by Joy Dike, PhD

It's 10:30 on a Tuesday morning and you're sitting in your fifth floor office working on an important report. Your phone lights up with a text message alert from your company's mass notification system:  "Active shooter on campus. Shelter in place." 

WHAT DO YOU DO?

Really, take a moment and actually put yourself in this position and think about what you would do. I'll wait... 

Would you panic and hide? Run to the elevator or stairs and high tail it out of the building? Call your spouse? Pull the fire alarm? Pop your head out of the door and see what everyone else is doing? Freeze up, unable to move?

HERE'S WHAT YOU SHOULD DO:
Avoid
Deny 
Defend

During an active shooter situation there are steps you can take to protect yourself and increase your chances of survival. Understand this: it is a matter of life and death - your actual survival may depend on what you do.

AVOID - Avoid the shooter at all costs. Escape from the vicinity of the shooter. If you can leave the confines of the building, do it. 

DENY - If you cannot exit the building, the next step is to deny the shooter access to you and those around you. Find a place to hide. Lock the door. Barricade the door with office furniture or anything big. Use rope, a tie, or a belt to secure outward opening doors. Turn off the lights. Remain quiet, silence your phone, and remain out of sight. 

DEFEND - If you have hidden and attempted to deny the shooter access to your location but he still finds a way in, the next step is defend yourself. Remember that an active shooter is trying to kill you, and you have the right to defend yourself by any means necessary. At this point your life depends on how well you defend yourself - do not fight fair. Position yourself where you can surprise the gunman. Use any objects at hand (scissors, hot coffee, fire extinguisher, etc.) to attack the gunman and incapacitate him.

by Joy Dike, PhD

As consultants, we have the privilege to present our risk assessment findings and recommendations to the decision makers in an organization - CEOs, CFOs, Executive Directors, heads of security, general managers, engineers, IT directors, school Headmasters, and more. More often than not, these are the people who have actively sought out having a risk assessment performed for their institution and are keen on improving security.

With that said, there are times when our findings and recommendations fall on deaf ears. Sometimes the decision makers are offended by our findings or don't believe us. ("We do TOO have radio communication between the lobby and 10th floor!") Sometimes they don't understand the terminology. ("Each of the locations surveyed that have visitor traffic should employ visitor management systems managed by the same SMS systems database allowing for universal reporting.") Sometimes they're frightened by the findings. ("You mean anyone can just hop over that broken fence and have access to the school campus?!") And sometimes they're overwhelmed by how detailed the assessment it. ("You mean that we have 531 active users in the access control database? But we only have 75 employees!")

While our risk assessments are always done in an unbiased and objective manner, we understand that hearing about your organization's or institution's risks and threats is sometimes hard to acknowledge. This is why at Invictus Consulting we make sure that each debrief meeting isn't complete until the decision makers thoroughly understand both the findings and the recommendations.

by Joy Dike, PhD

Visit the Resources page of our website to download a white paper about this topic of active shooter statistics. 

by Joy Dike, PhD

A quick Google search of mass shootings in 2015 will give you an answer ranging from 4 to over 350. That's a startlingly large range. Were there 4 mass shootings in 2015 or were there 300? Or were there 21? Or 294? Or 32? How are we supposed to make sense of this?

The issue at hand is how the term "mass shooting" is defined. Do we include the shooter in the casualties? Do we count only those killed? Or those shot and those killed? Do people even have to die to consider it a mass shooting? Do we include gang shootings? Drug related shootings? Domestic violence shootings? The parameters make a difference.

The next time you look at active shooter or mass shooting statistics, think about where the data came from. 

Visit the Invictus Consulting blog again in the next few days as we continue this discussion about the meaning behind the statistics.