 Hey, Aloha, and welcome back to the Think Tech Hawaii studios. This is another episode of Security Matters. I'm your host, Andrew, the security guy. Today, we're going to be talking about mass casualty response, active shooter response, all these things that we don't like to talk about or think about. We're going to talk about maybe what we can do to get that timeline down in response because that's super important. I've got an expert, a guy who studied this a lot with me today, David Sellers. He's a retired law enforcement guy. Welcome. Thanks for coming in. Yeah, thank you. Thanks for coming in today. I know it's hard to find the time to share, but this is an important topic for our audience. I'd like to start with my security folks with one question that just kind of set the tone for the day. Anyway, I know you're retired law enforcement, you've been in security a long time, but lately what keeps you up at night? Well, I guess what does keep me up and what we keep hearing about is that people, even though we have a lot of these active shooter incidents or other types of incidents that normally man-made and caused by bad people, that people aren't planning and or preparing as much as they should and even nowadays. So I just moved back from having a law enforcement career in the Seattle Metropolitan Area, the Bellevue Police Department, and there's a lot of good stuff going on there. But it also seems like different places across the United States have different levels of preparedness. So I would like to see people be more consistent and overall just make a better impact in that area. It's funny how all security work, we get called to sites, oftentimes people, just in electronic security like my industry, they wait until something happens before they deploy some equipment or put access control on the doors or whatever it may be. So it's interesting how that security somehow it's like that thing everybody's aware of, but they don't really like to talk about it. And of course, a large incident like this or any type of incident that's tragic, people surely don't like to think about that and do the planning and the things that are necessary to help out once it does occur. If you don't do that, you really are setting yourself up potentially for greater casualties, greater loss of life. If you haven't practiced your response to that. So I know you're in Bellevue. You want to give us a little more history on yourself? Sure. I started, I grew up here. I was born and raised here on the Windward side in Kaneohe. I went to University of Hawaii and I actually have a graduate degree from Shamanad University. I started police work at the Honolulu Police Department. I spent a few years here and then I ended up doing a lateral transfer to the Bellevue Police Department in Washington. I ended up staying there for 24 years. I was a patrol officer, a trainer. I went through that process and then I got promoted in 2000. I have a SWAT background. From 2003 to 2010, I supervised a school resource officer unit, which has officers in schools and we did a lot of emergency planning and preparedness and especially for active shooter type incidents in the schools and then with the SWAT background and then working with the regional terrorism group in that area in the Seattle metropolitan area, we did a lot of preparedness in that for other types of entities like hospitals, businesses and so forth. In 2010, I got assigned to a detective sergeant assignment, so I kind of had to get off the SWAT team, but my passion has always been for emergency preparedness for making sure that we are prepared, that we do whatever we can do, whether or not it's through technology or just training and just common sense as far as how we do things. Just recently, as far as, like I said, my background, I've been enjoying retirement, which is nice. We're lucky to get you back here, I think. And then recently, I was chosen as a subject matter expert for a project that Louisiana State University is doing. They're doing an active shooter campus response project, like an active shooter response model and a class that they're going to develop, and I'm part of that development team and content reviewer, so that's through, they call it the National Center for Biomedical Research and Training, and off of that, they have a counter-terrorism academy. So it was nice to be recognized as a subject matter expert in active shooter response with the work that I had done both as a school resource officer sergeant and then on the SWAT team and just kind of incorporating all the different parts and pieces into response and integrating those into a system and something that makes sense on the ground for everybody and also at the upper levels. So you think the outcome of that type of work is something you'll be able to apply to maybe help the response teams here, or will Louisiana look to push this knowledge out? The way that it's set up, my understanding is that that particular class or I guess it would be a class, it is for first responders, it's a public-private kind of integration, it's supposed to be like a best practices model type program that is instructed by people, I guess instructors like myself or others that have a background in active shooter response, and it's just, I think it's taking a look at in the U.S. who has good practices, who has good models out there that we can learn from and take in the different parts and pieces that could be successful in integration and making that happen. Yeah, it's amazing. There's, you know, there's, I know that recently the FBI put out, you know, it has that big data set from active shooters from 2000-2013, they just put out a new sort of a new study, they've been crunching that data a little bit more and looking at some of the characteristics of active shooters. DHS just put out a diagram, this all just happened in the last few weeks on hardening like a soft target type thing, so there's a lot of work that continues to happen in this area and I love it that they're bringing in other expertise out of law enforcement folks that have been on the ground. You guys had incidents in Washington state of this type, you obviously, and I know I remember you even had some law enforcement officers got ambushed up there in a restaurant, I remember a few years back, terrible. Yeah, they did, four