In light of the attacks in Paris, I got to pondering how many people that plan to take action during some type of active shooter/terrorist attack have an idea of how they plan to ID who does and doesnt need to be engaged. While some situations can be fairly obvious, not all of them are. So, how do you train for that and what are some determing factors that you think you'd use to make such a decision?

Thats a good question. Even as a law enforcement officer, its sometimes hard to identify threats. I have responded to many situations where dispatch has had conflicting information and upon arrival, people are so freaked out that they can't give accurate details. What us as police officers usually do, is treat everyone as a potential threat and cuff or have everyone lie on the ground. Once this is accomplished, we would conduct a frisk for weapons. As an armed citizen, you would have to go on reaction to behavior and information obtained from others. People often judge us based on the split second decisions that we have to make. Little do they realize that were doing the best we can to safeguard the masses.

In the police academy, they teach crisis rehearsal. This is a technique in which you take the information that you have received from dispatch and mentally rehearse all the possible scenarios before you arrive on scene. I've been in law enforcement for nearly 8 years I use crisis rehearsal on every call I go on. I can tell you, having a well organized plan will almost always have a better outcome then going into a situation blindly.

The answer to your question is, there is no easy answer. The situation would dictate. Keep a watchful eye of strange behavior and always report such behavior to your local authorities. If you find yourself in a situation where you have to actively engage an individual, make sure you give as much information to dispatch as possible so responding officers don't mistake you for a threat and not to worry, I have responded to a couple of situations where individuals were held at gunpoint by armed citizens. They gave our dispatch accurate information and were not mistaken as threats. If you would ever like to hear the details of those incidents, I would be more than happy to tell you via im.

As a baseline, everyone yelling about Allah gets shot.

Simple.  The Threatening people in a volatile situation will obviously be the ones threatening people in the volatile situation.

It's not always going to be simple.....scenario:


You're at an open air market when you hear gun fire. As you make your way to where ever you are headed; you see a guy kneeling down firing a pistol down a main aisle in the market.....what do you do? How about if he has a rifle?

You can insert whatever tool you want into the man's hand. Rifle, pistol, knife, hammer, but ultimately I might see where you're going with the scenario so I'll go in with the rifle as the tool. Depending on the time it takes you to come across this armed man, may help to be an influencing factor in your decision to engage him. If you encounter him seconds within hearing gunfire, I would think the probability for him to be an immediate threat is greater, given the lower probability that he is a normal, law abiding citizen with a rifle slung on his back as I'll go out on a limb and say that most of us dont carry rifles on our person and it would take a bit more time to return to a vehicle, deploy a rifle and return to the fight, but that in itself can stir feathers when it comes to whether or not a citizen should break contact and escape and evade rather than launch a counter attack alone on an unknown enemy force.

ASSUMING HE IS FRIENDLY:
Now I'll assume this individual is armed with a pistol and is firing down the aisle. How do you encounter this man? from his right or left flank or from behind? Or, God Forbid, you're looking down his barrel. If the man has any sort of training, gun safety instincts, and is assessing the situation as you would be doing, I would imagine that unless he was within feet of the actual threat, He would probably be trying to direct traffic of people getting to safety, maintaining muzzle discipline, and would be scanning for the threat, same as you would be i assume.

ASSUMING HE IS THREAT:
Once again, depending on how you come across this shooter will determine your immediate course of action. I would imagine that you would be able to determine he is a threat based on the direction people are running from him, around him, and if there are casualties close to his location. This assumes a single shooter, which obviously was not the case in your OP. If he is attacking, he would be attempting to cause as much damage as possible as quick;ly as possible, maintaining the confusion and panic, which would lead him to have more "control"  over the situation. I doubt he would be concerned about taking cover unless there was already a friendly force engaging him, but again, said friendly force would have that same muzzle discipline.

