IN FORCE911 MONTHLY NEWSLETTER
And You Think Halloween is Scary…?
“Shots fired – we have an active shooter.”
“We have an active shooter inside the school!”
“Just arriving, there are people down!”
This year has already seen twenty-seven school-related active shootings.
In May of this year, 19 children and 2 teachers were killed in Uvalde, TX as dozens of police officers stood by for nearly one hour. You may be asking yourself, why would there be delays in responding with officers on site? Do officers engage with the subject?
There are a variety of possible reasons. Officers may be trained to leave those tasks to specialty units, like Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) teams. Lack of Kevlar body armor, training, or a long gun may also be factors.
Another issue no doubt is lack of on-site intel: Where is the shooter? How many shooters? What type of weapons are they carrying?
Officers who respond to a shots-fired call to a building often arrive with little to no information of this nature. This is one reason that one third of officers who responded to an active shooting were shot, according to the Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training Center (ALERTC) in San Marcos, TX.
Officers will be emboldened to be the first on-scene, first in the building if they knew:
- The location of the threat
- Number of assailants
- Physical descriptions
- Types of weapons involved
- Number of victims
- Real-time “live” communications with those at the point of contact
The NY Times reports that from 2001-2021 there were 433 active and attempted mass shootings in the United States. Nearly 60% ended before police arrived. Alarmingly, active shooter situations are often over within 10 – 15 minutes before law enforcement arrives on scene.
What can you do?
Law enforcement officers can be notified within seconds of an active shooting situation, arming them with real-time intel about the threat.
In Force Technology’s IN FORCE911™ is the only real-time threat, alert, and notification app that is designed to give law enforcement officers the ability to respond in seconds to a school shooting. The system saves minutes when seconds count and provides officers with the real-time intel they need to end the threat quickly.
