. With that said, we have to emphasize, "You don't handcuff them. You don't touch them." We're going to end up undressing them probably with a robot and a razor knife. Bill Godfrey: The implications then on the medical side is, we don't touch them either? Billy Perry: No. Not at all. Nobody touches them. Like I said, even to include handcuffing. If they don't do exactly what we say, and this is something that individual officers and this is a scary and a new event that we have to discuss, but you need to, agencies need to clear it with their local prosecutors. We have to have an agreement. We've done that in the fourth judicial circuit where we understand that they're not going to be handcuffed and if you don't, if you're an actual bomber, if you been an active bomber, if you don't obey voice commands, you're going to get shot. Bill Godfrey: That's serious business.Billy Perry: Very serious business.Bill Godfrey: Serious business. Tom, anything else on the medical side that you wanted to ask Billy or bring up on this? Tom Billington: No, just that, again, as we have said through most of other podcasts, we have to talk about these things face to face with the people we are responding with before it ever occurs. That's the most important part, knowing what to do. We don't want to react. We want to act. We want to know how we're supposed to act beforehand. That's the most important lesson I can bring from this.Bill Godfrey: Yeah. I think the other piece of this, for me on the medical side, we're teaching and preaching it's warm zone. It's warm zone EMS care. We don't deliberately go into a hot zone or purposely go into a hot zone. The problem here with bombs, IEDs is that suddenly gets a little bit of a gray area, because now, by definition, it's not a warm zone. It is a hot zone, a direct threat environment, but if it's medical-related problem, that is supposed to be our domain on the medical side and probably need to have some conversation about that ahead of time. I don't think that's a discussion you want to get into at a scene about who is going to go in and get the patients. Is it going to be law enforcement? Billy Perry: It's definitely too late at that point, right. Bill Godfrey: Is it going to be fire, EMS? Who is going to go do it and whose responsibility is it going to be? The other sobering consideration is, if you have a significant number of patients that need to be moved and rescued, that is not going to get done by three or four medics and police officers. That's going to take a lot of people. As fast as we want to move, you could commit 10 people to move 30 and it's going to take a long time. . Billy Perry: Sure.Bill Godfrey: Or, you could commit 100 people to move 30 and it'll go pretty quickly, but you've got a large number exposed. Billy Perry: Right. You've exposed 100 people.Bill Godfrey: Yeah, so which is better? I don't know that there is really a right or wrong answer to that. It's going to have to be a judgment call based on the environment. Before we leave this topic, Billy, I've got to bring up the age-old one. Tom, this is going to make you laugh because I know you and I have been hearing this since we were both young guys riding on the back step. Radios around a bomb. Billy Perry: The mythical radio. Bill Godfrey: The mythical ... Debunk this one for us a little bit. Billy Perry: Absolutely. Would be happy to. It is something that is still prevalent in every operational order that I know of across the country and it's still one of those things. Bill Godfrey: Including our checklist.Billy Perry: Including our checklist. Honestly, it's one of those things that we just have to really understand modern information. You and I talked about it a year ago or a little over a year ago and you did research and found, as did I, that the only one we could find, we think it was like 40 years ago in a construction side. Modern data radios transmit data packets. They don't have the high wattage outputs for a sustained period of time that the old ones did. That's the only one that we can find of it. Again, we were schooled on it by the military. I was actually in a bomb suit doing an exercise and they said, "What are you talking to the command post back with?" I said, "The radio." It hit me. It's the exact same radio in the pocket of my sleeve of my bomb suit, my 92-pound bomb suit that we use in patrol. It's no difference. I'm leading over said device, pushing the button in the center of my chest telling everybody what I'm looking at. It's one of those ephiphanal moments when you realize, this is why I said earlier, "I'm not smart." I have empirical data to back that up, but it is. We still want you limit it in the event, whatever and don't put your antenna on a device again, in keeping with the "don't touch it mentality" and [inaudible 00:25:55] a bunch of times, say, "Yep, it's not going off." Just maintain respect of it, but it's not the "Oh my gosh, it's the doomsday event that we've always thought it was."Bill Godfrey: So, some common sense. Billy Perry: Some common sense. Can't hurt, might help, but honestly, if you've got something you need to say, say it.Bill Godfrey: We want to get air gaps. We want to get around a corner anyways, so hold your transmission til you get to your cover and then put it out. Billy Perry: Right. Put it out. The 300 foot, whatever, be cognizant of your standoff distances and look at how far those really are. That's big. Again, never, ever touch a bomb. Those are our takeaways. Don't touch the bomb. I'm not saying that we're going to execute a bomber, but I am saying we are not going to negotiate with one. Bill Godfrey: Okay. Well put. Never touch a bomb. Billy Perry: Never touch a bomb. Bill Godfrey: Never touch a bomb and don't touch it with your radio or [crosstalk 00:26:49] Billy Perry: Don't look at it.Bill Godfrey: [crosstalk 00:26:51] Billy Perry: Don't fold it, spindle it, mutilate it. Don't mess with it. Don't move it. Don't change the environment, like I said. Just use you common sense. It's a weapon. It is a firearm that fires at 540 degrees and does not miss. A bomber is a bomb and we're not going to touch a bomb. We're not going to touch a bomber. Bill Godfrey: Thank you very much. I think that's a good place to leave it for today and wrap this one up. Billy Perry: Thank you.Bill Godfrey: Tom, thanks for coming in. Tom Billington: Thank you. Bill Godfrey: Billy, thank you very much. Billy Perry: Thank you so much.Bill Godfrey: Appreciate you guys being here. Original Source: https://www.c3pathways.com/podcast/improvised-explosive-devices

Episode 07: Tactical Training for Leaders Discussion of leadership engagement, tactical training for leaders, and leadership modeling. Bill Godfrey: Hello, and welcome to our next installment of our podcast series on active shooter incident management training. My name is Bill Godfrey, a retired fire chief, and one of the instructors for C3 Pathways. I'm your host today, and with me is Michelle Cook, also one of our instructors but recently retired from the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office after 26 years. Michelle retired as the director of patrol and enforcement, which in layman's terms, Michelle, basically you were the ops chief - Michelle Cook: I was chief, yes. Bill Godfrey: About 1,200 uniformed officers. Michelle Cook: Yes, sir, 1,200. Bill Godfrey: And now she is enjoying life. For the last year, she is the police chief of Atlantic Beach Police Department, a small, beach-side community, beautiful little area, with ...? Michelle Cook: 30 officers. Bill Godfrey: 30 officers. Michelle Cook: 30 total officers. Bill Godfrey: From 1,200 to 30. Michelle Cook: 30. Bill Godfrey: So something tells me we're going to be coming back to some stories there about the difference between large agencies and small agencies. But in this episode we are going to be talking about tactical training for leaders, both on the law enforcement side and the fire department side. Michelle, you've been on the job for 27 years so you were around when Columbine occurred in '99. And as we all have so often pointed to this kind of watershed moment of, "Wow. Things need to change here. We need to make an adjustment," give us a look back from your perspective on the changes that you've seen both in the tactical training for line officers, for patrol officers, and then also the training that went with that for leadership on the law enforcement side and how to manage these incidents differently. Michelle Cook: Sure. So Columbine happened in 1999 and in that year, and the previous couple of years prior to that, I was working part-time at the police training academy. So when Columbine happened, I was there when we evolved our tactics. We knew that, at that point, surrounding the building and calling the SWAT team was no longer going to work. People were dying because that was our strategy, and so we knew that wasn't going to work. So following Columbine a series of evolutions came out, tactical evolutions, that saw the introduction of contact teams. You know? First they were diamond shaped with five people inside, and then it went to three people, and we've evolved so far today that a lot of agencies are pushing the solo officer entry, if that is the best route for that officer at that moment, at that event. So tactics have definitely evolved since 1999, and they continue to evolve. Up until C3, what I haven't seen is the evolution of, "How do you manage these incidents or events?" So pre 1999, I'm a patrol supervisor on the street; an active shooter call goes out. I tell my officers, "Surround the building. Wait for SWAT." SWAT shows up. SWAT command does their thing; they take charge of the building. When tactics change for a patrol officer to make entry, we never trained the supervisors on how to lead or manage that entry. So as tactics have changed, leadership and management of these incidents and events hasn't evolved, and that's really where we have a training gap now. Bill Godfrey: It's interesting the way that you've put that. I think in a lot of ways, we have a very similar gap on the Fire-EMS side. Of course, the fire service has been using ICS for years, and in some ways that has grown a level of self-assured confidence that we can kind of manage or handle anything. And one of the things ... You know? You mentioned C3 beginning the work in this area quite a few years ago now. One of the things that led us to that was kind of the "whoops!" moment where we went, "Okay. The way we manage a fire applied to an active shooter event is not having the kind of outcome that we want, and we need to perhaps look at this and see if there aren't some things that are different." And of course, there were, and there are some things that we train to very, very differently on that front. It reminds me though ... You know? Sheriff Kevin Barry in one of our previous podcast episodes was talking about the challenges of being the chief, that the higher level leadership ... You know? You're inundated day to day ... And I remember this from my time too. You're inundated day to day with budget meetings, and paperwork, and HR issues, and purchasing stuff. It can be very difficult to say, "I'm going to take an entire day and go to training. I'm going to take a week and go to training and set that time aside." It's very easy to push it away. And Kevin was making the point that sometimes as a leader, you've just got to suck it up and get it done and recognize that it's a priority. Do you think that that is impacting, in a negative way, our ability to get leadership across the country prepared to manage one of these events? Michelle Cook: I think that's part of it. I think there's a couple of other things that are happening too. You know? We have the busy schedules. We also have this, "Well my guys will handle it. My guys will go in there and kill the bad guy, and my guys will handle it and it'll be taken care of," and what we've learned is active shooter incidents are much bigger now than just going in and killing the bad guy. And up until C3 Pathways, there was never a template of how to manage these incidents so that the tactics guys were knocking it out of the park with the evolution of how to go in there and mitigate the bad guy. What wasn't happening prior to C3 Pathways, there was nobody saying, "Hey, this is a way to manage it. Here's a template for you to use. This is how you, as leadership, can manage this large event that is going to expand very rapidly. And within minutes you're going to have hundreds of resources there." There never really existed a template for leadership so the combination of being really busy, passing the buck to your guys to handle it, and a template being out there, I think, all led us to where we have found ourselves, which is a lot of leaders have been caught on their heels, so to speak, not understanding what's happening or how to manage it. You know? I'm not going to point out any particular recent event but if you look at them as a whole, how many times did you hear on the radio we had line level officers, Fire-EMS trying to do their job and somebody in management was saying, "Well hold on. Wait a minute. Wait until I get there. You guys don't go in yet"? And that's because that leader failed to understand the tactics that were occurring, and failed to prepare themselves to manage those tactics. Bill Godfrey: That's a really interesting point. When you think about some of the exercises that both of us have done and been involved in, we've seen that occur just in exercises and training, where the command post ... And I've seen it happen on the medical side as well, in Fire-EMS. There's this challenge of, "When is the warm zone really warm?" or, "When is it warm enough?" and hesitation from the command post in wanting to let the rescue task force go downrange, or wanting to let them move downrange, and I always kind of found that interesting. Because you're trying to get your head wrapped around something that you can't directly see and observe, as opposed to the police officers that are already downrange who are saying, "We're ready for the medics. Send me the medics. Send the rescue task force." And they know what that means. They understand what they're asking for ... Michelle Cook: But the leadership doesn't. Bill Godfrey: Right. Michelle Cook: Because the leadership has not attended any training, looked into what their guys are actually practicing, or attended any training themselves. So if my guys are using terms downrange, and describing things that I've never heard before - warm zone, hot zone, cold zone, red, greens, casually collection points - if I don't know what those mean as a leader, the natural tendency is to say, "Well hold on, guys. I need to come look at this before I let anything happen." Bill Godfrey: "I need a minute." Michelle Cook: "I need a minute." Because, you know? You have to prepare the brain for the actual event. And if you as a leader have failed to prepare your brain for what can eventually happen, then you're going to get caught off guard. And that's the lapse that we're seeing. That's the, "Hold on, guys. Wait a minute. Wait till I get there," that we've seen in recent events, and unfortunately people die because of that. Bill Godfrey: And I think that's my frustration in trying to communicate the challenge sometimes. It's not about right or wrong. Michelle Cook: Correct. Bill Godfrey: It's not about right or wrong. It's not about, "There a right way to do this and a wrong way to do this," or even a best way. It's a question of the clock. You've got two things that are going to kill people: the bad guy and the clock. I mean, law enforcement, last 10 years - you can look at the numbers and look at the data - historically, putting the bad guy down very quickly. Michelle Cook: Correct. Bill Godfrey: That active threat is ending in minutes. It's very quick but yet we keep managing to fumble the opportunity to quickly get medical care in to patients, and then quickly get them transport. That's the other thing of this, is ... You know? It's not just enough to get the RTF downrange; we've got to get those patients out again. And so that whole hesitation from the command post that says, "Oh, I need a minute to get comfortable with this ..." Michelle Cook: Correct. Bill Godfrey: We're just burning clock. Michelle Cook: Sure. And we haven't trained with our counterparts on the Fire and EMS side. So not only have I not trained to the tactics that my guys are using and understood those, I haven't trained with the Fire-EMS guys. So when the guys downrange are talking about rescue task forces and I have an EMS person walking up, I don't know what they're talking about because I have failed to prepare myself. Bill Godfrey: I think the fire service as a whole ... EMS as well, but I think the fire service kind of takes the brunt of this. We've missed an opportunity to make it welcoming to the Incident Command System. You know? Between the fire service being very rigid- Michelle Cook: Sure. Bill Godfrey: Very rigid. Very black and white, very rigid, very dictatorial about how ICS is supposed to be, and have to do it this way and have to do it that way. Michelle Cook: And policemen think ICS is a bad word. Bill Godfrey: Yeah, exactly. Michelle Cook: Right? Bill Godfrey: Which is largely our fault, and FEMA played a part in that a little bit too. Somewhere along the lines, law enforcement, they not only think ICS is a bad thing, is a bad word, they think a tractor trailer full of paperwork is going to back up to your scene and dump 10 tons of paper on you scene. That's not what it's about at all, and I think we've got some work to do there, but I think even on the fire side, there are some gaps for us as well because the functions and the command posts in an active shooter event are very different than what they typically are in how you run a fire. In a fire, it is typically a fairly flat hierarchy. It's the, the battalion chief is in command, and he is directly ... All of the troops that he's directing are direct reports. We don't see a lot of these where there's a bunch of divisions and branches. It happens sometimes, but it's not very common, and the incident commander, as that battalion chief in that fire, is actually providing not just strategic directions but tactical direction. That doesn't work in an active shooter event. No, that tactical direction has got to come from the tactical and triage level- Michelle Cook: Who are at the scene. Bill Godfrey: -at the scene, at the edge of the warm zone, and the command post has a whole host of other issues that they've got to deal with and manage, and I think that from the fire side, there's just a failure to understand that not only do we need to implement those layers, but we really ... These things are a bottom up driven event. You have got to trust the eyes and the ears, and the judgment of the people down range and support what they're trying to accomplish rather than trying to dictate the tactics that they're going to execute. Michelle Cook: Sure. Sure, and that goes back to if you understand and train with the guys at the line level on what they're doing and what their competency is, and you have a trust in them, and you trust your fifth man, you trust that tactical person to be making those calls. If you're at the command post, and this is another interesting thing about police work, is in many cases, for years, the police command post has been at the scene, like on top of the scene. I know firemen are guilty of that as well, but the closer we can get to it, the better, and that's just not going to work here because if you trust your line level officers to be handling the job, and you trust your tactical to be working with triage and transport to get the injured off the scene, there's a whole host of things that need to be happening at the command level that you cannot do if you're in the weeds at the scene. But because we haven't trained on what's going on, we resort to what we know, which is getting back into the weeds. I've listened to audio clips where you have captains and police officers of higher rank trying to dictate line level tactics at the scene, and they're not even there. That's another kind of cultural change in the industry that we have to see. Bill Godfrey: Officers, you trust them with a gun and