Episode Summary

A discussion about uses of the ASIM Checklist beyond active shooter events.

Episode Notes

Episode 37: Other Uses of ASIM Checklist

A discussion about uses of the ASIM Checklist beyond active shooter events.

Bill Godfrey:

Welcome to the Active Shooter Incident Management Podcast. My name is Bill Godfrey, your host of the podcast. We're happy to have you back with us. Today, we have three of the instructors with us to talk about the uses of the ASIM checklist beyond just Active Shooter. We have, as many of you know, the Active Shooter Incident Management checklist which lays out this process. But just because it's titled Active Shooter doesn't mean that that's the only thing it's usable for. We're going to talk a little bit about that today. I'd like to introduce you to the three instructors that are with us. We have Terrence Weems from the law enforcement side. Terrence, good to have you back in the house.

Terrance Weems:

Thanks for having me.

Bill Godfrey:

Absolutely. We have, of course, Adam Pendley also from the law enforcement side. Many of you know Adam. Adam, good to have you back.

Adam Pendley:

Happy to be here.

Bill Godfrey:

Of course, the inimitable Mark Rhame from the fire EMS side like myself. Mark, good to see you.

Mark Rhame:

Thank you, Bill.

Bill Godfrey:

Alright. Again, as we talked about in the opening, we titled it The Active Shooter Incident Management Checklist for a lot of reasons, but it's usable for more than just Active Shooter events. Adam, why don't you open us up and start talking about it in a little bit generically and then we'll roll from there?

Adam Pendley:

Sure. One of the things about the ASIM checklist is a validated process of building an incident management from the ground up. So many of us in law enforcement, fire and EMS over the years have trained on the incident command system. We go to the standardized FEMA classes, but oftentimes, we see the final org chart. We see this managing an incident from the top down model. You see all these positions filled out and what you find is that doesn't work in the field. One of the good things about the ASIM checklist process is we build a response from the first arriving unit that then builds from there. Additional units arrive, they start becoming teams, and then group supervisors arrive, and then incident command arrives, and you have branch directors.

As an incident unfolds, more elements are added from the ground up. Here's the point, is that the Active Shooter Incident Management checklist can be used for other types of rapid response on the law enforcement side and especially any sort of rapid response that involves an integrated response with fire EMS. As we're arriving to a violent incident, it could be a robbery in progress. It could be some other type of crime of violence. The idea of having the initial contact teams stabilize the scene, having a tactical group supervisor come in and start managing that inner perimeter and managing those follow on resources, teaming up shoulder to shoulder with fire and EMS, and then having the higher command come in and be part of the command post and all the elements that we talk about in the ASIM checklist, the staging manager and intel and PIO all fit in, in the same way in almost any type of rapid response from law enforcement, fire and EMS.

Bill Godfrey:

Things like mass shooting, I think that's a no brainer.

Adam Pendley:

Right.

Bill Godfrey:

Violent attacks, whether it's with an edged weapon or something else. Vehicle through a crowd?

Adam Pendley:

Sure. Absolutely. Because anything that either has the potential for multiple injuries or has multiple injuries, you're going to follow the same process. I think it's important to follow that process even on those different types of incidents an all hazards approach because if you only pull out the concepts of Active Shooter Incident Management, just for Active Shooter, you're going to be rusty. Fortunately, we see a lot of these across the country, but we don't see them all the time in each of our jurisdictions. Right? You have to find other opportunities to keep those skills strong.

Bill Godfrey:

Almost like a generic response process, Adam, is that what you're thinking? Something along that for a subset group of calls on the law enforcement side, this should be the default response?

Adam Pendley:

Sure. Kind of like your standard response model where you know that if you have something that's either in progress or that has just occurred, that is a violent scene with multiple injuries...

Bill Godfrey:

Like a drive by or something like that?

Adam Pendley:

Sure. A drive by in any sort of... Even if it's a domestic violence in progress or something that might involve a hostage barricade situation. There's a lot of examples of this that we could talk about where there's opportunities to really engage each element of the Active Shooter Incident Management Checklist.

Bill Godfrey:

Interesting. I'd like to revisit this idea of that of setting up a default response process, maybe that's a good idea for another topic. Let's go around. Mark, what are the things that are on your mind? What pops into your head about other uses of the ASIM checklist process and where it might be valuable?

