Ep 96: Active Shooter Data and Trends
Episode 96
Published Dec 9, 2024
Last updated Feb 18, 2026
Duration: 35:11
Episode Summary
In today’s podcast we discuss active shooter data and trends, focusing on response strategies and what role data analysis plays in improving preparedness.
Episode Notes
Episode 96 delves into the topic of active shooter data and trends, offering valuable insights for first responders and emergency management professionals. This episode provides an analysis of current active shooter statistics, response strategies, and the importance of data-driven decision-making in crisis situations.
Key highlights include:
- Data Analysis and Response Strategies
- Consistent Response Priorities
- Training Implications
- Adaptability and Self-Discipline
- Challenges and Future Directions
- Practical Implications
Whether you’re a seasoned first responder or involved in emergency planning, this episode delivers critical knowledge to enhance your understanding and effectiveness in responding to active shooter situations.
CLICK HERE FOR FBI ACTIVE SHOOTER INCIDENTS IN THE UNITED STATES IN 2023 REPORT: https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/2023-active-shooter-report-062124.pdf/view
CLICK HERE TO READ THE ACTIVE SHOOTER FACTS SHEET: https://www.c3pathways.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/2023_Active_Shooter_Facts.pdf
View this episode on YouTube at https://youtu.be/1PBM6G3saFw
Transcript
Bill Godfrey:- So in June of '24, the FBI and ALERRT issued their new report rounding up the data on active shooter events from 2023. And there is some interesting information in here. There's also data from the Gun Violence Archive and numerous other databases. But here's the question: When you are the police officer, the firefighter or the paramedic that gets the dispatch and you're responding down the road, does the data matter? That's today's topic. Stick around.
Welcome to the "Active Shooter Incident Management" podcast. My name is Bill Godfrey, your podcast host. I am joined here by three of my fellow instructors at the National Center for Integrated Emergency Response. Juan Atan, back in the house. Juan, good to have you.
Juan Atan:
- Thank you. Thank you.
Bill Godfrey:
- Adam Pendley on our law enforcement side.
Adam Pendley:
- Yes. Glad to be here. Thank you.
Bill Godfrey:
- [Bill] Good to have you. And then we got Coby Briehn back in the house, who of course, covers kind of all the disciplines. It seems a little unfair. You're being greedy over there.
Coby Briehn:
- I do what I can, sir.
Bill Godfrey:
- All right, so today's topic, we're gonna be talking about data, which is normally an eye-glazing type of exercise, but we spend a lot of time in the data and in fact, talking about how that can inform some of the processes and some of the systems. And so I want to kind of hit on a few of the interesting things that we've seen here in the data. Some changes, some things that haven't changed, and talk about that. But then I wanna spend some time talking about, what does and doesn't really matter to the responders and why. Adam, why don't you lead us off?
Adam Pendley:
- Sure. So, I mean, I think some of the things that we've seen that have kind of remained the same or have reemerged after, you know, 2020 was an odd year just because a lot of numbers were different because of the COVID time, right? But since then, some of the numbers have kind of gotten back where they went, so there's a couple things that I think inform responders and training and the way we put the checklist process together. And that is that you can expect firearms to be involved, and of those firearms, it's most often a handgun, right? Is your most common weapon type. But then behind that is rifles and shotguns.
You know, that number, and then the idea of you're shooting locations, that number has changed slightly. You know, people think, or we assume that schools, because they're the most impactful, but they're not the most common. Places of business, commerce, those are the most common. But outdoor locations, outdoor scenes have started to see an increase a little bit.
And, you know, then just the definitions. And I think the understanding of how some active shooting situations are defined versus a mass killing versus motive all create some interesting data points that we need to know about in the way we plan our responses. Like, for example, another common misconception, you know, from a public movie standpoint sort of way is that body armor or IEDs aren't used very often. You know, 4% for body armor and even a lower percentage for IEDs or other types of improvised weapons.
