C3 Podcast: Active Shooter Incident Management

C3 Pathways
  • 4.8 (16)
  • Education
  • Biweekly

This C3 Pathways Podcast series discusses Active Shooter Incident Management (ASIM). The Podcast features instructors and special guests discussing key elements and challenges of Active Shooter Incident Management and the implications for law enforcement, fire, and EMS responders. The bad guy and the clock both kill innocent victims. Don't miss the opportunity to gain key insights that may help you save lives!

  1. 5d ago

    Ep 140: Part 2 - What a Teacher Learned from the Marjory Stoneman Douglas / Parkland School Shooting

    What should schools actually prioritize to prevent and prepare for a school shooting? Kim Krawczyk was teaching math at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, on February 14, 2018. In Part 2, she explains where she believes schools are missing warning signs, why she thinks repetitive drills can condition students instead of preparing them, and why the incentives behind school reporting can work against student safety. For school administrators, teachers, school resource officers, threat assessment team members, and public safety trainers, this conversation challenges some common assumptions. Kim and host Bill Godfrey discuss whether teachers should hear simulated gunfire in training, what it takes for behavioral threat assessment to work, and why a school reporting “zero incidents” should raise questions rather than confidence. In this episode:🔹 Gunfire in training: opt-in or not at all? Bill weighs the value of staff learning what gunfire sounds like against the fear it can cause and asks Kim about new devices that reproduce the sound. Kim argues for opt-in participation, warning that requiring it of brand-new teachers could leave them “pre-traumatized.”🔹 Kim’s top priorities. At MSD, the cameras were working, but no one was watching them. She calls for a trained, dedicated campus monitor, fewer repetitive student drills, more authentic teacher training, and taking teacher reports about troubled students seriously.🔹 Threat assessment and the “zero incidents” problem. Kim says behavioral threat assessment can work only with handpicked, well-trained people who don’t dismiss red flags as “blowing smoke.” She also describes how pressure to look like a perfect school can leave struggling students without help. 💬 𝗗𝗜𝗦𝗖𝗨𝗦𝗦𝗜𝗢𝗡 𝗤𝗨𝗘𝗦𝗧𝗜𝗢𝗡: Does your school or district’s reporting culture encourage staff to raise concerns, or to keep the numbers clean? Share your experience in the comments. 🎧 𝗪𝗔𝗧𝗖𝗛 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗙𝗨𝗟𝗟 𝗦𝗘𝗥𝗜𝗘𝗦 𝗢𝗡 𝗬𝗢𝗨𝗧𝗨𝗕𝗘:Part 1 – What prepared a teacher for the MSD shooting: https://youtu.be/qT7nqXZLQPIPart 2 - School drills, warning signs, and behavioral threat assessment: https://youtu.be/fPID4vPjT5APart 3 – Locking classroom doors, evacuation, and shared responsibility: Coming soonPart 4 – Reunification and why staying behind a locked door can be safer: Coming soon 🎓 Take the free one-hour SSAVEIM Foundations school safety course: https://ncier.org/ssaveim/foundations 📌 𝗖𝗛𝗔𝗣𝗧𝗘𝗥𝗦00:00 – Introduction: Kim Krawczyk, MSD shooting survivor00:26 – Live gunfire and gunfire simulators in school training03:06 – Opt-in, opt-out, and the risk to new teachers04:45 – What would you have done?: The reality inside the classroom06:54 – If you could wave a magic wand: Kim’s top priorities07:51 – The cameras were working, but no one was watching09:39 – Fewer student drills, more authentic teacher training10:07 – Listening to teachers about early warning signs11:13 – Behavioral threat assessment teams: what “done right” means14:22 – Apathy and sweeping concerns under the rug16:10 – School reporting systems and the “zero incidents” problem19:17 – Are we incentivizing the wrong things? #SchoolSafety #Parkland #ThreatAssessment #TeacherSafety #ActiveShooterTraining Like what you hear? Drop a review and subscribe to our Podcast Channel. If you have questions, you can send them to info@c3pathways.com with “Podcast Question” in the subject line. Check out our websites and learn more about C3 Pathways / NCIER by going to: https://www.c3pathways.com or https://www.ncier.org The Active Shooter Incident Management Podcast is owned by C3 Pathways and NCIER. None of the content presented may be copied, repurposed, or used without the owner’s prior consent.

