Ep 87: Critical Perimeter Functions
Episode 87
Published Jul 1, 2024
Last updated Feb 18, 2026
Duration: 35:19
Episode Summary
Perimeter – the concept is simple; the application is hard. Both inner and outer perimeter are valuable assets, but the porous nature of perimeter can lead to an incident going sideways.
Episode Notes
In today’s podcast, our panel discusses the crucial responsibilities of the perimeter group in maintaining control and keeping things from going sideways. Establishing an inner perimeter, to contain the bad actors, and an outer perimeter, to keep others from entering, and keep control of the scene.
View this episode on YouTube at https://youtu.be/46gTwDWu_tc
Transcript
Bill Godfrey:When responding to active shooter events, there's a lot of critical things that have to happen very quickly. But one of the things that we don't talk about much at all is the important duties, the handful of important duties that the perimeter group has to get done to keep things from going sideways. That's today's topic, stick around.
Welcome to the Active Shooter Incident Management Podcast. My name is Bill Godfrey, your podcast host. I'm here with two of my fellow NCIER instructors at the National Center for Integrated Emergency Response. Both of them are law enforcement. Pete Kelting, back in the house, how you doing?
Pete Kelting:
Great, pleasure to be here, Bill, thanks.
Bill Godfrey:
Good to have you back. And Billy Perry, I'm getting to see a lot of you now, man.
Billy Perry:
I like it, I like it, I like it.
Bill Godfrey:
I love it too.
Billy Perry:
Thanks for having me back.
Bill Godfrey:
All right, so you guys are up on this one more than me on the fire EMS side. But today, and we have not talked about this, I was going back and looking at our previous podcasts, we've not talked about that handful of critical functions that the perimeter has got to do to kind of keep things flowing the right direction and going sideways on an event. So that's our topic today.
So just kinda remind everybody on the active shooter incident management checklist for those that are watching. There is a section here on perimeter. And there's basically three bullet points that we want 'em to hit. One, and this is for the perimeter group supervisor who's standing it up, is to get his team on a separate radio channel so they're not tying up airtime for the tactical channel. Establish an inner perimeter, and then establish an outer perimeter, and manage their staffing accordingly. The number of resources, what they want versus what they may have, and how they're going to deploy it. But that belies something to make it seem simple that really isn't simple.
Billy Perry:
It's not simple. Well, let me say it is simple. It's a simple concept, it's the application that's hard. Just like losing weight. It's easy to lose weight. Burn more calories than you take in and you lose weight. This concept is simple, it's the application that's hard.
Bill Godfrey:
Amen.
Billy Perry:
Right, war. Kill more people, burn more stuff than they do of yours, and you win. Concept simple, it's the application that's hard. And that's the way the perimeter is. Plus it's been the redheaded stepchild of tactics forever, but it's crucially important.
Bill Godfrey:
Pete, what do you think? What are some of the key things that you think are commonly just overlooked or become problems on perimeter?
Pete Kelting:
I think it's that we're first focused on getting resources down range to that initial threat. And obviously that's important. But a lot of those resources that are making that decision as they're responding to the scene are very well skilled at assisting with certain aspects of perimeters. So getting that perimeter group supervisor in place pretty quickly to identify the resources needed really, really helps a lot.
Bill Godfrey:
All right, so let me ask a specific question. Lemme put it into a specific. So we're in the early part of the incident. We're five, seven, eight minutes in. We got a couple of contact teams that are down range. Tactical stood up. First supervisors on scene, one of their first duties is to call for a perimeter group. You've still got a lot of people responding, but not a ton of people that are there yet. So maybe perimeter gets stood up with a group supervisor and three or four officers to start with.
What does that begin to look like for an inner perimeter, let's assume it's a school, the typical school campus, a high school or something like that? And you're having to play that role of perimeter group supervisor, and you've got yourself and three others. What's your deployment strategy? What are you thinking for that inner perimeter?
Pete Kelting:
So inner perimeter, and my perspective is, is that support to the folks working down range, right? The inner perimeter is mainly looking at setting up quickly as possible to keep that bad actor from getting out. And so, making sure that we can parse those resources as quickly as possible to support that initial inner perimeter is important to get that done pretty quickly.