So you say all that to say that the one thing that we do talk about when we talk about why the data matters is that the training that law enforcement does around the country, in most situations, is going to be adequate to get in there and stop the threat. We are not fighting SEAL Team Six in some sort of advanced weaponry. We are fighting, you know, a single shooter who's decided that today's gonna be their terrible day, and we can get in there and stop that, right? So that's what the data tells me in a confidence sort of way. But then after that, the response is gonna be very similar, you know, based on the way you just have to enact your training.
Bill Godfrey:
- It's an interesting reality. I mean, Coby, you've been teaching and training and working through this stuff as long as all of us and seeing this data shift over time. Fundamentally, what are the couple of things that jump out at you that you think would inform the way you train or the way you teach, things that we ought to pay attention to?
Coby Briehn:
- So I mean, we can break it all down into locations. Schools are obviously not the big ones, so we're working a lot of schools. So let's look at where the most common things are. So it's just giving you what the stats are saying. What is the most likely place? 'Cause if you go to schools, you have to deal with, what are our access procedures? How can we get into the classrooms? How can we get into certain areas? Same way with businesses. Are there ways to get in through there? Like, the "try before you pry" kind of thing. If we have to breach doors or how do we gain access? Do we just simply grab the access cards? What are the layouts of it? What are the windows look like for the outside? Are insides marked versus outside marked as far as for perimeters to be around.
So the more we progress, the more of those things are getting caught up to us, which is helping us. So it's all lessons learned from previous events. And that's where, I think, the more and more we break this down and look at this, that gives us the answers to what's happened in the past and it kind of tells us where the likely locations are, what are they likely armed with, where are they, this, this, this, this, and this. And all of it, it really sums up to, it doesn't matter. It's just we are there, we're dealing with the best-case scenario and let's deal with the best-case practices that the previous events have told us and make it fit to this circus or paradigm that we're dealing with here in front of us.
Bill Godfrey:
- Sure. So Juan, the data, there's a lot of information and statistical data in here, but one of the things that's not very well informed upon is the nature of the injuries, the type of the injuries, the severity of the injuries for the medical side. Is that a gap you think? Is that something that we would be better off if we could figure out how to get it?
Juan Atan:
- Yeah, I believe there's a gap because again, being on the fire-EMS side, you would like to see what kind of injuries were involved in these type of incidents. It is great that we know where it happened, in which locations, what was the, you know, gunman doing, did he have body armor?
All that is great information on the law enforcement side, but bring it over to the fire-EMS side. Hey, what are the injuries? What were the causes of the injuries? You know, where they salvageable injuries? Would a tourniquet could help this person out and it could help the fire-EMS side. I mean, it is great information now, don't get me wrong, but it leaves that little gap there. Like, okay, what do we have to be looking for in these type of emergencies? You know? Yeah, it's a shooting. We know we're gonna have people shot in the leg, chest, head, whatever the case may be, but are they survivable injuries for this type of event? Kind of thing.
Adam Pendley:
- And some of that may be data that kind of underlies the other thing that we teach, is that you're, you know, you're not only fighting the criminal, but you're fighting the clock. So to Juan's point about survivability, and that might be a hard number that people might not want to hear, you know? And there have been some follow-on studies and some shooting situations that, hey, there were some that were shot that had they been transported more quickly, they might have survived. And that's a tough number to hear. But some of that data, if we're gonna look at data points and how you prepare and how you train, that could be a gap that could, you know, could be filled with additional data.
Bill Godfrey:
- You know, it's an interesting tangent to the conversation. Of course on the military side, Coby, I know you're familiar with these studies, years and years ago, the military began looking at battlefield fatalities and saying, "Was this fatality preventable?" And in became to be known as tactical combat casualty care. Where they came up with a set of guidelines and they would look at the fatality reports, the autopsy reports, and determine whether somebody had potentially survivable injuries. Somebody that died had potentially survivable injuries. How did that inform battlefield medicine? 'Cause I know you lived through some of that when you were deployed. How did that inform battlefield medicine, and what, if anything, can we take away from that practice on the civilian side?
