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hello everybody trace Blackmore here and I’m sure you’ve noticed that I have started off scaling up very differently
this episode I’ve done that on purpose we’re going to be talking about some of the horrific things that have happened
recently and unfortunately continue to happen just recently we had the Vegas
shootings and I’m sure you guys out there are just like me you have no idea
what to do about this can’t even imagine though that something like this can even
happen however it does I’m very fortunate to have a friend that does
training on topics such as this his name is lieutenant Rob Pendleton of the
Snellville Georgia Police Department if you’re wondering Snellville Georgia is located about 35 miles north of
Atlanta and Rob is going to talk to the scaling-up nation today about what we
need to know to keep ourselves safe in several situations but he’s also going
to talk specifically about what we need to do if we were to ever find ourselves
in that active shooter situation and it’s my hope that nobody out there ever
has that occur to them it’s my hope that that never happens again
unfortunately III don’t think that’s realistic and that saddens me so much to
say I hope that you will share this episode with your friends with your
loved ones because if you are armed with information you can make better
decisions so if you will please listen with me as I interview lieutenant Rob
Pendleton my lab partner today is lieutenant Rob Pendleton of the Snellville Police Department and Rob is
the training director there Rob I want to thank you for coming on scaling-up we’re going to be talking about some
some pretty deep topics today but in but topics that if the audience knows what
to do and they’re paying a little bit better attention this is a show that could possibly save someone’s life and
ask you how you’re doing today um great race thanks for having me on absolutely well let’s just get right
into it okay tell us a little bit about what your job is and what you do well
I’ve been with Snellville for a little bit over 18 years now recently I’ve come
out come over from the patrol side of it and working as the director of training and we’re out there not only teaching
the officers the things that they need to know our chief has a suspense myself
and some of my other instructors out into the community trying to raise awareness about a lot of different things we do classes on just personal
safety firearm safety one of the big ones that we’ve been doing lately and unfortunately recently have had a demand
for it is a program called craze which is civilian response to active shooter and we’ve been out there teaching that
and basically it just goes over what to do if you’re involved in a situation like that and I know we’re gonna talk a
little bit about that today some people can be aware if something horrible like
that happened what they need to do absolutely absolutely I really enjoyed
the seminar that I attended of yours which is why you’re here of course you do a great job with with what you do you
start out with saying you’ve got to be aware and that’s the most important thing so what is being aware well it’s
one of the most important things tres situational awareness it’s a fancy term
that gets tossed around nowadays a lot of pilots will know they talk about that for piloting and things like that in the
military law enforcement breaking it down to its most basic component it’s
just being aware of your surroundings and and and not being distracted by certain things you know it’s basically
gives people a sense of place and safety to be aware but it’s easy to overlook
it’s easy to overlook we get into our day to day grind we go to sometimes go
to the same office every day we drive this way to work everyday our routine
sometimes makes us complacent and we have this false sense of security you’ll
always see they’ll always have that person on the news they’ll always interview that one person that says I never thought it could happen here right
well why can’t it it can always happen it can happen anywhere and by being
situation you where being aware of your surroundings and and focusing on certain
skill sets you can really mitigate the danger in your life and and and at least
hopefully I say and I say that as a caveat hopefully because we’re never doing a hundred percent safe but
hopefully you can forestall that a little bit if you think about it what brings on that false sense of security
like I said is this the routine the same people were around the common surroundings technology technology and
this is this is one of the big things for me right now technology is actually
taking away our skill sets we were born being aware of our surroundings as human
animals so to speak we would normally be aware back in caveman days you had to be aware
so you didn’t get eaten by an animal or things like that but even now in modern times
take for instance GPS it’s easy enough now to punch in the coordinates for
somewhere or the street address for somewhere and just listen to the Machine and let the Machine tell you want to
make a right or a left as opposed to actually knowing where you’re going in
training officers for the road I would forbid them for having a GPS in the car they’d have to learn the roads and the
streets of the city the old-fashioned way get out there learn them and learn
what connects with what and and it builds on that skill set because if you
only rely on that GPS if you don’t have it one day or it goes out or something
happens you’re lost without it with that in mind you talk about Bahgat the smart
phones in a second automatic headlights is another thing in reference to this
where technology is kind of robbing us of our awareness I work nights for 15 years in Snellville and
you’d be amazed at the amount of people and it didn’t really happen 15 years ago but with the onset of these auto lights
and the sensors now how many people drive around without their lights on at night they just assume that it’s going
to be taken care of for them and they just have no idea in fact going home
from work last night it was about 7:30 and I look in my rearview mirror sure
enough there’s a car behind me and it only has parking lights on completely dark so I stopped at a stop sign and
turned the blue lights on and get out and tell the young lady that was there and she was a younger driver and I
answer I said your headlights on I’m you need to turn your headlights on she’s like oh here they are said well no they’re actually not I’m
looking at them and they’re not your parking lights are not well they automatically come on well they
automatically didn’t and what she did was she had left it in the wrong position and I had to actually take
about five minutes to teach her how to actually turn the light off and this is what brights are and this turning this
this way does that so and not bashing the other generation I mean it’s great
to have the technology it’s fantastic but you also have to have a plan B you also at least need to know and use the
personal skills cell phones we rely so much on cell phones now everyone’s got
their head turned down I can go down the road whether driving I Drive in an
unmarked car now and I see people texting as they’re driving everyone’s looking down go to a restaurant and
looking to see how many people aren’t actually talking with each other there they’re playing on the phone they’re
