Active shooter near Emory University

And we continue to follow that breaking news. Police in Atlanta are responding to reports of an active shooter. This is near the campus of Emory University. What you're taking a live look at right now is from the scene. Dozens of officers, we understand, are responding to this for multiple agencies. That shooting was reported near the school, which also neighbors a CDC campus. Anna Schecter joins me now on the phone. She's the senior coordinating producer for CBS News's Crime and Public Safety Unit. Anna, thanks for being with us. I know this is still just all coming in and developing as we speak, but what is the latest that you know?

Sure. This is very early in the investigation, but what campus police have put out is that an active shooter on the Emory Atlanta campus at the Emory Point CVS. The situation was dire enough that they were putting out information run, hide, fight, and avoid the area. So that's essentially messaging to anyone who might be in or around that Emory Point CVS. Run, hide, fight, that is the official line of what to do if you encounter an active shooter. Now, the Atlanta Police Department is assisting. They are responding, multiple other agencies. The FBI is monitoring. And we just got word from our own Céline Gounder, who's heard from multiple people at the CDC that their offices have bullet holes through their windows. No reports of injuries at this time, and people are sheltering in place there at the CDC. So that is the latest information that we have at this hour.

--a bit about what that process is like. As soon as that first call comes in, that takes something from, perhaps, a domestic incident or something that was a smaller incident to escalating it to a response of this magnitude. What happens after that first call comes in to 911?

Well, sure. As soon as it's established that there is an immediate threat to the public, that there is an active shooter who might continue firing shots and injuring more people and that that person is in a position to continue to carry out an attack, that immediately kicks in. So what happens is local police, they have networks. They have lines of communication with neighboring agencies like, for example, Emory campus police. They have a point of contact at Atlanta PD and in neighboring counties, and then the Atlanta PD would kick that up, and FBI is going to see this news. The FBI Atlanta office is going to monitor. They're going to offer assistance, potentially just immediately take that initiative to get there on the scene. As soon as that term active shooter goes out onto the airwaves, that's the process that gets kicked in.

All right, Anna Schecter, we know you're going to be staying on top of this for some time to come. We really appreciate your insight in the meantime. And CBS News National Security Contributor Sam Vinograd joins us now. Sam, I'm going to ask you about this. As a former counterterrorism official, talk to us about what would be happening behind the scenes. We just heard from Anna about kind of that first response, but what happens that we don't know about right now? Well, Nancy, having, unfortunately, worked these kinds of incidents in the past, I will tell you that campus security officials train for these kinds of incidents regularly in coordination with, as Anna mentioned, state and local law enforcement, as well as sometimes in consultation with federal officials. So once that first 911 call does come in, campus security, along with state and local police, as necessary, are prepared to deploy and have various standard operating procedures that they're ready to implement, like the shelter-in-place notifications that went out. So, unfortunately, in today's threat environment, law-enforcement officials are used to and train for this kind of incident.

So I would imagine it doesn't surprise you to see this kind of police response from so many different agencies. Can you talk to us also about what it means when you have this happening in a situation that's near a university, that's near the campus for the CDC? These are major centers.

Certainly. What that means is that various other law-enforcement jurisdictions may be involved. So instead of just Atlanta PD, for example, you may have campus security officials involved. If this is in or near a federal facility, you may also have federal law-enforcement officials involved, and that may be why we are seeing such a large law-enforcement presence in and around what we believe to be the site of this active shooting.