Episode 11: #3 How does our Policy Fit with Mutual Aid? - "10 Questions from the Mayor" Series

10 Questions for the Mayor to ask the Police and Fire Chief Series

Question 3: "How does our joint response policy fit with our mutual aid partners’ response policies?"

Bill Godfrey: 

Welcome to our next podcast installment. We are in the middle of our mini series about the tem questions a mayor, city manager, county administrator, can ask their police and fire chiefs together to try to help them understand where they are at a preparedness level for an active shooter event or a hostile event.
Today with me, I have Joe Ferrara, retired Fire Chief and Pete Kelting, Lieutenant with the Sheriff's Office. Thanks guys, for coming in today to talk about this next question. My name is Bill Godfrey, also a retired Fire Chief and we're up to our third question. How does our, meaning our agencies, how does our agency's joint response policy fit with our mutual aid partner's response policies? Guys, where do you want to pick this one apart? 

Pete Kelting: 

You know Bill, across the country mutual aid is what agencies rely upon to be able to sustain resources in events or incidents where it takes multi jurisdiction, multi agencies to see to conclusion the event. Most jurisdictions abide by some sort of state statute or agreement ahead of time for mutual aid, but with saying that our policies and our training have to be able to support our response.
So it's important to know both formally and informally where we're able to respond efficiently together, where we've trained together, and that can come from relationships between and chief and chiefs, sheriffs and sheriffs, just to be able to support each other throughout an event early on. And if that event becomes more complex, the scale and complexity of it starts to drain resources that then more formal requests can be made through state requests or even from county to county through the state, the point of contacts. But we have to be able to see where each agency is comfortable with the training, where the liability falls on each other's actions and responses. So it's very important that both our mutual aid capability and our policy and training are all on the same page so that we're ready to respond if that event happens in our area. 

Bill Godfrey: 

Absolutely. Nobody ever does one of these things alone. Even the largest agencies, nobody ever does one alone. Joe, where's your opening on this one? What strikes you? 

Joe Ferrara: 

Well, I certainly agree with Pete and yourself that nobody does this alone and these things need to be linked, but I think you take the term mutual aid and as fire chiefs, and I'm sure police chiefs and sheriffs think the same thing, it's always that thought in the background that yeah, we're just going to request mutual aid and it's going to show up. I don't think it's that easy because I need to be 100% sure as an agency executive, especially if my county administrator or city manager asks me what we're going to do about mutual aid and what are we going to do about the policies. I need to know that that policy matches ours.
The only way to do that, and Pete, I think you mentioned it already, is those relationships need to be built in place. But to further that, I think we need to look to some level of regionalization and whether there be groups formed or whether there are task forces formed in a region that counties, cities, and even state agencies are training together. They're sitting down and looking at policies and even to the degree of when policies are developed, are they developing them jointly? Are they developing them as an agency?
And I hate to use the word silos with these, but that's what's happening. So you as an agency develops your policy and then you wait until you call dispatch and say hey, I need some mutual aid and then the next county north you comes and helps you out, but at that point do you as a chief really have any idea that that agency's policy is going to match yours? And what's the authority? Do those personnel, when they cross that geopolitical boundary, do they use their authority in the jurisdiction based on their policy? Is it based on my policy?
So those conversations have to occur and the only way to do that is for the respective fire chiefs, the respective police chiefs, the respective sheriffs to sit down well in advance of an incident. Don't wait for the incident for this to happen and decide, look, if it happens in your county, our personnel are going to be trained on your policy. If it happens in my county, our pers, my personnel are going to be trained on that policy.
Those decisions have to be made and if you don't have that answer for your manager at that time, I think it's going to be a little uncomfortable because if that basic answer of mutual aid can't be dealt with and what we're going to do with the policies, then I think if I were in the other seat as a city manager, I wouldn't have much confidence in those personnel across the desk from me if they couldn't tell me what they're going to do about mutual aid and policies. 

Bill Godfrey: 

I feel like we'll want to say amen in the church. Pete, you and Joe have both been around in the business a number of years, a lot of years, and you've seen a lot of challenges as have I. The agency that can't get along with the agency next door, you know, whether it's the same discipline or even different disciplines. What are some of the techniques that you've seen or maybe even used in your time to try to help break through some of that and get the dialogue open so that you can start working with your neighbors to move towards being on the same page? 

Pete Kelting: 

You know Bill, I think post 9/11 we've come a long way. You hear that quite often that both law and fire discipline have established relationships that have made great strides in training and response, but we still have some work to do. It's all about relationships. It's about making sure that we're staying in touch with our partners in fire and our partners in EM and that we're a part of the trainings and the think groups and the working groups across the state and across the country at a local, regional, and national level so that we have those abilities to discuss things that are working great and discuss things that are more of a challenge, and we still talk about communication and inner operational radio networks.
We talk about being able to have equipment that responds in a certain fashion from a self agency owned asset to a regional asset. Those conversations in those work groups, in those summits, in everything that involves building relationships, have to continue. If we step back from that then we're just doing ourselves a disservice.
I can't emphasize enough, you got to be able to be comfortable in relationships, working on the road, being able to step into a fire scene or fire personnel step into a law enforcement scene without feeling like they're stepping on somebody's toes. There's no jurisdictional battles that there's ... Not the us versus them mentality. We've got to work together to be able to respond efficiently. So relationships is truly important. 

Bill Godfrey: 

Joe, same question for you. 

Joe Ferrara: 

Well, I hate to be basic on this, but I think it all boils down to, you know, in this day and age and the challenges that we have as leaders of organizations, if you can't get along with a jurisdiction that's either within your county or an adjacent county or an adjacent city, you've got some real problems in leadership. To quote probably one of the simplest and greatest human beings, let's put a sweater on and let's talk about Fred Rogers and won't you be my neighbor? I hate to be silly about that, but really it's that basic. 

Bill Godfrey: 

Well, you know, sometimes it is and look, let's acknowledge that we've all been around the block a few times and we've certainly made our share of mistakes as well as having our share of successes, and sometimes there are pretty good reasons about why you have difficulty getting along with the neighboring jurisdictions. They can be legitimate operational reasons, but that doesn't remove the need to work through that. That doesn't remove the need to be able to find a way forward to get on the same page.
And Joe, as you said, sometimes it is about ego and I hate to say it, but all too often that ego, that competition, tends to kind of get in our way. And it's worth noting, when you look at prior incidents there really has been a demonstrated need for having to work across boundaries. You know, the suspect that started this thing in our jurisdiction doesn't live here. His residence is in neighbor A's jurisdiction, we're transporting to hospitals in three or four different jurisdictions, and now we've got security problems, overload problems, providing for the families, the follow on stuff that goes with the events. You know, we've got to work through that.
But the other thought that occurs to me that I'd like you guys to weigh in on here is that we're talking about the ten questions that the mayor, the city manager, county administrator ought to be able to ask the police and fire chief, but isn't this one where when the police and fire chiefs, EMS chiefs, when they feel like they've done everything that they can to try to break through and they're not making forward progress, shouldn't they be able to privately sit down with their mayor, their city manager, or county administrator and say I need your help. I need you to work with leadership in this other jurisdiction because we're hung up here and we need to find a w

Episode 10: #2 What is our Joint ICS structure? - "10 Questions from the Mayor" Series

10 Questions for the Mayor to ask the Police and Fire Chief Series

Question 2: "What is the integrated Incident Command System (ICS) structure (i.e. org chart) that you’ve developed as part of the joint response policy?"

Bill Godfrey: 

Welcome to our next installment in our podcast series. We are doing a mini-series here for mayors, city managers, county administrators called Ten Questions to Ask Your Police and Fire Chief. Our first podcast, we covered the question of, can you show and review with me our joint a hostile event response policy? So today's question on this one, what is the integrated incident command system structure, in other words, the Org Chart, that you chiefs of police, fire, EMS, that you chiefs have developed as part of the joint response policy?
My name is Bill Godfrey, one of the instructors with C3 Pathways, retired fire chief. I have with me today Adam Pendley, assistant chief with the Jacksonville Sheriff's office, also one of our instructors. Adam, thanks for coming in.
 

Adam Pendley: 

Yes, absolutely.
 

Bill Godfrey: 

So one of the things that, and this one is actually kind of a simple question for the mayor or for the city manager is, show me the Org Chart. If the police chief and the fire chief can slap down an Org Chart in front of them and say, "Yeah, we've worked it out," then you're probably in pretty good shape. But if you get a blank stare or you get some squirming in the seat, then you probably need to drill down and ask some more questions. But talk a little bit about, Adam, on the law enforcement side, some of the places where we need to be linked up ahead of time to establish the lanes and the lines of communication.
 

