Parkland: It’s not enough to have an armed guard
If the guard isn’t willing to engage the killer, the guard’s weapon does no good.
This is a very very disturbing report:
Scot Peterson, who was the last line of defense at Parkland’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas resigned after video surfaced of him outside the school Feb. 14 when all hell was breaking loose inside, said Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel.
According to Israel, Peterson, a school safety officer since 2009, remained outside of the building for about four of the six minutes Nikolas Cruz was inside killing students with an assault rifle.
When asked what Peterson should have done, Israel did not mince words.
“Went in,” Israel said. “Address the killer. Kill the killer.”…
“Devastated, sick to my stomach, there are no words.” Israel said of his feelings after learning Peterson did not enter the building.
Israel suspended Peterson but Peterson decided to resign instead.
I had assumed there was no armed guard at Parkland, although I was surprised that a guard hadn’t been stationed there in light of all the threats that had been made against the school and its students. Now it turns out that there was a guard (Peterson) either stationed there or arriving quickly on the scene, and that guard did nothing.
One of the characteristics of protectors—“sheepdogs” in the parlance—is that (unlike the rest of us, including me) they run towards danger instead of away. But this sheepdog seems to have been a sheep in sheepdog’s clothing.
A person has to know him/herself before taking on a job like that. It does no good to have a guard who will not confront the danger that presents itself. No wonder Sheriff Israel is so angry.
One particular quote from Sheriff Israel caught my attention. In it, he refers to the Jewish practice of sitting shiva (mourning):
These families lost their children, we lost coaches. I’ve been to the funerals. I’ve been to the homes where they’re sitting Shiva. I’ve been to the vigils. It’s just, there are no words.
That reminded me that I had read that Parkland has a large Jewish population (40% of the high school) and that many of the victims of the shooting were Jewish. I began to wonder whether Sheriff Israel himself was also Jewish; the name certainly suggests that possibility.
Here’s what I found:
Israel is the county’s first Jewish sheriff, and it’s an identity he has embraced. A 2016 campaign flier reported on that year by the South Florida Sun-Sentinel centers on the role that faith in general, and Judaism in particular, plays in his life.
“My Jewish faith is a central part of my entire life,” the flier quotes Israel as saying. “My late father Sonny Israel fought in the Korean War and became a police officer because he believed in the call from the Talmud that ”˜Whoever saves one life saves an entire world.’ Those words guided my brother and I, as we also became police officers.”
Israel is the sheriff in charge of the area that includes Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, where 17 faculty and students were killed by a gunman on Wednesday. Israel’s children, triplets, had attended the school.
I don’t think these facts had much if anything to do with Cruz targeting that school or his choice of victims, although I certainly don’t know. I think it’s likely, however, that he chose it because it was the school he’d attended and from which he’d been suspended, and the numbers of Jewish victims seem to have been proportionate to their representation in the student body.
Wow. That is really depressing. You’re right. The psychologists that deal with the military like to talk about sheep, sheepdogs, and wolves a lot.
Not everyone is cut out for the job. And it isn’t necessarily Peterson’s fault. This should be seen as a TSA job. If there was a shooting in the airport, I think a lot of TSA would freak. Training is important. I’d be very interested to know what sort of training Peterson was given. And what sort of screening was involved. Will definitely look into it.
Neo
From my comment about 20 min. ago on another of your posts,
“…It appears to me that the individuals and actions taken at the time are more important than the specific firearm (if available) that are used. These people didn’t run away, they engaged the threat.” Those people were the capitol police and the two Texans responding to the “Scalise” shooter and the Texas church shooter last summer.
Sheepdogs.
Didn’t know this either.
However, it’s not surprising. Military experts have researched soldiers in combat situations and discovered how few actually shoot to kill. Since then there has been substantial effort to train soldiers to shoot to kill.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killology
Following up on the previous mass murder topic, it’s a backhanded complement to humanity that we find it hard to kill and keep killing even if one is a psychopath.
The school leadership took a passive approach to identifying Cruz as a threat – basically talked themselves into ignoring him.
The FBI ignored explicit warnings and calls that Cruz was capable of and likely to commit violence.
The school safety officer was incapable of discharging his duties in the face of an active shooter situation.
Given these facts it is no surprise that some – mostly those on the Left – see confiscation of guns as the only solution to reducing or ending the killing of students in these sorts of situations.