This all assumes a single shooter. I think the dynamic of the reaction changes drastically when a coordinated attack is encountered. Sure, there are men and women out there that are willing to fight back and protect there own, but you are facing a squad, essentially, that has planned out its goal and knows its objective. This forum always talks about team tactics and the importance of drilling together. I assume that you dont always travel with the guys you drill with every day. So even IF you are part of a group of citizens in this market that are willing to fight back in the heat of the moment, the likelihood of your training and their training matching and successfully meshing well enough to effectively suppress and defeat that enemy force isn't in your favor.

I would think an escape and evade plan against a team is the best option if faced with this scenario if you're by yourself.

This is looking at everything through an "untrained" eye, but trying to look at common sense/ logical reasoning in a scenario..

Unless rounds are coming at me, my plan is to E&E my wife and I .   If I have to return fire, cover will be king.  

Last thing I need is to be shot by LE responding, while I'm trying to neutralize the threat.

I will ID the threat based on being shot at.

This!!!  The guys wearing blue get paid to defend the masses, not me.  My interest is in protecting myself and my family.  With only very very limited circumstances dictating anything different.

I agree with the previous posters. I attended a training course that also had simunitions-based force on force scenarios.

One scenario will always stick in my head:

You are sitting on a bench at a bus stop in the morning, on your way to work.

A man that you see frequently in the morning, at this stop, walks briskly towards the bench and sits down on the other end of the
bench.

Moments later, an enraged man runs up to the bus stop and screams at the man next to you:

                   

                      I AM GOING TO KILL YOU! MOTHERFUCKER!!!!

At that point, he fumbles in his pocket and the man next to you shouts for you to help him.

During this scenario, every student drew their weapon and shot the man (who did have a handgun).

Moments after the shooting, a police car rolls up with a small girl in the back seat. She points at the man (who was sitting next to you) and
sobs:

"That's him...that's the man who hurt me"

You shot her father...


Moral of the story:

Not everything you see on the street is "cut and dried." Be careful when you decide to act.

Each person has to formulate their own personal "Rules Of Engagement" based upon their values AND the local laws concerning lethal force.

Are you willing to:

die/go to jail/lose job/endure financial hardship/etc

for those you are going to actively engage a threat for?

The only person that can answer that question is you.

For me, the answer is yes, but, it is only for family and closest friends. They are the only ones that will take care of my family if I wind up dead, or in jail.

There is no right or wrong here. It is a personal judgement call.

EDIT:

Of course, this is different from an "Active Shooter" scenario, however, the principle still applies.

Do you risk getting killed by the shooter himself?

What about other armed citizens (or responding law enforcement)  mistaking you as a perp?

At the very least, stop and think before rushing into the fight.

I have contemplated before the situation where there is a shooter, I can escape to my vehicle where I have a rifle.  Do you go back in there with a rifle or is it more likely you are going to get shot by responding law enforcement than anything else?

ROFL I am going to bed.

First off, great thought experiment.  Up until around 5 years ago I would have responded that I would in fact tried to actively search for the shooter, even though now I realize how foolish that would be, and still would be considering my personal skill level.  Since I rarely venture to vulnerable target areas without my family, my first and foremost concerns would be to remove my wife and two small children from the area, and only engaging if necessary to evade. I offer this as my two cents:

Behavior:  Is the shooter using cover? Moving in open areas for those hidden/fleeing?

Equipment:  Standard casual wear or ACUs and a plate carrier? Rifle or pistol? Radios or comms?

Number of Shooters: Alone or 2+?

Time from Shots fired/Explosion/Gas ect:  10 secs or 15 mins?

I think those are good starts for identifiers, especially the behavior and the number of shooters. Encountering two shooters with rifles and lbe fanning a food court 15 seconds after the first shots are fired is probably a lot clearer that locating a shooter in plain clothes using a concrete pillar for cover 10 minutes after the first shots are fired.  Ultimately we have to use the info we have at the time to make the best decision.  Depending on how observant (and lucky) you are, you make things a lot worse or a lot better.

