Collaborative Wisdom: The New Frontier in Active Shooter Prevention

Recently, a number of articles have been posted on this platform about law enforcement evolving in their response to an active shooter. The theme is “police can do better by doing better.” Many of these articles have disparaged civilians, along with other police and military experts, regarding the phenomenon of active shooters. Many of these “so-called” experts – and I say that in quotation marks – state they are the “real” experts because they are lifelong police and lifelong military, or they crossover both. Few have an academic understanding of this horrific topic, let alone an understanding from the inside.

The Active Shooter Prevention Project (ASPP), LLC has experts from almost every walk of life, from intelligence agencies to Tier 1 operators, local, state, and federal police, and myriad professionals from Fortune 500 companies to professional sports league leadership. Indeed, there’s no single expert in active shooter studies, but we bring a core of people together and rely on each other’s input. Having the moniker of “active shooter expert” comes with a lot of misconceptions and a lot of connotations that sometimes get misrepresented. We only profess to know the solutions to the most thorough prevention measures surrounding active shooter incidents and how to keep them from happening.

There is a stigma surrounding the term “expert” that mistakenly associates the term with ego, and this is part of the problem.  The true mark of an expert is in setting ego aside. In the words of Denis Waitley, author of The Psychology of Winning and several other works: “Never become so much of an expert that you stop gaining expertise. View life as a continuous learning experience.” 

What we know is we have been to and investigated many of the shootings that have senselessly taken the lives of too many too soon. We have been specifically requested by government agencies since 2012, have been court-ordered to recreate a shooting – standing in the blood of those poor souls -, have measured the responses, and provided investigative feedback. As registered experts in almost every state and many federal districts, we’ve testified and investigated active shooters after they have happened, which is an unthinkable and painful endeavor.

We discuss post-event because the police that come forward with quotes from “experts” and solutions that do not work continue to evolve their misguided theory of response, which is that better and quicker is the only solution. Look no further than the evolution of the active shooter marker of the 1999 Columbine tragedy (not the first or the worst, but a national watershed moment) with a 45-minute response, 23 years later in Uvalde, with a one hour and 17 minute response time. With more funding, a national standard for response, and billions invested in gear, equipment, and training, we lay the foundation for the case or a prevention standard because response times are getting worse.

Many call for a national standard, not realizing we’ve created “A” National standard called the P.R.O. Model (Prevention. Response. Options.). This includes all facets of the issue. It exposes the collective reluctance to focus on prevention, the failures in response, and the options to bridge them all together. We can make locations as active shooter resistant, as they are fire resistant.  We, as a whole nation, are doing exceptionally well preventing death via our fire standards. Others say there needs to be a national standard like a fire code or fire prevention, yet at the same time, say that it is only the police that can solve the active shooter scourge, which does not propel the discussion forward. Here’s the difference: the big red trucks and firefighters inside are not the prevention solution. They exist solely for when the fire breaks out.

Now, there are people within the departments who work on the prevention side who are critical, but there are also codes and options inside each location that the public attends to.  Those would include fire alarms, fire escapes, sprinkler systems, halon systems (now replacement gases to halon are used), and everything in between. That’s the same as behavioral tracking software (used at most school districts), early warning gun detection, hardening classrooms with window film and ballistic doors, and wrapping it up with ballistic material for covert ballistic doors. Not only are you hardening the facility, but you are also offering protection and a system that works for prevention.

Police who say they can fix this problem with more responses don’t understand that you can’t respond to something eight minutes (the national average to respond) in, and expect everyone to be ok. That’s like waiting for a fire truck to respond to fight the fire and then help notify people the place is burning.

I write this with complete humility and respect and do not claim to be the be-all and end-all expert, but being involved in the response to an active shooter, having a master’s degree with a capstone focus on the phenomenon of active shooters, and being a retired police officer has given me some well-rounded information to go beyond the study of response application and delve into the prevention secrets that are right there for the sharing.

Albert Einstein said it this way: “Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value.”  He also said this of expertise: “Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning.”  Expertise should not be an end goal.  It should be the point where innovation and inquiry intersect with experience.

We are all human and want to help, but besmirching one another and qualifying or belittling someone over their abilities by committee or opinion is dangerous and divisive. We invite everyone to share in the exploration of ideas and solutions, but if this community continues to tear each other apart because of perceived importance, ASPP will still be strumming along while walking the walk.

We invite you to walk with us.

Respectfully, Chris Grollnek

#NEVERHERE #activeshooterexpert

Contributor: Glenn Norling

Albert Stepanyan Tod Langley CEO Scott Hyderkhan Gregory Shaffer Daryl Parker Aaron L. Witt, Active Threat Consultant Jennifer Russell, Co Founder SVP CSO Kris Grenier Jason Horner, CPA Scylla Scott Svehlak Alan Pugh MidPoint Technology Group Davista ZeroNow Clear Armor Scott Sieracki Dave Trudeau SafeWood Designs AMP Global Strategies Louis Barani Frank ONeill, CISSP, GCCC, GISP, PSP Blackfish Intelligence Brig Barker Glenn G. Norling, MA Justin Partridge Ruben Roel David Forman Gary Connor Imron Hussain Fawzia Atcha, Ph.D. Amesite Daniel Zilinski, PMP, CISA Peter J. Forcelli  Greg Vecchi Amesite IMRON Corporation Imron Hussain

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