In my opinion, this school shooting shows that Police Dept.....

You mean like the democrat's credo? Defund the police. Demonize the police.

 

If that is true, then TX is a far sadder state than I imagined.

 

It gets worse. No school resource officer present. Door left unlocked. Gunman fired a dozen rounds before walking into unlocked door, yet no move to repel him. A Texas Dept. of Public Safety lieutenant says cops waited (i.e. lounged around, ostensibly snacking on doughnuts), never attempting to breach, for the better part of an hour ...because “they could’ve been shot”. Possible takeaway: Texas is populated by cowards.

 

This is just plain silly.

There is nothing blocking the state from coming up with solutions. In fact, many ideas can not be implemented at the local level.

What is needed is leadership.

What Abbott offers is thoughts and prayers.

 

No the fundamental problem is we are not dealing well if at all with an epidemic if crazy people.

 

Dude I'm sorry but policing is the province of the local not the state or the feds. It has been that way since the very beginning of the country. State police agencies don't even exist until the late 1800s. The FBI shows up even later.

 

Well, first of all policing is certainly NOT the only approach. In fact, I don't see that being a success.

For example, it didn't help in Buffalo. And, that' not the only example.

 

Policing is ultimately how you are going to have to take dangerously crazy people of streets before they kill someone.

 

We could lock a lot more of them up and not be so stressed about the numbers of people we put into prison.

 

That might be part of it. I'm sure we'll have to retain that capacity.

But, many of these people have been identified before they were "dangerously crazy" to the extent of requiring police to snatch them up and incarcerate them before they commit a crime.

One catch is that by the time you want the police to go after some specific individual, it's often too late.

I don't seen any indication that one policy alone will do enough. It seems more likely that there will be reasons to include a number of approaches, each of which we hope will reduce the problem by some percent.

 

At one time we identified people who needed mental support and held them as inpatients. They got the psych evaluations and care needed for the time they needed it.

The move since then has been to turn them out on the street, where they often live in situations that are far from supportive - possibly homeless, etc.

I don't see prison as an answer. We don't give prisoners life terms. Just about every person ever incarcerated gets released. We rarely give anything close to the psychological care needed before release. For those disturbed, surely prison makes them less sane, less self supportive, more likely to go off the handle, more likely to be fed up with the world.

 

That could change. Life in prison in solitary confinement. Perfectly constitutional according to U.S. courts.

 

But changing them from mass shooter to mad bombers probably isn't the solution we're looking for

 

There was an officer in charge, he made the wrong call. The other officers that followed his direction had no other choice there has to be a chain of command; I'm sure there will be a lot of Monday morning quarter backing; but "I" don't think there was any intentional malice or cowardice in the police response, just bad information and bad judgement.

 

I can’t speak for the police department in question. But …

I am now a retired police officer. Our attitude was that if there was an active shooter in a school, we were going in, we were going to find him and eliminate the threat. Period. No waiting for a SWAT team. No waiting for anything.

If we lived, we lived. If we got wounded, we got wounded. If we died, we died. It just didn’t matter. What we were going to do had already been decided.

We trained for it. We had the equipment and firepower in all the patrol cars.

Done deal.

Today I spoke with a friend of mine who is still an active police officer. About going in and stopping the shooter, he said, “You’ll have to keep up with me.”

Apparently, not all police departments are ready for this. But this Texas police department does not represent all of us.

Seth

 

That's unfair. The officer in charge had bad intel and reacted poorly because of it. There wasn't any cowardice or laziness, they weren't eating doughnuts. They made a bad call for which I'm sure all officers involved are miserable over their commanders decision; including the commander.

 

Arrgh ...me and my occasional loathsome moods.
'Guess I'd best unwatch this thread

 

They do know how to handle school shootings, but they didn't follow the SOP's. The SOP's are that a single officer MAY engage a shooter that has taken cover, but, once there are two or more, they immediately actively engage the shooter and keep him engaged until the threat is stopped, You want him fighting for his life so that he is not shooting innocents.

The IC (Incident Commander) who responded made the call that would have been made if the shooter was barricaded without access to innocents. With the Shooter in cover WITH innocents it was the wrong call as has already been admitted by the DPS.

When Federal Border Patrol showed up a half hour later they were shocked to learn that the SOP's were not being followed and the IC also ordered them not to engage. They waited about 45 minutes and then finally stacked and assaulted, without the IC's permission. It took them 15 minutes to stop the shooter once they actively engaged him. Total time of the incident was 90 minutes with an innocent life lost, on average, every 4-5 minutes.