I am getting a lesson in emergency preparedness today. My day job is I'm a unix admin/support person for a local IT company. I'm sitting here waiting for this guy to call me and I have this sinking, sinking sinnkkking bad feeling. Like overwhelmingly bad.

So I find my center, put aside any irrational thoughts and clear my mind. I think where should I go to see what's going on and first thing that pops into my mind is a local news site... www.pennlive.com (which I maybe check once a week regularly).

Top story was 2 bank robbers robbed a bank near my house, then one of them is holed in the woods near my house (within 2 miles). Guess I know why I felt weird. Called the wifey, sent her an email, told her to lock the doors and grab the handgun.

Situation still developing but they locked down the school across the street from my house (I'm giving up way too much personal info, I know) ... and a few hours later (like 20 mins ago) took it off lockdown without explaining why while the manhunt is still on.

Good times. So today's emergency preparedness lessons just keep coming. Worst part is being separated from my wife and kid while this is going on by a span of 20 miles and having to calm my own thoughts. I'm usually a cool cucumber but it's vastly different when you're not there in person

I'm also wishing I'd have gotten rid of that *@#$ing glass door on the balcony (which thankfully has no stairs but still)

Ignorance is bliss.

There are so many armed robbers within two miles of my house, the prison probably couldn't hold them all if they were caught and convicted. And I'm not talking about politicians, most of whom aren't armed....

When I walk out the front door I look both ways down the block and if it looks like no one is a mugger, I'm pleased to venture on down the sidewalk.

Yet growing up in a small Oregon town it would have been creepy to hear about criminals two miles away.

Funny (and a little sad) what we can get accustomed to.

Best wishes to you and yours. I hope the perps are apprehended quickly and swiftly prosecuted and imprisoned.

I'm sure everything will be alright. I pray it will.

After this is over, it's time to ask yourself and your wife: Do we know how to use our handgun? Are we well practiced at the range? Can we use it effectively in total darkness (know everything about it by feel)?

Driving to work early one morning, I saw the local police closing down entrances to my neighborhood, with the SWAT team and other units coming in with lights and sirens. This is far from normal where we live.

My wife was home with the baby; I called and told her to turn on the A/C, shut the windows, arm herself, and stay inside.

Unbelievably, she started arguing with me about how it was a nice day, the A/C was expensive to run, and so on. With forced calm, I repeated that the SWAT team was deployed in our neighborhood, asked once again for her to close up the house and stay inside with her gun, and hung up the phone.

When the police helicopter started orbiting our neighborhood a few minutes later she took me seriously. To her credit she called back and apologized.

Now we have a few predetermined action plans that we don't practice often enough, but at least I'm confident that she won't think I'm nuts if we ever have the SWAT team come back into our neighborhood.

The SWAT callout originated from a domestic dispute. The police had been called to a house around the corner for a couple arguing loudly in the middle of the street. When the cops showed up the couple ran inside, and the man told the responding officers that he would shoot them if they didn't go away. The SWAT team used an armored vehicle to evacuate homes within line of sight of the house, and tried to make contact with the couple, who took their phone off the hook.

Eventually, the man came outside to tell the cops to go away and leave him alone, they shot him with beanbags and took him into custody. The woman came out and fought the arresting officers, and was similarly taken into custody. Alcohol was involved.

Seems like a terrible waste of beanbag rounds to me!

Yeah I am sure a beanbag round is more expensive than a real one.

Whoops, did I say that out loud!

we had several of those before we moved. I bought a scanner so we could listen and see just how close they were. One day an unmarked car pulled up to the house across the street so i got the scanner and heard a code 51 (IIRC) as backup came. I looked up <my city> police codes and found that a code 51 was stabbing. Later the police escorted the lady living there and her kids to pack what they could in a trash bag and leave and she had a big bandage on her neck. We got to talk to her, took her kids in our house so she could go pack her stuff and found out that her baby daddy had found them and stabbed her so she had to move to a new place.

In the UK, bank robbers are usually just allowed to say they are sorry, look contrite and then allowed to go and live in the Caribbean or the south of France with their millions.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3MkQAgrj8c

Because every drunk blowhard should get shot to death.

you might consider a codeword or pair of codewords that require immediate compliance without question...do it, and I'll explain later

"safehaven" .... secure the home

"armed safehaven"...arm yourself, possible danger from intruder

"flee safehaven to ......"...leave immediately, take firearm,I'll meet you at a predetermined location


educators... you should have a procedure in place to inform your administration and resource officer that you suspect a student is in possession of a firearm.... it needs to be an innocuous statement capable of being spoken in the clear, over the intercom or over the telephone..."this is Mr. Snyder in room 207, I've misplaced my yellow folder"

Same thing happened to me a couple of years ago. The police chopper was circling around first telling everybody to be on the lookout for a pair that robbed one the local corner stores. Then they told everybody to get inside. The last thing I saw before closing the blinds was a cop strolling around out front with his sidearm out.

I lived in a first floor corner apartment at the time. I closed all the doors and windows, and hunkered down on the living room floor with a newpaper and waited it out (the lower half of the exterior wall was brick and the living room had the most barriers between myself and any stray bullets).

About 10 minutes later I hear Pop...POP...POP POP POP POP POP POP POP POP coming from the north. About 2 minutes after that, it came from the east. I kinda doubt the two robbers got to stand in front of a judge, at least not the mortal kind.

EDIT


Dumb question, but why overcomplicate things? What part of "get and gun and..." does not connotate that the S is about to HTF and immediate compliance is required?

I can understand it as part of a school or other potentially high loss of life situation, but not at home.

There is an app for that. Oo Tunes app for iPhone streams radio stations all over the country and includes police scanners for a lot of cities. I do fire mine up when things occur near my house just out of curiosity.

