Dealing with Active Shooters from the Perspective of a Former School Resource Officer

I worked as a school resource officer at a 5-A high school (approximately 2,500 students) from 1999-2002. During that time, I became extremely interested in school violence, and active shooters in particular. I was the only police officer assigned to the school, and it quickly became apparent that I would have to deal with violent situations by myself.

After being involved in several violent encounters with suspects (some involving students and some involving non-students), I discovered that putting out an assist-officer in a school was completely different than putting out an assist on the street. This was because once the responding units arrived at the school, they still had to find me in the building. Even if I gave my exact location inside the building, none of the patrol officers were familiar enough with the school to know where I was talking about. This realization made me start thinking about what would happen in the event that an active shooter incident occurred on my campus.

Imagining an active shooter at my school helped me make several pre-decisions. Based on my experience with the delayed response of other officers to an officer-assist (which is among the highest priority calls that an officer will respond to) at my campus, my relationship with the staff and students, and the fact that my wife was a teacher in the building; I decided that I would not wait for back-up before hunting and engaging a shooter on my campus.

During the summer of my second year as a school resource officer, I was working in one of the schools during a summer school session.  We had several rival gangs attending the session and fights started occurring during break periods.  During one of the breaks, I positioned myself in the center of the main hallway near a stairwell when I heard several gunshots coming from the stairs.  I drew my weapon and started yelling at the kids to go into their classrooms while I focused on the stairwell, but the kids ignored me completely.  I then started yelling at the teachers to get their kids into a classroom, but they ignored me too.  I got on the radio and told dispatch that shots had been fired and requested assistance, giving them my location in the building. 

While I was going through this process, I observed a man walking down the stairs so I challenged him and he complied.  As it turns out, he was a coach and had heard what he thought were gunshots so he walked over to see what was going on.  He had found a string of fireworks, which had produced the noise.  With the crisis over and when my adrenalin levels returned to normal, I began to mentally de-brief the situation.  I realized that even though the “shots” were extremely loud from my position, none of the teachers in the hallway and nearby classrooms heard the noise.  They were completely oblivious to the entire situation.  Most of the students hadn’t heard the noise, and those who did hear it did not view it as the source of any kind of threat.  I was completely amazed at the level of frustration I felt in that short incident.

When I attempted to disregard in-coming officers, the dispatcher didn’t acknowledge me.  I called dispatch on the phone and found out that none of my radio transmissions had gotten out.  Even though my radio worked every previous time I had used it in the school, I had now discovered a “dead zone” inside the building that effectively cut off my primary line of communication. 

I was dismayed that an unarmed coach would walk towards the source of what he thought were gunshots, while I wasted valuable time (if there had been an actual active shooter) attempting to deal with things that were apparently out of my control (trying to clear the hallways).  I found that I wasn’t truly prepared for this type of event, either mentally or tactically.

I then began looking for training designed for one officer responding to an active shooter. Unfortunately, all of the training I found was designed for 3-4 officers responding as a team. When I inquired about receiving some in-house tactical training that might help me deal with an active shooter, I was told that this type of incident would need to be handled by 2-4 officers, and if I found myself having to respond alone I needed to “do my best”.

I was disappointed by what I thought was illogical thinking and a general refusal by the law enforcement community (my own department included) to address the very real possibility that officers would be forced to act alone when responding to an active shooter incident. Although I did not have to deal with this type of incident during my time in the school, other officers across the country did.

Many people in our profession still believe that a multi-officer response should be the main focus of our training. This is a mistake. We should design our active shooter training for a single officer response. Ron Borsch advocates a “Multi-directional SOLO Officer Response” philosophy that emphasizes that our best chance to successfully stop the active shooter is to split up immediately in an effort to locate the suspect faster. As additional officers arrive, they can each act independently and begin searching for the suspect. Speed is the critical element in stopping a killer during one of these incidents.

I understand the argument that drives the multi-officer approach, but I am not sold on that theory. In defensive tactics training, we must teach an officer how to survive a fight by himself because there are going to be many situations where he is forced to engage a suspect before help arrives. Why do we neglect the active shooter scenario?

I cannot think of many potential incidents in my city that would make the national news faster than an active shooter, especially if it takes place in a school. Even though the chances of it happening are slim, the consequences could have a devastating impact on my community. We must prepare individual officers to act independently in these instances. Not because we necessarily believe that acting alone is the best tactical choice, but because time is such a critical factor in these instances that waiting for a back-up may be as bad as not responding at all.

Once officers are skilled in acting alone, then we can compliment those basic skills with the techniques required to operate with one, two or three back-up officers. Teaching the techniques in this order will prepare officers for the worst case scenario, but will also allow them to work as a team if the situation allows them that luxury.

Ron Borsch, a 30-year law enforcement veteran who manages the SEALE (South East Area Law Enforcement) Regional Training Academy in Bedford, Ohio, offers a class called Tactical First Responder.  This course focuses on training officers to effectively deal with an active shooter while they are alone, and is exactly what I was looking for when I was a school resource officer.  Unfortunately, my department would not have sent me to the training even if I had known about it back then, but after my experiences as an SRO I would have gladly paid my own way to this training.

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