by Joy Dike, PhD

Earlier this week the UCLA campus went on lockdown. An active shooter who murdered a professor and then committed suicide prompted the lockdown. Early news reports of how students and faculty handled the incident seem to indicate a well-handled situation. From our point of view as risk and security consultants, two things stand out about the UCLA lockdown:

• their mass notification system worked as intended
• faculty and students were able to shelter-in-place effectively

Mass notification is a term used to describe a system or platform that can deliver a message to a group of people (e.g., all faculty and students, all employees). Mass notification systems are typically employed to deliver a one-way message (i.e., recipients cannot respond to the message) via text message or email or both. Mass notification may be used to initiate lockdown, alert people to a danger like an active shooter, or alert people to hazardous weather conditions.

The early indications from UCLA point to a mass notification system that alerted faculty and students to shelter in place and stay away from campus if they were not yet on campus. This is why mass notification is such an important facet of an Emergency Action Plan - people need to know to stay where they are and barricade themselves; people need to know to stay away from the campus/building/location if they aren't there yet; people need to know what is happening to reduce panic and confusion. Most individuals in our society (barring elementary school students) have smart phones on or near their person at most times - a mass notification system that sends text message alerts is a smart and effective way to alert a large number of people to possible dangers. 

News reports also point to the fact that faculty and students were aware of how to shelter-in-place. In the context of a lockdown scenario, shelter-in-place means taking refuge in a small, interior room with few or no windows. Once inside the room, you should lock the doors, close and lock all windows, close shades and blinds, barricade the door, and move to a place in the room where you cannot be seen. Barricading the door and moving to a place you cannot be seen is particularly important in the case of an active shooter. In the case of schools, this usually means staying in the classroom you're already in and locking doors, barricading the door, and hiding; this seems to be how students and faculty at UCLA conducted themselves (those that were already in classrooms), even getting creative with outward opening doors. 

Drilling a lockdown scenario is important; we can't emphasize this enough. The more you practice these types of situations with your people - whether they're students, staff, or employees - the better equipped your people will be when a situation arises. Panic mode has a tendency to set in during an emergency; people may forget to lock the doors or close window blinds, so the more these things are practiced, the better people's response will be in a live event. 

by Joy Dike, PhD

Having and practicing a lockdown procedure at your school is something we ceaselessly advocate for here at Invictus Consulting. We believe that drilling your plan is just as important as having a plan. We've talked about this multiple times before on this blog - look here and here and here and here and here for further discussions of this topic.

What I want to talk about today is a scenario in which your school needs to go in to lockdown because of something happening nearby. Earlier this month in Katy, Texas a disgruntled former employee walked into the front door of his former place of work, yelled something about his life being ruined, aimed his shotgun, shot at multiple people (killing one of them), and then took his own life. This man had been fired from the company recently and was out to get revenge. We could discuss this situation in the context of workplace violence and warning signs or situations that may cause an employee to commit an act of violence, but the focus of this blog post is on the nearby schools. A high school, a junior high school, and an elementary school are located directly across the street from the business where the shooting occurred. These schools (Morton Ranch High School, Morton Ranch Junior High, and Franz Elementary) went into immediate lockdown. 

There are a few issues to think about here. (Before we go any further, please understand that this commentary is in no way reflective of the Katy ISD Police or schools and how they conducted themselves. The active shooter situation and subsequent school lockdowns in Katy, Texas are merely serving as the jumping off point for a thought exercise here.):

• Why didn't the other nearby schools go in to lockdown as well? A map of the area seems to indicate that there are at least three other schools within a mile of the business where the shooting occurred and another four schools less than three miles from the shooting. That's a total of 10 schools within a 3 mile radius of this incident. It seems that the local school district department put the first three schools on lockdown, but if you're a parent or educator or employee at one of the other nearby schools, wouldn't you want to keep your students safe as well? A lockdown plan (in addition to being drilled regularly), should stipulate what circumstances qualify for initiation of the lockdown procedure.
• At least three nearby schools did go into lockdown mode even though nothing violent happened at these schools; they were put on lockdown because of a nearby incident. If you are an administrator or educator, you need to realize and understand that incidents at other locations can affect you, even if the incident is not on your campus. Many administrators and educators that we work with think that nothing bad will ever happen at their school. Whether or not that is a reality, the fact is that bad things may happen near your school, and this should be reason enough to write and drill a lockdown procedure.
• The three schools put on lockdown were ordered to do so by the local school district police department. We've met with a lot of school administrators who feel that they are perfectly well prepared for a lockdown or active shooter event because the local police department has a SWAT team. While a trained SWAT team may be effective in neutralizing an active shooter, are you going to rely on that SWAT team to set up your mass notification system? Audit your security protocols? Audit your camera and alarm coverage? No, of course you're not - its not the job of the SWAT team to write an evacuation plan for you or to make sure your mass notification system is in place and functioning properly. The job of the SWAT team is to neutralize the threat. The point here is that having a local police department and/or SWAT team is not enough - you need to have a proper security audit performed for your school and a proper lockdown procedure written and drilled. 