with bullets, and on the fire side, we're trusting the medics with drugs and a defibrillator and an advanced airway, but somehow, now all of a sudden, in this environment, we're hesitant to trust their judgment a little bit. It's interesting. Michelle Cook: Well, I'm not sure if it's hesitant to trust their judgment. I think we're hesitant because we don't know what they're doing, because we haven't been there to train ourselves. It goes back to, "Well, I'm too busy. My guys can handle that. It'll never happen here. I'll send my guys to the training." We've hosted several training events over the past year here, and I'm getting line level officers, which is great, but we're trying to teach incident management here and they're sending line level officers. I think it's hesitancy because they don't understand what's happening, and they're not prepared because they haven't engaged in training. Bill Godfrey: Meanwhile, the sergeants, lieutenants, captains are going to be the ones there that are going to be expected to put their arms around the thing and there's a gap. Michelle Cook: Sure. Sure. Bill Godfrey: So, given this gap that we've so eloquently discussed here, what's your short list? What are the things that a leader ... What's a modern day law enforcement leader need to know about managing an active shooter event? What's your short list? Michelle Cook: I think you have to research active shooter incident management. C3 Pathways is a way. For me, it makes sense. It works, so I think you, as a law enforcement leader, have to find some active shooter incident management training out there somewhere and you have to attend it. Don't send your people. You've got to go yourselves. I think you also need to attend active shooter tactical training that your officers attend. Number one so you understand it and number two, there's a chance, especially for somebody like me who works at a small agency, there is a chance that I could be a first responder, and so you have to understand what tactics you guys are training to so you don't muck it up the day of. I think those are probably the biggest things. Then, you've got to make nice with the firemen and EMS that work in the area. I think you've got to do that, and you've got to talk these concepts with them so that game day, everybody is on the same page. Bill Godfrey: If I were to have a short list on the fire/EMS side, similar in many ways, I think that leadership of fire/EMS needs to get to the training that the line people are taking. They need to see it, they need to understand it, they need to go through it and have the opportunity to ask some questions. I also think at the command post, they need to understand that where you normally in your role of leadership in the fire service are very tactically driven. You're very operational and hands-on, that in the command post, that's not going to be the role. That role is instead going to be handled down range by the tactical triage and transport officers that are operating at the edge of the warm zone, and that it has got to be a bottom up driven event. This idea, and I think the other piece of this, and they're kind of tied in together, is the idea of over-driving it, or what I'm going to call micromanagement from the command post has got to stop- Michelle Cook: Got to stop. Bill Godfrey: You've got to get that out of there, it's got no place, and then the other thing is this false security blanket of unified command is going to solve everything. We, of course, know you were part of the research that we did when we had some gaps that came up because of relying on that. If you stovepipe through the top and try to run everything operationally through the command post- Michelle Cook: It's not going to work. Bill Godfrey: -through unified command, it's not ... Well, in fairness, it's just not going to be fast. Michelle Cook: Right, it would be slow. Bill Godfrey: You'll get there. It's slow. Michelle Cook: Yes. Bill Godfrey: It's not going to get the job done quickly, and I think what has happened is we've confused, in the fire service, unified command, which is a very specific term with a very specific meaning, and as an old guy who was on the job when we invented it and added it to the ICS vernacular, it was developed to deal with this situation where more than one entity had a legal authority to be in charge of the incident, and we've confused the idea of unified command with what I think we really should be talking about, which is unified management. Up and down the food chain, we need to have line level law enforcement officers and line level medics that are trained and know how to work together on their teams, be it rescue task force or other functions. We need first level supervisors, sergeants, in some cases lieutenants too, or corporals or advanced level officers on the law enforcement side, and company officers on the fire and EMS side who understand the role of tactical triage or transport, and understand how that fits together. Then, the leadership, the executive level leadership, needs to understand that the role of the command post is to support those missions but also the much larger community impact, the messaging, if you're dealing with one of these- Michelle Cook: Sure. Bill Godfrey: -events at a school, you and I have had these conversations so many times. Michelle Cook: Sure. Bill Godfrey: It used to be you could wait 30 minutes before you started putting the message out. Your parents are going to be at these schools before your full response shows up. Michelle Cook: Sure, and I want to go back on something you just said. I was recently invited to a law enforcement panel discussion with the community, and there was probably about 100 citizens there. There was three law enforcement leaders there, including myself, and a citizen asked "If an active shooter happened at XYZ location, who has jurisdiction?" My response to that citizen was, "If we're all training together or working together, until the last injured person is transported off that property, it doesn't matter who has jurisdiction because we're all on the same team, and the team is there to stop the killing and stop the dying. Then we'll talk about who has investigative jurisdiction." I think that lends to the value of leadership training and leadership relationship building with those jurisdictions around you, both police, fire and EMS. Bill Godfrey: Fantastic point. Travis Cox, who you know, a lieutenant with Jacksonville Sheriff's Office, one of our other instructors on another episode, he made the point that if this comes to your hometown, it doesn't matter what patch is on your sleeve. It doesn't matter whether it's a law enforcement patch, a fire department patch, an ambulance patch, a hospital patch. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what jurisdiction. We are there to save lives, and we've got to work through all of that. The other point that he made that I thought was really very critical is that the ability to work together doesn't happen automatically. Michelle Cook: No. Bill Godfrey: You've got to make an effort. Michelle Cook: You have to make an effort, and as a leader of an organization, you have to lead by example. If you expect your line level guys up and down your chain to be making relationships with the other agencies around them the other officers around them. You as the leader need to be leading by example and they need to see you having conversations and training with both Fire, EMS and other police organizations. Bill Godfrey: Interesting. So I'm gonna come back to this size shift from the Jacksonville Sheriff's office of 1200 down to Atlantic Beach police Department of 30 officers. Michelle Cook: That's 30 including me. Bill Godfrey: 30 inclu ... well you know, we actually have had a number of active shooter events across the country where the police chief was one of the first ones in the door so you're right it's not unheard of but it does make me think. In law enforcement ... I mean across the country aren't most law enforcement agencies smaller agencies as opposed to these gigantic metro organizations? Michelle Cook: Absolutely, absolutely. Most ... about 90% of law enforcement agencies have 25 officers, 50 officers or less. So most are small and it's really recognizing that has really made me step up my tactical game because I understand that being one of five or six people who may be on duty during the day, there's a good chance that if something happens in my community or on one of the neighboring communities, I'm gonna be a first responder. Bill Godfrey: Interesting. So you are in what I would consider to be a very unique position to have the perspective from a large agency down to a small agency. We just talked about what was on your hit list of leadership training. For the chiefs of police, sheriff's of rural communities and the leadership at the larger ones. What do you think are the differences? So we talked about the things that you needed to hit but tell me a little bit about how that impacts the large agency versus the small agency. Am I asking that? You're giving me the puzzled look. On the scale of the leadership of these large agencies, what are the things that they need to focused on versus- Michelle Cook: Leadership of a smaller agency. Bill Godfrey: The leadership at a small agency. As you're moving down the scale and size, what are the differences and challenges? Michelle Cook: Well I think with the larger organizations you've got to stick with the tactical training and you have to make sure that your line level supervisors, sergeants, lieutenants, assistant chiefs or captains, whatever you have. All have both tactical training as well as management training, active shooter incident management training and can fill those roles. When I was at the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office being the number three in charge there was probably very little to any chance that I would ever be out and about near an active shooter scene in fact- Bill Godfrey: Did they even let you carry your gun back then? Michelle Cook: I got to carry my gun but I was usually 30 to 45 minutes away so all the good stuff had happened by the time I got there. So I was really more in the management lane so to speak on those. The smaller agencies, you got to know from top to bottom. I got to know everything from tactical ... being a contact team. First person in the building all the way to briefing the governor an hour later when he calls. So I've got to be prepared for all of that. Both the first responder role to the command role and everything in between and it's ... the training's a lot more fun 'cause you get to engage some more of the hands-on training but especially if you're in a rural area and you don't have a whole lot of resources you need to be on your A game, all the time. Because there is ... you're it, you're it and if you don't know how to respond that's gonna be a problem and if you don't know how to manage it. To me the problem is going to be worse because in Jacksonville if 600 policemen responded they worked for me. So they all knew my language, they all knew the codes, they all knew what to expect, they knew me. Something that happens out here in Atlanta beach, I've got probably six to 10 different agencies responding. They don't all know Michelle Cook so if I'm not making an effort to get out there and tell them what I expect in Atlantic Beach. Tell them how we're going to respond in Atlantic Beach and they understand what's gonna happen when they come into our jurisdiction then that adds to an already bad problem and I think you've seen that in a lot shootings. So many jurisdictions show up and they haven't trained together. So that is a problem that I think smaller, rural communities face is not only are a lot of resources coming but a lot of resources who have no idea what to expect are coming. Bill Godfrey: Interesting. So let me ask you this one from these different levels that you've been at from large to small. For your contemporaries out there on the law enforcement side, law enforcement leadership. What are the suggestions or tips that you would give them about working with their fire services EMS counterparts? How do they engage, cut through politics, budget talk, hard feelings left over from 20 years ago of XYZ thing. How do you get the job done? Michelle Cook: Persistence. We're very fortunate we have a fire station next door that is affiliated with the county not with the city and there are ... when I have a few minutes I walk over there and I start talking to them and I'm dealing with three different shifts so I got to hit them three times. I'll walk over there with diagrams, with a list of definitions and I'll just leave it on the table where they eat and hope they look at it. I invite them to every single training that we have and encourage them to come over even if they can only stay a few minutes. At least they're getting something out of it. And just persistence of, "hey guys" in fact this week they were watching the fire truck and I said, "Hey guys, what's the status of your body armor." And so they were talking about how their agency is gonna handle body armor so we had some conversation about well what if something happens out here at the beach? How are we gonna handle it? And so even those little informal touches I think all lend to the relationship. It doesn't have to be formal meetings. It can be, "Hey I'm gonna come sit down with you while you're eating, hey let's talk about this." But I think you have to be persistent about it. You can't let it go, it's so easy. It's so much easier to just let it go and think, "Okay it will never happen here." But I don't wanna be that guy who's named in an after-action report or who's face appears across national news as failed to do her job. And I don't wanna let the kids down, the people down, the community down or my agency down and I think that if you're not looking at this realistically. If you're not making any effort to address this at your level then you're letting your community down. I'll just be point blank about. You're letting the community you serve down by not preparing for this. Bill Godfrey: I think that's very well put. On the far side I think it's part of just going to have the conversation. Making a deliberate purposeful effort to say to the Police Chief or to the Sheriff or to the Commander or whoever you've got the relationship with. To open the door and say I really wanna talk about this. We need to talk about this some more and start small. You mention inviting them to training, I think anytime you can do joint training between law enforcement, fire EMS and include the dispatchers it's a game changer in getting things done but I think the other thing on the fire services, we also need to not overstep our area of expertise. Active shooter events are essentially a murder in progress. Michelle Cook: Absolutely. Bill Godfrey: And at no point is a fire department going to have legal authority to be in charge of a murder in progress. Not while somebody is trying to murder and while yes, we may be in charge of patient care. We can't do that patient care without access to the patients that is limited and controlled by law enforcement in an unsecured scene and certainly we're not gonna be in charge of the investigative stage. So I think a little bit of this, I don't wanna say, it's not so much a hat in hand approach but a knowing where we fit. That this is a type of incident where we are a supportive role. It's an important part of it but if we're going to save lives we have to work together. We might have the best medics in the world but if you can't physically get access to the patients because you haven't trained with you law enforcement officers, it isn't gonna do any good. Michelle Cook: Correct. Bill Godfrey: If you're transporting patients in the back of a police car there's not patient care going on in the back of that police car. Michelle Cook: Or you're taking them all to one hospital because we haven't prepared to manage this. Bill Godfrey: Exactly, exactly so I do think it is very much a two-way street but you make a really interesting point. Wow the time really flew by. Anything else that's on your mind that you wanna talk about as we wrap up here? Michelle Cook: ICS is not a bad word. No this has been good. I just ... I encourage police leaders. Make the effort, make the effort because lives depend on it. Bill Godfrey: Michelle thank you very much for taking the time to do this today. I look forward to the next one. Michelle Cook: Thank you. Original Source: https://www.c3pathways.com/podcast/tactical-training-for-leaders

Episode 06: What Makes Managing an Active Shooter Event Different? Discussion of what makes managing Active Shooter Events different from other types of incidents Bill Godfrey: Hello, and welcome to the discussion this afternoon. Today we are going to talk about what makes managing active shooter events different from all of the other types of incidents that responders go to. Today, we have with us Adam Pendley, assistant chief with Jacksonville sheriff's office, Travis Cox, lieutenant with Jacksonville sheriff's office, Tom Billington, retired fire chief, and I'm Bill Godfrey, also retired fire chief. Our topic today, Adam, what do you think sticks out in your mind, makes things different? Adam Pendley: Well, I think it's a great number of resources that respond very quickly in an active shooter event. While that makes it different than a lot of other types of incidents that you would use, let's say, the Incident Command System to manage, an active shooter event is also the same in the sense that it's very important to focus on the fact that the Incident Command System allows you to build operations quickly from the ground up. It's different than a lot of your day to day incidents in the sense that there's so many resources across the country that have trained to respond to an active shooter event and so many of them are going to arrive so quickly. What can be the same is that you can still use many of the concepts of the Incident Command System if you remember that truly the Incident Command System is designed to build operations from the ground up for an unplanned event and get them in a manageable span of control quickly, set up a Unity of Command quickly, and start acting proactively in a management by objective sort of way to accomplish certain tasks and certain things that need to get done right away on an active shooter event. Bill Godfrey: Travis, what about you? What sticks out in your mind? What makes managing an active shooter event different from all the other stuff you've responded to? Travis Cox: Well, there's a couple things that come to mind when you talk about an active shooter event. One of the things is that you're going to have resources like Adam said. You're going to have a lot of resources, not only responding, but they're going to be self-dispatching or they're going to be responding without being sent by a dispatcher. They're going to be self-deploying to this incident and we want them to self-deploy, because we're going to need the resources. But that's something that's different, that doesn't normally happen on the day to day basis. Secondly, you're going to have resources from other agencies that may not normally respond to things in your jurisdiction, but because of the nature of the incident, you may have other police departments, sheriff's office, neighboring counties, other municipalities within your county responding to this incident. You may have airport police. You may have campus police, school board police. You may have a number of different agencies responding to one incident. You have to figure out your interoperability. You have to figure out the different tactics that you may have been trained on to make sure that everybody's functioning off the same page of music. That's one of the things that has to be done. The second thing that comes to mind is in an active shooter event, you have a crime scene. You may also have a Hot Zone where there's still danger there. So you may get a person that has to assume command of that scene without being involved in that scene or not being able to see the scene, so they have to rely on the information that they're given from the officers that are actually inside the