Please see the valuable article here by John Weinstein the Lieutenant/Commander, Strategic Planning and Outreach at the Northern Virginia Community College. Thank you to Raymond Hitchcox, Security Manager at CHI Memorial Hospital, for sharing the article on LinkedIn.
See here my additional points, reflections, and considerations in response to this article.
This is a valuable article in how it addresses the Run-Hide-Fight methodology, but also brings critical thinking to the methodology.
Valuable in the article are some downloadable checklists. Take advantage of them.
Some major take-aways include, but are not limited to:
1. Develop your plan, that is, don’t expect Law Enforcement to save you. Law Enforcement are, largely, responders. And they do an excellent job at it. But an active assailant event will be ongoing before they arrive. Do not out-source your own safety, at work, at home, anywhere. Accept help, of course, but Be Your Own Bodyguard. (BYOB).
2. De-Escalation strategies, no matter how valuable they are (and they very much are) and no matter how applicable they are to virtually every other life and work encounter (and they very much are), are not, in an Active Assailant event, go-to tactics. Right tool – right context.
3. If you have children (or even if you don’t), ask your local school officials how they shelter in place. Many, in an unsafe way, cluster children. Inquire and seek change.
4. Whatever is your occupation or organization, know that an Active Assailant event is a life-event, not just an organizationally specific event. So when training for it, train with all of your life spaces in mind, that is, in public areas, schools, shopping areas, religious sites, home, etc. Think of Active Assailant training as a life-skill, just like CPR or First Aid, and not just something you do because your organization requires it.
5. In training, make sure that you’re actually learning, practicing (both in visualization and in physical action) the how of how to run, how to hide, how to fight. If your organization or trainer is treating any of the points (e.g., the fight part) as just a tagline, with no trainable, retainable, tactics, ask for more. There’s a reason we do fire drills, and not fire talks.
Be safe.
Farewell!
Conflict Transformation & Ethical Guardianship 