The Purple Center: Outside authorities should review the slow police response in Binghamton mass killings
Here is a blog post on the issue.
I really don't blame the police, because situations like this underscore the problems with over-reliance on the police for public safety.
It seems that when a mass murder takes place in a building, the police always treat it as a hostage situation, where the procedure is to surround the building and set up communication with the hostage-taker, then proceed cautiously to enter the building as safely as possible. All that makes perfect sense--if you are dealing with a hostage-taker.
But mass murderers aren't usually interested in hostages. They just want to kill as many people as possible before the police kill them. It seems that sometimes they get tired of waiting for the police to enter the building, so they kill themselves. This maniac in Binghamton was wearing body armor, so I assume he wanted a shootout with police. The police remained outside, so he killed himself.
Result: 14 dead civilians, 25 wounded civilians, one dead mass murderer, and zero police casualties.
The hostage situation response doesn't save civilian lives if the murderer's objective is mass murder and suicide. The only kind of police response that might make a difference in a Binghamton-type situation is the John Wayne type, where the first patrol officers on the scene crash through the door as fast as they can and try to kill the murderer before he kills them or anybody else.
That would help only if they get there while the murderer is still killing people. Often it is already over within a few minutes. And that is really too much to ask of patrol officers, isn't it? They aren't equipped for it, they aren't trained for it, they don't know what is going on inside, and they could be walking into a trap with explosives or an ambush.
That's why the only really effective response would come from armed citizens who are capable of defending themselves.
2 comments:
Your proposal of having everyone packing heat assumes these mass shooters are rational actors. Frequently as in this case they are not because they are psychotic, delusional and as you note often suicidal.
Well, even if the shooter is not a rational actor, if one or more of the victims happens to be armed, there's a greater chance that the madman will be stopped before there's tremendous loss of life.
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