Transcripts

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Part One:

Welcome to Voices in Local Government. My name is Joe Supervielle. John Curnut, Assistant Executive Director of Alert, Center at Texas State University, and Sarah Peck, Director of United on Guns, are here to cover what city managers need to know to ensure their law enforcement agencies are prepared to respond in the event of a mass shooting. Thanks for joining and your commitment to offering solutions at a local level to a very difficult topic.

Sarah, why don't you get us started? What's the key takeaway from the tragic school shooting at Uvaldi? You know, Joe, the after -action reports prepared by the Department of Justice and other experts, determined that the law enforcement response to the Uvalde shooting was a failure. The law enforcement officials did not fulfill their primary job, which is to stop the killing.

No one took command. and preparedness, not the politics or the legislation. And John's website is Alert with 2Rs .org, and we'll get in some of those details coming up. But thanks for joining us, both of you. And John, if you want to kick us off.

Okay. Well, thank you for having me. First of all, this is an honor and a privilege to be invited to be part of such a very important discussion. I guess our overall assessment is we're doing good, but we should be focused and intentional about pursuing better? What does it better look like? Yeah, I think that's, you said, this is not to criticize or poke holes in anything that's lacking.

It's, it's focused on how to do better. And that's, whether it's a local government's police department itself or the different, and we'll get into some specifics, but that can be overlap with county, state, SWAT, that kind of thing that maybe not everyone has, but active violent incident is the acronym that you're using. So can you give us a quick definition on what that is and maybe how it's different than what local governments or their police departments are doing currently where they kind of think that they have this covered or they're, again, they're doing their best, but it might not be up to the level. 

So define the AVI and then compare it to the norms you see out there the definition basically revolves around this event is where someone's trying to kill as many people as possible typically the training revolves around some level of awareness preparation prevention and response um what we see is that training today ranges from notionally covering the topic in a powerpoint becoming aware uh to digging deep into certain aspects of No, no, no, that's not what we do. But look at what we do instead of arguing with what's been said. We take a class that everyone needs to pass. We put the certificate into a personnel folder, and we may touch on that topic again here and there over the course of a career.

Every once in a while, we'll buy a piece of equipment, maybe some enhanced body armor or a shield. But the minimal training that goes into maximizing the use of that equipment, I use analogies a lot to kind of illustrate complex issues and make them relatable. Buying a guitar doesn't make one a guitar player. Taking one lesson doesn't mean that you're ready to play sold -out arenas.

With what little effort we put into this, no one is going to like the concert we're going to conduct if we've only practiced once or twice so far. In Texas, during the last legislative session, a mandate was passed required 16 hours of this type of training every two years. And I mean, that sounds good and it's certainly better than what we had before, but you wouldn't believe how many people are panicked asking how are we going to be able to pull this off.

We can't find that much more time in our training calendars to do that class. That's 16 hours every two years. And the frame of reference for we're going to do a class over and over and over again, that's also part of the problem. And I'll kind of unpack that a little bit later as we go. But when we think about the complexity of what it is that we're trying to get people ready to do, it's you have to be ready for a no notice, active hostage rescue with no intel, no idea who and how many others will show up to comprise your ad hoc team, what their capabilities are, and you run a really high risk of serious injury or death yourself when you arrive on this scene. The effort that we're putting into preparing our people for that reality and expecting dark near perfection and the execution of it is incongruent with how complex these events are and the expectation that is placed upon our performance and how important it is that we act very quickly and very decisively to save as many lives as possible we can't just train a little here and there until we get something right and then we've got to move on and do something else we have to train as hard as possible as often as possible until we can't get it wrong.

That's a much different standard. Sarah, anything to add? While law enforcement officials are saying, well, I did my 16 hours of training and I'm done.

Meanwhile, there are people out there in the world who are planning their attack. They are landing at day and night. They have resources. They have equipment.

They are studying the past attacks. And they are going to come ready to commit a serious mass casualty attack.

So they are training. And I think we need to match that level of intentionality because otherwise the cost could be the cost of the lives of the officials we're asking to respond.

I mean, that's that's the first concern. And then second, if if we have officials who aren't prepared to go in, they don't have the tactics and the muscle memory and the skill set ready to save their lives to go in to save others, then lives that could have been saved might not be saved. And that's really the balance that we have to achieve. And that's why it's so critical that we focus on making sure that our law enforcement agencies have the training that they need.

Okay, John, who needs this training? When you say the law enforcement, is that everyone on every level? Because different locations, different You know, there's, it can range from just a literal handful of people on a police force to huge departments with big SWAT teams. Is it, is it a fair slash realistic expectation that every law enforcement officer at every level is able to do this? And is it just, is that part of the job now?

It is. So who needs the training? Everyone in the community needs some level of this. We use the phrase chain of survival to illustrate that there are many links in this overall community response chain.

Each link has to be strong, and they also must be interconnected as well. And it starts with the civilian response all the way to the critically injured receiving definitive care at the appropriate facility.

