Active Shooter Drills in the Workplace

Wanna talk a minute for about active shooter drills in the workplace. Now, if you work in a building like PERSONAL DEFENSE NETWORK headquarters here where there's dozens of people, maybe scores of people or even hundreds of people in a large office or hospital or school setting then you probably have someone who in the HR department or in the security, or maybe the facilities department who's seriously thinking about what to do in a worst case scenario, active shooter event. Now, obviously if you're in a high risk area like a hospital, an amusement park, a shopping mall or a school someplace where people expect there to be a lot of victims who may not be armed. And certainly aren't thinking about defending themselves as they go about their business or go about their work day then active shooter preparation becomes even more important now, active shooter spree, killer whatever terminology you use. What we're talking about is someone who comes into your workplace with the intent on hurting as many people as possible. And remember, this could be related to a workplace violence issue. This could be someone who's having some kind of a problem inside of the workplace, mentally disturbed person, maybe someone who was recently fired who now has a vendetta and agenda against the people who are still there at the workplace. Who's come back in. And that means that these drills that are generally talked about in a large setting, like a school or a hospital also can apply to a small setting. If you work in a small retail shop you have three or four or five people that work there and you have a workplace violence issue. And someone comes back with an agenda to hurt you because you were a coworker, hurt other people in the environment and maybe even hurt your customers. It obviously responds very much like an active shooter situation is just going to be happening in a smaller scale location. So let's talk about the drills. Well, the first thing you have to do is have a plan. When someone comes out and gives you the flyer or maybe hangs a placard up in a, in a room on the back of the door and says, here's what to do. Maybe you're going to have a meeting. You're going to have the last email that goes out to all employees. Here's our active shooter plan. Well, having that plan, discussing it around the proverbial water cooler, or even having a meeting or a seminar, having an expert like myself, come in to teach one quick seminar of active shooter response. Isn't enough. What you really need to do is put into place specific drills that are going to help people prepare to execute this plan that's been put into effect. Now, the thing with a drill is that it's not emotionally charged. It's not supposed to be a scenario, it's not supposed to make you think that you're really under attack or test your ability to work under stress. As a team. All we're really doing is walking through the motions. We're going through the specific performances of the pieces of the plan that you have put into place at your workplace. Now, of course, we recommend that you have a simple three-step process, evade, barricade and respond if necessary. Now you can also integrate two other steps into that plan. Make it a little bit more comprehensive by thinking about improvised defensive tools. Or of course, if you're allowed to carry a firearm or other purpose-built defensive tool in the workplace then you're going to be able to arm yourself. And then of course, think about communication communicating not only with the police, but communicating with each other, possibly even communicating with the threat, the environment but it starts with evade barricade and respond if necessary. We can talk about those things. And of course there are plenty of videos here at PERSONAL DEFENSE NETWORK articles active shooter response resources here that you can look at but inside of the workplace once you've had that conversation, the drill is when you're actually going to get to put those things into place and practice going through those motions. Think of it as a fire drill at school. When that fire drill goes off once a month or once a quarter, it's probably something that all the teachers know is gonna happen. And it might even be something that the students know is gonna happen. When the alarm goes off you don't really think that there's a fire. You're not really afraid. There's no emotional charge there but you're all gonna line up and you gonna have attendance taken. You gonna go through the doorway. You gonna follow the little dashed red line that was on the map. You gonna go to the designated meeting point away from the school, and then the firemen are going to show up or the principal is going to come out and they're going to say, okay, all clear file back in go back to your classes, resume your school day. And we all went through that. Dozen scores, maybe hundreds of times in our life. Well, that's exactly what you want to do with your active shooter response. Even if you have an antiquated hide and hope policy of simply locking down in a room and trying to secure the door as well as possible and hoping that the good guys the police officers or the SWAT team get there before the bad guy breaks into the room. You still need to drill that as well. So don't just have a plan. Don't just talk about your plan. When it comes to active shooter response preparation in your workplace, run drills, run them every month maybe run them every quarter, but you have to actually go through the motions because what you may find in your drills is that some people aren't prepared or capable of doing the things that you thought they were going to do. Maybe just for whatever reason, there's too many people trying to get down one stairwell, too many people trying to barricade themselves in 1 room, and you're gonna have to adjust your plan. It's one of the best things that comes out of running the drill aside from just getting the practice at doing the things that may save Your life.