Billy Perry:
Right, the inner perimeter generally, and this is generally, is exponentially smaller than the outer perimeter. And it's literally just containing, like Pete said, the bad guy. It is a containing, it's keeping everything in, inner. And the outer perimeter is keeping everybody out.
Bill Godfrey:
Or at least it's supposed to.
Pete Kelting:
Supposed to.
Billy Perry:
It's supposed to. The challenge comes from what you're alluding to, is the porous nature of perimeters.
Bill Godfrey:
Then let's go there. When we see problems both in training and with live events with perimeter, is it generally an inner perimeter problem or an outer perimeter problem in your opinion?
Billy Perry:
Yes.
Pete Kelting:
All of the above, both.
Bill Godfrey:
Okay, all right. Well, then let's work our way from the inside out. What are some of the big things that the inner perimeter that goes wrong or they fail to do? What are those key items that are consistently missed?
Billy Perry:
Well, one of them is, and this this is gonna become a constant theme throughout almost every podcast, is a lack of knowledge. A lack of what their response to resistance tactics are, or policy, not tactics, policies are. Not knowing when they can, when they can't, when they have a duty to utilize force, like for the inner perimeter. Like not understanding truthfully that, I know of instances where we had forcible felons leave the perimeter. And you're like, "Who saw?" "I did." "Well, why didn't you stop it?" And Pete?
Pete Kelting:
Yep.
Billy Perry:
Have you lived that dream as well?
Pete Kelting:
I have.
Billy Perry:
And then vice versa, when people are showing up, did you not get stopped by the outer perimeter? And the porous nature of it.
But the biggest challenge is, who gets manned on it? 'Cause occasionally you'll get a really strike officer that is mandated to be there, and they will do a really good job. The challenge is, who ends up doing perimeters generally are the ones that volunteer for it. Just like one of the things when I would teach emergency assault, emergency apprehension teams with the responding patrol officers to the patrol division. I even told supervisors, you never have to, and this is, back me up on this, Pete, you'll never have to say, "You go handle traffic." You don't, because every agency has somebody that, I don't wanna use the word coward, so inject it where you think it needs to go. Every agency has those officers that will self deploy. They sound very efficient on the radio. "I'll go ahead and take traffic. I'll do signal 38 over here." Or whatever, am I, is that accurate or?
Pete Kelting:
That exists.
Billy Perry:
And so they're gonna do that. And I think the same thing happens on perimeters, 'cause they don't want to go down range necessarily, truthfully. And the ones you have that are really good, you have a great department or somebody got mandated, and they're generally timid, they're overwhelmed, and they're not strong in their decision making capabilities, and it leads to porousness.
Bill Godfrey:
So obviously that can happen. Now, in the process that we teach, your perimeter is getting assigned from the pool that's at staging. And so to a degree it's luck of the draw, timing of the arrival, and all that kind of stuff. But Pete, when it comes specifically just to the inner perimeter, what are the gaps that you think we see that are consistently problematic with the inner perimeter?
Pete Kelting:
Just looking at your physical footprint, in the sense of where you're first deploying your perimeter folks to. If you're pushing contact teams in from the number one side of the building, most inherently your weak sides are gonna be beyond that. And deploy perimeter units to backfill that aggressive push from the contact teams, and then fill in the rest of your perimeter as quickly as possible. So just getting your eyes on a map and seeing what's your operational responsibilities of your contact teams moving, and how you get that inner perimeter in to support those teams movement is one of the first key things you gotta look at.
Billy Perry:
If I could add. Pete comes from a SWAT background, I come from a tactical and bomb background as well. The big challenge is, everybody doesn't know what a perimeter is. Every officer doesn't.
Pete Kelting:
Absolutely.
Bill Godfrey:
I thought that was like day two of the academy.
Billy Perry:
No, no. They don't know how to build a good, tight perimeter. I mean, they know the literal definition, but they may not be good at setting up a. Is that not accurate?
Pete Kelting:
No, accurate, a hundred percent. When you talk about just responding to a call, perimeter should have its own time in the box training during the year.
Billy Perry:
A hundred percent.
