Ep 63: Chasing Ghost Calls
Episode 63
Published Jan 15, 2024
Last updated Feb 18, 2026
Duration: 36:57
Episode Summary
911 Ghost calls in Active Shooter Events (aka Echo calls) are common and challenging. Listen to this episode to learn tips and tricks to manage 911 calls that can leave you chasing your tail.
Episode Notes
Today we touch upon some common occurrences in Active Shooter Events where follow-on 911 calls report additional shooters in differently locations but in reality are not accurate. These calls -- though well intended -- often result in duplicate work, wasted resources, or over-response to a new location. Active Shooter Events have one shooter 97% of the time, but our training teaches the "plus one" theory that we should always expect another bad guy. If you don't manage it, you will spend valuable time and resources chasing ghosts.
Watch this episode on YouTube at https://youtube.com/live/NbApXhCQhVo
Transcript
Bill Godfrey:Hello and welcome to the Active Shooter Incident Management Podcast. My name is Bill Godfrey, your podcast host. I am joined today in the studio by Mark Rhame, fire/EMS instructor for the C3 Pathways. Welcome, Mark.
Mark Rhame:
Yep, thank you.
Bill Godfrey:
Across the table from us is Adam Pendley, one of our law enforcement gurus. Adam, good to have you back.
Adam Pendley:
Thank you, Bill.
Bill Godfrey:
And Don Tuten, straight across from me, one of our law enforcement guys. Long-term, just you exited out what? A couple of years ago you retired?
Don Tuten:
I did, yeah, a little over two years. So it's been good being on the other side, so thanks for having me.
Bill Godfrey:
Thanks for being back in guys. So today's topic, we are going to be talking about chasing ghosts, which is an interesting topic because it takes us down multiple paths. So one of the common things that we have seen in real-world events is what some people have called echoes or echo calls, false calls, things like that, where somebody reports somebody with a gun or active shooting in a different location, and things like this that have become a kind of commonplace. And so we want to talk a little bit about those, what's kind of driving that, and some things that they can do.
But then we also want to talk about the idea of chasing ghosts in our tasks. So law enforcement of course, gets a lot of training that says the plus one theory. There's always, if there's one bad guy, there's always plus one more. And how that can result in us chasing ghosts. So Don, why don't you lead us off a little bit? Where would you like to start? You want to start on the inside or you want to start at the high level with the calls? Where do you want to go?
Don Tuten:
Let's start with the calls.
Bill Godfrey:
Okay.
Don Tuten:
We can start with, let's just say a critical incident and keeping it on active shooter incident management. That call goes out of an active shooter or a critical incident, and let's just say that I won't use any one specific event, but that shooting occurs. And then unbeknownst to the people responding the assailant then leaves. How many calls start coming in? Well, number one, you have a challenge right off the bat, because they have to verify if the person's there or not there. But once they get there and they start putting the suspect information out, you can imagine how many calls you're going to start getting from the public that "Hey, I saw this person here, I saw this person there."
So now in addition to the one crime scene that you're working, now you're having to tie up so many resources just to somewhat try to verify and validate this additional information coming in. So it's something that we talk about a lot obviously, is trying to build that intelligence piece as soon as possible. Getting your communications officers and your dispatch on the same page. And then that integration obviously, between the information that the fire department is receiving, the information that rescue agencies are receiving and law enforcement getting us all on the same page, putting that bridge for lack of better terms, in place as soon as possible to try to delineate the good information versus bad information and to dictate out to everybody what they should be responding on.
Bill Godfrey:
Adam, how common is it to have law enforcement officers on the scene that are not uniformed that then trigger well-meaning secondary calls?
Adam Pendley:
Oh, absolutely. Or just law enforcement officers are going to respond from every level of the organization and from other agencies as well. Some of them are wearing markings that other law enforcement may recognize, but the public certainly don't know all of the markings of some of the other agencies or off-duty officers or off-duty detectives that are just wearing a small badge around their belt waistline or maybe some other sort of marking. So that person that's going in or out of the scene with a gun or a rifle may certainly generate additional calls. And to what Don was talking about, it's kind of an interesting example to start us off with, of you're actually trying to find a ghost, somebody who's left the scene and you're trying to distinguish a multitude of calls of people calling and seeing that particular suspect description you sent out.
