Fuck’n cowards. Heaven forbid they go into a building where someone might actually shoot back at them.

Don’t be too hard on the individual officers at the scene. A shooting at a school is a stressful situation, and centuries of military experience show that people under stress do not depart from their training, and if they’ve had no training, they tend to do nothing, especially if they expect someone else to know what to do. However, departments that have militarized to deal with “threats” really have no excuse for not having a better plan for situations like this.

The UNC shooting was a long time ago. Seems fresh to me, but I’m getting old. The punchline to the story? a jury awarded the killer $500k from his psychiatrist.

The Miami Beach shooting has a couple of video angles. My google-fu managed to come up with this relatively contemporaneous account of the police search for the weapon. A further update shows that all shooting victims were shot by police weapons. No need to worry though. Their boss was confident that the police would be fully cleared in any investigation just days after the shooting.

To assuage any fears you have, watch the footage from the next morning. You can see that the only door to the vehicle they have opened is the driver’s side rear door. The floorboard behind the driver’s seat is where the search turned up a gun. 3 days later. Only it took another 4 days to figure out exactly where they found the gun.

Meanwhile, earlier this year police in Miami Beach managed to shoot 4 bystanders during “Urban Weekend” while firing volleys at a car that for all we can tell from the video evidence never posed a threat to anyone. They clearly had know reason for firing their weapons other than “I saw another officer fire his weapon”. They did manage to do a good job of executing him after he put the car in park though. Nary a peep about this story locally or nationally after the fact though. “Internal investigation” seems to translate to “out of site, out of mind”. I suppose the fact that a search of the vehicle 3 days after the shooting turned up a gun on the floor behind the driver’s seat let everyone tell themselves that they saved us all from a dangerous gunman.

rubbish. SWAT definitely serves a purpose and when used properly imo are a net benefit to criminals (make it less likely that deadly force will be used due to their superior firepower, numbers, and tactics), cops , and everybody else

however when overused AS THEY ARE, they are a net negative.

the last time i was on an incident involving SWAT, one of their snipers managed to shoot a guy who had a rooftop position and was armed with a rifle, taking potshots.

just because SWAT is over/misused does not render the concept of, or proper deployment of SWAT to be a good thing

the problem is the over/misuse of SWAT.

the patrol guys waited for SWAT (prior to SWAT’s fuckups). absolutely 100% inexcusable. sadly, that was how academies and most agencies TAUGHT back then … wait for SWAT

since then, many agencies have adopted ASAP training, but a real cop shouldn’t need TRAINING to know that when kids are being shot – you go towards the shooting scene, or you turn in your badge.

personally, i’ve been in several dozen meth labs. some tend to be well armed, but the OP is correct – it’s almost always handguns.

SWAT sounds like a good idea on paper, but in reality, they serve little useful purpose.

But you are forgetting their primo use for instilling fear in the plebes and communicating papa government’s severe displeasure for your bad behavior.

Isn’t that awesome? These guys are too worthless and weak to go into an ACTUAL danger zone, but have no problem whatsoever with jacking Joe Citizen’s house on the weakest non-violent charge.

Posers.

The same thing happened in the much taunted Hollywood Bank Robbery. I think it took 19 minutes for SWAT to arrive, WELL after line cops had established a perimeter.

SWAT sounds like a good idea on paper, but in reality, they serve little useful purpose.

Omitting the phrases “punked out,” “like little b!tches” and “defenseless left to die” was classic Balko tactfulness.

I also heard the same thing about the Virginia Tech shootings, that the police arrived outside and waited until the sounds of shooting stopped before entering the building.

Can it be that the “heroes” are actually cowards who will not deploy unless they know there is no danger involved. Or, they know you have a dog.