Emergency Notification during a Hostage Crisis

My first topic for this post was to cover ENS needs for governmental agencies. I found it daunting. Government agencies come in so many sizes and colors: neighborhood associations, towns, villages, parishes, cities, counties, states, and federal; law enforcement, fire, health & safety, prisons, military, bureaucracies; and on and on. Schools are yet an entirely different topic.

Because this field is so vast, I'm going to focus on specific situations that require the use of an ENS.

To do this, we first need to understand some of the regular issues that arise which would be mitigated or alleviated by a notification system and believe it or not, one of the more common disturbances police need to deal with is a hostage crisis.

During a hostage crisis, especially where the hostage holder has a firearm, police want people living or visiting in the vicinity to get the heck out of the way! This is known in the biz as a shelter in place messaging.

One of my experiences was during a night time hostage taking. Neighbors were exceptionally curious to see what was happening. Many turned on their porch lights and driveway lights. The police were very nervous about this, since all that light made them easy targets for the shooter!

These two needs: shelter in place and turn off your lights became the basis for the first message police sent to residents.

The next important item about the message is the target - that is, to whom should the message be delivered? For this situation, a map based targeting mechanism is probably the easiest way to designate the target.

In map based targeting, the person sending out the message does so via a computer program which displays a map of the area around the center point, the center point being the location of the hostage. How much or how little of the area needs to be notified is situationally dependent. Typically, the map based targeting mechanism allows the notification dispatcher to designate the area visually, either by drawing a polygon or setting some boundaries.

Once the area is set, one further item needs to be examined: Should the mass notification message intended for residents in the vicinity of a hostage crisis be sent also to the house where the hostage is being held? This can go either way, again depending on the situation, but it must be addressed, nonetheless. A good ENS will allow the dispatcher to create an exclusion list locations that are not to be notified.

When the message has been created and the target is defined, the only thing left is to send it. This sending process may or may not require additional authorization, e.g. a go-ahead from a situation commander. That is a procedural matter that a good ENS should allow for, though few do.

Two further items about the target: there will likely be both stationary phones as well as mobile devices in the target area. Targeting mobile devices will be another topic for this blog.

After a message has been sent to everyone in the target area, you need to understand that a bunch of the people receiving a call or text message about a threatening neighbor with a gun are going to be really scared! It is absolutely critical that once you have notified these people of the situation, you keep them informed with updates and most importantly, an all-clear message when the situation is under control.

From the ENS features perspective, it is extremely important that you are able to re-notify the same target that you selected initially. If you end up needing to recreate the target, it is highly likely that you will miss somebody, causing them unnecessary anxiety and yourself unwanted rebuke.

The problem is different if the hostage is in a high-rise apartment building, but we will defer that for now.

My goal was to explain how an ENS would be using during a hostage crisis, and by doing so, provide you with an understanding of how specific features of an ENS support that goal. If you have any questions, please feel free to comment.