Rapid mass murder in-progress, aka Active-Shooter response

[Glenn E. Meyer]

The eyewitness literature finds that folks may remember the gun details better than the other details of the shooter after the incident. In a no shoot scenario- weapons details were about 70% correct, perp details 50% correct. In a shoot scenario - 50% percent about the weapon, 30 ish for the perp. The shoot reduced total recall but the weapon is still remembered better. The memory results are consistent with the perceptual focus mentioned above.

Stanny and Johnson’s (2000)
Effects of stress induced by a simulated shooting...
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10997233

Am J Psychol. 2000 Fall;113(3):359-86. ... Stanny CJ, Johnson TC. Psychology Department, University of West Florida, Pensacola 32514, USA. cstanny@uwf.edu

[BehindBlueI's]

The eyewitness literature finds that folks may remember the gun details better than the other details of the shooter after the incident. In a no shoot scenario- weapons details were about 70% correct, perp details 50% correct. In a shoot scenario - 50% percent about the weapon, 30 ish for the perp. The shoot reduced total recall but the weapon is still remembered better. The memory results are consistent with the perceptual focus mentioned above.

Stanny and Johnson’s (2000)
Effects of stress induced by a simulated shooting...
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10997233

Am J Psychol. 2000 Fall;113(3):359-86. ... Stanny CJ, Johnson TC. Psychology Department, University of West Florida, Pensacola 32514, USA. cstanny@uwf.edu

My experience confirms that in spades, especially in a certain subset of crimes. In the last few years I've been dealing with a lot of pharmacy robberies via note passing. The pharmacist or technician will remember the note almost verbatim in most cases. They remember what medicine it asked for, in what quantities, and often what words were spelled or used incorrectly. They recall if it was pen or pencil, the type and color of paper, etc. etc. The person who handed him the note? Meh. Race, sex, height within 3", weight within 30 lbs...maybe. The only ones who've gotten good descriptions have been robbed before, weren't surprised, and often saw the suspect approaching with the note and took special notice of him before the robbery began.

[voodoo_man]

My experience confirms that in spades, especially in a certain subset of crimes. In the last few years I've been dealing with a lot of pharmacy robberies via note passing. The pharmacist or technician will remember the note almost verbatim in most cases. They remember what medicine it asked for, in what quantities, and often what words were spelled or used incorrectly. They recall if it was pen or pencil, the type and color of paper, etc. etc. The person who handed him the note? Meh. Race, sex, height within 3", weight within 30 lbs...maybe. The only ones who've gotten good descriptions have been robbed before, weren't surprised, and often saw the suspect approaching with the note and took special notice of him before the robbery began.

As all things, being exposed to something, or training for it is the best way to navigate it next time.

Had a bank robbery locally, girl teller got a note, gave the dude 2k in small bills. she was upset because she "didnt get a good look at him" as in didnt know what race he was even. I told her next time, you take a deep breath and start making a detailed list of their attributes head to toe. She told her coworkers, and sure enough six months later one of her coworkers she told her to do this did exactly that, point of note, got an awesome flash description of the guy, never gave his note back and started yelling at him.

[Chuck Haggard]

Tunnel vision. They saw and processed the gun, failed to process anything else.

My first go through with an active shooter scenario was in a huge high school, hundreds of role players, sound effects, etc. I was no virgin to stress nor being shot at by that point, and it was still very tough not to shut down. There was so much chaos my brain didn't want to focus on anything, I was the opposite of tunnel vision. I actually 'saw' the shooter, but didn't process it until he'd 'fired' several shots at us. Since then we've done multiple smaller scale simulations in schools, a shut down hospital, a night club (complete with smoke machine, stupidly loud music, everything, that really sucked), etc. The more exposure, the better, but I concur in that very few departments are doing this or doing it regularly. The events are so rare and training time so limited (and training budgets) that it often gets pushed back for more urgent, more common, and the dreaded state mandated training in its place.

Even very elite dudes have issues with this, Paul Howe has talked about it several times, including noting an incident in his book where one of his Delta guys shot at other Americans during an operation.

[Robinson]

Even very elite dudes have issues with this, Paul Howe has talked about it several times, including noting an incident in his book where one of his Delta guys shot at other Americans during an operation.

I remember that section. After the incident, Mr. Howe first addressed with the guy the issue of why he fired at friendlies. Next he addressed the issue of why he missed. That part of the book stuck with me for some reason.