Category Archives: Active Shooter Drills

Capitol Hill Security Incident Scares Congress- Could it Happen To You?

The Capitol Hill Security Chase and Shooting yesterday gave a bad scare to everyone – including Senators, Congresspeople, tourists, furloughed federal employees and staff who still have their jobs.

The atmosphere on Capitol Hill was already so toxic that almost everyone jumped to the (incorrect) conclusion that it was
a disgruntled voter, and so there was shock when:

1.  It was a young WOMAN
2.  There was a 1 year old child in the back seat
3.  The driver of the car was not armed and mentally ill, (probably schizophrenic).

Where are you going today on a beautiful Fall Friday?  Almost anywhere you’re planning to go has had a
major security incident in the past three years…. whether it is:

A school
A movie theatre
A mall
A hospital
The office
A public building
A hair salon

And if a security incident did happen where you were, are you confident you’d know what to do?

That brief incident at the Capitol showed how in literally one minute, the situation goes from what
passes for normal at the Capitol, to total chaos, fear and terror.   The situation was handled correctly.

The communications systems were in place to send out a quick “Shelter In Place” order, and to keep
people updated.   The poor tourists and staff who were walking in the area were laying on the ground,
hiding behind trees, and had no idea what was going on – so they probably experienced the greatest fear.

The Capitol Hill police, the first responders, were probably not expecting to have the driver be a woman
with no political agenda, if you see a car trying to rush a barracide, the logical assumption is that they
have an explosive device and are trying to get closer to the target, but that was no true in this case.

So before you venture out for the weekend, keep these tips in mind, write them down and keep them in your purse or wallet.

1.  Be Situationally Aware – note where you at all times, how close a door is, or an alternate route for
your car when you’re in traffic.

2.  Spend 30 minutes deciding how you would react in an emergency shooter situation, and make a plan,
like deciding to use your car keys as a weapon, or keeping pepper spray in your purse.

3.  Remember to turn the sound off on your cell phone, if you’re caught in a developing security incident.

4.  If police are on the scene, follow their directions quickly and exactly.

5.  Have a local emergency number pre-set in your phone so you can call for help.

As they find out more about the Capitol Hill incident, this will probably be catalogued as an isolated incident,
which took place at a very inappropriate time, and a very inappropriate place, but it’s another wake up
for everyone.

Everything can change in a New York minute — be ready, just in case it changes for you!

 

 

Has it Been Only Two Weeks since the Navy Yard Shootings?

 

When i wrote my blog about the Shootings at the Washington Navy Yard on September 16th, I got some nasty notes about “Why did you have to write about this so soon after it happened?”

Well – I guess the fact that after about 15 days, no one can even remember the incident (8 people shot to death); the name of the shooter (Aaron Alexis), or much of the details.  It seems that people have decided that it was a mentally distributed person, so couldn’t have been prevented.  This is completely wrong.

One of the issues that security directors have is how to make their organization aware of the active shooter threat without terrifying them.  How do you get a large group of people out of the “It can’t happen here” mindset?   One of the main ways to bring an issue back home is by using the incident as a security awareness notice.

Write a “Lessons Learned” email and send it to everyone in the organization.  Follow it up with a purse and wallet card with reminders on what to do when faced with an Active Shooter situation.

NavyYard-smallKeep everyone informed on what happens after the incident – how the injured are doing, and more importantly, what changes the organization has made to ensure that it won’t happen again.

Try doing a simple threat-risk assessment to illustrate to management what the chances of having an active shooter incident actually are, based on the industry, the region, and the number of problems/complaints that employees have expressed in the past.

Don’t let anyone forget that this can happen to any organization, no matter how well funded, or how secure they think they are.  Remember, if it could happen in a DOD military facility – it could happen to YOU!

Navy Yard Shooting Highlights Effect of Cuts to Navy Security

Security professionals around the entire were shocked and dismayed when they turned on the news and saw the historic Washington Navy Yard locked down, surrounded by emergency vehicles, and looking for an active shooter.

