Data Collection and Analysis of Active Shooter Events

Voiceover

0:00

Welcome to The Beat—a podcast series from the COPS Office at the Department of Justice. Featuring 

interviews with experts from a varied field of disciplines, The Beat provides law enforcement with the 

latest developments and trending topics in community policing.

Deborah Spence

00:16

I am Deb Spence, your host for this podcast. It is being done remotely. Today on The Beat, we are talking 

about what the data can tell us about active shooter events with Dr. Hunter Martindale, who is the 

Director of Research at the Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training Center at Texas State 

University. Known as ALERRT, it was created in 2002 to address the need for active shooter response 

training for first responders. Since then, the program has trained more than 130,000 law enforcement 

and fire officials nationwide in dynamic scenario based training. In addition to after-action lessons 

learned through partnerships with agencies who have been involved in headline making active shooter 

situations, ALERRT has also established a criminal justice related research department to evaluate and 

enhance our overall understanding of active shooter events in law enforcement best practices. Dr. 

Martindale, Hunter, welcome to The Beat. To start, is there anything else you would like to tell our 

listeners about your background or ALERRT?

Dr. Hunter Martindale

01:15

Happy to be here. What sets ALERRT apart from many of the other active shooter training programs is 

our focus on research. We empirically test the tactics that are taught in our classes to ensure that what 

we teach is backed by data and is the best possible trend for all the first responders. In addition to test 

and tactics, we help maintain an active shooter database, which is what we're predominately talking 

about today.

Spence

01:35

How are the data for active shooter events collected?

Martindale

01:39

ALERRT works with the FBI active shooter group to collect and analyze the active shooter events in the 

United States. Members of our team maintain a list of tentative active shooter events as they happen 

throughout the year. Additionally, civilians and law enforcement personnel will sometimes email 

potential active shooter events that take place in their communities. I always welcome suggested 

events, this helps ensure we capture all the active shooters that take place. Unfortunately, active 

shooter events are occurring at a high enough frequency that they do not all make national news. So 
when people suggest events, we're able to round out the data set and make sure it's as complete as 

possible. Several times throughout the year the ALERRT FBI active shooter group will convene to go 

through the tentative list of active shooters. We discuss the details of each event, apply the definition, 

and vote whether to include or exclude the event from the list.

The FBI leverages field offices to contact departments that respond to the events to collect detailed 

information directly from the source. ALERRT will also submit FOIA requests to departments and 

attempt to get copies of the official police reports. We take great, great care to get details directly from 

the source and not from media accounts. We want the data to be as accurate as possible, basically. I 

should note that there are many different data sets of active shooter events. The ALERRT FBI list focuses 

solely on active shooters, ALERRT also maintains a data set of active attacks. The act of attack data is 

simply the ALERRT FBI data of active shooters, but we also include other active events where the 

attacker used a weapon other than a gun, such as an act of knife attack.

Spence

03:13

What are the overall benefits of analyzing past active shooter events?

Martindale

03:19

Before the FBI started looking at active shooter data, ALERRT was already collecting these data. We 

were first and foremost an active shooter response training program, we originally only trained law 

enforcement officers how to respond to an active shooter event. Part of that training was informing 

officers about the trends seen in the events and how to properly prepare. As the years went by, we 

noticed that civilians were having a substantial impact on how the events ended. So we developed a 

civilian response course to help prepare the community beyond just the first responders. When 

examining events, we also noticed that fire and EMS would benefit from active shooter training, so we 

developed integrated response class to train all first responders. In essence, the data had driven how 

forces had been developed based on the, the observed trends.

We hope that communities, law enforcement agencies, schools, businesses, and any and all 

stakeholders that are considering an active shooter response protocols are able to look at these data to 

better understand how they have unfolded in the past and develop their response roll calls based on the 

data. Basically, we want everybody to be able to base their decision on sound data.

Spence

04:23

What did the data tell us about responding to an active shooter event?
Martindale

04:27

There's a lot in the data, some of the basic findings that we like to stress are that 98 percent of the 

shooters are acting alone while responding officers should always be vigilant and aware that there could 

be a second shooter. They should maintain a cell, a safe space and start helping wounded victims. Once 

the immediate threat is over, there could potentially be a lot more lifesaving work to be done. We know 

that about half of the active shooter events are over before law enforcement arrive on scene with half 

of the events end in prior to law enforcement arrival, these data tell us how quickly events can end. 

