PD Active Shooter Training SoNH

MaverickNH

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A local PD in SoNH is doing Active Shooter training this week in a large building that is mostly emptied of industrial offices and manufacturing equipment but is a maze of hallways, staircases and rooms. Scenario is workplace active shooter with small groups of officers responding for first entry. Chained and locked door requires bolt cutters and sledge/hooligan to enter. Three to five shot employees in front offices (our volunteer organization).

PD trainers monitor and PD safety team double-checks entry team to be sure they have only simunition, blanks and/or blue guns. They are immediately engaged by one pistol shooter (firing blanks as PD are in uniform) with gun fight over 2-3 wounded innocents. They cuff the downed shooter and start medical on innocents when a 2nd shooter with AR15 Blank Firing Adaptor starts in - they engage and return to trauma med for wounded. Radio comms among team and HQ is live closed channel for local event only (so the whole state doesn’t respond by accident).

I was very impressed with the teams today (groups of 2, 3, 4 officers) and their trainers were complementary with a few corrections. Weakest point was trauma med - training is fair and equipment poor. Primary aim is stop the killing, secondary is aid the survivors until med help arrives. Emphasis on getting wounded to warm zones so medics can treat and transport ASAP. Not enough TQs or chest seals with 1st responders in general. They alternate between workplace simulations and schools during breaks and summer.

Quite an evolution in response from Columbine and Parkland to today. Only curiosity was that volunteers were not asked or checked for firearms. I assumed I was to be unarmed and left my pistol secured. A lot of pro-2ndA commentary from PD trainers. Very professional in every way.
 
I'm glad there is starting to be more of a focus on creating warm zones and treating wounded. I always hated the 'we gotta find the shooter hurr durr' kool aid
 
A lot of pro-2ndA commentary from PD trainers. Very professional in every way.

That is great to hear, and unlikely to be repeated in Mass. Has anyone ever proposed a good guy with a gun scenario? There have been a couple of threads on NES posing the question, "would you, as a civilian, act in an active shooter situation?" Truth is, in most cases, no matter how good your intentions, skill level or ability, doing what many of us would consider to be the right thing, is just about as good as signing your own death warrant, in many scenarios.
 
The PD trainer *did* mention that a good guy with a gun ought not be holding said gun when the 1st responders arrive, for all the reasons we already know.
 
The PD trainer *did* mention that a good guy with a gun ought not be holding said gun when the 1st responders arrive, for all the reasons we already know.

No...what should be happening is for officers to use common sense and take a breath before ventilating anyone
 
In our discussions at home about what to do in the event of a home invasion,zombie, vampire, alien, werewolf attack, we have decided my wife's primary role is to gather the kids and call 911, making sure to tell them to NOT shoot the guy in his underwear. She chuckled and said "Yeah, he's like 6'1"-250 wearing a white tshirt, BVD's holding a Sig and sporting morning wood."
And I have seen enough movies to know that's the first guy to die.
 
The PD trainer *did* mention that a good guy with a gun ought not be holding said gun when the 1st responders arrive, for all the reasons we already know.

I was an active shooter instructor for police and academy recruits for 10yrs in the Boston area. Myself and the other instructors stressed very highly to each and every class, in fact for every iteration we walked per class, that just because somebody is holding a firearm does not mean that they are a bad guy.

As examples I gave them our beautiful 2A, every single iteration again that we walked, to try and negate this situation, and explained that quite possibly an employee or employees carry at work and have been actively SAVING lives waiting for some back up (the police) to arrive. Do NOT simply shoot at anyone with a firearm!

There is also an extremely large chance that any cops or detectives in the area will hear the radio call for active shooter/shots fired at so and so business and you could have 3 or 4 detectives responding to the scene and entering a different door than the uniformed officers entered, so please again, do NOT simply start shooting just because someone is holding a firearm.

And we did in fact emplace role players as employees with firearms and plainclothes detectives into these scenarios to test them on their trigger discipline, ability to communicate with people and identify them (friend/foe) in stressful situations (we used Symunitions regularly with lots of outside noise distractions, screaming people running at you down a hallway, casualties, anything to cause stress and test them etc.

For the most part it went well, sometimes not, as you just don’t know how some people are going to react in high stress situations, and this was only “stress” and nowhere close to the high stress of real rounds being fired and real bodies on the ground.

We did everything we could to make sure every single cop or recruit we trained was very much aware that it is not illegal to carry a firearm in America, and a person doing so and using it to try and save lives should not be rewarded for their efforts with magazines being emptied in their direction by a bunch of f***ing scared cops. I was always very hard and verbally abusive to those who panicked just to make my point heard and I’d embarrass the f*** out of them in front of others hoping they’d remember this.

As a trainer I can now only hope that they remember it and conduct themselves in a professional and calm manner and don’t make that awful mistake.
 
I might have been more clear in saying “holding a gun” - not just “carrying”. The context was if you had a gun and were pointing it about when PD arrived you might not find it well received. You say “I’m a 60yr old white male, 5ft 10in, 180lb, and wearing a red polo with khaki trousers“ and the dispatcher just says “man with a gun, shooting in progress” and it goes poorly if you’re not holstered up when they come through the door, guns drawn.

Very few circumstances when a good guy with a gun got shot in any active shooter event, excepting the black security guard (no “Security” on his jacket) who was kneeling on a guy with a gun to his head when the responding PD showed up.
 
Mav,

You have to realize that a tangible portion of members here are 100% anti-cop, period. I present this simple fact with no emotion attached.
Now as far as active shooter response, I personally believe there is no more realistic and timely police TRAINING available today.
Having participated in such training with simunitions with Basher Tactical (defunct), Albany SWAT, MSP, Natick PD, NEMLEC, MetroLEC STAR,
and others has led me to this conviction. There is no way to 100% simulate, and therefore 100% understand, your own personal reaction to sudden extreme war-like assault.
Active shooter comes pretty darn close. I'd rather see MPTC drop annual in-service and make the 16 hour Active shooter response mandatory annual cert.
 
That is great to hear, and unlikely to be repeated in Mass. Has anyone ever proposed a good guy with a gun scenario? There have been a couple of threads on NES posing the question, "would you, as a civilian, act in an active shooter situation?" Truth is, in most cases, no matter how good your intentions, skill level or ability, doing what many of us would consider to be the right thing, is just about as good as signing your own death warrant, in many scenarios.
If you find yourself in that position, immediately holster your gun after capping the bad guy. They have no idea who the shooter is and tensions will be high.
 
On one training evolution, the Bad Guy ran past us victims cowering on the ground and I shouted “Do what you want to the women but don’t hurt me!“ He started laughing and the cops shot him severely.

Back in my younger days, we’d always try to get a girl to go on road trips with us. The girl might have rightly trusted us not to take liberties with her, but we really just wanted a young white woman to trade if we got in a jam. A shove out the door and we’d be off without pursuit.
 
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