Mark Rhame:

Well, the first thing I think of is that nine times out of 10, the boots on the ground are going to do an incredible job. Every single time, they go out there and they get the job done. The weakest link, as far as I'm concerned, what I've seen in my career is generally the command staff is where it fails and they fall apart. It's because a lot of the things we're exposed to, those big events, maybe once in a lifetime, you get involved in something like that. Maybe you trained on something, maybe you read about it, but you don't practice it enough. You don't get involved in some of those environments. When we talk about using the ASIM checklist for other environments, it really does put us all in the same stage or platform where when we have these big events, we're ready to perform.

As I see us responding to more and more of these domestic disputes, this civil unrest, these environments where we're having what looks like some type of domestic terrorism against our communities, against what we consider the norms, I think it really behooves us as public safety responders to step up and utilize a process like ASIM to respond to those events. Again, as I said before, generally I see the command side of the response to these big events as the weakest link. Again, those law enforcement officers that go in there to that threat, they're going to do their job. The fire EMS people, give them good direction and equipment. They're going to do a great job out there and they're going to perform to the standard we expect, but if our incident command side of that picture doesn't get their act together and do it right, it's going to screw up the whole environment. Again, utilizing the ASIM checklist for more than just an Active Shooter incident will make us better in the whole, as a public service or a public response to these types of environments.

Bill Godfrey:

You're talking almost like what Adam was saying about having a default response process, but it's not just a law enforcement response process, it's an integrated one. It runs across the disciplines. I don't know that I've ever seen or heard of anybody else doing that before. I definitely think that's one worth coming back and revisiting in a future podcast. Terrance, what jumps out at you as lessons learned or places where you think this process could be helpful in your walk of life?

Terrance Weems:

Yeah. Actually, one of the things that my agency we try and do with everything, anything outside of a normal day-to-day event, we utilize NIMS for that. But in looking at the ASIM model, one of the things that comes to mind immediately is a multi-vehicle crash with a ton of injuries and some deaths where the road, whether it'd be an interstate or county road, is shut down. Now, you have opportunity to put this into effect, actually building, as we said before, from the ground up. That first person arrives, sizes up the incident. They know what they have, and at the same time, they don't know what they have. All they see is a scattered mess.

Bill Godfrey:

You mean like one of these big, massive pile ups that we hear about on the news from time to time?

Terrance Weems:

Right. Few years ago, we had one on I-94 up near the Michigan State line, a number of vehicles, semis, and all of that. But what took this to the next level, it was like 12 degrees.

Bill Godfrey:

Ouch.

Terrance Weems:

One thing that we forget about is cellphones generally don't work very well and the battery life dies when it's extremely cold, plus you have all of the vehicles out there. Your batteries on your portables are dying and things like that. What this does is this gives us that opportunity to build from the ground up now, putting into place, everything that we need. I think that's outstanding. Even with the reunification and getting RTFs out and everything that we teach, it is able to be utilized even in a situation like that. You wouldn't necessarily think about it in that manner, but it's very helpful because again, using it as a general response to just about everything that you're doing, and if you're doing it all the time, you're practicing it all the time. When something huge happens, you're able to follow through.

Bill Godfrey:

It's really fascinating. I wouldn't have thought about using that process in terms of one of those big, massive pileups, but you're right. There's a lot of overlap there. There's a lot of things that fit and help. Alright. What else? Adam, what else is on your list?

Adam Pendley:

Terrance brings up the idea of RTFs and the integrated response and it really strikes me that you don't want to wait for a violent active shooter type event to get and teach fire, EMS and police to move together, to carry equipment together, to find the safe path in and out. Even at the crash site, fire, EMS, they know their job. Like Mark mentioned, they're going to do a great job, but we've already assessed the scene when we first arrive. We know where the injuries are, and so us working together as law enforcement to work with EMS and work together as an RTF to move into that scene is really important. But another great opportunity to do that in an even less stressful environment is any of our communities that have special events. We all have carnivals and fairs and parades and sporting events and arena events in our communities. In all my years of working special events, every time you have a drunk person that's down, that is going to be treated by EMS, you're going to need a law enforcement officer there. Right?

Bill Godfrey:

That's true.

