After Action Report / Improvement Plan

(1)

After Action Report

Improvement Plan

Courthouse Coercion – A Workplace Protection

Drill / Functional Exercise

(2)

ADMINISTRATIVE HANDLING INSTRUCTIONS

1. The title of this document is The "Courthouse Coercion - A Workplace Protection Drill / Functional Exercise" After Action Report.

2. The information gathered in this AAR/IP is classified as For Official Use Only (FOUO) and should be handled as sensitive information not to be disclosed. This document should be safeguarded, handled, transmitted, and stored in accordance with appropriate security directives.

3. At a minimum, the attached materials will be disseminated only on a need-to-know basis and when unattended, will be stored in a locked container or area offering sufficient protection against theft, compromise, inadvertent access, and unauthorized disclosure.

4. Points of Contact:

County Emergency Management: Steve Spradley

Taylor County Emergency Management Department (Office) 850-838-3575

(E-Mail) [email protected] Exercise Director:

Chris Floyd

Disaster Resistant Communities Group LLC (Office) 859-241-3565

(3)

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Courthouse Coercion - A Workplace Protection Drill / Functional Exercise was designed and facilitated to assess the current capabilities of courthouse employees to respond to and recover from threatening situations within the County Courthouse.

The purpose of this report is to analyze exercise results, identify strengths to be maintained and built upon, identify potential areas for further improvement, and support development of corrective actions.

Incorporated in Section 3: Analysis of Capabilities of this After Action Report is a comprehensive listing of each Core Capability with its associated Major Strengths, Primary Areas for Improvement and Improvement Recommendations

(5)

SECTION 1: EXERCISE OVERVIEW

Exercise Details

Exercise Name: Courthouse Coercion - A Workplace Protection Drill / Functional Exercise

Type of Exercise: Drill / Functional Exercise Start Date: December 9, 2015 Duration: Three Hours Location: Perry, Florida

Sponsor: Taylor County Emergency Management Department

Purpose: The purpose of the exercise was to assess the current capabilities of courthouse employees to respond to and recovery from threatening situations within the County Courthouse.

Scenario Type: Active Shooter

Participant Information

Participant Location

City of Perry Police Department Doctor’s Memorial Hospital

Florida Court System - Second Judicial Circuit Florida Court System - Third Judicial Circuit Florida Department of Health in Taylor County Public Defender’s Office

State Attorney’s Office Taylor County

Taylor County Clerk of the Courts Office

Taylor County Emergency Management Department Taylor County Property Appraiser's Office

(6)

Taylor County Sheriff's Office

Taylor County Supervisor of Elections Office Taylor County Tax Collector's Office

(7)

SECTION 2: EXERCISE DESIGN SUMMARY

Exercise Purpose and Design

The purpose of the exercise was to assess the current capabilities of courthouse employees to respond to and recovery from threatening situations within the County Courthouse.

Exercise Objectives, Capabilities and Activities

Capabilities-based planning allows for the exercise planning team to develop exercise objectives and observe exercise outcomes through a framework of specific action items that were derived from the Core Capabilities List (TCL). The capabilities listed below form the foundation for the organization of all objectives and observations in this exercise. Additionally, each capability is linked to several corresponding activities and tasks to provide additional detail.

Based upon the identified exercise objectives below, the exercise planning team decided to demonstrate the following capabilities during this exercise:

On-Scene Security – Protective Measures

Activity Core Capability

# 1 Coordinate and Manage On-Site Security

# 2 Initiate and Manage Protective Measures Operations

# 3 Identify and Coordinate Consequence Management Operations

Scenario Summary

Tuesday November 8, 2016 at 3:21PM.

As the bitter divorce case of Tom and Sara Thomas continues to move through the court system both Tom and Sara are in the courtroom attending yet another hearing regarding the custody battle over their two young children.

Members of both Tom and Sara’s families are sitting in the courtroom gallery and standing in the hall just outside the courtroom.

Tom’s brother, John Thomas, was arrested for assault several weeks ago after he became extremely agitated and threatened several employees of the Clerk of the Courts Office when he was refused access to the divorce case records that had been temporarily sealed due to the child custody proceedings.

(8)

Today’s custody hearing has proceeded without any of the outbursts that have occurred during previous hearings and the Judge even comments that Tom and Sara appear to be ready for the custody battle and the divorce to be finalized.

Originally there were two bailiffs assigned to the courtroom for this hearing however with the hearing proceeding in a calm and orderly fashion one of the bailiffs has gone downstairs to finalize his vacation plans with his supervisor.

Unknown to anyone in the courthouse several of Tom’s family members are able to sneak a handgun into the courthouse by passing the weapon through an opening in the courthouse lobby exit door as a large group of individuals were being screened at the security checkpoint at the other end of the lobby.

Another of Tom’s brothers, Robert, walked into the courtroom immediately shooting the bailiff and a number of Sara’s family members who were sitting in the courtroom.

Robert then abducted Sara and forcefully dragged her through the courtroom, down the hallway and into the stairwell.

All along Robert is making threats to Sara’s life and stating that he is not going to let her destroy his brother’s life.

