USA InterAgency Board recommends UK NILO role for active shooter incidents

Peter reports on the international interest in the multi-agency National Inter-agency Liaison Officer (NILO) role created by him in London in 2000, which was taken up as a national role in 2010 and now looks set to be introduced in the USA.

Designed for counter terrorism the NILO role has become a nationally agreed (operational and strategic) advisory role across the emergency services and specialist military elements.

The National Inter-agency Liaison Officer (NILO) provides: ‘A trained and qualified (vetted) Officer who can advise and support Incident Commanders from; FRS, Police, Medical, Military and other Government agencies on their Service’s operational capacity and capability to reduce risk and safely resolve incidents at which those assets may be required’.

From 2009-13 Peter and his colleague Tony Dixon developed and delivered the National ILO training programme. It is now the national standard.

The course quickly gained an international reputation for being one of the most demanding and rewarding courses in the emergency services' community. The NILO course has produced a national cadre of highly specialised liaison officers from the Police, Fire, Ambulance and Military, focused on CT and critical incident management.

During their tenure as course directors over 500 NILOs were trained and qualified across the UK emergency services and military.

A report has recently been compiled by the USA InterAgency Board dated September 2015 entitled 'Improving Active Shooter/ Hostile Event Response, Best Practices and Recommendations for Integrating Law Enforcement, Fire, and EMS'. Read full report here

Under Section 2 (page 14) the report recognises that:

'Scene control and stabilization is another essential element in effective incident response. Recognizing the first responder ethos and culture of responding quickly, it is also important to control the scene by accurately characterizing the threat, preventing overconvergence of responders by managing assets (people and equipment), and ensuring scene security and access'.

Furthermore, they recommend the':

'Creatation of Interagency Liaison Officer (ILO) positions, who are located in a stationary place such as a dispatch or command center. In the UK, ILOs have been used successfully to coordinate communications between the incident commander and law enforcement and fire/EMS responders. They help translate terminology and address gaps in interdisciplinary knowledge and understanding. The ILO is similar in concept to a safety and intelligence officer'.

The Executive Summary of the report states:

Active shooter/hostile events (ASHEs) have been increasing in frequency and severity since 2000 (Blair & Schweit, 2014). Unlike many other types of incidents, an ASHE will almost always result in the deployment of all first responder disciplines. In this environment, with multiple disciplines responding, a fully integrated incident response system is required with all first responder components working in concert. Historically, law enforcement, fire, and emergency medical services (EMS) personnel have viewed their first responder roles as independent of each other. As a result, the first responder community may not be prepared to function as one team to rapidly neutralize threats and save lives. To further the goal of helping agencies better prepare a fully integrated, seamless ASHE response, an Active Shooter Summit was convened by the InterAgency Board (IAB) in Charlotte, NC, March 17–19, 2015, to share lessons learned and identify best practices for an integrated ASHE response. Participants included law enforcement, fire, and EMS responders from municipalities in the United States and United Kingdom, several state and federal agencies, and Texas State University.

Following presentations by each participating municipality and agency on their ASHE experience and planning, Summit participants representing the three disciplines worked together in five focus areas—(1) policy, (2) planning, (3) medical, rescue, and equipment, (4) training and exercises, and (5) incident command. These focus groups identified 29 discrete recommendations; this report condenses those recommendations into 10 broader best practices:

1. Ensure leadership prioritizes and supports the development and implementation of proactive ASHE-relevant joint policies, procedures, training, exercises, and equipment.

2. Integrate and improve coordinated pre-event law enforcement, fire, and EMS policy development, planning, training, and exercises.

3. Create and implement a common operating language.

4. Integrate and improve coordinated command and incident management across all responder

disciplines.

1. Adopt the Rescue Task Force concept.

2. Employ Tactical Emergency Casualty Care (TECC).

3. Implement Casualty Collection Points (CCP).

4. Develop and communicate evidence-based guidelines for fire/EMS ballistic protective

equipment (BPE).

1. Establish evidence-based guidelines and education for medical and rescue equipment.

2. Promote two-way public communication as an essential component for effective ASHE

response.

Fundamentally, these best practices encourage a better understanding of roles, capabilities, and core competencies among first responders and promote effective communication and coordination through integrated planning, training, exercises, response, and mitigation. As components of an integrated response, these 10 best practices can be adopted in part or in whole depending on agency resources and needs. In addition, many of these best practices have value in any type of emergency response and are not unique to an ASHE response. The IAB will continue to be a platform on this topic. This report will help guide future working meetings with the broader community engaged in planning for and responding to an ASHE incident, with the goal of preparing detailed, implementable guidelines for adoption at the local level.