ODPS Ohio Emergency Management Agency Higher Education: Active Aggressor Tabletop Exercise (TTX) Toolkit

Houses of Worship: Targeted Disruption Tabletop Exercise (TTX) Toolkit

The United States, as well as many other countries, has a long and unfortunate history of violence against houses of worship. In recent years there have been a number of attacks on many different religious houses of worship including, but not limited to: the 2012 Sikh Temple shooting in Oak Creek, Wisconsin; 2015 Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina; 2017 Mosque attack in Quebec City, Canada; 2018 attack on a synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and the 2019 attack at the West Freeway Church of Christ in White Settlement, Texas.

Assailants have used guns, cutting instruments, and other weapons to carry out these heinous acts. Because of this, there is an increasing need for these facilities that may be perceived as “soft targets,” to take measures to protect themselves.

Emergency preparedness exercises can be a daunting and costly undertaking. This toolkit was developed to provide a free product for houses of worship to better prepare staff, worshipers, first responders, and other partners to plan for and respond to such incidents.

This Houses of Worship: Targeted Disruption Tabletop Exercise (TTX) Toolkit provides all of the materials and information necessary to easily plan and host a tabletop exercise.

The exercise covers three main objectives:

1. Operational Coordination – identify both the methods and means to improve coordination between staff, volunteers, and first responders during an active aggressor incident.
2. Operational Communication – evaluate communication plans and procedures between staff, volunteers, worshippers, and first responders during an active aggressor situation.
3. On-Scene Security and Protection – discuss and evaluate written plans and physical protective measures in place for the house of worship (specifically addressing active aggressor incidents)

Exercise toolkit materials include:

• PowerPoint Presentation for the exercise
• Facilitator’s Guide
• Participant Situation Manual
• Planning Timeline
• Meeting & Support Documents

To register and obtain immediate access to the <Houses of Worship: Targeted Disruption Tabletop Exercise (TTX) Toolkit, you will be prompted to provide: your name, your agency/business, e-mail address and location. This information allows Ohio EMA to see who is accessing the toolkit, as well as where the material is being used. All of the materials in the toolkit to plan and facilitate a business continuity scenario tabletop exercise are available to download, free.

To download the materials please click HERE