What this case represents is akin to the Active Shooter incidents which have become relatively common in the US and other jurisdictions. A recent study by Dr. Peter Blair, Director of Research for Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training and Associate Professor, Texas State University, defines an "active shooter" as:
one or more people killing or attempting to kill multiple people in an area or areas occupied by multiple unrelated individuals.
I shall return to some Dr. Blair's findings in this study shortly, however, the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has also studied active shooters quite closely and offer this definition:
...an individual actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a confined and populated area...
What is clear with regard to the shooting of RCMP officers in Moncton is that we witnessed an active shooting event that began, and stayed, a mobile situation.
Many commentators have drawn a comparison between these events and the 2005 ambush and killing of four RCMP officers in Mayerthorpe, AB. Here officers were guarding a grow-op and stolen auto parts in a Quonset hut when they were gunned down by James Roszko (46 years old), who later died of self-inflicted wounds.
In 2006 there was further lose of life for two RCMP officers following their encounter with Curt Dagenais after a car chase which developed from an investigation of domestic violence complaints.
The Police Executive Research Forum (PERF) in Washington, DC had identified active shootings as a critical issue following several events in a number of US jurisdictions, including the 2012 mass shooting in a movie theatre in Aurora, CO and the December 2012 shooting in Newtown, CT at the Sandy Hook Elementary School. In September 2013 an active shooting event in the Washington Navy Yard witnessed 15 people being shot, 12 of them fatally.
Accordingly, PERF organized a Summit on Active Shootings in Washington, DC in February 2013 which included representatives from law enforcement agencies across the country, and one senior police executive from Alberta. One of the highlights of this Summit was the research completed by Dr. Peter Blair which examined 84 active shooting events between 2000 and 2010. It is useful to note that Dr. Blair will be a guest speaker at the 2014 Annual Conference of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police (CACP) being held in Victoria, BC in August.
Blair notes that there was a change in the tactical approach to shooting events following the tragedy in Columbine. It was seen as important to increase the speed of the police response when active shooters are involved in an effort to minimize lose of life. This was a departure from hostage or barricaded person events where time could be an important ally.
The Police Response to Active Shooter Incidents (2014)
Clearly, a fast response is more dangerous for the officers involved and this leads to a need for specialist officers to become engaged earlier in the process. So, contact teams should be comprised of Emergency Response Team (ERT) members or tactical personnel who have a higher level of training, as well as, enhanced weaponry skills.
It is essential to recognize that active shooter events are highly fluid and dynamic. Again, they require officers with high levels of skill in containment and clearing activities combined with special weapons proficiency.
US research indicates that 80% of active shooters stay in one location with approximately 20% of them going mobile.
Blair summarizes these active shooter events as pre-police and post-police circumstances. It is possible that events will occur and the attacker will stop because they have committed suicide or have left the scene. It is also possible that before police arrive, the victims will either shot or subdue the attacker. In the post-police context the attacker may stop, again, by committing suicide or surrendering. Finally, the police may stop the attacker by shooting the attacker or subduing that person.
Research also shows that initial entry by a solo officer is inherently dangerous. Fully one third of the cases that Blair looked at found that solo entry officers were shot by the attacker.
N.B.: It is important to emphasize in the case of active shooters that every event is UNIQUE and therefore it is not possible to have a template of "best practices" that can be applied. There are definitely lessons learned that might be applied in any given circumstance but officers need to be prepared for a host of challenges and difficulties when confronting an active shooter or shooters.
Blair has distilled the research on the 84 cases he examined to create the following list of characteristics for active shooters:
- they engage more than one target;
- their actions are usually an expression of hatred or rage;
- they are often suicidal with no attempt to hide their identify [this may be an attempt to engage in subject-initiated homicide];
- they have often made plans for their attack; and
- they often choose a location based upon tactical advantage.
The Incident Commander has a key role to play in these events in areas such as:
- assessments;
- radio communications;
- requesting resources;
- gathering intelligence; and
- establishing perimeters.
Explicitly, the role of the perimeter team is to keep people OUT and to keep suspects IN...
The questions around "suppressive fire" which is really a war tactic were discussed at the Summit. Police executives were of the view that this is a war tactic that doesn't really have a place in law enforcement. However, "directed fire" may be useful in some circumstances if it is feasible.
The Summit highlighted a careful warning against officers "self-dispatching" to an active shooter event. This action may serve to complicate the response rather than assist it and if officers do come to the scene they should immediately go to a staging area where they can be properly assigned, if they are needed.
The attendees at the Summit emphasized that social media should be used extensively to communicate with the public. In the Moncton active shooting incident, the RCMP requested that people NOT use social media to share information regarding the whereabouts of its officers as a safety precaution.
University of Wisconsin police chief, Susan Riseling, has studied a number of active shooter incidents and provided five (5) phases for active shootings:
- Fantasy
- Planning
- Preparing
- Practicing
- Implementing (or, the Event Horizon)
It will be useful to examine how closely the actions of Jason Bourque align with these five phases.
The New York Police Department (NYPD) Looks at Active Shooters
Beyond the work done by Professor Blair, the NYPD (during Commission Ray Kelly's recent tenure) has published an important and invaluable study of active shooters. This publication is entitled: NYPD Active Shooter Recommendations & Analysis for Risk Mitigation.
This report considers active shooter events from 1966 until December 31, 2010. This resulted in a total of 281 shooting incidents which were located by doing open source research on the Internet. This report includes a series of recommendations that are geared for security personnel in buildings and fall into the following main categories:
- procedures;
- systems; and
- training
It is valuable to know that the age of the active shooting attackers shows a bi-modal pattern with peaks at 15 to 19 (in school settings) and 35 to 44 (in non-school settings).
The eventual resolution of active shooter events followed these lines:
Resolution Number of Incidents Percentage
Applied Force 93 46%
No Applied Force 28 14%
Suicide/Attempted 80 40%
Attacker Fled 1 Less than 1%
TOTAL 202 100%
It is disturbing when one considers the jurisdictional statistics assembled by this NYPD study. While the US is far and away the location for a vast majority of these active shooting events, Canada ranks second in overall instances of this type of occurrence. A sample of this jurisdictional listing is as follows:
Country Active Shooter Incidents
United States 237
Canada 8
Germany 6
Australia 5
Israel 3
United Kingdom 4
Finland 2
India 2
There will be much to consider as the RCMP, and other police organizations in Canada, debrief and come to terms with the events in Moncton, NB last week. There is much to learn in order to prevent, predict, and/or mitigate such active shooter events in the future.
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