Department of Homeland Security Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency

Active Shooter Preparedness Workshop

March 19, 2020
26^th Federal Plaza
New York, NY 10278

Given today’s ever-changing threat environment, preparing for and training employees to cope with workplace violence should be a key piece of an organization’s incident response planning.

A Unique Training Opportunity

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency within the U.S. Department of Homeland Security is hosting a one-day security workshop to enhance awareness of, and response to, an active shooter event:

• Educating participants on the history of active shooter events.
• Describing common behavior, conditions, and situations associated with active shooters.
• Fostering communication between critical infrastructure owners and operators and local emergency response teams.  This course includes discussions of interoperability, communications protocols, and best practices for planning, preparedness, and response.

Building Emergency Planning Capabilities

The event will also describe how to incorporate key elements of successful incident management into planning efforts including:

• Communication and incident planning for employees
• Emergency action plan development
• Recognizing behavioral indicators
• Coordinating with first responders.

Understanding Liability and Risk Exposure

The workshop focuses on providing awareness training that supports the development of emergency action planning capabilities. These capabilities may better position private sector organizations in receiving important legal liability protections from the DHS Support Anti-Terrorism by Fostering Effective Technologies (SAFETY) Act of 2002.

Following the 9/11 attacks, the private sector became very concerned about the risk of liability they would face in the event that their product, service, or layered security program (e.g., Technology) was impacted by an act of terrorism. The SAFETY Act seeks to mitigate those risks by encouraging the wide-spread deployment of effective anti-terrorism technologies by providing legal protections that cap or dismiss liability in the event of an act of terrorism.

To learn more about the SAFETY Act and the types of products, services, and layered security programs that have received protections, visit www.safetyact.gov.

Who Should Participate?

This event is open to:

• Corporate and facility security professionals from the private and public sectors
• Supervisory first responders
• Human resource managers
• Community response officials
• Homeland security representatives

Agenda

Time                Event

8:00 A.M.        Registration Begins

8:30 A.M.        Opening Remarks and Welcome; Modules 1-3   (Recognition, Prevention, Protection)

12:00 P.M.      Lunch

1:00 P.M.         Modules 4-6 (Mitigation, Response, Recovery)

4:00 P.M.         Closing Remarks

Notes:  A government-issued ID (license) will be required for entry.

Registration

• Registration for this event is free; please click here to register or copy/paste the following address in your browser:  https://www.govevents.com/details/36324/dhs-active-shooter-preparedness-workshop–new-york-ny/.
• Registration closes 03/16/2020 at 12:00 pm (EDT).
• Limited seating is available; 2 slots per organization.  Additional attendees will be approved on a case-by-case basis.
• Note:  If your plans change, please notify us so we can accommodate others on the waiting list.

One of the surest ways to prevent a mass shooting is to identify potential threats before they actually attack. Often the threats are “insiders”.

James Densley, co-founder of the Violence Project and a criminal justice professor at Metropolitan State University, said researchers looked at factors in the lives of shooters, including mental health troubles, whether they considered suicide, and how they had access to guns. These findings were reported in the New York Times/Associated Press:

“For a start, we need to be a little bit more attuned to the fact that people are in crisis, and are looking for help, and perhaps aren’t getting it.” Researchers found that 98 percent of mass shooters were men and that 52 percent were white. The proportion of mass shooters who had been diagnosed with mental health conditions was only slightly higher than the general population, according to researchers.

Importantly, school mass shooters are most often insiders. Here are more recent tools to help with threat assessments:

• Protecting America’s Schools: A U.S. Secret Service Analysis of Targeted School Violence. Ensuring safe learning environments for elementary and secondary school students, educators, administrators, and others is essential. Consider what role you can play in the larger efforts to make our schools safer.
  • Enhancing School Safety Using a Threat Assessment Mode
  • Enhancing School Safety Using a Threat Assessment Model Brief
  • ​Making Schools Safer Quick Reference Guide  ​
• ​Making Prevention a Reality: Identifying, Assessing, and Managing the Threat of Targeted Attacks. This report, a practical guide on assessing and managing the threat of targeted violence, contains concrete strategies to help communities prevent these types of incidents. United States Department of Justice. Federal Bureau of Investigation.