(slow techno music)
- Welcome to Grainger Insights.
I'm Jeff Metherd and today we're here discussing
mitigation, preparedness and response
for active shooter incidents.
So we're here with Chris Sonne and
Mr. Billy Castellano from HSS EM Solutions.
Why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself.
- Sure, so I'm the Director of Emergency Management at HSS.
I've been with the company for over four years now
and I've been involved in emergency management for over 15.
- Billy?
- Yeah, I'm the Senior Tactical Instructor with HSS
and I'm a former law enforcement officer.
I'm actually retired from the Chicagoland area
and all I do now is travel around the country
and teach active shooter response.
- And how did you get into the profession?
- So I started working in the emergency department
at Advocate Lutheran General Hospital
on the northwest side of Chicago
and worked there for many, many years.
And I just kind of found that emergency management,
preparedness and safety was an area that I was drawn to.
And as I worked my way through the organization,
I stuck with it and found that
that's really the career path that
I wanted to proceed with in my life.
- Excellent. What about you Billy?
- Well I left law enforcement a few years ago
to take come contracts overseas with
the US Department of State,
and while I was overseas,
I had been contacted by a Level I trauma center,
in the Chicagoland area,
and they wanted to revamp their security function
and they wanted to develop an internal response
for an active shooter or an armed intruder.
And I came home, we did that.
We were wildly successful and
that's kind of where things started.
- How do you define an active shooter incident?
- An active shooter, the FBI definition of active shooter,
is an armed individual that's actively engaged in
life threatening behavior or
attempting to engage in life threatening behavior
in a populated and confined area.
Most of the time it's with a firearm
and usually there's no method to their selection of victims.
- How does that differ from, say, a hostage situation?
- A hostage situation is an armed individual
that's holding one or more persons against their will
until specific demands are met.
And on the face of those two instances,
they look very similar.
- You know one of the things with the hostage situation,
Billy's mentioned before in training,
is that that's actually a
fairly stable event that's occurring.
Even though it has the potential to become
a very volatile event, it's fairly stable.
And an area of opportunity that we see a lot is
when an organization looks to develop
an active shooter plan and a hostage plan
to make sure that they are different,
because they are two very different responses
and postures that we would take,
in terms of how our organization
and how community partners are going to
come in and assist us as well.
So those definitions are important to know
so we can properly sight our policies and plans behind them.
- And it helps to understand law enforcement response too.
With an active shooter,
law enforcement response would be immediate.
The first responding police officers would make entry,
but with a hostage situation,
you might not want that response.
You might want a more measured response.
The first responding police officers
setting up a perimeter maybe.
- How do you get organizations to take
active shooter preparedness seriously?
- So we've had some great partners
that we've worked with in the past
in the insurance industry and the underwriting industry
that have gone back to them
and asked from a risk perspective,
how can we take a look at these events,
these training programs, exercises
and how can we mitigate our risks in these events?
How can we decrease our overall risk exposure
and posture of an organization?
So at the end of the day,
our fundamental philosophy is we're here to save lives
and we're here to make sure everyone
goes home at the end of the day.
On the grander picture of things,
we need to look at how we are perceived
in terms of risk posture within our community,
within our clients, our customers that we serve
and then what can we do to help mitigate those,
those various risks.
So it's kind of a two fold approach.
- Yeah that data driven approach,
I think we find to be the most effective.
It's offering folks the most relevant
and contemporary information
and helping them make the right decisions
in regard to preparing for that.
- Okay, that's a great segway into my next question.
What are some of the trends or statistics that
you think folks should be aware of
when it comes to active shooter incidents.
- So some things that we've learned,
nearly three fourths of active shooter events
are five minutes or less.
Almost a quarter of all active shooter events
are two minutes or less.
And if you look at average law enforcement response time
in the country, depending on what resource you look at,
you might find between ten and 15 minutes.
So what that means is that those facilities,
those employees, those affected folks
have an added responsibility.
They have a necessity.
They need to learn everything they can
to protect themselves in the event
because waiting for law enforcement response,
statistically speaking, might not be their best option.
- The other thing that we see is that
the instances of how these are occurring
are increasing year over year.
We haven't seen a steady plateau,
there has been a dramatic increase year over year.
Part of it is better reporting,
how we report these events and
the willingness of organizations to report it
and law enforcement entities as well.
