HIGH POINT, N.C. (WGHP) – If you are of a certain age, you might recall that the most resolute safety training you received in elementary school was how to “stop, drop and roll.”
Those commands for dealing with when your clothing catches on fire remain important to recall, but now our students – and many adults – are learning a new code for survival:
Run, hide or fight.
That’s the essence of active shooter training, a seminar in which we learn how best to endure the possibility of a weapon-wielding person who might be invading our school, church or workplace.
If you are a parent, you know about this, because such drills have gone on in many schools since around 2005 as a follow-up to the massacre at Columbine High School in Denver, Colorado, in 1999, when 13 were killed and 20 were wounded by two students on a rampage.
They have been conducted virtually everywhere since 2012, when 20 first-graders and six school employees died in a massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut. Those programs and practices took place in 95% of schools by 2015-2016.
That doesn’t even include the scares and lockdowns. The National Education Association says that in 2017-18, about 4.1 million students endured at least one lockdown.
In fact, a new database launched last month by The Associated Press, USA Today and Northeastern University tracks thousands of mass killings – defined as when four or more people, including the perpetrator, are killed in one place.
The year 2019 in fact had the most massing killings since at least the 1970s, The AP reports, with 45 of them on record, 33 of them shootings. A total of 229 people died, including 38 dead and 66 injured in three high-profile shootings in four weeks.
There have been dozens of mass shootings – if not always deadly ones – just this month, gunviolencearchive.org reports.
What started as a conversation about schools, though, now is training being provided to companies. And, let’s face it, mass shootings in the past year have occurred in a church, a supermarket and at a holiday parade, among other places. A study in 2021 by the Rockefeller Institute of Government found that 29.4% of mass shootings were in the workplace, and 25.1% at schools.
You have to be ready
And that’s why we bring in Lt. Travis Reams of the Support Services Division of the High Point Police Department, who for about four years now has been visiting schools and businesses to train people on how to survive in the chaotic situation. He estimates he has well more than 100 such sessions.
Reams said he has undergone about 3,200 hours of training and earned multiple certifications. His best advice surely elicits a question: Why didn’t law enforcement in Uvalde, Texas, perform like he says this is supposed to work when Robb Elementary School was invaded by a gun-toting teenager?
What do you do?
Reams describes the cool under chaos and the mental gymnastics required in advance to be able to survive such a situation. That includes knowing your exits, knowing your possible weapons and knowing how to avoid being spotted. And having more than one option for each.
“Hope is not a plan,” he said. “Embrace the chaos. Be able to think it through.”
Run. Hide. Fight.
Here’s what to do:
1. Run for your life.
- Encourage others.
- Don’t hesitate.
- Leave all your belongings (unless your cell phone is in reach).
- Run at full pace, “like you’re being chased by a dog.”
2. Barricade and hide.
- Do it as quickly and quietly as possible.
- Find substantial barricades.
- Take cover behind walls that are more difficult for projectiles to penetrate (think concrete block or in the parking lot an engine block).
- Lock doors and barricade them with objects that are difficult to move. “If a barricaded door opens out, it can’t be opened from the outside,” he said.
- Turn off the lights.
- Be quiet and calm.
- Silence your mobile devices.
3. Fight for your life
- Get anything you can as an improvised weapon.
- Disarm the perpetrator.
- Use strength in numbers.
- Use the element of surprise.
- Remain vigilant and prepared.
Reams said you must have a mindset of survival. He said the first three reactions when you hear a gunshot is to “fight, flight or freeze.”
“Give yourself permission to decide what to do,” he said.
“Don’t anticipate a perpetrator’s next move. Anticipate a series of outcomes.”
Your last option
All that said, fighting is your “absolute last resort.” You want to fight to render the perpetrator “immobile, unconscious or deceased,” he said.
When you fight, anything is a weapon. Attack in numbers.
“The two things a person needs to attack you are eyes and hands,” Reams said. “Attack the eyes. Attack the hands. Control the hands.”
Silence is golden
Most mass shooting events endure for 2 to 4 minutes, he said. About 80% are finished before law enforcement arrives on the scene. Most are in the daytime.
If you hear something that sounds like gunfire, you should react. Don’t wait. If you call 911, be precise in the information you provide, the locations, the numbers, the descriptions and the types of weapons.
Remember that when law enforcement officers arrive, their first responsibility – unlike what we saw in Uvalde – is to stop the perpetrator. Next is to attend to the wounded. The third responsibility is to take care of everyone and everything else.
And one key thing Reams said always to remember: “The sound of silence is good.”
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