Ep 110: Tactical or Management
Episode 110
Published Mar 24, 2025
Last updated Mar 5, 2026
Duration: 28:33
Episode Summary
Discover why balancing tactical execution (like neutralizing threats) with effective incident management (coordinating resources, communication, and victim care) is essential for saving lives as we dive into the critical distinction between tactics and management in active shooter incidents.
Episode Notes
Today’s panel tackles a critical question: What’s the difference between tactics and management in active shooter events?
The team dives into the distinct roles of tactical execution and incident management, exploring how these elements must work together to ensure a successful response. From law enforcement's focus on neutralizing threats to fire/EMS responsibilities in triage and rescue, the discussion highlights common gaps in training and coordination. They also share insights on the importance of knowing your role, effective communication, and integrating cross-discipline teamwork.
Key topics include:
- The balance between tactical actions and resource management.
- Challenges faced by tactical group supervisors and triage leaders.
- The importance of training that incorporates both tactical execution and incident management.
- Strategies for improving coordination between law enforcement, fire, and EMS teams.
View this episode on YouTube at: https://youtu.be/rshUHEADH64
Transcript
Bill Godfrey:When we talk about active shooter events, there's obviously a lot of tactics involved. There's also incident management that needs to be involved, but what's the difference between the two? And that's today's topic. Stick around.
Welcome to the Active Shooter Incident Management Podcast. My name is Bill Godfrey, your podcast host. I am joined by three of our other NCIER instructors here at the National Center for Integrated Emergency Response. On my left, Scotty Formankiewicz. Welcome in Scott.
Scott Formankiewicz:
Thank you. Thank you for having me.
Bill Godfrey:
First time in the studio, isn't it?
Scott Formankiewicz:
First time here. First time here.
Bill Godfrey:
All right. Scott, like myself, is on the fire EMS side. And across from me is Kami Maertz, our seasoned vet.
Kami Maertz:
Yeah.
Bill Godfrey:
Who continues to get some of the best numbers on our show. And Terrance Weems in the house. Terrance, welcome.
Terrance Weems:
Yes, sir. Thanks for having me.
Bill Godfrey:
So Terrance, also from the law enforcement side out of Indiana. So Scott's out of Wisconsin, Terrence outta Indiana. Welcome. Thank you guys for making the trip down to join us in the studio.
So today's topic, we are discussing the difference between tactics and management. And obviously they both have to fit together, but they are distinct. And there's some question about how well people understand that, don't you think Kami?
Kami Maertz:
Absolutely. I think for years obviously we focused on tactics. And tactics are really important for any incident. However, we've always lacked on the management side. It is that effectively managing the resources, making sure they're doing what they're supposed to, having that single point of command and making sure that everybody is on the same page, that's really important. And delineating those differences.
Bill Godfrey:
Terrance, from your perspective, you know, you've been around and seen a lot of active shooter training, not just the training that we do, but other stuff as well. How often do you see tactics training versus management?
Terrance Weems:
I would say outside of the training that we do, it's all gonna be tactics. Rarely are you gonna see anybody talk about the management of, you could have the best tactics in the world, but if you're lacking on the management side, your incident is gonna fail. You're gonna have points of failure, multiple points of failure that are there. Management is so extremely important that management can overcome the tactics.
Bill Godfrey:
And where does that go wrong, do you think? When you, so when you're talking about the tactics, Kami gimme a couple examples of some classic tactics and then let's kind of talk about how that can go wrong if you're lacking the management.
Kami Maertz:
So when we're talking about tactics, we're talking about, you know, making entry into the original incident location, clearing the buildings, clearing rooms, going in and making sure, you know, actually doing room entry, which is something that, you know, law enforcement's known for and things like that. However, we know from previous incidents, right, you can have hundreds of law enforcement officers on a scene, but if nobody is a point of managing those resources, it goes sideways. We have communication failures, we're not getting fire rescue involved, right? And so those communication gaps, those incident management gaps is where we're failing at.
Bill Godfrey:
And Terrence, on the law enforcement side, with the tactics we often see in active shooter events to have a, I'm gonna call it a successful outcome. But what I mean by that is things get done in a timely fashion. You gotta do more than one thing at a time. Is that one of the common failures you see? Or you've got a group of guys and gals that are executing tactics well, but because they're not coordinating doing more than one thing at a time, it's going sideways?