This makes that entire show last night on CNN even more pathetic. If law enforcement isn’t going to intervene even when they are on the scene then the gun issue is pointless.
As a Navy vet, I find it a crime for the school security not to have gone in. To know that a shooter is actively killing innocent, undefended people, to BE that defense, and to do nothing about it is disgraceful.
Not everyone is cut out to do that. It’s not something that everyone can or should aspire to. That’s a respectable stand to take. But having accepted that calling, it was a crime (dereliction of duty) not to have done what you were supposed to do.
Tim Turner: Bang-on!
(So to speak.)
Renta cops don’t equal warriors and hunters of humans.
The problem of how to protect soft targets from terrorism in 2001 was a hot topic of debate in counter terrorism or COIN.
The easiest application and the one I agree with, is to turn the soft targets into hard targets. This isn’t done with security guards. Security is merely an additional protective layer, that guerilla operations can circumvent. That is why it is better to harden all the soft targets by making them into warriors and killers, than to randomly select guards for them. Why…well, what are the chances that the guards are effective or in position. It’s not 100%.
If 1 out of every 3 persons in a soft target location is a warrior, that means the active shooter and predator has 33% chance of encountering somebody he cannot neutralize. This fixes him in place, allowing more and more reinforcements to amplify and focus in on the threat.
A single security “guard” can be easily neutralized using plain clothed assassins or snipers. Not a big deal. They can also be bought out using blackmail or other types of covert ops.
In this scenario, the guard did not receive the proper orders so his OODA decision cycle froze or got put into a permanent loop, preventing him from taking the offensive initiative. Why… well could be any number of issues. Ideological, legal concerns, etc. The fear of being prosecuted, the fear of being criticized, the fear of being killed, the fear of shooting bystanders and civilian children… all of it adds up in combat stress.
The military conditioning process is easy. Put country, nationalism, and patriotism as replacements for a civilian’s internal guide and judgment, with the safety trigger of proper authorization and orders. If they are given orders to fire, they will fire. If not, they will refuse to shoot friendlies and blues.
When the police use this method, they have an interesting problem. There is nobody at the crime scene to order the cops to fire or stop firing, since usually everyone is in a tunnel vision situation without commanders or legitimate chain of command in C3. Without the ability to wait for orders on field, they have to react to threats. And threats are criminals, but criminals are also civilians. So that means all civilians are threats that need to be eliminated to safeguard the LEOs.
There’s your jeopardy and due process.
A warrior is different from a soldier or someone in a hierarchy, because the warrior is a solo combatant most of the time. The warriors, whether civilian or anything else, have to make decisions on their own as to what tactics and strategy they will employ. Logistically, they are on their own as well.
Soldiers operate effectively only as part of a unit, a chain of command, an army. Hotdogging heroics are not promoted all that much.
There are also different roles for sheepdogs. Some dogs are like wolves, they patrol the perimeter, in the darkest darkness, keeping a watch as early warning sentries and perimeter guards. Then there are the dogs that like to be near the sheep and the dogs that like to just rest until given an order by the shepherd. They are analogous to close in protection.
The military conditioning process makes it easier for humans to kill other humans, but it has its problems. If you make it too easy, then you get a bunch of super soldiers that are out of control and psychotic. Not very useful. If you take the other side of the spectrum, then the civilian individual nature of the soldier overcomes their military discipline and the army breaks apart as their morale crashes and everyone is fleeing or fighting on their own. Also not good.
The police’s problem is that they have no safeguards. The individual LEO is counted on to make the choice of shooting or not shooting, but that is impossible when military conditioning has already made them gut reflexively view all civilians as legitimate targets and threats to neutralize. That’s why people see such extremes where LEOs hesitate and are killed vs where LEOs don’t hesitate and kill the wrong people.
If the police academy fails in the conditioning process, then the LEO dies because they are not at combat condition alert when the threat appears. If the police academy succeeds in the conditioning process, then the LEO no longer considers fellow humans as humans, thus the natural disinclination to terminate people has been removed. The moment the LEO recognizes you, the civilian, as a criminal or potential criminal, they pull the trigger. That’s your trial, be satisfied with that.
SWAT teams are generally worse and better on the scale of tactical operations. It got worse after 2001 because the demand got too high for them while the training cadres were insufficient to produce good team and solo operators. Homeland security was pumping out funding for more SWAT teams but without the requisite safeguard and tactical training. Apparently every county and city and ABC fed group now has their own SWAT team (aka death squad or kill team).