Coby Briehn:
- It looked at what the most common injuries were. What were the common factors leading to combat-related deaths. And it all broke down into several. And then what was treatable? You know, the outcomes or of war or any conflict is one better way to win through injuring the opponent. And the other aspect of that is ways to treat the injuries that are survivable and the best ways to come up with that. And that led to Tactical Combat Casualty Care, which in turn led to the Tactical Emergency Casualty Care Guidelines.
Bill Godfrey:
- [Bill] Which is the civilian.
Coby Briehn:
The civilianized version of it, yes.
- Both very adept at what they do. And Tactical Combat Casualty Care just looked at all of it, like the stats, the research of what were people dying from and how can we train not just the one medic, the unit medic that's taking care of it, but train everybody else. You're your own first responder. The guys to the left and right of you are the ones that are gonna be coming and how can we best prepare them for the inevitable, the worst day of dealing with those injuries, instead of just waiting for that specialized units to come in. Let's train the true first responder, which is you, the boots on the ground, and how to identify that and the easiest ways to treat those injuries.
Bill Godfrey:
- And I think the remarkable thing about that story is the proof is in the pudding. They have reduced battlefield fatalities very, very dramatically by applying this. And unfortunately, it's something we kind of miss in the civilian side because we can't get the autopsy reports, we can't do this analysis. Medical confidentiality, privacy, all important things. I'm not trying to say they're not important, but it deprives us of the ability to learn.
And one of the things that concerns me is, you know, the TCCC looked at, I think the biggest single loss of, preventable life was uncontrolled hemorrhaging, uncontrolled bleeding, which led to the advent of tourniquets being used in the battlefield, which, great, saved a lot of lives. That then got applied to the civilian active shooter environment and caused us to rollout nationally, tourniquets, tourniquets for police officers, things like that. And that training and those tourniquets have absolutely saved lives.
Coby Briehn:
- Correct.
Bill Godfrey:
- Not very many in active shooter events, but it turns out that they've had an enormous lifesaving effort on the other side. And when you look at the nature of the injuries, yes, you have injuries from the rifle rounds and ballistic injuries, but you also had a lot of IED injuries in the battlefield that we don't see in civilian active shooter events. And the rifle round in a battlefield is typically a distance away, whereas it's up close and personal, whether it's a rifle round or a bullet, and those both have different mechanisms of injuries. I wish that there was a path forward and it would require legislation that would undoubtedly be controversial.
Adam Pendley:
- Right.
Coby Briehn:
- Unfortunately. But I wish there was a path forward for us to study what's going on.
Juan Atan:
- No, absolutely. 'Cause again, looking at these numbers, like you mentioned, it's great that you see these incidents that happen and you see like, a number, just throwing out 31 casualties. How many of those 31 casualties died? How many were survivors? You know, just see a number. What were their injuries? So that we have a better understanding, you know, all first responders, these are the type of injuries you might be seeing. Not the same like what you were talking about in the battlefield 'cause in the battlefield's a whole different game itself. They got IEDs, they have the, you know, rifles, bombs, you know, you name it.
But in inactive shooter, it's a whole different, but we would like to see those injuries, so that way, when we train, we know what we're kind of training. Where in the military, you're training for... I mean, every case is the worst-case scenario, but in the battlefield, it's a very worst-case scenario. Where here, it's very different.
So again, the numbers, they're great for us, but hey, tell us, you know, who survived it? You know, who died? What was their injuries? You know, were they mutilated? Kind of thing so that way we have a better idea of what we're getting to and then when we train, we train for that mindset.
Adam Pendley:
- Sure. And I mean, it might be good to see also that, you know, to correlate between responses that maybe did have a better or faster RTF response and was a survivability better in some of those incidents as opposed to areas that might have had some challenges? And I know you can get those in, like, looking at some individual after-action reports and some different things, we review those as well. And again, we've said this many times, it's never meant to second guess anyone's response. It's just meant, you know, how do you build a path forward from there based on what you know.
