When you see something, say something: US Police to India

NEW DELHI: India should prepare itself for mass casualty events and involve citizens in reporting “early warning signals”, police officials from the US have advised their Indian counterparts in a presentation on the Colorado shooting incident inside a movie hall in 2012 that left 12 dead. The US officials said they had already incorporated learning from the Nov 26, 2008 terror attacks in Mumbai in dealing with such crises.

At the first US-India Police Chiefs conference in Delhi on Wednesday, Stu Frome, the deputy chief of staff of US Federal Law Enforcement Training Centre, said while opening the session, “Someone walked in legitimately into the theatre after buying a ticket, left the movie mid-way to walk out of the theatre and came back armed with weapons to open fire. It’s important that when we see in hindsight, there were signs of what was going to occur. We encourage our citizenry to report preevent happenings…In US, we have the policy – if you see something, say something.”

Police need to respond quickly to such incidents, Frome stressed. “It will be like, at 2 am, you get a call that a mass casualty event has occurred. You need to go from 0 to 100 miles an hour immediately,” Frome said, adding that the police rose to the occasion and the attacker, James Holmes, was arrested.

Dan Oates, the chief of the Aurora Police department who had handled the Colorado incident, also addressed the gathering on the largest shooting incident in the US.

Referring to similar recent shooting incidents in the US, Frome said such incidents could happen in an India as well and there should be a mechanism in place for citizens to report the early warning signs.