BUPD Offers Active-Shooter Training

BU, Brookline, Boston, and State police participated in active-shooter drills at FitRec in January. BUPD is offering “run, hide, fight” training sessions for any University community group seeking instruction. Photo by Jackie Ricciardi

Three action verbs: Run. Hide. Fight.

They might be the key to surviving an active-shooter situation on campus.

Run if you can. Hide if you can’t. Fight if you have to.

With the February 14 mass shooting at a Florida high school dominating headlines and the national political debate, the BU Police Department wants everyone in the BU community to know that officers are offering a 45-minute active-shooter training program for all groups of faculty, staff, and students who request the instruction.

“All they have to do is call,” says Kelly Nee, BUPD chief. “We have officers who are highly trained and certified instructors in this.”

BU community members who would like to take the training should contact the BUPD at 617-353-2110 and ask for Lieutenant Robert Casey. Numerous groups, from fraternities and sororities to School of Law staff members, have already taken the training, designed to help people react quickly and effectively if confronted by an active shooter.

Incidents such as the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., that took 17 lives and injured many more, as well as a hoax, or “swatting,” incident at Mugar Memorial Library last year, have increased the demand for active-shooter training.

Linda Skinner, LAW’s facilities manager, has scheduled several active-shooter training sessions for groups of employees, including one last Wednesday. There, about 30 staff from the Admissions and Financial Aid, Career Development, and Student Affairs offices came to a fifth-floor classroom to hear Casey’s advice.

The main thing, Casey said, is to be aware of your surroundings. Whenever you go into a classroom, make sure you know where the exits are and identify a corner where you could hide without being seen from the door.

“It’s all about having a plan and knowing your surroundings and knowing your environment,” he told the group. “How many of you have gone down the stairs in the building where you work? Is there more than one staircase? Do you know where they all are?”

The session starts with a video produced by the Department of Homeland Security and the Houston, Tex., Police Department. It shows a simulated workplace shooting that is mild by the standards of most TV cop shows, but is high on tension. A blank-faced, black-clad man with a backpack walks into the lobby of an office building, pulls out a shotgun, and starts blasting away at random victims. The camera roams the building to follow one group of employees sprinting for an exit, another barricading themselves in an inner office, and a third, denied those options, preparing to fight for their lives.

The runners move quickly to find a path to safety and gather colleagues along the way. They don’t stop until they are clear of the danger zone, only then calling 911 for help. The people who hide lock themselves in a room, turn off lights, silence cell phones, and barricade the door with furniture. And the ones whose only choice is to fight commit to an ambush with a fire extinguisher and other improvised weapons.

When the video ended, Casey helped the audience analyze what they saw, pointing out actions that were more effective and less effective. Some things that seem obvious are not. Don’t wait for your boss’ OK to leave, he told the group, and don’t worry about packing up your computer. “Remember what’s important: you, not your stuff,” he said. And if you have to barricade a door or even fight an assailant, don’t worry about scratching that piece of University furniture or damaging something you pick up to use as a weapon—your life is at stake.

“I certainly feel better after going through the training,” said Morgan Chalue (CFA’16), senior program coordinator in the Registrar’s office. “You feel a little more prepared.”

Stephen Morash, BU’s director of emergency management, reminded the group that statistics show that people are more likely to win the lottery than to get caught in an active shooter situation. But if a shooting does happen, he said, it can happen very fast.

“These incidents are not unlike a lot of emergency situations we see, low-frequency but high-impact events,” Morash said. “We don’t think enough about them beforehand, and we really need to plan what we would do when it happens, so we can take decisive action very quickly to protect ourselves and our friends.”

The instructors pointed out that not only are such incidents extremely rare, but BUPD response times on campus is extremely good, generally well under a minute. In the years before Columbine, they said, police procedure involved forming a perimeter and waiting for a SWAT (special weapons and tactics) team to assemble. That has changed.

“Now we’re trained that as soon as we get there, we’re going in” to confront an active shooter and end the threat, says Robert Molloy (MET’91), BUPD deputy chief.

Training for such events is important, says Nee, because most people don’t automatically think about how they would respond to an active shooter.

“It’s the times that we live in,” she says.