    Ep 140: Part 2 - What a Teacher Learned from the Marjory Stoneman Douglas / Parkland School Shooting

  2. Oct 27

    Ep 139: Part 1 - What a Teacher Learned from the Marjory Stoneman Douglas / Parkland School Shooting

    What actually prepares a teacher to protect a classroom during a school shooting? Kim Krawczyk was teaching math at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, on February 14, 2018, and she credits the training she once dismissed as “hokey” with helping her stay calm and know what came next. For school administrators, teachers, school resource officers, law enforcement trainers, and anyone who builds school safety programs, this conversation offers a teacher’s view from behind the locked door. Kim challenges the common approach of auditorium-style presentations and explains why classroom-specific preparation, realistic simulation, and the difference between training and conditioning can shape how people respond under gunfire. In this episode:🔹 Why one-size-fits-all safety briefings miss teachers. A gym, science lab, agriculture program, and math classroom each face different risks. Kim shares small details no training ever covered for her, like keeping student cell phones in the safe area and arranging the teacher’s desk to create a safe zone, and why walking teachers through their own rooms would make preparation feel real.🔹 Conditioning vs. training. Kim describes students lining up at the door as if it were a fire drill instead of getting behind a closed door and explains why repeated monthly lockdown drills can leave students numb or dismissive.🔹 The simulation that prepared her. Before the shooting, Coral Springs Police ran an exercise in a replica of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas (MSD) freshman building. Kim had experienced gunfire, fire alarms, cries for help, and door checks before the real event, so she knew what came next at every stage. 💬 DISCUSSION QUESTION: How does your school or agency make safety training feel real for the people in each individual classroom? Share your experience in the comments. 🎧WATCH THE FULL SERIES ON YOUTUBEPart 1 - What prepared a teacher for the Parkland Shooting -  https://youtu.be/qT7nqXZLQPI Part 2 – School drills, warning signs, and behavioral threat assessment: Coming Thursday 10/29Part 3 – Locking classroom doors, evacuation, and shared responsibility: Coming soonPart 4 – Reunification and why staying behind a locked door can be safer: Coming soon 🎓 Take the free one-hour SSAVEIM Foundations school safety course: https://ncier.org/ssaveim/foundations 📌 CHAPTERS00:00 – Introduction: Kim Krawczyk, MSD shooting survivor00:22 – “I used to be you”: Kim’s view of safety training before Parkland03:01 – Why auditorium trainings don’t reach teachers04:26 – Cell phones, safe corners, and classroom configuration06:59 – Text-to-911 and helping responders understand the scene09:08 – Unique campus challenges: cafeterias, gyms, fields, and labs10:58 – Conditioning vs. training: students lining up at the door13:24 – “Okay, we’ve done the lockdown, now what?”16:06 – The Coral Springs PD simulation that prepared Kim #SchoolSafety #Parkland #ActiveShooterTraining #TeacherSafety #PublicSafety Like what you hear? Drop a review and subscribe to our Podcast Channel. If you have questions, you can send them to info@c3pathways.com with “Podcast Question” in the subject line. Check out our websites and learn more about C3 Pathways / NCIER by going to: https://www.c3pathways.com or https://www.ncier.org The Active Shooter Incident Management Podcast is owned by C3 Pathways and NCIER. None of the content presented may be copied, repurposed, or used without the owner’s prior consent.

    Ep 139: Part 1 - What a Teacher Learned from the Marjory Stoneman Douglas / Parkland School Shooting

  3. Oct 6

    Ep 138: Train on Your Locations - Counterstrike Terrain

    Most tabletop training runs on the same handful of preset locations. A school. A shopping mall. Useful for teaching principles, but never quite your problem. In this episode, Bill Godfrey is joined by Kami Maertz and Brian Beechner to introduce Counterstrike Terrain, the newest addition to the Counterstrike family of training products. It's a digital map table for functional exercises that pulls up any location you want — your schools, your malls, your hospitals, your target hazards — and lets a room full of people stand around it, write on it with dry erase markers, and move physical resource chips across it. The conversation gets into what that changes in practice. Brian talks about the challenges that only surface when you train on real geography: the trauma center that's ten miles out instead of one, the roads you're very good at blocking and less good at unblocking. Kami walks through preplanning a high-risk warrant, briefing a search team on exactly where the turnaround zones aren't, and running a missing person search that scales outward as the search area grows. They also cover splitting the display for a complex coordinated attack, so the incident and the reunification center operate as two genuinely separate problems with a real communication piece between them — no notionalizing. Plus floor plan overlays, adjustable grids, the 4' x 4' Standard and 4' x 8' Large panels, public order applications, and setting one up outside a command bus when you can't fit every incident commander onto it. WHAT'S COVERED How Counterstrike Terrain differs from the preset Counterstrike printed boardsPreplanning SWAT warrants, special events, and target hazardsTransport routes, traffic, and perimeter decisions on real mapsOverlaying floor plans and adjusting grid sizeSplitting the display for complex coordinated attacks and reunificationMissing person searches and scaling the map outwardPortability, setup, and command post use  RESOURCES Counterstrike Terrain: https://www.c3pathways.com/counterstrike/terrain?utm_source=simplecast&utm_medium=audio&utm_campaign=podcast_ep138&utm_content=terrain Training courses: https://ncier.org/course/catalog?utm_source=simplecast&utm_medium=audio&utm_campaign=podcast_ep138&utm_content=catalog The National Center for Integrated Emergency Response (NCIER) uses Counterstrike Terrain in its School Safety and Violent Event Incident Management (SSAVEIM) Train-the-Trainer and Active Shooter Incident Management (ASIM) Advanced courses. View this episode on YouTube at: https://youtu.be/7LojszP8EoU Like what you hear? Drop a review and subscribe to our Podcast Channel. If you have questions, you can send them to info@c3pathways.com with “Podcast Question” in the subject line. Check out our websites and learn more about C3 Pathways / NCIER by going to: https://www.c3pathways.com or https://www.ncier.org The Active Shooter Incident Management Podcast is owned by C3 Pathways and NCIER. None of the content presented may be copied, repurposed, or used without the owner’s prior consent.

