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Originally Posted by afc wimbledon
Whilst I would have liked the cop to enter the building as the outcome probably couldn't have been any worse the truth is you can not expect anyone to be prepared to sacrifice their lives, its nice if they do but its absurd to expect it, he had no back up, no vest and a woefully underpowered sidearm.
He did what almost everyone would do on their own in a deadly but confusing situation, he froze, he also followed what has been police training in the US since the late 1960's, police have been taught for decades that they need to stay alive first and all else is secondary to that, its a philosophy I disagree with but its the way the US police operate, they are taught basically to use overwhelming and deadly force to be safe, its the theory behind the advent of SWAT teams and came out of the Watts riots in the 60's. It is why the cops down there shoot first and ask questions after.
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The part that saddens me is that with the passive strategy, kids have literally no hope of help until a swat team arrives. That's why I was moderately critical of the officers response. Not because I want teachers armed or more guns around, but I was apparently mistakenly naive to think that having armed police in schools could help keep them safe.
In my high school (95-99, ~1500 kids) we had an armed officer. In our case he was a regular city police officer that got h.s. duty as his assignment. He helped with truancy and all sorts of other things, but I had always assumed if an attack happened he would be our first line of defense.