Mark_R....my teaching assignment for a little over 30 years was primarily a 9th grade intro chem and physics class... and found out early on that especially when explaining lab procedures it was not enough to tell them what to do or not do eg. "you need to have your goggles on as there is a chance that someone will let a thermometer fall to the countertop, and I've had them propel shards of glass"...not just "wear you safety glasses"...you saved a lot of time and had much better compliance if you took the time to explain why you ask them to do something...after the initial explaination, just a "goggles" command was enough... just thought it would be a lot quicker to have a compliance word, explaination will follow if time is critical..

Thanks guys. No problems on my front but the guy basically got away despite our keystone cops dragnet. So things have calmed down considerably. Regardless since they didn't catch him the wife/I are still on alert. I like some of the ideas in this thread but to be honest the biggest thing on my mind right now is fixing that glass door to actually be secure (since unfortunately replacing it altogether is cost prohibitive for the time being).

I like the idea of the police scanner to see where they are as well, that's something I hadn't thought of.

Online live police and fire scanners (courtesy of another ETS member):

http://www.radioreference.com/apps/audio/?mid=18


We recently had a lengthy thread about home security. The thread title was something about someone's house being "cased."

For a sliding glass door: charlie bar and alarm.

Centrally-monitored alarm system and a big dog are the big deterrents to home invasion/burglary, according to DC police.

DC police also advocate bars on doors and windows but that would look odd outside the inner city. Yes, more law-abiding people than criminals in DC are living behind bars....

The smartphone scanner apps are basically streaming the online scanners. I was going to suggest going to radio reference anyway to see whats used in your area and you can tell what type of scanner you need, i.e. analog, digitial, encrypted digital.

OK, that explains it... I remember 9th grade chemistry and physics. 9th grade metal shop had the same thing: "hot metal" meant "I'm coming through with a 900F piece of steel, get out of the way NOW!". Ironically, it was the dumb stuff, like reaching in front of an oxyacetelane torch that tended to get the kids. Nobody every got burned from moving glowing steel.

I like "Lock and load. Prepare to shoot. This is not a drill." Simple, direct, and to the point. Can be spoken over the intercom and will gain immediate attention. Both from the good guys and the bad.

As far as all the other "safehaven" varients that were mentioned, a simple "Get your gun" covers all the bases. Anybody should know to secure the home when hearing that. If you are a truely prepared family, this will all be redundant anyways, because your house is always locked and you always have your gun at hand. As far as "flee safehaven" goes, the person at home at the time is in a much better position to judge the situation than a voice from afar on the telephone.

When the weather is nice and there's no specific threat, we often leave the windows and back door open. We will often leave the front door open as well, although this requires an adult to be within line of sight of the door. We're by far the hardest target in our neighborhood, and if there's a reason to we harden up some more.

HMP Castle Huntly Prison is about 3 miles away from where I live and there have been quite a few prisoners who have escaped (well more of failing to return to the prison when they are meant to return after being let out to visit their friends and family or Job etc whilst they are let out on license). Some folks in the local area around the open prison such as the village of Longforgan aren't to happy with this state of affairs.

I don't think I've even seen a policeman with a gun here in Scotland except perhaps at Glasgow Airport.

'I like "Lock and load. Prepare to shoot. This is not a drill." '

I like it! Esp for schools!

I grew up in another era... my high school went on lock-down only once, and that was when a German Shepherd mix was wandering around the campus, growling at people.

Sue

Cultures and responses are necessarily different. The UK is hardly known as a land indifferent to law and order. I'm no expert, so take my response FWIW; but a couple of things come to mind. Kindly correct me if I'm off-base.

First, I believe the UK fuzz have adapted to the brave new bang-bang world with a layered response to the threat. Many have training and access to firearms, but do not carry them into every situation unless there is reasonable apprehension that they may be needed. This is a reasonable compromise to the traditional role, in their view; and no doubt there are very heavily armed responders who deal with additional escalation. (Keep in mind that the UK has dealt with very real threats, internal and external, for an extended period.)

The second thing is perhaps understood (traditional) rather than codified. At least that's how I read it. A "firearms last resort" policy implies a "hands-on physical control first" policy, with perhaps a great deal more lattitude in how physical force is applied.

Anyway, that's my 2p.

As an afterthought: in these discussions, you have to read through the usual Brit understatement. E.g., a full-bore, two-fisted interrogation comes out as "the gentleman is assisting the police in their enquiries."

I believe that's why they're called Boobies.

I believe the term is "Bobbies," named after their founder. the last time I was through Heathrow, there was some pretty impressive armament on display, so I don't think the chaps are naive.

Correct, there is no shortage of firepower when needed and they they have dedicated units available to respond at all times.

In regards to hardening your sliding doors, I posted about 3M Window Security Film in a different post. I don't have sliders, but I was thinking of applying this stuff to my ground level windows.


Anyway, this link will bring you to Amazon with a selection of security film thicknesses and lengths appropriate for sliding windows. The stuff is a little spendy, though, but cheaper and more attractive than french doors with security grills.

(No affiliation)

I agree with that, but I don't think it implies using codewords. Especially not really obscure ones like "yellow binder" - that's less likely to get fast compliance for me as I'd have to remember what it meant.

Brangdon... since this is an open forum, and the procedure is still in use, I did not use the actual term , which is not that ambiguous...the call was to the front desk and to trained staff members....it is initiated by suspicion and not actual knowledge... most teachers are not gun people...this was a threat we needed to address post Columbine and considered a viable solution..additionally, a student could be sent to the office carrying the "yellow folder" with a seating chart included, and the suspicious student's desk identified