Podcasts about rtfs

Es sollte eine hochmotivierende Episode über Roberts Erlebnisse beim Katzwanger Backyard Ultra werden, stattdessen musste sich Flo von der ersten Minute an eine Hasstirade über RTFs und Shimanos Schraubenpolitik anhören. Natürlich haben wir danach trotzdem über den Backyard Ultra gesprochen! Einschalten, bewerten und teilen!

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.

Philip Eystein Fjeld has been working in the natural gas industry since 2002 when he joined Hoegh LNG, an LNG ship owner in Oslo. He later co-founded Flex LNG together with Jostein Ueland and Trym Tveitnes. The company was later bought by the John Fredriksen system. Philip then decided to start CNG Fuels in 2014. Which today operates the UK's largest CNG refuelling network. RTFS was founded in 2017 and is Europe's largest supplier of unsupported biomethane to the transport sector. The two businesses have combined in 2023 to make ReFuels, forming a fully integrated energy supplier dedicated to decarbonising Europe's commercial fleet.Partnership, recruitment & Ad enquiries?For business and partnerships enquiries email christopher@bynorthernnorway.com or use the contact form at www.christophervonheim.comFollow Vonheim on Twitter and YouTube:YouTube: Christopher VonheimTwitter: @chrisvonheimDisclaimerAll opinions expressed by Christopher Vonheim or his guests on this show are only their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Vonheim. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Christopher Vonheim as a specific reason to invest or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his opinion. This Show is for informational purposes only. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Philip Eystein Fjeld has been working in the natural gas industry since 2002 when he joined Hoegh LNG, an LNG ship owner in Oslo. He later co-founded Flex LNG together with Jostein Ueland and Trym Tveitnes. The company was later bought by the John Fredriksen system.Philip then decided to start CNG Fuels in 2014. Which today operates the UK's largest CNG refuelling network. RTFS was founded in 2017 and is Europe's largest supplier of unsupported biomethane to the transport sector. The two businesses have combined in 2023 to make ReFuels, forming a fully integrated energy supplier dedicated to decarbonising Europe's commercial fleet.00:00 - How Philip ended up in the gas industry and co-founding FLEX LNG05:12 - Are there any regrets and learning from the FLEX LNG journey?08:20 - What sparked the idea for ReFuels / CNG Fuels11:08 - How to convince people and companies to buy your solution / product15:15 - How to replace diesel as a fuel for trucks18:08 - Why energy needs to be reliable, cost-effective and available at scale23:30 - Why list ReFuels on the Stock Exchange, and what's next?27:50 - Why list a company in Norway, and not UK or Holland30:00 - How to invest in green energy stocks?38:30 - How much can the biogas market grow globally?42:15 - What you need to succeed as an entrepreneur46:35 - Where should you move to live and build your career49:55 - OutroPartnership, recruitment & Ad enquiries?For business and partnerships enquiries email christopher@bynorthernnorway.com or use the contact form at www.christophervonheim.comFollow Vonheim on Twitter and YouTube:YouTube: Christopher VonheimTwitter: @chrisvonheimDisclaimerAll opinions expressed by Christopher Vonheim or his guests on this show are only their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Vonheim. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Christopher Vonheim as a specific reason to invest or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his opinion. This Show is for informational purposes only. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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.

RTF: das steht für Radtourenfahrt oder früher auch Radtouristikfahrt. RTFs sind von Radsportvereinen veranstaltet gemeinsame Rennrad-Ausfahrten. Auf ausgeschilderten Strecken zwischen meist 40 und 170 Kilometern bietet der Veranstalter auch Verpflegung an, und das ganze für meistens nur 5 bis 10 Euro Teilnahmegebührt. Klingt nach einer super Veranstaltung? Dann hört euch die RTF-Tipps der ROADBIKE-Redakteure Moritz, Eric und Christian an und seid bei der nächsten RTF in eurer Nähe dabei!

