Introduction

On February 25, 2016, an active shooter event began with the attacker randomly shooting vehicles on a highway in Kansas (Berman, 2016). The shooter then drove to Excel Industries (a lawn mower manufacturer) in Hesston, Kansas, entered the building, and began shooting employees. Police Chief Doug Schroeder was the first officer to arrive on scene. He immediately entered the building by himself, found the attacker, and engaged him in a gun fight. The attacker was killed but murdered three people and wounded 14 others before he died. Chief Schroeder is credited with saving many lives by preventing the shooter from incurring a higher casualty rate.

Chief Schroeder’s actions illustrate a new trend in active shooter response―solo officer response. This article examines two commonly taught solo officer techniques for clearing rooms. We will refer to these as the peek and the push. Given the inherent dangers of responding to active shooter events, identifying a room entry technique that mitigates the danger to responding officers is imperative. The majority of active shooter events that police officers arrive at are still ongoing and the shooter has not been stopped or subdued (Dorfsman, 2014; Martaindale, Sandel, & Blair, 2017). First, we discuss the history and development of active shooter response in the United States.

Development of Response to Active Shooter Events Prior to the modern era of active shooter events, the standard training for patrol officers responding to an ongoing shooting event required the responding patrol officer(s) to contain the shooter in the building where the attack was occurring, control access to the location, attempt to communicate with the shooter, and call the Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) team (Blair, Nichols, Burns, & Curnutt, 2013). SWAT teams—not responding officers—were expected to engage and handle the shooter. During the shooting at Columbine High School, this is what patrol officers did. The first patrol officer on the scene engaged one of the shooters while he was outside of the building, but when the shooter retreated into the building, the first officer did not pursue. The responding patrol officers created a perimeter around the building, called for the SWAT team, and assisted victims who were on the outside of the building while they waited for the SWAT team to come deal with the shooters. It took the SWAT team more than half an hour to assemble and enter the building. During this time, the shooters had free rein in the school to murder students and staff. Twelve students and one teacher were killed. There was significant public outcry following the Columbine shooting, prompting police departments across the United States to examine their response tactics. Police departments around the country changed from expecting their patrol officers to contain violent situations and call for SWAT teams to handle the shooting, to expecting patrol officers to enter the attack location and stop the shooter(s) themselves. Relying on SWAT teams to respond and subdue the shooter is unrealistic if police departments want to save lives, which is priority in active shooter events (Doherty, 2016). Initial training for this change in response was drawn from the training given to SWAT team officers (Blair et al., 2013). Under the guide of the initial training, patrol officers arriving on the scene were taught to form teams of four or five officers, make entry into the building where that attack was occurring, and stop the killing. Experience with actual events and the delay that waiting for four to five officers to assemble created led to additional changes in policies. Police departments began allowing officers in smaller groups of two to three person teams to make entry. However, this still created delays that the departments found unacceptable in their responses to active shooter events. Now, we are seeing police departments across the United States authorizing their officers to make solo entry to stop the killing of innocent people.