The chances of an active shooter situation are similar to the chances of being struck by lightning, students learned at a workshop held on the Hill Tuesday.
UCLA Counseling and Psychological Services and the university police department put on the workshop to teach students how to protect themselves from an active shooter.
At the beginning of the presentation students learned that, like a lightening strike, the chance of encountering an active shooting situation is slim, but not unheard of.
UCPD Lieutenant Mark Littlestone said because Los Angeles is a major metropolitan area, active shooter events, although rare, do happen. He mentioned recent active shooter events, including an incident at LAX earlier this month and one at Santa Monica College in June, during the meeting as examples of real situations where students could use knowledge they gained in their training.
“Training gives you that extra couple of seconds to decide what to do in an active shooter situation, which could be the difference between life and death,” said Littlestone.
UCPD has hosted more than 100 similar workshops throughout the Los Angeles area, Littlestone said.
After the 1999 Columbine High School shooting, in which two armed students killed 13 people and injured 24 others at Columbine High School, law enforcement strategies were adapted in order to save lives, Littlestone said.
“After Columbine, that started to change our perspective,” Littlestone said. “Pre-Columbine, the tactic was to surround a place and wait for SWAT. We can no longer wait for SWAT when people are being killed.”
The survival strategy taught at the workshop was called “Run. Hide. Fight.” UCPD officers leading the workshop told students to first run if they encounter an active shooter. If you can’t run, hide – and if you can’t hide, fight the assailant, officers said.
UCPD officer Paul Kunstmann said the “Run. Hide. Fight.” strategy is simply an outline of what to do in an active shooter situation. It is not a strategy set in stone, he said.
“An active shooter situation is a rapidly changing environment,” Kunstmann said. “’Run. Hide. Fight.’ is a structure that you can use to organize your actions.”
After playing a video regarding how to best protect oneself in an active shooter situation, Kunstmann engaged the audience in a hypothetical situation on what each person would do if an active shooter were to come into the De Neve Learning Auditorium.
In this simulation, the consensus was that hiding first was the best course of action, and getting out was the next step. Kunstmann said it was important to adapt the strategy to the specific situation. The auditorium seats served as convenient bullet barriers – an advantage individuals might not have in another environment.
Tanya Brown, a staff psychologist at UCLA Counseling and Pyschological Services emphasized the importance of prevention over strategy in dealing with an active shooter.
It is important to report pre-shooting incident indicators so that active shooting doesn’t take place, Brown said. However, she said it is much more likely for a student to try to harm themselves rather than others, as in an active shooting situation.
Students at the workshop said they felt what they learned prepared them for a similar, potentially real-life situation.
Irene Xu, a second-year business economics student, said she wouldn’t have known what to do in an active shooter situation before the workshop, and wanted to learn the skills necessary to protect herself.
“My eyes were opened to what could potentially happen, and I feel much more aware now. (The training) could help save my life,” Xu said.