Lock the Door With Your Belt: Polish Police Drill 1,300 University Staff on Surviving a Knife or Gun Attack

Around 1,300 employees of the West Pomeranian University of Technology (ZUT) in Szczecin have completed a security course run by the regional police force, KWP Szczecin, covering armed assaults and medical emergencies. Most of the staff took part online, with the training reported by media on 28 October 2026.

Practical guidance for extreme situations and life-saving first aid in the workplace formed the core of the programme.

What to do when someone is armed

Knives, axes and firearms were among the threat scenarios addressed. The sessions were led by police officers nadkom. dr Micha? Kurdziel and podkom. Piotr Palicki, who built their instruction around the so-called "4U" rule — four behaviours to apply in sequence: observe, flee, hide and thwart the attack.

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The KWP Szczecin instructors noted that an armed assault typically lasts up to 10 minutes. During that critical opening phase, information on the ground is usually chaotic, while official emergency numbers are often overwhelmed by a flood of simultaneous calls.

Why running isn't always the answer

Tactical advice focused heavily on judging escape routes correctly. According to Szczecin police, fleeing is not automatically the safest option, since an attacker often knows the building's exits. There is also a risk that the designated assembly point becomes the perpetrator's target once an evacuation is under way.

In many dangerous situations, barricading inside a room is the better choice. Officers showed university staff concrete techniques for securing rooms quickly — tearing out chairs to block a doorway, for instance, or fixing door handles and locking mechanisms in place with belts.

The first minutes after a cardiac arrest

Beyond responding to violence, the training covered basic first aid: choking, severe bleeding and sudden cardiovascular arrest.

Police cited data from the European Resuscitation Council showing that without immediate resuscitation, a person's chance of survival falls by 10 to 12 percent with every passing minute. If CPR is started at once, that decline is only 2 to 3 percent per minute. The moments before emergency services arrive are therefore decisive.

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Demand far outstripped supply

Interest at the university was enormous. ZUT recorded roughly 800 registrations within two days, and about 1,300 staff members signed up in total.

Krzysztof Pietrusewicz, the university's prorector, described the course as a necessary response to real dangers. He named two direct triggers: the 2025 tragedy at the University of Warsaw and recent attacks at schools, which he said had made the urgency of structured crisis plans in education unmistakable.