answering emails they’re texting other people that aren’t there and not having that interpersonal interaction with the
people that they’re around take for instance or I take take games as an example or a homework assignment
look at your phone when you’re somewhere out on the side on a sidewalk somewhere
safe but look at your phone and start looking and actually process how much
your around you when you’re looking down at your phone as a cop we always look at
everything we’re looking in cars and we’re constantly surveying people and something a trend that’s come up now is
headphones people are wearing headphones and cars as they’re driving they’re plugging into the is that legal to have both no it’s
not actually but we see tons of it we see tons of it kids walking down the
street people walking down the street I remember why we had to stop to ask someone a question if they had saw a
suspicious person and I scared the daylights out of this teenager because he had his headphones on and was walking
down the street looking at his phone he never saw me coming never knew I was there until I him on the shoulder and he
went off the ground about two feet Wow you know but it’s things like that that’s keeping us from being aware of
our situations all of that technology just while it’s good it takes away from
what we personally have so I’ve talked about situational awareness I’m kind of
giving you a broad scope of it but what actually is situational awareness three
point definition to it it’s a collection skills to set limits that make us feel uncomfortable or in situations that make
us feel uncomfortable or a dangerous it’s an awareness of your surroundings on how to avoid potential dangers and
it’s another part of it is aspects of how we feel about ourselves self-esteem confidence in dealing with these
situations the simplest way to describe awareness and why it’s so important to
us is in reference to dangerous situations you can deal with something a
lot easier if you’ve got that time and you see it coming someone a lot smarter than me do a
lieutenant that I worked for four years once I got promoted to lieutenant told me he said well from a police officers
point of view and he may put his hands in a small circle around her eyes you have this small scope that you’re looking at he said as a sergeant you’ve
got to start looking at a bigger picture since as a lieutenant you’ve got to have 60 degree view every day and watch
what’s going on because you’re in charge well that’s the same thing for us everywhere every single person should
have that awareness when they’re out in public former Marine Lieutenant Colonel Jeff Cooper was his
name world war ii and korea vet he started the IPSec shooting foundation
worked at gun sight ranch brilliant man and came up with this idea this color
code of situational awareness and how you should be all through your day from
night to day and all of that and he simplified it by adding these color codes they talked about condition white
well-conditioned white is the lowest level of it you’re sleeping you’re around the house you’re watching the
game you got your feet up on the coffee table whatever you’re see you’re in your safety zone and that’s where you can
feel the most safe he steps it up a little bit goes to condition yellow condition yellow you’re aware you’re
attentive but you’re relaxed it’s not a state of paranoia but some people would
say it would be but you’re just observant and this is what happens when you walk out the door as police officers
we live in this constantly all day at work we’re in a high we’re at the top
end of condition yellow and we’re looking we’re watching looking for anything out of the ordinary you know is
there a threat out there think of it like you’re driving okay you are
definitely in condition yellow when you’re driving because you watch another car so you’re watching for that hopefully that person doesn’t cut out in
front of you what we call head on a swivel hopefully if you’re not texting while you’re driving which is also
illegal and you’re watching so that’s that’s another analogy for condition yellow is that defensive driving where
you’re making sure that everything’s around you you’re checking your mirrors you’re looking around what’s behind me
are they too close what’s on my sides what’s in front who’s cutting into traffic and stuff so that’s the best way
to describe condition yellow condition Orange steps it up another notch your
focus is directed at tential threat it may be a threat it may not be a threat but you’re aware of it
you’re aware that someone’s maybe too close someone may be staring at you too
much women have a condition Orange down pat with guys out there you go to you go
to the bar and their awareness is up and there’s that creepy guy over there in the corner so ladies have that down pat
and his and it’s it becomes it comes natural to them to watch out for those threats like I said it may not be a
threat but at this point you’re at that what if stage what if something happens you’re formulating a plan you’re
thinking about well if this person does come towards me what am I going to do you know if it doesn’t it doesn’t in and
I can lower it back down to condition yellow so you jump from orange to yellow a lot through the day and as officers we
do it all day long sure then he went on to talk about condition red where there
is a definite threat it’s a definite threat that’s coming at you you see it you’ve identified it you’ve got to take
some kind of action at this point that and at this point it’s a fight-or-flight thing and we’ll talk about that a little
bit later and references different strategies and then condition black is
you’re actively engaged in conflict something’s happened here this / you’re being robbed
someone’s trying to assault you and by then hopefully you would have had a plan
of action set awareness is what helps you get that plan put into play a lot
earlier if you see that threat coming I know I see videos of people have been
robbed outside of gas stations and they walk out of the gas station and sure enough they’re staring at their phone as
they walk out and they don’t see those predators those human predators that are
out there circling in them and trying to get into a position of advantage to rob
or hurt them or assault them Rob let me ask you there’s definitely technology and you know some of us have become a
servant to technology where we’re constantly looking at it we have to touch it we have to pay attention to it
and obviously that’s an issue that were not paying attention but also we all
have that feeling that something’s not but normally everything is right so we
dismiss things very easily how do you as a police officer really know what to
dismiss and what not to dismiss and what should we be maybe paying more attention to because of that a lot of it comes
with practice a lot of it has come just from years and years of watching people
becoming a student of human behavior I tell people and brand-new rookies I love
to tell them this we have one that just came out of the Academy two weeks ago
and he’s Daisy fresh he’s 21 years old and I swear I’ve got t-shirts older than
him I’ve been trying to put this exact same stuff into him and one of the things I told him to do
as a little homework assignment was to go find a public place a mall somewhere
public where there’s a lot of people and just sit and start people watching and watch the mannerisms watch people’s hand