That whole process in between the point where somebody is shot, stabbed, blown up, run over, set on fire, to the point where they survived this incident and the critical injuries they sustained, that gap in there is filled by each one of these links. The civilian response training is just as important. But specifically to the state, local, tribal law enforcement, fire,

EMS, dispatchers, that we're able to directly train with our funding that we receive, our suite of courses can be brought to them. Okay. You said certification, and I want to get into specifics on the alert training that you've referenced, but I also will ask for the audience, they might be saying, why is this different or why, explain to me why this is not just a different version of the box checking.

So explain to us what alert is, what the training is, and specifically, when you certify Okay. the more trained that they are.

So that's what we're all about. That's what we reinforce as a program. To the extent that we can influence or evoke that passion to want to do better, because we're going to leave, you know, eventually we're going to show up, we're going to train you, we're going to get you set up. But then we're going to leave. What are you going to do with it when we leave? And that is an agency issue.

That's an individual issue. That's an organizational issue. That's a leadership issue. And that's one of the other things that we talk a lot about is the leadership components at all levels, the individual, the group. Okay. So it's an ongoing process. Again, it's not the box checked moving on. It's, okay, we did that. We increased it. And next month, three months from now, a year from now, we're just going to keep hitting it in increments. Sarah, do you want to add to that? Yeah, I just wanted to say at this point for the audience that's listening, as a city manager, you may be wondering, you know, why do I need to understand the minutia of this kind of training? I'm not a law enforcement agency, but many police chiefs report to city managers. And so it's helpful for city managers to understand the level of training, the amount of training, the way that the training is optimally provided, to have an oversight component in their relationship with their chief.

You know, it's not enough to check it, to say, I have a great chief. I'm sure they've got this covered. That's not leadership from the city perspective.

It's your job to have that oversight and to have those kinds of discussions with your chief to share your expectation the entire force, including the new recruits, the veteran patrol officers and the chief all have this kind of training and to ask the right questions to satisfy yourself that they do have this training and that they have what they need and that they have the funding that they need to do this.

So we can go into more about what you might ask, but I think it's really important to understand what you're looking for, what is optimal because that's what you, those are the people you want ready on the day that a critical incident happens in your community.

Okay. And you said the key word is funding. It's a question I ask. make it happen.

So the police chief saying, yes, we're doing this, I don't say minimum. We're doing some training. It's not good enough. We need to do more. We got to pay for it. How are we going to get this done? Where's the money coming from and how they actually get it?

Yeah, absolutely. So the funding that we get through the cop's office, Department of Justice, it's a grant. That grant offsets the cost for our staff to put all this together and send out the expensive equipment for incredible instructors to show up at your doorstep, crack that kit open and start training your people in your own backyard. That would cost a lot of money to go to that class or have the class come to you. So we'll cover that cost.

Now, obviously, the people that have to get off for this training, their shift needs to be covered and we're not able to cover those costs. So there is still a cost associated in that regard.

But as far as the materials, the instructors, and the equipment they're going to be used to provide, you know, the latest, greatest research -based active attack or critical incident response, so we're seeing a lot of the skills that we teach in this course or the suite of courses that we offer. They also translate into other contextual contexts that people use on a regular basis.

We've had a lot of people that have gone to our classes. So that was a really great class. I learned a lot of things. I've been practicing that since we left. It wasn't an active shooter, but it was a scene that I made where there was,

you know, violence that had happened, and then all of a sudden I was under fire and these things happened. And I remembered something that you taught me and I did it. And, you know, now I'm writing to tell you that it all worked out better for me and I was able to render aid to the people that I didn't know before I went to your class.

So there's a lot of tangibles and intangibles that come along with those training. All of that is free and it comes to you and it sets that up. And what you do with it is going to be totally dependent on you and your agency, your organization, your risk tolerance, your abilities. I wanted to add two other funding related concepts for city managers who are thinking this through.

First thing is the idea of liability. If you have law enforcement officials that are trained up to the current FBI certified standard and they are executing the protocol that they've been trained on, then that reduces the potential for liability to the city. I mean, it is true, if there's a mass attack in your community, the likelihood that the city is going to be sued is there.

But right now we're seeing the city of Yvall Day and the law enforcement officials. So I have criminal charges filed against them. There's likely civil charges out there too.

This is just part of good risk management planning is you want to make sure that your officials have the training up to the current accepted best practice.

So that's that's that. The other part of this is the concept of equipment. We really haven't delved into that yet, but I just want to say that on the one hand, in some communities, there's a concern about over -equipping police, do they start looking like, you know, scary, you know, militarized forces?

We're not talking about that. We're talking about the need for vests that save lives and rifles that are accurate and can be used appropriately when needed.

I recently attended a briefing where I learned that a police responder was shot in the chest and did not survive because his vest was 20 years old.

