Active Shooter Incidents, Part III: Effective Preparedness, Training, and Strategies

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Karen Tynan: Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us for the Ogletree Deakins podcast. My name is Karen Tynan, and I’m a shareholder in the Sacramento, California, office and co-chair of the Workplace Violence Prevention Practice Group. Here with me today again is Dan Skoczylas, a subject matter expert in workplace violence and active shooters. This is part three of our three-part podcast series on the FBI’s report on 2024 active shooter incidents. Looking to help out employers with understanding this FBI report and understanding the data and materials on workplace violence.
Dan, we’ve had two parts to this podcast. We talked about the FBI report for 2024, and that it analyzed data going back five years. So that’s 2020, ’21, ’22, ’23, ’24. The commerce category does have the highest number of incidents and highest casualties. This category of commerce, which in the other podcasts, you and I talked about how it’s a narrow category, and really, government buildings, or churches, and education also have employees. Their commerce category is a bit narrow. What are your thoughts on the commerce category actually having the highest number of incidents, and highest number of categories in the FBI report?

Dan Skoczylas: Yeah. I hate to use this term, but I just think that they’re an easier target for these statistics. It’s easy for the FBI to analyze a place for commerce because it’s a confined space for them. The act of the shooter is in the hotel, but the recipients of the gunfire are out on this open field, so whose responsibility are those areas? Who is the finger going to be pointed at, and how do you deal with that?
I think that by and large, most of these places that are the unfortunate hosts of these things are inside some kind of facility or a confined area. In fact, confinement is one of the elements of the FBI’s definition, in a confined space, although we know it can happen in an open space, as well. Ultimately, my argument is that the only statistic that should be there and the only one that matters is that it happened in somebody’s workplace. This is workplace violence, plain and simple. Somebody works everywhere. Everywhere you go, somebody works there. We could narrow it down to just that and say we need to address this problem in all workplaces, no matter what they look like.

Karen Tynan: I agree. I actually took issue in the synopsis where the FBI categorizes an event that happened at a national park as just a government location, versus, okay, the person who was wounded was a park ranger. He is an employee. He was wounded, and somehow, the way the categories end up being defined, I think the numbers get a bit skewed. I like the fact that you’re pointing that out so that businesses, employers can really understand the risk and the data that they can use to understand their risks.
Now, at the conclusion of the report, I think this is important and it’s really what’s driving this podcast, the FBI emphasizes the importance of active shooter preparedness training and exercises for law enforcement, first responders, and civilians. I’m sure active shooter training for law enforcement is very different from employers. But let’s talk about what effective training on active shooters looks like for employers.

Dan Skoczylas: Yeah. Again, I’m glad you brought this topic up. There’s a lot of approaches to the training. Some employers simply want to be able to check the box and say, “We offered something.”

Karen Tynan: Right.

Dan Skoczylas: Be it a six-minute run, hide, fight video, or whatever the case may be. We like to build our employers into doing some live training with actual scenarios. Here’s my position on this. You can put on a six-minute video, and I can get nothing out of it. In fact, I can let the video run and get up and walk away, and go have something to eat or drink. As far as you’re concerned, I still watched the video.
When we do our live training events, we actually run it like a police roll call. You go through the event, and then we come back, and we debrief on that event. I can tell you, Karen, that we have people coming back to our debriefs with a bead of sweat on their forehead and tears in their eyes because they don’t realize how fast something like this unfolds. But in the end, nobody is ever going to ask them if they ever had active shooter training, and they’re going to go, “I don’t remember. I’m not sure.”

Karen Tynan: Right.

Dan Skoczylas: “I think there was a six-minute video, but I didn’t really watch it.” Their response is generally, “Yeah, we had some training. Have a seat, I want to tell you all about it because it was absolutely incredible.” Then they lay it out for the person that asked. Then they go home, and they share this information and the experience with their family and their kids. It becomes infectious, if you will. That’s our goal. We want to save as many lives as we possibly can, whatever that takes. Imparting this knowledge and letting them go forth to spread the word, we’re more than happy to do it.

Karen Tynan: I like your point around that because how many times have we seen these videos or PowerPoints where you just click after so many seconds, and it’s not effective. I like using the term effective for effective training.
The other thing that I saw in 2024, after SB-553 passed and after other states looked to line up after California and implement more stringent workplace violence prevention laws, was that a ton of training companies got into the business. “Oh, you could buy this off-the-shelf training. Oh, on this platform, for $9.99 per employee, you can have this amazing training.” But I was pretty frustrated last year, in 2024, because I think a lot of employers, they were approached or pitched this training that was just really not adequate or effective. The idea that someone’s just going to click through a PowerPoint and that PowerPoint, with nothing more, is going to be the active shooter training that you’re talking about. Just really isn’t sufficient.
I want to mention, too, and it’s something that you and I talked about, is delivering the training and making sure that employees have the opportunity to ask questions, to participate. Depending on your workplace, your workplace culture, your site, your employees, things like that, there are ways to make training work and be effective for your business. If you’re a small mom-and-pop place and you just get some generic training that could apply to any place anywhere, ask yourself, “Is that going to be the effective training that I want my employees to have?” I’m going to get off my soapbox now, Lieutenant Dan, okay?

