Other Blog Comments on the Useless Armed Manikins

These are posts from other Blogs....which I happen to agree with.......mag

It was Columbine-plus at Virginia Tech (NYT story), as the police proved themselves to be totally useless or worse. They interviewed suspects, secured the perimeter, ordered everyone not to move, and meanwhile and for two hours, apparently, the killer roamed free and started his rampage against unarmed students unguarded by unarmed teachers and administrators. "We can’t have an armed guard in front of every classroom every day of the year," said the chief of police. But they will darn sure arrest anyone who prepares for such an attack by arming himself.

When the police arrived after hearing reports of a massacre under way inside Columbine High School, they did not storm the building to catch the criminals. Instead, these heavily armed officers, wearing their famous coalscuttle helmets, surrounded the outside of the school, "sealing the perimeter," according to their spokesmen. Inside the high school, Eric Harris and Dylan Kliebold were running freely through the halls, merrily killing and wounding unarmed teachers and students as they tried to escape. In the end, the police didn’t even have to fire a shot, as the two miscreants ended their own lives. Thus, people were treated to a worthless show of force by the authorities, which did almost nothing to save anyone caught in the building. Lest one think this was an aberration, it is standard procedure by government forces.

Standard procedure forever and ever.

I think the exact process emergency police services (free market or otherwise) should use to respond to some specific situation ought to be based somewhat on the reality of the facts on the ground. One-size-fits-all tactics is irresponsible. The "lockdown" theory of mass shootings has some big problems with it. It's the same procedure they use for prison riots, incidentally.

The even more repulsive thing is is that they will congratulate themselves. I turned on BBC24 yesterday and the first thing I saw was some police-type guy saying they had done a "good job."

In situations like this, people need to understand that they need to fight back, not cower while hoping not to be shot.

When shots ring out like they did in Virginia yesterday, the police become a very slow reaction force that can do very little to protect anyone. That’s not a rap on police officers, its just the way things are today. Modern, risk adverse, police “critical incident” management techniques like establishing a perimeter instead of immediately taking action to stop the threat, or placing officer safety ahead of protecting the public by waiting for SWAT teams to mobilize, arrive and, maybe, deploy, WILL NOT save anyone who happens to be in a kill zone when the shooting starts, or comes under fire two hours after the first murders as we saw yesterday.

In 1966 two police officers and a hastily deputized armed citizen at the University of Texas took immediate action and killed a sniper in a clock tower who had murdered 13 people.

A generation later at Columbine the large number of police who responded there were not permitted to enter the school for hours. While police managers marshaled their resources and made by-the-book risk assessments, the cops they ordered to sit tight behind the barricades listened to gunshots and ignored calls for help from trapped students and teachers who later bled to death from their wounds. By the time the SWAT teams moved in, there was nothing left to do but help ship the bodies to the morgue.

Good job Virginia PD. Your incompetence allowed 32 kids to die. It's ok the flood of lawsuits will ferret out the good for nothing cops that were in charge today. It won't bring back those kids though. First in Columbine we saw fat assed cops shivering in fear while kids were killed. Today the cops did nothing. Didn't shut school down after first incident. The school President (Dr. Charles W. Steger) says it did its duty and "emailed" a warning to students. Today Virginia failed its children.

Good thing he shot himself......or the police would have allowed him to kill many others.