movements facial gestures how do people interact with each other you can tell
what looks threatening and what doesn’t and the more you do it the more you’ll start to see who else is doing it who is
that predator that maybe is in the corner somewhere looking for a potential victim we talked about good habits to
incorporate we talked about people with personal space and most personal space
is about five feet you give it about five feet with family members may be more intimate partners obviously closer
but you want to try to push that back a little bit as cops we always have a to arm length stand okay I don’t want
anyone getting within two arm lengths of me if you’re getting in close to me then that’s a big problem and I’ve always
been that way and a funny game to play a funny trick to play on some family members do but family members only
as you’re talking to them take a step towards them if you’re facing them and then as you continue to talk to them
take another step and keep on doing these little baby incremental steps and watch what they do watch their behavior
too that you’ll see exactly when you hit barrier and they’ll start stepping
backwards until they can’t step and finally they’ll just stop what are you doing and it kind of messes with their
mind I’ve done this I’ve done this with kids my kids and it’s a great thing but
it’s a neat sociological tool that you can use it really applies to all of this
watch people’s hands people will have tells a typical tell for someone
carrying a firearm they almost can’t help but touch where it is tug down on a shirt if it’s concealed or something to
make sure it still can see to make sure it’s still concealed exactly and and that’s one thing to look out for I know
an officer that worked with us years back he’s not with us any longer and that was his big thing was watch the
hands watch the hands because that’s where the danger comes from and you can tell these different things I just came
out of a really fantastic body language class that was taught I was taught at
doraville PD and the instructors fantastic he’s got his PhD in forensic psychology and some of the things that
he brought up in reference to that human behavior and how people react under stresses opened my eyes and it’s a
phantasm is a fantastic program talking about people’s reactions and if you
study it enough and you study body language or kinesics enough you can really pick up on this stuff another
thing is have a plan there’s a great training book called mind signing that’s after the name of
the author escapes me right now but it talks about daydreaming and your role
playing in your mind throughout the day you’re sitting in the car you’re in traffic start doing what ifs what if
someone comes running up to the car okay how do you react from that you’re going
from a store to your parking lot are you scanning the parking lot what if someone does this what if someone does that play
these scenarios out in your mind then when if if something does happen you’ve
actually mentally rehearsed for it a little bit I was on our tactical team for the city
for ten years and we rehearsing we rehearsing we rehearsed constantly in training every month and when we
rehearse for these what hips well it’s the same principle just trying to do it mentally and mentally scripting through
these things so if something were to happen you’re not at a disadvantage you’ve at least got some idea in your
mind of what you’re going to do with that practice you can make games with
family members and this is going into trying to remember tag numbers trying to
remember exits interesting things like that and what was someone wearing after
your right now hey what was this what were those people wearing and you’re exercising your mind to start
remembering these things and to stay shopping to be aware one of the tests
that they have in most agencies when you go to be a police officer part of the
written test is they will show you a photograph and you’ve got all 30 seconds
to look at it and then you’ve got to write down what you saw and who was wearing what what what did you see what
were they wearing and things like that they did when I was in the police
academy the way they did it and it was pretty interesting and it’s kind of scary took us by surprise our instructor
was there talking someone just walks into the room with a fake gun with
blanks comes in starts yelling at him pushes him fires three blank shots and
runs out of the room as it runs out of the room he turns the lights off and then someone else comes in turns the
light on and I tell us okay write down what you saw what happened everything
describe the scene and we all got to write that down it was funny because we each got it a little bit different some
people said three shots some people said four some people said to the clothing change and things like that so it was a
really good lesson in how to start learning to do observational skills and
to get out there and practice this there’s also things that people can do in their lives self-defense courses take
up training things like that first aid classes I know I was an EMT
from when I was in Virginia here back and I still have the basic skill sense but there’s people out there that don’t
have any basic first aid skills seek that out the Red Cross does classes like that local hospitals will do CPR classes and
things like that I know our Hospital inside of snobol Eastside does CPR classes and get some of that basic
training stuff and tools to keep yourself safe there’s plenty it’s not always about a
firearm there’s pepper sprays there’s Tasers there’s you know all kinds of things part of it and we talked about
that self-assuredness with that training brings that self-assuredness and if you
think about it love Discovery Channel you used to love watching animal shows and nature shows and equate all this stuff to it you’ve
always got the Predators that are hunting out the weakest don’t look like the weakest person out there walk
self-assured and look people in the eye that you know that they’re coming that helps a lot people I was originally from
New York and people joke around people from New York you know have this swagger about them when they walk and stuff all
the from and growing up there and we can always tell the tourists in New York because they’re always looking straight
up at the tall buildings and we all look straight ahead but it’s that selfish shortness of
portraying that self-assuredness that is another thing that just subconsciously helps that if someone is a predator out
there someone’s trying to do something that can help you with that we’re all the majority of the people that are
listening to this podcast for going in and out of buildings all day long they
might be office buildings there might be schools they might be manufacturing facilities you name it so it’s difficult
to train on any one specific building what are some general things that we
need to know that we can do that allows us to keep ourselves safe that’s a very
good question tres you take everything that we just talked about about being self-aware and you can apply all of that
to the different locations whether it be inside building open spaces
the main things to remember and to think about about this is know your
surroundings of know your environments if you are going around and you’re going to these different locations are they
the same locations all the time is it a route that you have maybe different clientele that you have to go to start