Adam Pendley:

Every time law enforcement responds to a fight, they're going to probably need medical there at some point. Right from the start in our planned events, we can schedule RTFs to work together. You have the rescue task force that's already assigned, and they're at various locations throughout the event. When an incident occurs, they can learn to move together. They can meet each other. They can learn about each other's equipment and about each other's processes. That way, God forbid three days from now, we have an active shooter event at a warehouse, we've already learned to do that. It's staging those officers and fire and EMS that are working together as an RTF, maybe they've done this before, and maybe they move into the scene more effectively.

Bill Godfrey:

That's a really interesting idea of deploying it at a planned events or special events. What are some of the ones where you've seen... You guys have the NFL games up by you and I can recall you mentioning that you've deployed that on that before. What are some of the other types of examples you've got?

Adam Pendley:

Actually, just this past week, we had the opportunity to... It was announced that our city would be the location of a big college party crowd sort of thing, and we expected an additional 10 or 20,000 folks to be down at our beach area. Again, we anticipate there to be crowded streets and lots of drinking and possibly fighting and things along those lines. One of the...

Bill Godfrey:

They do seem to go hand in hand.

Adam Pendley:

Yeah, absolutely. Part of our incident action plan was teaming up our bike officers with some bike or some mobile med unit teams on the fireside. We called them on the incident action plan, we called them RTFs. We had them strategically stationed throughout the beaches' area, so they could provide that rapid response and work together. In that environment, it provides immediate security to the medical, but it also provides medical for the opportunity, again, to work together. We meet each other in the less stressful event so it's easier to put that together during the active shooter.

Bill Godfrey:

It's interesting. It also provides an opportunity, I assume to get everybody used to the terminology, the idea of the teamwork and who talks to who and who reports to whom and whatnot, all those things?

Adam Pendley:

Absolutely. Yes.

Bill Godfrey:

Okay. Cool. What about civil unrest? That's been in the news a lot recently. It has a very apparent rise or what at least would seem like a rise in mass shootings, lot of generalized violence we're hearing about on a fairly regular basis, a lot of civil unrest. Is there a role there, do you think?

Terrance Weems:

Oh, for sure. Generally, if you look at it, depending on what stage you go to, you'll have a number of, let's say protests to those civil unrest situations. A lot of them are pre-planned. However, those that arise out in the middle of nowhere, you're going to have one or two officers responding initially. Now, that gives you that opportunity to put this plan in place right then, so you have that opportunity because although it's not an active shooter event, it is escalating. You're going into an unknown, but this event, generally when you get into the civil unrest, it generally doesn't... The fire don't go out rather quickly, but it continues to escalate until it blows up.

Unfortunately, we have seen it happen last year and even a few this year, but putting that plan in place, it helps. Just like Adam was saying earlier, if we do it on those small events, you're building those relationships. I think that's the most important thing to get the different disciplines together, trusting and believing that they're going to be able to support one another.

Bill Godfrey:

That's really interesting. You know what? I see the fit on the civil unrest that comes up unexpectedly. On the planned ones, Adam, and I know you've had your hand in a lot of these from the management side and having to put together incident action plans for the planned events. When it comes to the idea of demonstrations or potential civil unrest, things like that for a planned event, when you're putting together an IEP, I assume you would distinguish in the structure the difference between the function of a contact team that would be deployed if things go sideways versus... I don't know what you guys call them, forgive me, because law enforcement obviously is not my background, but the guys that are working in the line.

Adam Pendley:

Field force.

Bill Godfrey:

The field force. If you were pre-planning the event, how would you mix that ASIM org chart, if you will, that Active Shooter Incident Management checklist structure with the field force? Have you done that before? Have you got any ideas off the top of your head?

Adam Pendley:

Oh, sure. A field force is just another team structure underneath the law enforcement branch. You would have a field force group with multiple teams underneath there, very similar to the perimeter group. In the law enforcement branch, under the ASIM checklist, they're responsible for the tactical group supervisor and the contact teams that are underneath there. In a civil unrest sort of way, you may have a forward deployed teams that monitor various protest locations or counter protest locations and they're your initial contact teams. If they need more resources, they would call that up through tactical who would get approval from law enforcement branch and the incident commander and those additional resources could be deployed. It still falls under that same structure that we build. Essentially, we're still building it from the ground up.

