Response Strategy

The first step in having an effective response strategy is to have in place all the necessary prevention and preparatory measures and resources required to respond quickly, efficiently and professionally. Some of these
key elements will be discussed in greater detail below.

Operational Priorities

It is important to have a clear understanding and agreement on the key operational priorities throughout the response. First and foremost, of course, should be the saving of life, whether it’s during the course of an ongoing hostage incident or the aftermath of a bombing or shooting incident. Secondly, it is also essential that the wider public are also kept safe either from the incident itself or from further incidents that might take place. Thirdly, the authorities should be looking to bring the perpetrators and their accomplices to justice in order to preempt further incidents taking place.

Command and Control

It is important to have a clear understanding and agreement on the key operational priorities throughout the response. First and foremost, of course, should be the saving of life, whether it’s during the course of an ongoing hostage incident or the aftermath of a bombing or shooting incident. Secondly, it is also essential that the wider public are also kept safe either from the incident itself or from further incidents that might take place. Thirdly, the authorities should be looking to bring the perpetrators and their accomplices to justice in order to preempt further incidents taking place.

Tactical Intelligence

Tactical intelligence will also be key if tactical teams are deployed. They will want to know as much as possible about the threat posed, the environment in which they are working and the capabilities of the terrorist(s) involved. Whilst most tactical teams train to an extremely high level for these sort of events, they will always want to know as much as possible in order to increase their chances of success.

Tactical Response

A tactical response should always be ready and available but should also be used with extreme caution. As was seen in the recent Lindt Café Siege in Sydney, even extremely well trained tactical operators may not be able to secure the safe release of all the hostages and tactical failures can often lead to much soul searching and subsequent censure if it later transpires that more could have been done to ensure the safety of the hostages involved.

Negotiation Response

Which is why authorities must also continue to maintain a highly trained and capable negotiation response. A negotiated resolution to the incident is always preferable but even if that is not always possible, it helps to buy time
for other options and solutions to be put in place.

Media Management

Any terrorist incident is naturally going to attract massive international media interest and one of the tasks of the crisis response is to carefully manage the media to ensure that they do not interfere with the running of the event or put at risk those involved by compromising the response measures. Frequent press briefings and updates will go a long way towards ensuring media
cooperation and assistance, particularly as the media may well be able to obtain key information that might be relevant to the authorities during the response or during the later investigations.

Public Management

During a terrorist incident, the public are of course going to be extremely concerned and will want as much information as possible, particularly if they believe that their loved ones might be affected. The media may be
able to help with this but it is important that the authorities reassure the public that they are properly dealing with the incident and provide advice on what the public can do to safeguard themselves. The assistance of
the public should also be sought, as was the case following the Boston bombing, as they may be able to provide potentially vital information and intelligence to the responding authorities.

Social Media

Whilst the authorities can often develop a good working relationship with the media, this is not always the case with social media, which has to be carefully monitored so that quick follow-up actions can be taken to address any issues that might arise. In the recent hijacking of Egypt Air MS181, which later turned out not to be a terrorist incident, one of the so-called hostages actually took a selfie with the ‘hijacker’.

Transnational Cooperation

One thing that has become very evident following the Paris and Brussels attacks, terrorists and terrorism are not confined by borders and authorities must continue to establish good working relations with their international counterparts in order to respond effectively and decisively. Transnational cooperation is essential if the authorities wish to work together against terrorist groups in order to interdict their activities.

Sustainability

Whilst many authorities do train and prepare for the possibility of a terrorist incident in their jurisdiction, exercises do not always test the full scale and complexity of such incidents and more effort needs to be put in to ensuring a higher level of capability and capacity building for a prolonged and complex incident. The terrorist attacks in Mumbai, for example, demonstrated the difficulty authorities will have in dealing with multiple incidents, in multiple locations, over an extended period, with determined and well armed terrorists.

Peter R. Morgan is the Director of Crisis Avert Ltd and spent over 33 years in law enforcement. He was closely involved in CT-response as Commander of the Police Crisis Negotiation Unit for 12 years, responsible for counter-terrorist incidents, public order negotiations, serious criminal and domestic crisis incidents as well as suicide intervention and barricaded situations. He is also the author of “Critical Issues in Crisis Negotiations”, available on Amazon. This article is adapted from a presentation given at the Asia Emergency Management Conference in May 2016. For more information, please contact Peter at prmorgan@crisisavert.com or visit www.CrisisAvert.com.