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JB MDL holds Active Shooter exercise

  • Published
  • By Airman 1st Class Dennis L. Sloan
  • Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst Public Affairs
JOINT BASE MCGUIRE-DIX-LAKEHURST, N.J. --  Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst personnel participated in an Active Shooter exercise Jan. 20 to evaluate the installation's emergency response procedures.

By definition, an active shooter is:

One or more individuals who participate in a random or systematic shooting spree, demonstrating their intent and means to continuously cause serious physical injury or death to others. Their overriding objective appears to be that of mass murder, rather than some other type of criminal conduct such as robbery.

With recent active shooter incidents throughout the country, military installations are establishing procedures to counter similar attacks.

The purpose of the exercise was to evaluate installation response procedures of security forces: fire department and ambulance services: the mass notification system capabilities: and command and control processes.

"All emergency responders hustled to the scene in a timely manner," said Master Sgt. Chris Wright, 87th Security Forces Squadron lead evaluator. "We did find kinks in the system, but that is why we performed this exercise."

The exercise also evaluated the Crisis Action Team on their ability to implement correct quick response checklists and to create open dialogue amongst our internal community: how well the CAT communicated internally and whether the CAT completed the appropriate higher headquarters reports and notifications in a timely manner.

"This is the first virtual CAT done at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst since implementation of the [Department of Defense's] Active Shooter response procedures," said Mike Stefani, 87th Air Base Wing chief of plans and programs. "We conducted the virtual CAT to work out the kinks and refine existing systems here."
"I am fully confident the base community is in good hands," Wright added.

If there is an Active Shooter on base, community members and personnel who hear or see the incident are directed to dial 911 and provide the law enforcement desk personnel all the information on the situation so the base can start procedures to eliminate the active shooter as soon as possible.