officers were killed. Yeah, terrible. Just having coffee. So this, this borrowing, we don't get a lot of this in Hawaii, I think, and I'm not, I don't know, DHS has been ramping up some of its trainings. The FBI has some outreach when that first active shooter study came out, there were some folks doing that. I think HPD does give some classes to our colleges and things like that, but I don't know if we have how much expertise we have here and I don't know of a place you can go and sort of send like all the teachers for a day or a week to get educated on what to do and let them put together programs for all the campuses. So I think it's, it could be super valuable, I have this stuff in Hawaii and I hope you get to bring some of that back, you know, once this is all done, get to use it out here. Yeah, I mean when we kind of set up our program and we built it through the school district, right, we started asking questions mainly about response first, right? So we addressed issues like if we do a lockdown and we lock all our doors, how do the police get in? So the, so and if they can't get in because the doors are barred or locked or they don't have keys, then do they have breaching tools or do we have breaching tools because I was the police right at the time? So that on a basic level, you know, that would be my question when I headed out from the schools, headed out to talk to businesses and said what is your plan if you have an incident and you're 30-story building is secure, are you going to meet us with keys, are we going to be escorted, you know, do you have maps, do you have additional keys if there's a big incident? I mean how are we going to get the access that we need and then how are we going to communicate? So, you know, that was a big one. Prior, you know, we talk in prior Virginia Tech because I think Virginia Tech was the biggest kind of demonstrator of this, I don't just call it phenomena, it just makes you sick that there were quite a few people who were murdered in that incident that were shot face down and they were hiding, you know, they were hiding during a lockdown and our thinking, you know, I'm a run hide fight proponent because it's simple to kind of remember, but I'm not a run hide fight proponent in the sense of it's the end all be all. You have to think of it as these are tactics, I need to have an understanding about where I'm at, what my escape routes are, I need to have contingency plans, you know, just like any good, you know, special operator, you know, and I speak in those terms because I was on a SWAT team for a long time and I think there's a lot to be said about looking at your planning and how you, these situations you get into as, what is my primary goal, what is my primary mission, how do I do these things, but also if this doesn't work, then how do I remain adaptable and flexible? You know, there was a Jewish Federation shooting, I think it was in 2006 and at that point in time the police and fire department had not really worked together and communicated and integrated, but what had happened was just kind of organically in Seattle, because of need, people were injured on site at the Jewish Federation shooting, fire department members kind of broke the rules, the rules at the time were we're going to wait till it's a cold zone, it's a safe, to it's safe and clear, but you know what, I know a lot of these cases, there's a lot of unknown, so I don't, you don't know where the shooter is sometimes, the shooter goes to ground, the person's hiding, you know, is that a cold scene? I mean, it's one of those things, so from that particular incident, I believe that, you know, people learned at least in the Seattle area that had to start to be integrated, and so we needed to start coming up with ways to integrate the fire department into warm zones, because the fact of the matter is, we can try to prevent and mitigate a lot of this stuff, like we talked about, right? You know, we have threat assessment teams and we can try to get in front of the first shots, but once these things happen, and whether or not they're shootings or, you know, potentially stabbings or, you know, ramming, they always find ways to be bad people. Right. We need the manpower and expertise and the help of the fire departments to do rescues. Got you. And so, what, and it's not a new trend, this is just something that kind of occurred organically. I don't know in the rest of the U.S. kind of, you know, how it all happened, but it is starting to gain more momentum that police and fire integrate into what's considered a warm zone. So basically, a shooting could happen at, let's say, a mall. Let's say the police respond, they go after the shooter, obviously. Let's say they get information that they have 10 casualties of unknown, you know, how injured these people are, they try to assess over, you know, over radio and so forth. And then, you know, the fire department, in an ideal situation, the police will go after the shooter, but when the, when the, either the shooter is stopped or the person goes to ground, then the fire department can come in and backfill and be, and be actually escorted into a warm zone. If it's, if we're sure that the shooter is, you know, done and the scene is cold, then that's one thing. But how many instances have we run into reports of another shooter? Yeah, people are, people misreport. I mean, from the information, surely not clear. Or people just being going to ground and getting away. So are we going to wait, is the fire department going to wait? Yeah. And what does that mean? Does that mean that the police have to go in and drag people which, you know, we're not really trained to, we can drag people, but we're not really trained to triage and treat people, right? Sure. So if somebody seriously injured, am I, am I, what, what good am I doing by, you know, pulling them across a mall, if, and if I can get people and I can set up a, you know, safe corridor where I can move people through a zone and get them to the, to the person efficiently and, or, you know, multiple bodies efficiently and have them do triage and treatment there and then, and get them out of there. You know, they talk about the golden hour, getting to the hospital within, within an hour of having a serious injury. And that's where, I think ultimately, kind of my head went