Adam Pendley: 

Sure. This is kind of an extension of that first question about policies, but visually speaking, an Org Chart that actually shows a unity of command and a span of control is a good area to see immediately whether you're still working in silos. If the fire, EMS department has an Org Chart that does not include any police representation, or vice versa, the law enforcement Org Chart does not have any medical branch represented in its Org Chart, then that might be a red flag that your agencies are still working within silos.
But if you have an Org Chart that shows that an active shooter event, especially early in the event, is primarily going to be a law enforcement event with some very important tasks happening as you move into operations lower in the Org Chart, but you have a very well-represented medical branch that's working on triage and transport, but that in the Org Chart it shows that it's okay for the medical branch to work for the law enforcement agency that has jurisdiction for the active shooter event, that shows some level of cooperation. It shows that you're not working in silos. You're willing to work well with each other.
 

Bill Godfrey: 

I agree with you. I think, to me, one of the first places that I look is when we talk about rescue task forces ... For those that that may be listening on our elected official side, the rescue task force is a combination team made up typically of some medically trained people, EMS, so EMTs and paramedics, that are escorted by a security detail, usually law enforcement. So what you're commonly seeing is this rescue task force, which is a mixed discipline team of law enforcement and fire EMS personnel, now, their job is to go down range and take care of patients that have been injured. So their job is medical, but there's a security component to it.
One of the first questions that I ask people when I'm talking to them, especially on the fire, EMS side, is explain to me how your rescue task force is structured. Who's talking to who? What are the lanes of communication? So you've got a law enforcement element on the team. Who are they on the radio with? You've got a medical element of the team. Who are they on the radio with? How does that fit? How does that roll up into the command structure to where ultimately you've got an incident commander or a unified command, which I think is where you were going with what you were commenting earlier. I think we want to hit on that before we wrap up this question, but to me that's one of the very telling places to look is have you really integrated that rescue task force and those lanes of communication.
 

Adam Pendley: 

Sure, absolutely. I think if you're at a table having that conversation, and you're a city manager and you're having that conversation with your chiefs, the Org Chart helps you walk through those questions. So show me where do the rescue task forces work, who are they communicating with, and so on and so forth. But I think also it allows you to open up questions like, in our emergency plan, what delegation of authority do you need to make this work? Do we need to have an understanding that, at least early in the event, it may be driven by a law enforcement incident commander? But as the incident progresses and the active threat has subsided and you're moving more into rescue and clearing and reunification and survivor services and family assistance, that maybe the command box of the Org Chart expands a little bit, and it becomes a true unified command, a little more long-term.
Org Charts are just great to drive a conversation and illustrate, again, unity of command, and that is who reports to who, who do I work for, and who works for me, but then also span of control. As the event expands, where are we going to place resources so they're the most effective, where you're not overwhelming a single agency or a single incident commander and you have that shared authority? So once a city manager walks through that Org Chart with his chiefs or her chiefs, they can understand what delegation of authority is needed and where all these pieces are going to fall into place.
 

Bill Godfrey: 

Absolutely makes sense. I think the other thing that the Org Chart allows the mayor or the city manager to look at is, where are the linkages? So you mentioned unified command, and we often talk in our classes about the difference between unified command and unified management. Unified command is a very specific term that has a specific definition within the National Incident Management System and the way we use it. We see a lot of of national guidance that says, it's got to be unified command.
On the streets over the last, I don't know, 10, 20 years now, unified command has kind of morphed from what it was originally intended to be into this notion that each discipline is going to kind of run it's discipline directly, and that they're just going to share information in the command post. Of course, as we've seen in training and exercises and in studies that we've done on the real life incidents, that's a disaster in the making.
If you stovepipe your communications, whether it's stovepiping vertically through the command post or stovepiping all the way through dispatch, when you don't have your two command posts together, there is a breakdown. It slows communication down. It introduces errors and mistakes that occur, and it's a breakdown.
So one of the other things that I would say is when you're looking at the Org Chart, ask the question, show me where we're working together. Where are we working laterally across the disciplines? You should see two, three, four touch points across the org structure where we're working together and talking together and sharing information before it gets to that unified incident commander level.
That, of course, is what we call the idea of unified management is where we have come together across our disciplines to really work this thing together as opposed to stovepiping it by discipline through unified command. I think, to me, that's another really important touch point, especially given some of the national guidance we've seen come out recently.
 

Adam Pendley: 

Yeah, absolutely, and it's a starting point. I think it's fair to say that there's an asterisk here, that your Org Chart is going to change based on the size and scope of your incident. I say frequently in training scenarios that you should let how much incident you have drive how much ICS you need. You should never let how much incident command system you're using drive how much incident you have. What that means is that your Org Chart is going to develop as the incident develops.
However, if you're sitting at a desk in a pre-planning sort of way, an Org Chart can be very telling as far as how the agencies are willing to work together.
Like you mentioned, Bill, the touch points across laterally and to make sure that everyone is a unity of effort and unity of management moving in the right direction. So I think those are great points. Even if the astatic Org Chart does not necessarily become part of the policy, as you discuss the policy, you can draw out an Org Chart so you can ... It's just another visual way to identify gaps as the process develops.
 

Bill Godfrey: 

I think it's a really good point. This one, gang, is not really a complicated topic. Again, I think it's a pretty straightforward way for the elected official, the city-county administrator, to be able to evaluate a very technical area where they may not have the background, but at least they can get some understanding of how much preparation has been done and how much everybody's going to be working together.
Adam, thank you for taking the time to weigh in on this one. This one's going to be short and sweet. Please join us again for the next one.

Show Transcript:

Episode 09: #1 Show me our joint Active Shooter Response policy - "10 Questions from the Mayor" Series

10 Questions for the Mayor to ask the Police and Fire Chief Series

Question 1:"Chiefs, please show and review with me our joint Active Shooter/Hostile Event Response policy."

*Bill Godfrey: *

Welcome to our next installment in our podcast series. This time we're going to be doing something a little different. We're actually going to be kicking off the beginning of a mini series where we're going to talk specifically about the topic of what kinds of questions the Mayor, the City Manager, or the County Administrator should be able to ask their police and fire Chief together, and really be able to judge what their readiness level is to be prepared for an active shooter event or to judge where they may have some gaps. We're going to take each one of these questions, 10 questions here, as a separate topic. Our first question in this series is," Chiefs, can you show and review with me our joint active shooter hostile event response policy?" To talk about that tonight and got with me, Tom Billington, retired Fire Chief. Welcome, Tom.

*Tom Billington: *

Thank you.

*Bill Godfrey: *

We got Adam Pendley, Assistant Chief. Adam, thanks for coming. We've got Pete Kelting, Lieutenant from the Sheriff's Office. Pete, thanks for being here. Of course, my name is Bill Godfrey and retired Fire Chief myself. So with that, Adam, let's start with you. Why is this such an important question for leadership of a city or county to be able to ask the police Chiefs and fire Chiefs, why the focus on a joint policy?

*Adam Pendley: *

Well, I think this is probably one of the first indicators as to whether you actually have true integration between your fire police and EMS services in your town or community. If someone has taken an effort to sit down together and write a policy that is literally on the same sheet of paper that avoids contradictions, it avoids assumptions or disagreements or agreements about what another agency is going to do, if you haven't sat down and had a workshop and put those agreements on paper to de-conflict the issues that the different agencies can have, then that's kind of indicative that maybe you are agencies that share the same community haven't been talking to each other as much as they should.

*Bill Godfrey: *

Pete, tell me from your perspective, how important is that that the law enforcement agency and the fire EMS agency, the medical agency, actually have a shared policy that's been written together and signed off by the leadership?

*Pete Kelting: *

Well, Bill, that's a great question because policy supports training, it supports purchase of equipment and it supports the end result of what we do together and disciplines. Being able to work with your partner from fire or EMS or emergency management and know that our training efforts and our purchase of equipment all are supported by policy and that we have the goal to manage incident the same so that it alleviates any type of hurdles as we move forward going down the road.

*Bill Godfrey: *

Tom, what Pete's talking about raises kind of an interesting challenge. Pete's of course from a Sheriff's Office and I know you were fire Chief of a county department for many, many years. In that context, the fire Chief and the Sheriff aren't necessarily in the same chain of command answering to the same person. What's your takeaway on that? Is it still, you think, important to have a shared policy and and why?

*Tom Billington: *

Good point. A shared policy is badly needed. However, traveling around the country, there is no one size fits all. This policy can not be something that you go online and download and change the names. It is a policy that the law enforcement and fire or EMS agencies have to actually sit down together, come up with responsibilities and how to operate. It's an important time to get with your counterpart and figure out things beforehand. As Pete was saying, very important.

*Bill Godfrey: *

Where do you start the conversation? If you're the fire Chief and you've got, whether it's a city police Chief or county Sheriff or some other type of law enforcement entity that you're going to be working with, and I guess we guys, we'd probably need to talk about mutual aid and the importance of that as well. Tom, how do you start that conversation?

