CRASE Training, and the Window It Misses

By Chris Grollnek, Active Shooter Expert · Active Shooter Prevention Project, LLC (ASPP™) · The Other Side of Public Safety

This is the fifth post in a series that takes the response curricula one at a time and asks each of them the same question: what happens in the window before the curriculum activates? We have already walked Run, Hide, Fight, Avoid, Deny, Defend and ALICE training. CRASE is next.

What does CRASE training actually teach?

CRASE stands for Civilian Response to Active Shooter Events. It was built by the Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training Center at Texas State University, the same ALERRT program the FBI named their national standard for law enforcement response in 2013. The civilian course carries the Avoid, Deny, Defend framework into schools, workplaces and houses of worship, and it is usually delivered by local officers who know the buildings they are standing in.

It is taught well, it is offered free or close to it in a lot of jurisdictions, and the research underneath it came out of event reconstructions rather than off a whiteboard. An organization that has put its people through CRASE training has done something real.

What window does CRASE training miss?

Here is the shape of the problem. CRASE begins at the moment a person becomes an attacker, and everything it teaches is correct from that moment forward. The difficulty is that the moment is the end of a process rather than the start of one.

The FBI studied the pre-attack behaviors of active shooters and found that each one displayed roughly four to five observable concerning behaviors over a span of weeks and months before the attack, and those behaviors were seen by classmates, coworkers, teachers and family, which is to say they were seen by exactly the people a CRASE class is teaching what to do afterward, at a point when there was still something to be done instead.

Across the 528 active shooter incidents recorded between 2000 and 2024, the pattern holds. Somebody knew something. The question worth asking is not whether your people would avoid, deny or defend correctly on the day; it is whether the person who was worried in March had somewhere to take it, and someone obliged to act on it.

What does that window look like from the scene?

Our founder, Chris Grollnek, Chairman of the Board & Founding Principal, is a Former U.S. Marine and retired police detective corporal who was on scene at one of these events, where the attacker fired 168 rounds at responders and left a vehicle borne explosive device behind. He has said since that no response class, taught by anyone, would have changed the weeks that led up to that afternoon. The work of an active shooter expert lives in that earlier stretch, and something there had to happen instead.

Where does CRASE fit in the P.R.O. Model™?

An organization that has bought CRASE has bought the R, and the R saves lives once the worst has already started. The P.R.O. Model™ is Prevention, Response, Options, in that order, selected by the U.S. Department of Justice as “A” national standard for 2022–2025 and again for 2026–2030, then in use at some installations and commands across the Department of Defense.

The order is the argument. A CRASE class delivered into an organization that already has a written reporting route, a named owner for concerns and a documented vulnerability assessment is worth more than the same class delivered into an organization where nobody knows who a worry goes to. Run them together. Teach CRASE in the fall, and have the threat assessment team meeting in September, and train the leader who has to make the call in an active shooter tabletop simulation before the call ever comes.

If you are weighing one purchase against the other, we wrote the buyer’s version of this argument at prevention vs response, with the seven questions to put to any provider.

Frequently asked questions

Is CRASE training worth it?

Yes. It is well built, widely available, and often free through a local agency. The caution is what the organization records afterward. A CRASE training roster proves attendance. It does not prove that the exposures in your building were found and closed.

What is the difference between CRASE and the P.R.O. Model™?

CRASE trains individual behavior during an event. The P.R.O. Model™ maps the whole timeline, with prevention ahead of response and options behind it. They cover different parts of the same problem.

Can CRASE training and prevention training run together?

They should. Keep CRASE for the response layer, and put an assessment, a reporting route and a named owner in front of it. Neither one has to be removed for the other to work. The same holds for A.L.I.V.E. training, which closes out this series.

Sources

Federal Bureau of Investigation. A Study of the Pre-Attack Behaviors of Active Shooters in the United States Between 2000 and 2013. 2018.
ALERRT Center, Texas State University. Civilian Response to Active Shooter Events (CRASE). Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training.
Federal Bureau of Investigation. Active shooter incident reports, 2000 through 2024.
U.S. Department of Justice, P.R.O. Model™ selection, 2022–2025 and 2026–2030.