The sweet spot, so to speak, is the individual that conditions his own trigger mechanisms and safeties (Rules of Engagement). Thus they can follow orders in a unit if necessary, but also operate solo. Soldiers don’t necessarily like that, because it means the civilian is an independent authority that chooses who to kill on their own conscience, dime, and judgment. The police sometimes likes it and sometimes does not, depending on if the police is like Chicago where they are the master crooks.
I offer that there is an even more fundamental tragedy here than simply an officer of the law being remiss in his duty. There is an implied agreement in the contract between the citizen (not “subject”) and the state that the citizen will give up vigilante justice and violent vengeful acts, because that citizen, in turn, will be protected by the policing and execution of justice by the state.
Although a single individual incident, this sheriff’s deputy violated that agreement by violating the oath he took. This is no less heinous than the targeting of political adversaries by the IRS, swatting incidents, or the uneven administration of justice, all of which have become all too common.
Single incidents all, but they add up to a frightening and extensive list which, IMO, pushes us closer to the extreme of either a totalitarian state or anarchy and chaos.
https://legalinsurrection.com/2018/02/branco-cartoon-protect/
It’s hard to not judge the guard, but this is the environment he was working in. What if he actually shot one of the criminals that his PD had spent years protecting?
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2018/02/21/its-too-late-broward-county-school-board-beginning-to-admit-their-mistakes/
“Well, there it is.
This is what Jack Cashill was writing about yesterday: “Did the Progressive ‘Broward County Solution’ Cost 17 Student Lives?” —
Yes Jack, yes it did.
Jack Cashill knows all too well, because he watched us follow a similar 2012 Trayvon Martin trail into the rabbit hole of manipulated diversionary school discipline to avoid criminal arrests. Just so the school system could “improve their statistics.”
Broward County schools intentionally created polices from 2011 through 2015 that culminated in the 2018 mass school shooting in Parkland. We know this with great specificity because five years ago we warned Broward County Florida school board members this could happen.”
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/02/did_the_progressive_broward_county_solution_cost_17_student_lives.html#.WoyGF7t3rqM.twitter
By Jack Cashill
“We’re not compromising school safety. We’re really saving the lives of kids,” boasted Michaelle Valbrun-Pope, executive director of Student Support Initiatives for Broward County Public Schools, in August 2017.
Valbrun-Pope was referring to what an article by Jeffrey Benzing in Public Source calls the “Broward County Solution.” As Benzing relates, Broward County used to lead the state of Florida in sending students to the state’s juvenile justice system. County leaders responded with a perfectly progressive solution: “lower arrests by not making arrests.”
Authorities agreed to treat twelve different misdemeanor offenses as school-related issues, not criminal ones. The results impressed the people who initiated the program. Arrests dropped from more than a thousand in 2011-2012 to less than four hundred just four years later.
…
This is not the first time that this “solution” to school crime has produced lethal results. An earlier case in the nearby Miami-Dade County public school system should have been a warning, but unfortunately, the media conspired to suppress the details of the case. The victim in Miami-Dade was one Trayvon Martin.
Miami-Dade schools have their own police department. The exposure of the department’s practices began inadvertently with the Miami Herald story on Martin’s multiple suspensions. The article prompted M-DPD’s police chief to launch a major internal affairs investigation into the possible leak of this information to the Herald.
As the investigation began, the officers realized immediately that they had a problem on their hands. “Oh, God, oh, my God, oh, God,” one major reportedly said when first looking at Martin’s data. He could see that Martin had been suspended twice already that school year for offenses that should have gotten him arrested. In each case, however, the case file on Martin was fudged to make the crime seem less serious than it was.”
* * *
The point, that most sane people recognize, is that if you discipline students early for small offenses, they don’t progress to committing larger ones — or at least you put them away where they can’t hurt other people.
(Idealistic, not realistic, but that’s what we believe the Justice system should be doing.)
Clint Smith has a quote that addresses part of this:
Here is the hard truth- you are responsible for your own safety- and to think otherwise, or be taught otherwise is criminal misinformation. If you are in a public places unarmed, you are playing a macabre lottery- just be aware of that.
This sheriff’s deputy SRO was supposed to have a partner. Where was he? It always seems like we need a crowbar to get the information out.
I don’t know any cops, but I’ll bet they’re a lot braver when they’ve got a partner checking their 6, and available to pull their injured body out of the danger zone.
