Posted on 02/23/2018 5:52:00 AM PST by Sopater
My uncle John is a retired Los Angeles police officer. He doesn’t like to talk about it, but if I buy him enough drinks, he’ll tell how he captured an armed bad guy on the streets of LA, although my uncle was off-duty and unarmed.
The story involves car chases, foot chases, and a shotgun—and the guy holding it wasn’t my uncle. Fortunately, everything worked out that day, and a dangerous criminal was off the streets because my uncle risked his life—off the clock.
I think about my Uncle John every time I read an all-too-frequent report like this one: “The armed school resource officer assigned to protect students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School took a defensive position outside the school and did not enter the building while the shooter was killing students and teachers inside [all emphasis added] with an AR-15 assault-style rifle, Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel said Thursday.”
Most Americans are astonished and outraged to hear this. How can a police officer—how can any person—stand around listening to innocent kids being shot?
Most Americans don’t know this happens all the time. Remember the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando?
As the largest mass shooting [at that time] in modern U.S. history began to unfold, an off-duty police officer working at a gay nightclub exchanged gunfire with the suspect. But three hours passed before one of the nation’s most revered SWAT teams stormed the building and brought the attack that left 49 people and the gunman dead to an end.
The ISIS-wannabe was in a shoot-out with a cop before he even got in the building. But for some reason, the cop didn’t follow him in. Shots fired inside. Nothing. Then SWAT waited outside, even as shots rang out from inside the building.
Remember Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut? “Newtown officers arrived at the school while the gunman was still shooting but did not enter the building for more than five minutes, according to a prosecutor’s report.” The state police conducted a comprehensive review of events that day, but “didn’t interview any Newtown police officers who were the first responders on the scene.” Newtown police didn’t do their own after-action report, either. What’s to review, right?
This list goes on and on. Up in Canada during the 1898 massacres at Ecole Polytechnique: “As officers stood outside in the snow, [the shooter] moved through the corridors looking for more women to kill.” Out west in Columbine, as in Orlando, the cops exchanged fire with the killers, then waited outside as 10 people were gunned down. The police waited outside. Listening.
The sinking feeling we have as we read these stories isn’t anger. It’s betrayal. Our police are supposed to be better than that. We honor them, we tell our kids to look up to them, we buy them lunch, donate to their charities, we believe in them. That’s because we believe they’ve made a commitment to endanger their own lives to protect ours.
Only not everyone is in on the deal, apparently. Over the years as a radio talk host, I’ve had a dozen or so callers claiming to be cops who angrily insisted that, as one put it “Our first job is to make sure we go home to our families safe at night.”
My response was to suggest that, somewhere, there was a mall missing a security guard. For real cops, if someone is going to get shot—either an innocent civilian or themselves—their job is to take that bullet if they absolutely must.
So why do so many cops stand outside and do nothing while kids are being killed? Well, cowardice, for one thing. No, not all cops are cowards, that’s ridiculous. I know from personal experience that’s not true. But they’re not all heroes, either.
Ask yourself this: Could you stand outside and listen to high school kids get shot and do nothing? Particularly if you had a gun and the training to use it? Wouldn’t every cell in your body scream for you to run inside and kill that SOB?
So why do good cops wait? Training. It’s part of a tactical approach currently debated by police departments across the country. Before Columbine, everyone pretty much waited: Set up a perimeter, wait for SWAT, go in with mass firepower and a strategy to reduce civilian casualties. That doesn’t work if all the civilians are already dead.
So the strategy changed—or was supposed to. But as we’ve seen again and again, in some places, it hasn’t. This brings up the conversation nobody wants to have: It’s a lot easier to police good people than bad ones.
Sheriff Scott Israel, whose department had dozens of encounters with the Parkland shooter before the massacre but failed to take action, was on CNN insisting that the solution to gun crime is out of his hands. So he wants to get guns out of yours. He’s demanding restrictions on the gun rights of lawful citizens.
He couldn’t figure out how to get the information about the Parkland psycho into the background-check system, which would have stopped an actual bad guy from legally buying a gun. Instead, he wants to stop everyone. Why? Because law-abiding citizens abide by the law. We do what they’re told. We’re easy to police. So his failures are apparently on us to solve by giving up our rights.
The same with suburban teenagers posting crazy stuff on the Internet. Israel also wants police to have the power to detain people without a warrant, take them in against their will, and give them a government -authorized evaluation of some kind—all based on a police officer’s opinion that you’ve posted something “disturbing” on the web. Hey, there are plenty of angst-ridden teen boys out there to roust, and cops like Israel are more than happy to do it.
Scaring dopey teens and banning AR-15s is easy. Following up on truly dangerous people, building a case about their mental health, getting the evidence a judge needs to act—that’s hard work. So is going into a building where shots are being fired. Cops aren’t heroes for doing “easy.” They are heroes—and most of them are—for doing the hard stuff.
In 2013 during the Washington DC Navy Yard Shooting, my daughter's fire station was called. At the time she was a licensed paramedic (she's now an ER RN). Her ambulance entered the Navy Yard to assist. The perp was still at large. An Army Vet, at no point did my daughter or her partner shrink from their paramedic duties to attend to the wounded.
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Scaring dopey teens is easy. Banning AR-15's is not.
I think I'll stick around. As you post irrelevant information I'll just ignore it.
Ignore at will. Be my frickin’ guest.