Pete Kelting:
Is just specifically talking about how you set up perimeters too, and the type of call makes a difference too.
Billy Perry:
It does.
Pete Kelting:
Obviously, we're talking about active shooter here, so it's a little bit more focused. But yes, absolutely, more training on perimeter.
Billy Perry:
We need to be able to set up good perimeters for armed robbers, for stolen cars that bail, all that.
Pete Kelting:
I mean, one of the things that probably hasn't changed in the age of law enforcement in the sense when I've ever was introduced to a perimeter was, the old saying, right, Billy, start big, it's easier to shrink it down than to expand it.
Billy Perry:
Than it is to expand it.
Pete Kelting:
Now, on an inner perimeter, we're wanting to get pretty tight into our tactical area of operation. But even then, you gotta be careful that you don't suck in too close, depending on the time that you're already, benchmark time you're already down range with the incident.
Bill Godfrey:
So the thing that I think I've observed, again, coming from a fire guy, what do I know, right? But the thing I've observed from inner perimeter with some frequency, some commonality, is a tendency to just zone out. When they first deploy, they get to their post, they're paying attention, they do handful of scans. But within five minutes, their mind is wandered, they're no longer watching their area.
Billy Perry:
The way courthouse scenario, leaning up against a tree.
Bill Godfrey:
Yeah, they're no longer watching their area. The other thing that I think goes along with that as a missed opportunity is when the additional resources are moving in, there's a chance for perimeter to kind of, for those inner perimeter units to be able to say, "They're over this direction. I saw a team going this way. Work around to this side, you got more cover."
They've already got some sense of lay of the land, but I don't see them engaging in the opportunity to kind of give a quick lay of the land briefing to those other resources that are coming in. Which is generally gonna be rescue task forces, sometimes there's additional contact teams coming in, but it's usually the RTFs coming in. That's something I always kinda wondered. It's almost like they didn't feel like it was their responsibility to do things like that.
Billy Perry:
Well, and if you don't understand the importance of a perimeter, then you don't understand the importance of your job, and how valuable an asset you truly are. Look at South Florida, outer perimeter apprehended active shooters in the past. So I mean, it's pretty huge.
Bill Godfrey:
So, speaking of which, let's segue over to outer perimeter because it seems like we have a little more work to do there than we do anywhere else.
So as you guys both mentioned, the job of the outer perimeter is to isolate the scene and to keep anyone else from coming in. Let's take a typical high school of a thousand, 1,200 kids, typical campus. What are you looking at for an outer perimeter on something like that? What's the number of officers you're thinking?
Billy Perry:
Well, you just described my school, and it's 64 acres.
Pete Kelting:
I was just gonna say.
Billy Perry:
So I mean, you can look at it online. I mean, that's. So a perimeter has to be, it has to form a perimeter. So you at least have to be line of sight with each other, with your right and left.
Pete Kelting:
Absolutely, unless you got wooded area. But it has a lot to do with how many ingress, egress you have to the school. Is it sitting next to a neighborhood that's got tons of streets by it? I mean, so, but quickly, just when you said that, I mean, and I was already into the dozen, 10, 12 folks to try to button up a outer perimeter pretty quickly.
Billy Perry:
Easy.
Bill Godfrey:
Okay, so we're talking a dozen or more. In a school scenario, where you got parents coming to the scene, probably gonna be more than a dozen, is it not?
Billy Perry:
Yeah, it's gonna be several dozen.
Bill Godfrey:
And then the outer perimeter is also gonna be responsible for diverting traffic. They gotta lock it down.
Pete Kelting:
Yeah, I mean, absolutely. One of the biggest faults that we run into is, is not gaining control of our ingress, egress in our intersections to make sure that the high school parents aren't just driving. I mean, they started responding two seconds after we were responding 'cause of the text messaging today, right?
Bill Godfrey:
Text messaging.
Pete Kelting:
So as soon as we lose that control, they're hanging on a fence trying to see, parking, blocking our response, maybe even taking strategic areas for their parking where we wanted to park. So grabbing that traffic portion of our perimeter, and locking down the roads and the intersections is huge.
