Active Armed Offender Incident Analysis Paper

This paper will discuss in detail how Tasmania Police would initiate a response to an active armed offender incident. The background of the incident centres on an active armed offender incident at Salamanca Place, Hobart. The paper will discuss how police would resolve the incident using the immediate action rapid deployment plan (IARD). The paper will identify the IARD methodology, how it is applied by police and why it is an advantage over other tactical strategies to resolve active armed offender incidents. This paper will identify key documents that are used to guide and implement IARD to demonstrate how it is utilised in this incident.

An active armed offender is described in the New South Wales Police Force Active Armed Offender manual

The first team is an approach team, the second is a search team and lastly there is a recovery team. Each team has a minimum of two members. As outlined in the training package from the DPFEM, (n.d. (c), p.14, the response team role is to move quickly and safely toward the last known location of the active armed offender and not stop to search to search rooms unless they believe the offender is present. The response team does not stop to assist victims, however; provides an ongoing detailed commentary to alert first responders. The search team role is to follow behind the response team and search all areas where the response team has passed through. The recovery team provides security to non-police and emergency services and establishes a safe area to triage. (DPFEM (n.d.), pp.11 to

(b) pp. 28-29). In the article by Hodgins and Saliba (2015, pp.10-13), discuss the Columbine shootings and the reliance of first responders isolating and containing the scene, then waiting for Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) teams to arrive. They highlight that with this methodology, by the time SWAT arrived and entered the school, the two shooters had already killed three people and continued their indiscriminate shooting and killing an additional ten more people when police were already in attendance. Clearly in this case the ‘isolate, contain and evacuate’ strategy did not