Active Shooter Resources

An active shooter is an individual actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a populated area, and recent agile shooter incidents take underscored the demand for a coordinated response past law enforcement and others to save lives. The FBI is committed to working with its partners to protect schools, workplaces, houses of worship, transportation centers, other public gathering sites, and communities.

Although local and state law enforcement agencies are virtually always the commencement ones on the scene, the FBI has played a large role in supporting the response to every major incident in recent years and has much to offer in terms of capacity, expertise, specialized capabilities, training, and resource earlier and after an incident occurs. The successful prevention of these active shooter incidents lies with a wide range of public and private entities all working together.

To that terminate, the FBI provides operational, behaviorally-based threat assessment and threat management services to help notice and preclude acts of targeted violence, helping academic, mental health, business concern, customs, law enforcement, and government entities recognize and disrupt potential agile shooters who may be on a trajectory toward violence. The Bureau also continues its research to identify indicators that could signal potential violent intent.

Run. Hide. Fight.

These FBI training videos demonstrate the three tactics you can utilize to keep yourself and others safe during an active shooter attack—run, hide, and fight. Learning these principles now will prepare and empower y'all to put them into practice—and survive—should the unthinkable occur.

Related Videos

Overview of FBI Roles

FBI Jurisdiction in Active Shooter Incidents

Soon afterwards the tragic shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut in December 2012, the FBI sought ways its personnel could better assist its law enforcement partners. Two actions enhanced these efforts.

First, the Investigative Assistance for Violent Crimes Act of 2012, signed into law past the president in January 2013, permits the U.S. attorney general—at the request of advisable land or local law enforcement personnel—to provide federal assistance during active shooter incidents and mass killings (divers by the law as iii or more people) in public places. The attorney general delegated this responsibleness to the FBI.

2d, working with other cabinet agencies, the FBI is finding ways to assistance forbid and respond to active shooters. A White Firm working group—consisting of the Section of Justice (DOJ), Department of Homeland Security, Department of Education, and Department of Health and Human Services—is part of a broader initiative, At present is the Time, undertaken after the Sandy Hook shootings. DOJ, led past the FBI, was specifically tasked with preparation law enforcement and other first responders to ensure that protocols for responding to agile shooter situations are consequent beyond the country.

ALERRT/Other Preparation Initiatives

In response to the Newtown, Connecticut schoolhouse shootings, the FBI—with the Department of Justice'southward Bureau of Justice Assistance—teamed up with the Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training (ALERRT) program, which was developed in Texas, supported by the state of Texas, and housed at Texas Land Academy. ALERRT has trained more than 114,000 police force enforcement first responders in a response protocol adopted by the FBI as the national standard for special agent tactical instructors. Many state and local police departments have likewise adopted information technology every bit a standard for active shooter response, ensuring police force enforcement officers arriving on the scene understand how others are trained to answer.

Approximately 225 FBI tactical instructors from around the country were trained in the ALERRT protocols after attending its twoscore-60 minutes train-the-trainer course and are using what they learned to assist with the increased demand for the grooming by state, local, tribal, and campus law enforcement agencies.

In add-on to offering ALERRT to first responders, FBI field offices are bringing law enforcement command staff together to discuss best practices and lessons learned from prior mass shooting incidents. These two-day conferences include discussions and instructions related to specific aspects of active shooter incidents, including pre-issue indicators (i.e., behavioral assay), complex crime scene management and evidence collection, crisis management, victim help, media matters, and improvised explosive devices. To date, more 64,000 police chiefs, sheriffs, and law enforcement executives from state, local, tribal, and campus law enforcement have participated in these conferences, which volition be held on an ongoing basis to ensure that the law enforcement customs is prepared for hereafter threats.

FBI field offices besides host tabletop exercises—focusing on how to respond and recover from an active shooter incident. These exercises bring together our partner federal agencies, state and local police enforcement, fire services, emergency medical services, federal prosecutors, and district, county, and states' attorneys.

Active Shooter Training

Operational/Victim Assist

Once an agile shooter incident occurs, the FBI proactively assists state, local, campus, and tribal police enforcement outset responders to supplement resources every bit needed. We can ship multiple investigators to the scene, integrate into the control post, and/or mobilize and deploy evidence response teams, behavioral analysis and crisis management personnel, bomb technicians, SWAT teams, and experts in working with the news media. Equally advisable, we may also establish a command post at FBI Headquarters equanimous of diverse operational and behavioral Agency components.

Another essential part of our operational response is our victim assistance program. The FBI's Victim Services Partition (VSD), established in 2001, provides a diversity of support services to victims/family members, commencement responders, investigative teams, and other operational elements. VSD assets available to support agile shooter incidents include our field office victim specialists and members of our Victim Assist Rapid Deployment Team from around the country, who are specially trained to handle mass prey incidents.

In the Aftermath

Echoes of Columbine

For Constabulary Enforcement: LEEP

TheLaw Enforcement Enterprise Portal (LEEP)is a secure platform for police enforcement agencies, intelligence groups, and criminal justice entities. LEEP provides web-based investigative tools and analytical resources, and the networking it supports is unrivaled by other platforms available to the police enforcement community. Users collaborate in a secure environs, utilise tools to strengthen their cases, and share departmental documents.

Additional Resources