Well, that's not good enough. City managers who are responsible for, you know, equipping the police force need to make sure that the officers have what they need to survive these events.

And that's job one. So I just wanted to flag that. Yeah, thank you. And you're right. Not good enough to say the least. circling back quickly to the actually securing and applying for, if that's the right word, money to cover this. Our program has awarded the funding. And if they go to our website and under training, if they look for hosting requests, they can fill out a hosting request.

And, you know, this is the agency we have. This is how many people we have. This is more importantly, there are other agencies that we're going to be reliant upon for their people to show up or we're going to show up and help them.

And so we're trying to build these, you know, partnerships and these regional and local at the same time capabilities. We want to host a class.

This is when we can, you know, get our people in front of you. This is the location that we had to offer for the training. And, you know, that gets put on a request list.

And then we use the funding to execute on that request list. I think there's other sources of funding too, though. I know that emergency assets when they get purchased.

I was on a SWAT team for a number of years and some of the stuff that we had that was very expensive and our agency couldn't afford it by themselves was purchased with some of these funds. These are the same funds that we're saying, you know, every once in a while it's probably good to set up and exercise, run an exercise and test our true capabilities, identify those gaps in response, identify training that's going to fill those gaps, work the training cycle, and then come back and test it and evaluate it again. This is a process that a lot of people that are listening to this are familiar with. Just not doing it.

We're just not doing it often enough. And this is why this is so exhaustive. It is, technically, I'm actually 32 years old, but I look like this because I'm so stressed out all the time.

And I'm working on this for the last 30 years. um little things every single day that will add up over time.

And I say amen to that. That is, it's worth it. And that's leadership. And so back to city managers, you know, it starts at the local level where you, you sit down with your chief and you say, what do you need? Do you need the overtime? Do you need funding for the equipment? Obviously, budgets are about the city's priorities.

This has to be a top priority. That comes from the mayor, the city council, the city manager, make this a priority, get what the budget is that's needed, and begin working on moving things around until you can meet that need. But I wanted to highlight two other thoughts. One is, you know, to double back down on what John has said about alert.

If you are a law enforcement agency that wants the training, thanks to the federal funding, alert can come to your community and provide on -site training and provide equipment.

So that's terrific and that's free. There's some supplemental costs as we address, but that's out there. But alert isn't the only one.

There are has done and make a state line item, that means it can be done even faster. There's no waiting line. You set the budget. You provide it. You require it and you then provide the oversight and make sure it happens.

And then finally, at the federal level, there's always an argument to be made that even more is better. If more funding could be made available, then alert could expand its excellent training even faster, and that's important. So funding can come from many places, and many kinds of leaders can make this a priority, and that's what I think should happen. Okay, we'll wrap part one here. In part two, we'll talk more about the elements of the law enforcement response to a mass shooting, including Incident Command, Unified Command and how new innovations and cooperation between police and fire agencies can provide tactical medical care to victims sooner to possibly save more lives.

Just a note for the audience, we went almost full two hours on this interview, so there might be an awkward edit or transition or two as we did our best to break it down into three manageable parts for you to listen to.

Big thanks to Sarah for helping make those decisions in our editor Tolu. The website is Alert with2Rs .org and United on Guns .org.

 

Part Two

We're back on Voices and Local Government with John Kurnut, Assistant Executive Director of Alert Center at Texas State University, and Sarah Peck, Director of United on Guns at Northeastern University.

This is part two, a three -part series focused on what city and county managers need to do to ensure their law enforcement agencies are prepared to respond to a mass shooting. Again, this is prepare and respond.

This is not legislation or politics. In In part one, we covered active violent incident training, which alert provides nationwide at no cost. In part two, we're going to talk about leadership elements of law enforcement response to mass shooting, including incident command, unified command, and how new models of cooperation between police and fire agencies can provide tactical medical care to victims sooner, saving more lives. So what should the law enforcement response look like?

is people in different disciplines are really good at learning their position. And I use analogies. And I use the football analogy.

And typically in the presentations I'll give, there'll be a picture of, you know, like a chalkboard with a bunch of X's and O's on it. Offense and defense lined up on both sides of the ball.

But every one of those sides of the ball. There's different positions. There's line. There's backs. There's receivers. There's a kicker over in the sidelines. Just wait to get to kick that ball.

Everyone's playing their position, but we don't get together and we don't come together in scrimmage and run a play to see if we're actually getting the ball down the field. So when we talk about the links in the chain and the chain of survival,

We talked about civilian response, the run -hide fight, avoid deny, defend, the civilian response in casualty care class that we put on. It's a train -to -training program, and it's designed to give people some options -based approaches to these things, you know, proximity equals opportunity, so the closer you are to a threat when it manifests itself, maybe the less options you have. And Do you get away? Do you keep them out? Can you defend yourself? And then we get into Stop the Bleed, train the trainer component. Then we get into law enforcement response, which is a little bit more to your question. And what does that look like? Well, from the command and control thing, when we first started doing this training and we overlaid the incident command training, the ICS courses that we as an industry we're taking to learn more about this system, there was an incongruence there. There was the way that it's taught is that you show up and there's all these big organizational flowcharts and there's these boxes and sticks and divisions and branches.

