Another School Shooting—The Evolution of Police Response Continues

Last week a nationwide problem came to the Puget Sound region. We finally had a school shooting. Not a shooting where some kid brought a gun into school to show it off and accidentally pulled the trigger. A school shooting similar to ones that you’ve read about in one of the other corners of the country or seen on TV — kids screaming and diving for cover, groups running from the school with their hands up, chaos and confusion, people dying. As a police administrator with a 20 year career working in patrol operations I knew it was inevitable that Washington State would eventually have an active killing event that required a large-scale police response. This was that event and it included some of the personnel that I oversee.

At 10:59 on Friday October 24th, a student entered the cafeteria at Marysville-Pilchuck High School, pulled out a handgun and began shooting. A call came across our radio that the school was having an active shooter and at least five people were down. As a police agency that borders the City of Marysville (WA), our job is to help our law enforcement peers when the need arises. In this case that assistance came through the response of our personnel. 30+ officers drove lights and sirens to MPHS to fill a role on teams that would be seeking out the shooter, extracting students and directing them to relocation areas, or escorting aid personnel into warm zones where they could treat victims.

Unfortunately — and fortunately when you consider the dangers that cops and other first responders face on a day-to-day basis — the era where I was the leader of the pack is behind me. I’ve had my time in the field racing into a hot zone to try and “stop the bleeding” both literally and figuratively. My role now is not to respond to the event directly, but to provide the logistical support necessary for the brave men and women of our police department. They need someone behind the scenes giving them the tools they need to do their job. That’s what I was doing on Friday.

Active shooter events are not new, and we have been studying them for years. Over the last few decades there has been an evolution in how police deal with them. The Columbine High School massacre in 1999 was a watershed event in our response. Until that time, first responder’s role during a shooting was to contain the situation and request the assistance of special teams that would either negotiate with the suspects or use special tactics to dynamically enter the building and end the event. When the smoke cleared in 1999 police discovered that 15 people were dead and it was suspected that first responders may have been able to lower that number by intercepting the shooters and stopping the killing.

In response to the analysis of active killing events since 1999, we have developed “go-teams” capable of entering areas where shots are fired with nearly 720 degrees of view and the ability to fire multiple rounds at a shooter with assault rifles designed for accuracy and stopping power. Instead of waiting for SWAT, we were getting into groups of four or five and moving immediately to the sound of gunfire. This placed us in harm’s way, but was organized enough that we believe we could outgun a suspect while being protected by the cover of our own bullets. We were now intercepting these maniacs that were trying to set new death records before they were finished, thereby minimizing the deaths of innocent bystanders.

Since 1999 there have been several evolutions in our response to shootings. We’ve had so many of these events that we were able to analyze them and find ways to better our response and lower casualty counts. One metric that became very apparent was the number of suicides that occurred. The shooter was commonly ending his life during the event, both before and after the police arrived. One theory was that they wanted to remain in control of the incident and, if confronted, they would end it on their own terms — by killing themselves and not giving law enforcement the option of doing it for them. According to a recent FBI report, in 54 of the 160 active shooter incidents they studied between 2000 and 2013 the shooter(s) killed themselves either before or just after police arrival. This finding was already influencing how we were doing business; our go-teams were changing sizes. Instead of waiting for four or five officers to enter hot zones, we now only needed two (or sometimes one). If a shooting was occurring we wanted to work quickly to change the suspect’s plan — or to speed up the ending of the event through direct intervention or the suspect’s suicide. New response tactics, such as the Multi-Assault Counter-Terrorism Action Capabilities (MACTAC), are a result of these lessons learned. If you haven’t heard about it, you soon will.

All of these adjustments in our response have to do with the boots on the ground. They are changes to the tip of the spear. What about changes to the way we oversee these events? What can I do from my chair as an administrator overseeing police response? Let me harken back to last Friday and how I assisted with troop support on that day. As the event unfolded and our officers responded, I began monitoring multiple radio frequencies. I kept track of who was responding from our department, while listening to Marysville PD’s radio for updates on their call. My office became a command post of sorts and my white board was put to use to help keep track of the resources that were leaving the city. At the same time, I was assisting another supervisor with adjusting our organizational structure, moving detectives into uniforms so they could assist on the street while our patrol officers were gone.

In the midst of all this I began thinking about what my other roles should be. I was sitting at a desk looking at my computer when the thought of mining social media came to me. We talk about the dangers of social media frequently but forget that these internet tools may also serve a law enforcement function. Facebook and Twitter lead the way and students use them to provide very brief insights into their day. These mini-situation reports helped me on Friday as I fired up the Twitter Advanced Search and began refreshing buzz words that linked me into the intel being posted by students that had been in the cafeteria in Marysville. The television coverage had not yet ramped up, so this was my first glimpse at what was happening on site. While there’s no way to filter out misinformation, I figured it could give me a clue as to the shooter’s movement, identity and whether or not he was working alone. I was seeing pictures, videos and recaps of the shooting within seconds. Ten years ago we may not have collected any of that information, even days later.

After the fact we discovered that the shooter, a high school freshman, turned the gun on himself within minutes of the shooting. The active event was probably over before our officers even responded. The event was tragic. It did, however, give the hundreds of officers that responded that day a lesson in how to deal with large-scale coordinated efforts. It also gave their agencies an opportunity to improve efficiencies in their deployments to in progress events. For my agency, the take away amounted to another evolution in police response to school shootings — a need to establish a social media intelligence position that could monitor information on key sites and provide real time updates. If you tweak the Marysville scenario and the killing hadn’t ended so soon, this intelligence could be used to focus in on a shooter’s location and save lives.