Yes. But standard operating procedures for most departments is to assemble the entire team at a safe location before attempting entry.
SWAT teams treat “active shooters”, i.e. guys who go someplace just to kill a lot of people the same way they treat a barricaded suspect with hostages. The problem is, “active shooters” don’t wait. They don’t want to negotiate. They just want to kill.
Studies have shown that in the vast majority of cases “active shooters” commit suicide as soon as they are confronted with armed force, even if it’s only a single officer - assuming they haven’t finished what they came to do and killed themselves before the first officers arrive on the scene. If the first cop on the scene in this case had gone in there’s a chance he might have saved some lives.
The sad and ironic corollary is the recent case in Oakland, CA where SWAT went in on a barricaded suspect, who was not an “active shooter” but and was better armed than they thought, without making an adequate effort to negotiate or wear the guy down. Two good men got killed.
Police forces need to treat “barricaded suspects” and “active shooters” differently. Unfortunately this places the terrible burden assessment on the first officers responding to a very chaotic and dangerous situation. Mistakes will be made and innocent people will die because of those mistakes.
As long as there are places where sick bastards know they can go and find people who are forbidden by law from defending themselves this sort of thing is going to continue to happen.
Thank you for attempting to educate me on how this works. The Columbine killers were active shooters then weren’t they? Would you agree that in that case it’s pretty well established that the SWAT waited way too long? I ask you seriously because i’m interested and want to be informed.