Security Concerns Re-Emerge After Thousand Oaks Club Shooting

AP Photo / Marcio Jose Sanchez – Thousand Oaks
Mourners gathered outside the Thousand Oaks Teen Center in Thousand Oaks, Calif., Nov. 8, after a shooter killed 12 at the Borderline Bar & Grill Nov. 7. The attack was one of the most deadly to occur in a venue that regularly hosts nationally touring artists.

While fires continued to burn throughout Northern and Southern California at press time, the music industry was still reflecting on the Nov. 7 shooting at Thousand Oaks’ Borderline Bar & Grill, which terrorized some country music fans who had previously been at Route 91 Harvest festival in Las Vegas in October of 2017.

The shooting was carried out by a former marine, who reportedly shot the club’s security officer with a .45 caliber handgun then deployed a smoke grenade and shot up the inside of the bar before going to the bathroom and shooting himself. 

At the end of the carnage, 13 were dead including Ventura County Sheriff’s Department Sgt. Ron Helus, who was the first officer on the scene; a cashier at the venue; several students; a marine corps veteran; a local café owner and a survivor of the Route 91 Harvest shooting, according to the New York Times.

Borderline has been an active concert venue that in recent months hosted artists including Jerrod Niemann, Rita Wilson and Adam Carolla.

The incident raised questions about security concerns at clubs, but Mike Downing of Prevent Advisors (a counter-terrorism and security firm owned by Pollstar’s parent company Oak View Group) told Pollstar the reality is that with dangerous, armed individuals allowed to roam freely threats are hard to contain.

“From my perspective it’s getting worse … [More than 50] percent of the mass shootings in the U.S. have been recorded in the last 10 years,” said Downing, OVG’s Chief Security Officer. “2017 saw a huge spike in mass shootings.”

The reality is that club shootings, either outside or inside the venue, are not uncommon in the U.S., albeit few have such a high body count as the most recent one in Thousand Oaks. 

In the past several years high-profile shootings at club-sized venues occurred at an esports tournament in Jacksonville; a Finesse2Tymes concert in Little Rock, Ark.; a parking lot outside a Jason Aldean concert in Tupelo, Miss.; the area outside the Tacoma, Wash., nightclub Latitude 84 (which saw a local promoter charged with murder and unlawful gun possession); a Boosie Badazz show in Gardena, Calif.; a show at The Masquerade in Atlanta featuring Cousin Stizz; and outside a Meek Mill concert in Wallingford, Conn. 

Although club shootings are not an altogether infrequent occurrence, the above attacks pale in comparison to the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando that killed 49, and the terrorist attacks at Le Bataclan theatre in 2015 that saw the methodical execution of 90 during an Eagles Of Death Metal concert. 

Downing said one of the main things to take away from recent attacks was that more thought should be given to first-response procedures, and referenced an outside analysis of the response to the attack outside an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, England, in 2017.

The Kerslake report – an independent review into preparedness and response to the 2017 Manchester attack that killed 22 – highlighted different concerns about first-response practices, primarily that it took two hours for the Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service to arrive on the scene on the evening of the attack. 

This delay was attributed to a failure of communication (largely because of system failures by local phone provider Vodafone) and procedure, and Downing said the report highlighted the importance of venues running tabletop drills with various municipal agencies (fire department, law enforcement, etc.).

“I think when you plan for the terrorism threat, you are planning for everything else that can fall under that [emergency] umbrella. Man-made/natural disasters, fires, floods, etc. It’s not just terrorism events, you are training for every possibility that can happen. 

“You build confidence in your staff, your management, your security, and use those opportunities to build relationships with the municipalities, whether it be police, fire, public, transportation, sanitation, parks and recreation, rather than operating in silos.”

In the case of an active shooter, first responding officers can’t be expected to wait for SWAT to arrive while people inside the building are being murdered. 

The death of Sgt. Helus, Downing said, demonstrates that perhaps officers in the position of being first responders should be equipped with noise-distraction devices (i.e. flashbangs) used by SWAT teams, which can give officers a tactical advantage against active shooters.

Different questions also arose around first-responding practices after Chicago police shot a security guard outside Manny’s Blue Room bar in Chicago Nov. 11, while the guard reportedly detained a violent patron. 

The guard, 26-year-old Jemel Roberson, had a legal firearm and was African-American. 

Downing – who served as Interim Police Chief for LAPD, was a member of the Department of Homeland Security Advisory Council and as commanding officer of the LAPD’s counter-terrorism and special operations bureau – said beyond measures venues and promoters can take, he feels there has to be a societal re-conception of guns as a privilege.

While people’s Second Amendment rights should not be foregone, he says dangerous people should not be allowed to have guns and more steps need to be taken to prevent these individuals from becoming armed. 

The individual who carried out the Borderline shooting was visited by mental health specialists, according to the New York Times, but was determined not to be a threat to himself or others. 

Another issue security experts at Prevent Advisors are following is the weaponization of Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) Drones, which are already being used by terrorist organizations, specifically ISIS, outside of North America and Europe. 

The terrorist organization is distributing instructions through its online propaganda for how to conduct drone attacks.

Downing said there is technology capable of neutralizing much of the threat, but venues are currently prevented of using it by law, and he fears it will only be after a crisis that action is taken.