to learn those buildings that you’re in if you don’t know it ask ask the people
that work there they didn’t know the building the best hey where’s the nearest exits around here I have to take off and be honest and open with them hey
I’m coming in and out you know if something is an emergency were to happen even if it was a fire I’d love to know
which way to get in which way to get out do they have their own safety plans put
in place these different organizations in these different buildings but it’s always good to know that know the exits
is one of the biggest things because if you have to get out if you have to avoid some dangerous situation an active
shooter situation the number-one rule is to avoid and to get out again we talked
about that vine sighting have a plan all these different buildings that they’re
going in to look and see what would happen if I was in this room and
something happened do I have a way to get out all right am I stuck in this in here if I’m working on this piece of
equipment in this one room and am I giving up awareness and keeping my back
to a door am I is there a way that I could do it where I can see things coming at me from a distance okay just
to give me that little edge and a little bit of extra time to uh to react to that add on to that if something were to
happen will power just just normal will power if something actually did happen
one of the things they talked about in the craze is hope and hide and is hope
and hide never works that you have to have that will to survive you have to want to have that will and think of what
gives you that will family children you know we talked about changing that
emotion from fear to anger if I was in a situation where something like what happened it would it would make me
angry it would make me absolutely angry rather than can freeze up with fear and
try and get out of that situation and a lot of that is mental it’s using what do
you want to live for you know I have and for me it’s family from evil Emily comes
to mind first thing and choose to survive along with that be active just
be deliberate in your actions in what you do this hope and hide just never
really works but really taking all of these things that situational awareness it applies to wherever you are 24/7 no
matter what the building you’re you’re keeping your head on a swivel it’s the best way I can describe it that you’re
constantly looking funny story– friend of mine his son of my son went to the
same daycare together great guy was in the swimming pool business and still is
and we’d be standing out front of the daycare we drop our kids and we used to
go to McDonald’s for breakfast afterwards but we being mid-conversation and he starts snapping his finger right
in front of my right in front of me and I’m like what he’s like you just stop talking and you were watching something
over there I was like huh he’s like you went into cop mode and I was like what are you talking about he’s like you do
this a lot because you don’t even know you do it and and I started thinking about it I was like he’s right and it
was this awareness of wherever I was I was constantly looking around and
watching and it would be a car pulling into the parking lot of the daycare who’s in there is it a threat is it not
a threat no it’s not a threat I can assess that and go back to normal and go back to our conversation and that was
probably the first person I told the go to a public place homework assignment I said go to the mall and try that and he
did it and he came back and he was amazed he said he saw so many things he could see the younger couples that were
madly in love the the people that were being dragged through the mall to go shopping and stuff and he started seeing
stuff and he said it was amazing that his eyes were opened when he started doing that and we can do that in any of
a number building wherever you are the main thing to do is to is to really be active with
it and you have to stick to it and not get complacent about it because it’s so easy to do so a great homework
assignment for the scaling-up nation is to go to the mall go to some public place and go into cop mode absolutely
absolutely and you know it’s amazing once you start doing this the things
you’re gonna see in the things that are actually out there people just don’t realize it on a day to day basis we get
so wrapped up in our day-to-day that we focus we focus on other things again we
go back to the phones but just our typical surroundings there’s some people that go from you know the
air-conditioned house to the inter conditioned car to the air-conditioned office or wherever they go and there’s
nothing outside of that and that’s their routine every day they get complacent in reference to that and then do the
reverse on the way home it’s a matter of actually getting out there and really like I said being that student of human
behavior getting out there and opening your eyes to what’s around you and and
and mitigating those threats if they come up great information we’ve got to be aware let’s let’s get into something
that unfortunately we have to deal with in this day and age and I say unfortunate because it’s it’s ridiculous
that there are people out there that just want to create evil unfortunately it’s happening we need to know what to
do if there is an active shooter situation could you start with maybe
telling us what it means active shooter and then what can somebody like myself
do to make sure we’re responding properly we’re doing the right things well you know that term the term active
shooter for the longest time it’s come out now and it’s it’s this big word
that’s been out there in media and everything else and the more they talk about it the more we’ve gotten used to
it unfortunately and it’s something we should never get used to it seems like there’s something out there every week
another incident another incident or what’s gonna happen you know we just recently had and
they’re still talking about the horrific incident Las Vegas still things are coming out about that but it’s it’s been
happening for so long and if you think about all the statistics and one of the
statistics just look at between 2000 and 2013 there’s been a hundred and sixty
incidents of what they call active shooter which really is nothing more
than mass murder that’s all it is is this focused mass murder that someone is
trying to do so leads call the shooter what they are they’re a murderer that’s
exactly what they are it happens you know you’re faced with this thing how do you
how do you respond well if you take what we’ve been going over with the situational awareness and all of that
stuff hopefully you’re ahead of the curve that you know something’s going to happen but a lot of what happens with
people part of this complacency is and and it’s one of the three stages respond
disaster response there was an author Amanda Ripley wrote a book in 2008
called the unthinkable that talks about how to deal with a disaster fantastic
book they made it into a PDS special and she goes over the three stages of
disaster response which are denial deliberation and decision or decisive
moment and denial was the biggest problem that we have right now in these
different situations you go back to 9/11 people waited before
evacuating out of that building they talked that what was that what was
that loud noise the whole building shook oh my goodness and they they were in this state of denial