    Ep 138: Train on Your Locations - Counterstrike Terrain

  4. Aug 19

    Ep 137: School Shootings - Training Together

    Schools rehearse lockdown drills. Law enforcement trains tactical response. Fire and EMS practice triage and transport. But how often do all of those groups train together? In this episode, host Bill Godfrey and NCIER instructors Kami Maertz and Brian Beechner break down what actually goes wrong when schools and public safety agencies each build their plans in isolation. The conversation covers: Why siloed training creates dangerous assumptions on both sides — schools assume law enforcement "just knows," and public safety assumes reunification will "just happen" An inverted-thinking exercise that flips the planning question: instead of asking what should go right, ask what you could do to guarantee failure — and work backward from there The communication gap that leaves students locked down for hours with no updates, no information, and no sense of whether they're safe Reunification logistics that most plans haven't accounted for — bus availability, accountability at every transition point, custody verification, separating children from the incident area, and campus size Public safety blind spots including outdated or incorrect school maps, missing master keys, and unlabeled rooms Why a "lockdown" on a playground, in a swimming pool, or inside a cafeteria doesn't look anything like a classroom lockdown — and plans need to reflect that The episode closes with one common thread: communication and integrated planning — done together, not in parallel. The School Safety and Violent Event Incident Management (SSAVEIM) course is designed to bring all of these entities to the same table. Learn more: https://ncier.org/ssaveim View this episode on YouTube at: https://youtu.be/rzFKsYDvip0 Like what you hear? Drop a review and subscribe to our Podcast Channel. If you have questions, you can send them to info@c3pathways.com with “Podcast Question” in the subject line. Check out our websites and learn more about C3 Pathways / NCIER by going to: https://www.c3pathways.com or https://www.ncier.org The Active Shooter Incident Management Podcast is owned by C3 Pathways and NCIER. None of the content presented may be copied, repurposed, or used without the owner’s prior consent.

    Ep 137: School Shootings - Training Together

  5. Jul 31

    Ep 136: Change...Why Is It So Hard?

    If you’ve ever tried to line up law enforcement, fire, EMS, 911, and schools around one ASIM plan, you know the real friction isn’t the curriculum; it’s everything around it. In this episode, Bill Godfrey, Kami Maertz, and Brian Beechner look at why ASIM training so often stalls out after the first class and how to design a program that actually sticks. They organize the problem into four buckets – policy, partners, training, and maintenance – and share what they’ve seen work across jurisdictions. They cover how to use inverted thinking (“let’s list all the ways this could go wrong”) to get honest engagement, why one joint policy anchored on the ASIM Checklist beats a stack of siloed SOPs, and how to build a tiered training plan for line personnel, first‑line supervisors, and incident managers. They also dig into the long game: roll‑call refreshers, integrating ASIM elements into everyday calls, budget planning over multiple years, and tapping emergency management and grants so the program doesn’t quietly fade. If you’re a chief, sheriff, fire/EMS leader, 911/PSAP director, emergency manager, or school/system leader charged with readiness, this conversation gives you a practical roadmap for moving beyond once‑a‑year classes to a sustainable ASIM capability. For questions or support with ASIM in your region, reach out to our team and we’ll talk through what makes sense for your agency mix and budget. Like what you hear? Drop a review and subscribe to our Podcast Channel. If you have questions, you can send them to info@c3pathways.com with “Podcast Question” in the subject line. Check out our websites and learn more about C3 Pathways / NCIER by going to: https://www.c3pathways.com or https://www.ncier.org The Active Shooter Incident Management Podcast is owned by C3 Pathways and NCIER. None of the content presented may be copied, repurposed, or used without the owner’s prior consent.

    Ep 136: Change...Why Is It So Hard?