Bill Godfrey:
And you mentioned this, not getting control of intersections in our ingress, egress, that's a big one that I see from the fire EMS side. Is, we may or may not have an effective outer perimeter, but we have not maintained a corridor for the ambulances to be able to get in and out of the scene. And that tends to be something that I've seen not only in training, but I've seen consistently in real life events as well. You look at the videos, you look at the pictures, they really, really struggle to maintain that corridor.
Now, obviously that first dozen or so officers that get there are gonna park wherever they park and go do their thing. But once perimeter begins to get stood up, why is it such a challenge to get control of that flood of additional officers coming in? Because they're supposed to be going to staging. Why does that break down to be such a problem at perimeter?
Billy Perry:
I mean it's multi-faceted. I think not truly understanding your mission is one issue. I think it's hard to tell your peer no.
Pete Kelting:
Right.
Billy Perry:
Seriously, I think they're wanting to go in and do great things, and they can say, "You're not the boss of me, I'm going in here." I mean, there's a myriad of reasons. And I think it comes from emotions. I think it comes from both parties not really understanding their policy and what they need to do. Seriously.
Pete Kelting:
He hit it on the nail, is that I'm responding. Billy's on grabbed the intersection, I'm responding to the event, and I'm blowing by 'cause I think I'm needed down there. And who's Billy to tell me not to keep going? But back that up, it goes to communication, and quick identification of staging, quick communication to a perimeter group supervisor and a team saying, "Make sure all your folks know where staging's at."
So if I'm coming in and Billy stops me and says, "Hey, hey, hey, hey, staging is over that way. Is that where you're trying to get to, is staging?" Yeah, staging, go to staging." Instead of just letting me go right on by.
Billy Perry:
And that's not when we need to train it. This is why your policies need to be current. Your policies need to be accurate. They need to have things like this so they know to do that, so they're not just self deploying.
Bill Godfrey:
And I wanna underscore this one because one of our instructors had an event, real life event that went really fairly well. It didn't go perfectly, they had a couple of challenges, but the initial response went very well. Threats were neutralized very quickly. The injured were rescued and transported in damn near record time. And then the out of county mutual aid law enforcement units began arriving, and ignored the instructions from the perimeter to go to staging, and pushed into the scene. So they pushed past the outer perimeter, they pushed past the inner perimeter, self deployed into the scene, began kicking in doors. And this was 20 minutes post-event. Suspects were in custody, all the injured were off the scene. They were literally at the clearing phase. There was no driving force.
Billy Perry:
No stimulus.
Bill Godfrey:
There was no stimulus, and yet we're kicking doors and doing hard dynamic entries on what turned out to be fairly young kids. And I don't think that's an isolated incident.
Billy Perry:
I don't either.
Bill Godfrey:
So what's it gonna take to get law enforcement to understand that that is part of the job of perimeter? Is to keep that polyester pile from ending up down range, and get 'em into staging instead, and to control just the flow of responders in and out of the scene?
Pete Kelting:
Training.
Billy Perry:
Right, training.
Pete Kelting:
You said staging, right? Two years, three years ago we were talking about, what's it gonna take to get staging managers trained to effectively manage staging, right? So hand in hand with perimeter. I mean, law enforcement agencies, we're so apt to design our training agendas for the day around the actual hot topic of active shooter or something else. Let's pick a day just to do staging and perimeter, staging and perimeter.
Billy Perry:
I agree. And I think explaining why we need to know the perimeter. Because we're try not trying to promote inaction, we're not trying to promote losing inertia. We're explaining why this is better, why we need to control this to protect the scene. We're not talking about just doing it arbitrarily. There is a reason, an articulable reason for this. And I think it's important that they understand.
I think especially today's generation, they need to understand the why. And you can agree, you can disagree, it doesn't matter. It just, it is what it is. Give 'em the why. Let 'em know why. Here's why you need to understand this, because we need to protect the scene, we need to protect the inner perimeter, we need to protect the guys and gals that are in there as the entry team, as the emergency apprehension team, as the emergency assault team. And if you explain the why, and this is more efficient, it's better, it's an integral part, it's super important. And you need to be able to have a non-porous perimeter.
