Apparently rigging a cherrybomb to a door is sufficient to cut the legs out from under a “hot entry” by the Police - as they patiently wait for a bomb squad - while people were being killed.
That is not so much hindsight criticism of the Police as it is ridiculing them being outsmarted emasculated and rendered powerless by two psycho High Schoolers and a small pipe bomb.
Then let us not forget the brave brave officers at Virginia Tech - cowering behind trees as students stood out in the open recording with cell phones. The students with cell phones were displaying more bravery ‘under fire’ than the LEO’s hired to defend them.
One of my favorite lines in Battlestar Galactica is when Apollo advises the President that they have been boarded by Cylons and to ... ‘keep moving, stay away from main corridors, and head away from gunfire.’. The President agreed and was about to turn away when she grew concerned “What about you?” she asked. With a grin he replied “We are headed TOWARDS the gunfire.”.
That is what those charged with protecting the citizenry should do - head towards the gunfire.
My point being that if there was a report of a stabbing - the officers were obliged to go through a bit of danger (a yard with a pit bull) to see if there was in fact a citizen bleeding to death; rather than retreating to wait for animal control - much as the Police at Columbine thought they should wait for the bomb squad.
I don’t claim to be an expert on Columbine, but my understanding is that the bombs going off was not the problem, it was the tactical doctrine of the time that “ordinary cops” charging into a “hostage situation” would just make things worse and get more people killed.
AFAIK, this was the first major situation of its type in America. Prior to this they really were hostage situations where the appropriate response was to establish a perimeter and try to talk them out. Problem, of course, was that wasn’t what these kids had in mind.
IOW, it was the doctrine that was at fault, not the cops who followed it.
This is similar to what happened on 9/11. Doctrine, entirely reasonably to that point, was to follow the hijacker’s instructions, fly around for a few hours or days and then be released. Nobody knew they were scheduled to be part of a missile.
Once those on flight 93 found this out, it took them less than half an hour to toss the old doctrine, develop a new one appropriate to the changed situation, and implement it.
But let’s not take those on the earlier flights, or the cops at Columbine, to task for not being prescient enough to know a surprise attack wasn’t following the well-known script.