Quote: (12-18-2015 11:09 AM)H1N1 Wrote:
The latest advice from the UK police: 'Run, hide, tell'
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-35132442
If there is an attack, runaway whilst others are slaughtered, cower whilst others are slaughtered, wait for the Police whilst others are slaughtered. When the militarized Police arrive, do not do anything other than cower in front of them in case they feel obliged to shoot you. These guys have guns, but may not be able to tell the difference between an unarmed store clerk and a terrorist. Anyone else filled with confidence at this rousing example of a proud and defiant people capable of protecting themselves and those around them from enemies who would seek to deprive them of those freedoms?
It's particularly annoying that the UK police are preaching this right at the moment when the US authorities have -- very correctly -- concluded that a passive approach is ineffective and are encouraging companies to train workers to try to confront, distract, and overpower an active shooter:
Active-shooter training for office workers used to be about hiding. Not anymore.
Quote:Quote:
Spooked by a year of high-profile rampages, hundreds of companies and organizations like NeighborWorks are racing to train their workers how to react to a shooter in their workplaces. And after decades of telling employees to lock down and shelter in place, they are teaching them to fight back if evacuating is not an option.
The idea: Work as a team to disrupt and confuse shooters, opening up a split second to take them down.
The paradigm shift in response — from passive to active — has been endorsed and promoted by the Department of Homeland Security. Last month, it recommended that federal workplaces adopt a training program called “Run, Hide, Fight,” which it helped develop. D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier used the same phrase on a recent episode of “60 Minutes.”
...
At NeighborWorks, almost three dozen employees were taught to throw things at a shooter — chairs, books, purses, pens, phones, anything — and swarm. Those items don’t seem all that threatening compared with an AR-15, but that’s not the point.
“If you can move him from offense to defense, you have changed the outcome of the event,” said Greg Crane, a former SWAT officer whose company, the ALICE Institute, trained workers at NeighborWorks as well as Facebook and Apple. “He’s thinking about what you are doing to him, not what he’s doing to you. Mentally, he’s going through a whole different process.”
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For many people, the idea of confronting a mass shooter is new and totally startling. But Lanier and security professionals say they are pushing that response for a couple of reasons. For one, it works. An FBI study of active shooter events from 2000 to 2013 found that 13 percent of the incidents were stopped “after unarmed citizens safely and successfully restrained the shooter.” The other reason: With most shooting rampages ending before police arrive, what other option is there?
“If you’re passive in the face of extreme violence,” Crane said, “you’re going to get hurt.”
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To build up the confidence to go after a killer, the trainers offer historical examples of when it has worked.
Just this summer, three unarmed friends on a train headed for Paris tackled a suspected Islamist militant about to attack hundreds of passengers with guns. The shooting of then-Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) in 2011 was stopped by unarmed citizens, including a 74-year-old man and a 61-year-old woman.
One of Crane’s favorite examples is Jacob Ryker, who in 1998, on his 17th birthday, tackled a gunman at his Oregon high school — after being shot in the lung. Afterward, his mother said, “He knew he had to tackle the guy or other people would be killed.”
That didn’t happen at Virginia Tech, where Seung Hui Cho killed 32 students and teachers on campus in 2007. He stopped to reload his guns more than a dozen times.
“He wasn’t impeded in any way,” Crane said. “His victims were uninformed. That’s not their fault. We let this protocol of lockdown become a national standard.”
In short, after many years of idiotically instructing people to "shelter in place" as if that helps anyone, the DHS is finally offering the obvious common sense advice that if you can't run away, your best chance is to act and try to disrupt a shooter in some way, to throw any objects that come to hand to distract his attention and give others the chance to restrain and overpower him.
The whole article is interesting and worth reading -- including, perhaps, by the UK police.
same old shit, sixes and sevens Shaft...