Terrance Weems:
Yeah, and that's generally how it goes. So from the time that we, so I came into law enforcement in 1994, so during the time after that, when we started doing active shooter training, we hunted and we killed. Right? Hunter killer, right? You find a threat, you put it down, you slap hands, you go home, right? And what we left out of that early on was the fact that it's an active shooter situation because you have a person actively killing people, which means that you have injured people in a situation.
So, as we have morphed that, realized that, then we recognize we have to triage. We have to put tourniquets on people. We have to call the EMS fire and all of that. The problem is we, I don't believe we've done a very good job in putting those two things together within the training. Which means that when that situation happens, although we put the person down quickly, we're really, really good at that. Sometimes the communication with our fire EMS brothers and sisters is lacking. And that's because we have now taken all of our resources, put 'em into that one situation and nobody is taking control of that situation in some instances.
Bill Godfrey:
And I'm gonna,
Kami Maertz:
And with that too also is, and you know, from this is that we also do the searching for that plus one, right? So we're searching for that plus one, which also delays because that's a tactic, right? Is that something we're trained and we're, and to do and search for that plus one, but we forget about the injured, we focus on, you know, that tactic, that training instead of somebody going back and saying, let's slow down, let's get some, you know, a casualty collection point set up and those kind of things because we focus on those tactics.
Terrance Weems:
Right.
Bill Godfrey:
And I, I think that's a good segue. You know, Scott, fire service of course by and large is really known for using the incident command system a lot. And what I think gets lost in active shooter events is that there's still some huge gaps for the fire service and incident management. In fact, there's some things that we do not do well when it comes to managing active shooter events because of the fire service mentality of the top down approach versus what we have to do in an active shooter event. What's your thoughts on that?
Scott Formankiewicz:
So the top down approach, when I think of that, I ultimately just think of the time. And we talk about trying to beat the clock and how important that is. And I think that by trying to build it from the top down and waiting for specific people in specific managerial or rank type roles, whether it be a lieutenant, whether it be a captain to fill certain gaps that could otherwise be filled by trained firefighters or even driver operators or something like that, a more senior person. I just think of the amount of time that it takes to actually build that out. And that is a huge gap that we have specifically on the fire EMS side of trying to get in, try and get these injured people. 'cause we all know it's an unrealistic expectation to expect law enforcement to do absolutely everything while we just wait in an ambulance for them to bring 'em out to us.
Bill Godfrey:
Completely agree. And the way that I typically try to explain it is this, you know, in the fire service, you're the incident commander of the structure fire. You're standing on the sidewalk watching this house burn and assuming you know your craft, you can look at the building that's on fire, where the fire is coming from, where it's not coming from, where the smoke is coming from, how much it is, how it's moving. And you can tell an awful lot about what's going on inside that structure from standing on the sidewalk. But in an active shooter event, standing on the sidewalk doesn't tell you squat.
Scott Formankiewicz:
You're not gonna see anything. It's not like we talk about, you know, you can see the changes in conditions. I know when things are going bad. I know when things aren't getting done, things of that nature. There is nothing. You're looking at the outside of a building and seeing people walk in, run in whatever it may be. We're not getting those external clues that we would otherwise get.
Bill Godfrey:
And I think that's the biggest gap in the fire service is the guy or gal that's standing on the sidewalk, part of that command post, is the least informed of the people on the scene. And that is a reality that undoes a lot of the habit, the habit of the fire service and how we run incident command and it creates, it creates these gaps for us just like it does for you guys.
Kami Maertz:
Absolutely.
Bill Godfrey:
So you were talking a little bit earlier, both of you about the overlapping need and all the things that have to occur. What are some examples of the tactics that need to occur at the same time in order to get things done in a timely fashion? What are some examples of some of the things that you would want to see coordinated at the same time?
