By Paul Cech<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n When I first heard about active school shooter training from a colleague who had attended a training session, I quickly formed a cautious opinion.<\/span><\/p>\n In the year since then, I have been sorting through journal articles, books, and other resources to formulate an informed opinion with a plan to synthesize the information and write a literature review.<\/span><\/p>\n Active-shooter training is about practicing response mechanisms to remain calm and safe while following a protocol.\u00a0 The mechanisms are to run away and bring nothing along with you.\u00a0 Second, it is to hide in an area out of the shooter\u2019s view.\u00a0 Block the entry to your hiding place, block the doors and silence the cell phones. \u00a0Third, is to fight as a last resort and only when your life is in danger.\u00a0 Attempt to incapacitate the shooter and throw items at the shooter.\u00a0 The reasoning behind the protocol is that an active-shooter is running wild without any direction, only desiring to kill as many people in a short period of time that he can.\u00a0 But is that all there is? Some months ago, I contacted members of the Society for Police and Criminal Psychology and asked them a simple, informal question about their knowledge of the training behind Active School Shooter programs.\u00a0 I discovered that very little if anything is known about these training programs. I ask the same question to my former advisor and criminology teacher; again, very little was known.<\/span><\/p>\n I began to suspect that I would have some trouble finding specific information about Active School Shooter training. I would have even more difficulty finding scientific research about the topic. \u00a0It is mostly an intuitive approach and although it may work if trained right, we need to know more about how we get people to take the right steps in these situations.<\/span><\/p>\n The writer\/independent researcher within wanted to produce something about the topic, but I could not put my finger on what I was trying to say.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n I labored on. A week or so ago, I received an email message from a former Penn State \u2013Fayette Campus English professor. Her message included a comment about modern journalism. To make her point she talked about journalism during the Viet Nam war. My former teacher wrote: \u201cInstant reporting without proper research has not moved the United States ahead.\u201d\u00a0 Her statement fit nicely with something that I include as part of my gmail messages, it is a quote from A. Conan Doyle\u2019s Scandal in Bohemia<\/em>: \u201cIt is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data.\u201d There was the inspiration that I needed to figure out what I wanted to say to the readers of Inside Police Psychology about Active School Shooter training.<\/span><\/p>\n In a nutshell, there is very little information on the topic. At this time, it appears that no scientific research about Active School Shooter training exists. \u00a0We need more information and more testing of the process.<\/span><\/p>\n As an independent researcher, I am limited by a lack of resources and limited working space. So, I have found that I can make scholarly contributions by doing literature reviews and synthesizing data bout various topics. But, in this case, the literature is sparse.<\/span><\/p>\n This brings me, finally, to the focus of this article: This is a call for criminologists, educators, social workers, and many others to consider doing research about Active School Shooter training programs and even some of the assumptions behind active shooter models.<\/span><\/p>\n I would not be surprised to learn that somewhere between the warrior culture, which appears to be dominate within law enforcement, the concepts of \u201cto protect and to serve\u201d and community oriented policing that facts about Active School Shooter training will provide a clearer picture of what works best when dealing with this specific type of violence in our schools and in our communities.\u00a0 For example, are schools that only have one type of lockdown procedure more likely to have failures.\u00a0 There are a variety of codes used in school and under pressure codes can be misconstrued.\u00a0 So they may go into an active shooter lockdown when a tornado code is called and that may cause problems.\u00a0 There has to be a way to moderate that.\u00a0 Who should initiate a lockdown and what problems can that cause if someone is not there that day they are need?\u00a0 Also, what areas can a lockdown be called from?\u00a0 MANY OF THE LOCKDOWNS DON\u201dT HAPPEN AT THE FRONT OFFICE NEAR THE LOUDSPEAKER.\u00a0 What is the most effective communication pattern in these types of situations.\u00a0 What happens if the loudspeaker is taken out of the picture.\u00a0 These are all examples of things that need to be researched and not rely on intuitive assumption.<\/span><\/p>\n
\n<\/span><\/p>\nShow Me the Data<\/h2>\n
How Do We Know What Works Best<\/h2>\n