The shooting in Tucson that killed six and wounded 14, including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, by Jared Lee Loughner was what police call an "active shooter attack." Which essentially means it was an attack executed by a single angry person with a loaded gun, an event as hard to predict as it is to plan for—but doesn't mean the NYPD isn't trying.
"Active shooter incidents are some of the most dynamic acts of violence that police and private security encounter. They are particularly important for NYPD Shield members to understand," Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said in a statement announcing the department's new Active Shooter Recommendations and Analysis report [pdf].
Commissioned by the NYPD after the Virginia Tech shooting and the terrorist attacks in Mumbai (which they've certainly gotten a lot of mileage out of) the report is not really happy reading. Not only does it offer suggestions for how private security should handle such an attack (think: use cctv, have an evacuation plan, be ready to run, have heavy lockable doors) it also includes a very depressing appendix of 281 active shooting attacks from the last 44 years broken down into stats ranging from the gender of the shooter (96% male) to the number of weapons used (only 36% used more than one) to how well the shooters knew their victims (41% of active shooters had a professional relationship with their closest victim).
The report also led the NYPD to do some interesting tests on what standard office furniture is your best bet to hide under if, god forbid, you were around during an active shooter attack (and also unable to evacuate the scene, which is your best bet for safety). And what office staple won? Filing cabinets. While bullets go right through your average desk or cubicle partition, "file cabinets stopped bullets from a .38-caliber Smith & Wesson, a 9mm Glock and a shotgun. Only bullets from an AK-47 passed through."
