Active Shooter Incidents

Active Shooter Incidents

Introduction

The law enforcement has coined the phrase active shooter. It is defined by the Colorado, El Paso County, USA, Colorado Springs, and the Sheriff's Office manual of policy and procedure as such type of armed individual who makes use of the deadly physical force another people and does so continuously and has a free access to the victims every time. A shift in the paradigm has been caused by the active shooters in the field of law enforcement tactics and training, particularly when these people do not essentially expect to survive or escape such situations. The distinction of the fact related to active shooters has compelled the law-enforcement agencies for the development of newer techniques and tactics along with other procedures and methods for safeguarding the public. It is however, the fact that the individual community members should also participate in sharing the burden of these types of actions.

However, it is also the duty of the individual community member to shield the community against any such types of actions. Thus, it is the bottom line that the incidents of active shooting are characterized with respect to their uncertain nature, frequent occurrence and lethality. Therefore, the presence of well equipped and trained law-enforcement personnel would prevent such incidents in every workplace, university and school.

Discussion

The scenarios of active shooters have taken place at different settings and locations and with varying frequency in the United States. For instance, a part time postal employee, Patrick H Sherrill, into Edmond Oklahoma post office, shot, took his own life after killing 14 people (US Department of Justice, 2001, p. 11). There have been a lot of active shooting incidents in different learning environments, such as the 1996 Moses Lake, Washington incident, the 1997 West Paducah, Kentucky incident, the 1998 Springfield, Oregon incident, and two of the more publicized incidents, Columbine High School in 1999 (Zinna, 1999) and Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in 2007 (Massengill, 2007).

While referring to the occurrence of the active shooting scenarios in the learning environments, it was disclosed by Band and Harpold (1999) that the occurrence of the violent incidents in the learning environments are not only the school system's responsibility of the school system. The local government, law enforcement, the business community, civic organizations, and parents all shared a responsibility to combat such acts (Band & Harpold, 1999, p. 9).

In terms of the violent incidents in the learning environment, The United States Department of Justice, Crime in Schools (2007) reported: (a) out of the 393,938 incidents of violence, the factor of age was the major contributor and the biggest group to commit crimes was between the ages of 13 and 15 years, while the other large group belonged to the age segment of 16 to 18 years, and those in the 19 years and older followed the second group (b) most of the offenders of violent incidents were males, and (d) the highest rate of violent incidents occurred in October, subsequently proceeded by March and ...