Active Shooter Prevention Standards

Mission, Standards and Why We Do This

A stranger with a problem should be able to find help before the worst day, not after it. That is the whole mission, and the active shooter prevention standards below are what we have committed to in order to keep it honest.

Why this company exists

Before any of this was a profession, a police detective corporal responded to an active shooter incident and arrived to find a problem that response could no longer solve. There was a vehicle borne improvised explosive device. More than 1,000 rounds were fired. 168 of them were fired at the officers responding.

Everyone did their job that day. That is exactly the point. By the time the first unit rolled, every remaining decision was a response decision, and the outcome had already been shaped months earlier by people who never knew they were shaping it.

Chris Grollnek, Chairman of the Board & Founding Principal, is that detective. He is a former U.S. Marine and retired police detective corporal. He went back to school afterward and wrote his graduate capstone on the active shooter phenomenon, because the existing literature did not answer the question he had walked away with: what would it have taken to interrupt this before it started?

The P.R.O. Model™ is the answer he built. That is why we lead with prevention rather than response. It is not positioning. It is arithmetic learned the expensive way.

The Active Shooter Prevention Project, LLC (ASPP™) exists because the national conversation spent two decades getting faster at responding and almost no time getting better at preventing. Response is necessary and we teach it. It is also, every single time, an admission that prevention already failed. The federal research says the same thing: the FBI study Making Prevention a Reality examines identifying, assessing and managing the threat of targeted attacks, which is the ground our active shooter prevention standards are built on.

The active shooter prevention standards we hold ourselves to

**Table 1.** ASPP™ operating standards, by commitment and the practice that enforces it
Commitment	How it is enforced in practice
Prevention first	Every engagement starts with what could interrupt an attack during planning, not with how fast people evacuate
Evidence over marketing	We point at independent sources rather than reciting numbers. Standings move, and the published record is the authority ^a
Independence	No hardware sold, no reseller agreements, no commissions. A recommendation that pays us is not an assessment
Dignity for the affected	Incidents, dates and locations are named. Victims and attackers are not, ever ^b
Honesty about limits	Residual risk never reaches zero and we say so in writing, including to people who would rather hear otherwise

Source: ASPP™ operating standards, as of August 2026.
^a This costs us. A cited benchmark is more persuasive in a sales meeting than a link. It is also the first thing to go stale.
^b Naming an attacker hands them the thing many of them wanted. Naming a victim costs a family something and buys the reader nothing.

What we will not do

A page of active shooter prevention standards that only lists virtues is a brochure. These are the things we turn down.

We will not sell fear. A room that leaves frightened has been handed a feeling instead of a capability, and frightened people do not perform. Be Prepared. Not Scared.

We will not promise safety. No assessment, no technology and no training reduces risk to zero. Any firm that tells you otherwise has told you something useful about the firm.

We will not take a political side on prevention. An attacker planning violence against a school, a church, a stadium or a shopping center does not check the voter registration of the people inside first. Evil does not discriminate, and neither do we. We have delivered the identical presentation to audiences on both sides of the aisle and the content has never moved.

We will not claim capability we cannot staff. Where a discipline is outside our depth we bring in the Community of Experts or we say the work is not ours to take.

The standard behind the work

The P.R.O. Model™, which stands for Prevention, Response, Options, was selected by the U.S. Department of Justice as “A” national standard for the Assistant United States Attorneys and across the Department for active shooter prevention, first for the 2022–2025 cycle and again for 2026–2030. The P.R.O. Model™ is also in use at some installations and commands across the Department of Defense. The national training video built on it was produced for 10,700 Assistant United States Attorneys.

It was created by Chris Grollnek, Chairman of the Board & Founding Principal, a former U.S. Marine and retired police detective corporal who was on scene at an active shooter incident before this became a profession. That is the origin of the whole thing, and it is why the framework starts before the shooting does.

The places we have stood

Super Bowl LVIII street banner in Las Vegas — Las Vegas, Super Bowl LVIII. A city becomes the venue, and the perimeter stops being a fence.

Field preparation at Allegiant Stadium ahead of Super Bowl LVIII — Inside the stadium before the crowd, which is the only time the building is honest with you.

Vince Lombardi Trophy on display at Super Bowl LVIII — The reason the whole apparatus exists, and the reason it has to work the first time.

Some of this work happens in rooms. A good deal of it happens standing on a sidewalk outside somewhere that used to be ordinary, looking at a building and understanding, too late to matter, exactly where the chain could have been broken.

These two photographs were taken by Chris Grollnek at places he went himself. They are here for one reason. Everything above this point, the standards, the refusals, the framework, exists because of people who are not here to read it.

A community memorial fence outside a venue where an attack occurred, covered with hand made stars, flowers and a banner sent from another city that had lived through the same thing — A fence in Colorado Springs, and a banner sent by people in Orlando who had already lived it. Nobody in either city should have needed the other.

A high school campus under morning cloud cover, an ordinary school day at a place that once had a day that was not ordinary — An ordinary morning at a school that once had one that was not. This is the whole job.

We do not name the people who were taken. That is a deliberate choice and it is the only way we know to honor them without turning a family’s worst day into someone else’s marketing. The way we honor them is by making sure there is no next one. Prevention is not an abstraction to anyone who has stood at a fence like that. It is the only answer that arrives in time.

Why it is a passion more than a business

We have done expert witness work in multiple cases for victims’ families. Sitting across from people who lost somebody changes permanently what you are willing to say in a sales meeting, and what you are willing to sell. They are also the reason the phrase we use is not a tagline: #NEVERHERE™ is a destination, and every community gets to claim it.

Mission and standards

Schools, children and sacred spaces

Workplace, duty of care and liability

Service, community and country

In the field and in the press

#NEVERHERE™ is the destination. The P.R.O. Model™ is how we get there.

The P.R.O. Model™ · P.R.O. Model™ Workshops · Request a consultation

Related ASPP Services

Training, Assessments and Workshops. Assessment, workshop and training delivery built on the P.R.O. Model™.
Active Shooter Incidents and What They Teach. What past attacks reveal about the window before the first shot.
Weapons Detection Technology. Detection, mapping and screening technology, including the Blue Grass Army Depot deployment.
The Community of Experts. The subject matter experts who support ASPP engagements.

Why this work matters to us

Prevention is not an abstraction. These are the people and moments behind it.