Ep 68: Known Bleeding vs Unknown Threats?
Episode 68
Published Feb 19, 2024
Last updated Feb 18, 2026
Duration: 29:19
Episode Summary
During an Active Shooter Event the question to ask is “what is your threat RIGHT NOW – the gun or the clock or the criminal?” Listen to this episode to recognize when it’s time to shift gears and stop the dying.
Episode Notes
90% of the time the active threat is over within 10 minutes. In today’s episode we tackle the question of when is it time to stop searching for an unknown threat and when is it time to start focusing on medical? When the bad actor has gone silent, it’s time to coordinate resources and stop the known bleeding.
Watch this episode on YouTube at https://youtube.com/live/_NVp91myDsk
Transcript
Bill Godfrey:Wonder what the biggest mistake law enforcement makes when they're moving to the last reported location of an active threat and the shooting stops, and they don't know why? Stick around, that's today's topic. Welcome to the "Active Shooter Incident Management" podcast. My name is Bill Godfrey, sitting with three of the other C3 Pathways instructors. Got Adam Pendley to my left, Peter Kelting across from me, and next to Peter is Ron Otterbacher. Thanks, guys, for coming back in and doing another podcast.
Adam Pendley:
Absolutely.
Pete Kelting:
Thanks, Bill.
Bill Godfrey:
Always good to have the crew back in the house. So today's topic, Adam, you want to talk about the phrase?
Adam Pendley:
Sure, so a phrase we've been using a lot recently to kind of remind people of what your priority should be is that known bleeding will not stop while you search for unknown threats, and I'm gonna say it again, 'cause it's important. Known bleeding will not stop while you search for unknown threats. So what we mean by that is, as is part of the training for your initial response to an active shooter event, is that those first officers through the door, that first contact team, they're gonna push towards the stimulus, push towards the threat. Now, sometimes that can be additional gunshots, sometimes it can be witnesses screaming that the shooter ran that direction. It can be following the trail of carnage, you know, to kind of understand where your active threat might be. But per training, you do leave some things behind. You leave people that have been injured maybe in those first few rooms or hallways while you continue to search for the active threat, but what happens if you no longer have any stimulus? What happens if you continue to search and follow-on officers continue to search, and follow-on officers behind them continue to search, and no one stops to realize that your very next priority has to be beginning rescue of those people that you know are injured? And how does that really look, how do we work that out to make sure that we focus on that?
Bill Godfrey:
Completely agreed. I think this turn of phrase is really important, and I want to talk about some of the challenges of why that's so difficult for law enforcement to change gears. But the number one absolutely consistent 100% of the time mistake that we see is when the situation has changed, the shooting has stopped, we no longer have knowledge, we don't have an active threat, we don't have knowledge of the active threat's location, we continue, law enforcement will continue to push and search, and not change gears into the rescue mode. Our priorities are active threat, rescue, then clear. And it's not that the threat is necessarily in custody, and it's not necessarily that we know what happened to the threat. It's if it's an active threat, that's the priority number one. As soon as there's no longer an active threat, priority number two is rescue, and then priority number three is to go back and clear. But we see very consistently when we present these scenarios to people in training, 100% of the time, the first time they see that scenario, they are very slow to shift gears out of the searching. You know, they go from active threat to trying to search and clear, as opposed to switching into the rescue mode. Pete, Ron, talk a little bit about why that is culturally, how some of the prior training in years past has contributed to that, and some of the things you think we can do to try to turn the corner on that.
Pete Kelting:
Yeah, I think, you know, you start back post Columbine when law enforcement first started training for active shooter, and then in trying to incorporate EMS inside with us, there was that we're gonna step over, we're gonna keep stepping over and put the, you know, the bad actor down. And I think we probably kinda lost sense of, like Adam's talking about, when does that line finally stop? You know, is there a sense of location to where that stimulus is, the location of where we're trying to push? The situational tactical awareness of what other resources may be coming down range, and entering a potential to enter a building from a different location, that we don't give up ground. Tactically, we always, you know, we gained ground, we didn't wanna give it up. We'd have trailer teams come in behind us, things like that, but we walked a tightrope of how far we're gonna push. And I think we realize now that we've gotta have a lot better understanding of that stimulus, and where we're looking to find that bad actor.