Bill Godfrey:
Okay, so we've hit the inner perimeter, the outer perimeter. We've talked about the need to be able to obviously contain any fleeing suspect and capture them. The need to manage our own response and our own resources. Keep our ingress and egress open. So we've covered that. Now, let's talk about the civilian reaction, and--
Billy Perry:
The rogue do-gooder?
Bill Godfrey:
I think the rogue do-gooder. I think... Well, lemme split it this way because there are some special considerations. I think schools are a special consideration. Hospitals, airports, special considerations.
Billy Perry:
Right, churches.
Bill Godfrey:
But let's just talk in, churches, in general. What are the kind of challenges that the outer perimeter who has all of these duties that we just discussed, plus is going to potentially be facing off with the general public, some of whom may or may not have a personal vested interest in what's going on inside the perimeter, some that may just be looky-loos or do-gooders, what are the kinds of things that they need to be prepared to deal with? And at what point do you say, do you look around and go, "I'm by myself and I'm outnumbered, I need a friend."
Billy Perry:
Right.
Bill Godfrey:
Well, what do you think?
Pete Kelting:
I mean, you named all the special considerations and all the things that come with that. When you pull that aside at any other perimeter, it starts to affect traffic, period, right? You start getting overwhelmed with, if you're shutting down or changing a traffic pattern at a particular intersection, now you're impacting everybody else's life going on that isn't really sure what's happening on the other side. And that becomes a problem itself. Do we shut down the interstate? Do we change this pattern? And we've gotta be able to have enough resources to handle that. And too often we think, well they just have to wait. We've gotta deal with all this. And it's important that we attend to that, and be able to identify those resources quickly.
Bill Godfrey:
In fact, one of the roles of incident command is to work with their PIO to make those announcements and try to offload some of that local traffic by telling people we've got this situation going on. Stay out of the area, avoid the area, these roads are closed. And if you have an ineffective command post that either never comes or it comes so late that it's not usable.
But Billy, from your perspective, what are the - guys or gals that are on the post, they're staying in the position at the outer perimeter. What are the things they're gonna deal with, and at what point do they gotta go, "Okay, it's time for me to get some help?"
Billy Perry:
Well, I think you brought up a school. I work in a school. I know parents. I do not know of any school shooting that hasn't had at least one, if not several very belligerent parents. "I'm going in there to get my kid and you can't stop me." And that's something that needs to be addressed beforehand. You need to be thinking about, what do I do when this happens? 'Cause it's going to happen. If you end up on a perimeter, you are gonna run into that. And you need to know what you're gonna do.
Bill Godfrey:
That's a very good point, so let's go ahead and shift in and talk about special considerations. So let's talk about schools. Obviously with schools, you have parents that are gonna come in. They are gonna be very upset, not in a very great state of mind.
Billy Perry:
Right.
Bill Godfrey:
As all three of us are parents.
Billy Perry:
Not reasonable, not rational.
Bill Godfrey:
Yeah, we get it.
Billy Perry:
Totally get it.
Bill Godfrey:
We totally get it. But at the end of the day, you can't let 'em blow past the outer perimeter. How does that impact the math that goes in for the perimeter group supervisor who's got to oversee that and make sure that they've got staffing? What are the special considerations for a school?
Billy Perry:
Well, I think that's the biggest one, I would think. And keeping the media away. We adopt the posture that for even in the aftermath, we protect the survivors and the kids from three things; the elements, gunfire, and the eyes of the media. So we keep 'em under, out of the elements, out of from further harm, and from the eyes of the media. So you have to be cognizant and aware of all those things. And I think one of that Pete hit it earlier, and the big one, knowing your modes of ingress and egress. Knowing where the parents are probably gonna come from, and quadrupling your manpower there in anticipation of that. Because they are gonna come in there, "You're not gonna stop me." I mean, we--
Pete Kelting:
They're either gonna drive up or walk up, right? And so perimeter group supervisor working in concert with incident commander, identifying a parent muster area, a parent staging area, developed depending on how long the event's gonna happen, is I think key. Just like media. I mean, media's the same thing. They're gonna come from different areas trying to get a good close camera look.
Billy Perry:
Cameras, yeah.