crisis site and manning the information they're given via radio or via some other avenue besides being able to be seeing it from ground zero level. So those are the one big things that I see. Bill Godfrey: So Tom, we got a couple of interesting perspectives from the law enforcement guys. You and I are on the fire side. What jumps out at you as the big differences from the fire side of an active shooter? Tom Billington: Well, the big difference is, our leadership needs to let control go. You need to make sure you have key people in right positions. They're going to be down, down on the scene in the Warm Area and you have to let them do their jobs. You cannot run this scene from a command post. Most firefighters, that's the way we think. As a battalion chief or a deputy chief, we think about going to the command post and monitoring everything and giving out orders or direction. This is a case where you have to let your people on scene do their jobs. We're fighting the clock. Usually by the time we get in there, hopefully our law enforcement brothers have neutralized the threat and we're going against the clock. Seconds count. It's a little bit different. It's like you said. It's bottom up instead of top down, letting these folks get these patients treated, transported, and to a surgeon as soon as possible. Bill Godfrey: You know, that's exactly what jumps out at me, too, on the fire side is that traditionally, and I'm not sure I ever really realized this when I was still working active duty. But the fire service, the way we managed scenes, it's a very top down driven approach. The first company officer arrives and he might be in command for a couple of minutes and then the battalion chief takes over and they're in charge and they're directing everything from the top down, not just at the strategic level, but in some cases, they're directing tactics. They're directing which door the hose line's going to go to, which side of the building we're going to vent, the window, the roof, whatever the case may be, where we're going to ladder up. It's a very top down driven approach where the incident commander in many cases is directing the resources in a very flat level. So there's no layers. You don't have a bunch of branches and divisions and groups in most of these things. They're directing those Tactical operations. What really caught my attention about the active shooter events, is that that gets us into trouble real quick because we don't see the lay of the land, if you will, to be able to know the right tactics to call out, where the teams should be exactly, what rooms they should operate in. Where's the best place to set a Casualty Collection Point? Where's the best place for the ambulances to go? It would be in, to me, it's kind of the analogy of trying to run a fire the way we normally run the fire, but doing it from two miles away without ever being able to see the building or seeing what's going on. What's different here to me for the fire service, is that we've gotta reverse that process. We have to push the resources Downrange and then let those resources tell us what they need and where they think these things need to go and what needs to happen. We're pushing the resources to them. We're giving them what they need and supporting them in that role more so than telling them how they're going to do it. They're going to tell us how they're going to do it and we've gotta support that to the degree that we can and make that happen. Of course, coming back over to the law enforcement side, sometimes there are issues that come up where the guys Downrange may want to do something that Command or Tactical may say, "That's not a good idea." Right? Am I saying that right, Adam? Is that how you'd put it? Adam Pendley: Absolutely. I think a lot of stuff is already happening from the law enforcement side by the time fire EMS takes the medical branch role and starts organizing their resources. For example, if all goes well, Contact Teams have started to call injury counts out to their Tactical group supervisor, who is hopefully now working with Triage and eventually a Transport officer as the eyes and ears that are Downrange. What's interesting about this, when you talk about the reversals of what we're used to, if we go to a large structure fire as law enforcement, we have no problem believing that the fire department has Incident Command and we're really just the law enforcement branch being directed by the fire department to say, "Hey, we need a unit on the end of this street to protect our five-inch line. We need a unit over here to keep people from coming Downrange, and also we believe there's some Hazmat involved, so people need to stay upwind." From a law enforcement perspective, we have no problem understanding that we work for the Incident Commander that's the fire department on a large structure fire. For active shooter events, it's actually kind of the reverse. Law enforcement is in command early on and as the fire EMS supervisor arrives, they request the medical branch, and they take direction from law enforcement. They say, "Hey, we have a Casualty Collection Point established at this location. We believe it's safe to go in this location. This area has been established as Warm Zone." And hopefully, as the culture changes, the fire EMS supervisor can understand okay, we're going to take that from Incident Command and we're going to make that work and we're going to use them as the eyes and ears and we're going to trust the people that are already Downrange, that are already accomplishing tasks and we're going to fill in and start doing the lifesaving that needs to happen based on that information. Bill Godfrey: Travis, what do you think? Travis Cox: Yeah, that's a great point, Adam. I just feel like this. The bottom line for us here as First Responders on the fire service and the police side, if we're going to save lives, we have to bring our two disciplines together and we have to work together. Communication is vital. There is no way we're going to be as successful as we can be if we're not communicating. Regardless of what patch is on someone's sleeve at these type of incidents, we have to be able to communicate, work together, work in unison to save lives. Because once the shooting stops, we have ... You always hear the cliché, stop the killing, stop the dying. In order to stop the dying, to get the medical services to those folks that need it as quick as possible, we have to have good communication from those that are Downrange, those that are working in the Warm Zone, and those that are in the Command Post. All three of those different entities have to work together, communicate well, effectively, directly, and ensure that information is flowing back and forth up and down the chain of command so we can be successful as responders to save lives. Bill Godfrey: Tom, what's your thoughts on this? We've kind of come full-scale. You and I are both in agreement that we certainly need to shift gears on the fire side and not try to drive it from the top down. But Travis is talking about the integration up and down the food chain. What jumps out at you about that that's maybe different than the way we used to do it 15 years ago or maybe even what most of us expected? What sticks out to you as the important pieces of the integration? Tom Billington: Well, I like what Travis said. It doesn't matter what patch you have on your arm. We can help each other out. When we have people bleeding and the threat has been neutralized, getting the law enforcement officers to help with the medical part, like Travis said, very important. And vice versa. If law enforcement needs some assistance with something, radio traffic, delegation of some tasks, if there's fire personnel available, we should be able to provide that to the law enforcement. But the big thing is, we do not want to wait to be on an active shooter to figure this stuff out. This is the stuff that we need to talk about beforehand. We need to train beforehand and work through these issues. Again, I like the patch idea because we're all one team when we get there and we're fighting that clock. So very good points, Travis. Bill Godfrey: What jumps out at me from, and it feels like an eternity ago, but not that long ago we were looking at this a little different. We were trying to integrate really just in the Command Post, relying on Unified Command alone to be the integration piece between our disciplines and we found out, all of us, kind of found out the hard way that while you can make that work, it is not very fast. It's prone to some of the very mistakes and errors that we were talking about of driving things from the top down and forcing some bad Tactical decisions Downrange. What really jumps out to me is the level of integration that it really takes in order to take time off the clock. We always talk about the two things that are going to kill people is the bad guy and the clock. We can put the bad guy down quick, but if we don't get to people and get medical care going, the clock is going to kill them just the same as if we'd left the bad guy up still shooting people. What really struck me, going through this evolution over the years, is the need to integrate really all up and down the food chain, even at the line level. That rescue task force really only works because you've got the law enforcement and the medical guys now in the same team. The law enforcement guys are communicating with Tactical to stay in tune to the picture that's going on and make sure we don't end up bringing the medics into the wrong place and getting them into a Hot Zone when we didn't want to. The medical side, communicating back with Triage, they're all there working face to face Downrange, but they're back-hauling that information up to Tactical Triage, who are then comparing their bigger picture notes because they might be managing multiple contact teams, multiple rescue task forces, and then above them, we've got the integration in the Command Post between medical branch and law enforcement branch. Travis, how does that strike you? What do you see is the critical importance in that integration? Travis Cox: Well, that is key like you said, Bill. We have to be able to work together on all levels up and down the chain of command. For law enforcement and our rescue task forces, with our medical folks, when we go into these crisis sites, we have to be able to work together. We have to communicate. We have a built-in redundancy in our communications when we have the two entities working together. Again, it's all about saving lives. At the end of the day, it's about what can we do to work better, work faster in order to save lives of the citizens that live in our jurisdictions. Adam Pendley: And to add to what Travis is saying, I think the way that happens is again, those first arriving units start forming teams that have a specific task and purpose, if they stay in their lane. On the law enforcement side, you have a Tactical group supervisor that starts applying the strategy. On the fire EMS side, you have a Triage group supervisor that comes down shoulder to shoulder and works at the edge of the Warm Zone to do that actual lifesaving. There are so many other types of resources, so many other officials, elected officials, and other things that are coming, the job of Command where it's different from a lot of your day to day incidents, the job of Command is to now look outward. There are lots of pressures coming from the community from reunification, additional information, the public information side. The Incident Command takes on a new role of having to not only oversee the lifesaving that's happening into the Tactical Triage and Transport level just to ensure that they're hearing certain benchmarks are happening at that level, but also to look outward to constantly think about the things that are going to happen next. Even if your scene is 100% under control, the bad actor or the suspect came from a location. He arrived in a vehicle. There's hospitals that have to be managed. There's a lot of other things that happen. Unfortunately we don't have the luxury for every resource that comes to the scene to all focus on one task of, let's say, that threat that's Downrange. There are too many jobs that need to be done that if you don't parse those out to different teams with a different task and a different span of control, you're going to lose control of your incident right from the start. Bill Godfrey: Yeah, Adam, I couldn't agree with you more. I think you mentioned two things there, the layers of Command, and then the idea of staying in your lane. Really, the structure and the approach we use, what's interesting to me is that a lot of responders that I talk with, they see managing an active shooter event as really kind of the piece of it that's at the Tactical Triage and Transport level, just managing that Downrange piece when there's actually a lot higher level to it. We need the layers to be able to keep our arms around it with Tactical Triage and Transport staying in their lane, doing what they're supposed to do and then Command Post, medical branch, law enforcement branch staying in their lane. Tom, do you see it same way? What are your thoughts about that responsibility of staying in your lane and the consequences of when we drift off a little? Tom Billington: Well, staying in your lane's a good analogy. If you have five lanes of traffic and somebody pops in another lane, everything's going to turn into a disaster. Actually, I think on the C3 website, C3 Pathways website, the checklist is available. The checklist, active shooter checklist, is a great tool for staying in your lane. It lays out the responsibilities for each position. You go right down the list, make sure you're doing everything you need to do. As I said earlier, we want to help each other out, but we want to make sure we're doing our function and staying in that lane. When you do that, you're going to beat that clock. We're running against that clock all the time. So very important point that you made about staying in the lane. Bill Godfrey: Yeah, that does really sum it up. It is about not just getting the bad guy, but beating that clock to save lives. We're coming up on the end of our time. You guys have anything else you want to add on this subject? Any other thoughts, Tom? Travis? Travis Cox: I'll just say one thing. Integration and working together, the two different disciplines, does not happen automatically. This is something that you have to train, you have to utilize on maybe smaller events to get comfortable with working with the fire service or working with law enforcement. Then if this incident does happen in your jurisdiction, you're just that much better prepared for it. Bill Godfrey: Oh yeah. That's absolutely true. In fact, Travis, why don't you tell everybody who's listening about what you guys did in Jacksonville with your special events and using that as an opportunity to socialize the rescue task force concept and put people together. Travis Cox: Sure. We have several large special events that happen in Jacksonville every year. As we prepare for those events, one of the things that we do is we stand up an Incident Management Team to manage those events. But we pair our law enforcement and our fire service together and we develop rescue task forces for those large events. Whether it's a large football game, whether it's a professional game or a college game, we put those responders together so they get used to working, law enforcement and fire service together, and they're working to handle incidents, those small incidents, that one person down, or that small fight they may be to break up on these smaller incidents to get that experience of working together as a rescue task force. Bill Godfrey: Which I just think is a fantastic program. I don't know anybody else that did that. Every chance I get, I tell people about that because I just thought it was such a fantastic way to normalize that role and begin to build those relationships. Adam, any final words? Adam Pendley: No, again, I couldn't agree more that this idea of, not only for the special events, which often are planned from the top down, you have that luxury in a special event to put all the pieces in place. But the other way you can practice this is on the slower-moving, unplanned events. If you have a ... law enforcement has come across a meth lab or has come across a suspicious device, use that opportunity to build teams and as the layers are added, integrate law enforcement and fire to establish teams, ready response teams and even rescue task forces, so if something happens at that incident, you have those things ready. Or even on missing person events. So you have unplanned incidents that move slow enough that you can practice some of these same concepts so again, when the high stress, fast speed event happens, you're already, like you said, you've already normalized those relationships and those team assignments and building your operations from the ground up using these same concepts. Bill Godfrey: I think that's a great idea. Well, this has been a fabulous discussion. I've really enjoyed it this afternoon. Gentlemen, thank you very much for taking the time. Look forward to the next one. Tom Billington: Thank you. Original Source: https://www.c3pathways.com/podcast/difference-of-managing-active-shooter-event

