FACT: The world is a violent place. Politics aside, murder rates and rates of violent crimes are at an all-time high across this country. Police officers and tactical teams are forced to respond to these incidents on a regular basis. Mass shooting/killings continue to happen, however, many end with an ambush on responding officers. That is a new trend that we should be preparing for.
FACT: Police officer performance (on average) during high stress, novel, critical incidents is less than desirable. Most police officers / agencies are not prepared to respond to or handle a large scale critical incident. We are constantly being reminded of this fact when we watch news coverage of the latest active shooter, hostage, or response to suicidal person. There is a clear breakdown because we are actually smarter and better equipped than we have ever been, yet we still perform less than favorably. Why is that? How is that?
SOLUTION: We can’t stop these large scale critical incidents from happening. All we can do is prepare for them. We must understand critical vulnerability points within a society (schools, malls, restaurants, work places, etc.) and anticipate these violent novel events. We must have comprehensive training programs to prepare for a response and quick solution. This needs to be trained to the line-level first responders, first supervisors, middle managers, command staff, mutual aid deployment and integration, and media relations. When we fail during these incidents, it’s usually a failure at multiple levels and always contains a failure of leadership.
SOLUTION: Training is paramount. Tactics must be based in science and philosophy. We must deploy tactics that actually work in high stress situations, based on priorities and our ability to process information (think and make decisions).