• There has been a recent cluster of spammers accessing BARFer accounts and posting spam. To safeguard your account, please consider changing your password. It would be even better to take the additional step of enabling 2 Factor Authentication (2FA) on your BARF account. Read more here.

Workplace active shooting drill

C

cfives

New member
Joined
Jan 23, 2006
Location
usa
Moto(s)
1
Hoping the the Bay Area Mores Forum can help me find ammo that confirms my bias against a proposed active shooter drill at my work, during normal working hours.

Today, I went through a 5 hour annual safety training, and the new Health and Safety Compliance dude mentioned that he was working on a active shooter drill (announced to the day (best), or to the week (worst)). This strikes me as capitulation towards terror propagation, and greatly increasing the chances of it by planting the idea into disgruntled employees minds.

The workplace is understaffed, and wasting billed hours company wide, on a statistical insignificant possibility, is philosophically, morally, and economically fucked up!
Please confirm my bias with links to compelling and affirming data!
 
cfives said:
and greatly increasing the chances of it by planting the idea into disgruntled employees minds.
Click to expand...


I think you're reading into the copy-cat-craze (that usually occurs after school shootings) a bit much. Many many work places have emergency drills. It occurs everyday all over the nation. Would you rather they just brushed it off until an actual emergency occurs?

If someone's looking to shoot up their work place, they will. They don't need an emergency drill to muster up that courage.
 
I think the drills are to help other people in the event of a shooter, not trying to motivate someone to shoot up the place, ymmv.
 
At some point, take a fake gun, walk up to this guy, point at him and tell him to do his active shooter drill.
 
I wish my company would do that kind of drill. I've thought about it and made my own plans for what to do.

Someone will pull the fire alarm and everyone is programmed to congregate in a predefined, well open area. Probably not the right thing to do in that case.
 
byke said:
I think the drills are to help other people in the event of a shooter, not trying to motivate someone to shoot up the place, ymmv.
Click to expand...

I believe that is the intended outcome, but the more likely outcome is propagating fear, normalizing domestic terrorism, and possibly planting the seed/blueprint of efficiency into the head of a future disgruntled employee.

Were the cold war, duck and cover drills, effective drills to minimize children's exposure to an atomic blast, or were they sensationalist media/human nature driven measures that were ineffective at best, counter productive at worst?
 
Last edited:
Client I'm working for is also exploring this. I don't like the idea either just because i don't have confidence in the preparation for it to be done safely. For example, they don't inform the local PD, someone not familiar with the drill sees "the gunman", they shoot the actor or the cops are called and shoot the actor. I'm sure there are a bunch of other dumb things that could happen. In short, if the date is made available i won't be showing up.
 
We’ve run a few of those drills at work, even involved San Mateo County SWAT a couple of times (Urban Shield). I think a lot of workplaces are putting these on solely to mitigate litigation (we prepared our employees for this). It’s all security theater IMO. Run/hide/fight isn’t gonna stop a determined shooter from putting bullets in people. Those mosque victims in NZ all ran/hid/fought.

If you can’t stop it, the only thing you can do is shorten the length of the shooter’s time-on-site (armed intervention is usually best). Failing that, the next best thing a workplace can meaningfully do is have employees trained to mitigate the damage in the aftermath (STOP THE BLEED). Given the dismal numbers of people who are trained in First Aid/CPR/AED (about half of Americans claim to know FA/CPR/AED but I’ll bet you people who have actually taken those classes within a few years are in the single-digit-percentage if our work numbers are any indication of the larger population) I’m less than hopeful of the numbers of people who know how to treat a serious gunshot wound (ie apply pressure/pack a wound/apply a tourniquet).
 
cfives said:
I believe that is the intended outcome, but the more likely outcome is propagating fear, normalizing domestic terrorism, and possibly planting the seed/blueprint of efficiency into the head of a future disgruntled employee.

Were the cold war, duck and cover drills, effective drills to minimize children's exposure to an atomic blast, or were they sensationalist media/human nature driven measures that were ineffective at best, counter productive at worst?
Click to expand...