*Tom Billington: *

Well, the first thing is, as the fire Chief, he better know the police Chief or Sheriff by first name. You better have that relationship. If not, you need to build that right from the start. You need to be able to go in his office or her office and vice versa, shut the door and say, "Hey, we have something we have to work on here.", and make sure you approach it that way and start the ball rolling. I guess the relationships are so important to build beforehand.

*Bill Godfrey: *

It really does come down to that. Adam, it reminds me as we're sitting here talking about this, I recall you were actually a part of a training incident we had where in a training session, the law enforcement agency was talking about the EMS teams going down range and the EMS team said, "What are you talking about? We haven't trained for that', now for the benefit of the audience, this was quite a number of years ago now, and the law enforcement folks said, "Well, it's in policy." It turned out that it was in the law enforcement agency's policy, and the fire department, it was news to them. Talk a little bit about that surreal moment.

*Adam Pendley: *

Sure. That's absolutely true. Through training law enforcement has received, again, you talk about certain assumptions are made and if those assumptions are not shared with your fire EMS counterpart, you may find yourself standing alone. I'd like to add that in many communities, we already have a structure in place to have this workshop together and start sorting through these policies and we do it with natural disasters. In my area in Florida where I'm from, we already have management from the various agencies involved sit down in a pre planning sort of way and put together a comprehensive emergency management plan for natural disasters. I would think from kind of back to the original question, the City manager or some executive level person who's in this community might ask, "Have we done a similar process for a crime of violence, for an active shooter event? Have we had that same level of comparing notes together to come up with a shared policy that we do with other natural disasters that we have in on the rest of the country?"

*Bill Godfrey: *

Pete, something Adam just said made me kind of click and thinking about this. He made the comment about, "We make assumptions in our policies." I know I've seen more than I would care to admit, fire policies that law enforcement shall do this, we'll do this, shall do that and never vetted with that law enforcement agency, never signed off. How common is that on the law enforcement side? What do you see at the county level, at the city level with those kinds of assumptions that people put in their policies that weren't cross-checked with the people that they're assuming they're going to execute?

*Pete Kelting: *

Well, we certainly hope that we are sharing information and writing policy together, but that is common, Bill. You find that from local jurisdictions, from cities to county Sheriffs, from Sheriffs to state police and other fire agencies around our region, that if we haven't worked together ahead of time to vet those policies to know that we're again, going to train in the same dynamics when it comes to response to these incidents, is crucial. I think there's committees going on now as we know through NFPA and being able to look at standards. Not only do you have the standards nationally, but you also have cultural issues in a sense, are training ways of things. We always have joked in the past a little bit about the East coast versus the West coast of how things are done. They're done differently across the country, but I think we're making great strides and coming together on training committees, on think groups through safety summits and so forth where we know we need to sit down, look at each other's policies, write them if we don't have them, vet them and make sure that we're all on the same.

*Tom Billington: *

If I can jump in Pete because there's two things that you said make sense. One is, you want to see the fire Chief and the police Chief or Sheriff's signature on this thing, both of them. The other thing that happens so many times that we want to make sure does not happen with this policy is, when you ask the patrolman on midnight shift or you asked the firefighter who works at a station 10 miles away, "Tell me about your active shooter policy" and they say, "I have no idea what you're talking about." This is something that it can't go on the shelf. Everybody has to know about it and it has to be drilled and trained as so.

*Adam Pendley: *

It's interesting that you say that because I think it's also important to include your nongovernmental organizations and your private entities that might be involved in these things as well because I can give you a recent example where, again, this was more of a natural disaster example, but every week, we got everyone at the table to start discussing policies and how they would approach the plan. We had some special needs folks who ran some facilities and it was in their policy that law enforcement would transport anyone that has a need to a special needs shelter. Law enforcement had to step up and say, "We would not have the resources for

Episode 08: Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs)

Discussion of IEDs - Improvised Explosive Devices (aka bombs) in Active Shooter Events.

  <strong>Bill Godfrey:	</strong>
  Welcome to this next discussion in ongoing podcast series talking about active shooter incident management. Today, we are going to be talking about the impact of improvised explosive devices in the presence of active shooter events. <br />
    I have with us today to join the conversation Billy Perry, retired detective and bomb technician from the Jacksonville area. Welcome, thanks for coming in Billy.<br />
  <strong> Billy Perry:	</strong>
  Thank you for having me. <br />
  <strong>Bill Godfrey:	</strong>
  And Tom Billington, retired fire chief from the south Florida area. Tom, thanks for coming in.<br /><strong>Tom Billington:</strong>
  Thanks for having me.<br /><strong>Bill Godfrey:	</strong>
  I am Bill Godfrey, also one of the other instructors. Tom and Billy, both instructors here with C3 on the active shooter incident management course. 
    Billy, let's start off with you on the bomb tech side. What is the real threat of bombs to us from a practical point of view in these active shooter events? Based on what we've seen and what's going on, what is the threat?<br />
  <strong> Billy Perry:	</strong>
  I'm glad you're asking these questions, Bill. Bombs and IEDs are becoming much more prevalent in our world. When I say "our world", I'm talking about our world in the law enforcement fire community and especially in the active shooter realm. They are becoming more frequent. They're becoming more sophisticated. They're becoming more reliable and, as a result, more dangerous. 
    One of things that we like to say is "bombs have the right of way". You can't negotiate with them. They're an inanimate object and they're something to be concerned with. In our curriculum, we talk about 50 pounds and less being a device that we're concerned with. Where I came from and our jurisdiction, we were responsible for everything under 100 pounds under water. That's a lot. 50 pounds of explosives is a significant amount and will do a lot of damage. <br />
    Ignorance reigns supreme and to be frank, when I was involved in the explosive breaching side as a S.W.A.T. guy, I was very cavalier about explosives and I was terrified of a dirty bomb. Then, I found out that a, once I learned about explosives, I realized that I wasn't afraid of a dirty bomb. I could fix that with a whisk broom and dust buster, but conventional explosives now, I'm mortified of. They terrify me. 
    We have to be concerned about that. We have to be concerned about secondaries because bombers are like knife fighters. If you have one knife in law enforcement, you always look for another one and a third. The same thing with bomb. If they do one, they like to have two. Redundancy. Like I said before, they come from the department of redundancy department. You want to be cognizant of that. Just be careful with them. <br />
  <strong>Bill Godfrey:	</strong>
  Interesting segue in that, they come from the redundancy department is kind of funny, but I guess in many ways true here. From the active shooter events that we've seen and from the security information you're privy to, what are the kinds of things that guys that are operating on the inside should be looking for? If they have a bomb or they seize, if there is a bomb present, somebody brought an IED to the thing, what are the sizes? What's the range of the threat that they're looking for? What's the size of the package the device triggers? Any common stuff there? Anything to keep eyes out for? <br /><strong>Billy Perry:	</strong>
  Absolutely. They're the normal ones and we've seen all of them in the instance such as the Boston bombing, such as the San Bernardino incident. They've had the triggers from electric. They've had, when I say "electric", San Bernardino was a Christmas bulb which ran off of a battery. They had a remote-controlled, San Bernardino, remote-controlled car. The Boston bombers made grenades out of elbows, galvanized elbows. We have to be very cognizant of all those.<br />
    They're usually hand-portable, but they are still very formidable devices.<br />
  <strong> Bill Godfrey:</strong>
  Got you. <br />
    As we're a contact team or a rescue task force, both of them, they're moving downrange, they see something that just doesn't look right, what are the steps? What's the initial action? <br /><strong>Billy Perry:	</strong>
  Great question again.<br />
    I'll tell you, in our curriculum we say IED and tell where it goes on the checklist. We talk about that, where is it and talk about what it is. Where I come from, we were not super smart and what we had to do is, because I'm one of us and I can say that and we keep things really, really simple. We use the word "bomb" because nothing else can be mistaken for "bomb". The only time that we use the word "go" is in response, or in regards, I should say to "bomb". We say "bomb cover" or "bomb go". If we are moving down a passageway, a hallway or down in a area and we run into a device and by running into, I mean we see it, the point man sees it. No matter what size it is, we're practicing a 540 scan, 360 around, 180 degrees up and down and if you see it, immediately stop. Just like the military has a 5-25-5 meter immediate area scan, 25 meter area scan, we do the 5 foot scan and the 25 foot area scan to look for other things, but we call out "bomb cover".<br />
    If the bomb is a distance from us, we say "bomb cover" and we move to cover creating angles and air gaps. [inaudible 00:05:33] one person will hold on it, not necessarily looking at it because what are we covering? The bomb. If you can see the bomb, the bomb can see you. You've got to remember a bomb is a gun that fires in a 540 degree arc. It doesn't miss. We want to make sure that we keep that away, but we're still paying attention for actionable intelligence and stimulus. <br />
    If it's coming at us, I should say, like if the bomber comes out or the shooter comes out and throws something towards us, that would be "bomb go" and we're going to move past it. Is this moving toward us? We're going to move past it towards them and continue the assault. <br /><strong>Bill Godfrey:	</strong>
  Tom, I want to bring you into the conversation at this point. We've got a group of injured. There's a contact team that's either in the area or passed through the area because we've seen this happen in some incidents across the country. We're working to provide some medical, emergent medical care to the patients and then get them evacked out and then we find a device.<br />
    What's the impact, because on the rescue task force for medics being downrange, we talk about them being in a warm zone, but obviously if we're in the vicinity of what we believe is a bomb, that makes it a direct threat environment. Suddenly, it becomes a hot zone. What's the course of action? Tom, from your perspective, you've got medics downrange. They're already in there. You've got patients that need to get evacked out. Lo and behold, turn around, there's a backpack, there's a thing, there's a whatever. What actions are they going to take? What do you think is going to happen? <br /><strong>Tom Billington:	</strong>
  Actually, this is a good discussion point. Usually before we activate the RTF, law enforcement will tell the EMS or fire crew, "Here's what's going to happen if somebody starts shooting". It might be a good idea to have the conversation, "Here's what we're going to do if we see something suspicious. That way, it doesn't take the fire or EMS personnel off guard. If somebody says "bomb", I know that right away can make a firefighter go, "Oh, what do we do now?" Obviously, having the conversation beforehand is very important. <br />
    Again, making sure we have relationships with our law enforcement, very important. Again, if I was on the scene with Billy and we're looking at something that was maybe a device and he gave me direction, I would listen to it because I trust him wholeheartedly. I know his abilities. We need to make sure that the fire community is meeting with these experts not during, but way before an incident occurs. I think those two things alone will really help the fire or EMS folks be able to handle a situation when it comes up. <br /><strong>Bill Godfrey:	</strong>
  Billy, that scenario and what Tom is describing, I think it makes a lot of sense. They're in a room. They're in a casualty collection point. Lo and behold, you're working on five, six, seven patients and here's a device. Here's an honest goodness believed to be legit device. What are the things that they can do. What are the things that they can do to try to make themselves a little safer, make the patients a little safer short of the obvious of grab them and get them out of there? Are there anything, other things that they can do?<br />
  <strong> Billy Perry:	</strong>
  If it's a small room, we're going to get them out of there. We're going to have to move them.<br /> 
    Space is your friend. If an area will provide you cover from rifle fire, it's probably going to be okay for distance from a bomb. It's going to be better than obviously nothing. Space and good cover and angles. Multiple angles are even better, not in a confined area, but we're going to, if it is a very small device and again, all devices aren't the same. It's hard to pack ourselves 

