Posted on 02/23/2018 5:52:00 AM PST by Sopater
My uncle John is a retired Los Angeles police officer. He doesn’t like to talk about it, but if I buy him enough drinks, he’ll tell how he captured an armed bad guy on the streets of LA, although my uncle was off-duty and unarmed.
The story involves car chases, foot chases, and a shotgun—and the guy holding it wasn’t my uncle. Fortunately, everything worked out that day, and a dangerous criminal was off the streets because my uncle risked his life—off the clock.
I think about my Uncle John every time I read an all-too-frequent report like this one: “The armed school resource officer assigned to protect students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School took a defensive position outside the school and did not enter the building while the shooter was killing students and teachers inside [all emphasis added] with an AR-15 assault-style rifle, Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel said Thursday.”
Most Americans are astonished and outraged to hear this. How can a police officer—how can any person—stand around listening to innocent kids being shot?
Most Americans don’t know this happens all the time. Remember the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando?
As the largest mass shooting [at that time] in modern U.S. history began to unfold, an off-duty police officer working at a gay nightclub exchanged gunfire with the suspect. But three hours passed before one of the nation’s most revered SWAT teams stormed the building and brought the attack that left 49 people and the gunman dead to an end.
The ISIS-wannabe was in a shoot-out with a cop before he even got in the building. But for some reason, the cop didn’t follow him in. Shots fired inside. Nothing. Then SWAT waited outside, even as shots rang out from inside the building.
Remember Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut? “Newtown officers arrived at the school while the gunman was still shooting but did not enter the building for more than five minutes, according to a prosecutor’s report.” The state police conducted a comprehensive review of events that day, but “didn’t interview any Newtown police officers who were the first responders on the scene.” Newtown police didn’t do their own after-action report, either. What’s to review, right?
This list goes on and on. Up in Canada during the 1898 massacres at Ecole Polytechnique: “As officers stood outside in the snow, [the shooter] moved through the corridors looking for more women to kill.” Out west in Columbine, as in Orlando, the cops exchanged fire with the killers, then waited outside as 10 people were gunned down. The police waited outside. Listening.
The sinking feeling we have as we read these stories isn’t anger. It’s betrayal. Our police are supposed to be better than that. We honor them, we tell our kids to look up to them, we buy them lunch, donate to their charities, we believe in them. That’s because we believe they’ve made a commitment to endanger their own lives to protect ours.
Only not everyone is in on the deal, apparently. Over the years as a radio talk host, I’ve had a dozen or so callers claiming to be cops who angrily insisted that, as one put it “Our first job is to make sure we go home to our families safe at night.”
My response was to suggest that, somewhere, there was a mall missing a security guard. For real cops, if someone is going to get shot—either an innocent civilian or themselves—their job is to take that bullet if they absolutely must.
So why do so many cops stand outside and do nothing while kids are being killed? Well, cowardice, for one thing. No, not all cops are cowards, that’s ridiculous. I know from personal experience that’s not true. But they’re not all heroes, either.
Ask yourself this: Could you stand outside and listen to high school kids get shot and do nothing? Particularly if you had a gun and the training to use it? Wouldn’t every cell in your body scream for you to run inside and kill that SOB?
So why do good cops wait? Training. It’s part of a tactical approach currently debated by police departments across the country. Before Columbine, everyone pretty much waited: Set up a perimeter, wait for SWAT, go in with mass firepower and a strategy to reduce civilian casualties. That doesn’t work if all the civilians are already dead.
So the strategy changed—or was supposed to. But as we’ve seen again and again, in some places, it hasn’t. This brings up the conversation nobody wants to have: It’s a lot easier to police good people than bad ones.
Sheriff Scott Israel, whose department had dozens of encounters with the Parkland shooter before the massacre but failed to take action, was on CNN insisting that the solution to gun crime is out of his hands. So he wants to get guns out of yours. He’s demanding restrictions on the gun rights of lawful citizens.
He couldn’t figure out how to get the information about the Parkland psycho into the background-check system, which would have stopped an actual bad guy from legally buying a gun. Instead, he wants to stop everyone. Why? Because law-abiding citizens abide by the law. We do what they’re told. We’re easy to police. So his failures are apparently on us to solve by giving up our rights.
