Transcript
If you're wondering what's up with the new changes of the active shooter incident management checklist, you've come to the right place. We're going to talk about that today. My name is Bill Godfrey. Along with me today is Joe Ferrara. We're both instructors with C3 Pathways, part of the active shooter incident management instructional team. And we are going to talk about the highlights of these new changes. We're going to highlight some key issues. give you a little bit of the background on why we made some of those things. And when we're done, we're going to share with you some resources that may be helpful to you. So with that, Joe, let's go ahead and jump in here. OK, well, welcome to the C3 Pathways rollout of the version 3.0 checklist. And I'm going to go ahead and call it the new checklist since we've made so many changes to it. So this new version is 3.0, and it's going to be available on our website. as well as the help guide. We're rolling out the new apps in both Android and iPhone. All that's going to be available here. Okay, we're going to go through a radio traffic demo. Now this is a shortened version of the one we typically use in our training. And really the purpose is to illustrate the different roles and some of the changes and listen to it in real time or what it sounds like as someone's working through the checklist. So please follow along as we do this and you know we'll stop it a couple times to explain some of the some of the updates and changes. Listen along. Contact one has command entering front of the school. There you go. Okay so you saw there that patrol 101 arrived on scene established command and identified himself as contact one. Now what's what's the reasoning for this? The primary reasoning for that is that is their role when they arrive there. And you can see here radio ID contact one. In fact, there'll be a highlight arrow that comes up and shows that is the critical change here in this portion of the checklist. Again, contact one is in command. There's no change to the national incident management system ICS process. However, The name is contact one, which matches their role. And so the interesting background on this is when we were doing training all over the country, law enforcement, when we use the typical ICS approach that the fire service uses with the transitions of command, it became a little bit confusing because you had people through a very rapid succession in the first few minutes who went through several different name changes. And that became a source of confusion, not only in the training environment, but if you happen to miss that transition on the radio, you ended up calling for command and when you meant to be calling for tactical or you ended up wanting to talk to contact one, you know, things like that. So this actually simplifies that process. It makes it easier for law enforcement. It makes it easier in the training environment. And quite frankly, it just makes more sense. But the reality here is that contact one who is going by contact one on the radio, they're still in command right now at the moment, because they're the only ones that are there. And as the others link up with them, they'll still have that command role until the fifth man takes the tactical position and assumes command from them, which is coming up in just a minute. So this is basically a, it seems like a very subtle change, but it's actually very significant change in simplification for law enforcement to make it easier to use. And this reflects what we've learned not only in training, but actually what a number of large agencies who have implemented the checklist process have found have worked better for them on the law enforcement side in getting through this. Okay, so let's continue on in the checklist. Our next up is the second to the fourth arriving, and we'll listen to the audio of that. Okay. Okay, so with second and fourth arriving, you know, previously, When these individuals got on scene, they communicated with command and they formed a contact team. Well, guess what? The first arriving unit or units that are in command and are identified as contact one, contact teams already formed. So these individuals, as they arrive, nearly communicate with contact one, perform link up procedures for safety. And here we are, we're ready to continue engaging on the incident. So let's look at more continuation of the checklist and let's dive deeper and let's listen to what happens when that critical fifth man gets there. Absolutely. You know, Joe, right before we move on, I wanted to make a comment about the link-up. You know, as we've traveled across the country, we find about half and half law enforcement officers who know what we mean by link-up procedures and quite a number that don't. And this is essentially something that's being taught in a lot of the law enforcement training. that's a process for trying to avoid blue on blue shootings when you're moving inside the building when one team is approaching another team the idea of being able to shout down the hallway around the corner blue blue blue to be able to pick up that that indication if your training hasn't previously given you any link-up procedures we would certainly encourage you to seek out some that has the alert program Texas State University has a lot of link-up procedures. The laser program with Louisiana State NCBRT has link-up procedures that they talk about. All of them are a little bit different but really they all get at the same thing and that is how do we safely link up with each other. So I just wanted to mention that before we moved on. All right. All right, so here we are at the fifth man position. And if you caught that, which I hope you did, his radio ID was tactical. And certainly, as that fifth man arrives, he assumed command. But his functional role is that of the tactical group supervisor. He's going to keep that radio title throughout this incident. He's going to identify as that. So in the previous version of the checklist, there was a little bit of change out here. The fifth man would get there, he would get a briefing, just like you heard, from those first units, he would designate them officially as contact one, and then he would call himself