Mass school shootings have been the norm for the past two decades in different schools across the United States of America. Students, educators, and parents live in fear of such a vice ravaging their schools sooner or later. Policymakers and legislators haven’t adopted stringent measures to address this issue exhaustively and end gun violence subsequently. Despite loopholes in legislation, it is prudent therefore to prepare competitive crisis intervention procedures to mitigate the damage of gun violence, reduce mortalities and seek medical attention for casualties as soon as possible and neutralizing the perpetrators such a heinous act. This paper will delve into the details of my crisis intervention plan in response to a mass shooting in a local middle school.
In my capacity as the first respondent; my crisis intervention plan should first begin with notification to all hospitals nearby about the shooting. This will give hospitals enough time to mobilize resources and personnel to receive causalities. This limits the rate of mortalities since causalities can be stabilized quickly and effectively when hospital staff is ready and on standby to receive any casualties brought to their facility (Reeping, Jacoby, Rajan, & Branas, 2020). The next step is mobilizing Emergency Medical Services (EMS) and police to rush to the crime scene within the shortest time possible. Responding immediately is necessary to stop the spread of shooting, increase of fatalities and deaths and neutralize the shooters. Priority is to take students held hostage to safety and gun down the gunmen while evacuating the injured to trauma centers and providing them with immediate medical attention.
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Crime scenes are chaotic and without a proper protocol, the damage can be intolerable. The first cause of action is to design a protocol to control parents who are already arriving in panic mode and the media outlets so that EMS and police can neutralize the shooting and avoid exposing the bystanders to any harm (Reeping, Jacoby, Rajan, & Branas, 2020). It is necessary to establish a perimeter using the yellow tape to keep the media and parents out of the red zones and allow EMS and police to execute the plan of neutralizing and saving the victims within the shortest time possible (Santilli, et al., 2017). Collection of the brief of information about how the shooting began is necessary at this stage, this information can be obtained from people who arrived first at the scene or students and teachers who managed to escape. The next cause of action is to establish an integrated command and communication center to manage the operation.
The establishment of background information about the shooting, presence of a command center, police, EMS, and a rapid transport network to evacuate victims should now warrant a charge forward initiative. At this level, police officers should be allowed to proceed into hot zones of the shooting to ensure that victims are brought to safety, and shooters are apprehended (Santilli et al., 2017). The first batch of police officers, fully armed should be dispatched to create warm zones where EMS can safely manage victims; those with bleeding wounds can be stabilized before evacuation. The presence of an integrated command center will create effective communication and collaboration between EMS and police to reduce the damage of the shooting (Reeping, Jacoby, Rajan, & Branas, 2020). EMS officers should put on bullets vests and helmets and with the lead of the second batch of police be taken to the warm zones as communicated from the first batch of police. The goal is to evacuate victims as much as possible, stabilizing and managing to bleed and preventing hemorrhage while determining the victims in dire need of advanced medical attention for urgent evacuation to the hospitals.
The presence of EMS personnel and their active participation in managing victims is important to avoid crowding of the hospitals with victims with less damage which can be tackled at the crime scene rather than sending every victim to the hospital. In the case of the second wave of fatalities, a lot of deaths can be realized because of delayed medical attention (Santilli et al., 2017). Once EMS identifies and manages victims in need of urgent medication, ambulances should respond rapidly to ferry victims to trauma centers that are nearby. Once the shooters have been apprehended and everyone rescued and all victims taken to nearby trauma centers then the next cause of action follows. There is a need to install a communication line, specifically a hotline to service calls from parents who are worried about the safety of their children and also use it to disseminate information to the media (Mazer, Thompson, Cherry, Russell, & Payne, 2015). The integrated command center should reach out to all hospitals that received causalities to determine the number of casualties and their state. The next step is to talk to teachers and students to determine the cause of the shooting and how it happens and when it started. This step will be useful in gathering all the information to address the media and compile a report of the incident.
The final step is to address the media, to inform the public on the number of fatalities and the names of hospitals that received fatalities so that parents can go check on their children. It is also important to inform them about the shooters and the intention behind the shooting. This will be followed by assurance to the public that the situation has been successfully neutralized. Give them hotline numbers to call for inquiries; both crime response hotlines and hospital hotlines. It is also vital to evaluate the performance of EMS, police, hospitals, transport, and all stakeholders involved to determine any loose ends experienced so that this can be corrected to enhance more rapid response and success in the future.
References
Mazer, J. P., Thompson, B., Cherry, J., Russell, M., & Payne, H. J. (2015). Communication in the face of a school crisis: Examining the volume and content of social media mentions during active shooter incidents. Computers in Human Behavior, 53 , 238-248.
Reeping, P. M., Jacoby, S., Rajan, S., & Branas, C. C. (2020). Rapid response to mass shootings. Criminology & Public Policy, 19 , 295-315.
Santilli, A., Duffany, K. O., Carroll-Scott, A., Thomas, J., Greene, A., Arora, A., & Agnoli, A. (2017). Bridging the Response to Mass Shootings and Urban Violence: Exposure to Violence in New Haven, Connecticut. American Journal of Public Health, 107 (3), 374-379.
