Office Defense, Chapter 3: Preparing To Barricade in Office

Let's talk about preparing to barricade ourselves in our office in the case of a mass violence event or workplace violence event. Uh, when we talk about barricading first and always we have to understand what we're talking about. We're talking about getting into a position. That makes it harder for the threat to get into a position to hurt you. So hiding could be an example of barricading.

Putting the door between you and them, closing the door is barricading. Closing the door and locking it is even better barricading. So when we think about when we're in our. Office if we hear a violent event outside, we get some kind of a warning, maybe there's a code, there's a literal alarm going off and we decide that it's not a time to evacuate or evade being in the place where the bad guy is actually getting away. We're in the building and we're gonna stay in the building.

We want to barricade in our office, and that's going to mean not only making it harder for the bad guy to get into the space we're in, but also harder for him to even know that we're there and harder for him to hurt us from outside, especially in the case of something like a glass wall which is which is very uh prominent now in modern office spaces or if the door happens to have a glass window that. Someone maybe could see through so let's talk about it when we're in this space, we want to think about the angles and the orientation that someone is going to be most likely to come into the room if they're trying to hurt us. We want to think about the angle the person would have visually to look through frosted or glass walls or windows, maybe even windows from the outside. We want to think about the best angle we could be. To respond to someone if they were to break through the door, break through the glass, if they were to come into the room, how can we be in the best position to do a counter ambush to respond to them, to use our defensive tools, and of course that means also thinking about if it's a larger office, especially exactly where we position our defensive tools so that we don't have to go to one part of the office to get them and then go to the next part of the office to barricade.

So when we think about where we would want to go in this office knowing that obviously the threat's not coming through the walls could theoretically come through the glass wall, most likely would be coming at us from the door. The first thing we're gonna want to do obviously is secure the door. Now obviously you want to get it closed. This door doesn't lock. If you have a locking door from the inside, great, then you would obviously want to set the lock.

But if it's a workplace violence event, it is certainly reasonable to think maybe somebody has a key or they grab the janitor's keys and they're going office to office. So you want to think about being able to barricade in additional ways. So something like a doorstop, um, obviously a heavy duty one that's gonna help. You might also have some kind of a throw. The cables are here now first of all.

We're gonna talk about any door that opens to the outside. That's where you're gonna want to think about using a cable to attach it to some furniture to make it harder to open up. Also, you could have a short throw of cable or any kind of a a carabiner, any kind of a quick link, something like that, um, eye bolts in the door either way, locking it that way prevents it from opening out or opening in so it would be an extra piece of of reinforcement to the hinges and to the throw that goes into the the door frame. It would again reinforce the door along with or without something like a door stop down here that can be secured so there's a lot of ways if you think about it ahead of time, right, not so much in the moment, but if you think about it ahead of time you can definitely find ways to reinforce the door, make it a lot stronger, make it harder to get through. Obviously there's things with reinforced throws, dead bolts, all of those kinds of things.

Another thing to think about in regard to barricading your preparations to barricade is how you can use some of the barricade tools or items in ways to deny area to the threat or also maybe trap the threat in an office or in a section of the building. So if we think about the cable that we might use to block an outward opening door from inside of an office, some section of cable could be set up as well if you knew that this was the configuration of your office area. Bad guy might go that way. Bad guy might go that way. Bad guy might go that way.

If I were to be in my office and realize that there was a threat on the other side of this door and I wanted to deny this area to him or trap him or her in that area, well, I can close this door. Of course I can't lock it if I don't have the key, but even if I have the key, it could be. Released from the other side, this now becomes an outward moving door relative to my position and what I can do is use something like these sections of cable, even rope would be good enough, chain, whatever you might have to secure it to anything in this case I'm gonna use this door on the other side of the hallway. And while you look at this and you say, well, gee, Rob, you just slipped that around there certainly it could just be slipped off. You'll notice there's a little slack, which means that if someone were trying to open this from the other side of the door, they could get a little bit of motion, get a little bit of momentum on it.

Well, a couple of things. One, in terms of area denial, again, if someone's moving around looking for easy threats to find, if a door is hard to open, they may move on to. Next door. The other thing it's going to do is buy you some time and give you some very specific warning. In other words, if you're barricaded over in that position or maybe down here at that end of the hallway and you see that this is happening, it doesn't matter that someone might be able to reach through here and push this off or cut it or shoot it or do something with their strength to just move this hard enough to pull the doorknob right off the other side or off of this side.

