This is the interview from 11-7-17 with Yellowhammer Radio. Discussed the Texas church shooting and active shooters.
Yellowhammer Radio Interview on Texas Church Shooting 11-7-17
active shooter
Brett Winterble on KFMB Interview on Texas Church Shooting
This was the interview on The Brett Winterble Show on 760 KFMB in San Diego, CA, 10-06-17. Discussed the Texas Church shooting and Active Shooters and Active Shooter Response.
Brian Copeland on KGO-AM Interview 11-6-17
This is the interview I did with Brian Copeland on KGO-AM out of San Francisco, CA, on 11-6-17. We discussed the Texas Church Shooting and Active Shooters.
Active Shooter in Spokane, WA
Today there was an Active Shooter in Spokane, WA. Sadly, one student was killed and three others injured before one of the staff tackled the shooter and restrained him until police arrived. Here is a video I filmed live on Facebook discussing the shooting and a couple points that reinforce the things I am teaching in the Survive a Shooting course, and that I wrote about in the soon to be published Survive a Shooting book.
Watch the Active Shooter in Spokane, WA, video:
As I state in the video, the student who tried to stop the active shooter in Spokane, WA, should be considered a hero for trying to do something, and trying to help his fellow students. Sadly, he used the wrong tool. Crisis communications is a valuable skill, and the ability to defuse a situation and talk down a person who may commit violence is a valuable tool when facing a situation where it will work. Unfortunately, when a person is already shooting at people, killing them or trying to kill them, the time for talking is past and the only tool to stop the violence is counter violence. That’s why I recommended Tim Larkin’s book. He discusses this and explains the concepts very well.
Also, as I state in the video, this active shooter in Spokane, WA, shows that ordinary people can stop these active shooter events. People have done it before, and just as the staff member did today, people will stop these in the future too. That is why I teach what I teach. I don’t want people being helpless victims waiting for someone to save them. I want people to know what they can do to increase the chance of surviving.
Thoughts and prayers go out to all those in Spokane, WA. Especially to the family of the student who was killed.
Also see my tribute video: Sam Strahan & Joe Bowen: Heroes of the Spokane Shooting
Know Your Exits Save Your Life in an Active Shooter Event
Know your exits! This is a valuable thing to know during an emergency. Too often, most people try to exit out the entrance they came in during emergencies, and this often prooves fatal. Airline disasters and club fires both illustrate this point. Knowing nearest and alternate exits has saved people’s lives.
Many people teach to be aware. It’s true, situational awareness is very important for your safety. It is one of the most important things for your safey. But what should you be aware of? There are a number of things you should notice, and one key thing is to know the escape routes and the ways out of wherever you are. Know your exits!
Here is a video I recorded live on Facebook regarding this topic.
Active Shooter: Know Your Exits Video
Make it a game. Get your kids involved too. Teach them to always know the way out of wherever you are. Here is a short video I filmed in a mall discussing the importance of knowing exits and how many people won’t think of the exits going out the back of stores because we don’t normally use those exits. In an emergency, you can use them, and that just might save your life.
I hope these videos get across the importance of knowing how to get out of anyplace you are. You don’t have to dwell on it, just be aware of the ways out in case you need to exit quickly to save your life or that of others. Like I said above, you can make a game of it to help get used to recognizing the ways out. Make it fun for your kids and they will be learning a life saving skill without even knowing it.
Like I always say, I sincerely hope you never need to know where the emergency exits and alternate ways out are. But if you do, I sure hope you have been aware. I want you to be a survivor.
Run Zig Zag or Not from an Active Shooter?
Run Zig Zag or Not from an Active Shooter was recorded live on Facebook. In the video I talk about why I believe you should just run as fast as you can away from the shooter and not worry about zig zaging.
Here’s the video:
This is Greg’s website that I mention in the video: Active Response Training
Movement Saves Lives! Active Shooter Response
Movement Saves Lives!
There is a reason “Move!” is in the center of the Active Shooter Triangle used in the Survive a Shooting course and featured on the Survive a Shooting posters. (See them over in the right sidebar.)
