Event Security May Be Adjusted Following Las Vegas Massacre

MIAMI BEACH, FL — Law enforcement agencies across the United States may need to reconsider the advice they give ordinary Americans on what to do if they get caught up in an active shooter situation in the aftermath of the Las Vegas massacre, according to a Miami area expert. What's more, many law enforcement agencies may need to rethink their security arrangements for outdoor events like the Highway 91 Harvest Festval. Those discussions are likely t0 take place in the coming weeks and months.

"I think what may come out of an incident like this is potentially maybe recommendations for what the crowd should do in an event like this," Captain Daniel Morgalo of the Miami Beach Police Department told Patch. "What normally happens is we tell people to take cover, shelter in place, find hiding places."

But in an incident such as Las Vegas, where the shooter was firing from the 32nd floor of his hotel room inside the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino, that advice wasn't necessarily the most prudent response, acccording to Morgalo, who recently staged a mock active shooter drill in Miami Beach. As in the case of Las Vegas, Miami Beach also has many events throughout the year and attracts large numbers of tourists. (Sign up for our free Daily Newsletters and Breaking News Alerts for the Miami Beach Patch.)

"If you’re standing in the middle of the crowd, and you’re just hearing shots going off, you don’t know where they’re coming from and you’re confused," he said. "You’re not necessarily going to know what to do. But to me, you need to move and you need to get out of from where you’re at."

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He said that people run the risk of being trampled by the crowd. "But just from my background as a firearms instructor, it’s harder to hit a moving target," according to Morgalo. "So if you are standing out in the open and there is somebody from an elevated position trying to shoot you, my reaction would be to move, and move quickly and eratically to avoid the person being able to shoot me."

In other words, he said that people should run in a zig-zag pattern. "Try not to be a static target. If you are caught in a situation like this, you need to basically move and get out of where you are at as quickly as possible to where you have some type of hard cover."

One of the complications in Las Vegas was that the victims ran to the first structure they came across.

"From what I’ve seen here, there were instances where people took cover in metallic buildings and things like that where there was rounds that went through the walls," he explained. "It becomes extremely difficult to mitigate where you have a very large group of people standing out in the open like this and there’s somebody shooting from an elevated position."

Even so, not many shooters would have the skills needed to hit targets from the estimated 1,200 feet or so where the Las Vegas shooter fired from.

"Its a skill level that the average shooter is not going to have and then the fact that there’s so many people grouped closely together that they really don’t have to be that great of a shot to have an impact because there’s so many people grouped together," he said.

In this case, when the crowd lights were turned on, the shooter may have been given another unintentional advantage, making it easier to spot clusters of people.

The discussions that are likely to take place by law enforcement agencies across the United Staters will most likely center around the resources that might be necessary to respond to such incident in their jurisdictions.

"Basically we discuss, 'okay if this happens how would we respond to it on the investigative side of things? What type of resources would we need if we had mass casualties, dozens of people killed? What type of resources do we have to assist their families — victim counselors, things we don’t normally think about because we don’t expect things like this are going to happen.' But, we need to be prepared for them in the event they do."

His city of Miami Beach was already in the process of introducing counter measures around high-tourist areas to guard against vehicle-borne attacks like the one that occurred recently in Spain.

Officials will most likely need to consider changes to the security considerations that take place ahead of outdoor events in the aftermath of the Las Vegas attack.

"We’ve had concerts right out on the beach and in light of this event one of the things we’re going to have to consider moving forward is this type of attack," Morgalo acknowledged. "Although we do discuss the potential for different types of incidents like this to occur, what we normally focus on is security within the venue and preventing firearms from getting into the venue, whether it be on the beach or inside of a building."

Now police must give added consideration to the threat from above.

"One of the things that we’ve discussed as an organization is potentially deploying snipers from the SWAT team whose sole purpose is basically to watch the elevated positions," Morgalo told Patch. "It’s basically termed overwatch detail. They’re basically on sniper duty. So this is something that we’re going to have to consider for future events on the beach."

Miami Beach police practice an active-shooter response at a nightclub in South Beach. Photo courtesy Miami Beach Police Department.