Kami Maertz:
Well, we want to, obviously we're, and one of our big things of our training, right? We want this contact teams going in. We want them looking for the active threat. If there is no active threat, then what they wanna do is switch to rescue. However, tactically what we can do is we can take over rescue missions and then call back to tactical and get more contact teams, right? To continue on looking for injured, looking for additional areas of concern. But we're tactically, we're handling our, and that's what that tactical job is, right? Those resource management is, they're effectively saying, you're gonna stay here, you're gonna set the CCP, you're gonna start the rescue mission here so we can get the RTFs down range, but we're also gonna continue the mission. So we're gonna continue tactically pushing people forward to look for additional injured, look for additional threats, all of those things. But they're happening together, but they're not out of order, right? We're still doing the ask active threat rescue and then clear.
Terrance Weems:
And you wanted to make sure you're doing all of those things and you're putting your people in place, but at the same time you have to recognize one, that there could possibly be a threat there, whether that threat is coming into you or leaving out. And one of the more important parts of all of that is having a perimeter, right? And we tend to, sometimes we want to go in and we want to hunt and kill like we talked about before, not recognizing that if I'm protecting everybody, if I have that Overwatch so to speak, I'm actually doing probably the most important job and keeping those people safe so they can do the rescue and they can do the hunting and that sort of thing. So if you have to have somebody in place to put those different pieces in place. It's chess.
Kami Maertz:
To do the tactical things, but somebody orderly doing it.
Terrance Weems:
Exactly.
Bill Godfrey:
Yeah. And I know the terminology you're using the hunter killer thing, which was taught a long time ago. You're using it a little tongue and cheek. I just wanna clarify that for the audience. That is a, we got a memo on that where it's no longer hunt and kill, it's sweep and clear,
Terrance Weems:
Sweep and clear. Yes sir.
Bill Godfrey:
It's a little movie reference joke for you there, but Terrance, you've served as the tactical group supervisor before. What are some of the things that make that position so challenging?
Terrance Weems:
You have tons of information coming in from different places, from different people all at the same time. You have a responsibility for the safety of the people that are going into the situation as well as the people that are there actually taking the gunfire, those survivors and even some victims unfortunately, right? So you have all of that and then it's your responsibility to make sure that you're putting the right people in the right place to go and save lives. That in and of itself. But at the same time you have to coordinate with your fire and EMS brothers and sisters and making sure that they are aware of the situation, keeping them safe and bringing them into a safe, a safe-like environment. As safe as it can be, in such a tumultuous situation.
Bill Godfrey:
And Terrance, how much more difficult does that job get when Scott shows up as the triage group supervisor and says, okay, you know, I wanna start getting rescue task force in there, I wanna start working on the rescue. How much does that add to your plate?
Terrance Weems:
If they are willing to go into that situation, I am so excited. If they are not willing to go into that situation, that's where the difficulty comes in. Because if the day that that situation occurs is the day that I meet Scott, there's really no relationship built and there's no trust built up. So until we get that trust built up and we have a pretty good understanding of what the expectation is at that point in time, it makes things easy as long as he has the manpower.
Bill Godfrey:
So Scott, when you show up, as in this example as a triage group supervisor and you are meeting whoever is the tactical group supervisor, what are some of the things that are right on your mind right in the beginning that you want to know, you want to get out of the way?
Scott Formankiewicz:
So the first things that I'm gonna wanna know are, do we have an estimated approximate of the survivors that we have? If there's anybody injured, I wanna know those numbers as quick as possible. Has there been a warm zone that's actually established? Do I have the security elements that are there so I can begin to start formulating my rescue task forces, at which point I'd be reaching out to staging to start standing them up, not deploy, but stand 'em up so they can have those handshakes meet and greet, here's what it is, rather than waiting until we actually get there.
So forming them up in staging, waiting for that and kind of starting to go through, okay, what am I looking for? How many am I gonna need? How many RTFs am I gonna need? And then where ultimately are they going? Because if they don't have a destination, I'm not gonna be willing to to send them in. So I have to make sure, and it's a little bit of knowledge on our side of the fire EMS to know what law enforcement is doing for the simple fact of we're gonna go in there, we want to go in and we wanna save lives, but we have to understand that unless certain things are in place, we're not going to. So it's an understanding that I have to have of knowing, okay, this is what some of law enforcement's expectations are, this is what they have to do before I can go ahead and start sending my resources down range. So I think having that meet and greet understanding of both sides is critically important.
