Ep 78: Civilians On The Scene
Episode 78
Published Apr 29, 2024
Last updated Feb 18, 2026
Duration: 34:26
Episode Summary
You’ve been involved in an active shooter event. Law enforcement is on the scene. Now what do you do? What can you do? How can you help?
Episode Notes
In the aftermath of an active shooter incident, what can a civilian on the scene do to help? In today’s podcast, our panel delves into the steps civilians can take to help first responders on the scene, from compliance and providing information, to offering first aid support.
View this episode on YouTube at https://youtu.be/MUpRVrjKdcg
Transcript
Bill Godfrey:Have you ever wondered, after an active shooter event, when the shooting stops, what can I do to help? Whether you're a civilian or a trainer, this podcast is for you. Coming up, stay tuned.
Welcome to the Active Shooter Incident Management Podcast. My name is Bill Godfrey, your podcast host. I'm joined by three of the other NCIER instructors with me. Today across the table from me is Kami Maertz. Kami, good to have you back.
Kami Maertz:
Hello, thank you very much.
Bill Godfrey:
Tom Billington.
Tom Billington:
Hello, Bill.
Bill Godfrey:
Fire EMS side, good to have you back in the studio. It's been a bit since you've been in the studio.
Tom Billington:
Happy to be here.
Bill Godfrey:
All right, and then sitting next to me on the law enforcement side, like Kami, is Ron Otterbacher. Ron, good to have you back.
Ron Otterbacher:
Glad to be here, thank you.
Bill Godfrey:
So today's topic, we actually got an email from a school trainer who is responsible for teaching school administrators, teachers, and to some degree, I think students as well, but generally civilians on the after actions in an active shooter event. What to expect, what to do to prepare themselves, the typical run, hide, fight, or avoid, deny, defend, and what to do to help themselves try to make themselves be safe. But one of the questions that was posed in this was what, if anything, can civilians do to help the responders during the securing and rescue phase? Besides just show us your hands so that we know that you're not a threat.
So I thought we might split this into two parts. Let's talk about from the security element first of exactly what is likely to happen as officers make entry into a room where they might be and talk about that from the security side. And then Tom, I thought you and I might talk a little bit about some of the things that they may be able to do on the medical side. And as we go through this, just kind of explaining in general.
So Kami, I'm gonna ask you to lead us off. When a contact team is making entry into a room, and let's assume there's half a dozen, dozen people in the room, what are the things that they're going to do, the commands that they're gonna give, and what are they looking for out of the people that are in that room?
Kami Maertz:
Initially, obviously, they're gonna be concerned about everybody's safety. They're not gonna know exactly who the active threat is, and or be looking for a secondary threat potentially. So at first, when they come in, they're gonna be giving loud verbal commands, show hands, stand against the wall if you can, all of those things to be looking for what the active threat is. And I think what the biggest thing with civilians on that is to not be offended by that, is to take the initial, the directions that are given by law enforcement and go with those directions to make sure that they've established that area of safety. And so that they can get control of the situation. It's gonna be very chaotic. There's gonna be a lot of moving parts to it. So to minimize that chaos, it takes everybody interacting together and to cooperate with that.
So the biggest thing is, is to understand that you're going to get loud demands. They're gonna be yelling potentially. They're gonna be asking for you to do whatever it is that they necessarily need you to do, show hands, back against the wall, all of those things. And to take those directions and not take offense by the direction that is coming to you. And to just cooperate initially of their initial statements to you.
Bill Godfrey:
Now, assuming it's a team that's coming through the door, is there generally gonna be one person that's giving the commands or does the whole team kind of bark the orders? What does that generally look like? I mean, I know it's not the same for everywhere, but...
Kami Maertz:
Exactly. And it's gonna be chaos, right? So we do train obviously that one person gives loud commands. However, could it happen in a chaotic situation where you're having multiple officers screaming multiple different things? Absolutely. So obviously the safest thing to do in any interaction is just show your hands and just kind of calm yourself down to where you're getting to a point of safety and that they can see that you're not a threat, that you are a survivor that is in there and is part of this. However, you're not a threat to them. So just show your hands and kind of just remain calm at that point is the best way.