Episode 05: Casualty Collection Point and Ambulance Exchange Point Discussion of Casualty Collection Points (CCP) and Ambulance Exchange Point (AEP) in Active Shooter Incident Management (ASIM) Bill Godfrey: Hello, and welcome to this next installment of talking about some of the challenges that we see on active shooter incidents. Today we are going to talk about Casualty Collection Points. My name is Bill Godfrey, a retired Fire Chief and one of the instructors at C3 Pathways. I have with me part of the Instructor cadre team, Adam Pendley, Assistant Chief with Jacksonville Sheriff's Office. We've got Travis Cox, Lieutenant from Jacksonville Sheriff's Office, Kevin Burd, Lieutenant with the Huntington County Prosecutor's office. All three of them are law enforcement, obviously. Then also with me we've got Robert Lee, retired Battalion Chief, Paramedic and Tom Billington, also a retired Fire Chief and a Paramedic. Welcome guys, thanks for taking the time this afternoon to talk about this. So the subject today is Casualty Collection Points, and some of the challenges, what makes a good Casualty Collection Point, what doesn't, how do we manage them, how do we work them together, how do we deal with some of the law enforcement issues and then some of the EMS issues. Adam, you want to kind of set the stage for us on what we're talking about as we move into a building. You make entry, we've presumably dealt with the threat, or there's a team in process of dealing with the threat. But the first ones through the door are going to be law enforcement. Law enforcement officers, in some element of a Contact Team, it may just be two or three guys, or it may be four or five. Set the stage for us of what this looks like as the Contact Teams are working in the building and making a decision about where they're going to set up a Casualty Collection Point, and what they're going to pick. Adam Pendley: Sure. I think we're all familiar from the law enforcement perspective that there's this push towards dealing with the threats, stop the killing. But along the way, those first Contact Teams are going to identify areas where there are Casualties, where there are injured folks that need to be cared for. It becomes important to ... whether it's the initial Contact Team that is no longer being driven by some sort of move towards the threat that they have to make a decision to go ahead and establish a Casualty Collection Point, or communicate that there's injury in a particular place and a follow on team is going to establish a Casualty Collection Point so you can quickly or simultaneously both deal with the threat and start worrying about your second priority, which is the rescue, dealing with those folks that are bleeding and need immediate care. I think it's important for law enforcement to understand that initial team that is going to establish a Casualty Collection Point so you can make it to your next priority. I think Kevin can probably talk a little bit about what that team is going to do when they enter a room that has a number of Casualties in it that we need to move towards. Kevin Burd: Okay, so once we've identified in an area where we may have multiple Casualties, regardless of the tactics that are used to enter that room, once we get into that room we want to establish points of domination. They'll mention we may only have two or three officers, maybe we have four or five at this point. But once we enter that room we want to have points of domination so we can put folks that are in that room in an area that's Tactically advantageous to us. What we're trying to look to establish is obviously securing that room, and also looking at is this room advantageous to us where we can eventually set up an Ambulance Exchange Point. Maybe that room, if it happens to have exit doors, or an exit door, some place where we can eventually get to move those patients out, we want to make sure that we've secured that entire area. If we have multiple Casualties in that room, we're going to put them in an area where there're no issues from the law enforcement side in that we could be putting them in a position where we could have cross-fire issues where it may be near an exit door where they could possibly get away from us. We have to identify who they are first and foremost. One of the important things to remember, too, is once we establish those points of domination we have to control and secure that room and make it defensible because others will be coming in eventually to provide assistance. When you're in that room and you're in that area, a couple of things you want to be cognizant of is what could be used against us, if you will. If there are areas where we can't secure that area, we may have to look at collapsing other Casualties in the room into our area, or possibly setting up secondary Casualty Collection Points. But primarily the first room we go into, if we have several of the Casualties, or a majority of the Casualties there, we want to establish those points of domination, make sure that we have enough resources there, we may be calling out requesting additional resources because we want to secure that area so any follow-on resources that come in to assist us, it's completely secured. In dealing with the Casualties themselves, I think Travis, you can touch in on that. Travis Cox: Absolutely. One of the responsibilities of law enforcement inside a Casualty Collection Point is to do some type of Triage of the victims or the patients that are inside that room. One way the law enforcement can do that very rapidly is basically by addressing the folks that are inside that room and asking those that can move, ask them to move to one side of the room against the wall. Once you have that one group against the wall, you still may have some people that are injured that can't move, and they'll still be on the floor. Obviously, you're going to use good law enforcement commands, tell them to keep their hands where they can be visible for all of law enforcement to see, but you want them to move against one wall. Once you separate that group, you have one group on the ground still, and you have one group against the wall. Once you have that group against the wall, you're going to give a second command to say those that are standing against the wall, if you're not injured, or you've not been hurt in any way, move to a separate wall ... a second wall. So now you've basically separated that room into three groups. You have the injured folks that are on the ground that cannot move, you have a second group that did move but they're injured and they're standing on one wall, and then you have a third group that has moved to a second wall but they're uninjured. You have now did a quick Triage of that room so you can call those folks using the medical terms of the "reds" which mean people that are injured that could not move. You can even classify them as a "red patient". Those people that are injured but can move are also known as a "walking wounded." Those would be your green patients. And then your uninjured folks that you would not assign them a color, they're just people that have been involved in the incident and they have no injuries. So you separated the people in your room into three different groups, and that's a quick way that you, as a law enforcement officer, can Triage a room and help you manage that room until your medical counterparts arrive. Bill Godfrey: Let me kind of summarize and see if I've got this right on what you're saying. You identify the room that you want to use, or the room that you're going to make entry to. You use some tactics, depending on their training or local policy, to do the room entry, I guess the numbers of the team affect that as well. They get in the room, they look to take control of the crowd, take control of the people that are in the room, get them up against a wall, the ones that can, screen off the ones that aren't injured so that you've got the uninjured that can't move that are on the ground. We call those the "reds", the injured that are up against the wall that move, those are the "greens", the uninjured are on another wall. Then, what Kevin was talking about, the points of domination, to post your people up where you could control the room, control access to the room, and basically have that be a safe ... maybe the wrong word, but a reasonably safe room to work in. Am I describing that right? Did I miss anything? Travis Cox: Yes, you described it perfectly. What this allows you do is you can then identify people that may need medical treatment right away, and as law enforcement officers, if we have security measures in place in that room, we could then begin doing some of those life-safety measures on those folks that are injured and cannot move. So this is our opportunity to start those life-safety measures until our medical counterparts arrive. Bill Godfrey: So if you've got a team of four or five officers, a couple of them can hold security and a couple of them can start getting into the medical care, try to do some life-saving stuff? Travis Cox: Absolutely. Absolutely. That's one of the things that we're there for. Obviously, we know there's a threat in the building. Once we address that threat, our next priority is to start addressing those injured patients or those injured victims inside this crisis site. Adam Pendley: And I think it's worth adding that it's really not that different than typical level one training that law enforcement has received all over the country. We know that if we address a threat in a room that as soon as that threat is neutralized, you go into a SIM, a Security, Immediate Action Plan, Medical. Well, a team that may be assigned just to go to a Casualty Collection Point and secure a Casualty Collection Point is also putting together a SIM. They get security of the room, they put an Immediate Action Plan together as far as how they're going to deal with additional injured, how they're going to sort the room, where they're going to evacuate patients from, what additional resources they need, and then they start addressing the medical. So a team that may not have addressed the threat, they may just be a follow-on team that's assigned to deal with Casualties in a particular area. They're going to put together a SIM for that room as well, Security Immediate Action in Medical. Travis Cox: Let me add one more thing to that, Adam. One of the critical things that those law enforcement officers are going to do when they do Triage that room in that manner, is it allows them to give the number of injuries and the type of number of injured folks that they have to the Tactical person, or that person that's on the outside that's setting up the management aspect of an active shooter response. By doing these things, we can let Tactical know, "Hey, we have this many injured. This is how critically are they injured," and it gives them information to know how many Rescue Task Forces we may need, how many medical personnel we're going to need, how many rescue units or ambulances we're going to need, based on what we're seeing inside the crisis site. Bill Godfrey: So that provides us an interesting transition point to talk about it. Once you kind of get all that stuff set, you call out to Tactical and you say, "Okay, we're ready for a Rescue Task Force." So at this point we've got a law enforcement team that's inside. They've secured the room, they've got a Casualty Collection Point, if they've got enough numbers to hold security and do medical, they've started that. We've called Tactical to say, "Here is what we've got, our location and numbers. We need a Rescue Task Force." So then the RTF goes Downrange. So, Tom and Robert, talk a little bit about that first RTF through the door that's going to dump into that Casualty Collection Point. What are their responsibilities? What do they need to do when they walk into this room full of injured? Take us through that and paint the picture. Tom Billington: Okay, well piggy-backing off what my law enforcement counterparts have said, right off the bat they've painted a picture for me as an RTF. Before I even get into the room, I know kind of what I'm going to be seeing. So if there's more than three patients, I know right off the bat I'm going to need another RTF, or maybe two to three more RTFs to help me. When I enter the room with my security contingent, it sounds like as Travis said, I'm going to have personnel that are green in one area that are standing, or walking wounded, and then I'll have the other patients that are more severely injured. Since we are the first RTF we cannot use tunnel vision. We have to get in there and start sorting and arranging which patients need to be treated, do some quick interventions while we can, some life-saving interventions, and then make sure we're setting up the room for the next RTFs to come in. The first RTF when you get in there, if possible, you want to stay in there and kind of control the room and work with the law enforcement counterparts. That way, one person familiar with how the room is working and what patients need to be Transported, etc. Robert, what do you think? Bill Godfrey: Yeah, Robert, what are some of the challenges that you see the RTF teams running into and the mindsets? What are the things that people that need to be prepared for? Robert Lee: The first thing is we've got to make sure that our folks don't get the tunnel vision like Tom said, and concentrate on one patient. We need to scan the room. Those critically injured that we call "reds", we need to assess them, start to treat them, and prioritize them according to the severity in which ones need to be Transported. Priority opposed to the other one, so that makes sure we get the patients that need the care the soonest to the hospital first. One of the things that a lot RTFs tend to do is they find a patient that's critical, and they start providing that care, and they don't focus on the big picture -the whole room and all the patients that we have. When the other RTFs come in, those patients that we've identified as priority, we can start providing that care right off the bat and get them ready for Transport. Bill Godfrey: So the coordination piece of it is huge for that first RTF coming through the door. Robert Lee: Yes. Yep. Bill Godfrey: When they ... I guess from what you're saying, one of the first things we want to see that RTF do is to re-Triage these patients. I mean, law enforcement presumably has done a dirty red/green split just to give us a sense of the bigger picture numbers. But we need to re-Triage them and is start enough, or does it need to be more than start Triage? What does that Assessment look like that needs to go on there from the Rescue Task Force? Travis Cox: Yeah, we need to concentrate on making sure we're doing a full Assessment of these patients once the manpower is in the room, and we've identified who we need to start with first. That full Assessment is important. Instead of just doing the Triage itself and maybe just a quick treatment, we need to do a full Assessment like we would anybody else. Bill Godfrey: Yeah, and I know, Tom, we've talked many, many times in a lot of the classes we've taught where the start Triage is used. I don't know about you, but I certainly seem to have run across a lot of active duty folks in the EMS community that kind of feel like ... I get the sense that they don't realize that they need to do more than start. They think the greens can sit and wait for an hour. Tom, talk to me a little bit about some of the challenges in dealing with the severity and the different color groups, prioritizing the x-field, to whose going to go first, the mix of severities, and the implications for that for our ambulance loading. Tom Billington: In this situation we're dealing with trauma, gunshots usually. Right off the bat we need to decide which gunshots need surgical intervention as soon as possible. We need to be able to decide which patients we want to treat and Transport first. The other issue making sure that although some patients may be listed as green, remember, that may change. The numbers will continually change. The main thing is just making sure you're communicating with Triage about what hospitals you can utilize, what care various patients are going to need, a chest would versus a head wound, depending on the facilities you have, and being able to coordinate those patients out accordingly. Bill Godfrey: One of the things that I hear are Tactical and Triage, and Transport group supervisors talk about frequently in the scenarios that we run, is their frustration that they don't feel like the RTFs necessarily are giving them the information they need. They're not very quick to relay it to them how many reds, yellows, and greens they have. How many black tags. Again, it is difficult with a moving target, because the numbers ... As you begin to move patients out to Transport, law enforcement may be bringing some additional patients in. You may have a green that goes to a yellow, or a yellow that goes to a red. It is going to be a moving thing. What is the best practice for RTFs? What should be expecting from the RTFs in terms of keeping Triage informed of the numbers? When do they do that, and how often do they need to redo that? Tom Billington: Well obviously when we get into the room we want to double check on the counts that law enforcement gave us, and then do a thorough Triage again, and make sure they're color coded correctly. That would be a good time to let Triage know what we have and what color type patients we have. Again, remembering that by the time they get to the ambulance, the ambulance may have to change those color tags with Transportation so Transportation will get a good number at the end. Again, just keeping the number as fluid as possible, keep getting the information going. Again, that's another reason why the first RTF in the room may want to be the primary room proctor, stay there, and be able to monitor the patients as they change and add numbers or change numbers accordingly. Bill Godfrey: Tagging on to what you're saying about that, Tom, one of the things that we talk about in class sometimes is the Field Triage Score, which of course was a Triage system validated in a military study. Basically, it has two measurement points. You check the Radial pulse. If it's present and it's normal, they get one point. If it's absent, it's weak, thready, tachycardic, they get zero. Then you check your Glasgow Motor Score, not the whole GCS scale, just the motor score. Basically, do they obey commands. If they obey commands, they get one point. If they don't obey commands or are unable, they get zero. You add it together, zero, one, two, red, yellow, green. It's a nice, simple system, again, validated in a military study. It gives us some sense that it's a good, quick, easy way to get a good Triage of the patients that we're moving. So we get these patients packaged up, let's assume that we've got more patients that one RTF is going to handle, and we've got two or three other RTFs that are coming into the room. What role, Tom, does the first RTF need to take on in relation to the other ones coming in, or is it just a free-for-all, they all come in and take their own patient? Tom Billington: As I discussed earlier, that first RTF is sort of the lead, and hopefully they will be staying there for the duration. When the next RTF comes in, that lead wants to look at the RTF leader and the medical leader, and say, "You two go over there. You have this. You have that. You have a red. You have this injury. You take care of that." When the next RTF comes in, same thing. So you're kind of coordinating the whole operation. Again, making sure that if it's a red, which red do you want treated first? Which one needs that surgical intervention? Again, being in charge of that room and being able to direct the medical resources when they come is imperative. Bill Godfrey: So we get them lined up, we know whose going to go first, we kind of lay them out in order in the room, then we've got to coordinate the evacuation over to the Ambulance Exchange Point. Of course, the challenge there is we want to get the ambulance as close as we possibly can, but that kind of creates some security issues for it, doesn't it? What are we ... So we're back over to the law enforcement side of this in having to kind of coordinate our movements and behavior. What does that look like when we say, "Hey, we want to use this exit door over here that goes right out to the parking lot as our Ambulance Exchange Point." Adam Pendley: Well I think it's important to keep in mind that there is a security element with the RTFs, and they remain there the whole time. Again, their first priority is to provide that security element for the folks that are doing the medical care, but they also have communication with Tactical, so if there is a particular door that based on its location looks like that it would lead out to a good Ambulance Exchange Point, the security element can communicate with Tactical, and make sure that that area is secure so you can use that space efficiently. But I also feel like it's important to remember that if the security element of the room is doing its job, and there are extra law enforcement resources available, so much of law enforcement across the country has received additional training on some direct threat care, and may be able to assist with the medical element as well. So, there's a lot of resources in that room, but everyone has to realize that it is an integrated, cooperative response to make sure that the room is sorted, that the room is Triaged, and that medical care is happening, and when the RTFs are ready, that secured ambulance exchange points are happening. It's kind of a continuum of care that starts from the point at which law enforcement initially makes entering into that room, sorts the room, communicates to Tactical and Triage the numbers that they have. RTFs are brought into the room to start the medical care, and then continuing with law enforcement, there's a good security element to move them out to an Ambulance Exchange Point that would also coordinate with Transport that's there with Triage and Tactical so ambulances can come Downrange and get people to the hospital as quickly as possible. Travis Cox: If I can add to what Adam said, which is very important, you know a lot of us in emergency services and law enforcement, we have that built-up immunity where we try not to get too involved, and there's people bleeding around us that sometimes we have to step over them. But when the killing has stopped, [inaudible 00:22:32] is so important in law enforcement can save so many lives and help with the medical as far as just putting that tourniquet on and just getting the position where the patient can breathe just until they get more intervention. So, a lot more lives can be saved working together. Adam, good point. Bill Godfrey: Yeah, so we get them packaged up, we figure out where we're going to do our Ambulance Exchange Point. Assuming that you're spread too thin on the inside, who's going to take care of getting security over the Ambulance Exchange Point? How does that play out? Tom Billington: Well, one of the things that needs to happen, is there