Ron Otterbacher:
And we tend to look at it as a segmented response that we've gotta go after the bad guy, and we lose focus that while we're going out to the bad guy, we can still have other resources. We just gotta be quicker to make the call and say, "Let's get other resources in there to take care of these injured people while we're still pressing to find out why this threat is gone in a different direction." You know, there's so many things we could do while we're doing it, but we think it goes back to, I think how we learned when we were brand new deputies, officers, whatever, is we gotta clear before we can put anyone else in there, and that's not the case if we set it up and provide the proper level of security, security immediate action plan, medical. We can provide medical treatment for those people while we're still trying to figure out, hey, this guy didn't just disappear, what's going on? Do we just negate everything that's gone on the outside of that, or can we learn to work it all at the same time? It's like we say, if we've got the bad guy up on the second floor, why can't we start treating people and get people out on the first floor? You know, we've gotta broaden our perspective a little bit.
Pete Kelting:
Yeah, in the past, you know, you hear us say. "Every second wasted putting the bad guy down is another round into another victim," but every second that someone continues to bleed, as Adam's talking about, it's a battle between really having good tactical awareness of how you're responding down range as a contact team. You know, has tactical stood up quick enough, has the intelligence of to where this bad actor may be really getting across in communication to our response down range so we can make a better decision? Do the contact teams here go ahead and transition in, you know, to direct threat care? Where Ron's saying we call in other contact teams to start looking towards where that other bad actor is.
Adam Pendley:
So you know, I think some of this is all about scaling your response too, right? So and you've said this before, Bill, if you've had three or four people shot at a convenience store, 2,000 square foot convenience store, the faster thing to do is probably to clear the whole thing.
Bill Godfrey:
Oh yeah.
Adam Pendley:
Turn the lights on-
Bill Godfrey:
Absolutely
Adam Pendley:
And bring in your EMS teams, right?
Bill Godfrey:
Right.
Adam Pendley:
But if you're talking about a shopping mall that sits on three acres, you have got to, and I'm okay letting, I mean, I'm very good with the concept that that first contact team continues to be the hunter team that goes after where the last known threat was, right? But they've got to communicate. and some other teams have got to come in and fix what they left behind. So if we came into the mall and you had three or four people shot in that first hallway, that first store, you have a casualty collection or you need to establish a casualty collection point, that first team can keep going. Contact team two might need to stay put and start to secure that for rescue.
Pete Kelting:
And it's resource dependent. I'm sure there's listeners right now that you know, okay, that's great if we have impending resources that can build up and build other contact teams. There may be, unfortunately, some times in smaller geographical responses where contact team one or two is like the only folks you've got to go push towards that threat, and it may be completely across another side of the school, a mall, or something like that, and unfortunately, you know, there's that battle again between the next round or the continued bleeding, so.
Ron Otterbacher:
Yeah, the other thing is if the contact teams are operating properly, they'll leave you a bread trail that says, "This is where my victims are. I've got three down in the office, I got four down in the cafeteria," as they're moving, so we know where those places are so we can at least get to the initial place. It may be the three down in the office, and that may be your initial casualty collection point, so you may decide to send another team up to bring the others back to it so they can control that area better. But good communication from the initial contact team is gonna save time on everything else.
Bill Godfrey:
I think in fairness, we also need to acknowledge that the transition point between an active threat and an unknown threat or an inactive threat is not black and white.
Adam Pendley:
Right, absolutely.
Bill Godfrey:
And the guidance that we've always given as the best indicator, you're the contact team, you were moving towards the sounds of gunfire or the last intel we had, and as a contact team moving to a threat, you are taught you move past open doors, you move down hallways, you move to that sound of gunfire. You don't clear everything as you go, and that to me, and I think, 'cause I agree with this instructional point, is a really good indicator of when it-
Ron Otterbacher:
Sorry.
Bill Godfrey:
You all right, Ron? I think is a really good indicator of when you need to change gears. So you're moving down a hall, and you're walking past open doors, and you're walking past T intersections, then you're still chasing an active threat. When you suddenly start getting uncomfortable, and now that open door, you're not gonna walk by, you're wanting to do a quick peek or you're wanting to pie off the door or pie off the hallway, okay, stop. You're now clearing, and you've got your priorities outta whack. So after active threat, we get into rescue. Now, as you guys have alluded to, and Adam you explicitly said this, it doesn't necessarily mean contact one needs to stop and fall back. That may be the assignment they give contact two, but here's the point.