Bill Godfrey:
So Ron, as the team makes the entry, which of course my understanding from the law enforcement community is always a fairly nerve wracking, anxiety inducing thing to make entry into a room in an unknown situation. What are the kinds of things that they're looking for that's gonna signal them that things are going wrong? That they may have a threat or that could send this thing sideways?
Ron Otterbacher:
First thing I look at is as I'm going in is I look at three things, hands, eyes, waist. I wanna see where their hands are. We've gotta remember that we're married to our phones now. Your phone needs to be out of your hand, needs to be on the ground somewhere else. Don't worry about your phone right now because that can be mistaken as a weapon because they see something dark, they don't know what it is. So again, I'm looking at hands, eyes, 'cause they're gonna look and see what's going on and then I look at their waist.
Then I wanna see what the compliance is. If I tell people to move and they're not moving, something tells me something's wrong. I go back to the days of do a search warrant. Person's got one opportunity to listen to what we say. If not, they're gonna do what we say no matter what.
Same here because you know in these situations the likelihood of you being involved in an actual officer-involved shooting is very high and you're going into this, understanding that from the get-go and now you're in the middle of it and so you're gonna be on edge and that's why it's so important that they've listened to what the officers are saying, they keep their hands completely clear. Again, so many people are gonna be texting and everything. Get that out of your hand. That takes away that opportunity and then do what they say.
Bill Godfrey:
So I know that all of this happens very dynamically and very quickly but how long does it typically take to get a room secured? From the time you're in and you start barking the orders and you kinda get everybody lined up where you want 'em, I mean are we talking 10 minutes, two minutes? What does that typically look like?
Kami Maertz:
The entry's gonna be very quick. The entry's gonna be very quick into that room and to get control over that room is gonna be very quick. Controlling the chaos could take a little bit longer and that's based on the compliance that we're getting. Within the first couple of minutes that room's gonna be secured and they're gonna get compliance in one way or the other from everybody. But a big part of that is people taking control of themselves and listening and becoming compliant. The quicker that everybody becomes compliant, the quicker that chaos is gonna decrease and they're gonna be able to take containment of that room.
Bill Godfrey:
Yeah, anything that you wanna add to that on the timing of the room or getting that control?
Ron Otterbacher:
No, it'll be very quick within a minute, two minutes max probably. And again, you're getting compliance of where you want people but now you've gotta start talking to people and figuring out what went on, making sure that you don't have a bad guy embedded with everyone else. So you're gonna have to start making those determinations, seeing who's injured, who's not injured.
I like to say all the time that as law enforcement, if I go on any call, I arrive on a call and I've got about a second, second and a half to determine if Tommy wants to kill me or not. So we do rapid assessments. But again, depending on what the people inside do, it can facilitate us being successful and quicker at doing what we wanna do.
Bill Godfrey:
Okay, so I think that gives us a perfect jumping off point 'cause Ron, you mentioned the injured if you've got some injured in the room. So in some cases, the injured may be minor injuries and they might be walking wounded, they might follow commands and things like that.
But one of the things that we talk about in class, Tom, is trying to get the room geographically sorted. We wanna try to separate the uninjured from the injured that are walking wounded and then the injured that cannot walk, that presumably would be laying somewhere on the floor, may or may not be conscious. Does that change the dynamics for a team if they come in and there's two or three people down on the floor and potentially some civilian bystanders that are trying to render aid? Is that something that's fairly easy to recognize? Can that get confused as a threat from the phone? Let's talk through that and then I wanna jump over a little bit into the medical.
Kami Maertz:
The biggest thing on that is understanding that we're coming through that door, we're creating an area of chaos, right? So we're adding to chaos initially. So the best thing to minimize that chaos, again, is even if you're treating somebody, is if they're telling you to stand up back away from that person is to do that, listen to the compliance and then allow that chaos to decrease. And then you can say, I have this training or I have this, or I can help in this way, but allow that chaos and that safety element to take place first and then act.
Bill Godfrey:
Okay.
Ron Otterbacher:
And that's the thing that's so important for us to understand is public safety is as we're going through the door, they may be already rendering aid to these people because they've seen what happened. With that, we understand if they're focused on rendering aid, they may be slow to comply with our command to move away. We've just got to understand those dynamics are in play and we've got to do our best. We may help move them because they're not hearing us, but it's not because they're trying to defy our commands, it's because they're busy trying to save a life and we've got to understand that.