needs to be good communication to whoever that medical leader on that Rescue Task Force is, speaking with the law enforcement element within that Task Force so that medical person needs to give a heads up to the law enforcement counterpart, "Hey, we'll be ready to move in two to three minutes." That's the que for law enforcement to start communicating with Tactical, whose managing everything moving in the warm zone to start setting up that security perimeter around where the Ambulance Exchange Point's going to be. Again, also that law enforcement security personnel on the inside needs to request the location from Tactical because the location that they want to use as the Ambulance Exchange Point may not be the most optimal spot based on the information that Tactical has. So, if the place where the rescue responders on the inside want to use as the Ambulance Exchange Point is a viable location, then they'll set up security there. If not, they may have to re-route them. They may have to go to a different location for reasons not known to them. Bill Godfrey: So, Kevin- Kevin Burd: Yeah. Bill Godfrey: Paint the picture on the Tactical side. Let's say we're dealing with a school, two, three story building, we're going to use an exit door on the rear side of the school. What does that Contact Team that gets sent to secure the Ambulance Exchange Point ... what do we want them to do? What do they need to be looking for? What's their job? What does that look like? Kevin Burd: Really, what we're looking for, again, just like the room management part, the room security part, is to provide almost like a security bubble, if you will, outside that door where we've determined this is going to be the Ambulance Exchange Point. We're looking for that 360 or 540 degree coverage, and want to ensure that we have unimpeded egress for the ambulances to get into that location. It almost has to be a ballet act, if you will. We are looking for communication coming from the RTF, or the medical team leader, that "Hey, we're ready to move patients in two or three minutes," the law enforcement counterparts are ensuring that, "Hey, we've got security at the Ambulance Exchange Point." We don't want to put the Casualties out in an area where they're waiting for an extended period of time for those ambulances to come. So, we want to ... like that ballet act, if you will. The RTFs are moving the patients down to that Ambulance Exchange Point, security is making sure that, "Hey, it's safe to come outside," the ambulance at the same time is coming up, and it's a coordinated effort between all the disciplines to get the patients on to that ambulance as quickly as possible, as safely and securely as possible, and off to more advanced medical care. Bill Godfrey: You know, it's interesting. I think your comment about it being a ballet is really an appropriate way to think of this. It's very much an integrated piece on how we all have to work together. Law enforcement has that initial role to kind of get control of the room, set up the security, do some initial Triage, even if it's just a gross Triage to split the room between the walking wounded injured and the ones who can't move, make it a warm zone so that we can get a Rescue Task Force in. They can come in and re-Triage, do some ... whatever emergent advanced stabilizing care they need to, and then coordinate a place that the ambulances are going to come pick them up. It is very much a ballet, but the winning part of that is we take time off the clock. It saves time, and that's our goal is not just to put the bad guy down quickly, but also to take time off that clock for the people that have been shot and bleeding, and get them into the back of an ambulance faster. So I love your analogy of the ballet, and I think like this, if you practice and train it, and beautifully orchestrate it, it is something that can really make a difference and save lives. Well guys, thank you. I think you really did a nice job of painting the picture for the process of a CCP, and kind of crossing over to the other [inaudible 00:27:15]. Thanks for taking the time this afternoon. Take care, and we will talk to y'all soon. Original Source: https://www.c3pathways.com/podcast/casualty-collection-points-and-ambulance-exchange-points

Episode 04: Command Post Integration Discussion of Command Post integration in Active Shooter Incident Management (ASIM) Bill Godfrey: Hello, and welcome to our next installment of talking about active shooter events. My name is Bill Godfrey from C3 Pathways. And today's segment we are going to talk about integration in the Command Post. How do you bring law enforcement, fire EMS together and how do you make that work. And then, some of the common problems that we see. I mean, in a perfect world, we want one Command Post. We want all the disciplines together in that one Command Post. Actually, communicating with each other face-to-face. Sharing information, updating each other as the incident goes. And then also, coordinating with the troops downrange. But, that doesn't always turn out to be such an easy thing to accomplish and we're going to talk about that. With me today, we've got Tom Billington, Fire Chief. Stephen Shaw, Sergeant. Ron Otterbacher, Division Chief. Retired Sheriff, Kevin Beary. Fire Chief, Joe Ferrara and Fire Chief, Mark Rhame. Welcome guys, good afternoon. So, Ron let me kick this to you to talk about, it seems like such a simple thing to say. Getting everybody into one Command Post. Why is it turn out that, that's such a problem for us? Ron Otterbacher: Usually it's because we don't train before we have the incident. It's so important to train and understand what each other needs. It's also important to train so you know who you're dealing with and, you've got the ability to communicate. We see oftentimes where, we'll be co-located but it doesn't enhance communication whatsoever because, each person's got their own focus and they don't understand what the other person may need or what their agency may need or what their needs are for that tactical situation. So, I think training is the key to bring that familiarity together. The other thing is, introducing yourself to the people you work with because, it's a lot harder to just blow someone off if you know who they are. And it's evident all the time when we do these scenarios is, once they know each other and they've got an understanding of what's needed, they progress rapidly. Bill Godfrey: So basically, just the simplicity of introducing yourself to your counterpart in the Command Post and having a name to go with it? Ron Otterbacher: Absolutely. That face and that name goes a long way. Then, three weeks down the road after you've had the training, if I need something I call the Fire Chief and say. "Hey, I need this can you help me out?" And they'll say. "Yeah." Bill Godfrey: It sounds simple. It certainly sounds simple but, far too often we see a lot silos in the Command Post. Steve, you were talking about this a little earlier offline, before we got started. You know, what are the challenges that you see? What's the ruts that we're falling into? Stephen Shaw: I think as we go around the country and we do these scenarios, we're introducing people to new models and people kinda get ... They get in the Command Post and the co-located and we're working on the same incident. Police have their job, fire has their job, EMS has their job. And then you add in people like emergency management, outside political people, things of that nature. And everyone just kinda gets stuck in their lane or as we refer to it, a silo. And everybody just kinda does their ... They're focused on their task, their mission and they're worried about doing their job to the best of their ability and they forget about the people that are standing literally, a foot away from them. We're all here together, police, fire, EMS working together and in the Command Post a lot of times, you're so focused on your task that we see people ... We keep saying 'silo' themselves. Law enforcement officers, we gotta work on the law enforcement side. Fire fighters gotta work on the fire side and they don't communicate with each other very well. Bill Godfrey: Mark, how do we fix that? What are some of the tricks that responders who are on the job working in the field, you know, you find yourself in the Command Post or maybe even, just trying to get into the Command Post. How do we fix this? Mark Rhame: Well, I agree with one thing Ron said right off the bat is, that we've gotta train. But it's also got to be in policy. You know, it's easy to go out there and get together every once in a while and say. "Hey, let's do this." And we practice that integrator response or integrated Command Post. But you've gotta put it in policy, there's gotta be some enforcement on one side of it that says. "From the management, the top management, all the way down to that brand new fire fighter. This is what we're going to do in this scenario." So, not only do we place it in policy, but we train and we work with our partners across the table. Whether you're a fire fighter, whether you're in law enforcement or EMS, or EM whatever it happens to be. You gotta understand what those policies are, what those procedures are. Who's going to be ultimately in command because, it's written in policy. And you train on it on a regular basis. One of the pitfalls we have on a regular basis is that, you look at these training events that we have, there's a lot of middle ranks and maybe even, lower ranks and brand new employees but you don't see the management people. Who have to adopt this also and push it down from the top. That this is the way we're going to behave when we arrive on scenes. Bill Godfrey: So Kevin, Mark's talking about this issue of the Command Posts' policies and the training. And absolutely right on the mark with that but, we've seen all over the country these incidents where we end up with multiple Command Posts, you know, the law enforcement Command Post is over here. The fire Command Post is over there. And EMS is setup over there. How do we fix that? How do we legislate that problem into going away? And it seems like such a silly thing to have to tell everybody to get into the same Command Post, but we've seen it over and over again, how do you fix it? Kevin Beary: Well, in law enforcement the Chief of Police and the Sheriff need to have their policies mirror the policies of the EMS as well as, the fire. In other words, they're going to have to get together and write an active shooting policy to be able to get those Command Post people to work together, arrive on the scene, and locate themselves in somebody's Command Post. And you can have runners and radios and telephones to communicate back and forth to your individual CPs, but one Command Post needs to have all the players in it where they're talking with each other and they're making the decisions to save lives. Bill Godfrey: You know, I think that's a great point. Tom, we were talking yesterday about some dysfunction that we sometimes in the Command Post, and Kevin's talking about trying to get everybody ... Well, we're all talking about trying to get everybody together and talking. What are some of the common breakdowns that you see in the Command Post from the ... That just introduces dysfunction or causes the dysfunction? Tom Billington: Well, one thing is most of your people in the Command Post are senior people that have been in the business for many years. Training and policy is not the time to meet your counterpart. Break bread with them, have lunch with them, have meetings. When you have somebody come in your Command Post, you should know their first name, their abilities, and have a good relationship with them. And that's where some of the dysfunction comes from. We're not talking to our neighbors, the person down the street. And when you get on scene, that is not the time to discover what they can or cannot do for you. So, it's as easy as making sure ... Especially if you have a large organization or a large county or city, that you are meeting with the law enforcement or fire together. You're doing meetings together and eating lunch together. And that's how you can avoid some of that dysfunction. I've had instances where I've been in a Command Post with two fire agencies and they don't talk to each other. And that can happen to anybody. So, we have to reach out to our partners and get a relationship going and that should avoid a lot of the dysfunction right up front. Bill Godfrey: So Joe, let's assume we can get everybody into the same Command Post. We get them co-located. They introduce themselves to each other, in some cases hopefully, they know each other. How do we make sure that the mission that they execute moves forward? How do they know what lane is theirs? How do they know when they're out of their lane and when they're crossing over. Or, does that matter? Does it matter if they stay in their lane? Where does that piece of it fit and is that an important part of keeping your Command Post operating effectively? Joe Ferrara: Well yes, I think it does matter if they stay in their lane. You know, fire we have our disciplines and we know, we're subject matter experts in those areas as well as, you know, EMS has their lanes, and law enforcement. Now you know, the important thing to remember in an active shooter event, this is a law enforcement event. This is a crime in progress. And to back up a little bit, when we've lost integration, or we've started the event without integration. So let's be realistic, law enforcement's going to set up a Command Post probably, on this event. Fire's going to set up a Command Post. Somebody's gotta step up, and this is where we get out of our lanes. And it's okay in this circumstance. It's okay for law enforcement to reach out to fire and say. "Hey, let's get this together and let's work together on this incident." So that's the one time, I believe, where it's okay for law enforcement to cross over and get with fire. But once you're integrated, once you're together in the same command Post, I think it's incumbent upon the Incident Commander, to set those expectations and say ... One way of doing that possibly is you have a medical branch, you have a law enforcement branch. So those two directors have specific lanes and specific responsibilities to stick with. I think the Incident Commander becomes the traffic cop, so to speak that makes sure that those specific branches are staying in their lanes, because if you're going to ask each person not only to run their respective tasks and incidents. And now, you're going to ask them to make sure. "Okay, make sure there's a check and balance." I think that's a role of the Incident Commander here. Bill Godfrey: That's an interesting point Mark, we're talking about you know, staying in the lanes. How does that effect communication? Is both your verbal face-to-face communication but perhaps, even more importantly, radio communication. Does staying in your lane or wandering out of your lane effect your radio communication? Can it improve it or make it worse? Mark Rhame: Well, I think one of the things in regard to radio communication is, and we preach this and talk about this when we do classes is that, clearly on the radio we need to know who those people are. And we talk about, you gotta lose your normal identity on a day-to-day basis and clearly identify what position you are. And that will tell everybody that's listening to that radio channel, what your role in this incident is. Example being that, if you're a patrol office and you're 109 normally, and you take command and on the radio you're now Command. Everybody clearly understand that your command including, in the Command Post that you are the Incident Commander. If you are normally the Chief 100 of a fire department on a 24-hour shift but when you step into that Command Post, you become the medical branch on the radio, you are medical branch. Clearly, that defines to every single person that's listening to it, whether it's on a radio or face-to-face or you talking to some other person exterior or outside customer or interior customer, when they come up. They clearly know what your position is in that Command Post and I think, that's very, very important that we all practice that policy and make sure that everybody clearly identifies what they are in that Command Post and what their role is. Bill Godfrey: So, talking about radio comm Steve, how does that effect dispatch. You know, you've got presumably, law enforcement, you know, these days there very few law enforcement agencies that are using the same channel as fire EMS, they're usually split. Often, they have separate dispatch centers. Where's dispatch's role in this? How does that fit into this piece of it? Stephen Shaw: I think if you include dispatch in your training and you include dispatch in your policies as you're discussing these things. It can help mitigate some of this. A lot of people are going to revert back to what they're kind of used to doing. But if you have dispatchers who have been involved in training and are involved in decision-making they can say. "Well, Chief 100, I think he actually means that he's medical branch" for example. And they can ask that over the radio. There's been instances where fire has set up an incident Command Post and police have set up an incident Command Post and they're unaware of each other's existence. Dispatch would know that both of those are in existence and can remind them that they're there. Clearing up radio channels, all this stuff, if you include dispatch in your training and your decision-making, all those things can be kinda mitigated ahead of time as the event is unfolding, if some mistakes are made along the way. Bill Godfrey: So, we've talked about the silos and dysfunction and the importance of co-location, the training together, the policy development, relationship building and know it. Ron, what are the key tips that you would give to that Sergeant or Lieutenant or that Captain, on a law enforcement side for how to interact with their fire EMS counterparts to manage the event? Whether they're the law enforcement branch or whether they're Incident Commander, paint that picture for how that fits together and what that outta look like. Ron Otterbacher: First off is, like we've said several times here, get to know your counterpart. At that scene may not be the best time to sit there and figure out that you've never met, you've never worked with each other, you don't know what each other's expectations are. The second thing is, train together and make sure you set training that involves everyone. If someone is going to take the role of Incident Commander, medical branch, law enforcement branch, whatever it may be. They need to train together prior to an incident. Like Mark said earlier, a lot of times we'll have staff people or general officers and you know, agent company officers and everyone else, at this training but there won't be any Command staff members there. If they're going to run the incident, they need to train for the incident. Just because you have a title, doesn't mean that you're able to control that incident like it should be controlled. And that's been evident in some of the past incidents we've dealt with throughout the country. Bill Godfrey: Mark, on the fire EMS side, what ... Or really, just all around. What are the things that you think are the tips that can help them make a Command Post function a whole lot better? Mark Rhame: Well, from a fire and EMS standpoint is, one of the first things they've got to realize and we've talked about this previously is it, this is a law enforcement environment. It is a murder in progress, a crime in progress, that we are supporting the mission of law enforcement. Very important mission of saving lives but frankly, it is a crime in progress. So, fire is really gotta get that into their mindset when they walk into these environments. When they go into the Command Post, when they take a role there, that we have a leader who is going to be on the law enforcement side, and we're there to work as their partners, to work as a team. To make sure that the mission is accomplished. At very first, we're going to stop that killing and then, we're going to stop that dying but as a team effort. If they go in there with that mindset that. "No, I am the Incident Commander or this is a going to be a unified command and I own half of this room." They're probably going to fail. There's not going to be the relationship that's necessary and needed in these events. You gotta allow law enforcement to step up and identify that mission right up front and that's stopping the killing. Taking down the threat and then, allowing a joint effort between both parties, law enforcement, fire, and EMS on going in there and stopping the dying. And it's gotta be that joint effort. Otherwise, we're going to continue this same practice we've been doing for years and years and years. And people are going to die on the scene needlessly. Bill Godfrey: You know Mark, you're just kinda touching on it and Otter mentioned it as well. And that's the challenges of, leadership. Leadership not engaging in the training. We send the line folks to training. We send the line level supervisors to training. But the senior leadership, so often, and we see that ... And I don't think it's unique to law enforcement or fire or EMS or dispatch or emergency management or anybody. I think it's kinda universal. Senior leadership is busy. There's a lot of demands on their time. But, all too often, they don't make it to the training. And, that can have some prices to pay to it. Kevin, what's the real world outcome? In fact, I'm going to have you give us the final word on this. What's the real world outcome and the impact of the senior level leadership who's going to want to take charge, not having been in the training? And not having the experience of working with their line people through exercises and scenarios? What's the real world impact of that? Kevin Beary: Well, the real world impact on leaders that don't want to go to training. Whether it's EMS, fire, or police, is that you're going to be inadequate and inept in a major mass casualty shooting event. And, quite frankly, it's 2018. It's time to check the egos at the door. We're seeing all these mass shooting events all over the country and quite frankly, all over the world. And it is time that, as leaders of all those disciplines, they've got to get involved. They gotta put the Deputy Chief in charge for three days. If you've got attend the ASIM class and if we don't do that, all we're going to do is see the next mass shooting incident and more people are going to die because, you didn't take the time to concern yourself that you need the training as well as, all the mid-level and low-level employees of your own agencies. Bill Godfrey: Succinctly put and a very sobering thought for all of us. And with that, I think, we're going to leave that one there. Thank you for taking time with us guys, appreciate the sit down and look forward to the next time. Original Source: https://www.c3pathways.com/podcast/command-post-integration