The same with suburban teenagers posting crazy stuff on the Internet. Israel also wants police to have the power to detain people without a warrant, take them in against their will, and give them a government -authorized evaluation of some kind—all based on a police officer’s opinion that you’ve posted something “disturbing” on the web. Hey, there are plenty of angst-ridden teen boys out there to roust, and cops like Israel are more than happy to do it.
Scaring dopey teens and banning AR-15s is easy. Following up on truly dangerous people, building a case about their mental health, getting the evidence a judge needs to act—that’s hard work. So is going into a building where shots are being fired. Cops aren’t heroes for doing “easy.” They are heroes—and most of them are—for doing the hard stuff.
So the school had 2 security guards. One armed and one unarmed. The armed guard stood outside listening to the kids he was supposed to be protecting getting shot down. The unarmed guard was shot and killed while using his body to shield other kids. The armed guard is a disgrace.
Nice how they assimilate, isnt it?
Somali Police Association in Minnesota---getting dental work, I hope.
One of their Somalis colleagues killed a girl without provocation.
They come to the great melting pot of America then proceed to set themselves apart.
REFERENCE----Illegal Aliens Quietly Being Relocated Throughout U.S. on Commercial Flights
Judicial Watch ^ | JANUARY 19, 2018
FR Posted on 1/20/2018, 9:50:01 AM by UMCRevMom@aol.com
Immigrants entering the United States illegally through the southern border are quietly being relocated to different parts of the country on commercial flights, high-ranking Homeland Security officials told Judicial Watch this week.
In the last few days alone, groups of illegal aliens boarded planes at airports in Texas and Arizona accompanied by a taxpayer-funded government escort in civilian clothes to avoid drawing attention.
The first flight originated at Valley International Airport in Harlingen, Texas and was bound for Minneapolis. The second left from Tucson International Airport and arrived in Salt Lake City, Utah, federal sources said. In both locations the illegal aliens appeared to be in their late teens and were escorted by a Health and Human Services (HHS) chaperone. Judicial Watch reached out to HHS for comment but did not hear back from the agency.--SNIP---more at FR web site
Here's Obama in Kenya with a Somali Muslim he campaigned for.
Mohamed Abdi, Somali muslim candidate for Manera East, Kenya.....who lost.
Sheriff Israel should resign. He can go work on Hillary’s detail.
Cops are very adept at shooting unarmed people, maybe that waas the issue here.
Further proof of the woosification of America. Bunch of big baby snowflakes covering every generation these days.
Armed, combat-proven veterans should be used as security officers.
His name is 'The Coward Scott Peterson *spit*'.
Look how long it took the entire police for to finally go into Columbine. He was alone without back up. Did he call it in and was told to wait for back up? If he had drawn his gun parents would have sued for scaring their kids. Perhaps he is a coward. I’d like to hear his story. Could be this is the Sheriff covering his own backside for not doing anything about Cruz years ago.
The sheriff is to blame on many many fronts.
As a sworn officer, isn't he shielded from lawsuits for what he does under color of authority?
If not, every surviving family member should individually sue him.
The courts may, or may not, say that this "man" who was hired explicitly to protect had no "duty to protect".
In which case, one could argue that every penny he took from Broward county was fraudulently obtained...
Hold on, just a moment, while I skim my operational handbook.
Hard to say, he was theoretically one of Them.
Most of them would lie under oath, or misplace evidence to protect a brother cop, no matter how dirty.
It's time that changed, doncha think?
Three things I hate:
1. Liars
2. Cheating
3. Excuses
They need to add another diamond at the end; engage and kill perpetrator during rampage.
I’m probably going to get flamed for this, but making a frontal assault, alone, against an unknown shooter or shooters, with no backup sounds like a good way to get deaded. I don’t know that I’d have done it either.
IIRC isn’t there a Supreme Court case that says the police have no duty to protect?
See Warren v. DC
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_v._District_of_Columbia
The trial judges held that the police were under no specific legal duty to provide protection to the individual plaintiffs and dismissed the complaints. In a 2-1 decision, the District of Columbia Court of Appeals determined that Warren, Taliaferro, and Nichol were owed a special duty of care by the police department and reversed the trial court rulings. In a unanimous decision, the court also held that Douglas failed to fit within the class of persons to whom a special duty was owed and affirmed the trial court’s dismissal of her complaint. The case was reheard by an en banc panel of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals, and the defendant (District of Columbia) prevailed.
The last Scott Peterson in the news was that creep that killeded his wife out in California.
Bookmarked.
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