Local business leaders trained on how to survive mass shootings
Feb. 26—While mass shootings are low-probability events, they are of high consequence, said Robert Johnson, director of threat preparedness at Gittings Protective Security Inc.
On Thursday, Johnson trained members of the area's business community on basic ways to survive an active shooter or assailant.
Run, hide, fight has been developing as the safety industry standard, he said, since the 2012 mass shooting inside a Colorado movie theater.
Johnson, former chief of the Johnstown Police Department, elaborated on those strategies during a training session for members of the city's business community.
He said two-thirds of mass shootings end with killers stopped by unarmed citizens. That's because it takes police four minutes, he said, on average to arrive at the scene, he said.
Johnson presented data-driven strategies for survival during a Zoom training session hosted by Johnstown Area Regional Industries' Safety Industry Partnership.
The clinical definition of an active shooter, he said, is someone actively engaged in the indiscriminate killing of people in a confined, highly populated area.
"These situations are statistically rare, but they have devastating results," he said.
To illustrate the run, hide, fight concept, Johnson touched on news accounts of bystanders' reactions to a shot fired in downtown Johnstown last week.
Last Friday, a man was taken into custody after an incident at the intersection of Market and Main streets. An employee of Subway told The Tribune-Democrat that she took a telephone and hid in the bathroom, where she called 911.
If the threat is outside, it's smart to go inside, Johnson said. But locking or barricading a door is the crucial next step, he said.
He urged all businesses and families to discuss how they would act in an active shooter situation.
Furthering concepts of run, hide, fight, Johnson said to run means to be aware of exits, windows emergency exits. Hide, he said, means to lock and barricade the door and silence cell phones. And he said the best way to fight is to use teamwork and surprise.
Covering general situational awareness, he urged people not to become absorbed by screens.
"The single biggest threat to situational awareness are cellphones," Johnson said.