So you really are trying to find that particular person who's ghosted the scene. Whereas, the other problem we see a lot of is you may get to the scene and you may have your suspect, you've either neutralized a threat, you've got them in custody or whatever the case may be, but adults are going to flee shooting scenes. And every person that flees is going to be seen by a witness who thinks that that's the person who did the bad deeded. So that person ran and got into a green van and is driving away with great haste. Somebody's going to call that in as a suspect. Then at the scene you've got to discern whether or not what you're hearing about this suspect that you do have in custody, that that is your one.
You have to trust the early intelligence that says, "Hey, yesterday we fired that individual, he was mad at the boss and he's the one that came back and shot everyone and you have him in custody. Thank you very much." Trust that and understand that now this is your scene, it's secured. Yes, there's still a lot of investigation to be done, but don't spend...Don't waste valuable time chasing ghosts that you don't have to chase.
Don Tuten:
Creating chaos. Yep.
Bill Godfrey:
Sure. Mark. Adam mentioned people fleeing the scene. On the medical side, we see injured that can both flee the scene, take private transport either to a hospital or just someplace away from the scene, and then you end up with somebody that's got gunshot wounds. How often are we seeing people that are self-evacuating, self-fleeing the scenes, and what does that turn into in terms of ghost calls?
Mark Rhame:
I mean, if you look at some of the case study after action reports of especially the large events, you're going to see that most adults who have the capability of doing so are going to evacuate themselves. They're going to either on foot or they're going to get to their vehicle, they're going to end up at hospitals that have no notification or a little notification that they're going to be in inundated by all of these victims out there. When you're talking about the little ones, you talk about school shootings, which seems we focus on that a lot because that is such a, it tugs at heartstrings if you will, that's one of those ones that are very innocent of being impacted. But we get into the adult environment, it's pretty much more of a normal environment that those people are going to, they're going to evacuate, they're going to do.
And frankly, if I was in that environment, if I was in a shooting environment and I had no public safety experience that wasn't my background, and one of my loved ones or friends got impacted, I would probably be getting out of there as quick as I could. I'd get them to my vehicle, get them to an emergency room and try to leave that scene. So from an accountability standpoint for a fire/EMS, it becomes a serious problem for us. Obviously, we want the best care for them, but we still want to be able to make sure that we account for all those people who are there.
Bill Godfrey:
And I think a good example of that is if they flee on foot, businesses are the most common target in active shooter events. 60% of the time it's a business number one target, and if you've been shot in the leg, shot in the arm, whatever, but you're still mobile and you flee that business and flee to a business next door or an adjacent area or across the street and you come running in and "Somebody's shooting, somebody's shooting." That's going to be another 911 call at an adjacent business across the street that extends it out and can give it the appearance of a secondary shooter, larger event, things like that. I'm also kind of reminded of one of the real unique situations.
One of our instructors had years ago had an incident where there was an international flavor, there was a large number of international people involved, and some of them, the victims that had been attacked, texted and called to say that they were under attack, that they could hear the shooter next door, they could hear this, they could hear that. And those resulted in follow on information flowing back into the 911 center with information about a shooter in this location.
But it was 15 to 20 minutes old because it was going out international, coming back into the area and then having to get to the right comm center. And so it ended up being actionable information that was no longer actionable because of the lack of timeliness of it. And I remember him telling me they were chasing those ghost calls for hours after that. What are some of the things that we can do to try to bring that under control and to manage for that? Because it is such an expected thing now. Don, why don't you talk a little bit about what you... And then Adam, maybe from the dispatch perspective, take us in there.
Don Tuten:
Well, and that's one of the things I was going to start off with is, getting that intelligence officer or investigative officer up to dispatch as quick as possible or where calls are being received at, whether it be with your agency, an agency that handles that for your police and fire agency. So getting somebody there that's listening to either the fireside radio or the police side or both, listening to both of those. And what would really be good is if you could get a firefighter and a police officer in the same room where dispatch is coming in, especially if it's centrally located.
