Active Shooter Research Paper

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One of the hottest topics in law enforcement today is that of an active shooter. The active shooter has been involved in U.S. for decades causing fear and death. What recently seemed to bring this type of killer out into the worlds view again and majorly change the way law enforcement viewed handling this type of incident was the horrific shootings and killings done on April 20, 1999 at the Columbine High School in Colorado.
An active shooter is an individual actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a confined and other populated area. In most cases, active shooters use firearms and there is no pattern or method to their selection of victims. Active shooter situations are unpredictable and evolve quickly. https://www.dsac.gov/topics/active-shooter-resources …show more content…

No specific training or major policy changes happened. Active shooter incidents are now not only known nationally, but internationally known as well. A standard style of training has been developed for law enforcement in responding to these incidents in order for all responding agencies to have the same knowledge of how to handle this situation. Law enforcement agencies have moved forward in training that now meets the needs to help an active shooter situation. Law enforcement officers now have updated their equipment as far as weapons for be equal to the subject if not greater, entry tools, ballistic vests and shields, and different tactics to neutralize the threat rather than contain and negotiate. Upon arrival to the scene of an active shooter, the action for the first responders is to act immediately and head to the threat and neutralize it. There is no more waiting for SWAT to show up since the average arrival time for a SWAT team to arrive on seen and be put into action is around 50 minutes, whereas the average response time for first responder officers is around 3 minutes. https://leb.fbi.gov/2014/january/active-shooter-events-from-2000-to-2012 An active shooter tries to inflict as much damage as soon as possible before help …show more content…

More or less incidents? The amount of active shooter events has been on the rise since 2000. In the majority of all related incidents, the main choice of weapon has been the handgun. The next choice was some type of rifle. And finally, about 2 percent have used some type of IED. With tougher gun laws potentially coming into play and the amount of information that can be found on the Internet, it seems that, in the future, we may see more incidents involving IEDs.
New policies? Have been adopted from the local level all the way up to the federal level in dealing with active shooters. Policies have various approaches from solo officers going in to engage the threat, to forming contact teams usually comprised of at least four officers, too additional officers arriving to form up secondary teams for extraction, evacuation, or perimeter security
Look at the mental health side of this?? On the mental health side of this issue, Chief Riesling of the University of Wisconsin posited five phases active shooters go through. In the first phase the shooters seem to fantasize or are obsessed with other incidents. In the second phase they plan out what they intend to do. Phase three, they prepare and start acquiring what they will use to carry out their mission. Phase four is practicing how they will carry out the incident. Phase five, the actual mission. The mind set for an active shooter doesn’t appear to just snap and do it. The idea seems as it has been building

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