We've got to look at everything from a bunch of different perspectives, but we've got to also be prepared to take whatever action is necessary. If it ends up, they're on the bad side of this whole thing.
Bill Godfrey:
So let's assume Tom and I are in a room and we're trying to take care of a couple of people that have been shot or on the floor. Team comes in, show us your hands. Okay, we do that. Stand up. Are they generally gonna, whether they tell us to move to the wall or whatever, what's the best way for Tom and I to then, the best way and the best time for us to say, can we go back to helping those? Can we assist these people? Can I go back to trying to take care of this person? What's the best way to approach that as that dynamic hard entry begins to taper down?
Kami Maertz:
I think it's watching for that sign that chaos has decreased, right? And so in a natural situation, when someone comes in, and they're yelling and they're doing all of the things that they're going to do when they come through that door, and then it's gonna be that calm. That calm of everybody's quiet and then say, that person's injured, I can do this, can I help? And ask, can I help? That way that officer knows what your intent is on what your action is when you go to move. And they've given that direction. They've taken control of that and said, yes, you can help.
Bill Godfrey:
Okay, so Tom, I'm gonna jump over to talk about a little bit of medical here. And I think I wanna take this in two parts. I wanna talk about what civilians could potentially do if they happen to be in the room when something like this happens. And even kind of initiate prior to a team coming in because that's a very, very possible reality. And I think we've already kind of covered how to follow the advice and move back.
But let's talk a little bit about what that looks like. And I'm thinking probably the best place to start with there is the same thing we teach the responders, which is how to sort the room. Would you agree?
Tom Billington:
I agree totally. Definitely Bill. I think that if you're a civilian and you may have some training, you may not, but you can recognize if somebody's injured. You can count how many people are injured. You can decide maybe we can get them all in one place so they can be treated when the medical folks come in. Just certain things like that, even an untrained person can do knowing if somebody's injured or not.
Bill Godfrey:
Yeah, and generally we're, as we were talking earlier, and I don't know that we were very explicit about it, but generally speaking, what we will do is sort the room. We'll put the uninjured up against one wall. The injured that are the walking wounded we'll put against a different wall. And then that leaves the main floor area open for those that are injured that are not able to move, not able to walk or get up, which also sorts into our priorities because the injured that are up against the wall that are walking, what we call the walking wounded, those are a triage level of green, which are not the ones that need the immediate care. The ones that are typically gonna need the immediate care are the ones that are down on the floor.
And so just sorting the room, I think, is a big place to start and lets you focus. What's the likelihood that a team coming through the door, if they see I've got two or three injured down in the room, I've got a couple of injured up against this wall and people that don't look like they're injured up against this wall, are they gonna kind of recognize what's happened when they come through the door, you think?
Ron Otterbacher:
You hope they will. But also we've got to understand the level of care that we provide in those situations until it's stabilized. Maybe part of what we should do is teach the civilian side of things what direct threat care is. And try to give them a basis to, because we're not, even if they've got two broken fingers, that's not a priority that we're looking for. But if you're a civilian looking at someone with their finger sticking sideways, that's pretty traumatic at that time. So you won't recognize that that's not a big thing.
And so what we provide, you hope we would recognize that it's separated, but also if I see it separated, because you'd never see it separated like that, it might bring up some, okay, what's going on here? Is this a trap?
So we've got to look at it from all different perspectives that if we, as a community, public safety community, sit and say, we should train these things, then it'll become more often that we see it than it is now we don't see it. I've never heard of a situation where they've already separated the injured and stuff like that. So it would be a change, a paradigm change that we've got to prepare for, but I think it'd be a great one. Again, we're pushing the narrative. We can teach whatever we think is important.
Bill Godfrey:
Yeah, it's an interesting point. Ron says that he hasn't seen it or heard of it being seen. And boy, I get that because we have a hard enough time just getting responders to geographically sort the room. I mean, Kami, what do you think? Would the folks that you work with coming in on the team, because they've been through the training fairly recently, you think they might pick up on what's happened and figure that out?
Kami Maertz:
I think so, and I do think it goes back to training. That's something that we do implement now in training where you're going to have patients who are laying on the ground, you're gonna have some who can listen to your demands, some that don't, all of those things, and it's a huge part of training to walk into a room and to be able to recognize that and to know that maybe somebody's not non-compliant, they're just injured and they're not, or we're normally gonna see somebody with a large bleeding injury. However, there might be something that we're not seeing, but they're not compliant to us, but we're paying attention to those signs. What are they expressing to us in their eyes? What did their face look like? What are they saying to us? All of those things.