And, you know, to switch gears a little bit, Bill, the other thing that really jumps out at me from preparing your law enforcement response is the outcome of the shooter themselves and those numbers. You know, and it's common that people think, "Well, they all end in suicide," or a great majority of them in suicide. And that's not the case.
Bill Godfrey:
- Not anymore. I mean, five years ago, the percentage of of these things ending in suicide was substantially higher than it is now. It was 40-something percent just five, six years ago, and now it's been cut by more than 50%. It's half of that, right?
Adam Pendley:
The number one thing is that they're apprehended, right? So apprehended, then suicide, but then very close behind suicide is that they are killed by police. And then if you add the number of suicides that they've committed suicide as police are arriving, if you add that number to the killed-by-police number, it's actually higher than the suicide number.
So I say that to say that this really ties into law enforcement training as we have to get our officers to understand that what you're learning and how you respond and how you give a good size-up report and your follow-on officers, all of those are critical because you are going to have to take action. And fortunately, the number of officers injured or killed in active shooter events has stayed relatively steady. But we've seen those numbers, you know, those numbers are real. So, you know, training is important. Understanding that your actions matter is important and that it's gonna take a law enforcement response to end most of these things.
dt>Bill Godfrey:
- I think the other thing that we need to bring into the conversation, I think this is hugely important. So this particular report that we're discussing here, the one that FBI and ALERRT put out, and they do this every year and it's great stuff and I'm very appreciative of the work that they do. But we go back to just post-Columbine on this data set and it runs through, I'm trying to remember the numbers off the top of my head and I think the numbers I've got in my head run through 2022, not including the day of this report, but it's like 460 active shooter events over the last 20-plus years since we started tracking this stuff. And what's very interesting to me is what gets excluded because of the definition of what an active shooter event is and isn't.
And you mentioned a couple of these earlier, Adam, I wanna revisit that. You mentioned a mass killing. So there's another FBI report that defines a mass killing as three or more killed. But then the Gun Violence Archive, which is a private group that tracks gun violence or shootings here in the US, their definition for mass shooting is four or more shot, not including the attacker, the shooter. And here's what's fascinating is, they've got data from 2021 to, so far, in 2024, it looked like it was only up to couple up to a couple months ago. They've got over 2000 cases. So we're we're 460-something "active shooter events," with the air quotes, over a 20-plus-year span. But in a four year span, '21 to '24, not even a complete four years, we've got 2000 mass shootings where four or more people were shot. And a lot of that data obviously doesn't end up meeting the academic definition of an active shooter event, and this is where I want to kind of take a little bit to talk about this because for the responder, I'm not sure the academic definition matters a whole lot. If there were four or five or six people shot because it was a family argument, a backyard barbecue, and there's people running everywhere and bodies everywhere, how am I gonna approach that?
Adam Pendley:
- Well some of the same skills are gonna become vitally important. And that's what I was gonna say is that-
Bill Godfrey:
- I mean, you're still gonna think that that's an active shooter until proven otherwise, right? Same posture.
Adam Pendley:
- From a definition standpoint, the difference is often motive. You know, so one data set says that it has to be indiscriminate stranger killing, you know, with no other motive than that. Whereas mass killing can be people that know each other. And you know, I remember responding to an incident some years ago where it was a large outdoor party, and two individuals got in a argument with each other and shot at each other, but the result was 14 people being shot that were around them.
But to your point, Bill, is that, as you're responding to that, the motive doesn't matter. You know that you have people that are shooting, you have innocents that are going down, and you have to get in there and stop that active threat, build a response in the chaos of what's going on. And the same skills that you would use to something that's defined as an active shooter by dispatch is the same whether it's a mass shooting, an active shooter event, an unknown, you know, type of shooting with multiple people down.
Bill Godfrey:
- Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, Coby, we've seen this, unfortunately, far too many times. You know, the high school football game and two groups get into an argument and you know, a couple of people pull out guns and start shooting or one person pulls out a gun and starts shooting and then people get indiscriminately hit. You're a cop going into that. What are you thinking?
