Any police officer does not have to enter a situation where they will be killed.
They are nearly required to call for back-up if the situation demands it. The Resource Officer is not guilty of a crime; he did the only thing he could do and took up position near the gunman and waited for back-up. Everyone is allowed to live to see another day.
The problem here is the same as it was in Columbine, the ready availability of assault weapons by average citizens.
February 22, 2018
By Chuck Johnston, Jamiel Lynch and Dakin Andone
Officials (click here) also reported Thursday that surveillance footage from the school shooting was not shown live, as responding officers initially thought.
According to Coral Springs Police Chief Tony Pustizzi, the footage had been rewound, and police were watching it on a 20-minute delay, leading them to believe the gunman, Nikolas Cruz, was still in the building when he was long gone.
"The delay never put us in a situation where any kids' lives were in danger, any teachers lives were in danger," Pustizzi said at a news conference Thursday afternoon.
When officers arrived on the scene of the shooting, he said, they wanted to gain access to the security footage to learn what happened and where the perpetrator could be.
But last Wednesday the footage was rewound, Pustizzi told reporters. At some point, there was a miscommunication and officers believed they were watching real-time footage.
"The issue was more of a communications failure on who was reviewing the tape, letting our guys know that it was a 20-minute delay in what they were reviewing," Pustizzi said....
The delayed recording was a problem, in that misinformation was relayed, but, the students would have been on lock down by then and none in the hallways to be mistaken for the gunman.
...At 3:02 p.m., when the Broward County timeline says Cruz briefly stopped at a nearby McDonald's, an officer says the suspect dropped a bag near a stairwell. Another officer asks if the footage is a recording.
"Yes, sir. It's about a 20-minute delay," the first officer says. "They're following him on video on the camera. They had him exiting the building, running south."
At 3:41 p.m., Cruz was identified and taken into custody.
That was 39 long minutes where Cruz was among the public after his killing rampage. There was at least one mimic that manifested. That is one of the dangers affiliated with mass killings like this. The attack spawns others to act. And the mimic is not necessarily identical to the mass murder, it could simply be a trigger to carry out killing attacks.
Every law enforcement in the country should move to heightened alert status due to the mimic potential after such a mass murder. The public, as well, should be aware of the phenomena that can occur when these mass murders occur. "See something, say something." The police have stated, any suspicious behavior reported is the right thing to do.
February 22, 2018
By Alex Horton
An alert security officer (click here) at a Southern California high school helped thwart a potential attack Friday, two days after the deadly Valentine’s Day shooting in Florida that left 17 people dead, authorities said.
The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department said they raced to prevent a copycat attack last Friday,...