That's gonna give you time and specific warning that that contact with the threat is imminent, so using these types of tools in any way you can to stop a door from being able to be used at least used easily, is a good way to use improvised barricade tools to make yourself and others safer in these spaces. Again, getting back to the angle that we want to think about in this room we've got this glass wall and not only do we want to worry about again the angle of the entrance but also an angle of an attack or an angle of observation. So even in a modern setting where you've got a lot of glass or frosted glass, it's easy enough to see through this if you stage, if you get a regular curtain that can be closed for privacy or maybe for whatever reason in your office space, you know everybody's anti privacy. You wanna make sure the office always has a line of sight to the open area. Well, for.

For emergency purposes we can take this and probably do it in a much nicer way stage this up at the top of the glass wall so that it can be quickly deployed and of course we want one that went all the way down if this was actually the office I was in. So now we have blocked the line of sight. A lot of times just taking yourself out of the equation as an immediately obvious target is going to be enough. Um, we have a couple of different instances where in office areas the would-be killer, the attackers moving from down the hallway from office to office. And when they encounter in a school or in an office setting something as simple as a locked door that they easily could smash through or certainly shoot through with a firearm in their hands, they choose to move on to find an easier target, so a more obvious target.

So taking yourself out of the equation, really good idea. And then of course we think about the angle, um, while some people might think about being as far away from the door as possible if we assume this is either completely covered and blocked visually or it's a standard opaque wall, positioning myself here 90 degrees. offline from that potential line of attack or line of entry is really the best place to mount that counter ambush so that once I was here in my barricade space I could go to my high compressed ready position if I have a firearm. If I don't have a firearm, then we want to think about again staging our defensive tools in the position that we're gonna barricade in so that if someone is to come into the office and this is the only tool I've got, I don't want to have this tool staged in the opposite corner where I've got to come over here and block the door, go there and get the tool, then come over here and get into my position. Get up from my desk, lock the door, barricade set up there, move into my barricade position, and then get into my ready position so that I can strike the person, strike the firearm, strike their hand if they were to come through that door to attack me.

Um, again, understanding that your best position is always going to be offline from the line of attack. And if we are going to get down behind this desk from this perspective, we want to think about what this is gonna look like. Well, the first thing I'm also gonna do is take this chair. I'm gonna put it over here. That's gonna make it harder if someone does come through the door, harder for them to physically get to me.

I get it's roller. I could lock it. I could lay it down, whatever it is, but I'm gonna get it out of my way. It's almost like the like casting, right? I'm gonna move that rook out here and you know put the king back here in the corner.

So I'm putting that. There to aid my barricade situation and then I'm gonna get down behind the desk. Let's think about the position that I want to be in when I think about being behind the desk. Remember, I want to be able to respond. So if I'm not going to position myself somewhere in one of the corners of the room, I'm actually gonna get down behind this desk and again that's gonna block visual as well as being able to block an attack to some extent depending on the material if someone were just randomly, you know, shooting into the office, for example.

When I get down behind the desk, I don't want to get down under the desk to where I can't respond and I can't see what's going on, right? I want to think about the angle at which I'm going. I don't want to, you know, get down this way and just kind of cower and hope nobody attacks me. What I want to do is, is lower myself in a position like this where I can still be aware of what's going on around me. Now you're gonna think, OK, maybe somebody could see me under the desk, especially with this glass wall if I didn't have the curtain.

Yeah, they may see me, but maybe they're just glancing quickly and remember they're gonna be in a situation of a very tight focus, right, hunting, looking, specifically looking for targets and threats, most likely. So if I'm down here, it makes it a lot harder for them to see me than if I'm just standing up in the corner somewhere, even if I have a window or clear glass or whatever it is. And when I'm down in this position. Obviously I can go to my high compressed ready position with my firearm. I can go to an extended shooting position, right?

These are the kinds of situations where you you're gonna be putting that unorthodox shooting position practice into play if someone were to break into this room and I need to respond, you know, with my defensive tool to a lethal threat, it's gonna be in an unorthodox compromised position. That's something that we can practice. But again, always get into a position where you can keep your head up, you still have your mobility, you can use your defensive tools. Thinking about how you are going to position yourself, thinking about how you're going to secure the door, make it harder for the person to get in through it. Make sure that you're blocking line of sight, things like curtains staged for glass windows or any doorway windows also thinking about those complete walls having that big drape ready to come down or ready to close.

When you're in an office, it doesn't mean that you're trapped as a helpless victim. It might actually be the place that you can barricade and be as safe as possible in the worst case scenario of workplace violence.