And all the different information coming in, you can start making a quick diagnosis of is it valid, worth looking into or is this old information, based upon the intel that's being gathered from the scene itself. So I think that's something that we talk about. I think that around the country it doesn't occur quite as much as we would like to see it happen. But hey, getting that intelligence inside the dispatch center as soon as possible, being able to discern what is valid, what's not valid, and then like I said, being able to actually put the resources towards the stuff that's a little bit more valid.
Adam Pendley:
And then I would say, again at the scene, you have to establish and trust those early understandings you have of the incident that you have. Again, oftentimes we know that we have the suspect in custody, we know that that individual suspect was found in the parking lot at his vehicle with the equipment that was used in the attack, and there's no other witnesses of any other attacker.
So trust that information. We have additional resources at all of the positions that we talk about in an active shooter response to protect against a follow-on attack to make sure that everyone's safe. But you shouldn't continue chasing every call that comes in because of the delay or because of somebody misidentifying a witness or a survivor as a suspect. You need to be able to vet that and trust that. So that early intelligence, both in the communication center and also standing side by side with incident command to understand and paint a picture of what you really have, I think cuts down on wasting resources on chasing ghosts.
Bill Godfrey:
Sure. And for those of you that are listening and wondering who the kid is in the background having a meltdown, we're not torturing anybody. It's a new studio and clearly we need to do a little bit of work on our sound insulation. There's somebody that's just having a-
Don Tuten:
We're simulating a critical incident in the background, taking place.
Bill Godfrey:
They're a hundred feet away outside our front door and having a real meltdown. So I apologize for that. So back on track. Mark, from an incident management perspective, you're on the scene, you know to expect some of this stuff going on. I think Don And Adam talked about how to try to interdict that from the dispatch sides. What do you need to listen for and act upon or not act upon from the incident command posts when it comes to the ghosts or the echo calls?
Mark Rhame:
Well, obviously we're going to rely on dispatch and the information they're getting in, and hopefully we have someone from law enforcement that's embedded in dispatch and is going to vent out a lot of that bad information. But I'll focus initially on the fire/EMS side. So from a fire/EMS side, as we practice in this class and utilizing the checklist, the integrated response allows you to be successful. And if you look at every failure of an incident command environment where they don't integrate fire/EMS law enforcement together, it's a failure. They're in silos, they're doing their own thing.
And when you integrate, that allows fire/EMS to stand hip to hip in the command post and at our tactical triage and transport location and the information that's come in initially, especially initially about law enforcement's initial response to that location and whatever threat they've encountered and taken down or neutralized or held, whatever terminology they're using, whatever they end up with, fire/EMS is getting the firsthand information right then and there instead of traveling from the scene to dispatch over to another dispatch and then back down to fire/EMS and getting this third or fourth hand, not that I would think it would get screwed up, but standing next to each other, you're getting the same information and you developing the same action plan and that's where you're going to be successful.
Adam Pendley:
Well, to extend on what Mark's saying too, the other thing is you have rescue task force type resources that are being set up at stage and you have resources that are coming to the scene and where some of these potential survivors that have injuries that have fled to, you manage that with the same resources that you have at the scene. Whereas, dispatch may when somebody runs and says, "I've been shot." And they're at a neighboring drugstore or something, they've run two blocks to a nearby drugstore and they run in and they say they've been shot, that may route through dispatch and come in as a new shooting call.
And if it follows the normal dispatch parameters, you would have a fire rescue crew come in and standing off at a safe distance wasting time getting to that patient because no one's talking to each other at the original scene. Whereas, if you can sort out at the original scene that, "Hey, that's probably somebody that's fled our shooting, let's get a contact team over there or rescue task force over there and make sure they're okay and make sure it's connected and use the resources we already have on hand."
Bill Godfrey:
That's a really good point. And one of the things, and Mark you were alluding to this, with the integration that we do at the command post, that's one of the jobs of the intelligence investigative section. Early on in the first 10, 15 minutes as this thing begins unfolding, you're not going to start your investigative component at that point, at least not in a meaningful way. But the intelligence piece of that is very much a part of this is, "Hey, wait a minute, that is, as you said, a block away, two blocks away. What are the odds?" And being able to nudge somebody at command, so somebody whose head isn't in the attack site per se of trying to find the attacker or take the attacker down or deal with the injured, their head is up a little bit more above that looking at all the information come in.
