Ep 118: You Use This Everyday
Episode 118
Published Aug 18, 2025
Last updated Feb 18, 2026
Duration: 23:57
Episode Summary
This episode explores how first responders can build and maintain active shooter incident management skills by incorporating key practices and terminology into everyday calls, routine incidents, and special events. By doing so, personnel develop stronger habits, improve coordination, and identify training needs, all while preparing themselves for critical incidents even in the absence of real-life events.
Episode Notes
Today’s episode tackles the question How can first responders get real practice with active shooter incident management—when true incidents are (thankfully) rare in a career? Our panel explores practical strategies for integrating incident management skills into everyday calls and routine events—so you're always prepared, even if you only see a "big one" once in your career.
Key highlights:
- Discover how to build skills by applying active shooter incident management techniques during regular calls (like missing persons, single-patient shootings, or barricaded suspect events).
- Learn why adopting consistent terminology and roles on low-risk or special event calls (like fairs or football games) builds strong incident command habits.
- Hear examples of leveraging staging, tactical roles, and unified command in day-to-day operations—on both fire/EMS and law enforcement sides.
- Find out how these daily practices help responders break down silos, develop relationships, identify training gaps, and get more comfortable with critical incident management tools.
- Tips on building relationships, practicing rapid triage, and involving all agencies in pre-planning for special events.
Even if you respond to routine incidents or planned gatherings, there are constant opportunities to use and strengthen your active shooter response skills. This episode is packed with real-world advice, stories, and actionable ideas you can put to work immediately!
View this episode on YouTube at: https://youtu.be/2zABgzQ7Yi0
Transcript
Bill Godfrey:If you want to be great at something, you gotta practice it a lot. When it comes to active shooter incident management, that might be once in a career. So how do you learn this? How do you get good at it? How do you get practice? That's today's topic, stick around.
Welcome to "The Active Shooter Incident Management Podcast." My name is Bill Godfrey, your podcast host. I'm here with three of my other instructors from the National Center for Integrated Emergency Response. Across the table for me, Scott Formankiewicz from the fire and EMS side. Scott, welcome back in.
Scott Formankiewicz:
Thanks for having me.
Bill Godfrey:
Terrance Weems from our law enforcement side. Terrence, good to have you in the house.
Terrance Weems:
Yes sir. Thanks for being here.
Bill Godfrey:
And Kami Maertz, an old pro here at the podcast studio.
Kami Maertz:
Good morning.
Bill Godfrey:
Thanks for coming back in. Also from the law enforcement side and Scott and Terrence, guys glad to be in Florida?
Terrance Weems:
Oh, without a doubt.
Bill Godfrey:
It's a little chilly where you are.
Scott Formankiewicz:
It's so cold.
Bill Godfrey:
Well welcome down.
Terrance Weems:
Some would say freezing, I think is the scientific term.
Bill Godfrey:
So today's topic, we're gonna talk about the opportunities to get good at active shooter incident management practices by practicing it in real life. And so the idea here is, where are the opportunities to practice this on our everyday calls, our ordinary calls, playing events, things like that. Kami, you wanna lead us off?
Kami Maertz:
Yeah, absolutely. And so I think one of the biggest things is, when we're looking at this is, we're we have to get everybody to the terminology. So it's breaking it down to basic calls so that we can use it terminology over and over again so we get used to it. The things, one of the biggest ones that we started on initially was using on missing people, right? So fire rescue, y'all use staging all the time. That was something that was kind of foreign to us. We didn't use a whole lot. So when it first came out, that's where we started with that baby step of using it on missing people. We had two go to the scene and check the scene. Everybody else went to staging and then we put them in perimeter locations from there. But it started that staging. And then when we started to other scenes, say a little bit larger scenes, we started using tactical. And so that they got used to hearing tactical, people got used to calling themselves tactical, people got used to hearing command, all of those things. So say if we had a subject in a house, maybe a non-criminal barricade, something like that. We used a tactical position, but we started using them, people started getting used to the monikers.
Bill Godfrey:
That's a really great idea. Terrence, what about you, also on the law enforcement side, now you're in state police, you're a little bit different level, also district commander, a little bit different level. Where do you see the opportunities for the routine stuff to deploy some of these things?
Terrance Weems:
In my practice, I believe what we do or what I do is try and use this every day, right? So my district, we have between two to four pursuits a day, so two to four pursuits a day, whether we're starting them or another agency, the amount of crashes that we take, the other incidents that we respond to on a regular basis, what troopers want to do and what police officers want to do generally is everybody wants to be involved in whatever that thing is. It's our responsibility to make sure that somebody pulls back to make sure that we're utilizing our resource properly, so whether I'm using my budget or whether I'm using my people is my responsibility to make sure that I'm using them properly and getting the most out of the assets that we have.