Secondly, I suspect the police training ethos is a bit like the airliner admonition for parents to put on their oxygen mask first and help your children second. Take care of yourself first, because you won’t help anyone if you are dead. But I think the police have taken it too far.
Police have been taken to court for dereliction of duty where people have been injured or killed and it simply isn’t a crime anywhere I’ve heard of.
_______
There is an elementary school principal, Norina Bentzel, in Pennsylvania who put herself between a crazy man with machete and her students. Now she only has partial use of her arm. I saw her a televised interview.
It’s weird but maybe obvious that she saw the little kids as her charges. She didn’t give her actions a second thought even though she was unequipped to handle the threat.
In the Pulse Nightclub shooting the first responding cops were very proactive and brave until they were in radio contact with their CO. Then everything became very cautious, as though the lives of the two dozen people bleeding out were secondary to the potential injuries that police might incur.
This is why arming teachers is unlikely to make any difference to school shootings.
Most people will not put themselves in harm’s way fast enough to matter. They would if they had to time to rationally think, but under the pressure of imminent death your self-preservation instinct takes over. Vets and ex-cops will sometimes be different, having had the training and already thought through the issues, but your average blowhard who asserts he is tough enough — because he’s been on the range a few times — will wilt under pressure.
Arming teachers will just ensure shooters to make sure they target the teacher first. After that it is back to where we are now.
Chester. We’re not talking about arming teachers. We’re talking about allowing legal owners to carry in school. While it’s true that buying a gun doesn’t make you a tough guy, some people who are gaited to run to trouble will be armed in school and that’s better than having them run to trouble with a fire extinguisher.
There was a ROTC guy at VaTech who tried to rush the gunman. He was not armed, fortunately, or someone might have been hurt. He got a posthumous award, but the better thing would have been for somebody to have the tools to equal his heart.
I really think POTUS might fix this. If we harden the schools, potential shooters will know they are in for a fight. Unlike the Islamic terrorists, these shooters aren’t openly suicidal. The Vegas guy apparently had an escape plan of sorts.
American wants solutions; not an issue. Words and deeds make the perfect man.
Chester (et al):
The difference in motivation between the guard who froze and the coach who stood in front of the children was tremendous.
I would go down cursing the fool that denied me the right to protect me and mine.
Ed has it right.
It’s the personal investment in LIFE that’s the difference.
I hope he kept his weapon and one bullet when he retired.
Scot Peterson is a disgrace. I don’t know how he is going to live with it. I hope he does the honorable thing, at least once, at least at the end.
Exactly. How does one go on living with the knowledge that you are a coward who may have saved the lives of beautiful young people but instead cowered in fear? How is it possible? Removing all mirrors from the house might be the first step…
Humans have a tremendous capacity and ability to rationalize. The same traits that kept Peterson outside will help him deal with his failure to intercede.
You may not be able to live with yourself if you had done what Peterson did, but, then, I suspect you would not have done what he did.
In my first post, I meant to say this shouldn’t be seen as a TSA job. Somehow the negation got dropped.
I think people are right. When I first commented, I didn’t realize he was a police deputy. Given that he signed up for it, he should have done his duty. I’m still curious to learn more about his background. This was obviously a massive failure.
Why wasn’t he working with a partner? Is that policy or an accident? Secondly, what sort of training did he receive?
One report on the deputy who froze said his annual salary was $75,000. If true, low pay was not a problem.
Ahh, Neo. The Jewish issue seems hardly relevant here.
If CNN morphed into a supporter of Israel, they surely would have mentioned it, nay harped on it.
Coming from you, I’m surprised.
Here’s a question for everyone: who should have been armed? The LEO cowering in fear outside the building, or the teacher who died shielding children with his own body?
we’ve all heard that when seconds count, the police are minutes away. Now we must face the probability that even when they are on the scene, they may be of little use.
They would if they had to time to rationally think, but under the pressure of imminent death your self-preservation instinct takes over.
This is a good example of a non combatant ignorant civilian that thinks his lack of wisdom is superior to all the gas shot out from his clown car.
To put it another way, rational thinking is more likely to motivate a civilian non combatant to avoid risks, rather than to run towards the sounds of gunfire.
some people who are gaited to run to trouble will be armed in school and that’s better than having them run to trouble with a fire extinguisher.
Chester’s projecting. Some people are likely to run away no matter what the options are, abandoning everyone to be bear food. They thus think other people are like that as well.