So I think that's also one of the jobs of that intelligence section to take that in and turn it into meaningful information that you can tell command to either act upon or not act upon because we think it's duplicative information. So let's tangent to the other piece of this and talk about the ghost sin side. And this is I think more of a law enforcement issue than it is necessarily a medical thing, because most of the instances with the rescue task forces, they're already being kind of told where to go with a very specific mission, though not always but in most cases. So talk a little bit about how that can sometimes go wrong with chasing ghosts inside, how it manifests, why it goes wrong, what are some of the fixes that we want to do? Don, you want to take that one?
Don Tuten:
Yeah. It comes down at the end of the day and if whoever's had the opportunity to take this class or in the future takes this class, the first thing they're going to learn is this. We have a guide that we give everybody and we allow them to go down this checklist. And what it does that keeps them on task. When it comes to internally, we know what our parameters are, we know we're fighting the clock, we do our best to teach people that no longer are we trying to clear anything. What we're trying to do is get people down, secure an area, bring those rescue task forces in, let's move out the victims as soon as possible.
We're fighting the clock and not go down the realm of we got to keep searching, "We got to keep searching, we got to keep searching." In the past law enforcement, they don't want to quit, they want to keep going. Where the reality is, this is once you understand what your primary mission is, yes, it's stopping the threat, but if we take that in increments, once again, we can also start moving those injured out and we can satisfy that demon of the clock that creeps up on us. Sorry. But that's the first thing. Using this checklist helps us out, I think training to understand that, "Hey, there's a bigger mission here. It's not always trying to find somebody that's hiding in a corner." It's getting these injured out and then working with our fire and our EMS personnel and training with them, quite honestly, and kind of going back to some of the other podcasts we've done, is having an SOP, basically a standards that we're all agreeing on of what we're going to do training to that standard, then it puts people on the same page.
Bill Godfrey:
I think that's a really good point, Adam, go ahead.
Adam Pendley:
Well, I was just going to say again, sometimes I think some of our law enforcement listeners might be shaking their head in the background as they're listening to us. Because there is going to be, probably a justified belief that that first contact team has to continue searching for whoever did this terrible act, right? And I'll give you that. That first contact team, they can continue being the hunter killer team. And we've trained them that they have to bypass the injured and keep moving towards the active stimulus.
Bill Godfrey:
The driving force.
Adam Pendley:
The driving force, whether it's maybe a direction of travel, actual gunshots screaming coming from the end of the hallway, they're going to keep going towards that. However, what we haven't trained people to do very well is you have got to call in what you're leaving behind and someone has to come fix what you've left behind. So that's why there can be more than one job happening at the same time. You can still be working toward resolving the active threat, but secure what's in front of you with another team so you can begin rescue. Active threat, rescue and then continue clearing. That's the three very simple priorities.
Don Tuten:
And I should have prefaced what I was saying by the lack of stimulus, I guess is a good way of what I was trying to get. Without that stimulus driving you, then once again, we don't want you chasing something that's not directing you to go after it, hunt and kill it, basically. So I agree with everything Adam just said.
Bill Godfrey:
It's funny, as I observe the behavior, I've observed many, many times, in fact it's very consistent that in those instances when law enforcement encounters the suspect and they can account for the suspect, they're in custody, they've been shot and they're down, whatever the case may be, or they found the dead body, whatever. When they can account for the suspect, they're very quick to change gears and get into priority two, which is to rescue. But when the killing has stopped or paused or there's no more gunfire, there's no more driving force, there's no more intel, there is, and I don't even want to characterize it as a reluctance, because I think it's an unconscious behavior to continue driving forward and the consistent change point. And I'd be interested to hear you guys both comment on this. To me, there's been one clear delineating mark like when you have gone from, "I'm chasing the last direction of travel, I have an idea of where this guy is. I heard something, I saw something, I witness, what we call the driving force." And when you're now clearing.
