Paramount Pictures Employees Get Active Shooter Training For Movie Premiere Scenario
Last month, first responders used the Universal backlot to conduct active shooter training. Today at Paramount Pictures, first responders were on the Melrose studio lot to simulate shootings both on the red carpet and also inside the Sherry Lansing theater to train Paramount employees on what to do if they are faced with the unimagineable.
The Los Angeles Emergency Management Department’s ‘Run, Hide, Fight – Surviving An Active Shooter’ program is a program that is free to any business or organization interested in having their employees more prepared for an active shooting scenario.
The move came on what is (to the day) the second year mark of the Orlando Pulse Nightclub Shooting where 49 people were murdered and hundreds either physically injured or impacted.
The active shooter training exercise at the studio included LAPD and LAFD (those who weren’t fighting the Portola Fire). They used the sounds of gunfire to simulate both. Los Angeles Emergency Management Department have so far trained about 3,500 people and that includes how to help those physically disabled survive a shooting.
The moves are part of overall security measures that has come in the wake of so many mass shootings over the years, most recently in Nashville, Santa Fe, TX and Parkland High School.
A few years back on the red carpet I was only a few feet away when Brad Pitt was hit in the face by what he thought was a fan at Disney’s Maleficent premiere in 2014. It was a prankster from the Ukraine, but the incident showed how vulnerable today’s celebs and movie premieres are. Disney has since put in stringent seen and unseen security measures. And metal detectors are the rule of thumb now before going to see a movie premiere, which are considered “soft targets.”
“We don’t want people to be paranoid … these are interesting times we’re living in, but we also don’t want them to be completely unprepared (for) the possibility that something like this could happen to them,” LAPD’s Kyle Campbell told ABC 7 which reported on the training.
The active shooter training comes only about a month before the six year-mark of the Aurora Theater mass shooting which occurred during the midnight showing of The Dark Knight Rises on July 20, 2012. Twelve people were shot and killed, 70 injured and hundreds impacted.
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