The one thing with humans is that there is no one standard of equality to judge them.
That is why, in response to Aesop’s line, it is not hard for me to avoid penalizing the LEo or guard that appears to have failed his civic/social/job duties.
Warriors have had to cultivate the mental intent to kill often times on their own and thus they know first hand the difficulties of taking the initiative.
How does one go on living with the knowledge that you are a coward who may have saved the lives of beautiful young people but instead cowered in fear? How is it possible?
Oh it is very possible. Just look at Diane Feinstein, that Leftist woman in Saigon, and John F Kerry.
I once heard the story of one of my martial brothers from one of my instructors in hand to hand. This martial brother of mine was with his girlfriend in some city urbanish zone and was set upon by a great many hostile males. The leader of the hostile group intimidated the woman enough that she obeyed his commands to kneel down and do sex acts on the group boss. Of course, this was only because she was afraid for her lover, as her lover was being restrained by about 3 or 4 other males. Apparently the group boss started taking a passionate liking to her and started pushing her down to begin raping her. This caused my martial brother to most likely tap into the 30% reserve strength that berserkers and other warriors have access to. Normally the human muscles self limit themselves to 70-80% of the max contract strength, to avoid harming tendons and bones and nerves. He somehow got out of the hold of the people restraining him and began fighting with the group boss and the rest. Apparently the group was actually losing to the sole fighter (a berserker temporarily, but with no lethal force h2h skills at all) and pulled out a knife to even the edge. The woman, meanwhile tried to help by jumping on the back of the knife wielder and thus distracted him. While the brawl was ongoing, the woman got stabbed in the neck and later died. The martial brother suffered little injuries, but received a great mental trauma. He later joined the lineage instruction of H2H from some of my instructors as a result.
Ignoring the killing of some random strangers and kids, is far easier to tolerate and justify than ignoring the killing and destruction of one’s lover.
This is why some warriors receive and practice the methodology of virtual visualized training. We walk around as normal civilians, preplanning and visualizing how to eliminate targets in real life, but without the behavior that accommodates aggression or law breaking. Thus putting into realistic practice the Marine Corps or General Mattis’ comment that one should be ready to kill everyone, in the room or outside of the room…
The penultimate unrivaled under the heavens warrior is ready to kill every human on the planet. The mental intent is preloaded and already planned and visualized out. All that waits is the physical trigger for action.
The teachers have a personal stake in protecting their students. That is because many of their students are their favored ones or they have taken a liking to them.
For example, I would have to hesitate a significant amount to consider risking my life in charging to the rescue of Leftists or SJW zombies or those hostile to me. Unless I was bound by a covenant with the Divine Counsel or a personal contract, hesitation would be far greater than a “few minutes”.
If the lover of a LEO was in a school being put under siege, they might charge forward to eliminate the threat, assuming is a singular, as that might be the fastest way to save their lover. If there was a favorite student of his in the school, a LEO might just have enough courage. If there are cute girls that respect the LEO as a senior and mentor, that would be enough of a motivation too.
But is that the case for “American society”? Why should Law Enforcement Officers risk their lives to save civilians when many criminals come from civilians? LEOs are their backup, allies, and friends. Civilians are merely potential criminals waiting to become criminals and killers of LEOs. Why should LEOs, the superior class, risk their lives to save the peons and serfs?
the state that the citizen will give up vigilante justice and violent vengeful acts, because that citizen, in turn, will be protected by the policing and execution of justice by the state.
There are exceptions to this commonly accepted social contract.
The true disciples of Jesus (Yeshua) of Nazareth (the Nazarene) gave up such actions because no matter how far humans take the penalties of human law into consideration, death will still allow the soul/spirit to escape punishment. Thus in order to pursue ultimate immortal justice, the agreement is that in return for the constraint of punishment in this life, the guilty parties will be resurrected and given immortal forms and then punished later with full transparency. The Divine Justice is giving people what they deserve, not merely a punishment.
Of course this could all be merely the trappings of a religious control scheme, but then again your parents and the State could also be lying to you about everything. Human trust is thus not inviolable nor guaranteed to payout. Even more so for a relationship of a mortal and their god. Loyalty is always a two way street.