Episode 07: Tactical Training for Leaders

Discussion of leadership engagement, tactical training for leaders, and leadership modeling.

<strong>Bill Godfrey: </strong>                     

Hello, and welcome to our next installment of our podcast series on active shooter incident management training. My name is Bill Godfrey, a retired fire chief, and one of the instructors for C3 Pathways. I'm your host today, and with me is Michelle Cook, also one of our instructors but recently retired from the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office after 26 years. Michelle retired as the director of patrol and enforcement, which in layman's terms, Michelle, basically you were the ops chief -


Michelle Cook:
I was chief, yes.

Bill Godfrey:
About 1,200 uniformed officers.

Michelle Cook:
Yes, sir, 1,200.

Bill Godfrey:
And now she is enjoying life. For the last year, she is the police chief of Atlantic Beach Police Department, a small, beach-side community, beautiful little area, with ...?

Michelle Cook:
30 officers.

Bill Godfrey:
30 officers.

Michelle Cook:
30 total officers.

Bill Godfrey:
From 1,200 to 30.

Michelle Cook:
30.

Bill Godfrey:
So something tells me we're going to be coming back to some stories there about the difference between large agencies and small agencies. But in this episode we are going to be talking about tactical training for leaders, both on the law enforcement side and the fire department side.

Michelle, you've been on the job for 27 years so you were around when Columbine occurred in '99. And as we all have so often pointed to this kind of watershed moment of, "Wow. Things need to change here. We need to make an adjustment," give us a look back from your perspective on the changes that you've seen both in the tactical training for line officers, for patrol officers, and then also the training that went with that for leadership on the law enforcement side and how to manage these incidents differently.

Michelle Cook:
Sure. So Columbine happened in 1999 and in that year, and the previous couple of years prior to that, I was working part-time at the police training academy. So when Columbine happened, I was there when we evolved our tactics. We knew that, at that point, surrounding the building and calling the SWAT team was no longer going to work. People were dying because that was our strategy, and so we knew that wasn't going to work. So following Columbine a series of evolutions came out, tactical evolutions, that saw the introduction of contact teams. You know? First they were diamond shaped with five people inside, and then it went to three people, and we've evolved so far today that a lot of agencies are pushing the solo officer entry, if that is the best route for that officer at that moment, at that event. So tactics have definitely evolved since 1999, and they continue to evolve.

Up until C3, what I haven't seen is the evolution of, "How do you manage these incidents or events?" So pre 1999, I'm a patrol supervisor on the street; an active shooter call goes out. I tell my officers, "Surround the building. Wait for SWAT." SWAT shows up. SWAT command does their thing; they take charge of the building. When tactics change for a patrol officer to make entry, we never trained the supervisors on how to lead or manage that entry. So as tactics have changed, leadership and management of these incidents and events hasn't evolved, and that's really where we have a training gap now.

Bill Godfrey:
It's interesting the way that you've put that. I think in a lot of ways, we have a very similar gap on the Fire-EMS side. Of course, the fire service has been using ICS for years, and in some ways that has grown a level of self-assured confidence that we can kind of manage or handle anything. And one of the things ... You know? You mentioned C3 beginning the work in this area quite a few years ago now. One of the things that led us to that was kind of the "whoops!" moment where we went, "Okay. The way we manage a fire applied to an active shooter event is not having the kind of outcome that we want, and we need to perhaps look at this and see if there aren't some things that are different." And of course, there were, and there are some things that we train to very, very differently on that front.

It reminds me though ... You know? Sheriff Kevin Barry in one of our previous podcast episodes was talking about the challenges of being the chief, that the higher level leadership ... You know? You're inundated day to day ... And I remember this from my time too. You're inundated day to day with budget meetings, and paperwork, and HR issues, and purchasing stuff. It can be very difficult to say, "I'm going to take an entire day and go to training. I'm going to take a week and go to training and set that time aside." It's very easy to push it away. And Kevin was making the point that sometimes as a leader, you've just got to suck it up and get it done and recognize that it's a priority. Do you think that that is impacting, in a negative way, our ability to get leadership across the country prepared to manage one of these events?

Michelle Cook:
I think that's part of it. I think there's a couple of other things that are happening too. You know? We have the busy schedules. We also have this, "Well my guys will handle it. My guys will go in there and kill the bad guy, and my guys will handle it and it'll be taken care of," and what we've learned is active shooter incidents are much bigger now than just going in and killing the bad guy. And up until C3 Pathways, there was never a template of how to manage these incidents so that the tactics guys were knocking it out of the park with the evolution of how to go in there and mitigate the bad guy.

What wasn't happening prior to C3 Pathways, there was nobody saying, "Hey, this is a way to manage it. Here's a template for you to use. This is how you, as leadership, can manage this large event that is going to expand very rapidly. And within minutes you're going to have hundreds of resources there." There never really existed a template for leadership so the combination of being really busy, passing the buck to your guys to handle it, and a template being out there, I think, all led us to where we have found ourselves, which is a lot of leaders have been caught on their heels, so to speak, not understanding what's happening or how to manage it. You know? I'm not going to point out any particular recent event but if you look at them as a whole, how many times did you hear on the radio we had line level officers, Fire-EMS trying to do their job and somebody in management was saying, "Well hold on. Wait a minute. Wait until I get there. You guys don't go in yet"? And that's because that leader failed to understand the tactics that were occurring, and failed to prepare themselves to manage those tactics.

Bill Godfrey:
That's a really interesting point. When you think about some of the exercises that both of us have done and been involved in, we've seen that occur just in exercises and training, where the command post ... And I've seen it happen on the medical side as well, in Fire-EMS. There's this challenge of, "When is the warm zone really warm?" or, "When is it warm enough?" and hesitation from the command post in wanting to let the rescue task force go downrange, or wanting to let them move downrange, and I always kind of found that interesting. Because you're trying to get your head wrapped around something that you can't directly see and observe, as opposed to the police officers that are already downrange who are saying, "We're ready for the medics. Send me the medics. Send the rescue task force." And they know what that means. They understand what they're asking for ...

Michelle Cook:
But the leadership doesn't.

Bill Godfrey:
Right.

