Posted on 12/06/2013 5:09:25 AM PST by Uncle Chip
Officers stopped well short of school, approached by foot
State police investigating the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting have focused some of their efforts on the police response, interviewing local officers to iron out inconsistencies in their versions of events ....
"We know that our response will be heavily scrutinized as it should be and I am confident that our officers acted aggressively and appropriately in response to a chaotic scene,'' police union President Scott Ruszczyk said. "I think it's pretty tough to second-guess the guys who were there responding to a chaotic scene."
Among the aspects of the response under scrutiny was a decision by the first responding Newtown officer to park nearly a quarter-mile away on the street to the school and wait for other officers to arrive. Those officers moved to the school on foot along the tree line....
Dispatch records show that the first 911 call came in just before 9:36 a.m. and that the first officer arrived at the school about 9:37:30. The dispatch tapes indicate that there were officers in the school at 9:44 a.m., but don't make clear exactly when the first officer entered....
Sedensky told them during the meeting that state police and Newtown officers entered the building simultaneously....
"There was a thought that there was a second shooter. They had a man running around the outside of the school,'' Ruszczyk said. "My guys don't believe they did anything wrong that day."...
Kehoe has told The Courant that the department's active shooter policy, last updated in 2002, is clear that officers should enter a building in which there is a shooter and find the threat as quickly as possible. They are not to wait for command staff or SWAT officers to arrive.
(Excerpt) Read more at courant.com ...
Your cavalry were certainly in no hurry to enter that building to rescue those children.
Please explain what they were doing for 6 minutes and why when they finally did enter the building they did so from the back of the building -- as far away from the shooter as possible.
Ummm, no it's not. Kids, school, active shooter. Turn in your badge and get a job tending flowers.
Wow. Dial 911 and die.
I expect they spent the first few minutes coordinating with each other to avoid fratricide and ensure complete coverage to prevent the shooter from escaping and slaughtering defenseless civilians outside of the facility, since several police departments were involved. 7 minutes seems eminently reasonable, especially since every incident location has a different layout.
First Responder to Sandy Hook Slaughter Parked 1/4 Mile from School and Waited for Backup
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3094511/posts
Apparently they were waiting for him to commit suicide before they went in as well but he didn’t oblige them.
What we are running into here are protocols.
There are established protocols that stop emergency responders, and they work a bit like zero tolerance, break the protocols and you are in trouble.
An example An ambulance responds to an overdose, The protocol is to wait for the arrival of police to secure the scene before ambulance personnel are allowed to proceed. So the ambulance sits at a staging area and waits for the police while someone who took too many pills is inside. without treatment.
The protocols are set up for the protection of the responder, but do not have clauses to provide for different situations.
I feel that the first police on the scene were doing what their protocols called for, they waited for backup and for the scene to be made as secure as possible. In the meantime people are inside dying, and one brave officer could have saved many lives. I am not totally against protocols, but like all plans they do not provide for circumstances.
But what the heck everyone who arrived went home safe.
Protocols save responders lives I suppose, but when you take a job as Firefighter or police officer you have to realize that sometimes you have to place your life in danger to protect those you are sworn to protect. You have to assess the situation on your own and do what is necessary. Zero tolerance protocols be damned.
It appears that it wasn’t reasonable in their minds because they are trying to justify their slow response by claiming that shortly after they all arrived on the scene the shooter committed suicide — when in truth they know that he was still firing in there and didn’t fire the final shot until about 11 minutes later.
They admit that he didn’t kill himself until they began to close in on him and they didn’t begin to do that for atleast 6 minutes.
They all went home safe for their families.
/s
The cops I know would not have stood idly by while children were slaughtered. Protocols be damned, the guys I know would have stormed inside and engaged the target without hesitation.
Against protocol? Probably. But someone killing children should activate circuitry inside you that overcomes “protocol”.
Taxpayers pay an ever increasing amount of money to law enforcement to “protect and serve”. We also pay our soldiers to protect our liberties.
The soldier is willing and able to put themselves into the field of fire to save others or win the battle. Law enforcement stays back in staging area until the violence has subsided.
The soldiers’ bodies are beaten and broken with the constant demands of training. They deploy frequently. They return home with PTSD, healed fractures, battered backs. They fight through injury, adverse conditions, bad weather, and people shooting at them.
Law enforcement gets fat. They seldom train for conflict. If they get a little injury they go on disability.
They both get to retire typically after 20 years. The soldier gets half his base pay average over the past 3 years (no special pays or anything counts). Law enforcement typically gets about 80% of their total earnings over the last 3 years.
Go figure...
