Active Shooter Response - Thought Experiment

[G22inSC]

What most people don't realize is that for the average person, their best weapon in this situation is their eyes and a cell phone.

Copied from my post in another message/forum...

Would I save my family in a active shooter situation? Darn skippy. My wife and boys will be out of harms way with known instructions for dispatch as I assess whether or not I can provide more assistance than harm. My wife will call 911 with any possible information such as location, suspect information, victim injuries and the fact that I am present, armed and wearing such and such clothing. If I can end the threat, I will do so but not at the expense of my family. I am not there in a marked patrol car in a uniform. I am a citizen out to eat with my family. It's a rough world these days and everyone needs to grow up and accept a little responsibility for their own safety. LE a lot of times does not protect everyone, we unfortunately get called later, pick up the pieces and try to hold someone accountable for their actions. Sad but true I know.

The posts about armed citizens intervening is up to each citizen. I will caution you to think of what may happen when the first officers arrive and spot you with a gun. Will you act quick enough and hear all the verbal commands they are giving in the midst of all the chaos? Will you even know they are on scene? I'm somewhat lucky in a small community that if heaven forbid something happened and I was involved off-duty, most responding officers from the surrounding jurisdictions would recognize me and I will be looking for them with a visible badge on dispay (along with my wife having already informed dispatch that I was there and my clothing description). I will only say that generally, LE is better trained and mentally equipped for the situation than a normal armed citizen. That is not to say that some armed citizens aren't 100 times more capable than some officers because that is very true. I'm just saying than normally that is not the case and you may create more problems than solutions by trying to act instead of being the best witness you can.

If I offended anyone here, I will apologize ahead of time. Like I said earlier, this is just my opinion and everyone is entitled to their own.

[26 Inf]

Okay. So, do you think - knowing that, when arriving on the scene of an in-progress active shooting in the United States of America, that one or more concealed carriers could possibly be present and engaging the active shooter - that the standards by which LEO evaluate the scene they arrive at for shoot/no-shoot decisions should be modified to reflect the reality that there are likely to be other good guys with guns in civilian clothing, and to possibly afford additional protection for non-LEO?

I don't see that happening for several reasons, the first being that for an officer operating in cognitive mode versus stress mode, mere possession of a weapon should not be the sole criteria for making the lethal force decision, I've mentioned that in a previous post. Additionally, in some circumstances, as G22inSC pointed out in his excellent post, if you are aiming a gun around the corner at someone in that situation, anything the officers might do to maximize your safety impinges the safety of the person(s) you are aiming the weapon at if you are the shooter - which they wouldn't know at the time.

I know this idea has been floated before in various places, but perhaps it has some merit to it (or more than I've seen it given the past): CHP "badges", or maybe CHP "sash" of some kind. You mention that badges carried by off-duty police officers have the potential to buy them some sort of good-guy identification in the moment, and possibly save them from being shot by another good guy.

Each year off-duty or plainclothes officers are shoot by other officers, sometimes with fatal results. The reason shoots cluster around the gun on realistic threat targets, and force-on-force badguys take a lot of hits on the hands is because that is what the officer/other person is focusing on - it is instinctive. In those situations auditory exclusion and visual narrowing are common reactions - the person may not see the badge in the persons hand, they sure the heck won't see it clipped to a belt or hanging around the neck.

My initial thought in composing my original post up there is that, if there are shoot/no-shoot criteria for LEO that would potentially allow them to kill non-LEO good guys in an active shooter scenario, then maybe their shoot/no-shoot criteria should be updated to reflect the fact that we do in fact live in a society where we can lawfully bear (and use) arms, and are likely to be doing so in an active shooter scenario. Does this make sense?

I'm sure as more states become constitutional carry states this will increase, officers are well aware that there are legal CCW practitioners out there, but you need to remember that even in constitutional carry states carry is not that widespread.

Do we believe that a non-LEO facing a plain-clothes LEO (both yielding firearms) would be treated similarly in court to the LEO were the non-LEO to shoot the LEO?