And I believe that's how we do it on a daily basis. So instead of you having, so let's say for pursuit, caravaning is not allowed with Indiana State Police. That's anything more than five vehicles, right? Whether they be five troopers, five county folk, and one trooper, that's too many, right? So we're making sure that we're utilizing them and able to pull our resources back as we need them to move them in other places. And that's one way that we do it. Do it there instead of having six people going to one scene, no, we only need, depending on the scene, this is how many people we need. So we can effectively handle that situation.
Bill Godfrey:
Scott, on the fire EMS side, where do you think some of the daily opportunities are to use some of these?
Scott Formankiewicz:
So I think, even speaking from me back home, we've started using it on some of our acts of violence. So shootings, specifically with just one or two. So not the true definition of an active shooter, but it would be one of those where our battalion chief is going to actively go and seek out somebody from law enforcement they're gonna co-locate. So I think just getting in the habit of that, they've started doing that a little bit. As far as other scenes, we'll have our chiefs that again, will show up and they'll maybe start assuming some of those other roles. They might be, "I'm gonna notify hospital," which would typically be a transport type of thing. However, it's at least getting them in the mindset of, "Okay, these are some of the critical tasks that we need to accomplish." So it's been a lot on everyday stuff.
Bill Godfrey:
Yeah, and I think one of the huge missed opportunities on the EMS side is kind of what I'll call the loss of triage skills or mass casualty skills. Years and years ago you might only have one medic for three or four ambulances. And so you were used to having to manage multiple patients. But that's kind of been a lost art form because the attitude prevailing now, if you go to a car accident with three or four patients, you just call a couple more ambulances and, "This patient's mine that patient's yours." I think breaking that mentality is a missed opportunity to train yourself and your crews to rapidly assess multiple patients and to get past just, "Well we use START or we use SALT or we use whatever." Okay, great, you've put them into red yellows and greens and you've got four reds, which one's going first? And that medical judgment piece is something I think gets lost on the EMS side. What about special events?
Kami Maertz:
So for special events, if you're thinking about things like most places have county fairs, things like that, right? Which are kind of medium sized in our location or events, depending on your area. They can be very large, football games if you have a local football team, things like that. So Jacksonville, I know they're very big about Jaguar games. They started using RTFs and tactical locations and contact teams and things like that that are already in stage. We use it for our fair, right? So we're a smaller community outside of Jacksonville and so we use it for fairs though. But we have all those things that are put into place, but everyone already knows what their assignment is, what their role is going ahead. And we've had multiple meetings and everybody's kind of aware of who the incident manager is and what would happen if a situation did break out. So we're preparing everybody to learn that, but in a safe ICS format, right? So we have the ability to kind of build it out for everyone to see.
Bill Godfrey:
Yeah. Terrence, what do you think? What are the opportunities for what we otherwise might think of routine, special events to roll some of this stuff out?
Terrance Weems:
Well, I'm from Northwest Indiana, but Indianapolis is, what would they call it? It is the capital for sports almost in the country, whether it be football, basketball events. Obviously the Big 10 is awesome in everything that we do.
Bill Godfrey:
Wait a minute. You're saying Indiana has the best sports teams?
Terrance Weems:
Yes.
Kami Maertz:
He's like, "Yeah, that's actually what I said."
Bill Godfrey:
Okay, moving on.
Terrance Weems:
So, and I'm talking about collegiate sports, right? Because obviously the Bears rule, but we have every year the Big 10 championship is gonna be there. For the most part, collegiate sports is gonna be happening all the time in addition to all of the other things that are going on around the state. So during the fall you have football season, the Indiana State Police is participating at different various, without naming those universities, various universities. So we do this not every Saturday during the fall, but just about every Saturday there's a plan in place because of what we do. And then you take that to the Indianapolis 500, you take that to the Brickyard, you take that to a local high school game. So you're having an opportunity, whether it be on a Friday night, a Saturday or Sunday, we're doing this on a regular basis and you get good at it. We moved to this a number of years ago, before you would get a sheet of paper, it would have your name on it and your location. And now you have the whole packet, everybody's responsibility. So you know where you fit in the bigger scheme of things. And I think sometimes that helps you to actually work it out, so to speak.
Bill Godfrey:
Now at the risk of opening a wound on the NIMS sides, is it actually labeled as an incident action plan or is that-
Kami Maertz:
We do.