Coby Briehn:
- It really doesn't matter. You probably really aren't gonna know it's an a planned event till afterwards, till the post investigation happens. All you know is there's a lot of people injured. You don't take your skills learned from, let's just say from a active attack, active shooter class, you can't house those skills up because your definition doesn't meet it. Oh, it's a family barbecue, it's a gathering. It's just him versus him or her versus her kind of thing and then we have the collateral damage. It doesn't matter. I still need to, one, stop the killing, apprehend that, stop that from the injuries happening. I have to stop the bleeding from happening or the death from happening, stop the dying. And then three, what's the third thing? Is we want to get them to the highest priority or highest level of care beyond the parking lot that we're currently operating in or whatever our collection area is and get them going.
So the skills are transferrable across the shift of the event. It's just the reasoning that those people are in front of me is for the investigators to figure out. Or what actions led up to them. It doesn't matter if they were put there by a planned event or a non-planned event, and I mean active shooter event versus just a happenstance event, a planned active attack event. It doesn't change my response to it and I still am doing the best I can with what I have.
Bill Godfrey:
- I mean, it's still the same priorities, is it not? Number one is threat, number two is rescue, the injured number three is clear and restore security.
Adam Pendley:
- I'm assuming their injuries are the same, no matter what the motive was.
Juan Atan:
- And going to your point, I mean, yeah, these numbers are fantastic and everything, but again, the response is gonna be the same. Somebody's got shot, multiple injuries. We're gonna get there, we're gonna take care of business. Like Coby was saying, we're gonna take care, you know, get the active threat, you know, neutralize them as much as possible. We're gonna take care of the injuries and take them to the higher level.
I mean, the numbers are great for us, you know, to have them and say, "Okay, these are things that happen." But at the end of the day, these events happen 24/7, give or take. Is our responses gonna change at midnight or is it gonna change at five o'clock in the morning? No, we're gonna respond accordingly. I mean, yeah, the data shows that different days, different hours, things happen a little bit more. But do we know when the tones go drop or you get dispatched, are we gonna change everything? No, we're gonna go and take care of business.
Adam Pendley:
- I mean, Adam, are we seeing an inflection point where, again, from the responder's point of view, I understand from an academic point of view and a research studying point of view, you've gotta define these things, you've gotta put them in the buckets, and then you gotta dissect the data. But from a responder's point of view, are we at an inflection point where we should be talking about a standard response package that is dispatched when a call hits a certain threshold?
And when I say that, I mean, you know, we've got reports of multiple people shot. Don't know whether it's an active shooter or not. We're gonna assume it is, trigger that response. That's a minimum package of law enforcement, including supervisors. It's gonna be a minimum package of fire, minimum package of EMS, that's all gonna go to the scene and execute this response process, this response posture until they deal with any threat, rescue the injured, and clear and restore safety and security.
Adam Pendley:
- Sure. And I think those two things go hand in hand. Having a response protocol and having the discipline and the training to dispatch those packages right from the start and knowing that there's gonna be different roles along the way. What you don't want is, in a movie sort of way, having dispatch say, "Everyone available, go," right? Because you're starting your response with chaos before you even had a chance to even get there.
So the advantages of having a defined package, and we've talked about this many times before, of having your dispatchers participate in this training so they can recognize the different types of the way that these things can be called in. You know, we talk about the shooting a lot, but a lot of times these, these start with a vehicle-borne attack. You know, somebody runs into a crowd with a vehicle and then gets out and starts shooting. Or it starts with a "suspicious person with a gun" call.
That, as soon as you get information that, "Hey, this doesn't sound or look right because of the way these calls are coming in," the dispatchers working with each other, having a supervisor step in and say, "No, this sounds like this is shaping up to be an active assailant type attack. Let's go ahead and hit the button for, you know, 10 law enforcement, two supervisors, a commander, and on the fire-EMS side, the standard, you know, four engines, four rescue units, a chief," and, you know, all of those things that get toned out right from the start because what has to go along with that is that you've had some training in advance.