And for me I see it almost consistently, is when they're moving on information, they're walking past doors, they're walking past hallways, they're walking past rooms and they're going to someplace trying to find the individual. But as soon as they feel like what was driving them is now stale, well now they're not walking past doors, they're doing a quick peek on a door or they're doing a quick look in the room or they're going doors or they're pieing off the hallway corners as they go through things. And to me, as soon as I start to see that behavior, I'm like, "Okay, you don't know where the guy is now you're in clearing mode. We're on priority three. We didn't do priority two."
Don Tuten:
I think a lot of that has to go back to initial training. It falls back on your training. So you can set, it's unfortunate, but some people will set up that negative training, where everything is a shoot scenario or everything is a go in there and kill the bad guy scenario. I think some of that is driven by the media on a lot of the cases that come out that if you don't do anything that we're all going to be held accountable for. Training should be set up to where there's unknowns. People do flee. Training should be set up where somebody comes out and gives up 110% and that's where it ends. It's one person. Training should be where it's multiple factors, maybe one gives up and one flees without having those multi-facets and you only train to one go in, kill the bad guy, do God's work and then do the rest of what we're supposed to be doing.
It sets a tone of, "You know what I forget, this is a multi-phase approach to what we're doing." Yes, we want to keep everybody safe. Yes, we want to have that driving stimulus dictate what we do, but at the same time we get to a point where like Adam said, we step over so many, but there's a point where if that have no further stimulus to direct me to that location to stop this threat, then I need to reevaluate, hold, get what's other entities up there, let's start moving the victims out. And now we've cleared, we've secured that certain area to so far and then if the stimulus picks back up and then we can continue to go. So I think training is the biggest thing I would say in the realm of a lot of different agencies.
Bill Godfrey:
And I think that's important. And I want, because Adam, I know you're going to jump in here, 57%, 57% of these events, the active killing is done. It stops before the first law enforcement officer gets there. It's not a small percentage. It is the majority of the time, over half the time the active killing stops before the first law enforcement officer gets there. And so I just think I agree with you, your training has to be structured for all of those kinds of outcomes, so that you do train your folks to do that and it's not the first time they've encountered in real life. Adam, go ahead.
Adam Pendley:
Right, absolutely. And again, you have to be thinking in your head, "Somebody has to go back and fix what we left behind." Whether it's us, "We don't have any more stimulus, let's go back and help those people." Or I'm calling to tactical and say, "Next contact team has got to go into room one and help those people. We are still looking." That's okay. Either choice is a correct choice based on your circumstances or whatever the case may be. Because through training and adrenaline and desire to find the person who did the terrible deeded, I can almost give it that one team is going to want to keep looking, right?
Bill Godfrey:
Yeah, you'd almost forgive it.
Adam Pendley:
You'd almost forgive it. But they have got to communicate either that they're going to go back and fix what they left behind or that somebody else is dedicated to go back to fix behind. Because to extend on what you were saying earlier, Bill, the worst part is when you see every team is still searching, and no one has started to focus on helping those that have been injured and all of Mark's folks are stuck outside, they can't do anything because all the cops are inside searching for ghosts.
Mark Rhame:
And especially, they haven't created a casual collection point and secured that location. So we can't even send in our teams. You haven't secured the environment for us to come in. So again, if you're just chasing the ghosts, if you're just going out on your own, that doesn't do us any good on the fire/EMS side, we need to have that secure environment to go into.
Adam Pendley:
Right. It doesn't have to be a hundred percent clear. I mean again, departments all over the country are demonstrating that they're ready to go in. They just need some assurance from us that we've made what we know what's right in front of us, we've made what we know secure and that we're continuing to try to find out.
Mark Rhame:
I think that example we used a minute ago about holding room one, hold room one, we're going to be in there with our rescue task force, we're going to start working on the known patients.
Bill Godfrey:
And what you guys are describing also becomes a key element, the immediate action plan. And maybe it goes out on the radio, maybe it's just face-to-face between the team that's there, but the other thing is what's the size of your team? If in there, if your first contact team happens to be four or five people and you don't have contact with the suspect, but you've got contact with the injured, maybe you split the team, but you got to have those discussions in that immediate action plan. Or if the team's going to hold what they got, "Hey, we're going to stay if it kicks off again. You and you stay here and we're going to go pursue whatever the threat is and things like that." And I think those things, they get hit in training, but it seems like somehow it gets lost in the adrenaline of the moment. We get caught on a single track and we have a tough time shifting gears.
