Las Vegas Active Shooter Incident. Management Essay

A Day to Remember, Las Vegas 1st Oct 2017
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Introduction
The Las Vegas Mass Shooting incident is the deadliest mass shooting event that happened in modern United States history. On October 1, 2017, Stephen Paddock opened fire to more than 1000 shots into the crowd of the Route 91 Harvest Music Festival on the open-air Las Vegas Strip that killed 58 people and injured more than 800 other participants. Around 10 pm, Paddock targeted the festival from his hotel room on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Resort (Rosenblatt, 2017). However, law-enforcement officers that are guarding the festival were unable to quickly discover the location of the shooter from the ground (Melmer et al., 2019). The police managed to locate and breach the hotel room that Paddock is in, but when the police entered the room, they discovered that he had committed suicide. Authorities were shocked to discover that 24 guns, including assault rifles with armor-piercing bullets, were stashed inside Paddock's hotel room (Hutchinson, et al., 2018). This incident raised many questions about gun possession and security management on how Paddock smuggled high-caliber guns inside the hotel? While good leadership is considered important in emergency management, different leadership styles, including transformational and adaptive leadership styles, should be studied to investigate the effect of each style in improving the safety protocols during emergencies. In this paper, the role of transformational and adaptive leadership in an active shooter situation will be discussed to see the applicability of each style in dealing with emergency service management.
Traditional Authoritative Leadership
Because of the rise of mass shooting incidents in the US, different mass shooting protocols were developed to stop the shooters and decrease the number of casualties. These protocols are strictly followed to maximize their effectiveness (Linger, 2018). The protocols show the traditional leadership style of the police force that has generally been perceived as authoritative or militaristic, where the leader's command and protocols should be strictly followed (Decker, 2018). However, the unpredictability of a situation can limit the effectiveness of each protocol. In all cases, the first step of all the protocols against active shooting is finding the shooter, then, followed by quick engagement of the responding officers to neutralize the shooter as fast as possible through apprehension or killing (Linger, 2018).
The problem during the Las Vegas shooting incident is that the shooter was too far away to be spotted and apprehended by the ground police force. In this situation, following the protocols can be detrimental to the people because, while the police were still finding the shooter, he already killed many people and injured hundreds. A different leadership style can be used to ensure the safety of the people first and limit the casualties to match the situation.
Transformational Leadership Style
The most popular approach in leadership innovation is the transformational leadership style. Transformational style incorporates charisma and vision to change the values, ethics, and long-term goals of the organization. This style raises the motivation and morality of the followers to reach their fullest potential (Northouse, 2019). To activate transformational leadership, four factors need to be addressed: idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, and individualized concern. In Idealized influence, a leader should act as a strong role model for the followers emotionally invested with the leader and follow the vision that the leader will establish. Inspirational motivation is the factor of leaders to communicate high expectations to their followers but in an inspiring way. Intellectual stimulation is the factor that stimulates followers to be creative and innovative. The individualized concern is the show of care of leaders also for individuals, not just the common good (Northouse, 2019).
One unique event that happed during the Las Vegas shooting is the massive arrivals of injured and uninjured people at different medical facilities after fleeing the area. Because of the mass hysteria of the crowd and lack of communication between the venue security personnel and medical institutions, the medical facilities were crowded by people where the critically injured individuals were left behind in the venue (Reeping et al., 2019). Based on the factors of the transformational leadership, this approach can be involved in making an effective collaborative protocol not only for the police officers but also for the medical facilities and the crowd. The key component of the transformational protocol is the effective communication and collaboration of the head security officer of the festival, the police ground commander, and hospital staff.
For instance, using a hypothetical transformational leadership protocol, after the first confirmed shot of the shooter, the head security detail of the event should have immediately contacted the hospitals and police to respond into a mass shooting incident while alerting the people of run or hide at the opposite direction of the shooter. The police in the festival can break into several teams, including a crowd control team, medical support team, and shooter apprehension team. The medical staff can rush to a safe zone that was cleared by the police medical support team to build triages, where they can provide medical...