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The Responsibility of Police Officers
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Replies to: The Responsibility of Police Officers
That said, police are human beings and can freeze or otherwise freak out. Nobody ever knows how they're going to react in the moment for the first time. It's easy for armchair quarterbacks to call that SRO a coward, but IMHO that judgement should be leavened with some empathy for someone encountering a traumatic situation for the very first time.
That SRO must be going through hell right now, going through a lot of "if only" scenarios in his head. Yes he failed to do his job and possibly lives were lost as a result, but I personally am not lining up to spit on the guy.
https://www.npr.org/2012/07/21/157154275/how-columbine-shaped-police-response-to-shootings
https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/15/us/florida-school-shooting-columbine-lessons/index.html
I'm afraid, though, that it will always be difficult to expect a police officer who usually patrols school hallways looking for truants to suddenly shift gears and execute a probably suicidal attempt to stop a shooter. If we want school police officers to be ready to do sacrifice their lives to take down shooters, they have to get more specific, ongoing training. Or we could prevent shooters from getting guns.
You forgot that they were trained to expect the unexpectable. They are not like you and me with no prior training against violence. They were trained to expect violence and what to do when that happens. Compared to other violent crimes, school shooting is probably mild relatively speaking. Don't officers deal with active shooters outside of school? I don't see how school shooting is any scarier than dealing with seasoned criminals and freezes four deputies to non-action. I would call for a full review of the sheriff department. They also got 18 calls regarding Cruz including a few about his gun collection that went unheeded.
Probably because they didn't cause the problem to began with? Solutions need to get to the heart of the issue of mass shootings not responses to them.
We can discuss here what the police should or shouldn't have done but the million dollar question remains, IMO, how to stop these events from occurring in the first place. A reminder that the USA stands out in the world for these mass shootings. They don't have to be a given.
1. There should be a distinction drawn here between elected sheriffs officers and career police officers. The Broward County Sheriff, like many across the country, is an elected official. Elected in this case in one of the most liberal counties in Florida. Consequently, the Broward Sheriffs Office (BSO) has both Law enforcement and Political aims and motivations, whereas the police, like Coral Springs, would be thinking law enforcement first and foremost, which may have factored into why the CSPD entered the building while the BSO stayed out.
2. The BSO and the Broward School Superintendent Runcie established a program in 2013, called the "Promise Program" to "break the school to jail pipeline" by keeping kids out of the criminal justice system. This means misdemeanors and less serious offenses such as vandalism, pot possession, etc would be dealt with by the schools and not by the sheriffs office. Where do they draw the line for a "serious offense"? How about bringing bullets to school or getting into fights? Evidently not there. The Promise Program https://www.browardprevention.org/behavior/promise/ is intended to "safeguard the student from entering the judicial system". The goal was to reduce the percentage of students who were arrested by LEO. Did it factor into why Cruz was able to go so long without a record and so be able to pass background checks?
3. Why the 26 minute tape delay? Has Jake Tapper asked this question? If so, I haven't seen a good answer. Certainly it wouldn't be to help the SRO control any video evidence of criminal behavior. that's crazy talk.
4. If the NRA, Gov Scott, Sen Rubio, anyone who owns a gun, has blood on their hands, what exactly is on the hands of BSO and Broward Superintendent?
Seeing that Israel guy on the news nauseates me. He gives a bad name to law enforcement officers everywhere with his arrogance and hypocrisy.
I don't think you would have trouble drawing the line with active shooting.
Whether electoral or career, you would think a police department should be capable of protecting the public. If they fail, why bother to have a police department elected or career?
You can train and train and train, and still freeze when encountering a traumatic situation for the first time. It's just one of the unpredictable things about human nature. And not many cops have every actually fired their guns in the line of duty.
For a much less traumatic example, just think of all the people who practice a speech and then freeze when standing up in front of a group for the first time. You can train in front of your friends, but when you stand up on the podium for real the very first time, you just never know how you'll react.
So I guess this comes back to something we teach our kids. If you do something bad, are you a bad person or are you a good person who did something bad? Is that SRO actually a coward, or did he just act in a cowardly manner? I lean towards the latter.
I read an interview where someone had been reviewing the tape and therefore had it rewound. Somehow that wasn't communicated to later people, who then thought the tape was live.
Yeah. Should probably let the wife and daughter of Cmdr. Paul Bauer know that.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-met-paul-bauer-shooting-suspect-charges-20180215-story.html
Or it highlights the fact that the government can't protect you so they shouldn't restrict a person's ability to protect themselves.
There were 4 deputies taking cover. All froze? Are they popsicles? Again, I don't think school shooting is as scary as any other violent crimes outside of school. With a bullet vest, a gun and training on how to care for yourself in dangerous situation, facing one kid gun man is so scary. I bet it was very scary for the teacher and the coach who died protecting kids but less scary when you've done months of training and are equipped with hardware.
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Good points especially #2.
If you don't arrest students, then presto, your crime statistics go down and you can brag that you are the safest community or safest school district when actually your school and community is becoming more dangerous.
The goal should not be keeping students out of the law enforcement system when they are a danger, but protecting the rest of the student body.
You may want to look at what the police actually do. They don't just "patrol the schools" and go home. They actually do go on regular old get the bad guy duty as well.
I completely agree with these statements. It's very easy for people who would never even consider law enforcement jobs or taking action to risk their own lives in a shooter situation to vehemently criticize someone else. I've seen this same attitude about members of the military, too. It's your job, it's what you're paid for, just go and die like the pawn you are. They are expected to act like flawless, fearless robots. Not everyone can function through cold, dead fear.
When faced with a terrifying situation, one doesn't always know how they will react, whether it's their job or not. We don't know if they're supposed to call in backup and wait till a swat team arrives, or what their procedures are. It's all so easy to jump on someone based upon press reports without hearing details from the investigation. It sounds like there were mistakes made all the way down the line on this one, but scapegoating one person so harshly without full information is unfair. If we're going to blame someone, how about the shooter.
Regular police definitely have a variety of duties, but the man in question was a Sheriff's Deputy assigned full-time to that particular school. It's not uncommon in Florida, apparently because we have them here too. The official title of that deputy is School Resource Officer, but he's just like any other Deputy. The one difference is that other Deputies have different duties assigned to them in different areas, but SROs are generally assigned to a single school and spend their entire active day at that same school.
I've often questioned whether it makes sense to have a full time SRO in our schools. To me, it seems unnecessary - a fully trained and armed Deputy spending full time in a school that (in most cases) needs Deputy type services once or twice a month? But the one big issue that it makes sense to have a full time SRO Deputy to address is ... school shootings. Having a Deputy armed and with body armor onsite and ready to address unfolding violence is the single biggest reason to actually have a full time SRO Deputy. If we don't expect an SRO Deputy to go in and face an active school shooter situation, then why the heck would we need a full time SRO? Either these SRO Deputies should be fully expected to engage and address ongoing and active violence or we should stop wasting the resources having them at schools.