INCREASING VIOLENCE
6.4
Average number of “active shooter” incidents annually, 2000-2006
16.4
Average annually, 2007-2013
Source: FBI
Between 2000 and 2006, the study found, an average of 6.4 active-shooter incidents occurred annually. Between 2007 and 2013, the average more than doubled — to 16.4 each year.
“It’s troubling,” FBI Assistant Director James F. Yacone told reporters. “They’re cropping up around the country at an alarming rate.”
The “copycat phenomenon,” added Andre B. Simons, of the FBI’s famed Behavioral Analysis Unit, “is real.”
The nation’s 18,000 law enforcement agencies, as well as fire and rescue departments, have been struggling to develop training and protocols for confronting active-shooter scenarios. Officials define an active shooter as “an individual actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a confined and populated area.”\
Some active-shooter incidents gain lasting notoriety, as when 24-year-old James Holmes killed 12 people and wounded 70 at a movie theater in Aurora, Colo., in 2012.
Others studied by the FBI remain primarily local tragedies, as when 42-year-old Laurence Jones killed two people, wounded two others and then committed suicide at a Fresno, Calif., food processing plant in November 2012; or when 42-year-old Pedro Alberto Vargas killed six people at an apartment complex in Hialeah, Fla., in July 2013
“Many active shooters have a real or perceived, deeply held grievance,” Simons said, adding that the public shooting may give a sense of “omnipotent control plus notoriety.”
Police killed Vargas in a shootout, an encounter that the study further notes put law enforcement officers at real risk of harm. In 45 of the 160 incidents studied, law enforcement officers “engaged” the shooter. In 21 of those cases, officers were either killed or wounded.
The numbers, officials say, drive home some life-or-death lessons.
“Law enforcement needs to be ready, and needs to be thinking ahead before they arrive,” said Katherine Schweit, program manager for the FBI’s Active Shooter Initiative.
Proper equipment and relevant training, officials added, are needed even in small, rural departments, where response times may lag. That could mean equipping more officers with improved body armor, helmets, rifles and compatible emergency radios, officials suggested Wednesday. They noted that only one of the 160 incidents studied were ended by a SWAT team.
“It is the line-level officer where the rubber meets the road,” said study co-author J. Pete Blair of Texas State University.
Researchers also found, though, that active-shooter incidents often end before police show up. In 21 of the 160 incidents, unarmed citizens confronted the shooter and ended the threat. In 90 of the incidents, the shooter either committed suicide, stopped shooting or fled the scene.
“Citizens need to be ready and think about what they might have to do,” Schweit said.
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