Page 110 - JSOM Summer 2020

FIGURE 6 Joint partnership from law enforcement agencies at the
federal and state levels ensured a safe and successful outcome to a
potentially volatile situation in a small college town.

FIGURE 7 A photo
from an overhead
camera demonstrates the
disbursement of a crowd
after the conclusion
of the event.

Blackmun held that free speech “cannot be financially bur-
dened, any more than it can be punished or banned, simply
because it might offend a hostile mob.” 28
hundreds of Florida Highway Patrol troopers. An emergency
operations center and joint information center were established Key Lessons
to coordinate these agencies. Given the national publicity of the Several key lessons were learned from this event (Table 3). First,
Gainesville event, intelligence reports, and the Charlottesville, the close coordination and preparation between key stakehold-
Virginia, incident that lasted 2 days, all agencies were prepared ers ensured a successful resolution. Besides the standard stake-
for a prolonged event of at least 48 hours. holders (i.e., law enforcement and EMS), our involvement of jail
personnel, EMS physicians, hospital administrators and physi-
cians, helicopter EMS, and hazardous-materials decontamina-
Discussion tion support heightened awareness for the possible rapid influx
Careful and diligent preparation proved to be the key to a of patients. Law enforcement, prehospital EMS, and hospital
successful resolution (Figure 7). Despite an isolated shooting partners all participated in increasing and pooling resources,
incident, a torched vehicle, and multiple scuffles (all directly forming task forces, and implementing decontamination strike
related to the event), there were no serious injuries and no ad- teams in an all-hazards approach to NIMS. Second, the pres-
ditional transports to the ED. The isolated shooting incident in- ence and advice of content experts, in the form of UC Berkeley’s
volved three suspects with white supremacist ties who fired one invaluable insight, allowed us to preplan and anticipate contin-
round toward a crowd; these suspects were arrested quickly by gencies that they previously experienced.
law enforcement. Here, the immediate coordination among
21
the Federal Bureau of Investigation, other federal agencies, and TABLE 3 Take-Home Points
local agencies after the identification of gunfire underscores • The pooling of numerous resources from law enforcement, pre-
the importance of resource pooling; within a few hours of the hospital emergency medical services (EMS), and hospital partners;
event, the arrests were effected without any additional injuries. the creation of task forces and decontamination strike teams; and
the involvement of other key stakeholders (e.g., representatives
Moreover, the governor’s declaration of a state of emergency from the jail) in an all-hazards approach to the National Incident
was instrumental in containing this event without any loss of Management System (NIMS) was crucial for a safe and successful
life, as opposed to the events that occurred in Charlottesville. outcome.
• The increase in staffing was not isolated to prehospital EMS and
Ultimately, security costs for the event reached upward of law enforcement. The hospital altered its staffing paradigm to al-
$723,000, of which UF, a public university, partially contrib- low for a rapid, dynamic influx of patients.
uted. Although some critics believe UF “overprepared,” 23,24 • NIMS was designed by the Federal Emergency Management
22
EMS systems must be prepared for all scenarios. Hinchey and Agency and Department of Homeland Security as a comprehen-
sive, standardized, flexible, and scalable approach to incident pre-
Goodloe explain that “EMS systems must maintain ‘pro- paredness, resource management, and response. The framework is
25
duction’ capacity that exceeds demand despite the inherent designed to coordinate multiagency, multijurisdictional responses.
inefficiency this creates. This “cost of readiness” contributes
a significant proportion of the cost of EMS. A large compo- Third, the use of antiquated law enforcement vehicles as bar-
nent of the practice of emergency medicine, EMS medicine, rier vehicles proved to be invaluable for crowd control and
law enforcement, and tactical medicine is being prepared to establishing ingress and egress routes. Fourth, although air-
anticipate and manage potentially life-threatening situations; space was restricted for this event, the use of unmanned aerial
through careful and diligent preparation, disastrous conse- vehicles by different agencies provided a level of complexity
quences to life and health were prevented that day. that was unaccounted for.

Similarly, the University of California spent upward of $1.4 Fifth, it is an important reminder that one of the important mis-
million for two separate controversial events. 26,27 Public uni- sions of the NIMS framework is recovery. As an event comes
versities are burdened with shouldering the costs for event to a close, it is easy and natural to fall into the mindset that the
security as a result of the 1992 Supreme Court case Forsyth response phase is ending and to focus on demobilizing; how-
County v Nationalist Movement, known in First Amendment ever, as was evidenced in this event, the biggest threat occurred
doctrine as the “heckler’s veto.” In that case, Justice Harry immediately after the primary event as the crowd disbursed.

108 | JSOM Volume 20, Edition 2 / Summer 2020