ON THE JOB OFFICER SAFETY JUST HANDED DOWN PUBLIC SAFETY IT SOLUTIONS
Warm is the New Hot This is a two-step process. By Lt. Ed Sanow I Editorial Director
esanow@hendonpub.com Lt. Ed Sanow
response from ‘isolate, contain, call SWAT’ to ‘patrol enters immediately.’ Police depart- ments taught a variety of patrol officer entry tactics, starting with the four-officer (QUAD) formation. The realities of the timeline of violence then slowly took hold. While there are a few exceptions, the elapsed time from the first shot to the last shot is between four and six minutes. With an average of one person shot every 15 sec- onds, patrol could no longer wait for a group of four of- ficers to arrive before entry.
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Today, it is common for the first officer on the scene of an Active Shooter response to make solo entry. This is, by definition, a ‘hot entry.’ Hot means an Active Shooter is somewhere in the building and gunfire is heard. Over the past five years, the realities of the timeline of bleed-out have forced another change in response tactics. The arterial injury bleed-out time of five minutes is an overlap with the overall timeline of violence. That means the first few people who suffered major artery injury, but who could have survived, will bleed out just about the time the shooting stops or the shooter is stopped. We already know how to respond. Fire/EMS already knows how to apply the big Band-Aid. What is new—what needs to be practiced—is the rapid transition, the life-sav- ing hand-off from us to them. We are against the life-taking bleed-out clock until Fire/EMS has triaged every single in- jured person. A ‘warm entry,’ where Fire/EMS enters with a police protection detail, is the only solution. Warm means at least the known shooter has been engaged and the shoot- ing has stopped. Warm means ‘unknown’ risk. Just like the police used to isolate, contain and call SWAT, so too, Fire/EMS has had a long-standing policy of waiting until the building is clear and safe, a ‘cold entry,’ before they go in. Cold means the entire building has been
olumbine changed the Active Shooter
carefully searched and secured and it is completely safe. That means hours. The short bleed-out time is what sets the response and the urgency.
Part of the problem with the need to train for a ‘warm entry’ is the lack of a profound event to justify the training time and expense. Columbine forced the change to a hot entry. But there is no such high-profile tragedy to force the next change to a warm entry. It is an intellectual sell, i.e., do the math, and not an emotional one. The fact that this next step also involves other emergency service departments further slows the adoption of new training. This type of training represents some big changes for
law enforcement. Some Active Shooter exercises abruptly end when the bad guy is hit with Simunition®. We cannot take that shortcut any longer. Law enforcement needs to develop the discipline to fully follow through this first step and start the second step—getting Fire/EMS quickly to the victims. Step two is for us to transition from an entry team to a force escort, and then to a zone protection detail. The original entry team may send a pair of officers back to where Fire/EMS is staged. If all of the responding officers enter, there will be no one to escort Fire/EMS. Or a pair of officers may remain behind with the Fire/EMS at the stag- ing point waiting for the signal to proceed with the escort. At the very instant the situation changes from Active Shooter to either bad guy down, or to a barricaded gun- man, the Fire/EMS escort is launched. In the middle of a lot of confusion, someone needs to take the lead and make the call to transition from Hot to Warm. This is new for us—we need to train in this decision to transition. We stop additional injuries. They keep the injuries from becoming survivable fatalities.
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“Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.” — Henry IV, William Shakespeare 6 LAW and ORDER I March 2016
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