In an active shooter situation, you must do something immediately. You must move! When the adrenaline rush hits, people go into the fight or flight response, but there is another “f” and that is freeze. We can’t afford to freeze in such situations. Remembering to breathe, having a plan, and prior training are all important to reduce or prevent this freeze reaction. Freezing and remaining motionless can mean death. Movement can save your life.
What Movement Saves Lives?
Any movement is better than freezing, but what you do will be determined by your location to the shooter and your environment. You can escape, which could be running away or going out a window. You might move quickly to lock and barricade the door to deny the shooter access to you by keeping him out. If the shooter is right there, your best option my be to attack back and take him out. You attack back with anything available. If you are armed, use what you have. If unarmed, grab an improvised weapon or just use the tools you were born with by tackling the shooter and pounding his head into the floor with hammer fists. What you do is sometimes not as important as doing something. In almost every situation, doing something is going to be better than doing nothing.
I remember when a report came out regarding a plan to throw cans at an armed intruder if he came into a classroom. Some people were quick to criticize this. I’m not going to criticize it, because it’s better than not moving! Creating chaos and movement make it extremely difficult to shoot someone. Being hit with cans is going to mess up the killer’s OODA Loop and make it difficult to focus on his original task. This can create the opening to then tackle and take out the shooter. This is a lot better than jumping under desks to hide and hope.
Bottom Line
Movement saves lives, so move. Do something. Escape, deny, or attack back. I’m always ecstatic when people in my classes say, “I never thought of that, but I could do it if I had to…” That is what the Survive a Shooting course (read review) is all about. It provides people with options to increase their chances of surviving. Moving is key. Movement saves lives!
Movement Saves Lives – FaceBook Live video recorded 8/1/17
Why the Survive A Shooting course?
This is why Alain Burrese created the Survive A Shooting course:
After the July 2012 mass shooting at the movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, Alain made and posted this video to his Best Safety Tips YouTube channel. (Later moved to the Survive and Defend channel.)
Alain made a commitment right then to do something to help people so they wouldn’t have to live in fear and be helpless victims when these sick killers took out their frustrations and sick notions against innocent people.
Less than six months later, December 2012, the terrible Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting occurred. Being a father of an elementary school age daughter, this senseless killing hit Alain hard and he reconfirmed that he must do something to help people.
At this time, Alain had considerable experience teaching people. He’d taught conflict resolution, safety and self-defense classes and courses, as well as the martial art of Hapkido. But these Active Shooter and Active Threat situations needed something a bit different. So to add to his knowledge of safety and self-defense, Alain started studying Active Shooter incidents and how to respond to them.
This study included books, DVD programs, on-line courses, and articles (both on-line and magazines) on the topic. It included networking and discussing the topic with other experts. It also included attending an 8-hour Emergency Response To An Armed Intruder course taught by Safariland Training Group certified instructors. Alain then went through the instructor training and became certified himself. Over the last three and a half years, Alain has taught as part of a team that has taught this 8-hour course to around 4,000 community members on what to do when the unthinkable happens.
Alain started appearing on radio shows around the country to share information to help people when these events happen. He’s been on the radio in Florida, New York, California, Montana, Nevada, Michigan, Texas, and he continues to appear as time permits.
Alain found with all of this study that many of the resources lacked what he wanted to see in a book on the topic, so he is working on his book Survive A Shooting. It will be the definitive book resource for people on this topic. But just reading a book or watching a short video on YouTube isn’t enough.
Literally thousands of evaluations of the course Alain and the team were teaching commented on how empowering the training was. But because that course takes a team to teach, logistically it is difficult to get it out to more organizations. The 8-hour time commitment is also difficult for many businesses and organizations.
Alain wanted a course that would still empower people and show them that people don’t have to be helpless victims and that there are things that can be done before, during and after these horrific events to increase your odds of surviving. Alain wanted to empower people and teach them to be survivors.
The Survive a Shooting course does just that. It is only 4 hours long, so it is much easier for many businesses and organizations to fit into their schedules. Alain can bring this course to businesses and organizations all over the world. Bring him in and he can teach your people. So logistically it is also much easier than the course taught by the team of instructors.
Alain is saddened by the increase in these horrific events. But he is glad that his goal, standing out in front of the Batman movie poster, of helping people in these situations is now materializing on such a large scale. Helping thousands of people is not enough, he wants to help tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands. People should not be helpless victims!
