As a police officer, I was always trained to identify criminal behavior through actions and appearance.
When looking for suspects, I asked myself:
Are they dressed in a way that is inconsistent with the weather, signifying an attempt to conceal a weapon?
Are they wearing work gloves and a backpack signifying someone committing property crimes?
Do they have marks or other physical indicators of drug use?
Over my years of policing, these are some of the identifiers that helped me during investigations and proactive policework.
But what about active shooters?
I can tell you that in my head, I always had an idea of what I thought an active shooter suspect would look like based on training and what I saw in the news.
I believed an active shooter would most likely be a white male adult 20-40 years of age, wearing military style clothing. It is what we trained in scenarios, and how I crises rehearsed when thinking about what my response would look like.
The data doesn’t support my preconceptions.
The FBI did a study of the pre-incident behavior and demographics of 63 active shooter suspects between 2000- 2013. You can read the full report here.
The results of the demographic portion of the study?
“The sample comprised individuals who varied widely along a range of demographic factors making it impossible to create a demographic profile of an active shooter. Indeed, the findings and conclusions of this study should be considered in light of the reality that these 63 active shooters did not appear to be uniform in any way such that they could be readily identified prior to attacking based on demographics alone.”
This was also true based on my experiences. I responded to both the 1-October shooting in Las Vegas and the mass shooting at the University of Nevada Las Vegas in 2023.
During the 1 October shooting, I was expecting the suspect to be part of an international terrorist organization. This was because of the scope of the attack, and the multiple calls of additional active shooters along Las Vegas Blvd that I was hearing on the radio. These ended up being echo calls caused by victims running into other properties and reporting the same active shooter, causing confusion and reports of multiple calls coming into dispatch.
At UNLV, I was expecting a mentally ill subject attacking a school, or a disgruntled student.
What did the suspects actually look like?
Both were white males in their mid-sixties.
Stephan Paddock was the shooter on the 1-October shooting. He was a high roller at multiple local casinos and looked like thousands of other high rollers that gamble frequently in Las Vegas.
Anthony Polito was the shooter at UNLV. He was a disgruntled professor that wasn’t hired by the university and was dressed like a professor during the shooting. He was able to exit the building; he passed one of the teams because he fit in with all of the victims. Officers in front of the building confronted him and ended up shooting Polito when he pulled out a gun.
Neither suspect was what I was expecting when I was responding to these incidents.
It is important to keep an open mind when responding to a mass shooting without a suspect description. My preconceptions could have caused me to pass right by the suspect as they were leaving the area.
How do we identify an active shooter when we don’t have a description?
Are they dressed in a way that they could easily conceal a weapon?
Are there behavior indicators that differentiate them from a victim or witness? (1000-yard stare, not listening to instructions, moving against the flow of people)
Are they somewhere that the normal citizen doesn’t have access to?
What does an active shooter look like? It could look like anyone, of any age. That is why training, knowledge of behavioral indicators, and the right mindset is so important for our first responders when they are confronted with the worst call they will ever face.
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