As for the original topic, yes most humans agreed to the social compact of the USA, a high trust civilization. That, above all else, creates prosperity and security, not totalitarian state military power, not the 4th estate or 4th branch of government the beloved “free press” of America, nor is it the legal or economic or social power of the courts. This obedience to the social compact, lasts no more than the life of a mere human mortal. It is not eternal, it is not even Divine. It is transient. It is temporary. It is weak. It is inferior to the Divine Contracts.
To make a mortal break their human law contracts, nothing more than pain and rewards and death is needed for a mortal. To make a mortal break their Divine Contract… not even the enhanced interrogation methods of the ancient Romans sufficed.
Now we must face the probability that even when they are on the scene, they may be of little use.
For warriors and citizen independent killers, police were always more of a hindrance than a help. The most the LEOs could help with was to put the bodies into bodybags and clean the place up.
Sooner or later, some LEO SWAT team is going to pretrigger on an active shooting zone and kill everyone with guns, the citizen protectors as well as the hostile assassins. It is only a matter of time, as people get more extreme and insane.
These are the latter days written of in prophecy, which includes Gnostic and Sumerian prophecies and Norse prophecies and everybody else’s religious prophecies too.
Scott Robinson:
I was merely pointing out a fact I find both interesting and unusual. I don’t know what point you think I was trying to make, but actually I was merely observing something.
“Hardening” the schools might be the only solution that the politicians can agree upon. It might be effective. But there will be non-monetary costs we cannot calculate.
In the 50’s and 60’s, I went to elementary and high school in a small town in flyover country. We were certainly taught that there was danger in the world, and we boys expected that we would be called upon to go out and confront it. But there was no danger in or around the school house. My elementary school had only 24 kdis in all eight grades. My high school class was 32. I knew every one of them, even the “tough” kids, and knew there was no danger from them, either.
If today’s children go to school in a fortress, they will invariably believe that everything outside the castle walls is a terribly dangerous place, and that only the government can protect them from it. That bodes ill for liberty.
If today’s children go to school in a fortress, they will invariably believe that everything outside the castle walls is a terribly dangerous place, and that only the government can protect them from it. That bodes ill for liberty.
The Japanese have a counter agent for that. Many of their schools are private institutions, with an actual gate, occupied by actual gate guards, and a wall that requires a rope to get over. The wall encloses the entire property, not just parts of it.
It would be easy for the campus to feel like prisoners. However, this is counter acted by greater autonomy and powers given to the democratically elected Student President and council, which are selected as a cabinet by the Student President.
Part of this self governing autonomy includes the collection and distribution of all club funding and approvals. The collection and enforcement of policies governing licensed food production and the selling of materials during cultural fairs. Plus the monitoring of public morality in the school, recommending teacher home visits for troublesome households, and the creation of an organization that has a representative in each permanent classroom to “monitor” things.
Essentially, they are as well organized as the Amish and Latter Day Saints in the uSA but are only considered junior adults or those who have yet to come of legal age (20).
The world is a far more dangerous place than teenagers were ever told. But as with the Tooth Fairy and Satan Clause, telling lies of illusion to entertain kids isn’t a good thing by the standards of warriors.
I stumbled across a product today that I believe to be critical to protecting our students from school shooters. I think it belongs in every schoolroom in America and this is an item I’m in favor of the Federal government financing.
It’s highly effective at what it’s designed to do and so simple to use that a 5-7 yr old could employ it.
Perhaps even more importantly, it’s something that both sides can agree on. Finally, it’s very inexpensive compared to other proposed solutions.
It’s called the Barracuda Intruder Defense System and here’s a short video that demonstrates how the various types work.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJ19_qYPuyM
The system is manufactured by Bilco and here’s a link to their product page.
https://www.bilco.com/category237/Safety_&_Security_Products
It is of course not perfect but would protect children and teachers in classrooms. Children trained to move to either side of the door would prevent a shooter from targeting those inside by firing through the typical narrow window in most schoolroom doors.
Combined with an alert system and proper training it could form part of our own version of the highly successful “Defense in Depth” that the State of Israel has been using for decades in protecting their schools.
I think so highly of it that I just wrote to the NRA, Senator Rubio and President Trump about it, suggesting that after a proper evaluation, their promoting it would raise public awareness of its availability.
It should also be obvious that the NRA, Sen. Rubio and Pres. Trump promoting this approach would demonstrate that they do want to “do something” about the problem.
First, it is a fallen world. These things will happen.
That means anyone who says, “We should take action to reduce these kind of events, provided that the action doesn’t create worse problems” is thinking clearly and can be trusted to have a voice in evaluating solutions.
