The moment a mass violence, mass casualty, or domestic terrorism incident occurs is not the time for responding agencies to meet each other or develop an approach. Planning reduces chaos and mitigates challenges with victim populations (among other elements) during a response to a mass casualty incident. Stakeholders need to know who will be responding, what each agency’s roles and responsibilities are, and how they will effectively work together prior to an incident. Communities need to plan specifically for the size, scope, and complexity of mass violence and domestic terrorism incidents in order to ensure that there is an effective victim-integrated response when it is needed. In most cases, the victims of these attacks will come from diverse parts of the community. They will have widely varying needs, and law enforcement and service providers may be challenged to effectively engage and serve all victims. A functional response plan will include strategies to manage the complexities of the impacted population. Writing this plan takes time and effort. Diverse stakeholders must be included in conversations, and traditional responders must be willing to fill responsibilities outside of their regular routines.

With the increase in mass violence incidents across the globe, particularly in the United States, it seems like it is not a question of “if something happens,” but, rather, “when something happens.” Many communities affected by previous incidents of mass violence responded without a full plan for the intricacies of a criminal mass violence or domestic terrorism incident. All wished they had done more planning and built more relationships to better serve victims and their loved ones.

Mass violence events are unpredictable. These events are most often single acts of violence meant to inflict significant harm to specifically identified groups consisting of random individuals. Mass violence may create generalized fear, anxiety, post-traumatic stress, social isolation, and many other challenges for victims that can take time to appear and even longer to recover from. These events instill fear not only in the communities in which they occur but also in communities across the world as people fear the day it could happen in their own hometowns.