I do not know, but one consideration might be that the LEO had a duty to respond whereas the non-LEO did not.

[T2C]

Wearing a sash, other clothing or a badge to ID an off duty or plain clothes officer may or may not protect a person from being shot. I have been involved in training officers in Rapid Deployment techniques and I have seen people foul up under simulated stress, nothing like the stress of a real critical incident. You may get shot. If you watch the news closely, you will see at least a few articles per year concerning plain clothes LEO who have been shot by other LEO.


Contacting police dispatch and advising them you are a friendly and how you are dressed may or may not work. Dispatch does not always (almost always does not) provide responding officers with the information they receive by telephone, critical information or not. You may get shot.


The fact that some non-LEO carry a concealed firearm is covered in training. You may get shot.

What we have been teaching the civilian populace in concealed carry courses is to pay close attention to their surroundings for indicators that LEO are responding to the scene and near their location. If the threat has been neutralized or left your area, the handgun gets secured back in the holster and covered with clothing or placed in a school locker or closet, if time and circumstances permit. Naturally, your options are limited if a lot of people are near you when you have to secure the weapon. We also recommend the CCW holder flatten out on the floor face down with their hands behind their head with fingers interlocked. You should not be surprised if someone in a fleeing crowd who sees your handgun identifies you as the person who initiated the incident and was unlawfully shooting. Witnesses are often unreliable, especially during a critical incident. Expect to be handcuffed.

Even if you are not armed and in a school, church, daycare facility, etc., assisting other people you are still injecting yourself in a critical incident where weapons are being used and you may get shot by responding LEO, another concealed carry holder or someone nearby who grabbed a rifle out of their vehicle and responded to the incident.

The possibility of a parent, grandparent or good Samaritan stepping in to protect innocent lives is a reality and good CCW instructors at least engage students in conversation about what to expect if they insert themselves into a rapidly evolving deadly force incident. Good supervisors at LE agencies ensure trainers also cover the issue.

[glocktogo]

Okay. So, do you think - knowing that, when arriving on the scene of an in-progress active shooting in the United States of America, that one or more concealed carriers could possibly be present and engaging the active shooter - that the standards by which LEO evaluate the scene they arrive at for shoot/no-shoot decisions should be modified to reflect the reality that there are likely to be other good guys with guns in civilian clothing, and to possibly afford additional protection for non-LEO?

I know this idea has been floated before in various places, but perhaps it has some merit to it (or more than I've seen it given the past): CHP "badges", or maybe CHP "sash" of some kind. You mention that badges carried by off-duty police officers have the potential to buy them some sort of good-guy identification in the moment, and possibly save them from being shot by another good guy.

My initial thought in composing my original post up there is that, if there are shoot/no-shoot criteria for LEO that would potentially allow them to kill non-LEO good guys in an active shooter scenario, then maybe their shoot/no-shoot criteria should be updated to reflect the fact that we do in fact live in a society where we can lawfully bear (and use) arms, and are likely to be doing so in an active shooter scenario. Does this make sense?

You bring an interesting additional angle into it by adding to your scenario that the (presumably) non-LEO is ignoring verbal commands issued by the LEO. My knee jerk reaction to this is that I don't feel that ignoring verbal commands in this case justifies deadly force being applied by the LEO. It seems more reasonable to me that if the unknown person (to the LEO) were to present their weapon to him in a threatening way, then that would certainly justify deadly force.

Do we believe that a non-LEO facing a plain-clothes LEO (both yielding firearms) would be treated similarly in court to the LEO were the non-LEO to shoot the LEO?

You're not going to like my answer, but the answer is no. You aren't owed any special protections from harm in the midst of an active shooter scenario, just because you have a CCW permit. No, your actions won't be judged in the exact same manner as a uniformed LEO responding to an active shooter call, nor should they be. They have Qualified Immunity, you do not. They have a duty to respond, you do not. They are wearing immediately recognizable uniforms and are known to their fellow officers, you are not.