I understand your point, however, the hide under your desk during an atomic blast was BS and it did no good. I would even agree that it might have been propaganda. IMO, that is not the case for an active shooter drill.

I used to train and coordinate the drill for my workplace in my last position. I had multiple people with zero LE experience approach me afterwards and thank me for bringing things to light that they had not considered or thought of. For people who don't understand how to protect themselves or things to consider during an active shooter situation (turn office lights out, lock or block door, and turn all electronic sounds off) or what they should expect when first responders actually arrive on scene, this drill can help save a life. I also included the local PD on the day for the response so they were aware and it gave them familiarization to my workplace.

If you don't want to participate, that's cool, but I am certain, it will help someone you work with.
 
ontherearwheel said:
At some point, take a fake gun, walk up to this guy, point at him and tell him to do his active shooter drill.
Click to expand...


Umm, please don’t. I know you’re being facetious but fake guns in the workplace can’t lead to anywhere good. Where I work is probably a lot stricter about it but I know of one employee who was fired for bringing an airsoft gun (another employee saw him brandishing it and hit the panic button). Heck I know a guy who was fired because he pointed pistol-finger at another dude and jokingly said, “I know where to find you” (a 3rd party who saw it went and cried to HR about his safe-space being violated).
 
doc4216 said:
...
If you don't want to participate, that's cool, but I am certain, it will help someone you work with.
Click to expand...

I appreciate your point of view, but how can you be certain that that my workplace will encounter an active shooter, is that not helping terrorists, by spreading the idea that you are unsafe at any location?

The probability of dying by choking on food, is greater than by dying in an active shooter event. Why increase the odds of the later by normalizing, and publicizing it?
 
Last edited:
If the probability of an active shooter is so low, the small chance that the exercise will change that probability is also statistically low.
If you're a worker bee, enjoy a 1/2 day of doing something different. Don't be the office PITA.
 
byke said:
I think the drills are to help other people in the event of a shooter, not trying to motivate someone to shoot up the place, ymmv.
Click to expand...

Well honestly,.. where is your data? :rolleyes

Just because you're thinking it, doesn't mean it's correct ;)
 
dravnx said:
...
If you're a worker bee, enjoy a 1/2 day of doing something different. Don't be the office PITA.
Click to expand...

I am a worker bee that is adverse to the already prevalent concept of overtime to meet company goals. Negating half a day of productivity, to promote fear/terror, is fucked up at best, IMO.
 
Last edited:
1. Self-Defense shooting classes.
2. Issue 1911s.

yah, i know. No one wants to take direct responsibility for protecting themselves.
 
They use to drill us to hide under our desks at school in case of a nuclear attack. Active shooter drills are just about as needed and useful as that.
 
OP, I couldn't begin to confirm your bias but can offer this to perhaps frame your perspective differently and give you some valid argument to support your position.

Before your company spends a lot of money on an active shooter training they should first evaluate the potential for that to occur and how such training would benefit the employees. I'm not talking about some meeting but a thorough evaluation and risk analysis; there are plenty of resources to get that done. In any case, they should not have the company/person suggesting the training do that evaluation.

One of the things to consider is that all training has risks. Sometimes, people who go through disturbance response training can become traumatized. In LE work such training is mandatory but when it isn't a part of the job that risk has to be right at the top of the list. I have seen ancillary employees become traumatized and refuse to go back to work because a training scenario overwhelmed them.

Active shooter training is not amateur hour and it seems like the one proposing this is just that or isn't trained themselves (credentials be damned). The way in which you describe they made the recommendation points to a lack of end to end thinking.

Anyone who announces they are going to run an active shooter training scenario a week before they intend to do it is a complete amateur unless it is part of LE training where staff are accustomed to short notice training situations like this.

Sometimes data is BS. There is more to this than some statistic and no one is going to publish the data on how many people had very bad experiences with this type of training when it's done right much less when cowboy billy cuts loose on employees who work in cubicles for example.

To get your points across to the DMs just list the risks. Let that work on them because managers and executives are risk averse for the most part and all the data won't make any difference but being informed of the many risks will.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top