According to a study recently released by the FBI, from 2000 to 2012, the rate of active shooter incidents in the United States increased, particularly after 2008.
Between 2000 and 2008, approximately one event occurred every other month (five per year), but that rate increased to one per month between 2009 and 2012 (nearly 16 per year). The authors say the high rate continued in 2013 — there were 15 incidents last year.
The most common location of an active shooter incident between 2000 and 2012 was a business (40%), while schools were the second most common location (29%). Nearly one in five events (19%) occurred outdoors.
The median response time for law enforcement was 3 minutes, and the median response time for solo officers was 2 minutes. The median number of people shot per event was five, not including the shooter. All of the events identified by the authors involved single shooters (94% were male), and in 55% of the events, the shooter had a connection with the attack location.
View the charts from this report.
“It also is worth noting that in the five largest-casualty events (Northern Illinois University in DeKalb; Sandy Hook Elementary School; Fort Hood Army Base, Killeen, Texas; Virginia Polytechnic and State University in Blacksburg; and the Century 21 Theater) the police were on scene in about 3 minutes; yet, a substantial number of people still were shot and injured or killed,” the report claims.
Nearly half (49%) of the incidents ended before police arrived at the scene: 67% percent ended by the shooter dying by suicide or leaving the scene; 33% ended by the potential victims stopping the shooter themselves.
Of the 51% of incidents that were still going when law enforcement arrived, 40% of the attackers either died by suicide or surrendered to police. In the other cases (60%), police officers used force to stop the attackers, most often with firearms.
Again, it is important to note that it is a matter of WHEN, not IF an active shooter scenario transpires at ASU. According to this report, schools are the second most frequent location for an active shooter!! Proper and regular training of officers would ensure an appropriate response, but instead ASUPD has given NO additional training for its officers about how to respond to an active shooter. This, coupled with dangerously low staffing numbers on campus make ASUPD vulnerable to lawsuits when an such an incident occurs, primarily because of the lack of training officers receive to handle these types of calls.
When will the Chief realize the importance of active shooter training and appropriate planning for a critical incident?
The chief is more concerned about saving his own ass than doing anything to protect the public. He’s running around with his AR15//,m4 carbine rifle that 95% of his officers aren’t allowed to carry.
Oh chief support, fund, train anyone on how to use the huge load of rifles donated to us by AZDPS collecting dust in our armory. He’s probably worried about armed pissed off employees, so in his mind he needs the rifle more than patrol needs it to protect the community.
As the student population balloons out of control our police department shrinks. We have the largest university in the nation in the middle of a gun state. Thank god we have been lucky because as a department we are poorly prepared for an active shooter threat.
The chief is too cheap to offer practice ammo and failed qualification shoots are quite common. Only a select few are qualified with rifles and we have plenty collecting dust.
It’s increased for a number of possible reasons. The news broadcasts violent murder sprees for months at a time and this shows people who are nuts that they can get revenge and all the attention they want.
Mental health funding from the government has been slashed, more people self-medicating with more substances legal and illegal, proliferation of drug use in general, violence portrayed everywhere through TV movies games, while nudity is forbidden, poverty on the rise contributing to criminal activity.
The warning signs keep coming, so are we prepared at ASUPD? We can’t even staff the campuses without offering paid department overtime for years, so what do you think?
When they come and if I’m here when they do I will face the challenge, but our department as a whole is not as prepared as we should be to meet the threat. The Arizona State University is used to offering large sums of money to people it might have to face in court, negative cases that could generate publicity.
These criminal acts are becoming more common and deadly. Each news report details the act and gives potential mad men a how to list. Are they prepared to do that if we have double digit victims and a department that fell apart on a scene that they were unable to manage? With all the publicity this blog has generated in the law enforcement community the secret negligence won’t be so easy to hide.
Won’t be so easy to hide and less scapegoats to blame. Claiming I didn’t know is now out of the question.
We have been so lucky on this issue. It gets worse as time goes on. You have zero-1 officers on at satellite campuses, so you will be outnumbered 10 to one in a situation and wholly dependant on outside agency help, it’s happened.
In Tempe you have more people and more university inspired movement restrictions. Ballards, no wheel zones, making it increasingly unsafe for a fast response. Supposedly the chief was told the no wheel zone didnt apply to the police department, but he wanted to set an example.
Still unprepared as usual to meet the challenges, but we can always keep ignoring that until the day of like we have.
I’m really surprised we haven’t had one yet. The satellite campuses are virtually empty, one officer on, Tempe is empty for how large it is and how few ASUPD officers are there. It’s a good thing Tempe PD has staffing or criminals would have no fear of getting away whatsoever.
Chief, show your bosses what the actual schedule has looks like. Give them the scheduleanywhere.com login and password, so they can see the big empty department we achieved. It’s a good thing all the new trainees are coming on board just in time to get some time on and leave again because none of the leadership problems were addressed.
Top-level ASU administrators are well aware of our sworn officer shortage. This has been brought to their attention in writing with supporting documentation. If they continue to ignore this, they put themselves and the university at great peril.