To increase these numbers into the hundreds of thousands, or millions, yes, let’s think big and help millions, Alain will finish the book to introduce the basic information to people in that format. He will continue to teach as many as he can, but realizing that he is limited to so many days a year, he is also creating a Train the Trainer course so others will be able to learn from him and use the Survive a Shooting course as a platform and class to teach their own organizations and communities. He’s also looking at developing an on-line course to help others in that format.
Read a Review of the Survive A Shooting course.
Yes, the goal and commitment Alain made in front of that movie theater is materializing. Stay tuned for these new developments to occur, but right now, go ahead and book Alain to teach your group or organization while he still has time slots on his calendar.
Learn to survive, you don’t have to be a victim!
Active Shooter Defense Tactics on the MCS podcast
I did a podcast with Modern Survival and Combat Magazine with Jeff Anderson. Click the picture to go there to listen.
Active Shooter Court Rulings
Recent active shooter court rulings throughout the country have allowed negligence suits filed by victims of Active Shooters to proceed against employers for failing to provide defensive training to their employees. In other words, companies can no longer avoid their corporate responsibility to provide training on both how to spot potential active shooters and on how react if so confronted.
One of the allegations in the lawsuit against the town of Newtown and the Newtown Board of Education was lack of training. The lawsuit also alleges the town and school board were negligent in not having a more secure entrance to the school because it did not have bulletproof glass on the front windows and for having classroom doors that couldn’t be locked from the inside. (All things covered in the Survive a Shooting course.)
The 66-page lawsuit filed after the terrible Sandy Hook shooting lists a variety of reasons why the plaintiffs consider the school system to have been negligent, resulting in the many deaths there.
According to the lawsuit, school officials failed to provide the school with classroom doors that could be locked from the inside, thereby making the “lockdown” aspect of that school’s safety procedures virtually impossible to follow.
The lawsuit also alleges that school officials failed to sufficiently train and supervise the staff on the proper way to implement lockdown and evacuation plans. Classrooms in the school could only be locked from the outside with a key, in violation of state law, it alleges.
https://newtownbee.com/settlement-offers-made-in-sandy-hook-school-lawsuit/
According to an article by James Cameron, CPP, recent active shooter court rulings relative to liability lawsuits have shown active shooter scenarios are now considered a “recognizable hazard” to employees.
One of the regulations under the Occupational Safety & Health Administration Section OSHA of the United States Department of Labor *General Duty Clause, Section 5 (a)(1) states, “Each employer shall furnish to each of his/her employees, employment and a place of employment which are free from recognized hazards that are causing or are likely to cause death or serious physical harm to his/her employees”.
Example from Cameron of recent active shooter court rulings:
In a July 2, 2013 court decision from Hennepin County, Minneapolis, MN, the court found fault with the employer for negligence and failing to train their employees. District Court Judge Denise Reilly allowed two negligence counts to proceed against the company, Accent Signage. The civil case was brought before the courts by the victims’ family members in response to an active shooter incident at a place of business.
This incident occurred as the gunman, Andrew Engeldinger, walked into his place of employment on September 27, 2012 with a pistol. Once inside, Engeldinger shot and killed numerous individuals before taking his own life. Court rulings like the one above places the liability on the employer to train their employees to recognize the indicators of the potential active shooter and how to respond when they are faced with an actual active shooter incident.
The charges basically follow the OSHA guidelines set forth under the “General Duty Clause” that the employer needed to make training available and reasonable safeguards to be put in place. One of the victims, Beneke’s family sued the Accent Signage and Engeldinger’s estate in February. Releasing the shooters estate from liability and holding the company responsible is a new shift in thoughts regarding pre-planning and prevention. Engeldinger shot and killed Beneke, and four other employees and co-workers along with a UPS deliveryman before committing suicide on September 27, 2012.
This case has now settled for an undisclosed amount of money by Accent Signage to the Beneke family.
Train Employees
Based on these recent active shooter court rulings, and OSHA recommendations, employers should implement training and notification programs/systems to educate employees on the known risks for workplace violence and the steps that can be taken by employees to minimize the potential for workplace violence. This includes being trained on how to effectively respond to workplace emergencies to include active shooter situations.