I thought the authors could have expanded/explained more on how some of the potential harms/stressors with active shooter drills. I think this is a growing body of research (see Simonetti, 2020 JAMA Pediatrics). I also think there was good active shooter information in other fields (healthcare facilities specifically), that could have contributed / expanded to parts of your four principles. I really liked your inclusion of FEMA/NIMS processes.

Author Response

Thank you for your review. The article has been expanded to include a greater breadth of literature on active shooter drills. I have also added in a reference to emergency preparedness in hospital facilities, given the unique challenges faced by these institutions being similar to school environments (vulnerable population, varying sizes, etc.

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Thank you for the opportunity to review the article entitled, Managing Active Shooter Events in Schools: Prevention, Preparation, Response, and Recovery. Although this article discusses and important issue, the current review has many flaws that must be addressed prior to publication. These are highlighted below.

In the introduction, the author(s) (hereinto referred to as the authors) refer to the FBI definition of an active shooter. However, there is much controversary around the definitions of active shootings and shootings occurring on school campus. For example, there are definition by The Violence Project, K-12 School Shooting Database, Schildraut & Elsass, Everytown, etc. to name but a few. These definitional issues are important when discussing active shooter incidents and response in schools. As a result, the authors should dive deeper into this literature to set the context of problem for this study. This issue is present in the introduction and the findings.

Also, a more complete discussion of crisis/emergency management should be undertaken and how that particularly looks in schools.

Based on how this paper is written, what is stated in the Methods, and my own attendance of the same training (The Briefings), this article basically is rehashing the content of the training, rather than doing an extensive review of the existing literature. As such, it is missing very important aspects concerning each of the areas the authors review. Much literature is missing and views that run counter to the information presented in The Briefings is not discussed.

The relevant literature about crisis intervention or threat assessment when speaking about mitigation and prevention is needed. The authors cite Cornell, but there is much more work done by him and others on the effectiveness of threat assessment. The review of the literature in this area is very surface level and does not reflect the state of the knowledge.

When speaking about preparedness, there are other types of training occurring in education settings. For example, there are single-, dual-, and multi-option approaches that can be used in educational settings. Although the authors discuss the approach used by I Love U Guys, they fail to discuss how some schools use other approaches, such as Run. Hide. Fight, ALICE, or Avoid, Deny, Defend (See Jonson et al., 2020 - DOI: 10.1080/15564886.2020.1753871 for a review of the different categories of approaches). Thus, the study, in its current form, does not provide a comprehensive overview of the prevailing approaches used in school settings.

In the preparedness section, the authors would likely benefit from subcategories and discussing various aspects concerning reporting, target hardening, and training. In its current form, it is very disjointed. It mixes all these together. Also, a discussion of discussion-based exercises and operations-based exercises is needed. This is briefly done on page 5-6 but it needs much more nuance.

In the responding to the crisis discussion, again a more comprehensive discussion is needed. There has been an evolution of police response that should be reviewed (Martaindale and Blair - DOI: 10.1177/1043986219840237). Although the authors mention, ALERRT, they do not describe the actual response that officers should follow. Instead, they basically review notes from The Briefings, rather than the actual guidelines provided in the literature and by ALERRT.

Again, on page 7, the authors highlight only one protocol (SRP) but fail to discuss the others that are also used (See the Jonson et al., 2020 reference above).

A more thorough discussion of information center, reunification, etc. is needed on the top of page 8.

More discussion is needed in the Recovery section. With physical restoration there needs to be discussion about the pros/cons of renovation versus demolition, impacts of the building remaining standing or being torn down and its effects on the community, financial costs, etc.

Additionally, there was no discussion of the mental health of the first responders. Again, there was references to stories given at The Briefings rather than reviewing the literature. There is research out there about the recovery after trauma that the authors failed to consider and review.

In after action reports, again reference to The Briefings rather than going to the actual reports from the shootings are reviewed. Thus, the authors did not examine the original after action reports and relied on information presented to them.

Although the article attempts to fill a void in the literature, this is not a comprehensive review of the existing literature. As said above, the article reads more like a review of what was learned at The Briefings rather than an empirical examination of the literature. Thank you again for the opportunity to review this piece.

Author Response

Thank you for reviewing this paper and for providing plenty of suggestions for improvement.