Off duty and plain clothes officers are shot and killed by uniformed officers every year. It happens because they're displaying a weapon and not obeying lawful commands of a uniformed officer. It's almost always written off as a tragic circumstance, but that the non-uniformed LEO had a duty to obey the commands of the uniformed LEO and everyone would do well to remember that fact. As someone who's worn a uniform for decades, I can't tell you the number of times an acquaintance or co-worker has encountered me off duty and said "I almost didn't recognize you without your uniform on...". That's in a completely benign scenario, not a highly charged threat environment. It speaks to a cognitive bias inherent in the human brain. They can't control it and neither can you. You see a danger (gun), you don't immediately recognize the holder as a good guy and you categorize that person as a threat. If the uniformed LEO reasonably determines that the threat is imminent and non-compliant, they're justified to shoot whether that ultimately proves to be the case or not.

That's why no one could fault you as a CCW permit holder for NOT intervening in an active shooter scenario. If you do, you assume all risk inherent to such a dangerous endeavor. That's why my off duty response to an AS would be entirely dependent on proximity to the event and the immediacy of the circumstances. I'll guide innocents away from the scene before I go sprinting to a distant threat. I'll help triage the wounded once uniformed officers have neutralized the threat. I'll engage the shooter only if I'm right there, right then and know I'm saving more lives than in the first two scenarios. I'll drive him down until I'm sure he's DRT, then re-holster and do my best impression of a harmless wallflower with upraised, open, empty hands for responding officers.

I'll also expect that 911 lines are SWAMPED with calls, so nothing I personally communicate to them via phone will reach responding officers and therefore I'm better off not having a cell phone that could be mistaken as a weapon in my hands when they arrive. I'll also assume that auditory exclusion, tunnel vision and the effects of tachypsychia may make me less than capable of effectively responding to the commands of responding officers, hence the open, empty, upraised hands. I'll expect to get slammed to the ground and cuffed. No biggie, we'll sort it out once the scene is secured.

So no, there isn't an easy answer for a non-uniformed LEO caught in an AS scenario while carrying a gun. Short of immediately returning fire to save your life, you'd best remember that the cavalry will eventually arrive and you are not wearing a uniform. You just have to hope you make the right choices and survive.

[G22inSC]

Excellent post above by glocktogo that more bluntly explains what I was eluding to about knowing what you're getting into. LE trains for active shooters constantly with ever changing SOPs and other tactics. Have I ever been involved in an active shooter case, NO and hope I never am. On the other hand, LE typically has a better understanding and realizes the consequences of acting (off-duty) in these situations. There is a very real risk and that is something we are knowingly accepting ahead of time. Like I said in an earlier post, get people out and then reassess if I would do more harm than good by acting further. Only time this would not be the case is the event is unfolding instantaneously right in my vicinity and I'm better off driving forward to the threat than not.

[twadsw01]

Thank you to everyone for the quality of the responses given here. Lots to think about and consider.

What is this whole "duty to respond" you're referring to, glock? Is there really such a legal construct that binds the actions of LEO?

I'm not sure I'm on board with the whole "qualified immunity". I believe you, that it's a thing, but I'm not 100% sure that it should be (honestly, I'm sincerely not sure - but I am open to being convinced either way). But we can save that aspect of it for another discussion. I hope this doesn't send anyone over the edge, but perhaps one idea is that such "immunity" should be done away with in a situation like this, were it to be used to killing a good guy (LEO or non-LEO) being "written off as a tragic circumstance".