Bill Godfrey:
Perfect. So Tom, I'm gonna come back to the medical side here. You said something a minute ago that I don't wanna lose sight of is figuring out the count of the injured. So we sort out the room, we've got the uninjured on one wall, we've got the walking wounded on another wall, and we've got the ones that are down. And that count is important. So the ones that are down on the floor that are not walking wounded, we would consider those from a civilian or a law enforcement perspective as reds. And so we would have the greens that were the walking wounded, and then the reds that were down. How important is it for that count to get to the fire EMS side early?
Tom Billington:
Extremely, excuse me, extremely important. So we wanna make sure law enforcement gets that number from the civilian. The civilian can say, "Hey, I have three people down," or red, "I have four people there against the wall," green. It is important for law enforcement now to send that information to tactical and triage, et cetera, to get the RTFs to know what's going on.
So as soon as possible, that tells the fire rescue what resources we need to start asking for, what other resources might we need. So very important information to get out very soon.
Bill Godfrey:
And I think I would add to that and say, if you're in this situation, you've sorted the room, you've got the counts, and at that point, there's still no responders in the room with you, we always talk about in the old CPR training, designate somebody to go get the AED, designate somebody to call 911. In this particular case, whether you call 'em or text 'em, almost all 911 centers now are capable of receiving text messages sent to 911. To simply text 911 and say, "We are in this location, "there's this many of us, "and we have injured, "we have three greens and two reds in this location."
Some variant of that message, if the teams aren't there right away, it may be because they're dealing with other problems, other threats, or they may not know that you're there yet. So getting that information out to the 911 center potentially sets up the opportunity for 911 to relay that to law enforcement, to the responders, and get the teams in, does it not?
Ron Otterbacher:
Right.
Kami Maertz:
Yeah, absolutely. And it also, it creates a whole trail of events, right? So law enforcement knows how many people they're going in, it knows how many RTFS we need to send in potentially for that scene, how many hospitals we need. So it creates that entire trail of information from that basic information that we're getting from the people who are already on scene.
Bill Godfrey:
Okay, so Tom, now let's talk specifics on what a layperson with little or no medical training can do to help somebody that has been shot. What are the things that jump out in your head?
Tom Billington:
Well, first of all, the unfortunate reality where we are today, in today's society is, you'll notice now we have AEDs, Automatic External Defibrillators, in most rooms. We have trauma kits out, they're called bleed kits. These things are actually designed for civilians and they come with instructions.
So first of all, for civilians to know that these tools are out there are very important. Second thing is, hey, I have somebody bleeding, do I know my simple steps of direct pressure? Is somebody having trouble breathing? Can I put them on their side so they can breathe better or not ingest anything? Little things like that, just basic first aid training.
I think most importantly, and it happened to me on my last trip coming home, there was somebody injured on an airplane and the flight attendant came over the intercom and said, "Is there anybody medically trained here?" And all these hands went up. I would ask my law enforcement counterparts here, is that something to think about when we're in these situations, when you have civilians to ask, is there somebody medically trained? Is that something we wanna start thinking about taking forward?
Bill Godfrey:
That's a really interesting question. So, should it be the role of the contact team that's going in that room and securing it? If it's pre-RTFs, if it's before the rescue task forces are down range, once you've got the room secured and settled, is there anybody in here that's got medical training? I don't know, what are your thoughts?
Kami Maertz:
No, I think that's a great idea. I think it's a great idea for us to implement into our training, obviously to ask that question, to say, is anybody medically trained? Because some people will naturally stand off. It's very chaotic. They're naturally gonna stand off. They're gonna wait for that direction. If you do have that training, once it does become less chaotic, is to say, but if they don't, it is good for law enforcement to ask, does anybody have any training? That's a great idea.
Bill Godfrey:
What do you think?
Ron Otterbacher:
I think it's good, but again, understanding you treat to the level of training you have. So, you're gonna have to now determine if their level of training is higher than the contact team level of training or the RTFs team. If I'm in there, even if the RTFs come in and one of the people says, "Hey, I'm an ER doc." Well, come on, doc, jump in. This is your place to be.