Bill Godfrey:
And Kami, as all of this unfolds at the tactical triage and transport location, which is generally outside the structure, but usually pretty close. How overwhelming is it when you're just trying to do your job as tactical group supervisor and then fire and EMS shows up and now you have people to talk to face to, 'cause the radio stops.
Kami Maertz:
Yes.
Bill Godfrey:
While you're having a face-to-face conversation, right?
Kami Maertz:
Yes.
Bill Godfrey:
Nobody's trying to call you.
Kami Maertz:
Nobody's calling on the phone. The hundred people. Yeah. So it becomes very overwhelming, right? Because now you are not only focused on your job, but now you have additional resources coming from the fireside house, right? So now you have all those additional resources that you're also responsible for as tactical, making sure that they safely get down ingress and egress of those resources as well. So it comes very overwhelming the more additional people we add in and the additional information that we're trying to get out from those contact teams and make sure that we effectively have set up those resources down range to make them be able to get down there, be able to get out all of those things. So we're just adding on to an overwhelming plate already.
Bill Godfrey:
And what do you think is the biggest mindset shift or the biggest mindset that you need to have present either law enforcement or fire EMS when you're in that role trying to coordinate the tactics, trying to coordinate the law enforcement, the security tactics and the medical tactics. What's the mindset there that you think needs to, and I'm gonna come around to each one of you for this.
Kami Maertz:
To me is honestly is remembering you're an incident resource manager. That's what your job is. So you're not doing tactics, right? That's contact team's job is to do the tactics, is to be in control of that. If it goes sideways, you're gonna try to get them back under control, right? But your job is incident resource management. You're trying to make sure that they have what they need down range. And so if you can focus on that, that that is your role, whether it's our job, whether it's working with triage to get RTFs down range, you're just managing the resources down range and getting them effective resources to commit, complete their mission. That's what your job is.
Terrance Weems:
And I'm gonna piggyback on that. First thing came to mind is know your role. If you know your role, you're gonna be able to do the job. And knowing the things that she said, those things that are so vitally important to make sure that you are getting the resources where they need to be and helping them along in the process, communicating with the folk on the other side of the aisle, so to speak, to make sure that they are getting the information that they need and you're giving that information and shooting that information up where it needs to go.
Bill Godfrey:
Scott, what's your thought? Mindset?
Scott Formankiewicz:
I can't emphasize the same thing enough of the knowing your role. I think that's the biggest thing. We don't wanna, when I deploy an RTF out, if I'm triaging RTF is going, I'm assuming that the people have been trained up well enough to know what they need to do. They should know how to triage, they should know the color codes, the priorities, things like that. They should know how to put a tourniquet on. So really it's just making sure that I have in my mind the proper resources and focusing on that, not worrying about are they putting the tourniquet on right? Because that's secondary. That shouldn't even be in the front of my mind. I need to really be thinking about where are they going? Do they have the necessary stuff in place? Do they have the proper equipment that they're gonna need to go do the job? And are they working well enough with law enforcement getting that information out?
Bill Godfrey:
Yeah, it's really interesting. We started off talking what's the difference between tactics and management? Which in a way almost invites the discussion of tactics versus strategy. And to me, tactics very simply is what you're doing, what you're executing, the task. Whereas strategy is the priority. Just in its simplest form, active threat, then rescue, then clear. If you can do more than one thing at a time, great. But if you're shorthanded or overwhelmed, first you deal with the active threat priority one, priority number two is rescue of the injured, priority number three is clearing for security. And so sometimes I think we make this more complicated by using words that lack specificity. So to me, tactics is simply the task that you're executing and strategy, or the management of it, is simply about setting the priority, which can change on a dime.
Kami Maertz:
Absolutely. And knowing your role, right? So that's part of strategy is knowing where you play, what part of the puzzle are you and what is your role, right? So that you know that when the situation changes quickly, what your role is and how you're supposed to handle it versus trying to take on somebody else's role and overwhelming yourself. So it is knowing your role even as strategy. That's a huge part of it is learning that, training that.