Michelle Cook:
Because the leadership has not attended any training, looked into what their guys are actually practicing, or attended any training themselves. So if my guys are using terms downrange, and describing things that I've never heard before - warm zone, hot zone, cold zone, red, greens, casually collection points - if I don't know what those mean as a leader, the natural tendency is to say, "Well hold on, guys. I need to come look at this before I let anything happen."

Bill Godfrey:
"I need a minute."

Michelle Cook:
"I need a minute." Because, you know? You have to prepare the brain for the actual event. And if you as a leader have failed to prepare your brain for what can eventually happen, then you're going to get caught off guard. And that's the lapse that we're seeing. That's the, "Hold on, guys. Wait a minute. Wait till I get there," that we've seen in recent events, and unfortunately people die because of that.

Bill Godfrey:
And I think that's my frustration in trying to communicate the challenge sometimes. It's not about right or wrong.

Michell

Episode 06: What Makes Managing an Active Shooter Event Different?

Discussion of what makes managing Active Shooter Events different from other types of incidents

Bill Godfrey:
Hello, and welcome to the discussion this afternoon. Today we are going to talk about what makes managing active shooter events different from all of the other types of incidents that responders go to. Today, we have with us Adam Pendley, assistant chief with Jacksonville sheriff's office, Travis Cox, lieutenant with Jacksonville sheriff's office, Tom Billington, retired fire chief, and I'm Bill Godfrey, also retired fire chief.

Our topic today, Adam, what do you think sticks out in your mind, makes things different?

Adam Pendley:
Well, I think it's a great number of resources that respond very quickly in an active shooter event. While that makes it different than a lot of other types of incidents that you would use, let's say, the Incident Command System to manage, an active shooter event is also the same in the sense that it's very important to focus on the fact that the Incident Command System allows you to build operations quickly from the ground up. It's different than a lot of your day to day incidents in the sense that there's so many resources across the country that have trained to respond to an active shooter event and so many of them are going to arrive so quickly.

What can be the same is that you can still use many of the concepts of the Incident Command System if you remember that truly the Incident Command System is designed to build operations from the ground up for an unplanned event and get them in a manageable span of control quickly, set up a Unity of Command quickly, and start acting proactively in a management by objective sort of way to accomplish certain tasks and certain things that need to get done right away on an active shooter event.

Bill Godfrey:
Travis, what about you? What sticks out in your mind? What makes managing an active shooter event different from all the other stuff you've responded to?

Travis Cox:
Well, there's a couple things that come to mind when you talk about an active shooter event. One of the things is that you're going to have resources like Adam said. You're going to have a lot of resources, not only responding, but they're going to be self-dispatching or they're going to be responding without being sent by a dispatcher. They're going to be self-deploying to this incident and we want them to self-deploy, because we're going to need the resources. But that's something that's different, that doesn't normally happen on the day to day basis.

Secondly, you're going to have resources from other agencies that may not normally respond to things in your jurisdiction, but because of the nature of the incident, you may have other police departments, sheriff's office, neighboring counties, other municipalities within your county responding to this incident. You may have airport police. You may have campus police, school board police. You may have a number of different agencies responding to one incident. You have to figure out your interoperability. You have to figure out the different tactics that you may have been trained on to make sure that everybody's functioning off the same page of music. That's one of the things that has to be done.

The second thing that comes to mind is in an active shooter event, you have a crime scene. You may also have a Hot Zone where there's still danger there. So you may get a person that has to assume command of that scene without being involved in that scene or not being able to see the scene, so they have to rely on the information that they're given from the officers that are actually inside the crisis site and manning the information they're given via radio or via some other avenue besides being able to be seeing it from ground zero level.

So those are the one big things that I see.

Bill Godfrey:
So Tom, we got a couple of interesting perspectives from the law enforcement guys. You and I are on the fire side. What jumps out at you as the big differences from the fire side of an active shooter?

Tom Billington:
Well, the big difference is, our leadership needs to let control go. You need to make sure you have key people in right positions. They're going to be down, down on the scene in the Warm Area and you have to let them do their jobs. You cannot run this scene from a command post. Most firefighters, that's the way we think. As a battalion chief or a deputy chief, we think about going to the command post and monitoring everything and giving out orders or direction. This is a case where you have to let your people on scene do their jobs. We're fighting the clock.

Usually by the time we get in there, hopefully our law enforcement brothers have neutralized the threat and we're going against the clock. Seconds count. It's a little bit different. It's like you said. It's bottom up instead of top down, letting these folks get these patients treated, transported, and to a surgeon as soon as possible.

Bill Godfrey:
You know, that's exactly what jumps out at me, too, on the fire side is that traditionally, and I'm not sure I ever really realized this when I was still working active duty. But the fire service, the way we managed scenes, it's a very top down driven approach. The first company officer arrives and he might be in command for a couple of minutes and then the battalion chief takes over and they're in charge and they're directing everything from the top down, not just at the strategic level, but in some cases, they're directing tactics. They're directing which door the hose line's going to go to, which side of the building we're going to vent, the window, the roof, whatever the case may be, where we're going to ladder up.

It's a very top down driven approach where the incident commander in many cases is directing the resources in a very flat level. So there's no layers. You don't have a bunch of branches and divisions and groups in most of these things. They're directing those Tactical operations. What really caught my attention about the active shooter events, is that that gets us into trouble real quick because we don't see the lay of the land, if you will, to be able to know the right tactics to call out, where the teams should be exactly, what rooms they should operate in. Where's the best place to set a Casualty Collection Point? Where's the best place for the ambulances to go?

It would be in, to me, it's kind of the analogy of trying to run a fire the way we normally run the fire, but doing it from two miles away without ever being able to see the building or seeing what's going on. What's different here to me for the fire service, is that we've gotta reverse that process. We have to push the resources Downrange and then let those resources tell us what they need and where they think these things need to go and what needs to happen. We're pushing the resources to them. We're giving them what they need and supporting them in that role more so than telling them how they're going to do it.

They're going to tell us how they're going to do it and we've gotta support that to the degree that we can and make that happen. Of course, coming back over to the law enforcement side, sometimes there are issues that come up where the guys Downrange may want to do something that Command or Tactical may say, "That's not a good idea." Right? Am I saying that right, Adam? Is that how you'd put it?

Adam Pendley:
Absolutely. I think a lot of stuff is already happening from the law enforcement side by the time fire EMS takes the medical branch role and starts organizing their resources. For example, if all goes well, Contact Teams have started to call injury counts out to their Tactical group supervisor, who is hopefully now working with Triage and eventually a Transport officer as the eyes and ears that are Downrange.

What's interesting about this, when you talk about the reversals of what we're used to, if we go to a large structure fire as law enforcement, we have no problem believing that the fire department has Incident Command and we're really just the law enforcement branch being directed by the fire department to say, "Hey, we need a unit on the end of this street to protect our five-inch line. We need a unit over here to keep people from coming Downrange, and also we believe there's some Hazmat involved, so people need to stay upwind."

From a law enforcement perspective, we have no problem understanding that we work for the Incident Commander that's the fire department on a large structure fire. For active shooter events, it's actually kind of the reverse. Law enforcement is in command early on and as the fire EMS supervisor arrives, they request the medical branch, and they take direction from law enforcement. They say, "Hey, we have a Casualty Collection Point established at this location. We believe it's safe to go in this location. This area has been established as Warm Zone." And hopefully, as the culture changes, the fire EMS supervisor can understand okay, we're going to take that from Incident Command and we're going to make that work and we're going to use them as the eyes and ears and we're going to trust the people that are already Downrange, that are already accomplishing tasks and we're going to fill in and start doing the lifesaving that needs to happen based on that informati

Episode 02: The 5th Man (Tactical)

Discussion of the 5th Man (also known as the Tactical Group Supervisor) in Active Shooter Incident Management (ASIM)

Bill Godfrey:
Hello, Bill Godfrey here from C3 Pathways, we're here today to talk a little bit about fifth man and the tactical position, a key position, in the management of an active shooter event, certainly on the law enforcement side, but really, for the entire event. And I have with me today, to talk about it, Steve Shaw, sergeant with Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Ron Otterbacher, who's retired division chief from the Orange county sheriff's office. And retired sheriff Kevin Beary, also from the Orange county sheriff's office.

Guys, thanks for taking the time to come and talk with us today, Ron, what do you think. You've been around the block teaching this block for a long time, why is that fifth man and tactical position such a key element of managing these things?

Ron Otterbacher:
We actually got the fifth man concept from a lieutenant colonel from Memphis police department, he was trying to get his arms around not knowing what rank would arrive at a certain time, however, he wanted to make sure someone took control of the situation at appropriate time. That's how that came up, and then we kind of finessed it a little bit so we were able to use the action of that position as one of the critical positions in the incident command spectrum.

