Sheriff: Fight for your life because that is what it’s going to be

There are three things you should do if you ever find yourself in a mass shooting, according to King County Sheriff John Urquhart.

“First, run. Run, get out of that building. Go out the back door if you can. Go out the front door if you can. Climb out a window if you can. Break out a window if you have to. Get out of that building,” Urquhart recently told the King County Council.

“If you can’t run, hide. Lock yourself in an office. Lock yourself in a bathroom. Go underneath a desk. If you go into an office, blockade that door with whatever you can. And wait for the police to get there,” he said.

And finally:

“If you can’t run and you can’t hide, there’s a good chance you are going to get killed,” Urquhart said. “So fight. Get something heavy. Get a fire extinguisher, get a chair, get a computer monitor, whatever it takes, and you fight for your life because that is what it’s going to be,” Urquart said.

“The police have never said that before, but that is what we are faced with now,” he said. “That’s for government employees and the private sector as well.”

Sheriff Urquhart visited a King County Council meeting Wednesday to discuss law enforcement’s policies and reactions in the wake of recent mass shootings such as the terrorist action in San Bernardino, Calif. Urquhart has been vocal about his deputies carrying guns while off-duty and being prepared to jump into action at a moment’s notice.

Urquhart said that the usual advice police give people works in most cases.

“Do what the bad guy tells you to do. Don’t fight. Give him the money. Follow directions. That’s worked out very well,” he said.

But that is not the case with a situation where a gunman walks into a building with a plan. In that case, Urquhart said, people have to have a plan, too.

“The overarching message is that you have to have a plan,” Urquhart said. “Where’s the back door? Have that in the back of your mind. If I can’t go out the front door, I know where the back door is and I’m going to make a bee-line for that back door.”

“We have to talk to our employees now about what they are going to do if this happens,” he said.

The sheriff also briefed the council on how law enforcement officers are trained. Most people are aware that officers now run into a building when a shooter is active and do whatever it takes to take them down. That hasn’t always been common procedure. Urquhart said that new training isn’t so much a response to terrorism, but rather it came in the wake of the Columbine High School massacre of 1999.

Another thing Urquhart notes is that police are no longer leaving fire department crews behind. They’re coming along into dangerous situations to tend to the injured. That move was a “tough sell” to fire departments, the sheriff said. But now, fire personnel have tactical gear and are likely to enter into areas safe enough for them to tend to patients.

“It’s a really huge change. This is just taking off around the country, but the Pacific Northwest is the leader in doing this with fire departments,” Urquhart said.

While his words were sobering, Urquhart stressed that he wasn’t being dramatic and that co-workers need to be aware of dangerous situations that arise in modern life.

“This is not fear mongering anymore than it is fear mongering for a flight attendant to tell you to wear your seat belt and point out where the exits are,” Urquhart said. “You still have to plan, even though it may never happen.”