You know that those first arriving are gonna form up contact team one, right behind them, contact team two is gonna come in and they're gonna move towards the active threat. Tactical triage and transport are gonna stay put and manage the follow-on responders that your incident command on both the fire-EMS and police side are gonna establish a command post somewhere to start medical branch and start the law enforcement incident command. You know, so there's just a lot going on and the packages are good, but they have to go hand in hand with the training. And I think the data helps you understand the training.
Bill Godfrey:
- Yeah, and would you guys agree that it's probably important, again, from a responder point of view that we take a broad look at the data that could touch this. Not just one set of data or one set of reports.
So for example, where it can be a little misleading, when you look at the active shooter data, the stuff that meets the definition for an active shooter event, it is a true statement to say over the last five years, school shootings are declining.
Adam Pendley:
- Yes.
Bill Godfrey:
- However, when you look at a different data set that tracks gun violence in schools, the number of gun incidents in a school is steadily increasing over that same period of time. And you say, "Okay, well wait a minute. Why does that really matter?" Well, here's why it matters. If a kid takes a gun to school and fires it, accidentally, on purpose, shoots himself, shoots somebody else, shoots the wall, but a gunshot, a gun has been fired in school, that is going to trigger a response, is it not?
Adam Pendley:
- Absolutely.
Bill Godfrey:
- And you know, what are we thinking? We get dispatched to a school for a shooting in progress.
Coby Briehn:
- Here it is. Here it is.
Bill Godfrey:
- Right? Everybody's mind, whether active shooter was mentioned on the radio or not is irrelevant, Everybody's mind just clicked into that mode, did it not?
Coby Briehn:
- Right. What if? What if? Yeah.
Adam Pendley:
- So it's funny, there's very much a balance here. There's a bookend that we're talking about is that the initial response should be a disciplined package that meets a definition that everyone knows a role when they arrive and it's gonna be a sequence of things. You know, the same officers are not gonna always be the first ones to get there, driving distance, everything else. So everyone has to have this disciplined response and exactly what definition it fits doesn't matter at that moment.
However, once you get in there with your disciplined response and your early intelligence is telling you that this was a kid who brought the gun from school. We got him, we got the gun, he says he did it on accident, that you're just as adept at toning down your response and bringing it back down to a reasonable level and getting everyone back on the same page, right?
Juan Atan:
- You hit the nail on the coffin, toning down the response depending on what we already got, the information. Do we elevate the response or do we start toning down the responses 'cause we found out the information from the intelligence? And that's one of the important things that, you know, with these events that we have to be aware of. What's the additional information do we have as we're responding to these calls?
'Cause everybody, like you mentioned, it's a school shooting, everybody thinks active shooter, everybody's going a hundred miles a minute to get there, but all of a sudden, we get additional information, dispatch tells us, "Hey, the child accidentally brought it in." Hey, let's tone it down. You know, let's tone down the response now and go non-emergency, get there, and work out the situation.
Bill Godfrey:
- And then following onto that, how important is it that we as responders have the self-discipline to follow the procedures, to do what we're told to do, to stay on that task and when we're told, you know, we can deescalate this thing, we actually have the self-control to bring that adrenaline back down.
Adam Pendley:
- Right.
Coby Briehn:
Put it in check.
Bill Godfrey:
- Yeah. How important is that?
Coby Briehn:
- It's very important. You're gonna get everybody that's gonna want to go, you're gonna get guys that aren't listening to the right channel. They got it through cell phone, some kind of text message, however their notification to the event was, and then how can we weaponize that information and put it out? It's like, "Okay, hey, we got it under control." We don't need 75 cops here. What we need is seven here to handle this. We don't need to flood it with this, but we also have to be ready for when we do need that. 75's not gonna handle it, we're gonna need 125. I'm just giving numbers out.
So it's that first wave of information. Let's hope for the best, but plan for the worst kind of thing. We're planning for it, and do we need to keep going on with that plan or can we backtrack it, scale it to what it actually is, an example here of incidental or accidental discharge. Negligent discharge inside, inside the structure, kid wanting to show it off, be it intentional or unintentional discharge of the gun towards somebody, whatever that was. But we're already thinking for the worst. That's what's gonna happen unless we tell them, "Whoa, we got it. It's not the worst. It's not that bad."