But what we're seeing is the first one or maybe two officers on scene most of the time. Who are they? Well, they're a patrol officer.

They're an SRO. There's somebody that was in the is going to show up and perform that function.

The problem is, when they're not on scene, who is taking charge of the scene? Well, technically, who's on scene should be taking charge of the scene, but we're not empowering them to do that.

So our training starts that process early on as well, saying, if you're the first and only one on scene, you're in charge. You're the first command element. You are the first tactician on scene,

and you are also the first medical provider on the scene. That's not fun to be, but there you are, go. What does that look like? Well, we break things down into an operational overall arching goal of stop the killing first,

then stop the dying. Stop the killing. Somebody's actively killing, shooting, stabbing, running over, sitting on fire, blowing up people, and we need to stop that from happening.

That's one thing. them from dying as a result of.

So we're teaching people tourniquets. That's great. Another piece of equipment that we need to carry and be proficient with. But the medical prevention that they really need in a lot of these types of injuries is going to be surgical.

So we don't have a surgeon in our back pocket in our trunk of our car. We're going to have to take them to a surgeon. So the whole process I'm outlying right now is how do we show up unseen, decide this is an active attack in progress, where is the attacker, stop the attacker, and then how quickly do we set up security that's good enough, given the limited resources they're here in the first five to seven minutes, and then start to prioritize rendering aid to those that are critically injured and getting the critically injured transported to definitive care? That whole process that I just said takes time, and time is something the critically injured don't have today.

This is why the training on a regular recurring basis has to happen. We can't just know each other in our phone. We can't just know each other's phone numbers. We've got to know each other intimately, personally, because that trust that is going to be inherent for us to be able to go in there, and we have body armor and weapons, and they may not have the body armor yet. They don't have weapons.

And what we're doing is keeping everyone secure and what they're doing is trying to preserve life long enough to get them to definitive care and moreover a surgeon, the coordination that goes into that, the trust that goes into that, the communication that needs to go into that has to be practiced a lot to be very quick and effective when it's needed. So there's a lot of complexity to this and it,

It necessitates. It requires us to do this on a regular basis, not just every once in a while. And, John, in part one, you use the phrase train the trainer, is that, because I don't think it's realistic that every single person in a, whatever it is, town, county city is going to be able to show up to training on the same day or like work in that massive group within the chaos. But if alert can train the trainers, then there can be overlap, not just within a police force, but with fire, EMS, and any other variables that I'm missing? Is that part of the advantage of the ongoing training and ideally training the trainer so they can keep it going at the local level?

Absolutely. So we have about a little over 60 people on staff. We have over 400 paid adjunct instructors that are professionals. They do this.

They teach this. They train others to be able to do and teach it. We can only do so much. When you look at to date, we're somewhere around 20 ,000 certified instructors that we've created across the country.

That force multiplier that we're able to do, like in the first year that we operated as a program, we did probably 25, 30 classes. This week alone, just this week, we're going to do almost 120 classes across the country. That's the team that's going to show up and try to work this problem.

For that to happen, there has to be a maintenance, sustainment training component or capability that's left behind when we're done with our class. Okay.

And because it's also not just between departments. It's, again, if you're in that rural area, you don't know where it's going to happen or who's showing up. It could be two different counties responding. It could be some state level getting in there.

And again, as you said in part one, there's not, unfortunately, like a true standardization, but if the basic concepts are consistent and there's overlap that hopefully will help in that muscle memory to push through the chaos will still come through from the different groups.

Sarah, go ahead.

Yeah, I'd like to talk about one type of chaos that happens in many of these incidents, and that's where law enforcement officials from other agencies, as far out as they can hear the radio signals, the calls for that there's a scene, they come screaming in in their vehicles.

I heard one law enforcement officials say, and law enforcement officials don't park, they just stop driving. So they come in, This is law enforcement, emergency management professionals, mayors, city councils, whoever's organizing this training, these drills, they need to have that protocol that all law enforcement agencies need to hear and understand us do not self -deploy.

That is not what you do. If your agency has been called, go to staging, and that's where you'll be deployed. You'll be told you need to go take care of transporting victims, or you'll be told you need to block off the highway over here, or you need to provide security over at the family reunification center. So these are tasks that need to be done, and we need people to do it, but it's important that you go to the right place so that you can be deployed. So that's, and that brings me to the big overarching point, and this again is really to the city and county managers in our audience. One of the problems we see not everywhere, but in enough places for me to mention it on this broadcast, is once you reach a certain rank, it's really difficult to get those people to come into the training that is being put on for their people, which is important because we've seen that police chiefs in small towns have showed up and gone in by themselves because that's what was required to stop the active threat. We've seen that Chief executives of an agency showed up and they misread a scene and they were telling people to do something that was not consistent with what those people had been trained more in and knew better how to handle than their executive who showed up and started giving them misinformation. There's a quote by Andy Stanley. People say they want character, but they will follow clarity.