So, I think it's a good question, but again, we've gotta understand just because this person had basic first aid 42 years ago, maybe things have changed a little bit and maybe they're not the best one to provide the front assist.
Tom Billington:
And now in reality, I think you're gonna find most responders or emergency trained personnel will already start acting. They'll already start saving lives and doing what they know how to do, but it's just a thought that maybe it's something to ask.
Bill Godfrey:
Yeah, that's an interesting perspective.
So, I think you nailed, you talked about direct pressure, obviously. Wounds are compressible. Even on the head, if you've got a head wound, in most cases, I mean, you're obviously not gonna compress the skull, but head and facial wounds bleed pretty heavily. You do wanna be very aware of any blood that is getting in the airway. So, if someone got hit in the cheek or the jaw or the facial structure, that can bleed badly. If they're laying on their back, you may end up with that blood pooling in the mouth. And I realize this sounds a little bit gross, but the simple thing there is roll them up on their side so that that can drain out and leaves their airway open.
And any place else on the body, direct pressure and compress. If you happen to have access to bleed kits, to use tourniquets, there are instructions on how to use the tourniquets. That can be difficult to learn those skills when your adrenaline's up, if you've never had to do one before. So, I think for those of you in the community that are responsible for training civilians, maybe some, certainly if you're doing training in a school and you've got bleed kits that have tourniquets in them, probably ought to teach how to use those and get some training aids.
Tom Billington:
Especially your teachers and staff, at least, should have good training on how to use all the bleed kits.
Ron Otterbacher:
And actually, the reason I'm sitting here right now is because civilians helped me. I was in an auto accident and I was unconscious. I was bleeding. I was, you know, all the blood was going in my mouth. They pulled me out of my car with a canine in the back of the car. They pulled me out of my car and gave me an open airway that saved my life. There were four people that just acted, they didn't know anything about first aid, but they tried to help someone that was in need. And that's so important in all these situations.
Bill Godfrey:
Yeah, and I think the only other kind of unique injury that really calls for some special attention is when you're shot in the chest. Anything above, we would say above the diaphragm, but for those of you that don't know what that is, basically the center of your chest, your sternum. So if you're up here in the area of your lungs or your heart, that is a special care type of wound. It doesn't typically do a lot of good to try to compress that. Rather, we wanna get a chest seal on it. Now, a chest seal sounds like a very fancy thing. And a lot of people get confused about the purpose of a chest seal. It's not to keep the air from coming out, it's to keep air from getting sucked in through the open hole.
And so, you know, a piece of gauze or something may still allow air to pass through it. So you really wanna look for something that's a plastic, a Ziploc bag, a Walmart shopping bag, something like that. It doesn't have to be an actual manufactured piece of medical equipment that says chest seal on it. You just wanna get some type of covering that is going to prevent air from going in. And we'll still allow the air to escape out. So that's something to be aware of as well.
But generally, we're talking about situations where we would hope that the civilians are only caring for them for a few minutes. Tom, what else comes to mind in terms of medical care that civilians could do?
Tom Billington:
Well, fractures, broken bones, things like that. We have to, you know, a citizen can know not to move it, try to stabilize it maybe with a pillow. As far as, you mentioned the tourniquet. Again, that's a skill you have to learn. A lot of bleed kits do come with directions, but again, it's something you can't just pick up. Just making sure their airway's open, they're breathing. That's the main thing. And try to control that bleeding the best you can.
Again, certain areas you wanna use compression, other areas you don't. And especially the chest, as you just mentioned. But just little things like that. If you can just stall and slow that clock down a little bit so the rescue teams can get in there, that'll be plenty.
Ron Otterbacher:
Another thing that we can do, no matter what your level of training is, is provide psychological first aid. You know, they've been through the most traumatic situation in their life. You're gonna have people that respond in different ways. You're gonna have people that are freaking out completely, and you're gonna have people that are stoic and say, "I got this." So if you've got it, help other people get command of the situation.
Bill Godfrey:
And I think, Tom, I think you nailed everything that was still on my mind. The only thing that I would add is just kind of the sense of the raw prioritization. So, for example, if somebody gets shot in the head, that's obviously bad. Now, people do occasionally survive gunshot wounds to the head, but obviously that's very problematic. But here's the thing. Whatever damage has been done has generally been done. And so there's not, there is some urgency, obviously, to a gunshot wound to the head, but that urgency falls behind, for example, somebody that's been shot in the chest. That has a lot, a lot more immediacy to it.