But anyone who says, “We should take action to ensure this Never Happens Again” is thinking like an adolescent, is likely to try to immanentize the eschaton, and should be excluded from the ongoing discussion.
Second, competency to carry and use a firearm and respond correctly to deadly situations is a result of character, training, and how a person is “wired.”
That means we can neither arm all the teachers, nor make hard targets of all the students, nor make decent sheepdogs of all the security officers.
On the contrary: If the population of those who are armed are largely self-selecting, you must have a culture that inclines those who are best-suited to self-selection and those who are least-inclined to self-exclusion.
And if you are selecting in a top-down kind of way, you will need to start with a sort of experienced-officer-corps of persons with the right character, training, and wiring, who can discern which of the candidate personnel are best-suited.
I’m sorry to say that, in the U.S., our popular media and our academic culture have done as much as possible, bar lynchings, to belittle the individuals who have such attributes and the culture which best produces them.
What to do?
Well, until our culture changes, I think you should steel yourself for more failures of trusted institutions and more senseless outrageous tragedies. That’s the realistic response, at the macro- level.
And you should encourage whoever’ll listen to distinguish between problems that can be 100% exterminated (like polio), and problems (like school shootings/bombings) that can only be reduced to a slightly lower level by incremental adjustments at the margins.
And at the individual level? Discern with input from sober-minded others whether you are the kind of person who can be a sheepdog. And if you are, then get the training, read the literature, learn the doctrine, buy the relevant gear, and start carrying.
Most (all?) Florida public schools have a uniformed resource officer, be that a sheriff or police officer.
That he chose to run and hide is not a huge surprise, tho disappointing. The only time a significant portion of LEOs put ordinance downrange is when they need to re-qualify.
Paper targets at the range tend to not fire back. I would have been perfectly ok if he had swung around to get behind the perp and shot him in the back.
Renta cops don’t equal warriors and hunters of humans.
Not a renta cop. An actual, duly sworn, deputy sheriff.
Remember: To Protect and Serve is a very slick PR slogan. It isn’t actually something to hang your safety on. They’re not “first responders”. They’re the clean up service.
R.C.
Very good, sober assessment of the issues involved and what an individual should consider and do.
Geoffrey Britain at 2:28PM today:
Interesting line of products. I wonder whether they’re hiring!
Well, there are photos of Sheriff Israel hanging out with Biden, Obama, Clinton and Sanders.
Smells lib to me.
Geoffrey Britain at 2:28PM today:
Impressive stuff.
And so simple.
Sheriff’s hiring of political supporters under fire
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/local/broward/fl-sheriff-political-hires-20160827-story,amp.html
It just keeps getting worse.
When Coral Springs police officers arrived at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, on February 14 in the midst of the school shooting crisis, many officers were surprised to find not only that Broward County Sheriff’s Deputy Scot Peterson, the armed school resource officer, had not entered the building, but that three other Broward County Sheriff’s deputies were also outside the school and had not entered, Coral Springs sources tell CNN. The deputies had their pistols drawn and were behind their vehicles, the sources said, and not one of them had gone into the school.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/23/politics/parkland-school-shooting-broward-deputies/index.html?sr=twCNN022318parkland-school-shooting-broward-deputies0437PMVODtop
Sheriff Israel is toast and fully deserves it.
Not a renta cop. An actual, duly sworn, deputy sheriff.
It fits one definition but not another. Instead of a security guard that serves as a kind of deterrence or citizen arrest force, instead it was a cop rented out to the campus/academy/school.
They couldn’t even rent out 2 of em it seems.
Now if it was a civilian or LEO that volunteered for a particular role, it might be different. At least they might have failed by trying.
Children trained to move to either side of the door would prevent a shooter from targeting those inside by firing through the typical narrow window in most schoolroom doors.
That’s my favorite blind spot for ambushing people coming in narrow doorways. It was my default position to be in if the school I was in started suffering interesting sounds, back when Virginia Tech was in the news.
Eliminating the threat in under 3 moves or 3 seconds is feasible for an ambush attack. 5 moves or 5 seconds is probably more average and over 5 is the norm.