You risk your life. Then you end your chances of promotion because you violated protocol. It's a nice thought, but it's clear why people don't break the rules. It's that stupid McCain idea that we'll make waterboarding illegal, but intrepid agents will waterboard at their discretion, and we'll decide after the fact if we'll end their careers or imprison them for decades. Nobody's gonna take that risk for someone who isn't a blood relative or a close friend.
Here is an interview with one of two mothers who witnessed the 8 to 10 kids running down to the firehouse [obviously Soto’s kids] as they drove up to the school and stood for a few minutes by the broken plate glass window at the front of the school holding a conversation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptbd6qRY358
There were no law enforcement present at the front door at that time. Where were they??? More than likely they were all in the school at this point. So this is after 9:46 when they all apparently went in.
And then after a few minutes what do they hear — gunshots ring out. So obviously he was still alive even after 9:46.
Question:
Did the investigators even bother to interview these women before they invented the claim that he committed suicide a minute and a half after they arrived and before they entered the school???
How long does it take a first grader to run a quarter mile from the school to the firehouse???
Check the timeline, boys and girls.
The ONLY solution that would minimize carnage would be armed folks IN POSTION, AT THE SCHOOL.
That would be guns/in school/ with the kiddy-poos.
Can’t have that now, can we Sarah Brady?
So, we double-down on stupid, AGAIN.
But how can that be???
"Kehoe told The Courant that the department's active shooter policy, last updated in 2002, is clear that officers should enter a building in which there is a shooter and find the threat as quickly as possible. They are not to wait for command staff or SWAT officers to arrive."
Are there secret protocols that override police department policies -- Protocols of the Elders of Newtown perhaps???
I don’t know their protocols, but I suspect this guy is lying.
If he isn’t he just called the first officers to arrive on the scene a pack of cowards, because they did just the opposite of what he said was the present rule.
1st officer parked a 1/4 mile from school to await orders? That is a cowardly disgrace! Once the report of shooting in the school came in it was incumbent on the police to enter the school. Real cops are trained for this....the bottom line is how teachers and children were slaughtered while the cops set up a perimeter, donned their riot gear and walked to the school.
It’s all irrelevant anyway according to the Connecticut Police Chiefs Association Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting report:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/189695580/CPCA-Newtown-Report-Final
Since the shooter is believed to have committed suicide at 09:40:03 hours, Newtown Officers were on scene a total of 1 minute and 10 seconds before the shooter committed suicide.....
[So the first responders here didn’t have the time or the necessity to actually go in and stop him because they heard him commit suicide right after they got there — they are trained to identify a final shot when they hear one and can discern a suicide shot from a homicide shot]
Ohhh but wait —
At 09:41:07 hours, the patrol sergeant reported that the last shots heard came from the front of the building.
At 09:42:27 hours, the sergeant repeated that shots were heard at the front of the building, possibly the roof
[So according to the police chiefs the shooter killed himself at 9:40 but was still shooting 2 minutes later after he had committed suicide]
Isn’t it nice to be a final responder.
Ohhh the state police aren’t going to like this from the report:
“At 09:46:23 hours, the first state troopers arrived on the scene, followed by a stream of other officers and troopers responding to Newtown’s call for assistance.”
That’s two minutes after the Chiefs say the Newtown police had entered the building.
According to the state troopers they all went in together — simultaneously — at the same time.
The Report:
At 09:44:50 hours, 5 minutes and 57 seconds after the first unit arrived at the rear of the school, an entry team consisting of a Newtown sergeant and two officers make an entry at the south-east side of the school.
Soon after the entry, this team was joined by the Newtown Chief.
A simultaneous entry was made by a Newtown lieutenant, sergeant, and an officer, who found an unlocked door leading into a boiler room at the north-west corner of the school.
At 09:46:23 hours, the first state troopers arrived on the scene, followed by a stream of other officers and troopers responding to Newtown’s call for assistance.
[the state guys aren’t going to like this]
Experts divided over Sandy Hook response
If police had arrived at the shattered front entrance of Sandy Hook Elementary School with their sirens blaring —Adam Lanza might have ended his rampage and committed suicide sooner.
But experts are divided over whether police should have immediately gone into the school and confronted Lanza, or waited — as they did — outside for six minutes.
In the bloody last seconds of the murder spree, investigators said Newtown police cars arrived and parked more than a football field away.
The long-awaited release Wednesday of recorded calls for assistance and the background sounds of rifle shots that killed 20 children and six adults may provoke more questions than provide answers on the important issue of the police response.
During the 47 seconds in which Lanza fired at least nine shots from his semi-automatic Bushmaster XM-15 assault-style rifle and a Glock 10mm handgun, first responders were setting up outside the school on Dickenson Drive.
“Since Columbine, the message is go after the shooter as quickly as possible,” said Brookfield Police Chief Robin Montgomery, speaking on the evolution of tactics in active-shooter incidents.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.