"The reason I start with awareness is because so many of the events were getting secondhand information. We don't know exactly who the shooter is right off the bat. So one of the things that I recommend is that we maintain our situational awareness so that we don't necessarily. So if somebody says the shooters and green shirt that we only look for people with green shirts as so here's a test for your awareness.

Just kind of see what this is, an awareness test.

How many passes does the team in white make?

The answer is 13. And I, when I watched this the very first time I counted and I got to 13, I was so proud of myself because I got the right number. That meant I. I paid enough attention to count the passes. The downside is I completely and totally missed the moon walking bear.

But did you see the moonwalking bear?

So it's the same exact way. That doesn't change.

Instead of cattle shirts, we're focusing, obviously. Clear as day. There he was. Why we didn't see it before is because we were paying attention to the 13 passes made by the team in white. So it's really easy to miss something. So if somebody says the gunman's in a green shirt and you see a guy walking by you in a blue shirt with a long gun, you may not notice it because you're looking for the guy in green.

So just keep that in the back of your mind."

- Safety Steve

"But what happens if this happens? What's your plan? You gotta have to have a plan. This guy doesn't look out of place. He just looks like a guy. But you have to have a plan. And the vast majority of us, myself included, wouldn't know what to do if they were shooting right away.

And so our natural reaction is going to be to freeze. So he starts shooting, and everybody kind of freezes, which is not unusual. I would probably do same. I think the older gentleman here might have had some kind of training, because instead of turning to look, he just turns and grabs his wife and he hides behind the column.

That's pretty good. But the rest of us don't really have a plan, and so we kind of hunker down at the nearest place. But one thing I'll tell you is hunkering down, unless you've got some kind of a shield that will stop bullets, hiding behind a luggage cart or an empty mailbox or, you know, whatever you happen to have is going to be a little less than hiding behind multiple sheets of drywall or structural steel or concrete columns.

So one of the things I want you to get out of this is start looking around. Where's a good place to protect myself?"

- Safety Steve

"I used to ask where they haven't happened, but they're happening now everywhere. We had one in NIU years ago where we had somebody come in and do shooting. And we're all pretty familiar with Sandy Hook, Virginia Tech, churches. They're happening. We had one at the Sikh temple up in Pleasant Prairie.

Movie theaters. There was a shooting in aurora, Colorado, where 70 people were injured and 12 were killed. Restaurants, concerts. The Vegas guy. In fact, the Vegas guy actually cased Lollapalooza in Chicago. One of his potential targets for this rage of gunfire could have been Chicago. So he. He chose somewhere else.

Fortunate for us, not fortunate for the folks in Vegas. Nightclubs, The Pulse nightclub in Orlando. There have been numerous shootings at nightclubs, malls, work. You'd think, you know, relatively safe at work. But even there, there was a Christmas party at San Bernardino when they had their active shooter. The one place I would think that we're safe from an active shooter would be inside a police station, because everyone there is a law enforcement officer.

They're carrying guns, and they're prepared to defend themselves. But what happened in Detroit is a guy who didn't say anything to anybody. He just walked into the police station and started shooting."

- Safety Steve

"Active shooter is. It's an individual actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a confined and populated area. In most cases, active shooters use firearms. I would think in almost all cases when we're talking about shooting, and there's generally no pattern, some of the active shooters have just gone to get a body count.

Some of the active shooters have gone back to a job to kill people that they think wronged them. Other people have just been in an argument with somebody and just decided they needed to take a whole bunch of people out. It's. It's not known why they do this stuff in most cases, because the people that are doing the shooting generally get killed.

But in some cases, we know what the motive is."

- Safety Steve

"I pulled up a couple of maps just so you get an idea of where these active shooter events happen. So what I put these down is they're not all active shooters. They're just mass shootings where four or more people were shot. Sometimes it's gang violence, sometimes it's a rivalry, sometimes it's a domestic thing.

But a lot of these are just simply active shooters. And so what you're going to notice with these dots is the dots tend to be where people are. Salt Lake City, Las Vegas, Chicago, New York, New Jersey. So that was 2022. The map doesn't look substantially different in 2023, nor did it look substantially different in 2024.

So we're still having mass shootings everywhere. But why is the state of Wyoming and Idaho free from this? I think it's not necessarily the amount of guns, although a lot of the states have plenty of guns. I think the issue is there isn't a high concentration of people. When these guys want a body count, they want a humongous body count.

So they're going to try and go where people are. And Wyoming, I think two or three towns in Illinois equal the population of Wyoming. It's not a very populated state. Big state, but it's not very populated. So I pulled up the statistics from 2023 and we had 604 mass shootings, killing 746 with 2400 injured.

Last year was, I'm going to say better. It's disgusting still, but it was better last. We only had 586 only. There's 365 days. That means roughly one and a half or two, excuse me, three every two days. And it looks a little bit like it's seasonal. And if you think about the north being warmer in the summer, you have fewer northern events this time, this time of year because it's cold.

But once we get to summer, then we have more of them."

- Safety Steve

"A lot of them, they just want to become famous by breaking the record of the previous bad guy. They may have intended victims, but when we're talking about typically an active shooter, it's targets of opportunity. If you're an easy target, you're going to get shot. They're going to continue to move throughout the building, throughout the school, until stopped, whether it's by law enforcement or by us.

And more and more and more of these events are being stopped by the people that are the would be victims because they've, they've gone through training, they recognize that it's him or me, and they decide to act. Yes, you want to call 911. We definitely want the good guys on the way.

And law enforcement will come in. In the case of Aurora, Illinois, there were Chicago firefighters or police officers there. There were state troopers, there were people from Will county, from Cook County. People come for this. So the law enforcement is coming. You just got to survive until they get there.