Efficiency is always good, since I never settled for merely mediocre speed in terminating threats. Why? Because their buddies could be behind them. They need servicing too. One can’t use the buddies of a kill team as human shields forever. The nice thing about guerilla warfare is that even if one doesn’t have firearms, it is possible to upgrade or steal enemy weapons. Perfect for a guerilla ambusher. The fundamental problem of people who lack range in lethal force is that the firearm can engage at significantly longer ranges than a brawler. The brawler has to close the range gap, which usually means they get wounded or killed or suppressed and fixed in place. For an ambush location like a class room, the kill team puts themselves into lethal range themselves. The element of surprise also helps.
Most people, trained or untrained, are at best average. They merely get into a ground tussle and wrestling match with the enemy. That’s not all that efficient. As for how long that takes, it’s not as long as one sees in UFC matches but 5seconds is more than enough time for a death squad’s buddy to see you on the ground wrestling, and shoot you in the head or butt stroke you with the stock.
Assassins that can kill, unarmed, in under 1 second is ideal. That gives little time for others to react. Since people like that are rare, normal civilians have to compensate using tools like firearms. Tools are just tools though.
Second, competency to carry and use a firearm and respond correctly to deadly situations is a result of character, training, and how a person is “wired.”
That is a determination of the powers that be whether they allow you to carry or not in a particular situation.
If one ignores or rebels against this secular power hierarchy, then they are going to have to fight off police SWAT teams serving warrants.
It doesn’t matter how much skills or how much resources a person has in an airport, because they are not allowed to do anything with any tools. First the restriction on tools, such as guns. The other is the restriction on doing anything, which is far more important but less popular in the public imagination.
huxley:
It does seem to be getting worse and worse, according to recent revelations, and that Sheriff Israel ran an extremely loose ship.
It is very ironic, because Columbine—which occurred about 20 years ago—was supposed to have changed things in terms of police response. Prior to Columbine (and during Columbine), police waited before entering an active shooter situation. After Columbine, that all changed, and the idea was to engage an active shooter.
The article I just linked is somewhat ironic, because it was written shortly after Parkland and it assumes the post-Columbine protocol was followed at Parkland. But apparently the first responders (Peterson and the other three) followed the pre-Columbine approach.
neo: It is to weep.
Top to bottom it seems like an awful lot of official people are doing something other than the jobs taxpayers imagine they are paying them for.
Re Columbine, a teacher bled to death, he was being cared for and supported by his students but alas they were helpless, all the while the heavily armed swatters *baby walked* outside arms on one anothers shoulders. Also Columbine a student saved his own life by dropping from a window while heavily bleeding & got treatment whereas if he had complied with the loud speaker *official* he surely would have died being told to stay inside.
the while the heavily armed swatters *baby walked* outside arms on one anothers shoulders.
They are more dangerous to people’s pets and households that they mistake for drug running cells.
Also if you report your neighbor as a drug and child sex addict to the FBI and police, they will raid and swat him for you. Works pretty well from what I have heard.
Few Leos are going to run into a life and death battlefield where the humans and demons are rampaging around…
The retired ones are actually better at it, because they aren’t going to “need orders”.
huxley Says:
February 23rd, 2018 at 8:38 pm
neo: It is to weep.
It is the End of All Things, the latter days, Ragnarok, the tribulations leading to the Final Judgment.
As for me, it is not to weep.
It is ABOUT DAMN TIME. What took you guys so long up in the heavens… bring it on, whether god, demon, or angel, it’s all going to be concluded. This War has gone on for all of Eternity. It’s about time for us to settle things.
“…Sheriff Israel ran an extremely loose ship.”
Yes, he did. If I were a resident of Broward County, I would want him fired right now.
My unwritten rule-of-thumb is that the competence of the Sheriff or Chief of Police is inversely proportional to the number of stars on their collar.
Four stars – really. Is he the equivalent of the chairman of the joint chiefs?
Probably not relevant in a consciously and specifically motivating sense re. that target: though he was reportedly anti-Semitic. Possibly because – it has been reported – of resentment toward his own birth mother who – it has been reported – was Jewish.
That’s three “it has been reported” qualifications.
Have a good weekend ….
My unwritten rule-of-thumb is that the competence of the Sheriff or Chief of Police is inversely proportional to the number of stars on their collar.
A neat hack, I shall try to remember that.
As for Jeremiah and Jean De Arc, they were both informed of future events but with no reasons or causes attached to it that was comprehensible. At least I should be grateful I am not in their situations, since Jeremiah had to wait around 30 years for confirmation. It hasn’t even been that and America has obtained more or less confirmation. They have refused to repent, so the future cannot be changed.