9-1-1 Communicator Response to the Active Assailant

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“Communication is always the second casualty at an active shooter event.”

 

Universally, every active shooter event has demonstrated that 9-1-1 communication centers will be quickly overwhelmed at active shooter events. At the 2007 Virginia Tech Shooting, three dispatchers handled 2,027 emergency calls. At the 2012 Aurora Theater Shooting, 13 dispatchers handled more than 6,000 emergency calls. At the 2013 Paramus, New Jersey mall shooting, Paramus 9-1-1 received so many calls that they had to transfer calls to five New Jersey counties, the NYPD, and the State of Pennsylvania.

 

Numerous after-action reports have found the same problems with 9-1-1 communications at active shooter events. In some reports, reports have found that 9-1-1 communicators are very skeptical at first, not believing that callers are actually experiencing an active shooter event. In other cases, 9-1-1 communicators have had lengthy arguments with the callers about their location, not believing or understanding where they were. In other cases, 9-1-1 communicators have simply stated, “We have the call” and disconnected on callers who had critical information to share.

 

This presentation will discuss the concept of integrated law enforcement, fire, and EMS response. Multiple active shooter events in the United States have resulted in major delays for medical personnel to get to the injured. Numerous published research papers demonstrate that 33%-50% of the deaths are preventable with quicker treatment and rapid transport to a trauma hospital. This course will discuss the use of the Rescue Task Force model, as well as other types of integrated public safety response models.

 

We currently offer three different active assailant courses for agency 9-1-1 communicators:

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Basic 9-1-1 Communicator Response to Active Assailant Events:

This course is four hours long and is available both virtually and in-person. This course first describes the different active assailant events, integrated public safety response (law enforcement, fire, EMS, and emergency management). The second part of the course discusses numerous 9-1-1 considerations, including determining an ASHE response, warning signs of an ASHE, receiving the call, overwhelming calls, inconsistent information, triaging calls, questions to ask callers, dispatching the call, working the call, utilizing credible and actionable intelligence, the concept of “stale information”, sentinel benchmarks, protocol deconfliction, preparing callers for room entry, and more.

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This course is $3,000 for virtual or $4,000 plus travel expenses for in-person.

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Advanced 9-1-1 Communicator Response to Active Assailant Events:

This course covers the information in the basic course as well as additional topics. This course includes a deeper analysis of active assailant events, including active shooter, mass stabbing, vehicle-as-a-weapon, fire-as-a-weapon, and explosive attacks. Participants will review several case studies, including the Las Vegas 1 October attack, the New Orleans New Year’s Day vehicle-as-a-weapon attack, the 2020 Nova Scotia attacks, and more. This course will then examine 9-1-1 response much deeper, including radio system failure, CAD failure, “dropped” 9-1-1 calls, radio discipline, PSAP information sharing, three phases of 9-1-1 response, and more.

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This course is $5,000 for virtual or $6,000 plus travel expenses for in-person.

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Tactical Telecommunicator Response to Active Assailant and Terrorist Events:

This advanced 16-hour presentation covers the information in the basic and advanced course, as well as discussing the role of the tactical telecommunicator. This is for communicators trained both with active assailant response and terrorism response. Numerous concepts are discussed, including asymmetric attack tactics, situational awareness, “swarm ball”, working reunification centers to decompress 9-1-1, hostage events, officer ambushes, use of social media for intelligence gathering, and much more. Participants will review multiple case studies, including the Paris complex coordinated attacks, Uvalde school shooting, Charlotte U.S. Marshals ambush, and more. This course will also cover the concept of “swatting”, which has become a significant public safety problem.

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This cost for this two-day, in-person course is $10,000 plus travel expenses.

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Threat Suppression staff led the development and implementation of one of the nation’s largest joint public safety active shooter response protocols, training more than 400 9-1-1 dispatchers. In addition, our personnel have commanded multiple active shooter events and mass shooting events. For more information on booking these courses, please email info@ThreatSuppression.com or call 1-800-231-9106.