(9)

SECTION 3: ANALYSIS OF CAPABILITIES

On-Scene Security – Protective Measures

Performance Core Capability

Adequate Activity # 1: Coordinate and Manage On-Site Security

Associated Critical Tasks

Task # 1.1: Initiate and maintain inter-office / inter-agency coordination of On-Site Security.

Adequate Evaluator # 1

Observations  The group demonstrated a great ability to work together as a team to identify problems and solutions.

Recommendations

 Continue to work on notification procedures for lockdown to include a viable notifications tool.

 Continue to work together to develop plans / process for each individual office and develop a training and testing schedule.

Strong Evaluator # 2

Observations

 Good interaction and participation among all of the courthouse tenant agencies, both at the tabletop last month and the functional exercise.

 Individual constitutionals participated and trained their respective staff.

 Notification alert issues were identified and noted, but once the respective agencies received the threat notice they efficiently and effectively locked down and included the public visitors in their office as well!

 So overall good marks on responding to the emergency. Recommendations

 Utilize the benefits and interactions of the tabletop exercise and the drill / functional exercise to continue the good work and progress.

Task # 1.2: All Employees have a thorough working knowledge of current courthouse security and workforce protection procedures and guidelines.

(10)

Observations  The group demonstrated a good working knowledge of the current security procedures.

Recommendations  Continue to improve the courthouse security plan and procedures to include the protection of the visiting public.

Observations

 The tabletop exercise and obvious discussion from the same, left me with the impression that the participants felt confident during emergency actions and seriously thought about the activity as well as the law enforcement response.

 The vault door did not open until the "all clear" communication came from verified responding personnel.

Recommendations

 Regular training, testing and exercising various portions of the plan.

 Individual training of all new employees within a short period of hire and annual refresher training.

Adequate Activity # 2: Initiate and Manage Protective Measures Operations

Task # 2.1: Implement surge capacity plans to increase on-site security and workforce protection when a threatening situation is observed.

Observations  The process for requesting additional resources was discussed by Incident Command.

Recommendations  None

Strong Evaluator # 2

Observations  Once the threat notice was communicated, the respective agencies quickly followed the existing security plan in place.

Recommendations

 Identify ways to improve dissemination of the alert.

 Some of the agencies utilized their internal phone system paging feature to broadcast an alert lock down, as well follow up all clear alerts to the basement.

(11)

Task # 2.2: Initiate and maintain an Incident Management System to include liaisons from each of the offices and agencies housed within the courthouse.

Adequate Evaluator #1

Observations

 ICS was utilized.

 It was well understood by the first responder agencies at Command.

 It was not well utilized by non-responder agencies.

Recommendations  Continue efforts to familiarize non-response agencies on the benefits and use of the ICS structure.

Needs

Improvement Evaluator # 2

Observations

 There was little liaising between the ICS and the tenant agencies and between the tenant agencies with their respective tasks.

Recommendations  Force the liaisons to interact with interjects tailored to their operational needs.

Needs Improvement

Activity # 3: Identify and Coordinate Consequence Management Operations

Task # 3.1: Based on the threatening situation identify and prioritize the response and recovery activities that are associated with the situation.

Observations

 The group utilized a well thought out process for recovery.

 They put together a well-designed recovery plan.

 Good coordination was demonstrated among the varying agencies.

Recommendations  None Needs

(12)

prioritized issues for the Supervisor of Elections during a national election time frame, there was little if any real interaction between the ICS and tenant agencies of the courthouse. For example, the interaction was mostly between the county and non-court offices rather than the court offices of the Public Defender, State’s Attorney Clerk of the Courts Office and the Judge’s Office.

 The courthouse could be theoretically re-opened before the court operations could fully resume due to the blood and gore clean up in the courtroom.

 The ICS discussed the same, but never broached with the court. Why?

 Do you really want to open the Taylor Courthouse without the court being totally operational?

Recommendations

 Provide ICS training to managers of all agencies housed in the courthouse.

 Develop Continuity of Operations Plans (COOP) for each agency housed in the courthouse.

Task # 3.2: Develop an Incident Action Plan (IAP) that focuses on Consequence Management.

Needs

Observations

 They did not develop an IAP however, some of the discussions centered on many goals and objectives that could be found within a plan.

Recommendations  Provide IAP training to the managers of the agencies and offices housed in the courthouse.

Needs

Observations

 Emergency Action Planning (EAP) and COOP recovery planning seldom are discussed together, but this exercise identified the need for those discussions and preparations.

 I believe the participants eyes were opened during the exercise and these types of issues were partially identified.

Recommendations

 Continue planning and coordination meetings on a regular quarterly basis working through COOP issues and EAP issues that would enable the court operations to resume as quickly as possible, with testing and exercising on a regular basis.

(13)

SECTION 4: CONCLUSION

Exercises such as this one allow personnel to validate training and practice strategic and tactical prevention, protection, response and recovery capabilities in a risk-reduced environment. Exercises are the primary tool for assessing preparedness and identifying areas for improvement, while demonstrating community resolve to prepare for major incidents.

