After thousands of active shooter exercises, we can tell which leaders actually sleep at night. They all did the same things to earn it, and it is not about tactics. It is about leadership.  

This episode is the final part of the Active Shooter Training Buyer's Guide. Bill Godfrey, Jill McElwee, Billy Perry, and Ron Otterbacher break down what leaders have to own to make their organizations, and their partners, truly ready.  

They discuss:  

If you're a chief, sheriff, fire or EMS leader, emergency manager, or training officer, this episode gives you a practical guide to the leadership behind real active shooter preparedness, not just checking the exercise box. 

View this episode on YouTube at: https://youtu.be/qnBdoWeM8_E

Like what you hear? Drop a review and subscribe to our Podcast Channel. 

If you have questions, you can send them to [email protected] with “Podcast Question” in the subject line. 

Check out our websites and learn more about C3 Pathways / NCIER by going to: https://www.c3pathways.com or https://www.ncier.org

The Active Shooter Incident Management Podcast is owned by C3 Pathways and NCIER. None of the content presented may be copied, repurposed, or used without the owner’s prior consent.

The biggest failures we see in active shooter incidents aren't at the doorway. They're between agencies that never really trained together.

This episode of the Active Shooter Incident Management Podcast is Part 3 of the Active Shooter Training Buyer's Guide. Bill Godfrey, Ron Otterbacher, Jill McElwee, and Billy Perry dig into what integrated response training should look like across dispatch, police, fire, EMS, hospitals, and emergency management.

They discuss:

If you're a chief, sheriff, fire or EMS leader, emergency manager, or training officer, this episode gives you a practical guide for building real integrated response capability, not just checking the exercise box.

View this episode on YouTube at: https://youtu.be/fkAkEo_NS_4

Like what you hear? Drop a review and subscribe to our Podcast Channel. 

If you have questions, you can send them to [email protected] with “Podcast Question” in the subject line. 

Check out our websites and learn more about C3 Pathways / NCIER by going to: https://www.c3pathways.com or https://www.ncier.org

The Active Shooter Incident Management Podcast is owned by C3 Pathways and NCIER. None of the content presented may be copied, repurposed, or used without the owner’s prior consent.

In Part 2 of our Active Shooter Training Buyer’s Guide, Bill Godfrey, Ron Otterbacher, Jill McElwee, and Billy Perry dig into what good medical / mass casualty training should include: per‑patient clocks, real triage instead of “closest to the door,” the loadmaster role in casualty collection points, and how to adapt training to your local EMS system.  

They discuss:  

If you’re selecting mass casualty or warm‑zone care training for your agency or region, this episode gives you a practical starting checklist for evaluating the medical side. 

View this episode on YouTube at: https://youtu.be/tus68ab-uhU

Like what you hear? Drop a review and subscribe to our Podcast Channel. 

If you have questions, you can send them to [email protected] with “Podcast Question” in the subject line. 

Check out our websites and learn more about C3 Pathways / NCIER by going to: https://www.c3pathways.com or https://www.ncier.org

The Active Shooter Incident Management Podcast is owned by C3 Pathways and NCIER. None of the content presented may be copied, repurposed, or used without the owner’s prior consent.

Too much active shooter tactical training starts and ends with a few officers making entry and neutralizing the shooter. The reality is that the clock, the wounded, fire, EMS, dispatch, detectives, and command all matter just as much.

This episode of the Active Shooter Incident Management Podcast is Part 1 of a four‑part Active Shooter Training Buyer’s Guide. Today, Bill Godfrey, Ron Otterbacher, Jill McElwee, and Billy Perry dig into what proper tactical training should look like, so you can tell whether a course is covering the full problem or only the first few minutes.

They discuss:

If you’re selecting, funding, or approving active shooter training, this episode gives you a starting checklist for what “good” looks like on the tactical side.

View this episode on YouTube at: https://youtu.be/kOQ9m4qNHeQ

Like what you hear? Drop a review and subscribe to our Podcast Channel. 

If you have questions, you can send them to [email protected] with “Podcast Question” in the subject line. 

Check out our websites and learn more about C3 Pathways / NCIER by going to: https://www.c3pathways.com or https://www.ncier.org

The Active Shooter Incident Management Podcast is owned by C3 Pathways and NCIER. None of the content presented may be copied, repurposed, or used without the owner’s prior consent.

When a violent event happens at a school, the response and the reunification that follows are not a school problem or a responder problem. They are one problem, and both sides have to solve it together. School Safety and Violent Event Incident Management (SSAVEIM) prepares them to solve it together, with particular attention to the reunification a violent event forces.