when, when looking at all the aspects of response. Okay. Whether or not it's the people on site, the, the actual, because in, in my opinion, and a lot of people's opinion now, those people are the first responders. Sure. So they, so whatever they have planned, whatever they have prepared for, everything that makes sense as far as their tactics go, if they can get away from the shooter, if they can, if they can stop the shooter themselves sometimes, which has happened a lot, right? The fight part of Run Hash Fight. Right, right. Let's hold right there and we'll talk about what you can do, what your piece may, maybe could be if you happen to find yourself in one of these incidents. We'll pay some bills. We'll be back in about one minute. Aloha. I am Howard Wigg. I am the proud host of Cold Green for Think Tekawaii. I appear every other Monday at three and I have really, really exciting guests on the exciting topic of energy efficiency. Hope to see you there. Aloha. I'm Dave Stevens, host of the Cyber Underground. This is where we discuss everything that relates to computers that's just going to scare you out of your mind. So come join us every week here on ThinkTekawaii.com, one PM on Friday afternoons. And then you can go see all our episodes on YouTube. Just look up the Cyber Underground on YouTube. All our shows will show up and please follow us. We're always giving you current relevant information to protect you. Keepin' you safe. Aloha. Hey, welcome back to Security Matters. I'm with Dave Sellers. We're talking about active shooter response, mass casualty response. You know, there's a lot of things going on out there and you may have a role to play. So pay attention to this next part. We want to talk about, you know, looking at the people in the event as part of that reverse response team and super important for timeliness. You know, we were talking about that golden hour, being able to, we don't always have time to wait for the police. And I know, like, Run Hot Fighting the videos and things, they say when the police show up, they're going after the shooter. So if you're injured, just stay on the ground. Don't expect help. They're not there to help you yet, which, though they have a role to play, but them bringing in to a warm zone of the first responders or, you know, you helping out just because you happen to be there and know the guy left the room, right? There's some ways we can speed up that response time for the injured folks. So that's a piece of the philosophy now that's going on, I guess. Yes. So like we were talking about, I think, you know, the reality is, as a first responder is the person on the ground, right? So you have your options to run hide fight. Now, depending on what you do, I mean, if you get out of there, you help people out and you recognize where the shooting is and you have a good, you know, you've worked on your attitude and your awareness and just kind of understand and accept that these things do happen. And so you have a pretty good, solid, quick response. You can be helpful. You can get yourself out. You can get other people out. You can do those things. The other possibility of training and or having equipment on site is, you know, they have these tactical, emergency tactical medical kits now. Right. Like a large, you know, they've incorporated them at some schools. There's a large... I heard yesterday that there's a large stadium in the Seattle area that's thinking about incorporating them there. Good idea. They're talking about having these kits available for people that are trained. So it could be for your first responders. It could be for your people on site that are trained. Oh, like your staffs or the training so it's the way that you could, you know, and we're talking about things like tourniquets, wound packing materials, pressure dressings and so forth that can help with bleeding. Yeah, extremity bleeding. Yeah, sure. And then, you know, if we have those items and we have people that have some training over time, then we can make an impact on the ground. You know, it may not, it's not, it's not only about either running away or fighting the shooter, but it's also, it's about helping treat the rescued people. And then the other piece of this is if the people, if whatever corporation or business or people on the ground have a good relationship with the police and they, let's say they have police come by and hang out at their place so the police are more familiar or they have a good report with them so that they can communicate better either through their comm centers, you know, let's say a big shopping center in the Seattle area has its own comm center. You know, if they have pre-planned abilities and they can speak directly to our comm center and because it's all about situational awareness, if you think about it, it's about the people on the ground understanding what's going on and what they need to do and what makes the most sense at the time without freaking out, right? I mean, we don't expect everybody to be on the same level, but we're trying to train people up at different places and at least inform them that it will help them, that if they engage, if they look at their options, if they, you know, if they can help other people in great, right? So that's the first piece. Now you have the police department coming in and like I had mentioned the communication from outside to the police department, it matters because once the shooter is stopped or located, then we're all a little bit more feeling a little bit better and safer, right? Because when that happens, then at least we know that ideally the fire department can come into a warm zone. Like I mentioned earlier, the police department will set up a safe corridor and get the fire department in or sometimes it makes sense that maybe there's casualties near a door that we can get to that and we can move people out to the fire department there. So again, anything that cuts down time, whether or not it's communication efficiency, whether or not it's pre-planning, whether or not it's familiarity with how we operate and what our roles and expectations are, those all will contribute to saving lives in my opinion because anything that cuts back response time or time that that person is injured, the, you know, the time that it takes for them to get onto that operating