The other one that I would think, and it kind of tags onto what you're talking about here with the social, just talking to them. One of the most common signs of shock, in fact, the first sign of shock, we always say is an altered level of consciousness. But what does that look like? People start asking you the same questions over and over again. What happened? And then you tell them. And then 60 seconds later, they're asking you the same question again. Or the questioning becomes repetitive. They're not remembering. They're a little bit confused. And you're like, I just told you this. And at that moment that it goes through your head, I just told you this, you need to start thinking, whoops, this person is going into shock. What is going on? If it's, it may be very apparent from the bleeding that you're seeing, but if you're seeing somebody that's on the ground that, and this happens very commonly with abdominal wounds and chest wounds, there is not a lot of bleeding on the outside. And so it can have the appearance of being a fairly minor injury. And when all of a sudden they start getting a little confused and the questions become repetitive and you're like, I just explained this to you, that is a sign that they are bleeding very significantly. And that's a very high priority.
And one of the things, Tom, see if you agree with me here. I think one of the things that civilians could do is if they're in the room for five, 10 minutes waiting for responders, and they're able to do this, if they're able to recognize who the critical ones are to be able to call that to the attention of the responders, even if you're standing up on the wall with your hands up and you go, by the way, that one over there has a gunshot wound to the chest and is getting shocky. You know, this one over here, you know, I think that could really help focus the prioritization. What are your thoughts?
Tom Billington:
That would be night and day. That would be awesome if civilians had the ability to do that. And that comes again with training our civilians. And we've done it through the years with CPR and everything. And unfortunately now into bleeding kits, but knowing those things ahead of time, telling the contact teams who can tell the rescue task forces, the sooner the better, 'cause again, the clock is ticking, people are bleeding and time's of the essence. Definitely, I agree.
Bill Godfrey:
So we've talked a lot about civilians being in a room where they were injured. Let's back up for a minute. Is there anything different if there are civilians in a room and there's nobody in there and injured? They're fine. There's no threat. There never was in that room. They're just in there. Is there anything different that they need to do or should do or should be on the lookout for?
Kami Maertz:
No, I think it's just controlling the chaos. So even in that room is to when law enforcement makes entry is to get compliance and say, there's no injured in here. So they know they can bypass that room and look for people who are injured and things like that. That's important information for us to know as we make entry and get compliance of everybody is to immediately know nobody's injured in here. Nobody's come in here.
Ron Otterbacher:
I agree.
Tom Billington:
Or what if you went in the room and a civilian stood forward and said, "Hi, I'm such and such. None of these people are injured. I've counted all of them. We've done this. We've done that. What do you want us to do?" Maybe one spokesperson.
Kami Maertz:
I think the bad thing with that is only is that it's done immediately versus because if you do, that person's gonna stand out and that's gonna be where all the attention goes from those contact teams is gonna be that person stood out instead of everybody listening to compliance and then they're gonna look around the room and then for someone to say, "Nobody's injured here." It's to decrease that level of chaos first.
Bill Godfrey:
Does that start with the hands up? Does that go to slow raising my hand and going-
Kami Maertz:
100%.
Bill Godfrey:
Yeah. Just a way of signaling the team to say, I've got something I wanna share with you when you're ready. But a slow movement.
Ron Otterbacher:
Again, the most important thing is understanding the compliance. If they're complying with all your actions, if they're doing everything you say, the next thing is, "Is anybody hurt?" And then someone can say, "No, we've got 10 people in here. No one's hurt."
But the compliance is the big thing. Showing your hands, doing what we say, because again, we've got seconds to determine if you're gonna try to hurt us or hurt someone else. So I think that's the critical thing. Once you see compliance, doesn't matter if it's an active shooter, doesn't matter if it's a search warrant. Once you're getting compliance, then you understand that they're doing what you say. I'm not saying you calm everything down, but you understand they're doing everything you ask them.
So at that time, the threat may not be quite as high, but until you screen everybody and search them and everything else, then you're not gonna let down your guard. But it lets you know that they're following. If I will go into a room and I've got 100% compliance, and I go into the next room and I got three people that aren't complying with everything or with anything, you look at the environmental baseline and you say, "Wait, these are more of a problem than these are."