Terrance Weems:
And so as we're sitting here talking, and I can remember having one of our younger troopers sitting in my office, and I'm trying to explain to him the importance of following orders, knowing your role, right? This is just regular patrol. We got a person that is out. So we're on a manhunt, we have folk in a particular county. You have sheriff's officers, you have our troopers, you have local agency all out looking for this person. And for you now to drive 30 miles to go and assist somebody when there's no need for you to go there. When we already have those assets in place, what happens if we need something else in another part, in another county? You have now taken yourself out of that place. If we start with the management on our day-to-day responsibilities, then our people will now recognize during those excited periods that there is a responsibility that you have and there's a responsibility that we have to manage our people, manage our assets.
Bill Godfrey:
You know, Terrance, you hit on something really important that I think actually makes for a great topic for us to follow up on, which is how do you incorporate some of these practices in day to day? So I think we'll hold that for a future topic.
Terrance Weems:
Yes, sir.
Bill Godfrey:
But on on the fire and EMS side, Scott, the knowing your role I think goes hand in hand with staying in your lane. One of the things that you and I have both seen in the training is that fire and EMS culturally, because we use the command system all the time, day in, day out, we consider ourselves to be experts at it. And we are at the way we use it with the habits that we have, which don't really fit active shooter events very well. If you go back to the true tenets of NIMS and ICS training, which is not top down, it's bottom up. All of a sudden things can change pretty dramatically. But how big a deal do you think that is for us culturally on the fire? I think fire service, you know, EMS I don't think necessarily suffers from this as much as the fire service does.
Scott Formankiewicz:
Yeah.
Bill Godfrey:
How important is it to, to know, not only know our role, but stay in our lane and remember that this is a murder in progress, it's a law enforcement event?
Scott Formankiewicz:
I think it's critically important, and I know, you know, we've seen it in the fire service where everybody thinks they're an expert. Everybody thinks that they, they're the, the ICS expert until it's time to do ICS stuff. And then all of a sudden they're asking the questions and they're trying to find the answers for it. And I think from, from that perspective of, of staying in your lane it is critically important of not thinking for other, other people, other things, other roles as responsibilities. If you can focus and stay in your lane and do what you are really good at and not concern yourself with things that might not directly involve you. If I'm inside an RTF, I'm not worried about what hospital these people are going to. If I can do what I can do, I can be the best at that specific task that I'm trying to do, rather than trying to basically do 50% and 50%.
So staying in your lane is critically important. But the ICS system for us, we think we do it well, and normally we typically do, but like you said, in those specific instances, we do it well, but now we're trying to add in another element to it. We're almost trying to take this square peg and pound it into a round hole and make the event with law enforcement that's murder in progress, fit into our ICS system, which sometimes it doesn't.
Bill Godfrey:
And it's really interesting perspective because we're, we need teamwork. We need, like you just said, teamwork within ourselves. So the guys and gals on the rescue task force shouldn't be concerned about the ambulance loading and the distribution of the patients to different hospitals. That's the transport group supervisor. You know, we have these roles broken out. But then we've also got the teamwork of going across disciplines, which is not something we're really used to doing.
Kami Maertz:
No, no. And and as much as we preach, train, train, train, it's hard, right? And so you have to make it a priority because it is. We show up on scenes, right? But we in our own silos, even on scenes, even as many scenes as we go to fire rescue does fire rescue stuff, law enforcement does law enforcement stuff. But this is the first time that we're truly integrating and it's important for integrating, for the mission to truly be communicating. But, working, we had the same exact mission on those.
Bill Godfrey:
So Kami just hit on training, and I don't wanna leave this topic without addressing this. Okay, so we identified most of active shooter training involves tactics and not managing or coordinating those tactics, not setting the priorities for where they're gonna go. So how do we solve that? I'm gonna come to each one of you for your suggestions on how to address that in training. And I'll start. My first one, and I'll use the simple example of law enforcement's doing what I'll call contact team training. You're doing your entries, contact with the bad guy, one at a time, two, three teams, whatever the case may be. Don't just do that drill. Also include, as part of that drill, the tactical group supervisor. Coordinating with them on the radio, where they're having to talk and give their progression. So whatever that thing is that you're training on, whatever that drill, make sure that you're chunking up to the supervisory level above that so that you get it in context of the coordination. Does that...