But the other half of it is that
they are frankly just happening more often
because of the environment that we are living in today.
- Okay. Have you observed or aware of any kind of
root causes or issues that are precipitating
this rise in active shooter incidents?
- We see ...
It's difficult to profile.
But we see some common themes.
We see that revenge seeker.
That person that is trying to correct that perceived wrong.
We see the domestic terrorist related event.
We see the planned assaults.
And more often than not,
there are some levels of planning that
go into all of these types of attacks.
But they don't occur in a vacuum.
In hindsight we learn that folks saw something,
but didn't report it and
that kind of brings us to a large portion of what we teach,
and that's the mitigation, understanding the warning signs
and looking for those types of individuals specifically.
- And the other thing that we saw,
is that with the recession
that we had in the United States and across the world,
is that as the recession took hold
there were much more of these incidents that took place.
There is some industry specific numbers
that some of them saw twofold or threefold increase
in terms of the number of shootings that occurred
during that specific time period.
Now unfortunately, as we're starting to
recover from the recession,
and some parts of the country recovering better than others,
we're not seeing that plateau or decrease.
We're seeing still that growth of these types
of events that are occurring.
- Okay, are there any particular,
you mentioned a little bit about
some of the personality traits.
What are some of the other personality traits
that active shooters represent?
- Like I said, it really is tough to profile.
Once we think we have a handle on who we're looking for,
we kind of get thrown a curve ball.
We do see behavioral health concerns
coming up time and again
as we go back and dissect an incident.
More often than not we see the folks
that perpetrate these crimes
have had a history of behavioral health concerns.
And that's one of the common things that we see
but it really is tough to pin down
one particular personality trait
that may lend towards committing a crime like this.
90 percent of the time our shooters are single males.
We're seeing multiple firearms used more and more
and we're also seeing improvised explosive devices,
IED's used more.
And we're also starting to see body armor
as body armor becomes more prevalent.
But we know that the folks that commit these crimes
aren't typically concerned with their personal safety,
because maybe they've already written their suicide note
or they've posted their manifesto.
And I think, my personal belief, is that
maybe they're wearing body armor to prolong the event.
- You know, a lot of our customers,
a lot of organizations have
developed active shooter programs,
others have not.
What types of success and failures have you seen
with organizations that have attempted
to develop these plans?
- So kind of the best practice when we look to develop this
is to look at this as a program, you know?
It's not just doing an exercise,
they're not just doing a training,
they're not just developing a plan.
It's really to blend all those pieces together, you know.
Start to make sure you have a fundamental plan,
a response plan, a mitigation plan,
when it comes to an armed threat or
active shooter incident within your organization.
From that you can easily develop a training program
that's specific and effective for your organization,
and then you can look to start
to deliver some practical exercises.
And those practical area specific exercises
is what we've really seen resonate well with staff
when it comes to developing situation awareness
and having them kind of practice some of those pieces
that they learn through education and training
and what their different response techniques
are going to look like.
One of the biggest issues that we see
are people trying to go too big, too fast.
Trying to do too large of an exercise.
All encompassing, bringing in law enforcement partners,
instead of first really just focusing on your own house
and then building up from there.
So that crawl before you walk before you run.
- There you go.
- Thank you.
- I like to say one of the big failures we see anecdotally
is folks sort of taking the test
before they've learned the lesson, to Chris' point.
They want to have the big showy exercise,
that shock and awe training as it were,
before they've actually prepared and trained their staff.
There is a place for exercises like that, absolutely,
but it needs to be a measured approach.
We need to train our staff first.
- Are there any don't do's related to
active shooter exercises and trainings?
- Some people feel there's a benefit to have these
as unannounced exercises and drills,
and we find that to be the farthest thing from the truth.
The key thing is to communicate these events,
whether it's a training event,
a practical exercise, whatever it may be.
Communicate, communicate, communicate is the key.
When ever we conduct an exercise,
we tell all the participants right off the bat
during a safety briefing exactly
what they're going to expect
weeks, and even months before we conduct the onsite portion.
We're communicating with the staff with what
they should be able to expect during this exercise,
so they have a good understanding of what's going to occur,
so they're not going to be overly concerned
or overly, you know, disenfranchised.
They'll actually want to come and participate in this event.
- Thank you for your time today.
- My pleasure Jeff.
- Chris and Billy.
- Thank you.
- Much appreciated.
That's all for today.
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