DHS Fires Back with Active Shooter Preparedness

The Department of Homeland Security is hosting an Active Shooter Preparedness site loaded with a variety of interactive, web-based tools and instructional aids.

Poster from DHS Active Shooter Preparedness

The Active Shooter Preparedness site offers the following resources 

• Active Shooter: What Can You Do Course
• Active Shooter Webinar
• Active Shooter Workshop Series
• Active Shooter: How to Respond Resource Materials
• Options for Consideration Active Shooter Training Video
• U.S. Secret Service (USSS) Active Shooter Related Research
• Active Shooter Resources for Law Enforcement and Trainers: Request for Access to Joint Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) Portal
 

Most of the material hosted by DHS is ready-to-use or self-study format. This site is ideal for in-service training. According to the DHS Active Shooter Preparedness site:

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) aims to enhance preparedness through a ”whole community” approach by providing training, products, and resources to a broad range of stakeholders on issues such as active shooter awareness, incident response, and workplace violence. In many cases, there is no pattern or method to the selection of victims by an active shooter, and these situations are by their very nature are unpredictable and evolve quickly. DHS offers free courses, materials, and workshops to better prepare you to deal with an active shooter situation and to raise awareness of behaviors that represent pre-incident indicators and characteristics of active shooters.

For more, see prior MJ postings Soft Targets Attractive to Active Shooter Events and MJ Podcast #187: Inside Look at Net Talon. Also recommended: Net Talon

 

Highlights

Active Shooter: How to Respond Resource Materials provides quick and easy reading materials for businesses, offices and schools in preparing for an active shooter event. Print materials available include: active shooter booklet, active shooter poster and active shooter pocket card.

The Active Shooter Training Video gives simple and easy to follow recommendations for personal safety during a shooter event. This video is crisp and to the point and would be ideal for introducing the topic to a workforce and supporting training already in progress.

For those interested in case study, the United States Secret Service has provided several research papers related to active shooter events.

• Campus Attacks: Targeted Violence Affecting Institutions of Higher Education
• Prior Knowledge of Potential School-Based Violence: Information Students Learn May Prevent a Targeted Attack
• Assassination in the United States: An Operational Study of Recent Assassins, Attackers, and Near Lethal Approaches
• Protective Intelligence & Threat Assessment Investigations: A Guide for State and Local Law Enforcement Officials
• Threat Assessment: An Approach to Prevent Targeted Violence
• Threat Assessment: Defining an Approach for Evaluating Risk of Targeted Violence