Kami Maertz:
Yes, absolutely
Terrance Weems:
Makes sense. Yes.
Kami Maertz:
No, absolutely. And also, it is breaking down the roles, right? So that everybody understands the roles. I think that we're really, really bad about everybody understanding the role. I think when we're have leaders, leaders wanna focus on why I'm gonna learn the command position really well. But if you don't know what tactical's job is and you don't know what contact team's job is, you're gonna get lost in the shuffle. So it's important for when we're doing those trainings and we're training the contact, like you said, have that tactical group supervisor, have the command go and see what everyone else's roles are so that everybody's aware and even contact teams.
I can't express enough to the deputies that when they're learning contact teams, you need to also know what command's doing, right? So you need to know what command's role is in all of this so that everybody understands the positions, but it's doing the training, but taking the tactics out of it for a minute. Take tactics out, go piece by piece and explain, this is your role, this is what you're supposed to do, this is your role, this is what you're supposed to do. And really kind of getting away from that and slowing down that process so that we're learning.
Bill Godfrey:
Terrance, for you, the basic training that you're seeing happen and how do they chunk it up and include some management?
Terrance Weems:
So I like what you said to Scott just a second ago when you said how do we get our fire EMS people to think about this and what it is? I think we have to do it also on our side. What is it? It's not just only the murder in progress, it's the investigation that's gonna follow. It is also, right now we have people that are injured that need to get out. So you put all of those things in place and then you, once you explain what it is and then all of the things that are needed in order to have a successful outcome and then you chunk that up. Then you go from room entries to putting the shooter down to making sure that you have the things in place to do some assist on those people that may have been injured. Making sure that you have the communications with the fire, you take it from the one maybe for this year you will only do the entry and the tourniquets, let's say wound packing and that sort of thing. Now for the next one that you do in the latter quarter of the year, you take all of what you learned there and now you're bringing in whether you have role players to be your fire and EMS, you do that and that gives you an opportunity now to take it and you're able to chunk that up as you said.
Bill Godfrey:
Scott, what about you?
Scott Formankiewicz:
Same thing. I think literally chunking it up is the best way to do it. I think if you're trying to get this across to everybody doing it all in one fail swoop is not gonna work. And a lot of times for on the fire EMS side, what I'm seeing is similar to law enforcement, you know, in their training, if they go in, they neutralize the threat, they high five like, okay, we're good. Good job guys. Like yeah, you accomplished your task at that critical role. However, this is just the beginning. And we are guilty of the same thing in the fire EMS of how often do you, alright guys, stand outside the room, okay, now we're walking into a casualty collection point to go do what you do.
And there are so many things that were missed out that almost if when this happens, they're gonna go into vapor lock. So I think we have to remember the critical things of the communications between law enforcement, fire, movement, getting in, managing the CCP and then also the radio traffic. 'cause for us on our fire EMS side, it's not uncommon for us to radio and we need to get something out to the higher up we call command. In this instance, if I key up command somebody else is answering the radio, that might not have really the idea of what's going on. So I think knowing and emphasizing who we're talking to as RTFs is the other component that needs to really get put into this.
Bill Godfrey:
I think that's a great example. You know we're doing rescue task force training, which is great, but you can't do it in isolation, like you're talking about. If a fire department or an EMS agency is doing rescue task force training, they should, number one, have law enforcement with them because there's supposed to be a security component on your rescue task force. And you should have at least one group of law enforcement that's role-playing the contact team that is gonna be holding
Kami Maertz:
Absolutely.
Bill Godfrey:
The casualty collection point or the warm zone that you're gonna have to talk to when you get inside. And you should have a triage group supervisor on the radio that you're having to report and upgrade. So I agree with you completely. I think that there's just as many missed opportunities on the fire and EMS side as there is on the law enforcement side.
Well, thank you guys very much for coming in to chat about this topic.
Scott Formankiewicz:
Thank you.
Kami Maertz:
Thank you.
Bill Godfrey:
I hope you've enjoyed this. If you have any questions or comments, you can put 'em into the comments section or send us an email at info@c3pathways.com. Thank you to our producer Karla Torres, and as always, stay safe.