Because even for a planned event, you're going to look at those locations that you know you're going to have events at and you're assigning the right number of resources to each event with those additional resources available. One of the things that I know Mark can probably attest to is, is that you know that the fire department is going to get calls during that time. We always talk about clock. You have to beat the clock, right? If they're going to respond in a rapid manner, they don't want to have to leave the station and go stand by somewhere. It's better for us to think about, "Why don't we pair law enforcement right from the start?"

Mark Rhame:

One of the sidebar issue outside of the medical response using RTFs, is we talk more and more of fire as a weapon. When we think about the civil unrest issues, these planned protests, why don't we even talk about tagging up law enforcement with fire in a strike team type of an environment that is similar to a rescue task force concept, where we take a fire engine with a couple of law enforcement officers who are ready to respond to those fires that pop up in these civil unrest environments? For fire, we tend to sit there in stage and we wait and we wait and we wait until they clear out that whole area.

But what if we built out those teams ahead of time, not only on the EMS side for our rescue task force, but also the strike teams for that fire as a weapon environment that we can get in there and quickly start using maybe deck guns, deluge guns or something that are more unstaffed where we just dump a ton of water on that particular fire, and then get out of that environment and leave law enforcement to continue to work on that social unrest environment.

Bill Godfrey:

Instead of a rescue task force, a firefighting task force?

Mark Rhame:

Exactly. But again, we're going to include law enforcement as part of that component. Instead of just fire coming in there and going to do their job by suppressing that fire, we engage a law enforcement component with that fire engine or engines, and they respond in there as a team. Again, those law enforcement officers, as we do with RTFs, don't leave their wingmen. They stay with those people throughout and protect them. That gives fire more confidence that law enforcement has got our back. We can do our job. We can concentrate on that suppression activities and don't have to worry so much about those protestors that are there in the background.

Adam Pendley:

Yeah. We actually had a lot of success with that in my area during 2020. That would be part of the assignments. We would assign a law enforcement element to each of the firehouses that was in the area that we knew would be affected. That was their job. They stayed at the fire station. Now, the only bad news is we introduce law enforcement officers to recliners but...

Bill Godfrey:

You're just jealous.

Mark Rhame:

Well, we just give them applications. They can come over.

Adam Pendley:

Right. But all joking aside, whenever they were toned out to any event, because remember, we've talked about this many times as well. The other stuff that's happening in your city is still happening. You're still going to have responses to other types of medical emergencies, are responsible... If you get dispatched to a dumpster fire that is in the affected area, was it set on fire on purpose because of the civil unrest? Pretty much all of those calls for service out of that station have to have a law enforcement element along with them.

Bill Godfrey:

That's really interesting. I think that in itself probably is a whole nother podcast to talk about that topic and talk about that concept.

Mark Rhame:

Bill, you can take it a step further. When we talk about our response to hurricanes, tornadoes or whatever it happens to be, when we know that somewhere along the line, there's going to be some looting. There's going to be some kind of a crime environment when we're trying to go out there and check these buildings to see if the occupants are still there, if there's anyone that's injured in this collapsed structure. If we engage law enforcement with fire and EMS with these rescue teams, then we can take care of all of this stuff at the exact same time. They can go out start doing their windshield surveys, checking these structures. Law enforcement's making sure that no crimes are taking place, involving their individuals in regard to get witness statements, if there were crimes involved when they're going through. We can expand this thing out continuously when we talk about public safety response, incorporating fire, EMS and law enforcement in teams.

Bill Godfrey:

It's funny as you described that, it almost sounds like we're talking about an all hazards integrated response.

Mark Rhame:

Yes.

Adam Pendley:

Yes, exactly.

Bill Godfrey:

Interesting. Adam, you mentioned one a little earlier that I'd like to jump back to, and that was hostage barricade you kind of threw out. Can you talk a little bit about that? Can you and Terrence talk a little bit about some of the challenges that come up in those types of incidents that would warrant that integrated response?