And, what we want to do is, we know contact teams are going to be going in, the fifth man concept doesn't have to be actually a fifth person, or the sixth person, or seventh, just after the initial contact team goes in, and we've got resources down range, someone needs to stop and take control. If they don't take control, then it increases the opportunity for a blue on blue situation, it also makes it so we lose control of where our personnel are, and who's been deployed, the number have been deployed, so that's why it became so critical, and that's why we put it in the forefront of what we teach.

Bill Godfrey:
So, Stephen, you've done a number of these training scenarios with us as well, as well as going through them on your own. You know, what sticks out in your mind as the key things that fifth man really has to do, that that tactical position has to get their arms around and focus on, and what are the things that they shouldn't be focused on, that they need to get out of their head?

Stephen Shaw:
I think the biggest thing when we're talking about, you know, we talk about two enemies, the bad guy and the clock. With that comes the second enemy, the clock, the important part of that is efficiency of resources. Putting resources where they need to be and a proper amount of time. So, you have to have somebody there who has a good situational awareness, who is able to say, contact team one has done this, so I don't need to send another contact team to clear building A, because contact team one's already done it. So, contact team two can now start working on clearing building B, I need a rescue task force, I need a second rescue task force here.

Because they're so far down, a lot of times what we refer to as incident command as being down into the weeds, because they're so far down into the weeds, they can't be thinking about things like, reunification, calling in, you know, putting out press briefings. Those are big picture items that the incident commander needs to think of, so that that fifth man, that tactical position, is about focusing on controlling everything that's going on inside that inner perimeter, so that we can get help to the people that need it, and the most expedient manner possible, making sure that our resources are used most effectively.

Bill Godfrey:
It's interesting, you're describing it really almost in a strategic sense, for deploying of the resource. But let me ask you this, you know, why do we need it? What, is it, what's the consequence if we don't do a fifth man, if we don't have a tactical, and just letting the contact teams deploy and do their own thing?

Stephen Shaw:
I think the most glaring example is the navy yard shooting, where we had a suspect on the loose for over an hour, and over a hundred, 117 officers inside the building looking for the shooter. No one took charge and said, "Contact team one, lock down this stairwell, contact team two lock down this stairwell." So, we had a bunch of officers who were freelancing, who were looking around for different, who were looking around for the same task, but they were doing the same thing over and over and over again.

Again, we talk about speed, we talk about efficiency of resources, somebody needs to step up and say, "This has been accomplished so we can mark this off. Somebody stay here, leave it secure, so that we can move onto our next list of items." If we don't, we end up doing the same things over and over again, or we just lose accountability for people.

Bill Godfrey:
Interesting point, you mentioned the navy yard, by the way just, I want to make sure I'm following you on that clarification. You're talking about, when you say the officers freelancing, you're really meaning they just doing their training, move in, move to the sound of gunfire, without anybody kind of, you know, for lack of a better way to say it, being the quarterback and kind of putting the team where they need to. That's what you're talking about right?

Stephen Shaw:
Correct.

Bill Godfrey:
Yeah, Kevin, you know, you're coming in with a really interesting, broad perspective. You know, 16 years a sheriff, overseeing a lot of stuff that's gone on in a fair amount of time deployed in some tough areas overseas. And kind of a fresh perspective on this. How do you see it fitting together in terms of getting from that initial first few officers that are going in to neutralize the threat, and then, managing this just massive response that unfolds. What's your take on the fifth man?

Kevin Beary:
Well, I think the fifth man is probably one of the most important persons that's going to be responding to the scene. The first thing is you need somebody that's not afraid to take command. And, second is, listen to your contact units, get as much information as possible from those contact units, how many officers are hurt, how many survivors do we have, how many people down? And, you're already processing that information, when you take that fifth position, you need to make those decisions, coordinate it with your fire department and medical resources, and triage people, it's very important, because now, most of the contact positions, those people are gonna already have the person down. This thing is over in usually just a couple of minutes. But now you're fighting against the clock, and that fifth person is responsible for getting that clock, you know, kind of curved back as much as possible.

Bill Godfrey:
Really, really good point, Steve was mentioning the clock as well. Ron, talk a little bit about battling the clock versus battling the bad guy a little bit. Kind of paint that picture for those that are listening in on what we're talking about, and how fifth man a tactical plays into that.

Ron Otterbacher:
Battling the bad guy is pretty self evident. We gotta bad guy that's creating problems for us, we're trying to go and stop the killing, then we try to stop the dying. Stopping the killing is critical, but even if we don't have the bad guy completely locked down, we can still work on stopping the dying, which is, again, battling the clock. We can get people down range, they can render aid, while we're still going after the bad guy, in a safe fashion, or as safe a fashion as we can make it.

As we look at this, we want to make sure that the sooner we can get to the damage, the sooner we can render aid, whether it be with tourniquets, or direct pressure, or whether it be wound packing or anything else, that, we've got the opportunity to keep them from bleeding out. And, we also know that the best way for them to have a successful outcome in this entire situation, is getting them to the hospital and getting them into surgical ward, so the surgeons can save their lives.

We'll try and slow down everything, and it all plays into the clock. We've got a, make sure we know what we're dealing with, which is what the contact teams are painting a picture of what they see, what they're dealing with. And then, at the same time, they'll tell us we're able to send our rescue task forces in, and they'll also tell us where we'll able to set up our ambulance exchange point to get the patient out as quickly as we can.

Bill Godfrey:
You know, Ron, you're talking about the role of the contact teams and tactical play in the medical piece of this, from the fifth man's perspective, and who becomes the tactical group supervisor, talk a little bit about the role that triage and transport from the fire department or EMS, how do they work together? Paint that picture on how that plays out and the goodness of them, the goodness and badness of them working together versus not working together.

Ron Otterbacher:
Well, actually it's a great thing, and it's, what we've done is we've co located triage, transport, and tactical together. That way we don't have to go through the communications tree to get a message passed on. All we've

Episode 05: Casualty Collection Point and Ambulance Exchange Point

Discussion of Casualty Collection Points (CCP) and Ambulance Exchange Point (AEP) in Active Shooter Incident Management (ASIM)

Bill Godfrey:
Hello, and welcome to this next installment of talking about some of the challenges that we see on active shooter incidents. Today we are going to talk about Casualty Collection Points. My name is Bill Godfrey, a retired Fire Chief and one of the instructors at C3 Pathways. I have with me part of the Instructor cadre team, Adam Pendley, Assistant Chief with Jacksonville Sheriff's Office.

We've got Travis Cox, Lieutenant from Jacksonville Sheriff's Office, Kevin Burd, Lieutenant with the Huntington County Prosecutor's office. All three of them are law enforcement, obviously. Then also with me we've got Robert Lee, retired Battalion Chief, Paramedic and Tom Billington, also a retired Fire Chief and a Paramedic. Welcome guys, thanks for taking the time this afternoon to talk about this.

So the subject today is Casualty Collection Points, and some of the challenges, what makes a good Casualty Collection Point, what doesn't, how do we manage them, how do we work them together, how do we deal with some of the law enforcement issues and then some of the EMS issues. Adam, you want to kind of set the stage for us on what we're talking about as we move into a building.

You make entry, we've presumably dealt with the threat, or there's a team in process of dealing with the threat. But the first ones through the door are going to be law enforcement. Law enforcement officers, in some element of a Contact Team, it may just be two or three guys, or it may be four or five. Set the stage for us of what this looks like as the Contact Teams are working in the building and making a decision about where they're going to set up a Casualty Collection Point, and what they're going to pick.

Adam Pendley:
Sure. I think we're all familiar from the law enforcement perspective that there's this push towards dealing with the threats, stop the killing. But along the way, those first Contact Teams are going to identify areas where there are Casualties, where there are injured folks that need to be cared for.

It becomes important to ... whether it's the initial Contact Team that is no longer being driven by some sort of move towards the threat that they have to make a decision to go ahead and establish a Casualty Collection Point, or communicate that there's injury in a particular place and a follow on team is going to establish a Casualty Collection Point so you can quickly or simultaneously both deal with the threat and start worrying about your second priority, which is the rescue, dealing with those folks that are bleeding and need immediate care.

I think it's important for law enforcement to understand that initial team that is going to establish a Casualty Collection Point so you can make it to your next priority. I think Kevin can probably talk a little bit about what that team is going to do when they enter a room that has a number of Casualties in it that we need to move towards.

Kevin Burd:
Okay, so once we've identified in an area where we may have multiple Casualties, regardless of the tactics that are used to enter that room, once we get into that room we want to establish points of domination. They'll mention we may only have two or three officers, maybe we have four or five at this point. But once we enter that room we want to have points of domination so we can put folks that are in that room in an area that's Tactically advantageous to us.

What we're trying to look to establish is obviously securing that room, and also looking at is this room advantageous to us where we can eventually set up an Ambulance Exchange Point. Maybe that room, if it happens to have exit doors, or an exit door, some place where we can eventually get to move those patients out, we want to make sure that we've secured that entire area.

