Law and Order

JUL 2013

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FOCUS Hartford, CT Active Shooter Exercise SUMMARY Through the use of real-time interoperable communications and multimedia sharing technologies, rapid response challenges can be mitigated and overall response and operational effectiveness improved. The Hartford, Conn. Police demonstrated the significant benefits that can be realized using a technology of this type called Mutualink. MORE INFORMATION www.mutualink.net HARTFORD, CT ACTIVE SHOOTER EXERCISE IMPROVING SCHOOL SAFETY THROUGH ENHANCED SITUATIONAL AWARENESS By Joe Mazzarella T he mass school shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. serves as another grim reminder of a disturbing pattern. Schools are attractive targets for those seeking to carry out high-profle mass killings. This trend is not limited to schools and has spread to other places of public mass gathering, such as movie theaters, malls and workplaces of all kinds. These shootings know no boundaries and can and do occur anywhere from rural communities to large cities. Whether or not we are seeing the manifestation of a new societal pathology fueled by pervasive and easy access to social media coupled with worldwide Internet media outlets that enable anybody to get their 15 minutes of fame (or infamy), the fact is our schools are now high-profle targets. 16 LAW and ORDER I July 2013 One legacy of past school shootings, particularly after Columbine, is that law enforcement response tactics to these threats have changed from isolate, contain, negotiate, and tactical response to that of immediate entry and engagement by the frst responding offcers on the scene. This tactical change rightly recognizes that prior shootings indicate there is an unacceptable risk probability that school attackers have the primary intention to kill as many as possible. Thus, time is of the essence. Simply put, the operative assumption must be that an assailant intends to kill and must be neutralized as soon as possible. While a necessity, this tactic heightens the need to quickly achieve and sustain situational awareness from both an operational success perspective as well as for the safety of responding offcers and others in the vicinity. However, paradoxically, immediate entry and engagement have the effect of speeding up events, shrinking the window of time for information gathering and assessment, overtaking conventional command and control communications structures, and compressing decision-making time.

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