command. Later on, as you'll see as we simplify the first arriving supervisor process, we'll see why this reduces, in our opinion and in our practice, we've seen this reducing some confusion with radio communications on the scene. So our fifth man's there. He's gotten a briefing. He's assumed command. He's now an ID of technical. Bill? Well, and note that one of the other steps was to set a staging location, which is obviously a key element so that you can avoid the overconvergence. One of the things that I, you know, I want to just kind of briefly touch on here. And anybody that's had our training has heard us talk about this before. And that is the fifth man idea. Really the issue here is not whether the literal fifth officer arriving on scene is the one that assumes these duties, but more this is a marker of the point at which you need to start thinking about somebody taking charge outside, as opposed to having 15, 20 officers dump inside. somebody needs to be able to begin organizing that outside. Because once you get more than 10 officers on the scene, it becomes almost impractical to try to get your arms around that. Really, to have success here, we need to get our arms around it and have somebody coordinating that response in the first few minutes early on so that as it grows, we don't lose control of it. When we first started developing the checklist years and years ago, when we started going through the validation progress, process we were struggling. And it was actually one of a senior officer with a metro department that was working with us at the time that gave us the idea of the fifth man. And this was a key turning point in that early work that allowed a lot of this to kind of begin coming together. So whether it's the fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, that's not as important as recognizing that once you've got the first four officers down range, somebody needs to start thinking about getting control of it in the outside. And whether it's the fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth guy, that's not as important as somebody stepping up and taking the role. So I just wanted to kind of throw that in there as we move on. So next we're gonna listen to that first LE supervisor arriving. Okay, so that first le supervisor has arrived on scene He's gotten a good briefing from the fifth man who was in command and also There's a reminder the radio ID tactical now previously in the checklist this first le supervisor not only had to do all that but he had the additional step of Designating that person has the tactical group again. That's their role. That's what they're doing now this person the first LE supervisor is going to set up an official command post and you see one of the critical steps on here is set command post location so that all follow-on responders know exactly where the command post is and also it's important for everybody to know that command is no longer mobile. Command is no longer in the forward area or downrange. Command is now clearly in a cold zone location. Command is a fixed facility. and he gave the command post location, now that all follow-on units or any check-in units or any units that are assigned to go-to command know exactly where that is. Again, with practice, we've seen a lot less confusion in the process, especially in this critical phase when that first field supervisor is getting there, whether it be sergeant or lieutenant from the police agency. and they're back and forth on the radio, they're getting a briefing, but then they're talking about, okay, on command, you're gonna be tactical and don't, you know, make sure the other guys contact. All that goes away. Tactical was tactical, command is now passed, and now we're calling this person to command. And that sums it up. So, I mean, if you're kind of watching how this progressed, we have our first arriving officer who is contact one right from the beginning, even though at the time he's by himself, he or she is by themselves. But they're contact one right from the beginning, but they have command. They're in charge until tactical gets there and somebody assumes that role of tactical. Again, whether that's the fifth, sixth, seventh, whatever, that fifth man assumes a role of tactical. They are tactical on the radio, but they're assuming command away from contact one. So now you have tactical and contact one talking on the radio. And then when the first supervisor gets there, whatever rank that may be, that first supervisor that gets there, they assume command from tactical, and now that first supervisor is actually command on the radio. And that's really what we're driving to. So the process itself is still the exact same structure, none of that change. But this change, while again, I said earlier, while it seems very simple on the surface, it is a significant change that in our experience has dramatically simplified. And removed some of the challenges for law enforcement and being able to use this structure Okay, we're gonna move on to Some other changes in the checklist the first area we're going to talk about is the law enforcement primary checklist and the intelligence investigation section big change here is that this lines up with the NIMS guidance on intelligence investigation as a section and Just the naming of it to intelligence investigations. Also, if you notice a little further down that list, we changed to the reunification branch from the reunification group. More on that here very shortly. The next major change here was there used to be common responsibilities. Well, while they're common to all responders on the scene in all disciplines, we felt that the term multi-discipline was more appropriate. meaning that whether it's police or fire, EMS, emergency management, these are all areas of the checklist that are critical to everyone in those roles to review. You'll see the PIO section here, you'll see staging in here, and then the all-important reunification branch, which I'm going to talk about next. We've always had reunification as a consideration and part of this process. We've practiced it and exercised it, we've studied it, we've researched it. We've worked with the I love you guys foundation and the SRM standard