Contact one has gotta stop what they're doing, and make sure that they're coordinating the other resources. So whether contact one, and I'm assuming contact one is the one that's still on the point, whether contact one is making the decision to fall back to the injured, or whether they're calling another contact, that's immaterial. The point is, is that they get their priorities in the right order. We no longer have an active threat, because I'm now doing quick peeks on these rooms, and I'm pie-ing off these hallways. I need to hold my team here, call in, and let's find out where we are in resources. If there are no other resources on scene, Pete, to your point, okay, then I no longer get to search. I need to drop back and start taking care of the rescue and providing security for the rescue. And then maybe when those other resources show up, they can begin to push and start to clear out some of the envelope.
Adam Pendley:
Right.
Bill Godfrey:
You can do more than one thing at a time, but when you're resource constrained, it's active threat, rescue, then clear.
Adam Pendley:
Right, and the way you just said that is actually what, it makes it very intuitive, right? If you are pushing toward the sound of gunfire or the sound of a witness saying, "He's in that room, he's in that room," clearly, you're pushing past everything to get to that person so no more bullets fly, right? So that is very intuitive. If you have slowed down, and you're now searching for something, you're searching for something to do, the next thing you should search to do is figure out what you can secure for rescue.
Bill Godfrey:
Yeah, known bleeding
Adam Pendley:
Yep, known bleeding.
Bill Godfrey:
That's when we're now we've got an unknown threat, but we got known bleeding that we stepped over-
Adam Pendley:
Right.
Bill Godfrey:
At the entryway, right?
Adam Pendley:
Absolutely. So Bill, here's the interesting thing. I think across the country, as we've continued to talk to more fire departments, I think fire departments are truly eager to get inside and save lives, and they need-
Bill Godfrey:
I agree.
Adam Pendley:
And so in a situation like this, where if we're the ranking supervisors at the scene, and I'm telling you, "Well, we don't have the actor in custody yet," what do you need from me to commit your resources and to save lives?
Bill Godfrey:
That we have a casualty collection point, and we have security with our rescue task forces. That's it, period.
Adam Pendley:
Absolutely, right, and so, and I think that's been a big change, at least in the time that I've been involved in helping instruct some of this material, is there was a time when fire departments wanted to hear that all clear. There was a time when they would say, "You have to declare the scene clear before we will come in." That's not the case anymore. I think many fire EMS departments across the country, they want to, you know, have security measures in place. We'll go in with you, and we'll do what we need to do to save lives.
Bill Godfrey:
I think that's very true, Adam, and in a way, I kind of understand this. You know, the bulk of the states in the U.S use National Registry for EMT and paramedic certification. And when you're taking your practical exam for the National Registry, essentially, I'm not really exaggerating this, but essentially, the moment you walk through the doorway threshold, if you don't say, "I have my glasses and my gloves on, is the scene safe?" You fail, right, I mean, it's a fail item if you don't confirm that the scene is safe. And it's been that way for at least 25 years, probably going on 30 years now that they've been conducting the scenes that way.
And so literally every EMT and paramedic on the job today has been taught, you know, glasses on, gloves on, is the scene safe? If the scene's not safe, I take a couple steps backwards and you know, get outta Dodge. And now we're saying, "Oh yeah, we want you to do that on all other times, but in an active shooter event, no, you know, we want you to just, you know, come on up." And it is a little bit of whiplash for some people.
But I agree with you Adam, I think we're mostly over that. I think the majority of fire and EMS services in this country recognize that responsibility. They recognize the risk. And here's the other realities, right? So out of all of the active shooter events, 57% of them, the active threat is done with the killing before the first law enforcement officer shows up on scene. 57%, over half of them, the active threat is done before the first cop gets there and gets outta the vehicle. But here's the other one, the active threat is done in 10 minutes or less 90% of the time, 10 minutes or less. You're real, unless you're there for a pre-deployed event, it is almost impossible for fire and EMS to make the connection with the command post, get the teams formed up, and deploy less than 10 minutes after the bang.