We are always sorry to hear about active shooter events, and our condolences go out to the family of the employee killed by the active shooter. However, we do strive to learn from active shooter incidents, and this particular incident has the ability to teach us a few things about school lockdown procedures. 

by Joy Dike, PhD

Do you ever feel like you're in an episode of The Simpsons when it comes to conducting drills at your place of business or school?

People just don't seem to take these things seriously - people hiding in the bathroom during a fire drill, administration singing off that a drill has been done when it hasn't, or a drill being conducted at 3am on a Sunday when no one is in the building or on campus. There are too many ways to disregard the serious nature of emergency drills.

The fact is, though, that DRILLS SAVE LIVES. It is well documented that in times of severe stress your body goes in to auditory exclusion (your hearing worsens severely), you get tunnel vision (you lose vision on the periphery), you lose fine motor skills, and your thought process declines. By drilling and practicing what to do in the event of an emergency - whether its fire, tornado, active shooter, etc. - you are training your body and mind to perform the correct tasks when the time comes.

Imagine you're an elementary school teacher. You've taught in the same classroom for years. You've looked at the same fire evacuation plan on the back of your classroom door for years but never actually walked the path and practiced an evacuation. An actual fire occurs and all of a sudden your body goes into panic mode - you get auditory exclusion, tunnel vision, and decreased motor skills; now you literally can not follow the directions on the fire evacuation plan. Your students are looking at you to lead them, and you are frozen in panic, quite literally unable to think clearly. This is where drill save lives - if this teacher had practiced evacuating the classroom multiple times, over and over, month after month, year after year, her muscle memory would have allowed her to lead the children on the correct path to safety (even with auditory exclusion and tunnel vision). 

Please, take emergency drills seriously. They are not a waste of time; they are not planned as a way to make your day more difficult; they are not irrelevant. Practicing what you would do in an emergency could save your life.

With that said, let's end this very serious issue on a lighter note:

by Joy Dike, PhD

Here at Invictus Consulting we help a lot of schools and businesses improve their Emergency Action Plan. One part of an Emergency Action Plan is where to congregate if your campus, building, or property needs to be evacuated. Some people like to call this a "muster station," which simply means a pre-determined location to assemble people - students, employees, visitors, etc.

The question that should be asked with a muster station is: What are you going to do once everyone is there? This is a particularly crucial question for schools. If you've evacuated all students, faculty, and staff to a muster location, what do you do once everyone is there? Can parents just drive up and grab their kids? How do you even alert parents that their children are at a muster station rather than at the school?  How are you going to account for all persons? Will you keep students grouped by grade? By last name? Let them all mill around randomly? What about special needs students? Injured students? Can students have their cell phones? 

This is where a Reunification Plan is important. A Reunification Plan will give you policies, procedures, and concrete steps to take when faced with an evacuation and the need to reunify students with their parents. Like any other emergency plan, a Reunification Plan should be drilled regularly by teachers and staff so that they understand their roles and responsibilities.

Happy Star Wars day everyone - May the fourth be with you!
In honor of our favorite trilogy, we'd like to share a stormtrooper / security parallel. 

We sometimes come across clients who have the mindset that if their security risks are written down on paper, they are somehow more liable were disaster to strike. 

We liken this to an ostrich with its head in the sand - if I can't see the problem it must not exist!

This is an illogical mindset, and it can do your organization more harm than good. Having a risk assessment done for your organization, campus, building, etc. does not increase your chances of disaster. Do you think a tornado cares if you've written an emergency plan? You write the emergency plan for tornadoes to be proactive, not to outsmart the tornado. The same holds for an active shooter. You do a risk assessment and write an emergency action plan to be proactive and to be ready in case such a tragedy were to occur. 

Some people feel that having a risk assessment done and writing and emergency action plan for an active shooter somehow AIDS AND ABETS an active shooter. Listen, you are NOT outsmarting an active shooter by NOT writing an emergency action plan - that is just flawed logic.

Don't stick your head in the sand and cover your eyes and ears and pretend like your school, church, campus, building, organization is free from threats. Be proactive and be smart and be ready.

We're super excited about May the Fourth (i.e., Star Wars day) over here. Here's a quick preview of tomorrow's Star Wars themed blog:

​Are you a trendsetter? 

Stand out from the crowd and be proactive about your security management. 

Sad boring stormtroopers just stand back and let chaos happen. Awesome trendsetter stormtrooper is proactive. He's got swagger, and he's got a plan.

​Come back tomorrow on May the 4th to learn more!

by Joy Dike, PhD

I recently read one of the most apt metaphors for why we should prepare for the possibility of terrorist threats in our nation's school. Written in the Foreword to Innocent Targets: When Terrorism Comes to School,  Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, U.S. Army (Ret.) compares preparing for a fire with preparing for a terrorist attack at a school. It's worth repeating a few paragraphs verbatim:

"Our children are dozens of times more likely to be killed by violence than fire, and thousands of times more likely to be seriously injured by violence as compared to fire. And yet, in any school you can look around and see fire sprinklers, smoke alarms, fire exits, and fire extinguishers. If we can spend all that money and time preparing for fire (and we should, since every life is precious), shouldn't we spend time and money preparing for the thing that is far more likely to kill or injure a child? 