Exercises aim to help entities within the community gain objective assessments of their capabilities so that gaps, deficiencies, and vulnerabilities are addressed prior to a real incident.

Exercises are the most effective (and safer) means to:

 Assess and validate policies, plans, procedures, training, equipment, assumptions, and interagency agreements;

 Clarify roles and responsibilities;

 Improve interagency coordination and communications;

 Identify gaps in resources;

 Measure performance; and

 Identify opportunities for improvement.

This exercise succeeded in addressing all of the above as it provided examples of good to excellent participant knowledge, teamwork, communication and use of plans and procedures while pointing out areas in need of improvement and clarification.

Listed below is a summary of the level of performance the Core Capabilities and Tasks evaluated during the exercise. This summary outlines the areas in which exercise participants are strong as well as identifying areas that the departments should invest future planning, training and exercise funds on.

On-Scene Security – Protective Measures

Activity Core Capability Performance

# 1 Coordinate and Manage On-Site Security Adequate # 2 Initiate and Manage Protective Measures Operations Adequate # 3 Identify and Coordinate Consequence Management

Operations

Needs Improvement

(14)

APPENDIX A: IMPROVEMENT PLAN

This Improvement Plan has been developed specifically for Taylor County Emergency Management Department based on the results of Courthouse Coercion - A Workplace Protection Drill / Functional Exercise conducted on December 9, 2015. These recommendations draw on both the After Action Report and the After Action Conference.

Capability Observation Recommendation Responsible

Agency Completion Date Coordinate and Manage On-Site Security Initiate and Manage Protective Measures Operations     Identify and Coordinate Consequence Management Operations Coordinate and Manage On-Site Security     

Initiate and Manage Protective Measures

Operations

  

(15)

APPENDIX B: PARTICIPANT FEEDBACK

(Strengths – Areas for Improvement)

Strengths

Good and open interaction between courthouse members. Good subject matter experts to aid with facilitating the exercise.

Exercise has clearly caused courthouse members to think about their response to and recovery from an event. The exercise injects were very realistic and probable.

Learned the shortcomings of the courthouse response and recovery capabilities. Flow of the exercise injects.

Everyone working together.

Method for lockdown was well-known and implemented quickly. We had a plan for interruption of business.

Good liaison relationship.

Knowledge of panic button location and usage. Went to correct lockdown room.

We had our safe places prepared. We had each customer go with us.

We quickly executed our lockdown procedure. Exercise organization.

Preparation / Planning.

Makes you think about possible scenarios. Camera front desk.

Identified path to take to lockdown shelter and alternate location / doors to lock.

Identified method and content of essential communications that can be made from lockdown and afterwards.

Our internal call system easily advised all employees immediately of the lockdown and all clear.

(16)

All employees followed directions from appropriate law enforcement agencies for clearance and we quickly implemented the plan for the hours immediately following lockdown.

All locked down within four minutes. Verification of all clear.

Accountability.

We began lockdown on time.

We had a plan ahead of time as to what we were to do. We got the all clear from Investigator and did it on time.

Areas for Improvement

Notification of all offices and agencies in the courthouse would be difficult with current technical shortage.

Need to identify a key phrase to initiate a lockdown and to issue an all clear. Need for written security operational procedures for the Sheriff’s Office. A courthouse wide intercom system is needed.

All agencies housed within the courthouse need to have a COOP and fully understand how to use the COOP to maintain operations.

Everyone needs to have a basic understanding of ICS.

Better courthouse notification. Possibly a courthouse wide intercom. We need an office protocol on where to meet after event.

Plan for relocation and transfer of information.

We need a plan in place for supplies needed while in lockdown. We came out without verification of officer.

Need to review out plan and add more details. Notification system.

Additional courthouse security.

Need ability to lock jury room door from access via Circuit Judge’s office. Need to improve knowledge of voicemail and transfer of e-mails remotely.

(17)

Need to improve / install alerts / intercom for an immediate and clear indication of need to lockdown and / or evacuate.

Need trigger lock on doors.

Did not receive notice of lockdown.

All clear sign was not the safe word we needed.

Didn't lock glass doors or turn lights off (no key in office).

We need an intercom system that can reach all employees immediately. We need more phone numbers for referral services for employees. Need plan for relocating office.

All employees could not be notified of the all clear.

We did not have a secured plan for an extended emergency event.

We need a shelter in place bag in each safe zone (medical bag, bottled water, etc.). Keys to various offices need to be available.

Need an alert system.

Secondary alarm panel needed. Modification of doors.

(18)

APPENDIX C: ACRONYMS

Acronym Meaning

COMM Communications CONOPS Concept of Operations

EOC Emergency Operations Center ESF Emergency Support Function

IAP Incident Action Plan IC Incident Command

ICS Incident Command System IMT Incident Management Team

JIC Joint Information Center LOFR Liaison Officer

MOA Memorandum of Agreement MOU Memorandum of Understanding

NIMS National Incident Management System OPS Operations

PIO Public Information Officer SitRep Situation Report

SOG Standard Operating Guideline SOP Standard Operating Procedure

After Action Report / Improvement Plan