Their mentality, they know almost always that they're not going to escape. Many of them will kill themselves. Those that don't will try and shoot it out with the cops, which won't go very well for them. But it's often meticulously planned as."

- Safety Steve

"A lot of them, they just want to become famous by breaking the record of the previous bad guy. They may have intended victims, but when we're talking about typically an active shooter, it's targets of opportunity. If you're an easy target, you're going to get shot. They're going to continue to move throughout the building, throughout the school, until stopped, whether it's by law enforcement or by us.

And more and more and more of these events are being stopped by the people that are the would be victims because they've, they've gone through training, they recognize that it's him or me, and they decide to act. Yes, you want to call 911. We definitely want the good guys on the way.

And law enforcement will come in. In the case of Aurora, Illinois, there were Chicago firefighters or police officers there. There were state troopers, there were people from Will county, from Cook County. People come for this. So the law enforcement is coming. You just got to survive until they get there.

Their mentality, they know almost always that they're not going to escape. Many of them will kill themselves. Those that don't will try and shoot it out with the cops, which won't go very well for them. But it's often meticulously planned as."

- Safety Steve

"Running is good, but we need to know exits. And so a lot of what we have to decide is are there multiple ways for us to get out of the building or off of the roof or out of the movie theater? So we need to know where the exits are and we want to make sure that they're not blocked.

Run away from the sound of gunfire, not towards. That would be your best option. So know where the exits are. Keep in mind in an active shooter, we don't want to leave our stuff. We don't even want to leave. So we're afraid, but don't be afraid. Leave your stuff.

The guy doesn't give a damn about your stuff. He just wants you dead. So leave, leave your stuff, whatever you're working on. Unless you're doing something so inherently unsafe, if you leave it, just leave it. As soon as you recognize that it's gunfire."

- Safety Steve

"All right, if we can hide, hide. Now, some places are going to have really good hiding places. Again, I'm in an office. Office full of filing cabinets, columns. There's lots of places I can hide. I can go into closets, I can hide behind office furniture, things like that. But if you're going to hide, stay hidden.

Don't look around. And don't have your cell phone lit up. If you want to talk to somebody, you can, but don't cell phone out because it'll light up your face. So if you can find a good spot, then once you get decided you're going to hide, barricade the doors with whatever you have handy.

If you got nothing and the door has a door closer, the door behind me doesn't have a door closer. But if you have door stops, you know, I'm talking about those little itty bitty wedges. You have a door stop that's designed to hold the door open. Guess what? It does a very good job of holding the door closed.

So if you can do something, put things in front of the door. If there's a door knob handle that pulls down and you can put a chair under to prevent it from going down. All of that's good. Ideally, turn lights off in the room that you're in if you can.

Why? Because they're out in the hallway. They have day vision because the lights are very bright. If you're in a darker room, your eyes, your pupils have opened and the bad guys got dilated pupils. Because he's in the light, when he comes into the dark room, he can't see very well.

That's your opportunity to either attack him or hit him with something or run away."

-Safety Steve

"You couldn't run and your hiding place got broken into, then it's time to fight. And I know every company in the world has a zero weapons policy. Absolutely true. My favorite weapon that'll be on every job is going to be a fire extinguisher. We carry fire extinguisher for the risk of fire.

So they're with us on construction, they're with us in general industry. Hell, we probably even have them at home. So it's a very good weapon because you can squirt the guy in the face, that'll disorient him. You can hit him in the head, you can swing it by the hose and whack them there.

You're good. So fire extinguisher is good. If you happen to have other weapons handy, that's great too. But most of us don't think we can take out an active shooter because, well, they have a gun and you don't. But there's the thing. It's possible for unarmed individuals subdue and chase away armed intruders, and it happens all the time."

- Safety Steve

"When you see law enforcement, doesn't matter what you're doing, do not be a threat to them. What do I mean? If you got the gunman down and you picked up the gun and you're holding the gun, here's the guy, the gun the guy was using, you're a threat. So don't pick up the weapon.

If you've got the bad guy down, that's outstanding. Don't point because pointing could look like you're. So if you point with your elbow, you're not a threat. When they tell you to show your hands, this is not showing your hands. This is hiding your hands. This is showing your hands.

So if you have to show your hands, show your hands. If they tell you to stop, guess what? You stop. If they tell you to turn around, turn around slowly. If they tell you to raise your jacket, you raise their jacket. Yes, they're there. They don't know all the, all the details of the shooting.

They don't know who the bad guy is or isn't. Don't try to run towards them. There'll be plenty of time after the event that everybody can kind of get a collective, oh, thank goodness I'm alive thing. But try not to scream and yell. Try to remain calm. Again, you were just in a fight or flight situation.

You're going to be pretty pumped up."

- Safety Steve

"If there's 3, 4, 500 people in an area where this active shooter event's going on and you're all calling 911, you're obviously going to overwhelm the local dispatch. Just know that even if, let's say, I'm currently in Schaumburg, so there's 300 people trying to call Schomburg's 911, you're not going to get a busy signal, you're not going to get elevator music.

What happens is the 911 calls just radiate out.  So once Schomburg's overwhelmed, it goes to Arlington Heights, Des Plaines, Palatine, whatever. It just radiates. And everybody's going to still get an operator. If you do get an operator, stay on the phone with them. Don't hang up because you can relay what's going on.

They can relay, oh, law enforcement's on the way. They're coming here. We've identified that the shooter's on the south side of the building. So if you can get further north, all of that, that would be what we want to do. So call 911 once you're safe. Don't try and call 911 while you're, you're running.

Try and call 911 once you get out and you get safe."

- Safety Steve