what ripley calls normalcy bias that you interpret it as an everyday thing people
who would hear gunshots and was that a gunshot now that probably couldn’t be a
gunshot you know maybe it was if you’re in if you’re in a warehouse area maybe it was a pallet falling oh that’s no big
deal I go back to Las Vegas looking at one of the videos from there you see one of the
singers was on stage and sure enough during that video that gunfire erupts
and people you can actually see that people are in that denial phase and they’re kind of looking around is that
really what I think it is and it takes a few minutes in the one video that I saw
once they turned off the stage lights you hear the person go oh and this is
probably about five eight seconds into it after the first set of gunfire it happened again and the person’s telling
that people who they’re with get down get down get down unfortunately electronic devices they’re
videotaping the whole thing is what happens again rather than focusing on what’s important and getting the heck
out of there which they which they end up doing but it’s that denial phase that causes time it takes time up and and and
actually could be the difference between life and death and reference to one of these situations we’ve got to get away
from that denial of things happening when you finally get past the denial and
you start thinking you’re trying to make a decision under stress your senses
deteriorate it’s a lot harder to make a decision once you really start the heart
rate starts coming up and starts getting worse and worse and actually bridge
seidel did a book sharpening the Warriors edge you worked for the guy named Dave Grossman a lot on
interpersonal human aggression what they talk about what Savelle talked about was
the heart rate in different conditions and the different states of stress that
you’re in affect you personally 60 beats a minute you’re probably in condition like you’re
relaxed it’s a resting heart rate 60 70 somewhere around there but as it starts increasing to 90 120 and all the way up
to 125 your senses start to deteriorate and this is a natural phenomenon that
happened and it’s it’s happened to me once you start losing things
you get vasoconstriction of veins in the outer extremities constrict there’s no caveman response if you lost an arm a
bear or something attacked you you wouldn’t bleed out you get auditory exclusion you don’t hear anything
there’s stories of officers that have been in fights for their lives wrestling and a gun will go off and they never
heard if they saw the light but they didn’t hear the sound so we got vasoconstriction auditory exclusion and
tunnel vision tunnel vision is one of the last things to pick up and it’s actually happened to
me there was an incident that happened when I was working and was dealing with a subject subject and this is going
years back I made the mistake of looking away towards my backup like hey we need
to take care of this well as I turned back towards a guy he followed my looking back with a left hook to the
chin instantly the heart rate went up hadn’t been in that situation before I was still a young officer and as I
stepped back what I saw I didn’t I didn’t hear him but I could see him
flailing and his mouth open waving his arms and there was this orange fuzzy tunnel and he seemed a
million miles away but then I remembered they taught us about this in the academy they taught us about this tunnel vision
thing that under stress you can still operate and you can still function there’s also a time distortion that’s
involved when it’s when there’s such a stress level time seems to stretch out once I realized hey this is what they
talked about I can operate in this we went ahead and did what we had to do and he ended up going to jail at night but
it’s important to realize those things that under stress and studying this stuff that under stress these conditions
happen and it makes it that much harder to make those decisions so once you get
rid of denial you get into that deliberation phase the way the Krays program describes it there’s two
different brains that you have is lizard what they call the lizard brain versus the human brain your human brain
actually being able to make better to see you make those decisions where that
lizard brain while it’s a fast response it’s a stress response of just
fight-or-flight and you’re gonna try to run maybe not in the best direction maybe you won’t be making the best
decisions because you’re using that lizard brain as opposed to the human brain so awareness of all of this
actually helps out and in that decisive moment when you decide you have to act we talked about hoping and hiding which
doesn’t work which does not work just sitting there part of the correcting part of this crazy program there’s a
young female who was involved in a Virginia Tech shooting and she does this lecture and she talks about when they
first heard it the teachers told them and get under the desks and they were hiding under the desks and they were
just regular school desks they didn’t really provide any cover or concealment but they see my pet was the thing to do
it reminds me of the old days of the bomb shelters and the school drills of duck-and-cover yeah of hiding under your
desk she basically said the person came into the room and just started shooting and she just sat there and waited for it
to be her turned Wow and she ended she ended up surviving but she ended up being shot twice it’s a
really interesting part of this group of that program that video that she does but that never works you’ve got to make
that deliberate action you’ve got it you’ve got to decide and you’ve got to be able to make your decision and act on
it there’s a fancy term for it and the fancy term for it it’s called an ood a
loop I didn’t know if you’ve ever heard if I have not most people haven’t it’s something really simple that people do
every single day it came from an Air Force Major Major John Boyd fighter
pilot during World War two Army Air Corps brilliant tactician fantastic guy
with a great mind and he actually in the end part of his career helped with
tactics and strategies for Desert Storm so that he’s had a tremendous career but
when he came up with with this it’s beauty is an acronym for an observe orient decide and act and we do it every
day we do it every single day in our life the best example I can give is is being
in a grocery store you’re going down the aisle you’re gonna do you don’t know what you’re gonna get okay you orient
yourself down the aisle observe the item that you want ah I need that I need my
box of Captain Crunch or whatever you want you orient yourself towards it you grab it you decide that that’s the one
you want and you act on it and you take it and we do this constantly in in every
decision we make it’s part of this decision-making process it’s just no one had ever explained it to you before that
way before I started really getting into this and learning about this and how you make decisions we do it in tactical
operations we try to get into someone’s food only and disrupt their food OLAP so that way they it slows their thought
process down so the faster you can go through these pseudo loops and make these decisions having all of the
situational awareness and and all of these things that we’ve talked about put together the quicker you can get to the
act phase which is one of the most important things in this act of dealing with an active shooter the Krays program