People will not move into confusion. And there's a lot of confusion out there right now and a lot of it is ego -driven, where we're that you're going to get.

John and Sarah, can you, let's go through a little bit more details on the actual response and, again, what it should look like. So three phrases are kind of three sections of that.

I'll lay out and then you jump in and kind of walk us through that. Chain of survival, tactical medical care, and then the actual transport to trauma center. So that seems linear, but again, in this chaos, it's not necessarily going to be one -one -one. Different things are happening at different times. Yeah, so the chain of survival is kind of like the linear process that is over all of what we're talking about.

It starts with civilian response. The next link in the chain is when law enforcement arrives on scene and what are our overarching goals at that point, stop the killing. That comes in a couple different ways that we've seen.

But as we start to transition into Stop the Dying, which is people that are critically injured, they may not have much more time, what are we doing medically to try to stop or slow down that death clock that started the instant that they were critically injured?

Some of the equipment that we've gone out there and worked really, really hard on is tourniquets, chest seals, wound packing. A lot of these techniques used to be reserved for paramedics or for combat medics in some cases where a lot of this is derived from.

But we're seeing that it needs to be front -loaded more into if I'm standing there and nobody else is, what can I do? So that gets even back to the civilian response, stop the bleed campaign.

Where we're training people, you know, when seconds count and cops are only minutes away, chances are the medics are even longer to be able to get to you and try to fix what's gone wrong. There's some things you can do to try to slow down that clock until we can get in there.

Now as we transition from stop the killing to stop the dying, there's a lot of different models that we teach and we teach it because these are options. I don't know what resources are available at this particular time.

So which one is best, the one that happens the firstest and the fastest. So we show a law enforcement evacuation model. This in some agencies, this is the preferred model because they have the ballistic protection and they have the firearms to protect themselves and others with, whereas the fire and EMS components do not.

Us picking people up and carrying them out and handing them off to an ambulance that just pulled up and them quickly being taken to whatever level of trauma care they can receive just to stabilize them and get them where they need to go eventually with the surgery, that needs to happen quickly. We've been working on another concept, which is Rescue Task Force, Task Force, meaning that there's two different components that come together to work as one. Law enforcement's the security element, fire and EMS are the medical component, and they're going to go in escorted by law enforcement to render better medical attention because the environment is not completely secured.

It's not being completely cleared, but it is safe enough for us to be able to go in and operate with a security element attached. And then we also talk about another model that is out there, and we've seen it used, and that's what we call a secured corridor. This is where, and as we get back to the civilian response training that we're putting out there, when a lot of places are starting to very quickly a lot of people on duty to throw into this problem in the first five to ten minutes, that may be as good as it gets. So if it's secured enough and the risk tolerance of that particular fire or EMS component that's going to make entry, they'll go down this secured corridor, find the injured, stabilize them, and then get them out of there and transported the definitive care. These are all options, and we don't know what's going to be required on game day. We don't know what resources are available to you but what we do know is that time is of the essence and this has to happen fast um so this is why we're putting all these different components together in a training environment is so that we can come together and work quickly um when it's required who decides for fire and ems when if and how they are expected to go in.

And again, we kind of cover that in part one. Like, the law enforcement officers, they're sworn officers with a badge and weapon. They understand what the job and the risks are. EMS, to me, it is a different level. Are you saying that that is now part of that job, no matter where you are at what level? The leadership of an agency is going to decide. And they're only going to make that decision under certain circumstances, as in Senate Command been established? What do we know about what we're about to go into? And that will kind of make the decision on whether this is safe enough or it's a little too hot and not warm enough.

And we don't know exactly what's going on. But when we play, and this is why the research we do is so incredibly important, the what if game can create analysis paralysis, where we're doing nothing and we're worried about anything that could possibly be happening. But what do we're going to be? But what with somebody to stop them from actively killing other people, and there was two instead of one, they were found at the same time. There was two of them in the same room or in the same proximity with each other. This is critically important because when we now have no active threat that we know of happening, we're not hearing it, we're not seeing it, then we have to start doing some calculated risk -taking, decision -making, and that is going to be based off of statistical probabilities based off of the accurate.

At this point in the environment, the operational environment, we've made it safe enough where they can go in. They can do what they do while we do what we do and it can work and it does work.

It has worked a lot and we've seen a lot of people doing that. We are a task force. We go in together. We stay together. We come out together. We are going in to get the critically injured and get them out as quickly as possible.

You rendering medical attention, me providing security. the coordination and communication piece to this is critically important, and it doesn't happen by a slideshow only.

We have to get out there and practice it. Well, I just want to say that this is a real innovation, and it is something that a city and county managers should be talking about with their fire and law enforcement chiefs.