Not required. Volunteers with more pay. And think of the cost of 10-15 police officers for ever big high school that do nothing 99.99% of the time. Most would spend a whole career and not face the situation.
If he wasn’t expected to do anything, why was he even there?
Potemkin Cop?
A middle-aged social studies teacher, staring death in the face, confronting a shooter, might be thrilled to have the option of doing something other than dying while pleading “Please don’t shoot me”.
That is exactly what they will say. It is well established law.
Perhaps.
But no man's life, liberty or property is safe as long as court is in session.
And there will be a LOT of public pressure on the court to make someone pay, and The Coward of Broward is a highly visible someone.
Sucks to be Scott Peterson. It's going to get a lot suckier.
I don’t mean to damn your daughter with faint praise, but she’s a better man than Scott ‘The Coward of Broward’ Peterson.
When next you see her, give her a hug for me.
If they are too afraid to do their job then they shouldn't be police officer.
Most under-trained people will freeze. Maybe one in ten will rush in where angels fear to tread. Arm twenty.
If Aaron Feis were armed, he and a dozen kids would be alive today.
Arm the Aarons!
The universal defense whenever a cop murders a civilian is "I was in fear of my life!". It works darn near 100% of the time when Internal Affairs hears it.
Amazingly enough the cops investigating the cops seldom find them in error...
Maybe. By the same token, had the police and FBI done their job then Aaron Feis and all those kids would be alive today, too. In all of these conversations and proposed solutions, nowhere have I seen the suggestion that maybe the police and FBI need to take a long, hard look at where they failed and make sure it doesn't happen again. And pass their findings on to other police departments. Isn't the best way to keep students safe still to make sure school shootings don't happen in the first place?
That is almost always the case. So why should police officers be afraid of repercussions if they went in and shot the killer? They are almost never hung out to dry by their brass.
Aaron Feis did.
I’m sick of this motto that the Cops have to go home safe. When did they stop laying their lives on the line? I’ve read, seen, watched years of the COP shows, and one or two would breech homes with a reported shooter.
= = = = = = = = = = = = = =
That is one of those unfortunate ‘mottoes’ that come back and ‘bite you in the ass’.
One can understand the meaning of it and certainly it is true, but same can be said of the Asphalt paving worker that is resurfacing on the Interstate. Or ANYBODY that walks down the street of a city etc.
Also we started pointing out cops as heroes for simply doing the job that is the basis of their employment.
Those NYC and FDNY and the rest that RAN BACK INTO THE BUILDINGS were and are HEROES in the sense of the word as it was meant to be.
While the Police in the Alexandria shooting were ‘brave’ and stood their ground, they were NOT heroic in the true sense of the word...theirs - in a respect - was a kill or be killed situation.
Then we ‘have’ to point out one cop is not only a woman, she is lesbian. WTF does it matter?
SHE did her job. If ‘WE’ don’t think she was capable or are amazed that she stood her ground, maybe she shouldn’t have been there in the first place.
I remember a few years back there was a big deal about the lack of Black Fireman in a Baltimore graduating class. O’Malley was the Mayor and it turned out that the class had been assembled earlier and lack of money made them keep putting the class back and no one really noticed ‘or cared’ that it was ‘lily white’. Come to be that when the class was organized there were plenty of ‘others’ BUT the delay in start ‘forced’ many to go get some work and get on with their lives so they ended up with an all White team.
Baltimore took IMMEDIATE action though and had a recruitment campaign that basically shut out Whites, get these guys together and form a class IMMEDIATELY.
Would like to see how that turns out in the long run.
In the course of everything the ‘man/lady’ in the street included a ‘HUGE’ Black Lady being interviewed and getting her opinion..HER comment “If I am on the 4th floor and my fat ass is trapped I am not going to be checking on the color of the person at the top of the ladder’.
Even at 78 I tend to head toward gunfire and the yelling of fire, I realize I am probably just going to get in the way BUT I certainly hope that I wouldn’t have to ‘fight off LEO types while trying to ‘rescue’ someone.
Right, Wrong or Indifferent, it is a sad person that just hunkers down and doesn’t move - ORDERS or not— especially when you can hear the carnage going on from a SAFE distance.
We have to go back to hiring Police, Fire, FBI on a basis of real life experience, not so much emphasis on education, sex, gender (or supposed lack of), sexual orientation and the ability to carry modest weight in a stressful situation.
YOU can’t teach GUTS and what some would call ‘stupid behavior’ (RACING INTO GUNFIRE) but the men that were there when it was necessary no longer seem to be in our presence.
COPs that I grew up with and were around and I knew earlier in life would NEVER have acted the way these guys- I don’t mean to broadbrush but with the lawsuits for most anything, one almost has to wait for ORDERS to storm the building lest he be disciplined for not following procedure -
THE LIVES OF THE PEOPLE YOU ARE SWORN TO PROTECT ARE SECONDARY, which in itself is pathetic ESPECIALLY when Police Chiefs (POLITICAL APPOINTEES) who need a driver because they don’t know the way around the city they protect as they have worked in 10 different cities to allow them to be YOUR POLICE COMMISSIONER/CHIEF, these same guys/gals will get up in front of the microphone along with YOUR elected officials and damn ‘private’ gun carrying (ie licensed carriers) while not acting to protect individuals until it is entirely safe.
THE denutting of American Males is nearing its peak - sadly, and WE have to snap out of it.
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