Kami Maertz:
Yeah, and I think also for law enforcement purposes, when you're, or for civilians realizing that they're at a high adrenaline, right? So they're not thinking as clearly as they would in the non-adrenaline. So when they're coming in that room and we're looking at hands and somebody might think, "Well, we're all showing you our hands, but it's gonna take a minute for their OODA loop to go. Safe, safe, safe." And then to say, "Is someone a threat? And we don't realize it. Is somebody just hiding among these people and nobody wants to say anything?" And so those things might take a little bit longer and where people are saying, "I told you there's nobody injured. I told you there's nobody injured." We're still thinking in our heads, are we sure? Are we sure everybody's safe? Are we sure we're good to be able to move on? So those things might happen too.
Bill Godfrey:
Okay, the only other topic I think I wanna hit on here is in large campuses, for example, a school, whether it's a university or high school, whatever the case may be, the first handful of contact teams that begin going through the rooms and what we call the clearing phase, they're checking for threats, any unknown threats or any unknown injuries that we didn't know about as they go through and begin clearing their rooms. In some instances, there's so many people that you can't clear the room and then move and secure those people. You just don't have enough responders. You basically check the room, you check the people, and then you close the door and tell them to stay put and you move to the next room.
Is there something that the civilians in that room can do in that phase? That obviously you get the door closed or lock it or whatever, but what are the things that the civilians, so the contact team comes in, they've determined there's no threat, they're going to move on to the next room, what for the people left behind?
Kami Maertz:
Stay in that room, stay in the room, listen to the directions, don't take it as there's no longer a threat, I can come out, don't go against them, don't get angry and say they've left us. And so now we're gonna, because unfortunately there's other things going on. And so we have to handle those chaotic scenes and you're okay right here. And so that's the main thing is pay attention to listen to what they're saying and just remain compliant in what they're saying.
Know they're coming back for you. We're not forgetting, we know you're there, we've checked that on, we've let tactical know that room's safe, we've cleared that room, there are people in there. We've let somebody know that you are in there, we're gonna come back for you.
Bill Godfrey:
Very good.
Ron Otterbacher:
And we should be conveying that to them before we leave them.
Kami Maertz:
100%.
Ron Otterbacher:
You can't just say, okay, they're clear, let's go to the next one and not tell them anything. I'll stay right here, we'll be back. This is how we'll identify ourselves when we come back.
Kami Maertz:
Yep. Everybody in on the plan, right? Is always the best way to handle any chaotic situation is to say, I identify you, I see you, this is my plan to save you, I'm coming back for you.
Bill Godfrey:
Fantastic. Any last thoughts? No, all right.
Tom Billington:
Good stuff.
Bill Godfrey:
Well, thank you all for going down the rabbit hole on this. There's an awful lot of us as responders that also have roles as training, whether that's training civilians, training schools, school resource officers, training businesses, civilian campuses, things like that. And I think it's good to kind of have these conversations.
But I think in a couple cases, for example, I remember several, well, I guess it's been a couple months ago now, we did the interview with the high school student and he's like, yeah, okay, run, hide, fight, I got it, locks lights out of sight. But what comes after that? And it seems like we still have a little work to do on our side to really kind of share with civilians what comes after that. And it seems like there's a bit of a training gap there. So maybe we can do some work
Ron Otterbacher:
Trainings a lifelong evolution. You know, you're always learning. And we, from 1999 when Columbine happened to now, we've evolved tremendously as public safety. I think now we're getting more confident in what our capabilities are. But now we're realizing some of the holes that we left behind.
Kami Maertz:
Absolutely.
Ron Otterbacher:
And training the civilians, doing things such as that are those things that we've identified. So it's time we pull up our bootstraps and get to work.
Tom Billington:
And Ron, you're so right. After 38 years actually sitting here at this table, I learned something new today, training wise. So you can never stop learning. And I'll take that opportunity, definitely.
Bill Godfrey:
I think that's a perfect way to wrap us up, Tom. Thank you.
For those of you that are listening to the podcast, if you haven't liked or subscribed, please do so and share it with the folks that you work with that are interested in this. This doesn't work unless we get the message out and everybody gets on the same page. I wanna say thank you to our producer, Karla Torres. And as always, till next time, stay safe.