Don Tuten:
I think supervision plays a big piece of that, also. Somebody has to take control and see the entire... That fifth man that we talk about, that first initial supervisor that says, "Okay, I've got three, four, I've got five people inside as my initial contact team, the next one that comes in..." And they're describing what they're obviously seeing and doing back to that initial supervisor. That supervisor is the one that helps drive the direction of those contact teams. Whether you continue to send your first contact team in for the... Continue to do your search for that stimulus, basically your second contact team has been given a specific mission as well as to secure that area. Supervision's a big piece of it. Without it and without being very vocal and without communication back and forth, is a good chance that the wheels are going to fall off somewhere with during the event.
Mark Rhame:
But Bill, to add to what Don just said, what I see more on the fire/EMS side on the rescue task force is that they complete their mission, but instead of calling the triage group supervisor, they're chasing their ghosts. They're chasing the people who are not known, that there's no intel, there's no evidence, there's no reason for them to be going down these hallways looking for additional patients.
Bill Godfrey:
Searching.
Mark Rhame:
And instead of just calling up the triage group, suffice to say, "Listen, we've completed our task. What's our next assignment?" And maybe just hold in place in room one, it's secured right now, law enforcement contact teams are going out there and they're clearing rooms. If they come across a patient, we'll redeploy you or it may be simply return to staging. We need to rehab you and debrief you. But once they start chasing those non-existent patient, those ghosts out there, it becomes problematic because if a real event pops up, they're not in the right place, they're not where there should be.
Bill Godfrey:
Yeah, it's interesting you mentioned that, Mark. It kind of slipped my mind, but we do see that as one of those, I don't want to call it negative training, but one of those training hiccups that we see is, they'll get, like you said, they get done with their task or they got to assigned a task, but by the time they get there, that task is already done, another team is already completed and they're not needed. So they're going to go look for work, instead of calling back to the boss and saying, "That task is complete." Or "I'm not needed on that task. Where else do you need me?" We now go looking for mystery work and making up our own work as opposed to getting a task and a purpose again and getting another assignment.
Don Tuten:
Sticking within your lane. You were given a task, go do that task. Or if it's already been done for you, come back and get another task.
Bill Godfrey:
So let's go around and quickly and kind of talk about... You're at the command post, you're either at tactical triage and transport you, you're at the command post. What are some of the red flags that tell you that you've got some of this stuff going on?
Adam Pendley:
I mean, I think the biggest one is that you have not heard about the security of a casualty collection point. These things should happen in relatively rapid succession. Contact team one, contact team two, they're going in, they're searching for the active threat. But then you hear radio silence. They're not encountering anyone, but at the same time, they're not calling back the location of the injured patients and they're not calling back a location for something that needs to be secured so you can begin sending in rescue task forces. And it would be echoing in my head the turn of phrase that I say all the time, and that is that "Known bleeding does not stop while you search for unknown threats." So every minute of that radio silence where you're neither getting a threat, nor are you securing a casualty collection point, is someone bleeding closer to their death.
Yeah, I would say the chaos that's going to be on the radio because you're going to have a lot of what ifs going on, no rescue task force being asked and nobody taking control. That's the biggest thing, when everybody is out doing their own thing, they all want to talk. When nobody takes control and assigns one person to talk on the radio, that's when you know that it's no longer following a process, it's kind of everybody's out doing their own thing.
Mark Rhame:
And I'm going to put, I don't hate to use the word blame, but I'm going to put the responsibility back on that triage officer and to a certain extent the tactical officer. That once they know that they're getting down low on patients that are still on the scene, known patients that were in that casualty collection point, they're not challenging the RTFs that are on the site and say, "What are you doing right now? Do you have a job right now?" And if they said, "No, we're not here." "Oh, we've gone down to room 25." Well, they didn't know that. They should be challenging their groups and understanding what the patient count is based upon the amount of responders and do they still need them there. And they need to take some responsibility on that side too. It's not just the boots on the ground, the people inside the structure that may be freelancing or going off and chasing ghosts. And maybe that the supervisors aren't paying attention to what's going on. And they got to make sure they pay attention and have accountability.