"You aren't owed any special protections from harm in the midst of an active shooter scenario, just because you have a CCW permit." - Glock, would you say that LEO are "owed special protections from harm in the midst of an active shooter scenario, just because [they are an LEO, wear a badge, etc.]"? The statement strikes me as having a little bit of a chip on the shoulder about a non-LEO asking if LEO should take (additional) special precautions to try and help avoiding killing the wrong person in an active shooter scenario. Could be wrong, but that's the way that smells. Haha, you don't have to try and please me with your answer, as far as me liking it or not, bub - these are sincere questions being asked. Honestly, if I were an active shooter intent on harming people, I'd go to a Halloween shop and grab a cheap cop outfit, hoping it would at least buy me a few extra seconds to inflict some harm as an LEO hopefully mistook me for a fellow responder (and to create reports of a person dressed as an LEO being the active shooter), since y'all apparently key off of the uniform so much. It doesn't exactly take a genius to think of doing something like that in order to create a little more chaos in the situation.

All this seems to be adding up to say that no one here really thinks that there's much of anything at all that can possibly be done to further mitigate the risks involved for non-uniformed personnel of any kind engaging an active shooter.

Thanks all - G22, glock, 26Inf, T2C, jp, dennis, etc. - for engaging the topic. Always good discussion to be had here.

[Dennis]

To be even more blunt and practical, you are basically wasting your time playing what-if games with law or training ideals. Active shooting situations are fluid, chaotic situations involving a many unknowns and if you want to survive and maybe even help with your CCW you should concentrate your effort on more practical tactical concerns.

In an ideal world expanded training for all officers and legal constructs that take all likely scenarios into account would be nice, but as the line level LE and others here know that is unlikely for a host of practical reasons.

The fact that there is already training and legal precedent for good guys (LE or not) being mistaken for bad guys is also a factor. Any lethal force situation is a balance between any immediate threat and your understanding of the situation. Off duty cops, CCW, and good Samaritans in the middle of the fight are nothing new.

More importantly, many here are trying to answer in a way to help YOU survive and help if you were caught up in a bad situation.

Maybe you just want to discuss theoretical high level possibilities, but given current practical and political realities others here may not see that as very productive when discussing a current life or death scenario.

Dennis.

[twadsw01]

Dennis, you nailed it - original intent was to discuss more along the lines of what you said there: "theoretical high level possibilities", i.e., if we could ground-up construct training that would account for more non-LEO CHP'ers being involved in such incidents, what would the outcome (tactics, procedures, etc.) look like, that sort of thing. Instead, more people want to discuss the "here's how things work now now, so this is how should you respond in this situation".

To be even more blunt and practical, you are basically wasting your time playing what-if games with law or training ideals. Active shooting situations are fluid, chaotic situations involving a many unknowns and if you want to survive and maybe even help with your CCW you should concentrate your effort on more practical tactical concerns.

In an ideal world expanded training for all officers and legal constructs that take all likely scenarios into account would be nice, but as the line level LE and others here know that is unlikely for a host of practical reasons.

The fact that there is already training and legal precedent for good guys (LE or not) being mistaken for bad guys is also a factor. Any lethal force situation is a balance between any immediate threat and your understanding of the situation. Off duty cops, CCW, and good Samaritans in the middle of the fight are nothing new.

More importantly, many here are trying to answer in a way to help YOU survive and help if you were caught up in a bad situation.

Maybe you just want to discuss theoretical high level possibilities, but given current practical and political realities others here may not see that as very productive when discussing life or death tactics.

Dennis.

[glocktogo]

Dennis, you nailed it - original intent was to discuss more along the lines of what you said there: "theoretical high level possibilities", i.e., if we could ground-up construct training that would account for more non-LEO CHP'ers being involved in such incidents, what would the outcome (tactics, procedures, etc.) look like, that sort of thing. Instead, more people want to discuss the "here's how things work now now, so this is how should you respond in this situation".

If you're more interested in discussing theoretical "possibilities" not grounded in current law or practice, carry on my good man!

[twadsw01]

If you're more interested in discussing theoretical "possibilities" not grounded in current law or practice, carry on my good man!

Well, that was just my intent. I'm open to wherever the discussion goes - y'all've put lots of good info out, and in a single thread about the topic. So I appreciate the interaction.