In any moment of decision… the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.
-Theodore Roosevelt
Our Story
From our beginning as a small school security training company, we have been dedicated to promoting proactive strategies to improve the chances of survival during an active shooter event. We’ve worked with hundreds of thousands of individuals in Police/LE, K-12 Schools, Healthcare, Higher Education, Business, Government and Houses of Worship organizations and empowered their people using ALICE Training.
Our drive to make a difference and continue to lead the evolution in active shooter response tactics is at the core of what makes our solutions so effective. At the ALICE Training Institute, we’re always working to create new stories of improvement. From teachers and healthcare professionals to police and everyday citizens, our active shooter training classes teach skills that improve your chances of survival anywhere you go in life.
Our Mission: To Improve Chances of Survival
The threat of an active shooter attack is rare but very real. We aim to eradicate the “It can’t happen to me” mentality and change the way people everywhere respond to armed intruders. At the ALICE Training Institute, we believe that individuals should be prepared for active shooter events and empowered to make their own life-saving decisions. Once empowered to make their own life-saving decisions, individuals must be trained in proactive active shooter response options, rather than a passive, mandated, one-size-fits-all response. We want all Americans to have the knowledge and skills to survive when shots are fired. We can achieve this by training as many people as possible and implementing training in drill form across all organizations. We have seen the successful results of fire drills. It’s time to start anticipating man-made disasters.
Training Options that work for the largest organization or a single individual.
Origins of ALICE Training
The ALICE Training program was created out of a husband’s desire for his wife to have a better plan in case of an active shooter event. After the Columbine High School shooting, Greg Crane was a law enforcement officer in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area and his wife, Lisa, was an elementary principal. While both prepared in their professional lives for this type of tragic event, it was not until a fateful conversation around the dinner table that brought the two worlds together and created the ALICE Training program. Around a Christmas Eve dinner in 2001, an announcement came across the local news of an officer being killed in the line of duty, and the conversation turned toward the dangers taken on by law enforcement officers. Although he had trained officers in active shooter response for many years, Greg asked Lisa a question he had never asked a school administrator, “What are y’all doing while the police are making their way to the school?” Lisa explained the school’s protocol, which was the standard at the time, “When I find out we have an intruder, I put out a “Code Red” over the PA, the teachers get everyone in a classroom, lock the door, turn off the lights, sit in the corner and wait for the police to arrive.” Greg said the abnormally high number of killed and wounded in the mass shootings of the 90s made perfect sense…these lockdown responses made people easy targets. He did not like that plan for Lisa and the people at her school, so he set out to find a better plan. However, after reading the active shooter response tactics suggested by the so called “Experts”, he found that, in the end, when the bullets started flying, the staff and students were on their own to “figure it out”.
Greg, and a fellow officer, set out to create a plan based on the strategies that brought them through some violent shooting situations. Through years of development, modifications, additions, deletions and a lot of input from other ALICE Training Instructors across the country, ALICE Training is the first program in the country to use option-based, proactive, survival strategies to prepare for active shooter events. Now, many Governmental Agencies, Police/LE organizations and associations have made recommendation which mirror ALICE Training concepts. We continue to lead the way with cutting-edge research, updated materials and an ever increasing body of knowledge and experience to help civilians of all demographics learn strategies which can help them survive an active shooter situation anywhere they may find themselves under attack.
Our vision is to empower all citizens with the skills and knowledge to respond when shots are fired. If the police cannot be there in time to help, the next best thing is to prepare our civilian population to help themselves until public safety arrives.