Bill Godfrey:
- And isn't it also, I mean, if we don't have the discipline, the self-discipline to control our movements and tone it down, we end up with the ability to unintentionally escalate the event. There was a really, really notorious case study that we look at and talk about on a fairly regular basis where the initial few officers were running with their weapons drawn through a very populated space. They were quite a distance away from where the shooting had occurred. And the shooting and the shooter were dispatched almost immediately. I mean, in less than 60 seconds, the thing was done.
But for minutes that followed, we had officers, weapons out, in their hand running and sprinting through very public places that caused a reaction.
Adam Pendley:
- Right. So I think that's what the data tells me is that these things can look like a lot of different situations, which means that we can train for the worst-case scenario, but we need to realize that these things are resolved in a wide variety of different ways, which should educate us to the idea that we need to get in there, do what we're trained to do, but then have the discipline to trust our initial intelligence, trust what our eyes and ears are seeing, trust what our witnesses are telling us, and that we can say we got this under control.
We can use tools in the toolbox like, you know, tactical guiding resources, staging, guiding some resources, command having the authority to say we are done. And sometimes, when I'm speaking to law enforcement groups, a first-year sergeant does this really well. They go to a car crash and if the car crash ends up with a person trapped and it's more complicated, they call for some additional units. If they get there and there's five officers there and they just need one person to write the crash and one to handle the tow, they tell the other three to get back in service, go away. You know, go back to work, right?
We do resource management really well, but then sometimes, because we call it an active shooter, we end up kind of losing our minds a little bit and we get kind of way off track. But I think that's changing, and again, I think that's where data is really good for training and identifying the types of situations you can face, but then actually getting in there and doing some exercises and understanding when you respond that to have the discipline to trust and do what you need to do and do what you're seeing.
Bill Godfrey:
- Yeah, and I completely agree and I think the message that that I would say is, looking at data is crucial. It's part of your job responsibility. You can't just look in one place though. You need to fully understand what the data is that you're looking, what it represents, what it doesn't represent. And then look at other sources and say, "From my perspective as a responder, not as a PhD researcher, but as a responder, what information am I gonna have at time of dispatch? What's that gonna sound like and how should I react accordingly?" And then what data sets can help inform that.
And so for our listeners, if you haven't seen this report, it's about 50 pages long, from the FBI and ALERRT, great reports, some great data and studies in here. We will put a link to it in the show notes. We also have a couple of one sheets that we've put together that are just summaries of some of the key highlight items. We'll also link to those in the show notes as well. Final thoughts, Adam?
Adam Pendley:
- Trust what you're seeing. The situation will evolve. It's good to train up front, but trust what you're doing when you get on scene.
Bill Godfrey:
- [Bill] Coby, final thoughts.
Coby Briehn:
- Doesn't matter how the injury got there, they're injured. Treat it as you need to, deal with the problem as you see fit.
Bill Godfrey:
Bill Godfrey:
- [Bill] Juan?
Juan Atan:
- In giving a size-up, letting everybody know what you see, what you hear. So that way, we could up the response or tone down the response.
Bill Godfrey:
- And I think for me, just remember, it's from your perspective as a responder, what matters is what it sounds like when it came out over the radio and then what you actually find on the ground when you get there, and the rest of it should be informed by that. Thank you guys for talking about this.
Coby Briehn:
- Thank you, sir.
Bill Godfrey:
- Interesting topic. Data can be somewhat of a boring topic, but I think there's really, really great information in here.
Coby Briehn:
- For sure.
Bill Godfrey:
- For those of you that are listening, if you haven't liked and subscribed to the podcast, please do so. If you have some questions or comments, we're always happy to field those. Please feel free to shoot them our way. Thank you to our producer Karla Torres for making us look and sound great as always. And until next time, stay safe.