At least half the time of the police news conferences were spent in lavish self-praise of the response of law enforcement.
At least half the time of the police news conferences were spent in lavish self-praise of the response of law enforcement.
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As far as I can tell, it’s still believed that it took over an hour for the public union employees to reach the shooter’s room.
What exactly did law enforcement do to earn praise? I have no idea if they could have made a difference, but their actions as reported so far were mostly waiting. Waiting even after the shooter stopped shooting...for somewhere around an hour? They may have had no choice for various reasons, but this pattern of LE not engaging shooters makes me wonder why on earth they need special units and special gear/military gear. It seems the shooter fired as many rounds as he wanted, with not even annoyance from LE, and then he decided when to stop.
According to the story LE is going with now, the security guard was shot before the crowd shooting. LE says the security guard reported what happened on his radio. So LE knew where the shooter was when he started shooting, yet they did not in any way engage him? Once that floor was evacuated they should have been able to at least harass him by firing shots at that room from the hallway- which would have kept him distracted from shooting the innocent people below.
I know I am second guessing the actions of LE and I probably shouldn’t since I am not LE and I wasn’t there. I am using their own reports to try to figure out what happened though. They are telling us LE got there shortly after shooter started firing into crowd...they waited until he quit shooting and then waited for around an hour after he quit shooting before breaching the door and entering the room.
If a SWAT team is not going to engage an active shooter in under an hour- why do these cities need a SWAT team? I remember when they started forming SWAT teams and that was the stated purpose- to have a group that was trained to act quickly in situations like this.
In my area a few years ago a criminal barricaded himself in a house and started shooting, first at random people then police arrived. Small town, small county sheriff’s department- a couple State Police joined them at some point. That was it, no SWAT, so special toys. They engaged that shooter, they stormed the house and took him down. He was heavily armed too but LE took him on. That is what LE used to do everywhere until they got all these special units.