Adam Pendley:

Sure. I think that type of incident mirrors the ASIM checklist process very closely because you get that initial dispatch of an active scene of some sort. If a hostage barricade started as an argument and are armed argument of some sort, it turns into a hostage barricade, that initial arriving units are going to essentially form a contact team, give a size of report, engage if they're able to or contain if they're required to and call for additional resources. I think if you have an additional contact team that's going to cover the rear of the building, other contact teams or an apprehension team that's responsible if the suspect gives up or tries to escape. You have multiple teams down range, and now you have a lot of resources already at the crisis site. Just like it's very true in the active shooter environment, it's important for somebody to stay put and now become that fifth man or that tactical group supervisor, the tactical person to now manage how everyone else...

Because the worst thing that you can do at a hostage barricade situation is to have everyone show up at the front door, right? Because you're going to potentially aggravate the situation. You're going to have too many people trying to do one task. Again, having that fifth man or tactical manage the responses and set a staging area becomes critically important. Then, all the follow-on resources after that, you're going to have fire EMS come to your staging location in case the hostage barricade goes poorly. You're going to have negotiators. You're going to have intel. You're going to have a lot of additional follow-on resources as you also continue to build this response.

You have that tactical a little further down range. Hopefully, you can get a triage or a fire EMS officer to work side by side with tactical, again, to make those decisions about, "Hey, if the hostage taker goes active, we're going to do this. If they release hostages, we're going to need this." There's a lot of close integration down range. Then, the integrated response to the command post also becomes critically important.

Terrance Weems:

Extremely important. One of the things that you want to make sure that we're doing is communicating the need, making sure that we have the resources that we need in each one of those situations because just like you said, once you have that hostage taker, who knows where it's going to go from that point? Having all of your ducks in a row, even before you need them just means that that experience is going to be that much better and most likely have a positive outcome.

Bill Godfrey:

It's a fascinating topical area that frankly, Mark, I don't know about you, but it's not one I feel like we had a whole lot of training with for those particular types of events. It's fascinating to hear you guys describe that. The one other area that I want to talk about before we leave this topic is the idea of area command. While it's a component of the Active Shooter Incident Management curriculum, in the intermediate and the advanced class when we talk about complex coordinated attacks and how to manage those, one of the things that we always say in class is that, "Hey, this area command tool can be used for more than just this thing."

When you've got complex investigations that are crossing jurisdictions, you've got a manhunt. As we sit here today, we've had yet another tragedy with a police officer being shot. There's an aggressive manhunt on for the suspect not too far from where we are. Talk a little bit about that idea of area command as a tool that can help us more effectively manage these events and how we can use it, what we can use it for, and the benefit of it.

Adam Pendley:

Well, from the law enforcement perspective, I think you already hit on that. We talk about a lot in active shooter events that you have the minimum of a three scene, or you have the crisis site itself, the transportation the suspect you used, and then also where they live or where they came from, but that expands even further. We've seen incidents where we know a single suspect has committed a violent act in more than one place. It may not necessarily even just be an active shooter type event that they have committed acts in multiple places or like you mentioned, this manhunt situation that is, by its very nature, going to cross multiple jurisdictions. We can all look back at the after-action reporting on the Boston marathon. We know that we had a very serious crisis site at the scene of the run that involved bombings, that required multiple patients being treated and ultimately where it started, they ultimately have the jurisdictional authority because that's where the original crime was committed.

But then, you had another officer shot in a different jurisdiction. You had the suspect. You shoot out with the suspect and yet another jurisdiction and ultimately the capture of the final suspect in yet another jurisdiction. An area command, a concept can become very important to manage those critical resources. That's what we talk about all the time. You have these multiple sites. You only have so many SWAT teams. You only have so many armored vehicles. You only have so many specialized canine units and such. You can't just chase your tail every time a new location pops up, that everything heads that way. You have to be very deliberate about managing those critical resources. I think there's opportunities to practice that on a more regular basis.

Mark Rhame:

Bill, I've set up several area commands and it's not directly related to what we do in regard to ASIM, but it does explain how an area command does function. One of the examples I try to give in class is that we had a tornado touchdown, multiple places on the east side of our county. The typical dispatch was full compliment, which was in that particular time, was [inaudible 00:29:18] companies, a rescue, a battalion chief, and an EMS captain to each one of the sites. We ended up having four sites within a couple square miles of each other. The problem with that as a shift commander is that, that one event basically stripped down my entire command staff from my county. Right then and there, it was gone. I said, "I can't do that. There's no way I can do that. I have to control this environment as a shift commander."