Bill Godfrey:
Those are all really good examples. I think if you're down range, it's easy to see. And if you're on a contact team, especially if you happen to be as happens sometimes you get a sergeant lieutenant, heck, we've had the police chief be the first or second one there. And they're no longer part of command now, they're part of the contact team. But if you've got some leadership in, you know better and you downrange and kind of seeing this go on. See something, say something. I mean as silly as that sounds. Because it ends up, we were talking about this in another podcast when we were all together, slow is smooth and smooth as fast. And if you don't get on the right priority, you get punished by the clock. And the cost of that is people die.
Adam Pendley:
Right. And if you are one of the resources downrange, remember it's okay to delegate up. And what I mean by that is if you see a job that's not getting done because either you're overwhelmed or busy or you're on a different mission, call it up. Tell tactical, "We need another team to go into room 25 because it hasn't been secured yet." And that's it. Delegate up, because tactical does not have x-ray vision, they can't see everything that's going on. And they'll get you the resources that you need, you just have to ask for it.
Bill Godfrey:
Yeah, that's a really good point. And it's one of the things, Mark, on the fireside, I think that we constantly fight a little bit against. In our world, on a typical structure fire, the incident commander is the all-knowing, all-thinking one. And in most cases, that's okay because they can stand on the sidewalk and look at the building and where the flames are showing and where the smoke is showing and how much is smoke and where's it moving and how's it coming? And it tells them an awful lot about what's going on inside that building. But in the case of an active shooter, you're standing on the curb, you don't see jack, you got no idea what's going on in that building and so you really are reliant on those crews inside.
Mark Rhame:
Exactly. And that's why we emphasize in the advanced class and even the basic class that those teams inside need to make those critical decisions because the incident commander can't do it. And you really don't want the tactical triage and transport officer doing it. The example I'll use is naming where the casual collection point is. Incident command has no clue where the best or casual collection point would be or the ambulance exchange point.
Bill Godfrey:
Oh yeah, that's a good one.
Mark Rhame:
The people who have the best eyes on that are the boots on the ground. Those are the people that, especially that first contact team or maybe the second contact team. But that first RTF, when they get in there, they got to make those determination what works best for them for the patients they have. And if you've got someone in an incident command post with a book open and looking to go, "This is probably a good spot right there." It's probably going to be a failure.
Bill Godfrey:
So let's go around because Karla gave me the 30-minute signal a little bit ago. Let's go around and hit real quick. One tip for avoiding chasing ghosts.
Adam Pendley:
I'll say discipline is the biggest thing. And understanding what your objectives are.
Mark Rhame:
I would say follow the priorities, deal with the act of threat. Begin rescue. But remember, clear is important. Not only even if law enforcement feels like they definitely have the one and only suspect, the disgruntled employee who came back and we got him today, you're having to clear for patience that may have fled and are now hiding in a closet in a different building, injured and scared to come out. Clearing is still an important priority as well, even though we're focusing on rescue and that we've already dealt with the active threat.
Bill Godfrey:
Mark.
Mark Rhame:
Integrator response and share intel. I mean, if we put our fire/EMS and law enforcement together, hip to hip, and their game plan is one and the same and their share intel, that game plan should be one In the same.
Bill Godfrey:
And I'm going to say echo something you guys said earlier, which is on the intel side, you got to get somebody into the comm center. It's one thing when you're working in a large urban or consolidated metro comm center and they got plenty of people that can get on task, but that's not the case across most of the country. There are many, many comm centers where there's only 1, 2, 3 dispatchers on duty. They are going to be overwhelmed. You got to get somebody else in there who's task it is to try to sort through what is new and what is old.
Gentlemen, thank you very much for coming in. Fun topic, talking about chasing ghosts, something we see on a regular basis. And with that, I want to say to you, if you haven't subscribed to the podcast already, if you listen to the audio version, please do subscribe. If you're watching us on YouTube, subscribe there. You can hit that bell to kind of get an announcement notification of when there are new releases of the podcast series. Want to shout out and thank you, Karla Torres, our producer, for once again, making us sound a whole lot better than we are. And with that, please do share the podcast with others. It's important that we get the information out to everybody. And with that, stay safe. Until next time, take care.