I know that a lot of larger cities do this routinely. You know, cities like Nashville and, and Austin and places where they have huge crowds and big events all the time.

This is standard bread and butter stuff. This is very, very well established. But for more smaller cities or places that haven't had these kinds of big events or haven't had mass shootings, maybe this is something they haven't explored, but this is the way. you know, so that they can get to those trauma centers. Those are things that good leadership, good planning will equal a better outcome. And that is what we're seeing in the cases where victims have survived, even serious injuries. It's because this was in place. And so it is, it is that important. And that's why we wanted to emphasize it. Thanks, John and Sarah, for giving us a better understanding of the leadership challenges associated with mass shooting and how police and fire agencies can work together to provide tactical medical care.

Coming up in part three, we'll have description of effective response to an actual mass shooting and we'll discuss how city and county managers can talk to their law enforcement leaders about training and equipment needs, including sharing resources that will help you in your city prepare. Again, the website is alert with 2Rs .org and United on guns .org. Both of those websites are linked wherever you're listening. John and Sarah will also be presenting at ICMA annual conference in Pittsburgh.

September 22nd, registration is open at conference .icma .org.

Part Three

Thanks, John and Sarah, for joining and your commitment to offering solutions at a local level to a very difficult topic. Today, we're going to talk about what an effective law enforcement response looks like and how city and county managers can ensure their law enforcement agencies are properly trained and equipped.

We'll wrap it up with a summary of resources city and county managers can use to prepare the entire government to respond to a mass shooting. Sarah, over to you. I listened to the first responders talk about an incident that I think went really well.

So if you don't mind, I'd like to just talk a little bit about it because I think it highlights a couple of the things we're talking about. It's the Allen Outlet Mall shooting in Texas.

And it was a sunny day at the mall. And there was a police officer there, regular patrol in the parking lot, talking to a mom and her kids. There had been a parking caffle. And he was just there and, you know, reminding kids to always wear their safety belts and shot fires in the distance.

And he knew instantly what it was. And he didn't get on the radio and call for backup. He didn't look around for his partner. He reached into his car, picked up his rifle. He already had a vest on and ran through the road towards the sound of the fire. He could hear it echoing around. He was looking for it.

He found the shooter and he shot the shooter. Nine people died. However, this was minutes. The guy had only minutes to shoot and then was stopped.

The killing was stopped. But that wasn't all. Then the police were there and his partner was there. They immediately started putting on tourniquets after they used up all the tourniquets that they had on them in their own kits.

They started pulling clothes off of racks and tying turniquets using clothing. they began transporting in police vehicles to the nearest trauma center.

And in the briefing that I saw, the head of the trauma center said that it was these actions that were taken that saved these lives, that every life that could have been saved was saved. And then I heard the officer, now remember, this is a team effort here. Not one guy is responsible for this, but I will give credit to that guy who was off of his, turned away from the kids and ran towards the shooting. This officer said he had had alert training and he availed himself of every opportunity to train that he could, every opportunity. And then when game day came, he knew what to do. And he didn't think about it. He didn't pause. It's all recorded in his body cam. It is really impressive and it is really scary.

And it really reminds us how much we are asking of these officers. We need to give them what they need to succeed. But when it works right, it really works well.

And that was, I think, a good example of a success story that we can also credit alert with because he credited alert with the training that he received. Well, and the firefighters that runs. in saving as many lives as possible. Dispatch, police, fire, EMS, hospitals, blood banks, schools, churches, mental health providers.

Everyone in the community is a role on this team. Yeah, Sarah, I'm glad you told that story because it is important to point out when it works. And again, starting at the first part of the first episode with this topic, John asked, he said, why. People need the why. That's why. Because it worked. maybe not so great, maybe a little friction between them and the police chief. And as we've said, it's not just the police department, but it might be hard. And this goes to John's point about leadership overall earlier, but still, it's a hard conversation to bring up kind of questioning, well, what are we doing? Is it good enough? Because the implication might be it's not enough. And then the police side might be, of course it's not enough you all aren't paying it we're not staffed we're not equipped like of course it's not enough what are you going to do about it so it's it can it can be flipped and go back towards the manager or even the elected officials so y 'all i want an answer from both you but maybe start with john on your end from the police side of it what would you want to hear from that city it's your type?

Obviously, it's a little, you know, uncomfortable and we're a little insecure, you know, bringing this up. I'll tell you what's really uncomfortable and what's going to create a lot of insecurity is messing it up.

So we cannot assume that we know what we know and that we're as good as we think we are. Let's test it. So emergency managers, let's start setting up and running these is to test our actual capabilities.

And let's be true and honest. No nonsense assessment of our capabilities. And then let's go out and let's target some focused training to fill those gaps. And it's from the elected officials what they should be hearing from us.

It's not what I want to hear from them. It's what they should be hearing from us. A good leader is not going to find excuses as to why more can't be done. A good leader is going to find ways, make ways for us to actively pursue better.