I stood up an area command and reduce the response to each one of those events down to one engine company, one rescue, and then held a battalion chief with me at the area command posts. Now, I know this doesn't follow the practice we utilize in the ASIM, but it does make sense when you talk about controlling your response, your resources to those particular events. I stood up a lot of area commands in regard to brush fires. Because again, if you sent a full compliment brush fire with a structural exposure to multiple sites after a lightning storm the night before, you're going to strip down your resources very, very quickly. Area command has a vital role in our normal day-to-day responses when we have multiple events popping up in a geographical area and standing up that area command gives you that advantage of control and the resources that you want to leave for that next event that might be right around the corner.

Terrance Weems:

Right. Not just controlling the assets that you have, but actually obtaining assets that you need. There used to be a time when I was growing up where you did things in your own community, whether good or bad, you didn't necessarily venture out. Now, in regards to violent crime and that sort of thing, people are crossing borders. Borders mean absolutely nothing. Within an hour, I have two states, Illinois and Michigan that I can get to. People traverse right down through, up and back. One of the things that I recognize is the need for that area command because when you need equipment, you need bodies, you need those assets, one police department, especially if you're in a small rural area, you're not going to have the ability to get what you need outside of an area command.

Bill Godfrey:

I think it's a fascinating topic. To me, one of the key points that I think we always try to hit home on when we talk about complex coordinated attack, which is the idea of three or more attackers attacking a single site, two or more sites under simultaneous attack or an act of terrorism that overwhelms a local jurisdiction, that's the definition we use. The reason we use that is because it's from the responders' point of view, what does this call sound like and how should we respond? That's where I'm going with this. We've had numerous incidents across the country where an attacker was mobile and attacked several different sites, often crossing jurisdictions. You've got those 911 calls coming in. You got the first hit over here and that's a car accident with a couple of people shot and then three or four minutes later, a mile down the road, mile and a half, you've got some more people that are shot.

You got another shooting coming in and then four minutes later, it crosses into another jurisdiction. We had one of these that just occurred a few weeks ago where a suspect killed several of his relatives in a home, went to the local police station and began attacking that with a semi-automatic rifle. Then, after shooting up the police station and trying to kill a bunch of people there, broke contact. A few minutes later, began shooting up a park with a bunch of kids that was right next to a school. Imagine, you're the 911 operator working that particular day, and you're getting these calls, that's going to sound like simultaneous attacks. That's going to sound like a complex coordinated attack. At the very least, even if it is the same attacker and they just went mobile, you got three complex crime scenes and close range to each other. As Mark said, that's going to strip your resources if you do the same thing for every one of them, and you got to get control of that.

Adam Pendley:

Absolutely. I think it's again, part of the process you learned in the ASIM incident management process is that you don't send everyone to the first site. Right? You have to control... We have to have the organizational discipline to certainly get what you need to address the initial act of threat, but then manage everything else from there. That's why the fifth man concept is so important, tactical, and we stress it over and over again, the importance of staging, so you are not over committing too many resources to that first site.

If you practice that on a multitude of different types of incident responses, both police fire, and those responses that we do together, and that's one of the things that's been my fear when we talk about complex coordinated attack is so many agencies across the country have done a fantastic job preparing for an active shooter event, that the first time they have something that sounds like that, they send everyone. Everyone from the patrolmen to the chief and the kitchen sink all pour into that first site. Without following this control of resources managed response, you have too much at the first site and you're not prepared for that second, third, fourth site, whether it's a mobile suspect who's on a spree or whether it's truly a complex coordinated attack. Either way, if you over commit to the first scene and don't follow a process, you're going to be left flat-footed.

Terrance Weems:

Right.

Bill Godfrey:

I think that's a fabulous wrap up and a great place to end this. Gentlemen, thank you very much for your time. Ladies and gentlemen, I hope you enjoyed the podcast. If you have not already subscribed to the podcast, please click subscribe wherever you consume your podcast materials. If you have any questions for us or suggestions for future podcast topics that you would like the instructors or any of our guests that we bring in from time to time to talk about, please send that to us at info@c3pathways.com. That email again is info@c3pathways.com. Until next time, stay safe.