Terrance Weems:
We do.
Bill Godfrey:
You do? Wow.
Terrance Weems:
We do.
Bill Godfrey:
Look at that Scott, Law enforcement incident action plan.
Kami Maertz:
We have Sheriff Cook though, so-
Bill Godfrey:
Well that's true.
Kami Maertz:
We're cheating.
Bill Godfrey:
That's true. So Scott, on the fire EMS side, the pre-planned events, where you're deploying, what are the opportunities there?
Scott Formankiewicz:
I think it's a great opportunity for a couple of different things. One, obviously we're trying to provide this care and be on the ready for anything that happens with citizens. So having, whether it be, you call it a QRF, you know, so whether that be fire and EMS and law enforcement together, which is what we know as a rescue task force, I think it's a good thing for a couple different reasons. One, like I said, you're providing that care, but two, it's an opportunity to essentially train. So you are now mentally in the mindset and I've had a couple times where we've done this and I've had people come back, "Oh, it would've been nice to do this. Oh, we should have done that." So every time that we do one of these, it's an opportunity in a way for us to train and figure out, find the gaps and identify and deal with them accordingly. So it's almost like we're programming ourselves that these incidents are happening, even if they're not.
Bill Godfrey:
Isn't it an opportunity to build relationships too?
Kami Maertz:
That's exactly, and that's the biggest thing is and when you're saying that, and that is what it is, right? So we're forcing ourselves to kind of be in that same area and share that space and find out what our roles would naturally be. So we started implementing that though as even in command, right? Where our fire rescue guys coming in they were pushing a guy up to our tactical position to where those are natural relationships that they need to start building. And that's how we're doing it on incidents that are not as severe as a active shooter event, right? That are lower level, but that we're building those bonds or our RTFs if we're doing lower level, right, that they're just sitting around for most of the day probably just hanging out, right? We're ready for something to happen, but they're just hanging out. And those are important relationships to have.
Scott Formankiewicz:
And sometimes that's when those questions come up. We'll have standing there in a group of people that on the fire EMS side, I might have law enforcement. "Hey, so if this happens, what do you want me to do? What should my role be?" And it's a good time for us to have those conversations and think and pre-plan a little bit. And then it's that getting to know each other, the introduction of what our roles are, what our responsibilities are, and how we fit into the big picture,
Terrance Weems:
Right. And put them in that same room, breaks up the silos they have. No-
Kami Maertz:
Absolutely.
Terrance Weems:
You know, the bigger the room, the more opportunity for a silo. But you put them in that conference room for that incident command, right? And they are there, they're able to be there. So they have to have those conversations
Kami Maertz:
And you assign them as a team, right?
Terrance Weems:
Exactly.
Kami Maertz:
So you're an RTF, so you're a team. And so when you get that, then that kind of creates your own silo. Now you're a team, but you have those entities that are working together and working next to even y'all for as long as we have now is, I've learned so much from y'all's job that I've never would've known, I never would've thought about, what you could put in the back of an ambulance, of the different triage levels that you could put back there, of hospital counts, things like that that we take advantage for granted. Where like, "You can just throw as many as you want to a hospital, it's a hospital, they have stuff."
Terrance Weems:
Right.
Kami Maertz:
But learning those and having them talk and communicate and realize those specialties is really important.
Bill Godfrey:
Yeah, I remember hearing a story about a community that had implemented this at some football games where they had, they organized their officers into contact teams. Now I think in fairness, they were just partnering up and doing them in twos and they organized fire EMS into rescue task forces with some officers as well. And these were not high school, they were pro-level games and were there some drinking and some-
Kami Maertz:
Yes.
Bill Godfrey:
What do you call that thing when you got one team against the other team and people get a little excited about that stuff.
Terrance Weems:
Competition?
Bill Godfrey:
Yeah. Yeah. That sometimes gets outta hand. But in the very beginning, the very first time they did it, everybody was kind of groaning and moaning, "I don't know why we're doing this. This is stupid, it's a waste of time." And then the very first game that they did it, they realized very quickly that almost every time there was a medical incident, whether it be a drunk or a fight or whatever, there was some level of security challenge with the crowds, and they always needed law enforcement there. And now in their rescue task force, they had a package with them. And so I thought that was kind of a really, really interesting perspective.
So what are some opportunities, I want to dig down a little more specific. You hit on a couple, but you hit on them really fast. On the law enforcement side, what are some types of calls that warrant at least some basic incident management on the law enforcement side where you can stand up and use some of these things?
