Packed house for active shooting seminar

Avoid, Deny, Defend:

Aviod (starts with your state of mind)

• Pay attention to your surroundings
• Have an exit plan
• Move away from the source of the threat as quickly as possible
• The more distance and barriers the better

Deny (when getting away is difficult or impossible)

• Keep distance between you and the threat
• Create barriers to prevent or slow down the threat
• Turn off lights
• Remain out of sight and quiet by hiding behind large objects
• Silence phone

Defend (because you have the right to protect yourself)

• Be aggressive and committed to your actions
• Do not fight fairly
• Use any objects at your disposal as possible weapons    

The Marietta High School auditorium was packed Wednesday night, but not for a performance of the Nutcracker or some other holiday play.

The 800-capacity theater was overflowing with people who spent two hours learning how to increase their odds of surviving an attack by an active shooter.

The program, called Civilian Response to an Active Shooter Event, was put on by the Marietta Police Department and combined a lecture of best practices, with video training and 911 calls from actual mass shooting events.

The major take-away: be aware of the surroundings; have a plan; and take action as soon as possible.

Lt. Jake King told the crowd that 20 of the 32 people killed during the 2007 Virginia Tech attack were shot lying in the fetal position.

“Lying in the fetal position and begging for your life is not the answer,” King said. “Hide and hope is not (the best) option.”

The better option, King and Lt. Brian Marshall said, is to “avoid, deny and defend.”

“Folks you are not helpless,” Marshall said. “What you do matters. You can change the course of (an event), hopefully for yourself but surely for other people.”

King told the crowd that incidents of active shooters have increased 500 percent in the past five years. And Stanford University researchers, who maintain a database of mass shootings that don’t seem to be related to gangs or drugs, say 159 people have died in such events as of Nov. 24.

Factoring in the latest shootings in Colorado and California, and about 180 people have lost their lives that way.

Those statistics are the reason Robin Benifield, a teacher at Cheatham Hill Elementary School, came to the program.

“I am a teacher in an enclosed environment,” Benifield said. “I’m going to try to get the program to our school so all the teachers can be trained.”

King told the crowd that the average police response time to active shooter events is three minutes. A person is shot in those events about every 15 seconds.

“When seconds count, police are only minutes away,” King said to a round of laughter.

Both officers said defense against an active shooter starts by knowing the surrounds, identifying exits and reacting as soon as noises or events seem out of the ordinary.