In this episode of the Active Shooter Incident Management Podcast, Bill Godfrey and Kevin Nichols walk through the updated course. SSAVEIM brings schools, responders, and emergency management through lockdown, the public safety response, and the reunification that follows, which many school teams have never practiced. Schools see how responders will actually manage the incident, responders see everything reunification involves, and each side leaves knowing the parts of the other's job it had never seen.

The biggest focus is the part that goes differently at a school: violent-event reunification. Because the building becomes a crime scene, reunification is forced offsite, with all the logistics and security that involves. SSAVEIM builds on the I Love U Guys Foundation's Standard Response Protocol and Standard Reunification Method, and concentrates on the violent-event reunification those programs do not cover. Both school-district and community emergency managers belong in the preparation, because a violent event surfaces a long list of plans that need updating.

Bring SSAVEIM to your community: https://ncier.org/ssaveim?utm_source=sc

More resources: https://ncier.org/research and https://ncier.org/blog

View this episode on YouTube at: https://youtu.be/m7bfI_q4ve8

Like what you hear? Drop a review and subscribe to our Podcast Channel. 

If you have questions, you can send them to [email protected] with “Podcast Question” in the subject line. 

Check out our websites and learn more about C3 Pathways / NCIER by going to: https://www.c3pathways.com or https://www.ncier.org

The Active Shooter Incident Management Podcast is owned by C3 Pathways and NCIER. None of the content presented may be copied, repurposed, or used without the owner’s prior consent.

You cannot afford to wait for a real active shooter incident to find out how well your agencies coordinate. The updated Active Shooter Incident Management (ASIM) Advanced is where your agencies become one coordinated team, ready to run a real response together.

In this episode of the Active Shooter Incident Management Podcast, Bill Godfrey and Kevin Nichols walk through what has changed in this three‑day course. Their focus is simple: give you a clearer view of how your teams performs when law enforcement, fire, EMS, dispatch, and command are all working together.

They also discuss:

Learn more about ASIM Advanced at: https://ncier.org/asim/advanced?utm_source=sc

View this episode on YouTube at: https://youtu.be/xeKwv7HeHpw

Like what you hear? Drop a review and subscribe to our Podcast Channel. 

If you have questions, you can send them to [email protected] with “Podcast Question” in the subject line. 

Check out our websites and learn more about C3 Pathways / NCIER by going to: https://www.c3pathways.com or https://www.ncier.org

The Active Shooter Incident Management Podcast is owned by C3 Pathways and NCIER. None of the content presented may be copied, repurposed, or used without the owner’s prior consent.

The most valuable part of Active Shooter Incident Management (ASIM) Basic has always been the hands-on scenarios, so the updated course is built to give you more of them. With most of the lecture now carried by the free ASIM QuickStart course, which is a prerequisite, students arrive already sharing the fundamentals, and class time focuses on running the process.

In this episode of the Active Shooter Incident Management Podcast, Bill Godfrey and Kevin Nichols walk through what changed. After a short opening that hits the high points and goes a little deeper on a few topics, the class moves into three prescribed scenarios, up from two, with time for a fourth. Those scenarios are now scripted in the trainer manual, so every class, in any state, runs the same standard and objectives. The thinking is simple: consistency is what produces quality.

For agencies that want to sustain training in-house, the ASIM Basic Train-the-Trainer has been rebuilt. Because the foundation is front-loaded and the scenarios are scripted, it is now a single eight-hour day instead of two, and it qualifies up to twenty trainers at once, double the previous number, with everything they need to start teaching the next day. The course package is now a browser-based download that runs on Windows, Mac, or Linux and includes the participant guide, trainer guide, and course design document for CEU and POST submissions. And every current trainer can take a free update, eleven short modules in about an hour and fifteen minutes, that recertifies their credential for another three years.

Learn more about the updated ASIM Basic at: https://ncier.org/asim/basic?utm_source=yt

View this episode on YouTube at: https://youtu.be/b33b6KEZjas

Like what you hear? Drop a review and subscribe to our Podcast Channel. 

If you have questions, you can send them to [email protected] with “Podcast Question” in the subject line. 

Check out our websites and learn more about C3 Pathways / NCIER by going to: https://www.c3pathways.com or https://www.ncier.org

The Active Shooter Incident Management Podcast is owned by C3 Pathways and NCIER. None of the content presented may be copied, repurposed, or used without the owner’s prior consent.