The FBI definition of an active shooter event is appropriated here, since that is the one most commonly used for emergency management planning. Importantly, the intention of preparing for an active shooter event is to minimize any form of harm; thus, making it somehow redundant to deliberate whether it counts as a mass shooting. For that reason, the paper has been updated to touch upon the issue of defining a mass shooting, rather than exploring it extensively. Readers are signposted to resources that explore the competing definitions of mass shootings in more detail.

The paper explores the concept of emergency management, focusing on the four main principles of this and how to translate these into concrete actions. The unique challenges faced by schools are highlighted.

Although there was already some discussion about the alternative methods to the Standard Response Protocol (e.g. Run, Hide, Fight), further details have been added to the paper. Notably, the purpose of the paper is to provide a starting point for conducting emergency management, rather than to extensively debate every alternative training protocol.

Further details about threat assessment have been added to the paper; although there is limited scope to discuss this extensively here given its focus on the four principles of emergency management.

The original after action reports were already cited in the original paper. Since the review into the Robb Elementary School shooting has just been published, this was reviewed and added into the paper.

Further reading has been undertaken for this paper, considering the useful suggestions offered by the reviewer. It should be noted that journal articles are a snapshot into the literature, with there not being scope to extensively focus on all areas covered.

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

Thank you for reviewing this paper. Whilst attempts have been made to change it in line with your review, this was rather challenging at times given the criticism was very abstract as opposed to constructive: e.g. saying the literature review is non-existent; yet not offering any suggestions for resources to include in the paper.

Further context has been provided to the topic in the Introduction, highlighting the competing definitions of mass shootings. The purpose of the paper is outlined as detailing the four principles of emergency management to give readers an overview of such a topic. An explicit aim for the paper has been added to the introduction.

It is unclear how the literature review is non-existent when a breadth of source are clearly referenced and cited within the paper. Any suggestions you had for literature to be reviewed would have been useful.

Being quite familiar with the purposes of a methods section, the research carried out for the paper is documented here. The aim of the paper has been explicitly stated in this revision.

The feedback on the findings is rather unclear: e.g. what does ‘the findings are structure like an literature’ mean? The findings are structured thematically to aid the reader in finding out more about a specific issue (e.g. recovery from a crisis). The analysis of literature and the training undertaken are also grouped thematically.

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Thank you for the opportunity to review the revised article entitled, Managing Active Shooter Events in Schools: Prevention, Preparation, Response, and Recovery. I hope you find the following comments helpful.

Although the authors added some discussion for the definition of a school shooting, they still have not set the context of the problem. For example, how many active shooter events are there at school? What is the likelihood a person will be killed in a school shooting? This is why the definitional issues are important to discuss as it will allow for a framing of these high impact, low probability events. As it is now, the paper does not have that component.

This sentence is stated twice in the second paragraph: The planning process must be as comprehensive as possible, going further than a simple emergency action plan (Doss and Shepherd, 2015, 41-42).

I go back to an early comment that this paper is a review of that this article basically is rehashing the content of the The Briefings training, rather than doing an extensive review of the existing literature. Now the authors do say in the Methods it is an overview of one training approach. If the authors want to keep the paper as is, it needs to be reflected both in the introduction and title. A title could be something like One Approach to Managing Active Shooter Events in School: An Overview of the I Love You Guys The Briefings. The current title makes it sound like the paper will do a deep dive in how to manage active shooter events, which would involved reviewing the existing literature in more detail.

In the preparedness section, ALICE was given to the students in a discussion-based format, not online (online is how the trainers are trained). Additionally, the Huskey and Connell study did not specify the type of training, which led to results that lump many protocols together. The Schildkraut studies used SRP from I Love You Guys so that should be stated. Also, please note in the Robb Elementary report, there is an important note on page 353. It states:

Observation 16: Lockdown procedures are predicated on a locked door, impenetrable doors and walls, and other physical security that did not exist at Robb Elementary. One teacher at Robb was shot through several walls and many other teachers and students were at risk of the same fate, given the high-powered rifle used in the attack.

Recommendation 16.1: UCISD must reconsider the preeminence of the lockdown procedure in a dynamic, evolving situation, where the risk of remaining in place may outweigh the risk of finding away to exit the area, which in the incident at Robb Elementary led to UCISD staff and students running into the building to lock down. Teachers, staff, and students must be provided with options for protecting themselves and helping to protect others.