Adam Pendley:
Right.
Bill Godfrey:
And when you stop and think about that, you know, the saying we've had for years in the fire service, and I think it was Chief Alan Brunacini, rest in peace, that coined this phrase, was risk a lot to save a lot, risk little to save little. And so it's a question of the risk assessment, and the answer is, is a risk assessment of going into an active shooter event after the 10 minute mark is actually a very low risk.
Adam Pendley:
Right.
Ron Otterbacher:
The other thing is it goes to training. We've modified training since 1999, how we respond to active shooter incidents and stuff like that across the country. I go back and say in our paramedic or EMT class, and do they even discuss the function of a rescue task force, how to operate within that structure? You know, because when they get assigned to a duty station, they're learning everything about the station, how often do they train? If you've been a rookie firefighter for a year, how many times have you trained on your responsibilities for a rescue task force? Maybe that's something-
Bill Godfrey:
That's good question.
Ron Otterbacher:
We can look at as a, you know, across the public safety sphere.
Adam Pendley:
Go ahead, Pete.
Pete Kelting:
Well, going back to the, I mean, the original topic of our podcast is, you know, we're stepping over folks that we obviously know are bleeding out, right? And you know, we're concerned about how far is law enforcement continue to traverse the terrain to find the bad actor? Some of those void fillers are stop the bleed, right? That's why we have our hospitals and folks going out there to, you know, educate the public of how to use tourniquets and stop the bleed. Our contact teams and our tactical teams are now carrying throw stop the bleed bags that you can toss out to folks. Should we be in that decision making? How far are we going as a contact team one to chase this threat down, right?
Adam Pendley:
Right.
Pete Kelting:
When we make that decision. So we recognize we don't wanna go too far, but we also have some things that can fill those voids as we, you know, tactically make our decisions.
Adam Pendley:
Right, which might be smart tactics for areas that may not have the follow-on law enforcement numbers as quickly as, but those areas that have the resources, I think it falls on the law enforcement folks to make it clear to their fire EMS counterparts that we have secured this part of it.
Pete Kelting:
Absolutely.
Adam Pendley:
We have this corridor available, and we're gonna go with you. And it does come back to the fact that again we cannot have over convergence of law enforcement all doing one task, and that is trying to find the bad guy. We have got-
Bill Godfrey:
We'll make it worse.
Adam Pendley:
Yes, we have got to understand that some of that law enforcement has to start carving out other jobs that need to be done, and that is, what can we secure for rescue? Let's get our fire EMS folks inside as part of that rescue task force, and let's coordinate. So if you have resources, you definitely ought to be carving out other jobs. If you have just a few number of resources, then you gotta decide, okay, I don't hear any active threat, let me go to the next part of the SIM, which is security, immediate action plan, and medical. If I'm not hearing any security threat right now, and I don't need to activate an immediate action plan, it's probably time to focus on medical.
Ron Otterbacher:
And the other thing is, and we've transitioned as far as what we talk about when we teach is there are two things that are killing people, it's the bad guy and the clock. It's so important that we get the clock out to everyone so they understand.
Adam Pendley:
Right.
Ron Otterbacher:
You know, the bad guy, there's times when the bad guy's taken off, you know? If we don't do something about the clock, then these people are gonna die anyways.
Adam Pendley:
Right.
Ron Otterbacher:
So you know, we've just gotta make sure everyone understands that transition is so important, and why it's so important. I think we still have areas that have no concept of the clock at all.
Pete Kelting:
And our tactical position, it's a lot of responsibility to help those contact teams down range to make good decisions. You know, I spend a lot of my instruction time at the tactical position, and I quite often say, "Hey, you know, remind them, what's your threat right now, the gun or the clock?" And it stops 'em for a second. You know, did I throw another contact team into the warm zone to help set up that CCP to secure that ground gain, right? 'Cause as soon as you give that ground up-
Bill Godfrey:
To get those exchange points secure.
Pete Kelting:
Get the exchange point secured, you know, what's the priority at the time, the clock or the gun?
