An active shooter is defined as "... an armed person who has used deadly physical force on other persons and continues to do so while having unrestricted access to additional victims."[1]
The definition includes so-called "snipers", but not usually suicide bombers. Active shooters have caused a paradigm shift in law enforcement training and tactics, especially as these persons do not necessarily expect to escape or even survive these situations.[2]
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According to some police science research, when an active shooter begins his attack, it is imperative that the initial police responders immediately pursue and establish contact with the shooter.[1]
The sooner the shooter can be contained, captured or neutralized, the fewer the casualties incurred. During the pursuit, police officers will move through unsecured areas, and bypass dead, wounded and panicked citizens while approaching the perpetrator(s).[2] It is important for law enforcement personnel to survive the encounter to end a massacre, rather than become additional victims.
SEALE Police Academy (Bedford OH) manager Ron Borsch reports their research has determined that aggressive action -- by even a single individual -- is the most effective countermeasure in stopping the active shooter. For example, initially single unarmed civilians have accounted for half of mass-murder preventions.[3]
In a study conducted by the commercial law enforcement training company Hard Tactics, researchers concluded that the faster a shooter is confronted, in any fashion, the higher the probability of event resolution with minimum loss of life. The group studied forty active shooting incidents. They found that seventeen incidents were resolved by the shooters themselves. The most likely resolution in these cases occurred when the shooter ceased attacking his victims and committed suicide, or attempted to.
The Hard Tactics researchers were completely surprised to find that in seventeen of the reviewed cases, the event was resolved by victims when confronting the shooter. In at least three cases, the shooters ceased their attacks when directly verbally confronted by someone they knew. In other cases, the shooters were overcome by physical confrontation by the intended victims.
One of the most important facts to emerge from the study was that, of the forty studied incidents, only six were resolved by police. Of those six, only two had what the researchers considered to be a favorable outcome in that the police arrived during the shooting and immediately resolved the shooting and limited the loss of life. In the other four incidents, police followed the customary isolate, cordon, and control access method used to isolate a scene until special operations teams and negotiators can arrive. In these incidents, police failed to have a positive effect on limiting loss of life.
Modern "Immediate Action Rapid Deployment" (IARD) police tactics and protective equipment have been developed that enable first responder patrol officers to rapidly approach armed individuals. Ballistic shield technology has progressed, and officers can deploy lightweight versions of these shields from their patrol vehicles. The "Baker Batshield" was introduced in 2003, and gives trained officers the ability to move swiftly while simultaneously aiming and operating a pistol, submachine gun, or assault rifle. The ability of police officers to apply accurate firepower is important during an active shooter emergency, as rescuing officers are reluctant to use weapons in crowded areas for fear of adding to the casualty count, and have a difficult time getting closer to an active shooter without ballistic protection.
Retired FBI trainer John Wills states, "The street officer faces just as much danger as do SWAT teams. Moreover, the street cop usually never has any time to "gear up" for the encounter. With portable, folding shields, one only needs to pull it out of its case and go".[4]
Concurring with Wills, retired Army Special Forces Sergeant Major Bill Barchers, goes one step further proposing that, in fact, street cops today need to receive the basics of Individual Movement Techniques (IMT) and close quarters combat. This training will enable them to tactically move to make contact (movement-to-contact in military terms) with an active shooter upon arrival without waiting the arrival of back-up officers. This approach requires much more than just new patrol officer training. It requires a whole re-look at emergency planning. Barchers goes on to point out that repeatedly, departments find out in the most painful ways possible, that every second counts in an active shooter incident. His company, Hard Tactics, is helping departments preview every possible site of potential active shooting incidents within their jurisdictions. They are designing standardized grid systems so that officers have a reliable system of pinpointing their exact location at a potential scene. Then finally, the company is helping departments redesign communications procedures so that radio nets are quickly rerouted in such ways that the first responding officer has a solitary priority on his channel and all other non-incident, non-tactical related traffic is redirected, most commonly resulting in a dedicated channel just for tactical responders.
No case demonstrates the need for this kind of response more than the Northern Illinois University shooting in February 2008. In that case, it is inconceivable that there could have been a quicker response. In fact, Chief Donald Grady himself was on the scene in less than a minute of the first call. Chief Grady has repeatedly said, "that no level of preparation — short of manning campus buildings with armed guards and metal detectors — could have prevented (Steven) Kazmierczak’s attack". While an exact time-line is impossible to determine at this point, Grady's very telling description is of critical note. It appears that the police were called as the attacker was seen entering the building with guns. The police reacted nearly instantaneously. In fact, Campus police were at the scene but did not actually enter the building until Chief Grady arrived twenty-nine seconds after he was notified. By the time the chief arrived, organized his responding officers, and entered the building, the shooter had already killed himself, five others, and shot a total of twenty-one people. All of this occurred in well under three minutes. This case points to the need for street cops to be armed with rifles and be prepared to close, isolate, or neutralize an active shooter upon arrival at a scene without waiting for back-up. In the NIU case, by any existing measure, says Barchers, the police acted nearly perfectly.
By the time a shooter decides to go active, there is little time available to save the lives of innocents positioned in the immediate "killing zone", as referenced by author Rick Armellino:
"The October 2nd, 2006 Amish schoolhouse massacre in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania, is a textbook example showing how quickly and efficiently killing can commence in the presence of a closely established police containment perimeter."[5]
The need for "Immediate Action Rapid Deployment" (IARD) by police first responders is described in an article published by the Christian Science Monitor dated May 31, 2000:
"Instead of being taught to wait for the SWAT team to arrive, street officers are receiving the training and weaponry to take immediate action during incidents that clearly involve suspects' use of deadly force."[6]
The article further reported that street officers were increasingly being armed with rifles, and issued heavy body armor and ballistic helmets, items traditionally associated with SWAT units. The idea is to train and equip street officers to rapidly respond to these situations, instead of simply setting up a perimeter to prevent the escape of the suspects while awaiting the arrival of SWAT units.
As an example, in the policy & procedure manual of the Minneapolis Police Department it is stated:
"MPD personnel shall remain cognizant of the fact that in many active shooter incidents, innocent lives are lost within the first few minutes of the incident. In some situations, this dictates the need to rapidly assess the situation and act quickly in order to save lives."[7]