The most negligent, unprofessional, obscene words anyone can ever say are, 'It will never happen here.' Imagine the firefighter saying, 'There will never be a fire in this building, and we don't need those fire extinguishers.'

When someone says, 'Do you really think there will be a terrorist act or a school shooting here?' I just point to the fire exit and say, 'Do you really think there will be a fire here? Statistically speaking, it is very unlikely that there would ever be a fire here. But we would be morally, criminally negligent if we did not prepare for the possibility. And the same is far, far more true of school violence.'" (pp.xviii-xix)


I really like this analogy because it speaks so clearly to the do-nothing strategy so many schools employ about a terrorist attack - school administrators often have the mindset that a terrorist attack or school shooting could never possibly happen on their campus. It's a problem for other people in other countries. Or at least other cities. "I don't have to worry about this problem in my community" is a mindset we find in far too many schools.

We need to break ourselves of this mindset. The methods to mitigate the threat of a terror attack are the same methods to mitigate the threat of an active shooter, and it starts with admitting that the school needs to have a risk assessment done and put a plan in place for various types of emergencies, not just fire emergencies. 

by Joy Dike, PhD

We talk a lot about active shooters, mass shootings, and workplace violence here on the Invictus Consulting blog. Here we go again...

Recently a man walked into a leasing office at an apartment complex In Tallahassee and opened fire. What we know so far is that this man was acting out in retaliation for his wife having been fired from her job at the apartment complex earlier that day. He shot an employee of the apartment complex 6 times (not fatally) and then went back outside and casually waited for the police to come, looking, "like a man who had accomplished his goal."

Let's look at this case in the context of active shooter, mass shootings, and workplace violence. Is this man an active shooter? Is this an an instance of a mass shooting? Is this a case of workplace violence?

Remember that the agreed-upon definition (by the White House, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice, the Department of Education, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency) of an active shooter is "an individual actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a confined and populated area; in most cases, active shooters use firearm(s) and there is no pattern or method to their selection." 

Is he an active shooter? Was he:

• attempting to kill people
• by shooting them
• in a populated area
• with no particular rhyme or reason for who he aims at 

The four major parts of the definition of an active shooter may fit in this case, IF we learn that the mindset of the perpetrator was to kill people indiscriminately. This information hasn't come to light yet. The first question is whether he intended to actually kill people. The other question is whether he was shooting randomly or if had chosen targets. This information also hasn't come to light, but the fact that he went to the leasing office (rather than the nearby apartment complex gym, pool, or computer room) may indicate that his targets were employees of the apartment complex rather than random individuals (or renters) at the apartment complex. Without knowing his mindset, we can't fully commit to calling this an active shooter case.

Was it a mass shooting? While there is little consensus on what defines a mass shooting (see this blog post and this white paper on active shooter statistics for a more detailed explanation of this topic), all definitions assume at least 3 people are shot. This instance, then, would not be classified as a mass shooting. 

Is this a case of workplace violence? There are four types of workplace violence offenders:

• Type I - The offender has no relationship with either the victims or the establishment. (This is random violence, often attempted robbery.)
• Type II - The offender currently receives services (e.g., retail, health) from the facility where they commit violence. (This often manifests as violence towards nurses or healthcare workers by their patients.)
• Type III - The offender is a current or former employee acting out against current or former place of employment. (If the woman who had been fired from the apartment complex had done the shooting [rather than her husband], the Tallahassee case would be Type III workplace violence.)
• Type IV - The offender has a relationship with an employee and domestic issues spill over into the workplace. (This often manifests as domestic disputes or domestic violence carrying over into the workplace of one or the other of the domestic partners.)

In the Tallahassee case, we can certainly classify the violence as Type IV workplace violence. This man had a relationship with an employee (his wife), and he committed violence at her workplace. Even though the wife was not present for the violence and her husband was not acting violently toward her, he still committed violence at a place of work where he had a relationship with an employee. 

Now that we've determined that this is not a mass shooting, is potentially not an active shooter situation, but is definitely a case of workplace violence, do you feel relieved? Safer? More scared? Glad that one less active shooter case has NOT happened in the United States? 

The reality is that workplace violence - whether it is a case of domestic violence, harassment, emotional abuse, threats, or an actual armed gunman - poses a greater threat to the daily safety of workers than do active shooters. Workplace violence occurs every day in places all over the country, and someone does not need to be wielding a gun to be classified as engaging in workplace violence; most instances of workplace violence do not involve guns at all. We've said it before, and we will say it again until workplaces are truly safe, but you need to have a workplace violence policy (i.e., a zero-tolerance policy), you need to make sure employees know about and follow the policy, and you need to make sure that your employees feel safe at work.

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

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