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As I noted yesterday, early reports of mass shootings are subject to the fog of war. Initial details are incomplete or wrong. We already have some substantial revisions to what happened when the shooter initially entered the school. As I noted, the first reports suggested that the gunman had shot his way past three officers — one school police force officer and two municipal police officers. The picture now looks significantly different — though the overall picture, I would argue, is much the same.
According to the latest reports, a school security officer exchanged gun fire with the shooter prior to the shooter entering the school. The two municipal police officers exchanged gunfire with the shooter once he was already in the school but — apparently — before he had actually begun shooting kids. They apparently felt they were outgunned. So they called in backup.
Here is the part of the story that is new and deeply disturbing. Apparently police on the scene waited for a significant period of time — like tens of minutes — while parents outside the schools begged them to go in and kill the shooter. Parents even brainstormed about whether they should go in and rush the shooter themselves since the mass shooting was unfolding as everyone waited outside.
There are now videos emerging of this part of the drama.
We can’t be sure we’re getting the whole picture from a single on-the-scene video without knowing just where we are in the timeline or just where the video is being taken. But an AP report substantially confirms what we appear to see in the video: that parents waited outside the school imploring officers to go into the school as the drama unfolded.
It’s important to note that these videos and these reports both show what parents outside the school perimeter thought they saw happening. We should leave open the possibility in our heads that they didn’t have a complete picture, that things were happening they were not aware of. I don’t think that’s likely. But let’s be clear on what we know and what we don’t know.
If we piece this together with other reporting, it appears that the local police department called in backup after the shooter shot at the local police department’s two officers. The video appears to show the period in which local police department officers are waiting for backup in the form a heavily armed and armored SWAT team.
One other detail that may help understand what was happening. The latest reports — again, tentative — say the shooter barricaded himself in a classroom and then began killing children and teachers in that classroom. Apparently everyone who died was in that classroom.
The school shooting police doctrine since Columbine has been that you don’t wait on the perimeter. You enter and try to kill or disarm the shooter as soon as possible. If I were these parents I would never forgive these officers. And for good reason. You don’t have to sign up to be a police officer. These are the moments which make being a police officer dangerous. Sometimes highly dangerous. But that’s the job. That’s why, for all the shifting social perceptions of police officers, they’re given great societal deference as heroes.
That said, from a policy viewpoint, we should look beyond individual courage or cowardice. If a shooter has body armor and one or more AR-15s he has a big advantage over a cop with a handgun. That was almost certainly the case with the school district officer and it was quite likely the case with the two municipal officers who were there on the scene. Trying to rush the shooter very likely would have gotten them killed.
Remember that in the aftermath of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018 a school resource officer was later charged with a crime because he allegedly hid rather than engage the shooter. In other words, this is not the first time when an outgunned school security officer decided he didn’t want to sacrifice his life to stop a school shooting as it unfolded or at least didn’t resort to heroic means to do so.
My point here is definitely not to excuse these officers. As I noted above, that’s the job and no one made you sign up. After all, we literally expect fireman to charge into fires. But the fire chief will call his people back if the building becomes too dangerous. The global point is this: As long as society allows pretty much anyone to arm themselves as the functional equivalent of a combat solider — AR-15 and body armor — that person is almost certainly going to dramatically outgun the first police officers they encounter. It’s probably unrealistic to assume those officers are routinely going to sacrifice their own lives in what may be a futile effort.
In Buffalo, a retired police officer working as a security guard, Aaron Salter, shot the attacker. But body armor protected the shooter. He returned fire and killed Salter. Salter died and it didn’t even seem to slow the shooter down.
The answer — at least a key part of the answer — seems obvious. You can’t seriously address this problem without doing so at the source, without putting some limits on people’s ability to show up at a school armed for combat. As long as that solution is off limits, you’re limited to workarounds and strategies that as frequently as not amount to tragic farce.