Bill Godfrey:
I think these are all really good points. I also wanna point out one other that we haven't talked about, and that is watching out for your definition of terms. There was a relatively notorious event where there were several rescue task forces that were geared up in staging ready to go with security, with body armor, go bags. They were ready to go, and they were begging the incident commander for permission to deploy, and they kept getting denied because it was still technically a hot zone. And that occurred because their definition of a hot zone was till the suspect is killed, captured, or contained, killed, captured, or contained. It's a great sound bite, and they did a lot of training on this in their whole region, and you could have asked, I think just about any cop or firefighter or EMT, you know, "What's the definition of a hot zone?" And they would say, "Until a suspect is killed, captured or contained." Well, in this particular event, the suspect stopped shooting, and nobody knew why. Nobody knew why. And so what was not an active threat continued to be classified as a hot zone, which prevented, by definition and policy, the rescue task forces from deploying. And now, in that particular event, there were some other stuff that went on, and so that delay of the rescue task forces had minimal impact to the rescue and the care of people, you know, as we talk about what went on in that event. But the point is, is that a well-intended policy definition forgot-
Adam Pendley:
Right.
Bill Godfrey:
About this very thing that we're talking about, which is the shooting stopped, the active killing has stopped, and we don't know why. Are they dead, did they kill themselves? Have they been subdued by the people they were attacking? Have they fled the scene? Have they taken hostages, are they barricaded up? The killing stopped, and we don't know why, so if we don't have active killing, our next priority is to stop the people from dying, because the active killing that remains is the people that are bleeding.
Adam Pendley:
Right.
Bill Godfrey:
That's our next priority is those people, and then we'll hunt the person down.
Adam Pendley:
Sure, so, and this is so worth emphasizing that another example we use sometimes to get people into the right mindset is the fact that we define ourselves into complexity sometimes when we label something an active shooter event. We define ourselves into unnecessary complexity, because the reality is if we respond to a double shooting in the roadway, a drive-by shooting of some sort, and there's two or three injured people down, law enforcement's gonna get there. The suspect is not captured, killed, or contained. The suspect has fled the scene 'cause it's a drive-by shooting. We go there, we secure what we can, and we radio for fire EMS to roll on into the scene, and we work that warm zone together on a daily, if not hourly basis, all over this country, but yet when we label something an active shooter event, somehow we can't seem to figure out how to do that same level of security to get rescue into people that need treatment while we're still securing other areas.
Bill Godfrey:
And Adam, I agree with your point, but not necessarily the cause. I think it does ramp it up when you label that way. It ramps it up for everybody. But I think the root cause is that people aren't familiar with how the play is supposed to unfold. You know, they don't know where they're supposed to be. They don't know what role they're supposed to do. They think they do. They read a policy, they think they understand it. Somebody gave 'em a PowerPoint. You know, they read an article in a magazine. You know, they've had-
Ron Otterbacher:
Watched a little podcast,
Bill Godfrey:
They watched a podcast. They had a little RTF training. You know, the cops did contact team training the other day. But we're not doing it together.
Ron Otterbacher:
Right, integrated.
Bill Godfrey:
Right, we're not integrating it, we're not doing it together, we're not practicing together, and so there's a lack of familiarity with what that's supposed to look like. And you know, you're not gonna win the Super Bowl.
Adam Pendley:
Right.
Bill Godfrey:
By trying to take a play on paper that you've never practiced and go execute it. That's foolishness, and yet in a lot of ways, I think that's exactly what's happening. You know, Ron, to your point about how much training are the rookies getting, is it in the academy? Are EMTs and paramedics being taught basic RTF stuff? Are cops being taught RTF stuff? I know they're being taught contact team stuff, but you know, what about the rest of it? And I fundamentally believe, in this country, until active shooter training becomes a routine, standard part of our training, a routine expectation of training, as long as we continue to treat it as specialty training, it is gonna continue to be a problem.
Ron Otterbacher:
And if you think about it, you know, for as long as we've done this, and we've done it for a minute or two now, the best thing we've done is taught people how to integrate the responses. You know, I think that's one of the most important things I'm proud of is we've taught people to play in the sandbox together.
Bill Godfrey:
Yeah.
Ron Otterbacher:
But the only way you can get better at it is by training together.
Bill Godfrey:
Practice.