Do LEO here have a fear of responding to similar situations and mistakenly engaging a concealed carry holder?

They shouldn't have a fear of it. They should be cognizant of it but if they shoot one, oh well.

Agree with the part in red, maybe I should have said concern and not fear.

I may be taking the part in blue out of context, but I think if you shoot someone generally trying to help and not a threat, that its not an "oh well" event.

If they look like a threat to responding officers and they get shot then the officers did nothing wrong. Intent on the decadents part is unimportant. So don't look like a bad guy when the cavalry gets there.

No, don't do that. You will at a minimum get cuffed and stuffed. You could very well get shot.

Best thing would be to direct responding LE to the threat and give a description of shooter/s.
You could tell LE you have a rifle in vehicle if they need it.

I suppose if the Shtf for real, and you had multiple scenes in a small area, LE would be spread very thin.  You might need to go all sheepdog and risk it.

Yeah, to me that has bad idea written all over it. If you already made it out to your vehicle, why would you go back in and attempt to engage? If I made it out of "the situation" to safety, the only way im going back in is if ive been separated from my family and highly suspect they are still inside.

I get the good intentions part of it, but the risk isn't worth it IMO unless you are LEO or off duty.

Fair enough.  Seems like you would feel badly just hanging out outside, but it could definitely make the situation worse to try to help.

In my office, if someone started shooting up front in the lobby I can easily get out my ground floor window and go to my truck where I have a rifle. My employees are like family to me, so I would return for them. That said, I wouldn't waste time going to get the rifle, I would have to use my EDC and hope it would be good enough. I think things happen too quickly to go get a weapon that isn't already on you.

An example when someone got a weapon and then returned that comes to mind is the Pearl School shooting here in MS. I believe the Vice Principal heard the gun shot. Ran out to his truck and got a gun out of it and returned. He pointed the gun at Luke Woodham who had killed two people and said, "Put the gun down, Luke." Luke complied. He put the gun down and ran out of the building. Had the VP not done that a lot more people may have died, we can't really say for sure. It has been a while since I read about that, but that is how I recall it going down.

ID THREAT- anyone I see who possesses the ability to kill me or someone else.

CONFIRM THREAT- anyone trying to kill me if I'm in uniform, or after I've ID'ed myself if in plain clothes (granted I survive a panic pot shot thrown my way)... anyone trying to kill unarmed people... two people shooting it out... that will take more evaluation.

It's hard enough in training... I imagine it's going to much harder in real life. Link ups and friendly fire are serious risks and possibilities. I believe realizing this problem is the first step in dealing with it... in other words, if you find yourself in such a situation, try not to get tunnel vision or locked in to the idea ANYONE and EVERYONE with a weapon is the REAL THREAT. Food for thought... anyone with AS training or response protocol training/knowledge could very well try to lure you into a false sense of security.

This is indeed a tough situation, but in the first part of the scenario and during the entire engagement you (at the time of the event) believe that the man threatening has ability, opportunity and the life of another is in jeopardy. At this time you are just in using deadly force to save the others life. Does it suck that you just shot a little girls father, hell yes. But you cant live in hind sight. As enraged as the father was he, at the time he was taking the law into his own hands and thus also wrong. This is why we teach our officers that it is the perception at the time of the event that dictates action.

In as I have pondered this many times.

Thanks to the LEO'S that have given their 2C's.

There are some good points on the thread.  As a current police officer I have to say that body language will tell you a lot.  You can tell the difference between a confused guy with a gun and someone who is trying to kill people.  That being said if you have a gun out and we arrive you are more likely to get shot.  I always advise folks that if they hear sirens and they aren't in any imminent danger that they need to holster their weapon.  I wrote an article on this very topic.  Let me know what you all think.
http://www.tierthreetactical.com/anatomy-of-an-isis-attack/

My first thought.  

This is excellent information and for that. It is bumped.

Great write-up. Well done. Insightful