that we teach comes from a group that’s called well program called the alert
program and law enforcement we love acronyms just let the military does so everything has to have this long name
and a lot of letters alert stands for advanced law enforcement Rapid Response training and it comes out of Texas State
University they’ve been doing it since 2002 it is a tremendous program it started
out for officers teaching officers how to respond to these situations and how
to adapt to these situations and it’s been picked up Department of Defense has
picked up on it so they are nationwide the standard for police officers for
active shooting or active shooter response state of Georgia has picked it up as a standard as well the state
academy in just north of Macon and Forsyth Georgia teaches this class on
probably twice a month it’s a two-day class that they teach officers on how to respond it’s it’s a pretty high speed
class they use what it called simunition rounds which are kind of like paintball
for cops and it looks and feels like a real firearm that we would carry but
it’s huge paint bullets so it’s as close as you can get to to realism without
getting hurt well what alert decided in Texas State University decided is not only did the
officers need to know something the need came out for the general public to know how to respond to this what do I do what
are the simplest things I can do even if I have that lizard brain and all I can
remember is something very very simplistic a fight-or-flight kind of thing and what they came up with was an
acronym an acronym called ad diene it’s one of the biggest parts of this program that we teach and it stands for a void denied
defend it’s very very simple it applies to wherever you are it can be any kind
of building any location anywhere and if
you think about it there’s been other programs that have been out there they’ve called it run hide fight a whole
bunch of different things this one is specific to this alert program what a void deny defend is basically in any
situation if you are involved in an active shooter situation the first thing
you want to do is avoid it you want to get out you want to find an exit get out as quickly as possible and we talked
about with situational awareness knowing where those exits are being aware that if it does happen I know where an exit
is a primary exit if you can’t get to that is there a secondary exit and in
the class we talk about different ways to get through things going through a window if you have to one of the things
they bring up is could you actually if you had to if you were in a room and needed to get out of that room and there
was no other way out could you get through drywall to into another room potentially and the
answer is yes we talked about that in the program but that’s the biggest thing if you’re faced with that you want to
get away as quickly as possible some of that video from from the Las Vegas event
that just recently happened shows people and they are moving they’re running they’re grabbing whoever they can with
them and they’re getting out even if they didn’t know exactly where it was they’re trying to get as far away from
that sound as possible and just keep on moving that’s the main tenant to all of this stuff but what happens if you can’t
if you can’t that comes into the deny phase and when we talk about the deny
phase we want to deny them access we want to deny that that shooter that murderer access to where you’re at if
you’re in an office close the door lock the door turn off the lights if they
can’t get in there they’re gonna move on to the next thing a lot of the behavior that they do is they’re looking for
targets and unfortunately you don’t want to be that target so if you can deny
them access they’re gonna go for the next easiest area they’re trying to get as many as they can as quickly as they
can because if you think about these incidents there have been some that have been longer but most of them are our
minutes our minutes of them 5 minutes 10 minutes of an incident so it’s critical
if you can’t avoid it then you deny them access to where you’re at what are some
of the ways that we can deny access to them if you look do a survey of where
you’re at if if it’s an everyday office that during the same office every day do
a survey what can you do one of the simplest things it’s a doorstop if you put that door
stuff underneath that door and block it and lock it it’s gonna be hard for them to get in it’s gonna be tremendously
hard for them to get in another option is barricading the door with furniture get as much in front of
it as you can to deny them that and take that time away from them because if something like this happens
someone somewhere is dialing 9-1-1 guaranteed and we’re coming and the usual response for something like this
is about a three-minute response as we’re coming we’re coming and we’re trying to stop all of this from
happening you know one of the fortunate things from all this is you now know how to handle this because it’s happened
before and you’re trained for it absolutely absolutely so you deny at all cost to get them out
that buys you more time if you needed a secondary exit maybe to get out of a window to try to go back to the avoid
part of it hide as much as you can in that room away from that door once
you’ve got it barricaded you can use if it’s a door that swings out a belt a
belt maybe keep a nylon strap in your office if your door opens or opens
outward keep something that you could use to tie off to keep someone from opening that door that way as one of the
other options to do and when all else fails it comes down to the defend part
there’s been different situations in the program and as there’s a video it
is a school board in Florida that this young where a disgruntled husband comes
out his wife was terminated and he comes to the school board meeting with a gun and clearly there’s a there’s so many
things in this video that we’ve talked about here that you see just in this one video there’s the denial phase of people
are just this this guy he spray paints and emblem on the wall and people are just sitting there looking there’s one
or two they get it and run and get out of there as quick as possible they get through that denial phase pretty quickly
and they go to straight to avoid and get out but people are just sitting there
and he tells him to leave as he’s got a gun in his hand and people are stopping
and picking up their belongings and things like that and kind of you know laptop bags and stuff this is
persons there with a with a with a firearm and it’s amazing to see this folks leave your personal stuff get out
exactly you know the person that the other instructor I teach this with is lieutenant Boone and he always loves to
bring up because in the video it shows a few ladies that are taking their purses and he says there’s nothing in there
that’s worth your life Ryan didn’t run you know there’s a point in time where a
woman comes out and fantastic for trying to settle the situation she takes her
person actually hit some hits the guy from behind when he turns around that’s
where the defendant part could have come in because every person from that school board could have come from behind him and jumped on that person and gotten
that firearm away from him so that’s the fight part of this is that there’s gonna come a point in time where if there’s a
bunch of you you can overpower that person there may be someone that gets hurt you know there’s never a guarantee