Pete Kelting:
So we have to be able to be ready to push them in an area where we can maintain control. Bill, you're familiar with the two events that I was on, one being a hoax and one being legit. And I can tell you both times, the parent, we lost control of the parents because we were focused on that immediate resource going to the school, and making sure we had enough officers coming in.
And that's all depending on, if you've got a thin response coming in to your event, you're gonna keep flowing that. And you're almost pushing that perimeter in the back of your mind till you feel like you've satisfied that thirst or that that initial response. But that's where you lose control of those parents coming in. 'Cause it's like a tidal wave, I mean, they're coming quick.
Billy Perry:
It is. And not to vacillate too much, but we were talking about parents. Another challenge that you're gonna have along the lines of parents and the media, drones. When a drone comes over, who's gonna see it first? Outer perimeter should.
Bill Godfrey:
We hope.
Billy Perry:
We hope. Exactly, we hope. And if not, inner perimeter.
Bill Godfrey:
We hope.
Billy Perry:
We hope, does that make sense?
Bill Godfrey:
Yeah.
Billy Perry:
So I mean, and we need to know whose it is, where'd it come from, what's it doing? I mean, those are some of the new special considerations that we have. But I think the three biggest ones for most of them, number one is containing the bad people. The bad actors for the inner. And the outer, 'cause I'm from the Department of Redundancy department. I'm a big diver, so outer perimeter is redundant inner perimeter. Their primary purpose is keep people out, but they also double as a--
Bill Godfrey:
Catch point, secondary catch point.
Billy Perry:
Catch point. Right, a redundancy. So we gotta be cognizant of that.
Bill Godfrey:
So, what is your advice to those cops that are on the perimeter post that are dealing with angry parents? We can all empathize with that, but is there some things that you would suggest to try to deescalate it to avoid the classic of parent being tackled on the ground and handcuffed? And the media of course is covering that, 'cause they can't get any closer.
Billy Perry:
Well, the decision ultimately lies with the parents truthfully. But you can't argue, we were just talking about this. You can't argue, you can't rationalize with irrational people, you can't reason with unreasonable people As police officers, I know Pete's been doing this long enough, I have been. We've all been called everything but a child of God, and you gotta let 'em vent, and then just calmly say, "No."
Pete Kelting:
I think you just hit the nail on the head there, is don't overreact to that parent.
Billy Perry:
Right, don't buy into it.
Pete Kelting:
To be able to quickly tell 'em that, quick brief, "That our command is working hard with the school system to keep you informed. Here's where you can go and stage and get additional information. I don't have any other information for you other than that." And just try to keep the situation as calm as possible. Knowledge, information to the parent is helpful, calming.
Bill Godfrey:
That's a big one. And Billy, now you're in a kind of a unique position 'cause you're working directly with a school now.
Billy Perry:
Correct.
Bill Godfrey:
How important is it for the school pre-event to kind of tell parents what to expect, what the communication plan is gonna be, what the process is gonna be? How much, if at all, does that impact the parental response?
Billy Perry:
I would hope, 'cause it hasn't happened, but we do embolden them with knowledge. I do think it can't hurt and it has to help. Does that make sense? We have an old saying, can't hurt, might help. Can't hurt, I think it's definitely gonna help. And because it's war gaming them in advance. It's already given them an idea this is what's gonna happen. And we've already warned them, this is gonna be a long time coming. We're gonna get you there as soon as we can. Because one of the things that the school wants parents to know, they want them to come get the kids. They don't wanna sit, "We wanna keep 'em for a while." That's not true, said nobody ever. Okay, so the sooner they're outta there, the sooner they're not your responsibility anymore. Seriously, is that not transparent?
Pete Kelting:
Absolutely.
Billy Perry:
And so we want to relinquish them, we want to surrender them to you. We want to turn 'em over. But every single parent has to be checked by ID and has to sign off the sheet from the iloveuguys.org. I mean, so I think that's important that they know. And so even if in the heat of the moment when you say, "We've told you about this Mr. Kelting. This is gonna happen, but this is what's gonna have to happen first." It can go, okay, maybe.
