Just to follow up on what dac1842 said, the situation is markedly different if you have armed security personnel on campus, whether in uniform or otherwise. In that situation, the CHL is in much the same position he/she would be in in any public place such as a shopping mall or theater. When the shooting starts, there is a much greater chance that the CHL could be misidentified by the armed security personnel, than would be the case if a LEO response was coming from off campus. I'm not too worried about misidentification if FPD units are responding to a "shots fired" call, as the shooting will be over before they arrive. But a bunch of people who are strangers to each other going to guns at the same time is a tactical nightmare. If we had armed LEOs on campus, then I would draw and fire only if the attacker were posing a direct threat to me, my wife, or the kids in my youth group. (This assumes the security personnel are at my location, not 2 minutes away.)dac1842 wrote:First, unless your church intends on getting a security license for you guys to act as "security". Change to a safety team. (Been through that with DPS already). Now for the CHL issue, Our church is not posted nor at this time do we intend to. We have uniform officers there and plain clothes. We do have CHL's we know that carry. Without going into detail of our plan, the short version is everyone is told to get down. If someone id's himself as a CHL'r we tell them to get down and leave the rest to us. We have no issues with CHL's, but we have plans and since they are not apart of our safety team they are not privey to the plans and we do no want any innocents getting hurt.
While we recognize that CHL's can play a part in the onset of an incident we want to execute the plans we have in place. Do not discourage the CHL's, they can play apart in the immediate response. We have enough folks strategically placed throughout that we can respond to any part of our church literally within seconds and if necessary place a chl holder with a LEO.
But, we do not want to expose anyone to danger that is not trained to deal with it. I hold a chl as well. But I have 15 years of law enforcement with two of that on a SWAT team. Most CHL's have the course. Nothing more. While we do not intend on posting our church, we do not want anyone responding to an incident that does not practice and train with us.
I would never support posting our church and in fact I would move to another if we did. However, dac1842's warning about untrained response in a crowded setting like a church should taken to heart. If the only person in harms way is an untrained, seldom practiced CHL, then anything is better than acquiescing to a massacre. However, if armed security personnel are present . . . well, I can't make a life or death decision for anyone else.
I would suggest that, to the extent possible, LEO security teams at a church should try to learn the CHLs in the congregation, but the larger the attendance and the more reluctant CHLs are to identify themselves, the harder will be this task. I also think CHLs should try to learn the people on their security team, if the church is willing to identify them. I understand the arguments against disclosure, but in this situation, I think the value of anonymity is far outweighed by reducing the risk of "friendly fire" that, as Clint Smith says, "really isn't friendly."
Chas.