If we have multiple Casualties in that room, we're going to put them in an area where there're no issues from the law enforcement side in that we could be putting them in a position where we could have cross-fire issues where it may be near an exit door where they could possibly get away from us. We have to identify who they are first and foremost. One of the important things to remember, too, is once we establish those points of domination we have to control and secure that room and make it defensible because others will be coming in eventually to provide assistance.

When you're in that room and you're in that area, a couple of things you want to be cognizant of is what could be used against us, if you will. If there are areas where we can't secure that area, we may have to look at collapsing other Casualties in the room into our area, or possibly setting up secondary Casualty Collection Points.

But primarily the first room we go into, if we have several of the Casualties, or a majority of the Casualties there, we want to establish those points of domination, make sure that we have enough resources there, we may be calling out requesting additional resources because we want to secure that area so any follow-on resources that come in to assist us, it's completely secured.

In dealing with the Casualties themselves, I think Travis, you can touch in on that.

Travis Cox:
Absolutely. One of the responsibilities of law enforcement inside a Casualty Collection Point is to do some type of Triage of the victims or the patients that are inside that room. One way the law enforcement can do that very rapidly is basically by addressing the folks that are inside that room and asking those that can move, ask them to move to one side of the room against the wall.

Once you have that one group against the wall, you still may have some people that are injured that can't move, and they'll still be on the floor. Obviously, you're going to use good law enforcement commands, tell them to keep their hands where they can be visible for all of law enforcement to see, but you want them to move against one wall. Once you separate that group, you have one group on the ground still, and you have one group against the wall.

Once you have that group against the wall, you're going to give a second command to say those that are standing against the wall, if you're not injured, or you've not been hurt in any way, move to a separate wall ... a second wall. So now you've basically separated that room into three groups. You have the injured folks that are on the ground that cannot move, you have a second group that did move but they're injured and they're standing on one wall, and then you have a third group that has moved to a second wall but they're uninjured.

You have now did a quick Triage of that room so you can call those folks using the medical terms of the "reds" which mean people that are injured that could not move. You can even classify them as a "red patient". Those people that are injured but can move are also known as a "walking wounded." Those would be your green patients. And then your uninjured folks that you would not assign them a color, they're just people that have been involved in the incident and they have no injuries.

So you separated the people in your room into three different groups, and that's a quick way that you, as a law enforcement officer, can Triage a room and help you manage that room until your medical counterparts arrive.

Bill Godfrey:
Let me kind of summarize and see if I've got this right on what you're saying. You identify the room that you want to use, or the room that you're going to make entry to. You use some tactics, depending on their training or local policy, to do the room entry, I guess the numbers of the team affect that as well. They get in the room, they look to take control of the crowd, take control of the people that are in the room, get them up against a wall, the ones that can, screen off the ones that aren't injured so that you've got the uninjured that can't move that are on the ground.

We call those the "reds", the injured that are up against the wall that move, those are the "greens", the uninjured are on another wall. Then, what Kevin was talking about, the points of domination, to post your people up where you could control the room, control access to the room, and basically have that be a safe ... maybe the wrong word, but a reasonably safe room to work in. Am I describing that right? Did I miss anything?

Travis Cox:
Yes, you described it perfectly. What this allows you do is you can then identify people that may need medical treatment right away, and as law enforcement officers, if we have security measures in place in that room, we could then begin doing some of those life-safety measures on those folks that are injured and cannot move. So this is our opportunity to start those life-safety measures until our medical counterparts arrive.

Bill Godfrey:
So if you've got a team of four or five officers, a couple of them can hold security and a couple of them can start getting into the medical care, try to do some life-saving stuff?

Travis Cox:
Absolutely. Absolutely. That's one of the things that we're there for. Obviously, we know there's a threat in the building. Once we address that threat, our next priority is to start addressing those in

Episode 04: Command Post Integration

Discussion of Command Post integration in Active Shooter Incident Management (ASIM)

Bill Godfrey:
Hello, and welcome to our next installment of talking about active shooter events. My name is Bill Godfrey from C3 Pathways. And today's segment we are going to talk about integration in the Command Post. How do you bring law enforcement, fire EMS together and how do you make that work. And then, some of the common problems that we see. I mean, in a perfect world, we want one Command Post. We want all the disciplines together in that one Command Post. Actually, communicating with each other face-to-face. Sharing information, updating each other as the incident goes. And then also, coordinating with the troops downrange.

But, that doesn't always turn out to be such an easy thing to accomplish and we're going to talk about that. With me today, we've got Tom Billington, Fire Chief. Stephen Shaw, Sergeant. Ron Otterbacher, Division Chief. Retired Sheriff, Kevin Beary. Fire Chief, Joe Ferrara and Fire Chief, Mark Rhame. Welcome guys, good afternoon.

So, Ron let me kick this to you to talk about, it seems like such a simple thing to say. Getting everybody into one Command Post. Why is it turn out that, that's such a problem for us?

Ron Otterbacher:
Usually it's because we don't train before we have the incident. It's so important to train and understand what each other needs. It's also important to train so you know who you're dealing with and, you've got the ability to communicate. We see oftentimes where, we'll be co-located but it doesn't enhance communication whatsoever because, each person's got their own focus and they don't understand what the other person may need or what their agency may need or what their needs are for that tactical situation.

So, I think training is the key to bring that familiarity together. The other thing is, introducing yourself to the people you work with because, it's a lot harder to just blow someone off if you know who they are. And it's evident all the time when we do these scenarios is, once they know each other and they've got an understanding of what's needed, they progress rapidly.

Bill Godfrey:
So basically, just the simplicity of introducing yourself to your counterpart in the Command Post and having a name to go with it?

Ron Otterbacher:
Absolutely. That face and that name goes a long way. Then, three weeks down the road after you've had the training, if I need something I call the Fire Chief and say. "Hey, I need this can you help me out?" And they'll say. "Yeah."

Bill Godfrey:
It sounds simple. It certainly sounds simple but, far too often we see a lot silos in the Command Post. Steve, you were talking about this a little earlier offline, before we got started. You know, what are the challenges that you see? What's the ruts that we're falling into?

Stephen Shaw:
I think as we go around the country and we do these scenarios, we're introducing people to new models and people kinda get ... They get in the Command Post and the co-located and we're working on the same incident. Police have their job, fire has their job, EMS has their job. And then you add in people like emergency management, outside political people, things of that nature. And everyone just kinda gets stuck in their lane or as we refer to it, a silo. And everybody just kinda does their ... They're focused on their task, their mission and they're worried about doing their job to the best of their ability and they forget about the people that are standing literally, a foot away from them.

We're all here together, police, fire, EMS working together and in the Command Post a lot of times, you're so focused on your task that we see people ... We keep saying 'silo' themselves. Law enforcement officers, we gotta work on the law enforcement side. Fire fighters gotta work on the fire side and they don't communicate with each other very well.

Bill Godfrey:
Mark, how do we fix that? What are some of the tricks that responders who are on the job working in the field, you know, you find yourself in the Command Post or maybe even, just trying to get into the Command Post. How do we fix this?

Mark Rhame:
Well, I agree with one thing Ron said right off the bat is, that we've gotta train. But it's also got to be in policy. You know, it's easy to go out there and get together every once in a while and say. "Hey, let's do this." And we practice that integrator response or integrated Command Post. But you've gotta put it in policy, there's gotta be some enforcement on one side of it that says. "From the management, the top management, all the way down to that brand new fire fighter. This is what we're going to do in this scenario." So, not only do we place it in policy, but we train and we work with our partners across the table. Whether you're a fire fighter, whether you're in law enforcement or EMS, or EM whatever it happens to be. You gotta understand what those policies are, what those procedures are. Who's going to be ultimately in command because, it's written in policy. And you train on it on a regular basis.

One of the pitfalls we have on a regular basis is that, you look at these training events that we have, there's a lot of middle ranks and maybe even, lower ranks and brand new employees but you don't see the management people. Who have to adopt this also and push it down from the top. That this is the way we're going to behave when we arrive on scenes.

Bill Godfrey:
So Kevin, Mark's talking about this issue of the Command Posts' policies and the training. And absolutely right on the mark with that but, we've seen all over the country these incidents where we end up with multiple Command Posts, you know, the law enforcement Command Post is over here. The fire Command Post is over there. And EMS is setup over there. How do we fix that? How do we legislate that problem into going away? And it seems like such a silly thing to have to tell everybody to get into the same Command Post, but we've seen it over and over again, how do you fix it?

Kevin Beary:
Well, in law enforcement the Chief of Police and the Sheriff need to have their policies mirror the policies of the EMS as well as, the fire. In other words, they're going to have to get together and write an active shooting policy to be able to get those Command Post people to work together, arrive on the scene, and locate themselves in somebody's Command Post. And you can have runners and radios and telephones to communicate back and forth to your individual CPs, but one Command Post needs to have all the players in it where they're talking with each other and they're making the decisions to save lives.

