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TABLE 1 Key Tenets for Command Officers intensity. This helped standardized the jurisdiction’s response
Law Enforcement Supervisor Fire and Rescue Command Officer to an AVI. By providing these simulations (supported by facil-
• Acknowledge AVI and • Acknowledge AVI and request itators), the participants left more confident in commanding a
request additional resources. additional resources. response to an AVI.
• Monitor deployment of • Identify a Staging Location.
contact teams. • Announce need for ballistic PPE The authors also identified two important observations about
• Gains early situational and TECC kits. commanding the response to a high threat incident: 1) do not
awareness. • Build up plan and resources for
• Declaration of a warm zone. mass casualties. hesitate to deploy medical personnel into the warm zone, and
• Announces unified 2) deploy multiple warm zone care strategies (i.e., RTF teams
command location and and protected corridor). First, participants hesitated to request
requests Fire and Rescue unified command, delaying entry of medical personnel into
Command Officer. the warm zone. The command officers were seeking definite
Unified Command Objectives confirmation that one shooter existed and was stopped. Facil-
• Establish and announce unified command. itators pointed out that there will always be uncertainty when
• Share information to establish a common operating picture. contact teams report that the shooter was apprehended (or
• Determine a joint strategy to access, treat, and extract patients
(i.e., RTF teams, protected corridor, etc.). “down”). Reports of a second shooter are common during an
• Establish joint assembly area and begin forming joint teams. AVI. 11,12 According to an FBI 18-year review of active shooter
Maintain accountability of these teams from formation to incidents, only 1% of incidents consisted of more than one
deployment. shooter. The establishment of a warm zone should be based
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• Locate, treat, and remove patients from the warm zone through on probability, not possibility of a second shooter. This ac-
effective face-to-face and radio communication between law
enforcement and fire and rescue. knowledgement helps shorten the time to get fire and rescue
• Utilize the four “Cs” of communication with and across agencies personnel (as RTF teams or through a protected corridor) into
for effective communication. the warm zone to treat patients. Role-player provided key in-
• Demonstrate command presence. formation to the command officers over the radio, such as “the
AVI = acts of violence, TECC = tactical emergency casualty care, PPE = down shooter matches the description” and “we do not hear
personal protective equipment, RTF = rescue task force. any more gun shots in the building.” Second, one of the AVI
officers. Figure 3 shows the multiple communication lines scenarios required the combined tactics of protected corridor
across the command lab during a typical AVI simulation. The and rescue task force deployment. The authors feel this may be
elevated voices of the role-players and exposure to 2 minutes the most realistic situation. Although many casualties located
of simulated response noise also contributed to creating some in one area is conducive to a protected corridor strategy, RTF
realistic stress. and extraction teams may still be needed to search adjacent
areas for casualties.
FIGURE 3 Multiple lines of communications during a simulation
created inherent stress on unified command. TABLE 2 Lessons Learned About Simulating High Threat Incidents
in the Command Competency Lab
1. Participants commanded multiple active shooter incidents to rein-
force decisions, priorities, and communication procedures.
2. Simulating high threat incidents in the command competency lab-
oratory standardized the response.
3. Simulations are almost as beneficial to learning as experience.
4. Simulations allowed simultaneous implementation of protected
corridor and RTF team warm zone care strategies.
5. The command competency lab provided a “no-fault” environ-
ment for LE and FIRE unified command to manage an AVI.
6. The establishment of a warm zone should be based on probabil-
ity, not possibility of a second shooter.
RTF = rescue task force, AVI = acts of violence, LE = law enforcement;
FIRE = fire and rescue

Lessons for Operating a Command Competency Lab
Five lessons learned for operating a command competency lab
were also identified (Table 3). With clear and focused objec-
Lessons for Simulating a High Threat Incident
in a Command Lab tives, the simulations became consistent and reproducible. The
use of a small number of facilitators and role-players also en-
Unified command competency simulations identified six les- couraged consistency and reliability (Figure 4). Both groups
sons about simulating high threat incidents in the command were also “cross-trained” to fill more than one role in produc-
competency lab (Table 2). A command competency labora- ing the simulation. In the command competency lab, the lesson
tory allowed unified command to manage an active shooter of command presence cannot be overstated. The calm and clear
incident multiple times to reinforce decisions, priorities, and radio traffic, collective communication between agencies, and
communication procedures. An AVI is (hopefully) a “once-in- use of the Four-Step Model Communication’s model ensured
a-lifetime” event for a jurisdiction’s fire and rescue and law effective unified command operations. Known as the “4-C’s
enforcement agency. In the command lab, commanders man- Model,” the steps to effectively communicate are: 1) the sender
aged this rare event multiple times. These simulations touch connects with the receiver, 2) the sender conveys the message,
several of Thorndike’s Laws of learning: exercise, effect, and 3) the receiver clarifies that message by repeating it, and 4) the

62 | JSOM Volume 22, Edition 4 / Winter 2022