After training more than 32,000 responders in over 2,700 active shooter exercises, we've learned what separates a coordinated response from a chaotic one: whether law enforcement, fire, EMS, and dispatch have ever operated from the same playbook. ASIM QuickStart was built to put that playbook in every responder's hands, for free.

In this episode of the Active Shooter Incident Management Podcast, Bill Godfrey and Kevin Nichols introduce ASIM QuickStart, a free online course that delivers the foundational concepts of active shooter incident management in 12 short video modules, in less than an hour. It covers how an incident actually unfolds, the key roles and terminology, and how responders move from first contact to organized rescue and transport, all built on the national-standard ASIM Checklist.

Because it's free, self-paced, and available on any device, an entire agency can complete it without pulling people off the street or paying to backfill shifts, and you can push it out to the mutual-aid partners who would respond alongside you. When everyone arrives already speaking the same language, you spend the first critical minutes acting instead of figuring out who does what.

There's no registration wall to start, responders can watch the modules in any order, and you can earn a certificate of completion for training hours if you choose. For agencies rolling it out at scale, a free tracking tool lets a training officer see exactly who has and hasn't finished.

Start the free ASIM QuickStart course at: https://ncier.org/asim/quickstart

Watch this episode on YouTube at: https://youtu.be/e9DlLZsOxug

Like what you hear? Drop a review and subscribe to our Podcast Channel. 

If you have questions, you can send them to [email protected] with “Podcast Question” in the subject line. 

Check out our websites and learn more about C3 Pathways / NCIER by going to: https://www.c3pathways.com or https://www.ncier.org

The Active Shooter Incident Management Podcast is owned by C3 Pathways and NCIER. None of the content presented may be copied, repurposed, or used without the owner’s prior consent.

After training more than 32,000 responders in over 2,700 active shooter exercises, we’ve seen Rescue Task Force (RTF) become so focused on who “counts” that it can distract from the actual goal: use the people you have to save as many lives as possible.

In this episode of the Active Shooter Incident Management Podcast, Bill Godfrey talks with instructors Kevin Nichols and Kelly Boaz about a mission‑first definition of RTF that works in big cities and small communities alike: a team with a medical mission operating in an unsecured area, with its own internal security, regardless of which uniforms are on it.

They discuss why time doesn’t apply the same way to every injured person, why judgment at the casualty collection point matters more than labels, and how keeping RTF concepts simple helps responders focus on getting the right patients on the first ambulances instead of debating terminology.

Get the free sample Rescue Task Force SOP and glossary of definitions mentioned in this episode at: 

https://ncier.org/asim/checklist

https://ncier.org/research

https://ncier.org/blog

View this episode on YouTube at: https://youtu.be/W7HUJCBFWOc

Like what you hear? Drop a review and subscribe to our Podcast Channel. 

If you have questions, you can send them to [email protected] with “Podcast Question” in the subject line. 

Check out our websites and learn more about C3 Pathways / NCIER by going to: https://www.c3pathways.com or https://www.ncier.org

The Active Shooter Incident Management Podcast is owned by C3 Pathways and NCIER. None of the content presented may be copied, repurposed, or used without the owner’s prior consent.

Your active shooter plan needs an Emergency Manager. After 2,700 active shooter exercises across the country, we keep seeing the same pattern: one agency tries to improve its active shooter response, but without emergency management leading a shared plan, training stays siloed, and different approaches collide at the same incident.

In this episode of the Active Shooter Incident Management Podcast, Bill Godfrey talks with instructors Kevin Nichols and Kelly Boaz about why your active shooter plan needs an emergency manager out front.

They discuss:

The bottom line: hope is not a plan. In almost every real event, “everybody is coming to this thing,” so somebody has to own one coordinated plan for everybody. That somebody is your emergency manager.

Get the one‑page conversation guide mentioned in this episode to use with your emergency manager: https://ncier.org/research

View this episode on YouTube at: https://youtu.be/EnG5QLvhjn8

#ActiveShooterResponse #EmergencyManagement #PublicSafety #Podcast

Like what you hear? Drop a review and subscribe to our Podcast Channel. 

If you have questions, you can send them to [email protected] with “Podcast Question” in the subject line. 

Check out our websites and learn more about C3 Pathways / NCIER by going to: https://www.c3pathways.com or https://www.ncier.org

The Active Shooter Incident Management Podcast is owned by C3 Pathways and NCIER. None of the content presented may be copied, repurposed, or used without the owner’s prior consent.