reunification method is the process that we use. We've simply taken that process and laid it out into our checklist. And certainly here you can see there's the reunification branch. Now there are some critical areas in this branch as you'll see in follow on slides and I'll explain that where this branch. answers to, but this is a branch under the intelligence investigation section, which is why I kind of spoke of intel and investigations first. Now some important things here is not only setting up the reunification branch, but additionally communicating with the PIO about the location. You can see right above that arrow where it says announce relocation site when authorized. Well that relocation site is set by the reunification branch director However, they will communicate that site internally first, and it will not be released publicly until they're ready to start receiving loved ones, parents, family to the reunification site. And the reason behind this is really very, very simple. If you announce the location of the reunification site before you've got security and staff in place, you're going to create a huge problem for yourself and trying to get it organized, not to mention you have the potential to have angry parents and family members that show up at the location that was publicly announced and there's no officials there ready to meet them. So really, this is just a check and balance in the process to make sure that the cat doesn't get out of the bag. We need to pick a location, we need to get resources there, get it set up, make sure that it's safe, get a security perimeter up, and then put it out for an announcement. Absolutely. Okay, let's move on to the flip side of our checklist and we're going to talk about the updates to the IED or improvised explosive device portion. Now in this section, we talked about the bomb cover and bomb go concept. And you can see that's been added. Also, some things have been added that you may think are just blatant, however, as part of a checklist, especially an emergency checklist, they bear reminding. So not only the bomb cover and bomb go, but in big red there, you see never touch bombs. Important safety tip. Yes. Yeah. Yes. And bombers are bombs. I know that sounds, may even sound a little bit silly, but if someone is created an IED and they're the bomber, then they may have devices planted on them. So we treat Bombers as bombs Being very explicit. Yes. Yeah, never touch a bomb. And if a bomber is a bomb, then you don't touch the bomber Okay, so other things in here in this ID checklist are We've converted our terminology. So it used to say expose victim rescue Again, you know, if you've taken a our classes we're very distinct about the difference between a survivor and a victim. In our book, a victim is someone who has died as a result of this event. A survivor is someone, whether injured or not, has made it through the event. So if we're going to rescue someone, an exposed survivor rescue we feel is more important. And we feel that No survivors threatened is a more appropriate statement than no victims threatened. And I'll let Bill elaborate a little bit more, because he's the originator of the survivor versus victim. Yeah, and I don't know that I want to take enough time today to tell the whole story. It's a little bit of an amusing story of how it occurred. But what started off as kind of a funny conversation with some survivors of actual active shooter events and telling stories. It turned into a very serious one when we got into the discussion about the difference between the emotional impact of the victim label versus someone who's lived through this being able to see themselves as a survivor. And it turns out that there's a common pattern to the recovery process. And that almost always starts with seeing themselves as a survivor and not as a victim. And the reason that we highlight that, the reason we talk about it in our training, is guess where they're getting the victim label? They're getting it from us as responders. And I'm sure that everyone watching this like us, we got this business to help people, not to cause more damage. And if we can use some different terminology and help speed the recovery process and help people heal, then all the better. So that's why we're very, very sensitive about using the term survivor for everyone. who lives through the incident, again, as Joe said, whether they're injured or not, and reserving that victim label exclusively for fatalities from the attack. Absolutely. And just two other quick areas on here, and you'll see some magic arrows pop up. We have one more here with the change, and that is the intel and investigation section. Again, it was a simple change, but to be more aligned with NIMS, we felt that we should have the exact terminology. And then under the intelligence and investigation section is the all-important addition of the reunification branch. And you'll see that there right below that. So that was another change on this page. And if you recall from any of our previous training or the previous version of the checklist, reunification was a group under Intel. What we discovered through training and exercises and practice is that was too low in the organizational chain. There needed to be a lot more organization under that. And we've learned that and kind of worked through that with the I Love You Guys Foundation in trying to refine their curriculum and our curriculum together, but bring those things into alignment. And we'll talk a little bit more at the tail end here when we take over their website. But concurrent with our release of this new material and the changeover of our curriculum, The I Love You Guys Foundation is also updating their curriculum, which I don't think is going to be out today, the day that we're recording this on July 30 of 2019, but it will be out very, very soon. Absolutely. Okay, so that concludes the overview of the checklist changes. Our help guide obviously has been updated to reflect the checklist changes as well, and that consequently is version 3.0 of the help guide, which is available on our website. And I'm going to turn it over to Bill, and he's got some great links for you to go to to get more information on this. All