Kami Maertz:
For the ASIM terms specifically is, because obviously incident management's every day, no matter if we think we're using it or not, we're using it on every day. Any call you go to, you're doing some level of incident management. But when we're talking about breaking it down into a true incident management, where it's at a higher level is going to be when you're going to the suicidal calls, you have somebody in a house, possibly a hostage barricade, things like that. Or on the other side where it is, it's a non-criminal barricade, we're trying to make decisions so we're slowing down. You might have somebody who has barricaded themselves in for whatever reason, maybe they have a warrant, anything like that, where there's not a risk to the public, anything like that. But it slows it down. But it allows us to use those from a safer, safer ability to be able to kind of break down and have a tactical position, have a command position, all of those things.
And so we use them on a lot. Like I said, basic, basic level with no risk would be like a missing person, right? We're using a staging, technically we're kind of using a tactical, but honestly we can kind of mold those, which is part of incident command, right? If you don't need additional, you don't need additional, you make it work for you. To where that we have somebody who's running the resources, who's managing the perimeter, managing the people who are at the scene and managing people at staging or directing people from staging to where do they go, right? So you have a staging manager. So there's different calls like that that we're using on that may be criminal, may be non-criminal, but that we're just putting those people in places.
Bill Godfrey:
Terrance, on your side, opportunities, manhunts, suspects from serious incidents, what?
Terrance Weems:
Oh, without a doubt. So we can take a manhunt, right? So within my area, I have two prisons and seven county jails, right? So means I have seven counties, but so two prisons and seven county jails, a manhunt is gonna happen. And what do police want to do? We want to go to where the action is. We want to be the last place where that person was last seen. But if you do that, then now all of your resources are going there. That's a perfect opportunity for you to use this program. Not an active shooter, but it allows you to utilize your resources. That's the whole purpose of incident management.
And from time to time, from the months of November to March, we have this thing called snow and with a snowstorm that gives you an opportunity, it truly does to put this in practice because now you are now really forced to utilize your resources and to make sure that you are positioning your people and staging them if need be. And you have to work with other agencies, you have to work with the department of transportation, you have to work with each of the fire and EMS companies that are in your particular area. It forces you to do that. And then it gives us an opportunity even afterwards to have an after action to see what happens and how it went.
Kami Maertz:
Yeah, when you're talking about also with the getting on scene and everybody, all the deputies wanna go to that main scene, right? Where the last person was, I call that sticky glue, right? And so it's like a sticky glue on a scene is everybody wants to get there and then you can't get them to leave. So once they get on your scene, it's almost impossible. You could tell somebody 10 times and be like, "I need you to go do this." But they want to stay there. But if you put them at a staging location, it's almost like putting a bull behind a gate. They want to do something, they want to be somewhere so they're more apt to go and listen to you and not overwhelm your scene, ruin your evidence. Because they're not showing by your, and you don't get that sticky glue effect where you can't get them back off your scene. You put them at a staging or while they're en route to staging, you start putting them in perimeter locations. But they get the moniker of staging, they get the purpose of staging and they get that training lesson of it, which is really important.
Terrance Weems:
And it allows you to be able to get in and out of that scene. You can manage those people.
Kami Maertz:
Yes.
Bill Godfrey:
Wait a minute, you mean police cars won't be blocking the way that the ambulances need to go?
Kami Maertz:
Exactly.
Terrance Weems:
Right. Despite popular belief, police cars are not like invisible. I don't know if anybody knows whose Vision is for Marvel where you can just go through. It don't work like that.
Bill Godfrey:
And they always seem to be parked right in front of fire hydrants, don't they Scott?
Scott Formankiewicz:
Always. Yeah, we're right in front of the house.
Kami Maertz:
We're really good about that. We have maps for that.
Bill Godfrey:
Scott, on the fire EMS side, most agencies respond to some number of shootings, fairly violent events or in some cases stabbings. Is that a missed opportunity for us to deploy that every time, even though it's a single shooter, it doesn't meet the definition of an active shooter or that kind of thing? Is it an opportunity to get in the habit of standing this stuff up?
Scott Formankiewicz:
I think it absolutely is. I mean right away off the mindset of initially what the call is, that's telling us right away, there's an opportunity right there for us to use this. I think a lot of other times too, by doing this, it again it might identify pitfalls. 'Cause a lot of times it's typically it might not be, and I can speak for back home, it's not this local jurisdiction only, you have county resources that are coming in, you have other resources which might be on different frequencies, different channels. Where they going? Who are they talking to? So I think by implementing the strategy in a reg, I don't wanna say routine 'cause there's nothing routine, but on an act of violence like that, I think it's definitely a missed opportunity. I think we should be doing it a lot more.