Episode 03: Triage and Transport Discussion of the Triage and Transport Group Supervisor positions in Active Shooter Incident Management (ASIM) Bill Godfrey: Hello again, everybody. Bill Godfrey from C3 Pathways, here with a number of the instructors to talk about triage and transport and the challenges of integrating our medical roles in an active shooter event. Today I've got with me retired fire chief Tom Billington, both fire chief and paramedic. Another retired fire chief, Mark Rhame, also a paramedic. And not to be outdone, a third retired fire chief, Joe Ferrara, also a paramedic. Guys, thanks for taking the time to sit down and talk about this today. So just to kind of set the stage for us, when we talk about, in typical EMS, when you talk about mass casualty incidents, we always hear them throw out triage, treatment, and transport. It's kind of the three classic things that we talk about. But in an active shooter event, it's a little different. The triage officer, normally is ... The bus rolls over on the interstate, triage is walking among the bodies and doing their thing. But in an active shooter event, it's not safe to do that. But the job still has to be done. So Mark, can you open up by kind of talking a little bit about what's different about triage in an active shooter event? And how do we do the integration with law enforcement to set that up and get it rolling? Mark Rhame: In a traditional sense, the triage activity, or the triage person as you said, is walking amongst the individuals who are injured and trying to determine who is the most critically injured and which patient's gonna go first to the hospital, which patient's gonna get treated first. In the sense of a active shooter event, as you stated, that triage person, the person who's in that position, cannot go into that environment, because it may be still hot in the very beginning. It becomes warm when we take down the shooter or we put the shooter in a place where we can actually get to our patients safely with our rescue task force. But that triage officer is going to make and determine basically from a distance, utilizing rescue task force and standing right next to the tactical officer who has contact teams inside whose relaying information back to him or her about what kind of patients and how many patients and how severe they are so they can come up with their tactical considerations. For the triage officer in this environment, they're going to stand up rescue task force. And the rescue task force are a combination of our fire EMS people and law enforcement at a security envelope for that team to go in there and start counting our patients, start doing some very quick treatment on those patients, getting them to a location where they're all the patients are in one place, which we call our casualty collection point, determining the quickest route out of that location to an ambulance exchange point so we can load them up into the ambulances and move them off that scene, working hand in hand with our transportation officer who will be standing next to us. One of the considerations we have to have, though, is a triage person who's in that position, is they have to go down to a safe environment where that tactical officer is. So there is a consideration for that triage officer working with our medical branch to say, "Is it safe for me to send my people into that location? Is it safe for me to send my triage person and my transport officer down to that location so they can be standing next to each other talking face to face, coming up with their strategy and tactics?" So once that area is determined to be safe for them to go to that area -- it's a warm zone, so there's still some consideration of a threat -- but they can go down to that location. They cohabitate with them. At that point in time, they can stand up their rescue task force and get them inside and start working on these patients. Bill Godfrey: Fantastic. Joe, we were talking on another podcast with the law enforcement guys who really, really were talking about the importance of co-locating triage and transport with the tactical group supervisor to be able to work the problem very directly. Can you talk about, from the fire EMS perspective, from the medical perspective, why is it so important to put the triage and transport supervisors forward with the tactical group supervisor? Why can't they just take it over and run it and do what they gotta do? Why is that co-location location so important? Joe Ferrara: Well, I think if we look into some of the common problems that occur on scenes from an incident management perspective, it's always communication. Communication always seems to be the number one gap. So in one scenario, we could take our triage and transport group supervisors, and they could be in a fire command post, and they can be directing the rescue task force and directing the ambulances, but yet the gap there is they're not talking to tactical. Tactical has the operational picture of the scene. Tactical knows where the boundaries of the hot zone is. Tactical knows about the security threats occurring. Tactical knows when it's safe to start the rescue operation. So if we're gonna create a gap by not co-locating, by forcing triage and transport to pick up a phone, or worse yet, have a cross-patch radio channel that may or may not work ... Because typically, fire and EMS are not on the same radio system as police. So why not, when the medical branch is stood up, and the medical branch sends triage and transport group supervisors as a command function, as an ICS function, downrange, send them to the tactical folks? The tactical guy, who was maybe that fifth man. I know we talked about it in a past podcast. It's not the counted fifth man. It could be the fifth, sixth, seventh. Whoever that law enforcement person is that's running the tactical operation, who better to have the folks in triage and transport that are gonna be moving patients and getting them out of scene as expeditiously as possible, why not have them with the law enforcement supervisor? By doing that, those triage folks will have no question about whether it's safe to put an RTF in with a security bubble. The transport group supervisor will have no question about where the ambulance exchange points need to be, because getting that information directly from the person that has the operational picture, the tactical group supervisor. Bill Godfrey: So Tom, Joe, obviously, talking very passionately about a lot of the challenges in understanding the security side of this thing, which, of course, for fire and EMS folks, that's not our area of expertise. That's not normal for us. But being there with tactical to get that, can you talk a little bit about some of the difficulties or the challenges in getting the patients transported? I mean, okay ... the law enforcement's neutralized the threat. The rescue task forces have moved downrange. They've got contact with the patient. We're ready to get the patients out of there. What are some of the challenges that are faced on the transport side in making that happen in a timely fashion? Tom Billington: Well, one of the things we discuss is neutralizing the threat, which is done. So now we're fighting the clock. And as a transport group supervisor, you are that final cog in the wheel to get these patients to the correct facilities as soon as possible. And so it's really important that the transport group supervisor have situational awareness. They should know where the hospitals are located, the best routes, how many patients each hospital can take. And this has to be done rapidly. Again, we're fighting the clock. We have to get these injured people to a hospital as soon as possible and to get them treated. Again, by being located with the other groups, you have a better chance of understanding the clarity of what's going to happen, where you want to send them. And it's really a important task. Bill Godfrey: Tom, walk me through the process of how the rescue task force who has the patients picks a spot to hand them off to the ambulances. Walk me through how that happens and what that looks like. Tom Billington: Okay, when the rescue task forces are ready for the ambulances, the first thing they need to do is establish an ambulance exchange point. It has to be a location close to their casualty collection point. It has to be easy access. And obviously, there needs to be security. So once they have identified a location close to the casualty collection point that is outside that the ambulances can come and leave freely, they need to make sure they have a security bubble, and set up the ambulance exchange point. When all of this is completed, only then do we bring the ambulances in. And of course, we bring them in one at a time with security, load the patient. This is a very important point. When we load the patient, we're not sitting there treating the patient anymore. We do not want to be sitting target, as you may call it. We want to get the person moved and get on the way to the hospital. So it's a very important part. Remember, security's important. Remember, don't box up your ambulances one at a time, and it should go pretty good after that. Bill Godfrey: So mark, talk a little bit about the challenges that are faced realistically. The triage and transport group supervisors, they're physically co-located, maybe at the trunk of a car. Maybe they're working off a desk somewhere, or they're just standing in a parking lot, but they're working with tactical, and you've got these three people that are putting their heads together, trying to kind of coordinate that ballet. Talk a little bit about what are some of the typical challenges you see and maybe some of the ways to overcome those challenges. Mark Rhame: Well, probably one of the biggest things is they've got to trust the teams that are inside. The tactical officer along with the triage and transport have eyes inside of the building. They are with the patients. They have identified a casualty collection point, and they are giving a recommendation for an ambulance exchange point. Those individuals who are outside, who are running that inner perimeter, that warm zone that was a hot zone previously, being the tactical officer, that triage person and that transport person, they have to trust the people inside to give them a good recommendation of a good pathway from that place that they're bringing their patients to, that casualty collection point, to the outside as an ambulance exchange point. Simply standing outside and looking at a map doesn't always work. We can all look at maps, and especially if you get a multi-story structure, and think we can determine the quickest route from inside the structure to the outside where the ambulances are waiting to take the patients to the hospital. But truly, you've got to trust the people inside who have physically walked it and who have an understanding of where the quickest methodology or the quickest path to get them out. You've got to trust them to make a good decision, a good recommendation. Now, you have every right as a triage officer, or a tactical officer, to overrule that, because you're seeing the bigger picture. You own that inner perimeter. You may see other threats they're not seeing, or other considerations. But really, you've got to trust those people inside to given you good intel, good patient counts, and a recommendation of the quickest methodology of getting those patients off the scene. Bill Godfrey: So, Joe, I'm gonna put you on the spot with this one. Why not just drag or shuttle the patients out of the hot and warm zone back to some cold zone area where you can lay them out, really do a good assessment on them, treat them if you need to and then load them in more of a traditional transport area where you've got a line of ambulances? Why not do it that way? Joe Ferrara: Well Bill, that's certainly a good perspective, and that's traditionally the way we've done it in EMS. We've set up those treatment, transport, and triage areas. We've set up the tarps and we start moving patients out from there. However, as we've stressed in active shooter events and learned lessons from the military, when people are shot ... time. Time is the killer. So the longer that we let these people sit on scene, then the less their chance of survival. The only thing that is gonna save these people is rapid movement, and rapid transport to an appropriate facility. So we have our choice here. We co-locate with tactical. We organize a rescue task forces downrange. We push them to do indirect threat care to get the patient briefly stabilized, and we move them directly to ambulances. So if we're gonna move once from a casualty collection point to the back of an ambulance, why not make it the shortest move? And that shortest move is from inside the CCP to outside in the ambulance exchange point. Rather than moving them inside the CCP, over to the cold zone, and now we're gonna re-triage them and retreat them and load them back into ambulances and cause another delay. So because of that killer of time, the best thing to do here is to get those patients directly in the AEP, directly in the ambulance and on their way to the appropriate facility. Let's cut out the other steps that are killing our patients. Bill Godfrey: Good points. Good points. Tom, from your perspective ... I know you've done a lot of training on the RTF side, and on the transport side and trying to help people integrate that ballet, I'm gonna call it ... What are some of the challenges you see? Where do people slip up? What are the common mistakes that you see in that process of trying to get into the patients quickly, do whatever emergent ... as Joe said, emergent indirect care you need to, and then get on an ambulance and get out of Dodge? What's the common mistakes you're seeing? Tom Billington: Well, the first is hesitation. You need to make sure that, when you're on a RTF, a rescue task force, that you're comfortable, that the law enforcement officers are going to protect your life, and the law enforcement officers are comfortable, that you're going to listen to them for safety reasons. So the first thing is, don't hesitate. You need to move in as a team and be ... Rapidly assess these folks. Start treating them as quickly as possible. On the transport side, some of the tangles we get into, I'll give you an example, is we think a lot about helicopters. Transport isn't only by ambulance, it can be by helicopter. But a problem with that is as a transport officer, again, situation awareness should let you be able to decide is it quicker to put them in the back of an ambulance and drive to them the hospital? Or is it quicker to drive an ambulance to a landing zone, transport the patient to a helicopter? The helicopter crew has their procedures that they have to do before they take off. We may even be adding time by using that helicopter. So it's just another issue you have to weigh out. Again, we're fighting the clock, so the quickest way is always the best. Bill Godfrey: Mark, what about your perspective? What are the common mistakes that you see? Mark Rhame: Well, Tom hit a very good on there in regard to delays that we artificially create. The delays that aren't driven by the shooter, who has been taken down, secured. The delays of believing that you can't enter a building after you've secured that area, even though the threat still may be within that hot, warm zone. Those delays are what's killing these patients. And we've got to come to the conclusion, the reality, that we're creating a lot of these problems ourselves. We can have the solution right in front of us with proper training, with practice, with integrating our response, but we've got to eliminate these delays by trusting our judgment on these issues. There is nothing wrong with entering a structure where you still have a threat in it, so long as you've held that threat at bay, you've placed that threat somewhere that it's not gonna harm anyone else. That it's law enforcement it's held that person in place. And then you can send in your rescue task force, get those people off the scene, even though you haven't taken down the threat. So we can't get into this mode where we're gonna back up a half a mile or a mile and wait for the scene to be totally secure and become cold, because those patients are gonna die right in front of us. We've got to get into that environment where delays are killing these people, and we've got to be a little bit more aggressive. Bill Godfrey: Joe, if you were giving advice to a new, young paramedic, or a young company officer, who is gonna have to play the triage or transport role, what's the one piece of advice? In fact, I'll pass this question to each of you guys. What's the one piece of advice that you would give a young medic or a young company officer who's gonna have to play either the triage or the transport roles in an active shooter event? What's the one piece of advice you'd give them? Joe Ferrara: Don't waste time. One of the biggest problems that I always saw as a supervisor on the scene, as a company officer, was we do a great job getting the patient extricated, and suddenly, we get them in the back of the ambulance and we think some magic is gonna happen in there and the patient is gonna be cured. Get in the truck. When the patient is loaded, get that driver up front and let's move to the hospital. Trauma patients will benefit from surgery, not from paramedic intervention. So don't waste the patient's time. It's way too valuable. Bill Godfrey: Tom, how about you? One piece of advice you'd give to the young paramedic or company officer? Tom Billington: He or she must trust the people that are in those positions, that are in the RTF. Trust them. The only time you want to override a decision is if it is a danger to health. If there's a threat they don't know about. But other than that, you have to let these people do their jobs. Give them the tools they need. Support them, and trust that they are making the right decisions. And overall, you should have a better outcome. Bill Godfrey: And Mark, you? Mark Rhame: Get organized. I'll give you an example. If you are placed in the position of transport, you need to find out what hospitals are able to take what type of patients right up front. You cannot wait until the patients are starting to be dragged out, placed in the back of an ambulance, and then calling dispatch and asking hospitals what patients they can take. You've gotta be way ahead of the curve on this issue and get organization very, very quickly. Get that information that's necessary for you to be successful in getting those patients off the scene as quick as possible. Bill Godfrey: Great stuff. Great stuff. Well, that's our time today, chiefs. I want to say thank you guys for sitting down and taking the time to talk about this. I enjoyed it. Look forward to doing some more of these in the future. Original Source: https://www.c3pathways.com/podcast/triage-and-transport