Dan Skoczylas: Yeah. You’re absolutely correct. It’s not a soapbox by any means, Karen. You’re right. We have just recently implemented a video component, an online component to some of our training, but we are very clear with the client and whoever is using it that it is intended to be a supplemental or a stop-gap between live training events. You can’t expect that, especially a small company, is going to shut down production for even four hours every month because they’ve hired somebody new to put them through this live training event. They have to expose them to the material a little bit, and then get them involved in the next live training event if they’re still employed there. That is the purpose of our supplemental training. If we cannot make them experience what this is like, then their reaction to it is going to be ineffective in a real live situation.

Karen Tynan: I like your points on that. I had notes for me to make sure we talked about missteps and mistakes in active shooter training, and we’ve started to cover that. One thing I see, and this is the nerdy safety lawyer in me, is record keeping. Employers need to record that this training is happening and what was the content. If you, at a later date, are going to try to prove, “Hey, all my employees were effectively trained to deal with workplace violence, we did have active shooter training.” Well, when did you have it? What was the content? Who delivered it? Did everyone participate? Did they have the opportunity to ask questions?
As much as we’re talking about the actual training, I sometimes see employers forget about the record-keeping part of training and just maybe generically record, “Oh, yeah, everybody got training on June 1st, and all good,” and really nothing more than that. I like to point that out for our listeners so that they can make sure they’re taking that action item.
Any other aspects of effective training or mistakes that you see in active shooter training that you want to point out before we talk about some other aspects?

Dan Skoczylas: Just to build on what you just said about the record-keeping, most of the time when we see security breakdowns or breeches, or God forbid, an actual active shooter event, and we trace it backwards to where things went awry, it almost always lands squarely at the feet of policy, practice, and procedural failure, or what we call PPP. Everybody likes to do the active shooter training. It’s fun; you’ve never done anything like this before in your life. But the policy, practice, and procedure is what’s going to save your people-

Karen Tynan: Yes.

Dan Skoczylas: … on a daily basis. To include the record-keeping component.

Karen Tynan: I like that because you’ve got to make sure, “Oh, we onboarded all these other people. Oh, are we going to wait 10 months because someone came two months after a training?” Absolutely not. I like that we have this bit of emphasis on policies and procedures.
Now, I have had this question, and I want to get your thoughts on it. I have heard from some folks who implemented vigorous training, especially after SB-553, who said, “You know what, active shooter training is just too graphic, it’s traumatizing. So-and-so in another department, they had an incident years ago at this other place they work, and they got teary even talking about this training.” What do you think employers can do, from your perspective as the professional, when there may be employees who have a sensitivity or who don’t feel that they can, I guess the word would be fully participate in vigorous active shooter training?

Dan Skoczylas: Yeah. We get this all the time, almost every time we do a live training event. What we tell the employer ahead of time, and then we tell it during the classroom portion of the training, is if, for any reason, you are not able to participate in this, simply let us know and we will find a safe zone for you to sit where you can watch. We’ve had people who say, “You know what, this bothers me so much, I would prefer to go sit in my car.” We tell them that’s fine, just let your employer know. Thanks for letting us know, because we’re not looking to cause anybody any harm here. Just know that the training that you’re missing out on at some point might be just the thing that saves your life. But we take all of those things into consideration for these folks, and we’re not forcing it down anybody’s throat. We don’t find that the employers do either.

Karen Tynan: Right.

Dan Skoczylas: It’s not like they’re mandating them to participate in these things. If they say, “I can’t do it,” they’re like, “Okay, you can’t do it. We gave you the opportunity.”

Karen Tynan: I agree. One thing I’ve seen offered, especially at larger employers who maybe have greater resources, is if you have two or three employees who say, “You know what, I’ve been a victim of domestic violence, and this is way too triggering for me. I don’t want to cry in front of my coworkers. I’m not exactly sure what the content’s going to be, but it’s difficult for me.” I’ve had employers say, “We’re going to offer you one-on-one training. Would you like that? In a quiet place. Our professional trainer will have some one-on-one training with you that will be delivered in a way that works for you.” I’ve also seen employers offer some smaller group training that made people a little more comfortable when they had had experiences that made them vulnerable to feeling stressed around it.
And also, I’ve had employers who say, “The video is too graphic for you? Okay, well, we’re going to have some written materials, and we’re going to go over it. If you feel like you need to take a break during the delivery of these materials, you take as many breaks as you want, and we’ll go at your pace.” Trying to accommodate that.
I think especially when someone says they’ve been a victim of domestic violence and have been on the wrong end of the gun, honoring that and making sure we’re not retraumatizing them. And trying to find a way to help them be trained, but at the same time not impacting them negatively. I like your thoughts on that. Being a bit flexible, I guess is the word I would use, Lieutenant Dan.