Bill Godfrey:
You know, I think that's a great point. Tom, we were talking yesterday about some dysfunction that we sometimes in the Command Post, and Kevin's talking about trying to get everybody ... Well, we're all talking about trying to get everybody together and talking. What are some of the common breakdowns that you see in the Command Post from the ... That just introduces dysfunction or causes the dysfunction?

Tom Billington:
Well, one thing is most of your people in the Command Post are senior people that have been in the business for many years. Training and policy is not the time to meet your counterpart. Break bread with them, have lunch with them, have meetings. When you have somebody come in your Command Post, you should know their first name, their abilities, and have a good relationship with them. And that's where some of the dysfunction comes from. We're not talking to our neighbors, the person down the street. And when you get on scene, that is not the time to discover what they can or cannot do for you.

So, it's as easy as making sure ... Especially if you have a large organization or a large county or city, that you are meeting with the law enforcement or fire together. You're doing meetings together and eating lunch together. And that's how you can avoid some of that dysfunction. I've had instances where I've been in a Command Post with two fire agencies and they don't talk to each other. And that can happen to anybody. So, we have to reach out to our partners and get a relationship going and that should avoid a lot of the dysfunction right up front.

Bill Godfrey:
So Joe, let's assume we can get everybody into the same Command Post. We get them co-located. They introduce themselves to each other, in some cases hopefully, they know each other. How do we make sure that the mission that they execute moves forward? How do they know what lane is theirs? How do they know when they're out of their lane and when they're crossing over. Or, does that matter? Does it matter if they stay in their lane? Where does that piece of it fit and is that an important part of keeping your Command Post operating effectively?

Joe Ferrara:
Well yes, I think it does matter if they stay in their lane. You know, fire we have our disciplines and we know, we're subject matter experts in those areas as well as, you know, EMS has their lanes, and law enforcement. Now you know, the important thing to remember in an active shooter event, this is a law enforcement event. This is a crime in progress.

Episode 03: Triage and Transport

Discussion of the Triage and Transport Group Supervisor positions in Active Shooter Incident Management (ASIM)

Bill Godfrey:
Hello again, everybody. Bill Godfrey from C3 Pathways, here with a number of the instructors to talk about triage and transport and the challenges of integrating our medical roles in an active shooter event.

Today I've got with me retired fire chief Tom Billington, both fire chief and paramedic. Another retired fire chief, Mark Rhame, also a paramedic. And not to be outdone, a third retired fire chief, Joe Ferrara, also a paramedic. Guys, thanks for taking the time to sit down and talk about this today.

So just to kind of set the stage for us, when we talk about, in typical EMS, when you talk about mass casualty incidents, we always hear them throw out triage, treatment, and transport. It's kind of the three classic things that we talk about. But in an active shooter event, it's a little different. The triage officer, normally is ... The bus rolls over on the interstate, triage is walking among the bodies and doing their thing. But in an active shooter event, it's not safe to do that. But the job still has to be done.

So Mark, can you open up by kind of talking a little bit about what's different about triage in an active shooter event? And how do we do the integration with law enforcement to set that up and get it rolling?

Mark Rhame:
In a traditional sense, the triage activity, or the triage person as you said, is walking amongst the individuals who are injured and trying to determine who is the most critically injured and which patient's gonna go first to the hospital, which patient's gonna get treated first. In the sense of a active shooter event, as you stated, that triage person, the person who's in that position, cannot go into that environment, because it may be still hot in the very beginning. It becomes warm when we take down the shooter or we put the shooter in a place where we can actually get to our patients safely with our rescue task force. But that triage officer is going to make and determine basically from a distance, utilizing rescue task force and standing right next to the tactical officer who has contact teams inside whose relaying information back to him or her about what kind of patients and how many patients and how severe they are so they can come up with their tactical considerations.

For the triage officer in this environment, they're going to stand up rescue task force. And the rescue task force are a combination of our fire EMS people and law enforcement at a security envelope for that team to go in there and start counting our patients, start doing some very quick treatment on those patients, getting them to a location where they're all the patients are in one place, which we call our casualty collection point, determining the quickest route out of that location to an ambulance exchange point so we can load them up into the ambulances and move them off that scene, working hand in hand with our transportation officer who will be standing next to us.

One of the considerations we have to have, though, is a triage person who's in that position, is they have to go down to a safe environment where that tactical officer is. So there is a consideration for that triage officer working with our medical branch to say, "Is it safe for me to send my people into that location? Is it safe for me to send my triage person and my transport officer down to that location so they can be standing next to each other talking face to face, coming up with their strategy and tactics?" So once that area is determined to be safe for them to go to that area -- it's a warm zone, so there's still some consideration of a threat -- but they can go down to that location. They cohabitate with them. At that point in time, they can stand up their rescue task force and get them inside and start working on these patients.

Bill Godfrey:
Fantastic. Joe, we were talking on another podcast with the law enforcement guys who really, really were talking about the importance of co-locating triage and transport with the tactical group supervisor to be able to work the problem very directly. Can you talk about, from the fire EMS perspective, from the medical perspective, why is it so important to put the triage and transport supervisors forward with the tactical group supervisor? Why can't they just take it over and run it and do what they gotta do? Why is that co-location location so important?

Joe Ferrara:
Well, I think if we look into some of the common problems that occur on scenes from an incident management perspective, it's always communication. Communication always seems to be the number one gap. So in one scenario, we could take our triage and transport group supervisors, and they could be in a fire command post, and they can be directing the rescue task force and directing the ambulances, but yet the gap there is they're not talking to tactical. Tactical has the operational picture of the scene. Tactical knows where the boundaries of the hot zone is. Tactical knows about the security threats occurring. Tactical knows when it's safe to start the rescue operation.

So if we're gonna create a gap by not co-locating, by forcing triage and transport to pick up a phone, or worse yet, have a cross-patch radio channel that may or may not work ... Because typically, fire and EMS are not on the same radio system as police. So why not, when the medical branch is stood up, and the medical branch sends triage and transport group supervisors as a command function, as an ICS function, downrange, send them to the tactical folks? The tactical guy, who was maybe that fifth man. I know we talked about it in a past podcast. It's not the counted fifth man. It could be the fifth, sixth, seventh. Whoever that law enforcement person is that's running the tactical operation, who better to have the folks in triage and transport that are gonna be moving patients and getting them out of scene as expeditiously as possible, why not have them with the law enforcement supervisor?

By doing that, those triage folks will have no question about whether it's safe to put an RTF in with a security bubble. The transport group supervisor will have no question about where the ambulance exchange points need to be, because getting that information directly from the person that has the operational picture, the tactical group supervisor.

Bill Godfrey:
So Tom, Joe, obviously, talking very passionately about a lot of the challenges in understanding the security side of this thing, which, of course, for fire and EMS folks, that's not our area of expertise. That's not normal for us. But being there with tactical to get that, can you talk a little bit about some of the difficulties or the challenges in getting the patients transported? I mean, okay ... the law enforcement's neutralized the threat. The rescue task forces have moved downrange. They've got contact with the patient. We're ready to get the patients out of there. What are some of the challenges that are faced on the transport side in making that happen in a timely fashion?

Tom Billington:
Well, one of the things we discuss is neutralizing the threat, which is done. So now we're fighting the clock. And as a transport group supervisor, you are that final cog in the wheel to get these patients to the correct facilities as soon as possible. And so it's really important that the transport group supervisor have situational awareness. They should know where the hospitals are located, the best routes, how many patients each hospital can take. And this has to be done rapidly. Again, we're fighting the clock. We have to get these injured people to a hospital as soon as possible and to get them treated. Again, by being located with the other groups, you have a better chance of understanding the clarity of what's going to happen, where you want to send them. And it's really a important task.

Bill Godfrey:
Tom, walk me through the process of how the rescue task force who has the patients picks a spot to hand them off to the ambulances. Walk me through how that happens and what that looks like.

Tom Billington:
Okay, when the rescue task forces are ready for the ambulances, the first thing they need to do is establish an ambulance exchange point. It has to be a location close to their casualty collection point. It has to be easy access. And obviously, there needs to be security. So once they have identified a location close to the casualty collection point that is outside that the ambulances can come and leave freely, they need to make sure they have a security bubble, and set up the ambulance exchange point. When all of this is completed, only then do we bring the ambulances in. And of course, we bring them in one at a time with security, load the patient.

This is a very important point. When we load the patient, we're not sitting there treating the patient anymore. We do not want to be sitting target, as you may call it. We want to get the person moved and get on the way to the hospital. So it's a very important part. Remember, security's important. Remember, don't box up your ambulances one at a time, and it should go pretty good after that.

Bill Godfrey:
So mark, talk a little bit about the challenges that are faced realistically. The triage and transport group supervisors, they're physically co-located, maybe at