Episode 02: The 5th Man (Tactical) Discussion of the 5th Man (also known as the Tactical Group Supervisor) in Active Shooter Incident Management (ASIM) Bill Godfrey: Hello, Bill Godfrey here from C3 Pathways, we're here today to talk a little bit about fifth man and the tactical position, a key position, in the management of an active shooter event, certainly on the law enforcement side, but really, for the entire event. And I have with me today, to talk about it, Steve Shaw, sergeant with Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Ron Otterbacher, who's retired division chief from the Orange county sheriff's office. And retired sheriff Kevin Beary, also from the Orange county sheriff's office. Guys, thanks for taking the time to come and talk with us today, Ron, what do you think. You've been around the block teaching this block for a long time, why is that fifth man and tactical position such a key element of managing these things? Ron Otterbacher: We actually got the fifth man concept from a lieutenant colonel from Memphis police department, he was trying to get his arms around not knowing what rank would arrive at a certain time, however, he wanted to make sure someone took control of the situation at appropriate time. That's how that came up, and then we kind of finessed it a little bit so we were able to use the action of that position as one of the critical positions in the incident command spectrum. And, what we want to do is, we know contact teams are going to be going in, the fifth man concept doesn't have to be actually a fifth person, or the sixth person, or seventh, just after the initial contact team goes in, and we've got resources down range, someone needs to stop and take control. If they don't take control, then it increases the opportunity for a blue on blue situation, it also makes it so we lose control of where our personnel are, and who's been deployed, the number have been deployed, so that's why it became so critical, and that's why we put it in the forefront of what we teach. Bill Godfrey: So, Stephen, you've done a number of these training scenarios with us as well, as well as going through them on your own. You know, what sticks out in your mind as the key things that fifth man really has to do, that that tactical position has to get their arms around and focus on, and what are the things that they shouldn't be focused on, that they need to get out of their head? Stephen Shaw: I think the biggest thing when we're talking about, you know, we talk about two enemies, the bad guy and the clock. With that comes the second enemy, the clock, the important part of that is efficiency of resources. Putting resources where they need to be and a proper amount of time. So, you have to have somebody there who has a good situational awareness, who is able to say, contact team one has done this, so I don't need to send another contact team to clear building A, because contact team one's already done it. So, contact team two can now start working on clearing building B, I need a rescue task force, I need a second rescue task force here. Because they're so far down, a lot of times what we refer to as incident command as being down into the weeds, because they're so far down into the weeds, they can't be thinking about things like, reunification, calling in, you know, putting out press briefings. Those are big picture items that the incident commander needs to think of, so that that fifth man, that tactical position, is about focusing on controlling everything that's going on inside that inner perimeter, so that we can get help to the people that need it, and the most expedient manner possible, making sure that our resources are used most effectively. Bill Godfrey: It's interesting, you're describing it really almost in a strategic sense, for deploying of the resource. But let me ask you this, you know, why do we need it? What, is it, what's the consequence if we don't do a fifth man, if we don't have a tactical, and just letting the contact teams deploy and do their own thing? Stephen Shaw: I think the most glaring example is the navy yard shooting, where we had a suspect on the loose for over an hour, and over a hundred, 117 officers inside the building looking for the shooter. No one took charge and said, "Contact team one, lock down this stairwell, contact team two lock down this stairwell." So, we had a bunch of officers who were freelancing, who were looking around for different, who were looking around for the same task, but they were doing the same thing over and over and over again. Again, we talk about speed, we talk about efficiency of resources, somebody needs to step up and say, "This has been accomplished so we can mark this off. Somebody stay here, leave it secure, so that we can move onto our next list of items." If we don't, we end up doing the same things over and over again, or we just lose accountability for people. Bill Godfrey: Interesting point, you mentioned the navy yard, by the way just, I want to make sure I'm following you on that clarification. You're talking about, when you say the officers freelancing, you're really meaning they just doing their training, move in, move to the sound of gunfire, without anybody kind of, you know, for lack of a better way to say it, being the quarterback and kind of putting the team where they need to. That's what you're talking about right? Stephen Shaw: Correct. Bill Godfrey: Yeah, Kevin, you know, you're coming in with a really interesting, broad perspective. You know, 16 years a sheriff, overseeing a lot of stuff that's gone on in a fair amount of time deployed in some tough areas overseas. And kind of a fresh perspective on this. How do you see it fitting together in terms of getting from that initial first few officers that are going in to neutralize the threat, and then, managing this just massive response that unfolds. What's your take on the fifth man? Kevin Beary: Well, I think the fifth man is probably one of the most important persons that's going to be responding to the scene. The first thing is you need somebody that's not afraid to take command. And, second is, listen to your contact units, get as much information as possible from those contact units, how many officers are hurt, how many survivors do we have, how many people down? And, you're already processing that information, when you take that fifth position, you need to make those decisions, coordinate it with your fire department and medical resources, and triage people, it's very important, because now, most of the contact positions, those people are gonna already have the person down. This thing is over in usually just a couple of minutes. But now you're fighting against the clock, and that fifth person is responsible for getting that clock, you know, kind of curved back as much as possible. Bill Godfrey: Really, really good point, Steve was mentioning the clock as well. Ron, talk a little bit about battling the clock versus battling the bad guy a little bit. Kind of paint that picture for those that are listening in on what we're talking about, and how fifth man a tactical plays into that. Ron Otterbacher: Battling the bad guy is pretty self evident. We gotta bad guy that's creating problems for us, we're trying to go and stop the killing, then we try to stop the dying. Stopping the killing is critical, but even if we don't have the bad guy completely locked down, we can still work on stopping the dying, which is, again, battling the clock. We can get people down range, they can render aid, while we're still going after the bad guy, in a safe fashion, or as safe a fashion as we can make it. As we look at this, we want to make sure that the sooner we can get to the damage, the sooner we can render aid, whether it be with tourniquets, or direct pressure, or whether it be wound packing or anything else, that, we've got the opportunity to keep them from bleeding out. And, we also know that the best way for them to have a successful outcome in this entire situation, is getting them to the hospital and getting them into surgical ward, so the surgeons can save their lives. We'll try and slow down everything, and it all plays into the clock. We've got a, make sure we know what we're dealing with, which is what the contact teams are painting a picture of what they see, what they're dealing with. And then, at the same time, they'll tell us we're able to send our rescue task forces in, and they'll also tell us where we'll able to set up our ambulance exchange point to get the patient out as quickly as we can. Bill Godfrey: You know, Ron, you're talking about the role of the contact teams and tactical play in the medical piece of this, from the fifth man's perspective, and who becomes the tactical group supervisor, talk a little bit about the role that triage and transport from the fire department or EMS, how do they work together? Paint that picture on how that plays out and the goodness of them, the goodness and badness of them working together versus not working together. Ron Otterbacher: Well, actually it's a great thing, and it's, what we've done is we've co located triage, transport, and tactical together. That way we don't have to go through the communications tree to get a message passed on. All we've gotta do is turn to our left, turn to our right, and say, "I need this, or I need this." Whether it be tactical asking for a rescue task force, they turn to triage, says, "Look, I need two rescue task forces downrange, this is where I need 'em. We've got security in place." Or, transport saying, "Look, we're setting up our AEP here, I need a cover team to provide cover team for the AEP." Turns to tactical, say, "I need this cover." And he turns around and calls the contact team and said, "I want you to provide cover for the AEP and this is the location." So, it works great, the communication is unobstructed, you turn to each other, as long as you pay attention to each other, and we see from time to time, we're governed by our radios, and it would be a lot easier if we were just to turn and tap them on the shoulder, and say, "Here." Bill Godfrey: Stephen, I know you've experienced some scenarios where tactical was removed from the medical component, and they were trying to kind of coordinate it remotely over the radio. Can you talk a little bit about some of the challenges that you've seen in those instances, and, you know, maybe some of the pitfalls that can be avoided if you get the medical folks, and a tactical person, you get them together working together? Stephen Shaw: I think the main thing is air time. There's a lot of people are gonna have something to say, it's gonna be a battle just to get air time on the radio in order to talk to somebody. A second aspect of it is, law enforcement can, officer and whoever's running the medical side of it, are more, sometimes, are more than likely gonna be on two different channels. So, you either have to switch your channel back and forth, or have a second radio, or have a communications aid. And then, the other thing is, we talk, everybody, I think, has played the telephone game, where you line up in a row and somebody tells the first person in a row something, and you whisper it into the next person's ear, and by the time it gets to the end, it's a completely different message. Messages, through no fault of anybody's, sometimes get muddled over the radio. Whereas, if we're sitting right there together, we can look at notes, we can hear what we're saying face to face, we can hear each other's radio traffic. If we have to call on the telephone, or we have to say something over the radio, by the time it gets to the intended source, the message may be different than what the original message was. In addition to the fact that, with the air time, and with the other channels, it may not be timely information anymore. Information is constantly evolving, especially in an event as dynamic as an active shooter. You may have your casualty collection point set up in one place, and you're sending RTFs there, and then all of a sudden, your threat is no longer contained, by the time that information gets relayed to the people that need it, it may be too late. Bill Godfrey: Kevin, you know, you've had, obviously a lot of experiences a command officer, you know, working some pretty challenging events. Certainly overseeing them, and certainly being on the hook and being responsible for them. Can you talk a little bit about the challenges and the guidance that you would offer to, you know, people who are on the job, who are going to find themselves in command, or in these management roles, of trusting the people downrange, and the importance of letting the people downrange really kind of drive the lay of the land, as opposed to trying to dictate it from top down. Can you talk a little bit about that, because my sense is, is that that's a pretty big deal in the tactical environment. Kevin Beary: I think it's a pretty big deal in law enforcement in general. You have to surround yourself with people that you trust. And, for a chief of police, or a sheriff, the bottom line is when those people get sworn in, you gotta trust them, they're going to be carrying out that everyday mission. And in this particular incident, when you're sending people down range to an active shooter, and your initial folks are reporting back, of what they see, and the casualty numbers, and what have you, very important that that person takes command. Because that fifth person is going to be the initial incident manager, who is going to have to paint a clear picture for when he gets relieved, and ultimately to that incident commander. And it's that initial trust factor, that you got people down range, they're giving you the information that you need, you're collecting that information, and you're passing it on. It's the picture clarity, so that all law enforcement responders, and all fire responders can get there and start saving people's lives. Bill Godfrey: So what, from your perspective, what's the consequence, you think, of having folks downrange that are, you know, telling you X, and being back at the, you know, command post, or somewhere remote, and saying, "man, I think Y's a better choice." Can you talk a little bit about some of the challenges there, because sometimes, you know, there might be some appropriateness to that. But other times, you gotta trust the people that are down range don't you? Kevin Beary: In an active shooter situation, I guarantee you that it's the people down range, they're seeing it first hand. The person at the command post, is getting that second hand information. You've gotta trust them to make the right decisions, and, if you don't, then the situation could get muddled very quickly. Bill Godfrey: Ron, I've heard you talk a lot, when you're doing coaching the tactical position, coaching the fifth man position, about task and purpose. And making sure that when you're pushing resources downrange, contact teams, or rescue task forces, you know,in conjunction with Triage, you're pushing them with a task and purpose. Can you talk a little bit about, why you think that that's such an important element or important component of that function. Ron Otterbacher: Sure, when we talk about task and purpose, we want to make sure that they've got an assignment, they know who they're working for, they know what channel they're on, and they know what their responsibilities are. If we just send them downrange, to do whatever they decide looks good, then it may not fit in the concept of command and control for the overall incident. Everyone that goes downrange, doesn't matter if it's contact team, doesn't matter if it's rescue task force, doesn't matter if it's an ambulance for the ambulance exchange point, they've all got to know what their responsibility is, who they answer to, and what they should be doing. I also need to let them know what my expectations are. If I send them down range, I'm gonna tell them, "And I want you to report back to me as quickly as you can, to let me know what's going on. I want you to constantly paint a picture for me, so I have a better understanding of what you're seeing. You are my eyes, you are my ears, and that's what I have to count on." The task and purpose, simply clarifies what that is, and what I need from them at that particular time. Bill Godfrey: So, Steve, let me see if I can kind of sum this up, because it occurred to me, the way we started we may not have really explained, where the fifth man comes into this thing. So, we've got an incident that goes down, you've got your first contact team of officers, presumably three or four officers that are moving downrange, and what we're looking for is the fifth officer that arrives, again, as several of you have said, it may not be the literal fifth officer. But, once you've got a contact team downrange, you need to start thinking about getting your arms around it, and getting some command and control around that. So, that fifth officer that arrives, that's gonna take temporary control of this, or temporary charge of it until the incident commander gets there, supervisor gets there. And they're going to marry up with the fire department or EMS for triage and transport. How do they pick a good location? Talk a little bit about, you know, where do they need to set up? How close should they be, how not so close, how does the fire department get up to them if they're too close, you know, kind of walk us through what that looks like or what that life cycle might look like for a fifth man from the moment they take it, you know, as they slide into tactical and start working it with triage and transport. Stephen Shaw: So, I think the first key component of that, is as that first contact team is arriving on scene, they give that good size up report, where, they're saying what they're seeing, what they're hearing, are they hearing what sounds like, to them, rifle shots? Are they hearing pistol shots? Are they seeing IEDs there, because that information changes how big your hot zone is. If I'm dealing with somebody who's got a rifle, my hot zone is gonna be pretty big, because that round can travel pretty far. If it's a building, and they're contained in a building, my hot zone then shrinks, no matter what weapon they have, because they're in a building. So, that initial size up report from the contact team is vital to getting that information. I would say, if you're that person who's gonna be that fifth man, you start big. We can move closer if we need to, but it's very difficult to back out. Pick a place that's fairly close by, but it's still far enough away that you know that you're not in the hot zone. Police officers and firefighters, EMS and ambulance personnel, we have a different definition of what's dangerous, and it's not because police officers are better than any of these people, it's just because we have guns and we have vests and we deal with this kind of stuff all the time. And, sometimes, we fool ourselves into thinking that we're safe when we're not actually safe. And so, if you're that person, you have to put yourself in the mindset of, "If I didn't have a gun, if I didn't have a vest, I don't have any armor, and I don't have any training, where would I want to be?" And that should probably be your starting point. But that, the information that you get from the first contact team is vital. And then, the next thing is, you have to think about what is a realistic location, because you're gonna be kind of in that warm zone. There's a good chance that some of your contact teams are gonna want to come, or a perimeter group is gonna want to come and make a face to face to you, so you can't be a mile away. But you have to be close enough where you're still effective, but you're far enough where you're out of the danger zone. So, you have to be, it comes with familiarity with your area, kind of that, as police officers we talk about a when/then thinking a lot of times, when this happens, then I will do this. So, as you're on your regular patrol, be thinking, if you're that person, who you think you might be in that position, think ahead of time, if I was to have an active shooter at this location, where would be a good point, a good location for me to put my initial command post? And then you can change it based on the information that you have. But that information that you get there, put, not thinking like a cop all the time, thinking like somebody, thinking like somebody from another profession, and then the pre planning I think are all keys to this. Bill Godfrey: You know, that's a great answer, and really appreciate that rounding out that problem. That's our time for today, guys, I can't thank you enough for taking the time to sit down and talk about this stuff, and I look forward to some more of these as we move forward. Thanks for your time. Stephen Shaw: Thank you. Ron Otterbacher: Thank you. Kevin Beary: Thank you. Original Source: https://www.c3pathways.com/podcast/tactical-group-supervisor