Dan Skoczylas: Absolutely. They should make sure that they find a vendor or a company that’s going to do the training for them that will allow for those flexibilities to occur, and work with them on those issues so that everybody gets the most that they can out of the training that’s available.

Karen Tynan: Now, here’s the question that we saw a lot in 2024 with the new laws and people starting their training from scratch. Tell me your opinion, give me your thoughts about in-person versus video versus recorded training or simple written materials. Are there ways to have effective training, maybe more on a budget? Do you have preferences around the mode or method of people receiving training?

Dan Skoczylas: Our preference is always to have it done live, in person. Our experience has been that that has been the most effective. Most of the clientele that we have for those are repeat clients; they have us back every couple of years to redo this.

Karen Tynan: Right.

Dan Skoczylas: But recognizing that it’s a big country, you can’t cover everybody. Ultimately, you want to get in front of as many people as you can. If you’ve got companies that are working more on a budget, what I would suggest is that they do their homework and their research. Don’t just jump on the first video solution that’s presented to you because you want to check the box. If you’re going to invest any money in anything, you want to make sure that it’s going to be effective, that it’s going to have an impact. The last thing you want is Cal/OSHA showing up at a workspace after an event and asking the employees, “Tell me about your workplace violence training.” And somebody says, “I think we had a video that they played in the lunchroom, but I didn’t watch it. I don’t remember.” That doesn’t help.

Karen Tynan: No, for sure.

Dan Skoczylas: Whatever you paid for that video is going to be the nail in your coffin. Do your research, dig in a little bit, and figure out what is the best fit for you.

Karen Tynan: I like your thoughts on that. I think that employers need to think about, “Well, are we a retail business? Is our risk for workplace violence, does it just come from employees, or does it also come from our customers?” Or, “Are we a place, like a logistics place with trucks and vans coming in and out at all hours of the day and night? We have a different risk.” I also have some medical device clients, good grief, their security, their bio-security, I don’t think a fly gets in their place.
When you’re talking about evaluating yourself and identifying your own needs, I really like that as a starting point. And thinking about, okay, well, what’s right for us? Maybe it is something on a tighter budget, or maybe it is more than a video, or having a professional come in. I like that starting point, self-evaluation.
Now, here’s my last question. This is a good one, Dan. A lot of listeners like to have takeaways, like an action list. What can I do? I’ve listened to this podcast, and Dan and Karen said all this stuff. They talked about data. They talked about training. They talked about June as the top month. But what kind of action items, what kind of ideas do we have for employers to have a list of two or three things that they could do right after listening to the podcast?

Dan Skoczylas: I would throw this out to the upper management and certainly the HR folks in all of these companies. Most places have their own HR people, or even outsourced HR people at this point that do those types of tasks for them. We are usually seeing that they are the ones that we have the most contact with.
A little self-reflection on the company’s part would be my first suggestion. Do you actually have a workplace violence policy? Do you have any policies that would address this issue? If you do, when was the last time they were reviewed? Do they comply with SB-553? Are there elements that are missing? Recognize that, no matter what that policy, practice, or procedure is, there are other things that you can implement to help mitigate the loss of life and livelihood in the event of a workplace violence incident. Everything from screening the people that you let in the front door to facility assessment, to the active shooter training all plays a part in lowering the risk exposure to the company that you’re working for.

Karen Tynan: I like that. I think that self-reflection is key. That gives you your action list for your own self-audit. I do think that this podcast, if you think about it, we talked for about 20, 22, 24 minutes each, so the series of three—it’s about an hour. It’s an hour well-spent. You can share the podcast at work, all that. If you are a nerd and want to read a 50-something-page FBI report, you can also get it online. It’s a government publication. If you want to read it and read it through a lens of Dan’s expertise and my expertise, through the lens of a workplace safety attorney, a workplace violence prevention attorney, I think also taking a look at the report and seeing what kind of kernels are there for you as you think about this podcast.
I love closing out like that, Dan. I have to say thank you to you for joining me. I love having this kind of amazing resource for our listeners, for our clients, for our colleagues. I know if people check us out on LinkedIn, they’ll see we’re commenting on each other’s pages and sharing great information. That’s how we connected. I encourage them to look for you on LinkedIn. Then look for our blog post on ogletree.com. Check out our practice page, the Workplace Violence Prevention Practice Group on the same website. Just have to say thanks so much for listening, and stay safe out there.

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