Ron Otterbacher:
You know, we can do all the practice we want as cops and say, "We think this is the way to do it," but we haven't included fire, haven't included the EMS. I go back to the saying I say all the time in the classes is if I tell law enforcement to charge the line, they're in an ERT type situation, they're moving protesters down range. If we tell the fire department to charge the line, they're sending water down range. We tell the power company to charge the line, we're all getting electrocuted. We all think we know what it means, but it has a different meaning for everyone. So that's why it's so important.
Adam Pendley:
Right.
Ron Otterbacher:
To integrate the training so we all have an understanding of this is why we set up the RTFs, this is why we set up everything else.
Adam Pendley:
Just getting the, like just we did a minute ago, just getting the fire guy and the police guy standing next to each other and I say, "Bill, what assurances do you need to come inside with me?" And you lay it out for me, right? I mean, just that conversation in a training setting is a giant leap forward.
Bill Godfrey:
It's breakthrough.
Adam Pendley:
Yep so.
Pete Kelting:
Well, you know, it's like you said in the academies where, you know, the new recruits coming in, you know, the transition right now in both law and fire is huge, so we have a lot of new folks, you know, on the floor. Do they know, do they understand what the responsibilities are that we're talking about? When we talk about an unknown threat, right? Versus known bleeding. We fall victim to sometimes bad intelligence. Is that threat still with us or not? Are we chasing the plus one? How far are we gonna continue to go? To again step back, secure what we've got, take care of the bleeding, it's now a warm zone, let's get the folks down the range that's gonna help. Depending on geography and resources, you know, what's our next step? Tactical, kind of putting the situational awareness together and we systematically approach it. I think we fall into traps when we think we just gotta keep going and keep going and keep going.
Bill Godfrey:
And in fairness, I do understand it. I mean, how long have you guys been training cops about the plus one on a threat?
Adam Pendley:
Right.
Bill Godfrey:
Right? And I mean, I assume you still are.
Ron Otterbacher:
And it still happens every day.
Bill Godfrey:
You still are, but in an active shooter event, it's one shooter 97% of the time. 97% of the time, it's one shooter, and we don't always have the luxury of knowing what has happened to that shooter.
Pete Kelting:
And you talked about who's getting the training. We can't forget our communication specialist, you know? They're frontline getting intel from 911 calls, witnesses calling in. Does that make it to the people in tactical and command to make good decisions?
Bill Godfrey and Pete Kelting:
In a timely manner.
Pete Kelting:
If I'm in building five, and the description was, you know, this, and seven buildings away, 'cause you know, somebody can really get through the venue quickly, they know the venue, and they're going somewhere, and Comm Center gets a 911 call the same description, am I gonna try to push that far? No, I'm gonna tell tactical we're staying where we're at. We're gonna start setting up the CCP, securing the ambulance exchange point. That needs to be handled by somebody else if there's resources there to do that.
Adam Pendley:
Well, I'm gonna steal your phrase. I like the way you said it earlier. What is your threat right now, the gun or time? What's the threat right now?
Bill Godfrey:
That is a great soundbite. First time I've heard you say that. That's a great soundbite.
Adam Pendley:
What is your threat right now, the gun or the clock? And I think that's another simple way to really get people to focus on what the priority right now should be
Bill Godfrey:
I absolutely agree. Any last thoughts, Adam?
Adam Pendley:
No, I'm just gonna repeat the phrase, known bleeding will not stop while you search for unknown threats.
Bill Godfrey:
Peter?
Pete Kelting:
Be focused. Good situational awareness, good tactical organization helps you make the best decision at the time.
Bill Godfrey:
Ron?
Ron Otterbacher:
To have a sound, integrated response, you have to train together, and understand what each other's needs are.
Bill Godfrey:
And I'm gonna steal Pete's phrase 'cause I like it so much. What is your problem right now? Is it a gun, or is it the clock? Gentlemen, thank you very much, I appreciate it. Shout out to Karla Torres, our producer, for pulling all of this together. If you haven't liked or subscribed to the podcast, please do. If you're consuming it on YouTube, you can subscribe there and get the announcements as we release them. Please do share this with the other people that you work with. The only way this information helps is if we all share it with everybody else, and until then, stay safe.