Episode 01: Common Misconceptions Discussion of common misconceptions in Active Shooter Incident Management (ASIM) Bill Godfrey: Welcome to our discussion of active shooter incident management. Today, we've got with us Stephen Shaw, sergeant from Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Adam Pendley, assistant chief with Jacksonville Sheriff's Office. Mark Rhame, retired fire chief from Deltona, Florida and Orange County, Florida. And Joe Ferrara, also retired fire chief from Martin County, Florida. My name is Bill Godfrey, also retired fire chief and your host this afternoon. And our question today is what do you think is the biggest misconception that people have about active shooter incident management? Adam, why don't we start with you? What's on your mind about the big misconceptions that you seen on the law enforcement side or the dispatch side? Adam Pendley: I think one of the misconceptions is this idea that it's entirely the first responder, the police officer, fire, EMS and that is definitely an important role. But I think it's important to remember that all the active shooter incidents start in the 911 center. That initial recognition of an active shooter event is so important and that initial intelligence gathering. And getting the right resources dispatched is so important to the ultimate success of managing an active shooter event. Not only does it start there, but as the first responders arrive on scene and they're giving those initial report backs, and follow on responders are dispatched. In a lot of training that you see for active shooter incident management, you don't see dispatch integrated into the training and response. I just think that's an important thing that must be addressed as we move forward to try to manage these active shooter events. Bill Godfrey: Steve, what do you think on the law enforcement side. Adam obviously addressed something near and dear to all of us on the comm side. What jumps out at you on the law enforcement side? Stephen Shaw: I think the biggest thing after Columbine, the focus was so much for law enforcement. The focus was so much on going after the threat and neutralizing the threat. I've actually been told in active shooter training that the incident management aspect of it will take care of itself. Someone will come along, a chief, a captain, someone like that who will come along and take care of that. So your average first line supervisor, especially does not put a lot of thought into there needs to be a command and control aspect within the first five minutes of an active shooter event that's set up very quickly. I think that's one of the things that as ... on the law enforcement side, during training, we focus so much on going after the threat and neutralizing the threat and then we just kinda stop our training there. We don't get into reunification. We don't get into press briefings. We don't get into where are we gonna send all of our injured people. I think that's one thing that's missing from the law enforcement side is just the ... we don't practice that incident management side of it enough. Bill Godfrey: It kinda stops with the bad guy down? Stephen Shaw: Correct. Bill Godfrey: Yeah. Joe, what's your perspective on the fire EMS side? Joe Ferrara: Well, I think, from a fire and EMS perspective, we do command really well. We do incident management well and we assist our law enforcement brethren with that. The part where I think fire and EMS has a hurdle and we need a paradigm shift is we're all trained that the scene is not safe. So we're gonna stage and wait for law enforcement to clear the scene. That doesn't work in active shooter incidents. People are gonna bleed to death. We need to get in there. We need to work with our law enforcement partners. We need to form our rescue task forces, go in as a security bubble and get the job done. We don't need to wait for a half hour, an hour. People don't have that kind of time. So, the shift that's occurring in the industry is that we as fire and EMS professionals, we need to train on the rescue task force concept. Work together with law enforcement to move in, get the patients together. Get them on ambulances and get them to the hospital. Bill Godfrey: Mark, what about you? Mark Rhame: I agree with Joe. If you went back 30, 35 years ago in my career, we used to go into scenes that were today considered unsecured. We literally would just go in under the belief that we could handle anything. Even without law enforcement presence, we would just respond into the scene and then we went. We flipped it 180 degrees where we started staging out. And it got to the point that we were staging out for so long that you were kinda wondering is the scene actually still active or not? Because we would be out there for 20 or 30 minutes, just sitting so far away. Not knowing what's going on. With little to no communication. This program that we're in right now with active shooter incident management allows us to get together very, very quickly. Develop those game plans. Not put our fire and EMS people in harm's way per se, but to get them in there as quick as possible, so we can save those lives. It's a better process than what we've been doing for the past 10 or 15 years. Bill Godfrey: That you brought that up is kinda interesting. This kind of parlays into some of the challenges with integrating the response. Each of the disciplines, law enforcement, fire, EMS, they do a good job in their own right, but in active shooter it gets kind of challenging for us to execute our missions because we have to so closely rely on each other. What do you think are some of the things that you've seen, the trends on the integration side or the challenges that lie there? Tag that into your thoughts. Mark Rhame: The problem is that nationwide, as we travel around the nation, you're seeing it's not ... we're not up to that point where we are integrating. There are some departments that are practices on a regular basis. We have some people here with their own department that do that whenever they do stand bys. They'll actually put rescue task force together and it creates a great environment for those events that are planned. What you're seeing out there is you still have that silo effect. You have firefighters, EMS departments and law enforcement that believe they do an excellent job on their own. But when they put them on the same page or put them together, they don't play well with each other. That's what we need to bridge. We need to get these people in there where they can at least start talking about how we can get together and form these teams and form a command structure that is us working together instead of apart. Bill Godfrey: Adam, he mentions the silos and we've had some incidents where because the responders on the scene didn't get together in a command post, they ended up siloing their communications and actually using dispatch as a go-between. How big of a challenge do you think that still is in the country? Where are the gaps? What's the road we still have to cover? Adam Pendley: Well, I think one of the things that Mark pointed out is that the responders work well together. Police and fire and EMS if you put them in the same room, they work well together. What I think, where I think we fail is that as that moves up the chain of command, you lose something in policies that allow that integration to really work. And you lose a command staff presence where there's ... it starts getting managed in different directions. The silos happen at a higher level. It's like where most incidents fail is at the management level. Not so much at the ground level. The first responders, they want to save lives. If you don't have policies and you don't have conversations and you don't have a command element that works well together and all moving in the same direction. I think that's where it fails. On the communications side, again, I think if all levels train together, both from the first responder level, through dispatch and then all the way up to the command level, I think you start to bridge some of those gaps. Bill Godfrey: So what Adam is talking about, Stephen, kinda flows with some of the challenges we've seen with people kind of feeling like unified command is the magic bullet. We're gonna operationally direct the troops from the unified command post. Do you still see that as a problem out in the field. Do you see that that's an area that we need to work on? Stephen Shaw: I think it depends. You certainly see on big scenes, police, fire, EMS really want to work together in a unified command. On smaller scenes, people still tend to do the silo thing. Police are off doing their thing. Fire is off doing their thing. Maybe fire and EMS coordinates a little bit or police tell the firefighter, "Hey, I need you to come over here and help me out with this." But I think where we would start turning a corner real world is if we started working together on even smaller events. If police and fire are at the same place, then the police and fire commanders need to be hooked up. And that's something that I see in my area a lot. We still tend to do the silos a lot rather than working together. When we have these big events, like I said. Large structure fires, large crowd management events, you see them working together but on smaller events that we do day-to-day, I think we could definitely use a little bit more integration. Bill Godfrey: So, Joe, how do we fix it? How do you think we address some of those challenges and get people to see a better path forward? Or a quicker path forward? Joe Ferrara: As Stephen said and I certainly agree. In the fire service, when we started doing incident command, we did it on every incident. No matter how minor the incident was, we set up command. We named the command. We used the titles. But it didn't happen overnight. It took years and years of conditioning to do that, to do that sort of training. So I think together with law enforcement, like Stephen said in his jurisdiction, they're doing that on the smaller incidents and the law enforcement leadership is getting together with the fire and EMS leadership. They're running a unified command. Really, that's the only way. So as an industry, we need to push that with our partners so that when fire goes back and they leave these classes. Law enforcement goes back to their respective jurisdictions, then they sit down and they go, "Okay." Maybe you're not gonna do it every time. Pick a Tuesday, like we used to do in fire. We'd pick triage Tuesday. On triage Tuesdays, everybody got a triage tag. So if we're gonna do that with these, let's pick a day. Let's pick a time when on an incident where law enforcement is there and fire is there, we're gonna get together on incident command. And we're gonna run this incident. Adam Pendley: Absolutely. I just want to extend on what he said is that it's in addition to the command element. It's a unified effort. So as you get closer to the life-saving in the area around the warm zone and tactical and triage and transport issues that happen so close to the life-saving, that is a unified effort. As you get into the command post, when you're talking about the misconceptions for active shooter, law enforcement is gonna remain in command of the scene probably longer than people realize. That's okay. As long as the fire EMS element is there, standing shoulder to shoulder with the incident commander that is most likely law enforcement for a good period of time when the incident starts. But there's still a unified effort there. There's still a medical branch happening. There's still other things happening that move in the same direction. What's interesting about that is, we mentioned large fire scenes. We've done that for years on a large fire scene, the fire commander is the incident commander for a lot longer into the incident than law enforcement would be. We're not really in a unified command mode when we roll up on a large structure fire, let's say. We're doing the law enforcement branch. It's still a unified effort and it's just the roles are reversed a bit in an active shooter. I think it's important to realize that the actual incident command may rest with law enforcement a little longer than we realize. Eventually, once the unified effort is in place and the incident slows down a little bit, then we move more into a unified command element. I think that's kind of important to recognize. Stephen Shaw: I think too, talking about the command post being there for a long time, especially on the law enforcement side. As law enforcement officers, just as a nature of the culture of our job, we tend to really get down into the weeds. And we really want to. We have trouble letting go of any sort of responsibility. So if you're an incident commander, it's important for you to delegate some of that responsibility off to ... if you're a captain and you show up, you're the IC. Delegate some of that stuff off to your sergeant or your lieutenant so that you're not doing everything by yourself. If you're too far down into the weeds, you're not doing your job right as an incident commander. It's your job to look big picture. Eyes up. We talk about a 30,000 foot, 50,000 foot view. But you have to keep your eyes up and forward, looking at challenges that may come down the road, not just ones that we're dealing with right now. But anything that we can foresee, that we can easily foresee down the road is something that's an incident commander's job is to look at those events rather than focus so much on what's going on in the present. Bill Godfrey: Yeah. It's an interesting point that Steven raises, Mark. When we teach in the active shooter incident management course, we divvy up the roles and responsibilities. There's the command post has some significant roles and responsibilities but the actual running or the management of the down range stuff is really done at that tactical triage and transport level. I know you're frequently one of the incident command post coaches. Why do you think that that matters so much? That splitting up of those roles and responsibilities. Why isn't it okay for command to just run everything from themselves directly? Mark Rhame: I think what a lot of people don't realize even in our industry, in public safety. They don't realize that there's a lot that's gonna happen on that command incident command level. They're at that 50,000 foot level and they're handling a lot of issues. Anything from dealing with their own bosses, with politicians. Dealing with school administrations or public safety ... or public place management. They gotta deal with those people. They gotta make sure they got the right resources there to be successful in this event. When you get down to that tactical level, where you have a triage and a transport stood up, those people are worrying about that hot zone. That immediate threat area. That's what they're dealing with. Unlike incident command, who's really looking at such a bigger picture and they're dealing with those big events that they have to deal with on a regular basis. Bill Godfrey: Adam, what do you think? With what Mark is describing there, how does that become impactful for law enforcement? Because they obviously have, as Mark said, you've got the hot zone. You've got the warm zone. You've got that immediate scene down range where you have to neutralize the threat. We've got to provide rescue to the injured and get them off the scene. But from a law enforcement mission, there's a whole lot more to it? Adam Pendley: Absolutely. A lot of your active shooter training is all that down range stuff. We teach a lot about how to neutralize threats and to begin rescue and do those sorts of things. But we forget the fact that everyone is coming to this event. City leaders, other stakeholders, other agencies, federal agencies, so I think it's command's most important job is to be that next layer away from the scene to act as a buffer against all of that stuff that may interfere with the actual life-saving that is happening down range. If you allow everyone that's responding to this terrible event in your community to make it all the way down to the edge of where the life-saving is happening, they're going to get in the way. There's going to be ... you're gonna interfere with the actual life-saving. So let those first responders who know what they're doing. Have a unified effort of life-saving at the tactical triage and transport level. And then the command post should be that extra layer of management that's gonna be looking outward to everything else that's gonna be pouring in on you because you've had this terrible tragedy in your community. Like Stephen said, it doesn't just stop at when the patients are transported. You're looking at days if not weeks' worth of management that's going to continue and you start that early at the command post level, looking outward. If everyone's focused on trying to do the life-saving job, then you have an entire incident management team focusing on one objective. You have many, many more objectives that are falling in on you. Bill Godfrey: That really sums it up pretty well. I think, paints the picture pretty nice. Guys, thanks for taking the time to sit down this afternoon and kinda talk about this. As we've been discussing, we're gonna grapple with this and a lot more questions as time goes on. Adam, Mark, Joe, Steve, thanks for taking the time. Hope you all enjoyed it. Original Source: https://www.c3pathways.com/podcast/common-misconceptions

Today we bring you an innovative way to practice responding to an active shooter. Training can be expensive and at the end of the day the average officer, firefighter, EMT and emergency manager only takes a small lesson if any away from the training. C3 Pathways has created a training program that puts the responder in the middle of the action and they never have to leave the classroom

Bill Godfrey is a retired Fire Chief and founder of C3 Pathways, a training group for active shooter and MCI events. We talk about command, inter-agency relationships, the importance of training, C3's training solutions and much more.