RTF steht für Radtouren Fahrten oder Radtouristik Fahrten. Doch was genau steckt dahinter und warum lohnt es sich an so einem Event teilzunehmen? Thorsten und Mailin sprechen über diese begehrten Events und klären dich über alle Basics auf. Außerdem erfährst du von spannenden RTFs im norddeutschen Raum. Dazu haben wir uns zwei Veranstalter eingeladen, die von den Besonderheiten ihrer Touren berichten. Auch in Cuxhaven gab es in den letzten Jahren regelmäßig ein RTF ähnliches Event. Der WattWurm - vom Harz bis ans Meer- gilt dabei eher als Radmarathon. Wird es den WattWurm in diesem Jahr nach 2 Jahren Pause endlich wieder geben? Erfahre jetzt mehr im Podcast! Rad & Tour Inside: Vor ein paar Tagen war dein Rad & Tour Team in Bad Bederkesa auf einer Team-Tagung. Thorsten berichtet jetzt ganz exklusiv, was ihn dabei so aus den Socken gehauen hat und was seine Highlights waren. Auch Mailin hat einiges von diesen drei Tagen mitgenommen. Was das wohl sein mag? In den Shownotes halten wir auf jeden Fall viele Insider Bilder für dich bereit! Schau vorbei auf www.radundtour.de/rtf 66KM Fahrspaß: Wenn wir schon über RTFs und den Wattwurm sprechen, dann darf der heutige Tourentipp auch gerne ein Ausschnitt vom Rennradabenteuer sein. Den Streckenabschnitt von Rotenburg bis Niendorf kannst du direkt beim nächsten WattWurm in deine Tourenplanung einbauen. Bike der Episode: Wusstest du, dass neben dem Riese&Müller Load, das Roadster das beliebteste Rad im Team von Rad & Tour ist? Für dich haben wir uns mal umgehört, warum die Mitarbeitenden so auf das Riese & Müller Roadster abfahren und was es so besonders macht. Shownotes: https://www.radundtour.de/rtf

These days, most financial advisors (a term that is totally meaningless) claim to be acting in your best interests. Yet, very few are ALWAYS required to act as your fiduciary. How can you deteremine who is really on your side?Later, find out what people claim they really want for Christmas.Along the way we take a bunch of listener questions:What do we think of M-1 Finance?Do reported fund returns include fees?Can a 401k be moved into a Roth IRA?What are the differences between Fidelity's and Vanguard advisory services?Can I-Bonds be owned in an IRA? 

Interview NotesRob's live Tweet threadRob's archive of the provided RTFs (hex decoded)Rob's BLX Container ExtractorAll about Dennis Montgomery. Warning: this is a WIki rabbit hole.A Torrent of several gigs of data from the Cyber-Symposium is available at:magnet:?xt=urn:btih:39a9590de21e77687fdf7eacee4dd743f2683d72&dn=cyber-symposium&tr=udp://9.rarbg.me:2780/announceRapid Rundown NotesThe original Bleeping Computer story on Microsoft shutting off Basic AuthThe related story about Amit's Autodiscover bug finding that may have prompted the aboveA somewhat early reference to some WPAD bugsThe earliest reference Tod could find about WPAD exploits... which happened to be written by the very same Tod back in 2009.

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 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 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 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 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.

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 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 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.

In this episode, I have a great conversation with Chris Towler, a nano tech engineer and front end developer, all about Rich Text Fields, HTML, JSON and Markdown and how and when to use them in Contentful. ******************************* Questions Asked ******************************* Tell us about your background. What is nano scale technology? What got you interested in programming? How did you get into Contenful? Please define JSON? What does "stringify" mean from a development's perspective? Why is it important to stringify data? What is HTML formatting? What is markdown and how is it different than HTML? Why would people use markdown over HTML in their textfield? Explain the difference between a rich text field, a long text field and a short text field in Contentful? What are validation values differences between the 3 types of text fields? Give us the details of a Rich Text Field in Contentful. What are node types in the RTF field? Why is it important to have the formating separate from the content itself in a RTF field? How are node types in Rich Text Fields rendered into HTML? Can you extend the native Rich Text Fields to add your own formatting options for authors? Tell us about how you use custom content types to extend the formatting options of a Rich Text Field? How can custom content types to extend the RTF field help design systems? Can you limit the formatting capabilities an author has in a Rich Text Field? What's the difference between a link, embedded and inline entry in Rich Text Fields? Tell us about content previews and how they can be used to see what the content in an RTF field looks like? What are some best practices for pasting content into an RTF from Microsoft Word or Google Docs? Should we only use Contentful's RTFs over the long text fields? ******************************* Reference Links ******************************* Chris Towler’s Website (https://www.christowler.nyc/) Chris Towler’s Twitter (https://twitter.com/heyitstowler)

Kein Vereinstraining, keine RTFs und kein Espresso nach der Tour - wie in allen Teilen des Alltags macht sich auch die Corona-Krise auch im Rennrad-Alltag bemerkbar. Die ROADBIKE-Redakteure sprechen über ihre persönlichen Erfahrungen und geben Tipps, wie man trotz Corona, Kontaktverbot und Kurzarbeit effektiv trainieren, oder einfach nur Spaß beim Rennradfahren haben kann.