and in each door someone may get hurt but you keep that person from just
walking blindly and and and killed people left and right so that’s the
final part of it is defend yourself and we go back to that emotional part of it
that I talked about what’s that emotion that’s gonna make you want to defend yourself feel like I said for me it’s
family and you have to have that just well up and change that attitude inside
of you from fear to anger and that’s what I make you react in that fight in that defend part and you defend yourself
and you defend everyone around you you think about it wherever wherever you are there’s something you can use to defend
yourself even if it’s a location you’re not normally in it’s not your home office it’s not where you used to warm
your home your office you’re at a client’s location you look at the things
around you what can be used whether it’s keys a screwdriver anything that can be
used as a defensive weapon to try to take that person out and at that point all’s fair game
you know you’re defending yourself you have the right to defend you and to live so all bets are off at that
point and that’s the main tenants of what the craze the civilian response program teaches is that avoid deny
defend and it can be applied anywhere like I said it it’s simple enough that
you can take that and apply it to whatever location you’re at wherever you go through your day and go from there
Robert just mentioned that the fortunate thing from all this evil and look that’s
what it is this is this is evil the police and the first responders have learned some valuable things from these
evil things that have happened so if we can barricade ourselves up and deny
entry we can we can rest assured that there are people on their way and they
know what’s going on but the evolution of how you learn some of these items is
one of the things that I use to kind of get myself through this craziness I really have a hard time the world’s hard
enough and now we’ve got people that just want to hurt other people it helps me to know that even with that going on
that some good can come from this and you have good things that you’ve learned
and other officers have learned that have helped you get better when something like this happens do you mind
going through some of the incidents that we’re all familiar with and some of the good things that you’ve learned from
that or some situational things that are absolutely traceable you know it’s always evolving our our
job is what people think that we’re out there and we just wait to get some it’s
a very very static job but it’s constantly evolving it’s constantly changing in the industry laws change
tactics change in the 18 years that I’ve been with the city the things that I
learned from the police academy and just starting out some of them are just
completely out we just don’t do that anyway certain things and for a lot of
different reasons I remember some of the textbooks that I would read I was a voracious reader when I first got into
the business and anything I could get my hands on to learn we look at it we look at that stuff nowadays and we kind of
laugh because it’s so out of date so we’re constantly evolving in reference to active shooter situations we’ll start
we’ll start with Columbine because that’s what everyone talks about that’s kind of the bellwether for all of this
up and up until the start up until Columbine critical incidents that
occurred basically the officers would come they’d set up a perimeter and wait
and it would wait for whatever tactical team whatever acronym you wanted to use SWAT SRT to get there well that’s
usually about a thirty minute response time for them to get from wherever they are to get out there to get on scene to
get kitted up and to pull the whiteboards out and start making plans and start trying to get a response to
what’s going on and that’s what happened in Columbine and it was unfortunate because that didn’t happen they were
just going about what they were trained but had they gotten in there sooner they would have been able I believe to save
more lives and that’s one of the biggest things now that alert group that alert
teaches and the way our training has changed over the years is we don’t wait
anymore we don’t wait rather than waiting for a specialized team for
frontline officers are trained in how to respond and it’s big thing we’ve truth
trained our entire department and we retrain them and they keep updating and
refresher training and things like that so they are the first ones in the door you get one to two officers and you get
in you get on the radio and you tell them where you’re going and you start actively looking for that person to stop
that threat and that’s what Columbine brought about was that that fundamental
change in tactics rather than wait that you got to get in there time times in
the and you’ve got to get through that door and you got to get in there and unfortunately and we teach this in the
class as officers were expendable we are expendable that’s our whole purpose that’s our job is to get in
there and to stop that threat you never want it to happen but if you’re hurt or something happens that’s unfortunately
part of the job your Trump words out there to try to save the public and to try to help the public will touch on Aurora Colorado in
Aurora part of what happened and in the Krays program they actually they
actually have video of that subject coming into the theater and buying
ticket and getting his ticket and going in they show when the actual shooting
started what had happened and people running out the door it’s funny again that one that video is very clearly
shows that hope and hide they showed to concession stand employees and they see
everyone running out the door they don’t know what to do you see him in that moment of just vapor lock where they
can’t figure out what to do and they both duck underneath the counter and they hope and hide and they sit there
and after a few minutes you see the one person come out the first employee kind
of looks around at runs then the second employee sticks her head out and realizes that she’s been left and she’s
by herself she goes over the counter and finally it clicks in for her to get out
the door get out the door with a void at all cost that situation what ended up
happening in the aftermath was the law enforcement came in to get in there to
stop the threat the fire department staged out which is what they do one of
the premiere things you learned that I learned in EMT school when I went
through that program the first thing you ask is is a scene safe so as firefighters paramedics they’re
not gonna go running into where an active shooter is where some kind of gunfire is because they can’t help
anyone if they’re hurt what ended up happening was they had different they didn’t talk on the same radio channel
they couldn’t coordinate communication between fire and law enforcement so
while the officers are trying to pull bodies and trying to help these people the fire department was staged further
away which is what their normal plan of action is but they couldn’t communicate so what’s come from that is being able
to communicate better on the same channels when there is a situation like
this little command post potentially but also and we’ve done this out here in Gwinnett County they’re actually
training the firefighters to be a second wave to go into that situation and they
will go in with body armor and they’re going in strictly to help so they’re