table, basically that's impactful. So any tools, any communications that we can have, any technology, I think, I personally think it's an unexplored area as far as the human element of it. I think there's probably things that we can do on our own and our own teams and our own work groups and so forth that might help us be better first responders. Yeah, you know, I co-founded my company with my wife and when she talks to groups, she's really big on community and that sort of that sense of community that maybe has been lost and then the whole digital transformation and everybody's walking around looking at their phone where we, you know, teach this inside our office and people know what to do and where to egress and all these things, but I don't incorporate it with my neighbors on both sides. I've got a senior center on one side, a kiddie center on the other side, and we haven't done a joint operation even with us. There's three or four other businesses along the front there and we do share a common corridor in the back that could be the threat maybe could come through. You never know. So there's work there that we're not doing even in our own community with as much awareness as we have and so I, you know, the commercial folks I talk to, I know like our campus folks and some of our hospitality folks have definitely worked with HPD, but I don't know that the commercial business buildings, like we came in, you know, from downstairs, the op center right down on this building itself, and I don't know if the folks here have all been trained or worked together or know what to do. So you make a really good point that there's a lot of work that can potentially be done. Yeah, and I think it's up to us as individuals to figure out, okay, our kids go to whatever school. What do the schools have in place? What do you have personally in place when you take your kids to the mall? And then if you run a business, if you do business here or your corporation or small business, then communicating with your police department and your fire department and asking them, sometimes they're kind of hard questions because it might not be, I am not sure that the Honolulu Police Department and the Honolulu Fire Department integrate in that fashion. During an event here, yeah, I don't know. So if they don't or if there's talks to or what have you, I'm not here to judge. It's more just, these are ideas and concepts and tactics and strategies and tactics that are out there that are being implemented, different tools, like I was saying with the medical kits, with the integration of police and fire. And what it all points to is, I believe like I was saying, the most effective and efficient use of manpower to get those people that are injured into the operating room. And that's what you're talking about. And so anything that we can do, I know it's harping on that point, but I really believe that it's true and it's an area that if we really kind of nitpick and we look at the response timeline, that there's going to be stuff that we can be more effective, we can be more efficient and therefore more effective, cut the response time down and then basically ultimately save some lives that way. Yeah, I think we should talk to DHS because we probably need a panel. We had a pretty good size symposium that DHS brought just recently and it was the first time we sort of had all of the folks that are security minded in one room, two, three hundred. I had never seen that happen here before and this coordinated response topic didn't really come up. We had from HPD, they have a guy that's like in charge of big events like the marathon, for example, is a big event here and they have to do special planning. So I think they've done it around events, but I don't know if it's part of the daily conversation and it needs to be because these events don't actually happen when we want them to. We have a one, but they're always going to happen when it leads convenient. And I'm not saying this is the only way to do it, I'm saying that this is a good, it seems to be a really good option and it seems to, the training has worked well and I can tell you this, that when the fire department wasn't fast enough for some of the police people, when we did training, when we were doing these trainings, then we would take option B, which is basically to pull people out to a door or an area that was safe. So I'm not discounting that that can happen or that's a good idea because in Aurora, Colorado, there were police officers who put people in vehicles to rush them to hospitals because they would have bled out if they and the doctors have said that. So I'm not saying that this is the only way, I'm saying that it seems to make the most sense because the fire department have medical expertise and they can do the triage on site and way better than the cop scan and if we can use them, we can probably save some time and it's all about just being more efficient and ultimately minimizing the damage that we, cops are notorious for damaging stuff. Well, they come in, they have a mission, right? And I think even they're on site, what's the mission of this team, what's the mission of this team and understanding where those may overlap for a more, another thing being, hey, the beating that golden hour for the increasing survivability of the people that are injured. I mean, the three missions have been this way for a long time. We actually learned it from the LA County Sheriff's when we set up our program, probably prior to 2000, is stop the shooter, rescue the injured and then evacuate and try to do those things simultaneously and obviously stopping the shooter is number one for law enforcement. But people have a tendency to get focused and that's why I'm kind of refocusing what I think is probably the, like I said, it's an area that people don't really delve upon heavily is all the different responders, you know, getting into the minutiae about how they can be better, more efficient and faster. Yeah, man, we're really looking to pick up response time to minimize response time to increase survivability. Great stuff here today. Hope you enjoyed our episode. David, thanks so much for coming in. Appreciate you coming on the show today. Check out your program for active shooter response, see if you can make some improvements because security matters. Thank you.