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PHOENIX (KSAZ) - In light of Thursday's shooting at a newspaper in Maryland, in addition to recent shootings at schools and churches, a number of businesses are turning to professionals to help them train their employees, about what to do in an active shooter situation.
Experts say it's important to know how to handle a potentially deadly situation.
"Be aware of your surroundings, because that could have been the individual who was in here lasyt week and acting funny, and it can be the very person who comes back a week later, and you didn't realize or didn't even pay attention to who he was or what he wanted," said Mike Simon with Arizona Security Institute.
Simon helps train corporations, schools, and basically anyone else who asks for it on how to react to an active shooter.
"Obviously, the more you can alert people and tell people, the more people can get out," said Simon.
First thing first: if you can, Simon says you need to get out of the area. If you can't do that, you hide. Fighting is the last option.
"Do something. Fight back, even if there's two people and they rush him," said Simon. "Maybe one of them gets hit, maybe none of them get hit, it all depends of where he's at or what he's doing, the type of weapon he has, if he has to reload, you wait for those moments," said Simon.
Another thing corporations or schools can do is bring in equipment that can protect people in the public space, and that's what Amulet Protective Technologies does. The company has ballistic barrier technology that is designed to be integrated directly into furniture, walls and interior design elements, all without anyone noticing it's there.
"No ones done it prior," said CEO Jeffrey Isquith. "We saw a gapping hole in security, and that was the physical protection within the space."
Isquith says it's that extra barrier of protection when you need it most.
"Its just something that's invisible to the environment because its embedded, just there in case something like this happens," said Isquith.