right. So I'm going to share here real quick our website stuff. Here we go. So if you go to our website, c3pathways.com, and then right up at the main link on Active Shooter under Checklist, this is where you can go to find almost all of the checklist assets. So, of course, there's some thumbnails here of the checklist, but you've got the link to download the PDF. There's a link to the checklist explainer video. Now, this is the radio video that we were playing for you a little bit, Clips. That's actually 10 minutes long, recorded from one of our active shooter incident management training sessions. It was edited to avoid overlapping radio traffic and to consolidate for time, but you'll certainly get the idea. We do have a phone app that's available for both Android and iPhone. Those are being updated today. The Android has already dropped and gone live as we're recording this, and we're expecting the iPhone version to go live sometime later this evening. You also have access to the copyright clearance. So we apologize for this. We wish it weren't really necessary, but it's one of those things. So the copy, the checklist is actually our copyrighted property. You do need permission to use it. There is no charge for that. It is free for you to use. It's just simply a quick form that you fill out to put your name, your agency name, a couple of things to agree to for the terms. And when you click submit, it immediately emails you the permission, write an email, and files a copy with us as well. There are some FAQs that are available to you, as well as the help guide link that you can download. Here's the links to the official mobile app. And this is the checklist explainer video that we talked about from our YouTube channel where you can find a bunch of other resources. So that's a lot of the resources that we've got on the website. One of the things that you might want a little plug for our podcast series, we do have, if you're not familiar with it, a series of podcasts that we do, which is the instructor sitting down, kind of like Joe and I have talked, where we pick a particular topic and we kind of drill down on it. So some interesting things to pick up there. Now, our... Active Shooter Incident Management Advanced Course, which you can find information about on the website. It is funded by DHS. So through the National Domestic Preparedness Consortium, through TEEX, we have funding from DHS to deliver 12 of these courses a year over the country. As a responder, you can apply to try to get one of those deliveries, and those deliveries are free to use, so there's no cost to them. If you're wondering how to sign up, I'm so glad you asked. You go to the Alert website, and it's alert with two R's. That's important. Alert.org with two R's. Up in the top link, you'll see a link for training, and under that is a link for hosting requests. Now, once you hit hosting requests, there's a little more drill down you have to do, so follow along. First thing you want to do is pick first responder, as opposed to the business corporate one. And you're looking for the Alert-funded training, because presumably you're wanting to submit a request. for the training that isn't going to cost you any money. Once you click on that, it will bring you to this hosting form, which is very short and very simple. It'll literally take you 30 seconds to fill out. Most important thing here is under course type, pick ASIM, A-S-I-M, for active shooter incident management. Put in this information, click that you're not a robot and submit it, and that'll get you into the request queue. Now, I do want to kind of set a realistic expectation. The request queue is very significant. The requests that we do are not necessarily in the order that they come in. There are factors about how many have been done in that state. Is it a state where we haven't done one yet? Any other needs if they have special events of national significance that have special security requirements? All of those things can be extra considerations that might change the order and where you land on the list. And those are things that you can tell us down in the justification as you fill that out. So again, go to alert.org, that's alert with two R's, click on the training hosting request, navigate through the first responder for alert funded and pick ASIM, Active Shooter Incident Management, out of the course, type it into the form. The last thing I want to share with you is the I Love You Guys Foundation website. So it's iloveyouguys.org and the The actual name, the U in I Love You Guys is the letter U. However, they were astute enough to also get the website for I Love You Guys with the U spelled out Y-O-U. So either way you can get there. Once you get there, you can look under their programs. Their programs are all available for free as part of the I Love You Guys Foundation mission. Now, if you actually want them to come out and conduct a training session for you, there's obviously some cost to that. But in terms of the material, they have the standard response protocol, which they split between both the K-12 and for higher education. They also have the standard reunification method. So while we don't dive into the standard response protocol, understand that this standard reunification method is a part of this standard response protocol that you'll get in the training. And this standard reunification method is what we've synchronized with our curriculum. And again, as we look at this today, they have not released the new version, but I know John Michael and his team are actively working on that. And we do expect that to drop within the next week or two, which I think is going to SRM version 3.0. I think 2.0 is the current version. Look for that to go to version 3.0 and you'll see when you look through that, that that process aligns exactly with what we've got in the checklist process. And I think that about wraps it up. Joe, you got any closing comments there? No, and please feel free to contact us if you have any questions about the checklist process or any of our other products or services and training we provide. Have a great day and be safe. Thank you. Take care of yourselves and thank you for spending time with us. Stay safe.
