By Stephanie Osorno, Marketing Copywriter at Alertus Technologies

Did you know a staggering 333 active shootings occurred in the U.S. between 2000 and 2019?

According to a recent FBI report, the average number of annual active shootings doubled from 10.2 to 23.1 incidents over a span of 10 years. These shootings resulted in 2,851 casualties — both killed and wounded — in a wide range of essential environments, including educational organizations, businesses, health care facilities, military and government properties, and more. 

As the number of active shooting incidents continue to rise, it’s crucial to prepare with an active shooter emergency action plan. To help your organization get started, we’ve identified five active shooter preparedness strategies designed to enhance communication and rapidly and proactively mitigate harm amid an armed intruder event.

Active Shooter Preparedness Strategies

1. Improve Alerting Redundancy with Comprehensive Mass Notification
When it comes to a life-threatening active shooter incident, it’s important to intervene fast with warnings for everyone in danger. In fact, on average, active shootings take place over just five to seven minutes. With a comprehensive and flexible Mass Notification System (MNS), you’ll be able to mitigate loss of life and quickly ensure notification delivery through consistent emergency messaging across multiple alerting devices. 

For example, using voice synthesis and screen display text within a robust MNS, you could deploy a clear, direct, and actionable life-saving active shooter alert such as: “An armed intruder has been reported on the sixth floor in building A. Please shelter in place and await further instructions from authorities on-scene.”

2. Unify and Integrate Alerting Devices and Systems
Your active shooter plan will work best when the notification process is fully unified and integrated under one powerful, easy-to-use platform. By integrating your MNS with existing legacy systems and communication devices, including text and email systems, conventional PAs, desktop computers, speakers, digital signage, and VoIP phones, you can more easily empower authorized users to simultaneously activate an active shooter alert to each integrated alerting endpoint.

3. Streamline Activation
Rather than lose valuable time deploying multiple disparate notification systems, consider implementing an MNS with one-touch activation options that allow your team to disseminate active shooter alerts within seconds. True, single point of activation capability streamlines active shooter notification and significantly reduces response times. 

4. Ensure Inclusivity and ADA Compliance in Facility-Wide Notification
Does your organization have both audible and visual notification devices in place throughout the facility? Audible and visual alerting is key for facility-wide reach and centralized infrastructure. With an audible-visual device such as Alertus’ Alert Beacon, which uses emergency tone souders, bright strobe lights, and intelligible Text-to-Speech technology, you’ll increase your chances of reaching everyone, everywhere, with timely active shooter communication. 

Keep in mind that a comprehensive MNS will be Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) compliant to account for individuals with different auditory or visual abilities.

5. Enhance Situational Awareness
To rapidly detect armed intruder activity and minimize risk, your MNS should offer smart camera technology integration. Combining smart camera features with an MNS is a useful, cost-effective approach for instantly notifying security personnel about intruder recognition or raised arm movement from existing smart camera footage.

Be sure your MNS can leverage the Internet of Things (IoT) to integrate with fundamental building automation systems as well. This could include gun detection, door access control, and more to achieve maximum situational awareness and advanced active shooter management.

While active shootings may not be completely preventable, incorporating these suggested strategies into your active shooter preparedness plan can help protect your organization, mitigate harm, and maintain business continuity as best as possible in the event of an armed intruder incident. 

For more insight on active shootings, you can find our 2000-2019 Active Shooter Infographic here.