escorted by officers the first wave of officers goes in to actively go after that threat and to find that threaten
eliminate that threat the second wave is firefighters and paramedics going in to
try to triage and to pull out those people and bring them out of that situation and help as many as they can
Virginia Tech was another one of shooting that occurred in Virginia Tech
I was talk to you about that that one student that was there what she talked
about also in her speech was that that person that that shooter changed
ownership to them to them to the residents for the classrooms where they were it was I forget the name of the
hall but he actually went with chains and went and barricaded himself in there
to give him more time because he knew that law enforcement was coming he knew that there was gonna be a response so he
wanted to give himself as much time as possible consequently we carry breaching
tools we carries things I’ve got I know in mine I’ve got bolt cutters and pry
tools and things like that that I can do to actively get into a place tools that normally only the fire department would
carry back in the day we’ve had to adapt our skill sets and change and start
doing things like that so we can still so nothing and keep us from getting in there and we keep adapting we keep
adapting Las Vegas that just recently happened horrible no one had planned for that no
one with all the training that we’ve had it was just one of those things a high-altitude person a good angle of
attack sculpt weapons rapidly firing weapons something completely different
the jury’s still out on all of that in reference to training and what could
have been done differently better all of that they’re still actively going through that but I can guarantee that
this is going to be like Columbine another paradigm shift for us this is gonna be another big shift in our
training where it will adapt whatever that is will adapt and it just keeps
going back and forth and we keep adapting back and forth trying to stay ahead of the curve when I took your
class you were very specific that these evil people have something in mind they
want to get something and you say don’t give it to them don’t give them that motivation can you speak on that sure
it’s it’s the notoriety of what’s going
on it seems like every time they want to be the next biggest person maybe it’s
the one-upsmanship I know in different news stories with the Las Vegas incident
they talk they keep talking about numbers and they keep talking about the most you know the highest number of dead
but what they are also doing is they’re constantly talking about the subjects
name and they keep putting their name out and they keep talking about talking
about him and that’s part of that notoriety that I think some of them seek over the years they want to be known as
that person that did that and actually when some stories that you’ll see there’ll be a different name in the
crazy class I talk about this and we talk about Aurora Colorado and some
people will remember that but there’s other incidents that happen that people will not remember unless you hear the
term that’s used what in the stories describe it’s a kind in Aurora Colorado they
talked about the Batman killer or the Joker killer since he had the person had
orange hair there was another one in Michigan that was they talked about the names and they brought the names of but
people remember it more as the uber driver killer and they remembered that
and it’s and it’s the way that they’re almost advertising the actions and this
isn’t a knock on medians no it’s it’s just the way things are and the way
people remember things but what alert also does alert has another program that
they go out there and they talk about don’t need them don’t give them the notoriety that they want don’t give them
that that boost to their ego which potentially is why they’re doing all of
this and let them let them go away in obscurity and talk more about the
victims talk more about the stories of the people that helped each other during these situations I know there was
stories that came out about Vegas about people just stopping and helping each other people with medical training that
were in the middle or helping others that had fallen and doing that that’s what to talk about talk about people
helping each other through these things not advertising the acts of what you
said before someone who is just generally evil and that’s unfortunately what this what this is all about but we
talk about that and that’s the last slide and the program is not to name them and not to give them that notoriety
well I can’t thank you enough for coming on this is this is heavy stuff this is
very deep stuff this is stuff that’s gonna make people safer it possibly can save someone’s life thank you absolutely
I’ve I think it’s tremendous I know a lot of listeners or anything a lot out
of this there’s a lot we talked about all of it’s important but I I know that
there’s that one thing that you want to make sure that every listener takes away
from this what is that one thing open your eyes and open your mind be
aware of the surroundings you’re in yeah keep your head out of the phone who
looking down in that phone all day put it away put it in your pocket start being more aware of your surroundings
who’s around you what’s around you and become that student of human behavior
it’ll give you in the end it’ll give you that edge when something does happen if you’re unfortunately placed in that
situation that you’ll have the skill sense and that a little bit of advanced
learning to try to get away and save yourself I want to thank you for the job
that you do most people run away from danger you and your fellow officers and and
other first responders they run towards danger so they can help people thank you for everything you do and thanks for
coming on thanks for having me trace I appreciate it I’m sure like me since the Las Vegas shootings you’ve been trying
to make some sort of sense out of what happened and we’re never going to come
to that end the only good that I can think can come from something like that
is for us to be aware and to have information that if something like that
were to ever occur again that we are now able to make decisions based on the
information that we just heard make sure that you’re staying out of your phones
all the time our phones are great we’re able to get the information we need but
they’re not a substitute for the world around us they should help us deal with the world around us they shouldn’t be
our world so pay attention to what’s around you maybe try talking to the
people that are around you definitely practice some of the things that Rob mentioned to us when we go out to
restaurants where are the exits how am I going to be safe if the main exit that I
came in or blocked and it’s my hope that we never have to use that information but if we have that information and we
need it I think we can take a horrible situation and make it a little bit
better folks I always in the episodes by saying be a better water treater tomorrow than
you were today but I’m going to end this one saying treat your neighbor treat
whoever you’re with better than you did yesterday we’re all on this planet
together we all have to work with each other we all have to live with each other let’s do that in a way that that
just makes it a little bit better so that’s my challenge for tomorrow have a great week folks