Former Santa Rosa policeman teaching people to be prepared for active shooter

It’s a grim, unpleasant topic which most people aren’t particularly eager to engage. Chris Parman, a former Santa Rosa police officer, knows that.

But in the wake of three recent mass shootings that once again have the nation grieving, Parman’s passion is palpable when it comes to the question of sharing guidance he thinks could save lives. And in a situation when seconds truly matter, being mentally prepared could make the difference between surviving or not, he said.

“You gotta be willing to have these conversations because this is the world we live in,” said Parman, a private consultant specializing in active shooter training and fraud risk management. “This is here and now. The whole argument that, ‘This could never happen to me’ is out the door.”

Parman will offer the first of what he hopes are at least two free public sessions Aug. 26, at Epicenter Sports & Entertainment Complex in Santa Rosa.

The effort is part of a growing national trend in preparing individuals in law enforcement, education and the private sector for the possibility of confronting someone bent on violence.

Active shooters are a growing threat in the United States. For example, it’s been an especially bloody month since the gun violence in Gilroy, 2½ hours away, on July 28. Mass shootings there and since then in Dayton, Ohio, and El Paso, Texas have left 36 people dead and another 64 wounded. Although they are shocking, mass shootings still only represent a small fraction of gun-related deaths a year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Each violent scene plays out with a level of fear, chaos and unpredictability that would make the notion of preparedness seem absurd. But experts say thinking ahead about the kinds of considerations one may confront in a crisis makes it less likely a person will freeze in the face of danger. Having reviewed a mental checklist at some earlier time makes for faster, smarter decisions about whether to run, hide or brace for a fight in a bid to survive long enough for law enforcement to reach the scene, they say.

“It is kind of muscle memory for the brain,” Santa Rosa Police Sgt. Jeneane Kucker said. “If you have thought about it or practiced it, that is what your brain will fall back on. If you’ve never thought about what you would do, you may freeze because you haven’t thought about it at all, ever, and it’s so completely shocking.”

Kucker, who oversees school resource officers for the department, routinely works with them to assist local district administrators assess campus safety and train staff, reflecting on places they might hide, doors they can barricade, classroom items they might wield as improvised weapons.

Even as you hope nothing ever happens, “the more people are mentally prepared and not in complete shock,” the less likely they’ll just “shut down and do nothing,” Kucker said.

“You have to do something, whether it’s moving, hiding or fighting your way through,” Kucker said. “You have to do something. It’s your only hope of surviving.”

Parman said the focus of his training will involve raising participants’ awareness of their surroundings to speed recognition of a problem and building the kind of mental strength and resilience that empowers people to size up a clear threat, make a plan and commit to it.

“Not having the ability to react is going to cost people’s lives,” Parman said. “What I’m trying to do is lower the body count, and it means being able to react faster and quicker and know exactly what it is you’re going to do.”

Much of his program is based on what’s taught to law enforcement officers within Santa Rosa police and Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office. It includes the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s “Run, Hide, Fight” response model, as well as features of a privately developed training approach called ALICE, meaning Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter and Evacuate.

He’ll talk about the difference between hiding for concealment and hiding for cover - behind walls or objects that might offer protection from ammunition and about assessing escape routes or choosing potential weapons.

But largely, Parman wants participants to think ahead about the need to switch their brains into fight-or-flight survival mode in a crisis and never give up.

“The mind is a very powerful thing, and you can tap into it to give yourself a better shot at survival,” he said.

Parman also will provide time for three Sonoma County people to describe their own experiences as survivors of the deadliest shooting in U.S. history two years ago in Las Vegas, when 58 people died and 422 were shot and wounded during the Harvest music festival. Two are from the world of law enforcement, but Parman said their stories reveal the points at which all three understood the severity of the threat and the lengths to which they had to go to survive it.

“This is information and people’s experiences being presented in a way that people can take something from it,” he said.

There appears to be an appetite for it. The Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office and Sonoma County Office of Education plan a similar training session in September and already close to 200 people have signed up.

One of the benefits of training is participants have to contemplate the possibility that they could be caught in the line of fire at some point, said Sonoma County Sheriff’s Sgt. Sean Jones, who oversees the department’s SWAT team. Should you then find yourself in such a situation, you don’t have to start there, at “square one,” trying to process what is happening, and should be able to react more quickly as a result.

“It’s not a tactical training, and it’s not a drill. It’s essentially mindset training - an options-based training expanding on the run, hide-fight-idea,” Jones said.

Parman has had a preoccupation with mass shootings that stems, in part, from his own experience as a young Alameda County sheriff’s deputy, when an area gangster arrived at the county fair one night in 1998 and opened fire.

“I saw 10 people shot in front of me, and I couldn’t do anything about it, and I had a gun, and I was in uniform,” Parman recalled.

The victims included several small children. None died and the shooter was tackled and arrested, but the experience “left a heavy imprint on me,” said Parman, who has made a study of the nation’s mass shootings since.

Professionally, after close to two decades in law enforcement, he spent more than five years as director of investigations for the Graton Resort and Casino in Rohnert Park before striking out with a partner as a consultant, working fraud risk management and consulting in the highly regulated areas of gaming and legal cannabis.

Recently, he added active shooter training in response to what he saw as a growing need. Epicenter, already a client, is one of the companies for which he has provided it, and it’s where he trained 22 people from the leadership and management staff earlier this year.

General Manager Ryan Porter is also a longtime friend and said he and Parman have often talked about the necessity in a crisis situation “to just steel your mind and be determined.”

“The training isn’t about becoming an expert, where you’re going to become a ninja and stop it,” Porter said.

“The point is to learn some basics, like to be a difference maker, and a difference maker can be knowing which direction to go and be someone who says ‘Follow me.’?”