Bill Godfrey:
And it can have some interesting results. You know, one of our instructors recently was involved in a very, very, the planning for a very, very large scale event. I don't wanna say the name of the event, but it happens in the middle of the desert. They erect this big effigy of a person and then they light it on fire. But they got involved in helping the event organizers organize their security and medical response teams into zones. So because it's a fairly large event, sprawling over, they set up various zones. They put in place the structure from the active shooter incident management checklist. So we've got the command, you've got your law enforcement branch, your medical branch, and then downstream of that, you had tactical triage, transport and then your contact teams and your rescue task forces. But everybody had regular day-to-day jobs. The difference was they had an incident action plan stood up that said, "Okay, if something happens on your watch, you are going to be the tactical group supervisor and you are going to be the triage group supervisor." And if it happens in this zone, these resources go initially everyone else stays in their zones and kind of pre-planning that.
And thankfully they did not have any horrible, they didn't have an act of shooter event, they didn't have any horrible acts of violence. They did have quite a few medical calls as you might imagine, and some encounters of violence. But the entire team that was part of that public safety response followed that. And it worked really well because they had the people there that they needed, they had the other people deployed where they were supposed to be and still had good coverage and good results. And I just thought that was a really fascinating example of how to apply these things in a non-traditional way that can yield-
Kami Maertz:
Yeah.
Bill Godfrey:
Really effective results. Have you seen any of the, now you mentioned the fairs, what's the structure that you're typically setting up for your fairs?
Kami Maertz:
So we're setting up the incident command. So you'll have an incident command. What we'll do as a tactical position, which for this incident we would use as say the person who's actually down range actually on the fair grounds, right? And so that person's gonna be our tactical position. Your contact teams are gonna be the people who are actively working the fair and your RTFs are gonna be back with command, right? Because that's how we're gonna do this for this because we don't have a staging. Now there is one set in place, so if an incident happened, they would break-
Bill Godfrey:
Like a pre-designated?
Kami Maertz:
Yes. But our RTFs are actually going to remain with command unless an incident breaks off. They would then go to a staging location that's already been predetermined and they would break off and go in there. But we don't wanna get away from having those RTFs ready, but not necessarily a whole staging area set. So they're with the command, but everybody is listed on the structure, everybody knows. So we have additional units who come in who are taking those positions so that we're not taking from, 'cause normal calls are gonna happen, right? So it's an additional event to us, but it's already pre-planned in case something goes sideways.
Bill Godfrey:
Yeah, Scott, both Terrance and Kami were talking a little earlier about having these organized incident action plans, which were really amazing. There's still quite a number of law enforcement agencies that may be interested in doing some of this stuff, but maybe haven't done it before. What do you think most fire departments gonna be willing to help and maybe take on the organizing of an IAP and showing them the ropes?
Scott Formankiewicz:
I think they should be, I think it's again, it's a great opportunity to work with our local partners and get IAPs established. And I was thinking about it as we were talking about it. Sometimes we'll see for these pre-planned events that IAPs get sent out. And I know is it one of those that it comes to your email, you look at it, "Oh it'll never happen," and then you just kind of discredit it not knowing that your role on that day you're named in that IAP you have a specific role. So are we actually reading these when they come out and not discrediting them? 'Cause it's a good opportunity for us to get in the mindset of when this happens, "What am I gonna do?" And like Kami said, having a staging area that's designed in there, it's in there, it's written, but do you know it's there or are we just gonna revert back to what we saw, what we've always done and now we're creating a further problem. So I think it's a huge opportunity for us.
Bill Godfrey:
I think that's really right on point. And I think the place to leave this is just to say, hey, if you've never done any of these things that we're talking about, that doesn't mean you can't do them tomorrow. It doesn't mean you can't try them tomorrow. And you may need to have a conversation about it. You may need to invite your local officers over for dinner at the fire station or the officers swing by and talk about an event, parade that's coming up or something like that. But I think there's always an opportunity to do better.
So thank you very much for coming in and talking about this topic. Terrence, this was one that came up out of something you mentioned on our previous podcast. How do we implement this stuff on a day-to-day basis? So I think that's really good stuff.
And for those of you that are listening, watching, if you've got some specific questions or challenges unique to you that you'd like to talk over, feel free to give us a call or shoot us an email. We're always happy to try to help out. You can reach us at info, info@c3pathways.com or call us here at the office. Thank you to our producer, Karla Torres. And until next time, stay safe.