Sarah, you've worked with city managers and mayors and that side of it. So in your experience, what's the best way to get that conversation started? Actually, as John said, some change and some action. The conversation is part one, but then how do you actually get to the action part? So first of all, there is no substitute for building a relationship of trust.

Like this relationship should not start. by one city, a major city, if I remember correctly, the chief and the mayor had a weekly lunch. Big city, lots of things to talk about, but not saying that it has to be that, but we conducted research. And every mayor we spoke to highlighted the importance of having that relationship built on trust with their chief.

And if you don't have that, you need to find, build that, or you need to find a new chief. In the case of Parkland, they did not have their own police force. They had to rely on the sheriff's office and the city of Coral Springs.

If that's your situation, you really need to be reaching beyond your city borders to build the relationship with your sheriff or your mutual aid partners.

It's going to matter someday. And you don't know when it's going I'm going to be. minute, but my argument is this is not just a law enforcement response. This is, the city has to, has many services and responsibilities when this happens, as well as the civilians that John was talking about. So part of your job is to make sure that all of the pieces are prepared in advance of a major incident.

And that starts with law enforcement. So commander's intent, you just convey your intent that law enforcement is prepared. You meet with your chief of police to convey that expectation and that your expectation is that the entire force, new recruits all the way through the chief, they're all going through this training. You expect your chief to be involved, hands on, and even equipped. I think most chiefs would appreciate.

about the training protocol. What kind of training are they doing? How often is it provided? Who is getting it? Just ask these questions over, you know, in a conference room. This is a professional discussion here. And you take away from that your own analysis of what's happening.

And at a minimum, the training should include the tactical skills needed to immediately stop an active shooter. And that's, you know, there are some real tactics there.

And the chief should be able to explain that to you. What does that mean? You heard John talk about it. It needs to sound something like that. They need to have, in their training, the basics of incident command and building a command structure. And, you And questions you might ask if you're a city managers, and where do I fit into that command structure?

And how can I oversee that to make sure that it's going according to the protocol? Then you're going to want to ask about, are you doing training on tactical emergency casualty care to stabilize injured victims?

We just heard about how that is life -saving as well, just as important as going in immediately to stop the killing is stopping the bleeding. We must do that to save lives. So are they doing that?

Do they have that rescue task force format? Would they consider doing that? Are they working with fire? How do they work with fire? So you want to ask those questions. Then I talked about the self -deployed law enforcement.

Do they have a protocol for that? Can they create a protocol for that? Just These are open -ended questions. You're not telling them how to run their agency at all. You're just telling them what your understanding is and you're soliciting their feedback.

And then, of course, you want to focus in on the minimum length and frequency of the training. I mean, I would want to hear as a city manager that they're doing this kind of training, the 16 -hour training every two years as recommended, but that we also do a monthly group breakout session where we practice some aspect of this and that they, you know, they're giving each other input and feedback. So it's a feedback loop there. It's a positive one. Everyone wants to be doing a good job. And so, you know, rather than being critical, you want to be supportive. So how's all that going? And then you wrap up that discussion with, okay, well, that's what the expectation is. Sounds like you've got it. Great. What else do you need? Or I think we could do even better. What do you need? What can we do to get to monthly trainings? What do you need in the way of equipment?

And then let them tell you. And then it's on you to follow through. Like that would be that would be that the final full circle of good leadership is you hear all of that.

You express your intent. You have the assurances. Then you make a promise. And now you need to deliver. But again, it's worth it. It's not going to be easy, but it's worth it. Yeah.

That was great to get some specific questions. So again, it's not just kind of that I don't even know what I'm asking conversation with the police. Is there anything else the city, county town needs to think about to prepare in advance of one of these incidents? And again, we've covered a lot today. There's a lot on the alert website. There's a lot in the playbook.

So it's not like people have to memorize everything or take notes today. This is kind of the entry point. And there are written resources we'll link to. But any other big pictures? Have I missed anything?

Is there something else I should ask that the audience needs to hear about the topic? So first of all, the most important thing that everyone listening to this can do is go to the briefing on September 22nd in Pittsburgh where we're going to talk about preparedness for city managers.

So we'll run through the entire role of city officials from the role of the mayor and crisis communications. We'll do a deep dive on victim services.

John will talk more about preparing law enforcement and giving them the support and resources, training, and equipment that they need. I just want to highlight that there is on our website all these resources are there, the protocol. That's what you'll need for the first 24 hours, help you understand what your immediate role is as a city leader, not as law enforcement. That protocol was developed through research at Northeastern University.

We have the playbook, which is a comprehensive resource that you can just take a deep dive in there on any of the topics that will be in your responsibility, either before, during or after shooting, covering crisis communications, victim services, and collaboration with law enforcement. for crisis communications.