Following an attack, I routinely hear in the news that the majority of shooters kill themselves, that's just 

not true in the data. Approximately, a quarter kill themselves before law enforcement arrive on scene 

and about 11 percent kill themselves after law enforcement arrive.

Civilians are stopping the attacker 16 percent of the time, law enforcement officers are shooting the 

attacker 25 percent of the time, and physically subduing the attacker 11 percent of the time. So law 

enforcement is responsible for stopping over one third of the events. The data also tells us there isn't a 

good profile for the attacker. Yes, the majority of the attackers are male and act alone, however, that's 

about as far as the profile can take us. The racial distribution roughly resembles the distribution within 

the population, the attackers range from 12 years old all the way to 88 years old. We can go on and on 

about the data, there's a lot more information included in the FBI data reports and on 

activeattackdata.org. 

Spence

05:51

How can the active shooter data be integrated with other data to improve our understanding of active 

shooter response?

Martindale

05:58

The active shooter data do a really good job of describing how the events unfold. We can gather 

information on weapons, victims, the attacker, how the event is resolved, and so on. But the data about 

themselves and the description—active shooter research is limited in that there's no way to test 

different combinations of tactics or civilian response as it's impossible to set up a true experiment to see 

how different combinations would play out. You just can't stage an active shooter and see how law 

enforcement or civilians would respond without everyone knowing ahead of time, it's not safe. To fix 

this issue, we've recently begun combining the descriptive attack data with experimental data regarding 

civilian and law enforcement response. We do this with something called agent-based modeling. Within 

agent-based modeling, we can build an environment that mimics real life based on the descriptive data.

This allows us to run thousands of computer simulations to observe the trends. We can then take 

experimental data and see how those data improve or do survivability in the simulation. For instance, 

we ran a simple experiment test and how long it takes a teacher to lock a door under stress using a 

couple different types of door locks. We also captured how likely the teacher was to fail to secure the 
door based on the type of door lock. We created a school environment in the agent based model and 

had the attacker conduct the attack utilizing the same trends we see in the descriptive data. We then 

run the simulation thousands and thousands of times using the experimental door lock data and see if 

the type of lock can make an impact. Every single tactic can be tested and put in simulation over time.

Agent-based model is just emerging in- into this field and there are literally hundreds of possible 

experiments to run to inform the simulations. We're in the process collecting more police response and 

civilian response data through experiments to input to the simulation and we will continue running 

thousands and thousands of simulations as we go forward.

Spence

07:44

What are the future directions of these types of data?

Martindale

07:48

The future of experimental data is far reaching. Every aspect of law enforcement tactics can be tested to 

ensure that the tactics improve officer performance, decision making, and survivability. There are also 

many, many experiments regarding civilian response techniques to undertake. These let us know how to 

train civilians and what will work to improve their survivability in the event of an active shooter. 

Furthermore, the descriptive data are constantly improving. Law enforcement agencies understand the 

importance of this data and are becoming much more forthcoming with sharing data. The ALERRT FBI 

active shooter group will continue collecting these data and we're always looking at ways to improve the 

data that we have.

As I described in the previous question, there are new and exciting ways to combine the descriptive data 

with experimental data using simulations via agent based modeling. And these models will continue to 

improve and help us understand how different response methods can help save lives.

Spence

08:41

How can people get more information regarding active shooter data?

Martindale

08:45

In addition to the FBI active shooter reports, people can go to activeattackdata.org, that is ALERRT's 

website for the active attack active shooter data. Again, that website is activeattackdata.org, that is A-CT-I-V-E-A-T-T-A-C-K-D-A-T-A-dot-O-R-G. You'll find an overview of the data and summaries of all the 

events on that website. Additionally, there's a section where you can request certain graphics or data 

points for your needs. Those requests go directly to me and we try to get any and all requests entered 

within 48 hours. Lastly, anybody can email me at hunter@alerrt.org, A-L-E-R-R-T-dot-org with questions 

regarding the active shooter data, and I'll be happy to answer anything.
Spence

09:34

Thank you, Dr. Hunter Martindale for joining us on The Beat. 

Martindale

09:37

Thank you for inviting me to participate on this podcast. I really hope people are able to use the active 

shooter data to help prepare.

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09:43

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Voiceover: Disclaimer

10:41

The opinions contained herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official 

position or polices of the U.S. Department of Justice. References to specific agencies, companies, 

products, or services should not be considered an endorsement by the authors or the U.S. Department 

of Justice. Rather, the references are illustrations to supplement discussion of the issues.