  6. Jul 8

    Ep 135: Active Shooter Training Buyer's Guide - Leadership

    After thousands of active shooter exercises, we can tell which leaders actually sleep at night. They all did the same things to earn it, and it is not about tactics. It is about leadership.   This episode is the final part of the Active Shooter Training Buyer's Guide. Bill Godfrey, Jill McElwee, Billy Perry, and Ron Otterbacher break down what leaders have to own to make their organizations, and their partners, truly ready.   They discuss:    The difference between "I think we're ready" and "I know we're ready," and the hard work that closes the gap    Why readiness is preparedness, not just training: policies, procedures, funding, and a plan to maintain all of it    How training, exercises, and repetition each do a different job, and why leaders who confuse them stall out    Why your readiness depends on your partners, so if your mutual aid, fire, EMS, and dispatch aren't ready, neither are you   If you're a chief, sheriff, fire or EMS leader, emergency manager, or training officer, this episode gives you a practical guide to the leadership behind real active shooter preparedness, not just checking the exercise box.  View this episode on YouTube at: https://youtu.be/qnBdoWeM8_E Like what you hear? Drop a review and subscribe to our Podcast Channel. If you have questions, you can send them to info@c3pathways.com with “Podcast Question” in the subject line. Check out our websites and learn more about C3 Pathways / NCIER by going to: https://www.c3pathways.com or https://www.ncier.org The Active Shooter Incident Management Podcast is owned by C3 Pathways and NCIER. None of the content presented may be copied, repurposed, or used without the owner’s prior consent.

    Ep 135: Active Shooter Training Buyer's Guide - Leadership

  7. Jul 1

    Ep 134: Active Shooter Training Buyer's Guide - Integrated Response

    The biggest failures we see in active shooter incidents aren't at the doorway. They're between agencies that never really trained together. This episode of the Active Shooter Incident Management Podcast is Part 3 of the Active Shooter Training Buyer's Guide. Bill Godfrey, Ron Otterbacher, Jill McElwee, and Billy Perry dig into what integrated response training should look like across dispatch, police, fire, EMS, hospitals, and emergency management. They discuss: How integration really starts at the first 911 call Setting Realistic, Attainable, and Measurable (RAM) goals Getting everyone on a common playbook with the ASIM Checklist and one shared policy How emergency managers bridge the real "PPE": personalities, politics, and egos If you're a chief, sheriff, fire or EMS leader, emergency manager, or training officer, this episode gives you a practical guide for building real integrated response capability, not just checking the exercise box. View this episode on YouTube at: https://youtu.be/fkAkEo_NS_4 Like what you hear? Drop a review and subscribe to our Podcast Channel. If you have questions, you can send them to info@c3pathways.com with “Podcast Question” in the subject line. Check out our websites and learn more about C3 Pathways / NCIER by going to: https://www.c3pathways.com or https://www.ncier.org The Active Shooter Incident Management Podcast is owned by C3 Pathways and NCIER. None of the content presented may be copied, repurposed, or used without the owner’s prior consent.

    Ep 134: Active Shooter Training Buyer's Guide - Integrated Response

  8. Jun 24

    Ep 133: Active Shooter Training Buyer's Guide - Medical

    In Part 2 of our Active Shooter Training Buyer’s Guide, Bill Godfrey, Ron Otterbacher, Jill McElwee, and Billy Perry dig into what good medical / mass casualty training should include: per‑patient clocks, real triage instead of “closest to the door,” the loadmaster role in casualty collection points, and how to adapt training to your local EMS system.   They discuss:    • Why the biggest survival gap isn’t the gunfight, it’s medical care and triage    • How to think about the “clock” as per‑patient, based on wound location and physiology    • The current state of law enforcement medical training and realistic expectations    • How medical judgment up front changes who actually needs to move first    • Keeping drills in context: radios, movements, casualty collection points, and ambulance exchange points    • How to use after‑action and post‑mortem reports to keep raising your standard of care   If you’re selecting mass casualty or warm‑zone care training for your agency or region, this episode gives you a practical starting checklist for evaluating the medical side.  View this episode on YouTube at: https://youtu.be/tus68ab-uhU Like what you hear? Drop a review and subscribe to our Podcast Channel. If you have questions, you can send them to info@c3pathways.com with “Podcast Question” in the subject line. Check out our websites and learn more about C3 Pathways / NCIER by going to: https://www.c3pathways.com or https://www.ncier.org The Active Shooter Incident Management Podcast is owned by C3 Pathways and NCIER. None of the content presented may be copied, repurposed, or used without the owner’s prior consent.

    Ep 133: Active Shooter Training Buyer's Guide - Medical
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This C3 Pathways Podcast series discusses Active Shooter Incident Management (ASIM). The Podcast features instructors and special guests discussing key elements and challenges of Active Shooter Incident Management and the implications for law enforcement, fire, and EMS responders. The bad guy and the clock both kill innocent victims. Don't miss the opportunity to gain key insights that may help you save lives!

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