Duck and Cover

"Hostage Drill Promotes Safety,"
Tallahassee Democrat (2/19/08)

Have no time to look around
Just run around, run around and think why
Does anybody really know what time it is
Does anybody really care
--Does Anybody Really Know What Time it Is?,
Chicago

It no longer shatters the intellect
that those who make war
call themselves diplomats

we are no longer surprised that the
unfaithful pray loudest every Sunday
in every church and sometimes
in rooms facing east
though it is a sin and a shame
--The Women Gather, Nikki Giovanni
___________

Following the recent school shooting at NIU by the latest 15-second-of-famer, our local paper has decided to make us all feel better and as though someone knows WTF is happening by fronting the story, "Hostage Drill Promotes Safety."

The article covers the hostage drill at at a local middle school and Florida A & M University, replete with "rapid gunfire, 'bloody' victims and panicked squeals." George Romero would be proud; however, the featured response is an unlikely deterrent and possibly, inappropriate treatment.

As always, the officers are conducting a military-type assault. All are wearing protective masks, implying the use of toxic substances such as CS or CN (teargas). The hostages obviously won't have such protective gear. The officer on the right is carrying a 5.56 mm M-4 type military assault rifle, which fires a projectile at +/- 3,250 f/s -- not a wise weapons choice for close quarters in which friendlies may be taking refuge. (A 9mm with safety slugs would be a much wiser choice of weapons.)

The pictured assault team is bunched up, and a dedicated shooter could neutralize the three on the left with controlled fire. Bunching up is a formula for disaster, and I'm assuming they are not in the posture posing for the cameraman. The picture indicates a lack of training.

While armed responses are often required in such scenarios, some thought should be given to resolution of the incident via hostage negotiation. Shooting first is not always the answer.

"When an incident happens, a universal system is used so everyone can patch into it." Hopefully the communication and mobile crisis management center has pre-established lines of communication for overall incident management. But at the team level, only the response team should communicate internally. Too many people talking on a tactical net is not a viable command and control function.

The newspaper headlines on NIU read "latest school terror." Finally, we must be clear defining the threat. A crazed lone gunman is not a "terror threat." To conflate the terms is to appropriate a discrete phenomenon in the name of which two wars are falsely being conducted to include any act of outrageous violence. This accretion of violent episodes inappropriately lends credence to the wars. The two phenomena are separate in origin and purpose.

The military assault might not be the best treatment in either scenario.

After the Virginia Tech shooting, VT English teacher and poet Nikki Giovanni said, "I knew when it happened that that's probably who it was. I would have been shocked if it wasn't." Because of the shooter's previous menacing behavior, Giovanni went to the department's chairwoman and told her she was "willing to resign before [she] was going to continue with him." He was removed from her classroom.

As an aside, read some of Ms. Giovanni's poetry if you want to read real. There are no minced words there, only a harsh yet redeeming honesty.

That is the kind of integrity and honesty that is called for today. The father and girlfriend of the NIU shooter gave the usual babble about "what a nice guy he was," and how, "no one would've suspected." Yet the night before the shooting he called the girlfriend -- with whom he lived -- late to poignantly say goodbye, and had just purchased a handgun for her.

Hello -- these are warning signs, if anyone cares to sees them.