What is involved? What are we talking about here? What the key things are that you need to be thinking about for law enforcement preparedness? You know, you're a little mini checklist in there. What we're talking about when we're saying victim services, the reunification or notification center where people are reconnected to their families or where death notifications are given, the family assistance Center, which is the follow -on service center, which provides wraparound services for families and victims. It is a major deal and a major incident. And then a resiliency center, this is something that can be put into place to help your community, the victims, the family members, and your community recover from the long -term effect of trauma, which is something that we don't talk a lot about, but is really an important aspect of this. This is the job of the city.

This is not the job of law enforcement. And so this preparedness checklist and the tabletop exercise template that goes along with it is something that you can take a look at and start looking at gaps.

Are we ready for this? Do we even know what they're talking about? If the answer is, we're not ready or we don't know, time to get a briefing, attend that conference, read the materials, call us up. We're resources for anyone listening to this, this podcast. And we really want to help people do what they need to do to be prepared.

And so this kind of brings me back to the question that you posed when we got started, which is, well, what if you're in a place where there isn't a city manager, you're a county manager, or it's an corporate area, or there isn't even a dedicated police force. How are you supposed to prepare for these kinds of incidents? And the answer is you have to anyway. You must do that. There are schools and churches and synagogues and little grocery stores and gasoline stations.

As we've seen all of these places are places where mass shootings can and do take place. And tragically, school shootings are increasing and they typically happen in smaller communities.

So it is absolutely essential for people to self -identify as a leader. Like this is the time to step up if you are the township manager, if you are the volunteer or something, whatever it is, whatever system you have in place, take a look at these materials, call the shit. you know that you want to be there for them.

So we have resources to help even those communities that don't have these larger city and law enforcement agencies in place to lead, there are still leaders there and they need to step up and start thinking about these things, as sad as that is to say. That's true. John, any closing thoughts? So the funding that we receive is very targeted for specific state, local, tribal, law enforcement, fire, EMS, telecommunicators. Our conference in December, December 2nd through 5th in lovely San Marcos, Texas, it's self -funded.

So that allows us to invite everybody else, all the other stakeholders and community members. We have physicians. We have medical directors. We have school people, security, private security special specialists. We have military people, lots of law enforcement, fire, and EMS, dispatchers, mental health providers. We didn't really touch on it a lot here, but the what and how doesn't work and you don't receive the training that's given to you and it doesn't manifest itself into action on the game day, if you're not in a good mental space, and there is a acute trauma that we talk about all the time, but we don't talk about is this cumulative trauma, and that is going to keep us from being our best.

It's going to keep us from performing at peak levels and doing this over an entire career. So we will have a lot of those specialists in our conference as well. We'll have model programs.

It is available for free at united on guns .org. Sarah John, thanks for your time today. Thanks for everything you do on this topic.

Thank you. 

Thank you for having us.

 

Guest Information

John Curnutt, Assistant Executive Director, ALERRT Center at Texas State University

Sarah Peck, Director, United On Guns

John and Sarah's session at ICMA Annual Conference.
 

Takeaways

• Law enforcement officials need strong leadership and a passionate why to effectively respond to mass shootings.
• Ongoing training is crucial for law enforcement agencies to improve their response capabilities.
• Active Violent Incident (AVI) training focuses on awareness, preparation, prevention, and response.
• City managers play a key role in overseeing and funding law enforcement training.
• Funding options include grants from organizations like the COPS Office and emergency management funds.
• Up-to-date equipment and risk management planning are essential for effective response.
• Leadership and chain of command are crucial in managing the chaos and stress of a violent incident.
• Interoperability and coordination are key to ensure smooth communication and cooperation between different agencies.
• Protocols and tabletop exercises help establish a unified and efficient response.
• Response in rural areas presents unique challenges that require careful planning and coordination. The chain of survival in active shooter incidents involves civilian response, law enforcement intervention to stop the killing, and medical intervention to stop the dying.
• Different models of response include law enforcement evacuation, rescue task force, and secured corridor.
• Trust and coordination between law enforcement, fire, and EMS are crucial for effective response.
• City and county managers should build relationships with law enforcement and ensure that training and resources are provided.
   

Chapters

Part One

Introduction and Commitment to Local Solutions

Law Enforcement Preparedness Overview

Challenges of Box Checking and the Need for Ongoing Training

Training Expectations for Law Enforcement Officers

Funding Options and the Role of City Managers

Making Proper Response a Priority

Part Two

Leadership and Chain of Command

Collaboration between Law Enforcement and Fire Departments

Protocols and Tabletop Exercises

Challenges and Planning for Response in Rural Areas

The Chain of Survival and Models of Response

Part Three

The successful response at the Texas Allen Outlet Mall shooting

Building Trust and Coordination

The Role of City and County Managers

Ensuring Training and Resources

Resources

ALERRT.org

UnitedOnGuns.org

Get the Mass Shooting Protocol - First 24 Hours | FREE Download

Get the Mass Shooting Playbook | FREE Download

Ten Essential Actions to Improve School Safety