All the shock, the outrage, the Defense Department reaction, the involvement of the overlapping law enforcement jurisdictions, has apparently been already forgotten by the public, moved to the virtual ‘old story’ pile by the latest news of a mall shooting in Kenya, meeting at the UN, and the politics as usual in Washington DC.

If you graph it online, you can see the dramatic spike and then the dramatic drop-off in interest by the general public. This highlights what the security community has to deal with, in the context of a 24 hour news cycle.

My perspective on the event was personal because one of my very best friends was in Building 197 that day, a former navy commander, now a contractor, who went to work at 5 am that morning, and finally returned home at 9 pm that night.  Unlike many shootings, the PCs, smartphones were all up and operational during the event, so people were instantly able to communicate with friends and relatives as the event unfolded.

NavyYard-smallRumors ran rampant that it was terrorism related, that there were three shooters, then that rumor switched to two shooters and eventually to only one shooter, Alexis Aaron, a mentally disturbed young man who had previous events of gun violence and yet had a top secret security clearance at the time of the shooting.

If we took a poll three weeks ago and asked people which facility would they judge to be the safest, the results
would probably look something like this:

1. Military Base in the U.S.
2. Hospital
3. Regional Mall
4. Police Station

Unfortunately – this is more like a list of the places where a shooting is more likely to take place.  As all the work in workplace violence statistics shows, a domestic Military Base has been the site of two mass shootings in only the last 4 years.  This includes the twelve killed and eight wounded at the Washington Navy Yard, as well as the thirteen killed and twenty injured at the Fort Hood shooting in late 2009.  That’s an average of 6 killed each year, and 8 injured, and doesn’t take into account any random shootings, training-related injuries, only the mass shootings.

Hospitals have increased in violent incidents every year for the last ten years, and we just witnessed a mass shooting at a Kenyan Mall.

However, the hospital and the mall are both completely OPEN, they want people to come in, they don’t control access at all.
This is what is so surprising about the Navy Yard shootings, the lack of security, lack of enough armed guards, lack of current background checks, lack of metal detectors, lack of retina scanners, and every other usual form of security control.

Speculation is that the key controls were missing because of budget cuts, which means that the Navy made the decision to reduce security controls, instead of cutting other, less critical programs.  The incident makes a strong case for examining the potential Return on Investment for security controls!

Even if the shooter’s background check was “current”, it certainly had not been updated based on his own recent events, and brushes with the police, and, of course, the anger and mental health problems appears again, and is shrugged off as too tough to manage and track.

However, it is a wake up call for the U.S. Navy, the Department of Defense, the U.S. Capital Police, and a variety of other organizations who “Secure” the Washington DC Capitol zone, and it leads to more questions than answers.

Already, the questions are starting about what controls SHOULD be in place for all military bases, and, naturally, re-examining the background check process and how it could be updated and improved.

Let’s not forget this time.

 

 

 

 

The Active Shooter – What’s the Right Response? Run Out or Lock Down?

I got to sit in on a security group discussion yesterday.  It includes both security directors and local law enforcement and It was interesting to see how both groups approached the active shooter scenario differently.   Which way is the best?  Is there a best?

For law enforcement officers at both the state, city and county level, they want all doors to be unlocked so that all the occupants of a facility, or a hospital, can get out and run for safety as quickly as possible.   They say that means more people will survive, not get shot, and it works with the natural human reaction to run away from danger.

Some of the active shooter experts in the room said that active shooter situations should be treated like fire drills, because people are used to fire drills, and they know what to do, because they practice fire drills more frequently than active shooter drills.

For the Security Directors, especially of hospitals, they wanted to be able to lock down if there was an active shooter call in their facility.  They felt that there were problems in evacuating quickly, and some were concerned about leaving bed-ridden patients behind while the clinical staff run out of the building.  So they advocated locking down all doors instantly.

While the heated discussion continued for almost three hours – at the end there was no “BEST” solution.  Each Security Director or Manager will have to decide for themselves which approach is right for their organization.  The important thing is to think it through in advance, prepare people in advance, and take advantage of the great materials that are available to help organizations prepared.


Get more information including videos, training materials, on line courses and more at
http://www.dhs.gov/active-shooter-preparedness.