(https://portal.cops.usdoj.gov/resourcecenter/content.ashx/cops-r1141-pub.pdf)

Note that Robb Elementary was an SRP school (I Love You Guys) and in The Briefings they argue that a locked door is the best defense against a shooter, thus this report is advocating for more multi-option responses (e.g., Avoid Deny Defend, Run Hide, Fight, ALICE) rather than an SRP approaches that recommends evacuate if and only if a lockdown is not possible.

In the responding to the crisis discussion, its important to state how lessons were learned from prior shootings to save more lives. After Columbine and their waiting for SWAT, LEOs moved a quad formation style where the first four officers entered. After VTech officers moved to a solo engagement style, where the first officer on the scene enters. This is why the Parkland response and Robb Elementary response are seen as failures (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1043986219840237)

For active shooters in schools, the main protocol in SRP is lockdown with self evacuation only if unable to get behind a locked door. Hold, Shelter, and Secure are not used if the threat is in the building. Since the paper is on active shooting events, that needs to be stated and highlighted more than the others.

I mentioned before more information about information/reunification centers and discussion about renovation versus demolition should be included that the authors did not address.

The authors mention the Robb Elementary report will have recommendations. That report is out and includes specific recommendations. Those should be discussed specifically.

As mentioned before, the article reads more like a review of what was learned at The Briefings rather than an empirical examination of the literature. As such, the title and intro should reflect that if this is to be published in some version of its current form. Thank you again for the opportunity to review this piece.

Author Response

Thank you for reviewing the latest iteration of this paper. I have tried to respond to your comments below.

Statistics for school shootings and active shooter events in K-12 schools have been provided, elucidating how the varying definitions lead to differences in the number of incidents recorded.

The title has been changed to reflect that this paper is more of an introduction to the topic rather than a deep dive into the relevant literature. Trying to incorporate The Briefings into the title felt a bit clunky to read. Additionally, it also disregards the fact that the paper is not just a recap of the Briefings - it goes through the principles of emergency management, interlinking these with findings from this event. Considering this, it was felt that it would be more appropriate to change the title to show that it may be used as an introduction to the topic; in addition to highlighting the Briefings were highlighted in the abstract, introduction and methods sections. Additionally, the abstract now makes the above point of it being an introduction to emergency management and also highlights that the SRP is one possible training approach.

The ALICE correction and note about the SRP drill in Schildkraut's papers have been added.

The point about the Hold, Secure and Shelter actions not likely to be used in an active shooter situation was taken on board and discussion of them was reduced, with greater focus given to lockdown.

The Robb Elementary report was reviewed and the recommendation about lockdown added in to strengthen the argument that any approach to emergency management should be fluid to cope with the dynamic, evolving nature of an active shooter situation.

A paragraph has been added on the demolition of buildings after an active shooter incident using the case study of Columbine High School.

The Robb Elementary School report is discussed in a bit more detail and reference is made to the changes to law enforcement tactics after Columbine.

Hopefully this addresses all your points.

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

My comments to the editor and author are attached.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Author Response

Thank you for reviewing the latest iteration of the paper. Please see responses to your comments below.

You made the point that the article is structured like an empirical research article; yet reads like a literature review. To address this point, the ‘Methods’ section has been renamed to ‘Aim’ and ‘Findings’ has been renamed to ‘Introducing Emergency Management.’ It is at the discretion of the journal editors, however, whether these headings are kept.

The methodological components you describe in your review should be used in a different type of article: for example, testing the reliability and validity of a risk assessment tool in a particular population. In response to this comment, the Aim section (previously Methods) has been rewritten slightly to make it more specific in outlining the aim of the paper. It should now be clear that this paper does not employ methodological approaches to test a particular hypothesis; rather, it is a critical overview of the literature coupled with key insights from attending training and a school safety event. This should be suitable for the purpose and scope of this paper.

You are correct in that the training approach has not been tested for this article – this was not the intended purpose of it. The Introduction to Emergency Management section (previously Findings) presents some findings from other empirical research undertaken into training approaches that should give readers some basis for understanding the effects of training approaches. The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the literature pertaining to the components of emergency management and present one possible training approach as something that may be suitable in certain situations.

In the follow up questions and concerns section, you have questioned the value of an emergency management approach. The paper should have explicated this, with this being particularly clear in the Recovery section where mistakes made in previous active shooter events are discussed – more detail has been added to this to deepen this discussion. Additionally, more details have been added to the Conclusions section that should hopefully highlight the value of an emergency management approach.

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