Bill Godfrey:
Maybe. So let me ask you this, and then I'm gonna tangent to one of our other ones. If the guy or the gals is working the post on the outer perimeter, of course they're probably gonna be listening to the tactical radio, even though they're assigned, for their perimeter duties, they're assigned to different channel.
Billy Perry:
Perimeter channel.
Bill Godfrey:
But they're gonna be listening to what's going on. Is it appropriate, is it okay for parents that are genuinely concerned and emotional to be able to tell them information they may not know? Like, "There is no more active threat, we're working on rescuing the injured, and then there's this has to happen." Is it okay for them to provide some information that may not have been released to the general public, or do we need to keep that close hold?
Billy Perry:
I would keep that close hold personally.
Pete Kelting:
Yeah, I think it comes down to messaging from the command post. I mean, it'd be kept close to the chest, but the point of command getting a school representative in the process early quickly. And be able to get that messaging out, and be able to tell a parent. I mean, most schools nowadays, most have the whole app that you sign up for, is pay attention to that. Law enforcement has the ability to put messages out, and just refer them back to that, and just try to calm their ease. I mean, if it's a vetted, there's no more threat, and you say, "That's probably not gonna hurt." But you wanna try to keep as much information.
Bill Godfrey:
All right, so I'm gonna skip over talking specifically about churches and hospitals because I think that they have a whole lot in common with the scenarios that we run into in schools. But let's talk for a minute about airports, because airports can be a particularly challenging event. You've got people, 'cause the airports are so large, it's very likely that you're gonna have a whole bunch of people inside your perimeter that have nothing to do with the event that went on, didn't see anything, didn't hear anything. They just want to get their luggage and leave, or they want to be able to get on their flight and go, that isn't gonna go. You're gonna have traffic problems out the wazoo at the perimeter. You may have people that are trying to leave.
What are some of the special challenges in your mind of securing an airport? Each of you worked in an area where you had international airports you covered. In your mind as you think about your airports and trying to get the perimeter wrapped and then deal with traffic and information diversion, what comes to top of mind?
Pete Kelting:
Craziness at an airport. Like you said, the event may be isolated in a certain area. The amount of airlines in airport, they all have their own little emergency management plans, they all have their contracts with folks and stuff. But just gaining control, that initial incident, right, getting that inner perimeter set up. And then working on that, the traffic part of it for an airport is probably the biggest part, is that ingress, egress of traffic. 'Cause you actually end up having less ways in than most places that you can grab pretty quickly. And then diverting incoming people, it's huge.
Billy Perry:
Right, we actually had a really big call at our airport, where everything was shut down. A guy walked in with a backpack, said, "I have a bomb dropped at TSA counter."
Bill Godfrey:
That'll disrupt things.
Billy Perry:
It was a showstopper. And before that, we had to jump through a million hoops to get these special badges for the airport that had guns on 'em so you could be armed on the property, and all this other stuff, that all access. And then we have the call, and we have our own police department at our airport. They took the inner perimeter, the sheriff's office did the whole outer perimeter, and the bomb squad and everybody did the bomb thing. And I went down range on that. And I was the only person on the whole concourse in the whole airport. And I was laughing going, "Nobody's here to check my badge." And by myself, with the 1975 playing the "Chocolate" coming over the radio. Things you remember?
But I think that it's gonna be, it's huge. As big as you think it is, it's bigger. And I think utilizing, 'cause even agencies that have a subsector or a zone assigned to their airport, they're gonna know it. They're gonna have the inner perimeter, and then have the other set up for the outer. And it's actually, it's big, but it is manageable.
Bill Godfrey:
All right, any other thoughts?
Pete Kelting:
Lots of training. You always hear me say train early, don't train late.
Billy Perry:
And train well. You hear us all say, make sure it's good training.
Bill Godfrey:
Yeah, and I think I would just say as a general perspective, I get it, but perimeter is not a place to zone out.
Billy Perry:
If you are on a perimeter and you find yourself in your car, you're probably doing it wrong.
Bill Godfrey:
There you go. All right, well thank you to our producer Karla Torres for pulling our podcast together every week. We really appreciate you, Karla. Please like and subscribe the podcast, share it with those of you work with. And until next time, stay safe.