Fine Tune Shooter Response

The details of the rage killings in Bingampton, NY, have yet to surface or solidify since the event occurred yesterday. (See "http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/Shooter-Blocked-Door-Hostages-Hid.html">). But to a security professional, there is always room for evaluating response protocols to see where they lend themselves to fine tuning.

All accounts of the event, so far, indicate that the shooting was over within moments of police arrival on scene. This is good. Police across America have adopted the Active Shooter protocol in the aftermath of the Columbine High School carnage in Littleton, CO, some years ago. Recall that in Columbine, responding law enforcement followed standard procedure of the day, which reflected fundamental assumptions of how to make order out of chaos: set up a perimeter, minimize exposure to risk, and let the trained and equipped entry team (i.e. SWAT) lead the way in. Reasonable as this sounds, the fundamental faux pas in this procedure was that it creates a space for killers to murder more victims and to make their last stand. Hence the Active Shooter variation which now encourages the first police on site to make immediate entry to neutralize the threat. And it works,as shown at the Santee High School shooting in the San Diego area in 2000. Two cops, an off-duty officer dropping his daughter at school, and a local policeman heard the shooting, went right in, cornered the shooter in the boys' restroom and even brought him out alive. Point: they didn't wait for SWAT and thus saved more students from getting shot.

So what is wrong now? Early indications are that the police in Bingamton took hours to clear the targeted people from the shooting site. By some accounts, police even placed restraints (flex cuffs) on some of these people, watching them closely, at gun point, in an abundance of caution. It is time to update these tactics. What we see in such approaches, though conducive to officer safety, is the perpetuation of the same kind of pre-Columbine reflex that outlasted its usefulness until the Active Shooter protocol emerged as the new de facto standard. Once the shooting stops, the first priority should be making entry and getting emergency assistance for the wounded. The second priority should be assisting survivors without adding to their terror. How many rage killers have concealed themselves among the survivors to elude police in such situations? This was not a hostage-barricade situation or terrorist standoff where the shooter had other objectives and was using hostages as a means to an end. This was a situation where the killer was on a one-way shooting spree. The police need to update their tactics to take this into account.

Surely the means exist to bring people out of this kind of situation more rapidly while still capturing their contact details and identity for futher investigation. How? Bring them over to a seating area, take down their names and, if necessary, a photo with a cell phone camera. If you want to get clever, offer a cup of water and then keep the cup for fingerprints or DNA. But is it really necessary to antagonize a traumatized group by treating them all like potential assailants after the shooting has ended and the guns are recovered from the clutches of the only fatality that looks self-inflicted and has extra ammunition? Not only do such tactics hurt police public relations. They also reduce cooperation of victims who might otherwise be more forthcoming in the investigation which follows.

-- Nick Catrantzos