See photos of the tarot deck we used here:https://www.instagram.com/p/B_FuUzcpcM8/--Support the show at http://patreon.com/funcityventuresShare the show with your friends via https://funcity.ventures--@funcityventures is the show on twitter@funcityventures is the show on instagram@bijanstephen is TK@randwiches is Viv@nguersh is Luxeand @shodell is Lash@taylordotbiz is the bad boys and@mikerugnetta is everything else--Recorded at Fortunate Horse in Greenpoint BKProduced, edited and sound designed by Mike RugnettaPixlriffs' card is The StarOur music is by Sam Tyndall - https://pileofsecrets.bandcamp.comOur art is by Tess Stone - http://notdrunkenough.com/Our Discord mods are Olivia Gulin, Kestrel and KitThe voice of Artemis is Molly Templeton--CC-BY Licensed SFX and music used in this Episode:https://freesound.org/people/RTFS/sounds/180453/

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 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 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

Jacob is an actor--a rising young talent struggling to find himself. After suffering a meltdown on national television, Jacob instead finds himself struggling with possible career suicide. One morning he awakens to discover something else entirely: his exact duplicate; a man named Troy Maxim. Troy is handsome, charming, eager to please, but something about him seems the slightest bit artificial—and dangerous. Jacob soon learns that the role of his lifetime may the one he never knew he agreed to take. Written by Corey Payka.Directed by Robert AK Gonyo. Starring Laura Iris Hill, Cristina Pitter, Josh Adam Ramos, Rob Karma Robinson, and Kia Sayyadi. Sound engineering by Liz Regan. Sound design and editing by Robert AK Gonyo. Play development by Sarah Misch. Artwork by Andrew Singer. dtc radio theme by Spencer Robelen. Host by Pip Gengenbach. All other music and sounds used with permission from Audioblocks. “Night on the Docks,” "Night on the Docks - Trumpet,” and “Night on the Docks - Sax” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ From FreeSound.org: "Hang up hand down phone.wav” by davidferoli, Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ Thank you also to FreeSound users 123jorre456, Adam_N, aldenroth2, bdunis4, benniknop, dmunk, freeborn, FunnyMan374, jeremjuru, jessepash, jrssandoval, kayasavas87, mdsn, MegaPenguin13, nmarciniegasm, piratecesar, planetcomedy, postworkflow, RTFS, and Vampirella17.

Rob Krar discusses his impressive 2014 victory at Western States. Kasie Enman talks babies, families and making a comeback. Scott Forbes won the UK's Race to the Stones and has a story to tell. Renee McGregor provides an informative Talk Training and Emelie is back wirh Smiles and Miles. A blog, the News, Up and Coming Races and Stevie Kremer co hosts.

Man könnte meinen, Markus würde in ner Disco sitzen... Äh... Markus sitzt in einer Disco! Und zwar auf Gran Canaria... nunja, wenigstens Christian bleibt bodenständig und in Köln. Womit dann auch das erste Thema klar wäre.00:00 Begrüßung Warum die schlechte Tonquali?! Was ist da los??? 01:20 Trainingslager Anreise und warum Gran Canaria - viele Skandinavier da unterwegs - Karneval und St. Patricks Day, Markus lässt es krachen - Glückshotel mit einem Schweden - Tag1 - lanschaftlich eher trist abseits der Bettenburgen sehr hübsch, aber teilweise gleichgültig gegenüber Natur - ohne Garmin = schlecht vorbereitet - Markus "ruhig angehen lassen" - Tag2 dann in kurz kurz - die Anstiege und die Berge - immer schön die gleichen Fixpunkte zu treffen - im Norden fast immer windig, dafür landschaftlich schöner, der Süden eher windstill - Tag3 28:09 Wie fährt er denn der neue Bock? Fährt sich besser aber schwierig zu sagen ohne direkten Vergleich - extrem steif bei höheren Geschwindigkeiten - was macht den Unterschied, der Rahmen, die Laufräder? - Es muss Spaß machen - Ich möcht nicht mehr ohne elektrische Schaltung - Akku wich schlimm im Alltag - schnellers schalten einfacher möglich - und auch noch Tag 4 - Markus Bilder... "Die likes sind eigentlich hates!" - Kompressionsstrümpfe sinnig oder nicht? Beide begeistert - wie nutzt man die Tage optimal 51:15 Christian fährt die Saisoneröffnung Saisoneröffnung bei optimalem Wetter - Über 900 Teilnehmer - dieses Jahr auch sehr viele RTFs in Köln mal wieder - 56:00 Ein neues Cervorossso Kit ist da Christian ist sehr sehr glücklich - Tolles Trikot, fantastische Hose - Trikot mit Sillikonstoppern - die Hose ist die beste die Christian bisher gefahren ist - passt wie angegossen - nicht das letzte Geld was Christian dort gelassen hat - war ein Tipp vom Christof - nutzt man ein Angebot wirklich, wenn man etwas zurückschicken könnte, auch nach mehreren Tagen - Castelli Armlinge sehr lang geschnitten 1:15:30 RC Adler RTF EIne Art Köln SChuld Frechen Gedächtnis RTF - Empfehlung von Christian für das kommende Wochenende - ein Velohometrikot? - Anfrage wg. Werbung, was halten die Hörer davon? - noch eine "Nichtempfehlung" für einen Film und eine Empfehlung Vielen Dank, für euer zuhören und bis zur nächsten Folge.