Capt. Blakely (Portrayed by Warner Anderson):
Mr. Greenwald, there can be no more serious charge against an officer than cowardice under fire.
Lt. Barney Greenwald (Portrayed by Jose Ferrier):
Sir, may I make one thing clear? It is not the defense’s contention that Lieutenant Commander Queeg is a coward. Quite the contrary. The defense assumes that no man who rises to command a United States naval ship can possibly be a coward and that, therefore, if he commits questionable acts under fire, the explanation must be elsewhere.
The Caine Mutiny @1954I thought of this scene in The Caine Mutiny while looking over the active shooter in Texas last week. On Tuesday, May 22, a murderer walked into Robb Elementary School in Uvalde TX. He then murdered 21 people, all but two children, and injured 4 others. The nation has focused on this matter since then.
A quick review of the facts that are unquestioned.
- The murderer purchased two AR-15s (One on the 17th, one of the 20th) just after his 18th birthday (May 16th).
- On the morning of the 22nd. he shoots his grandmother, stole her truck, crash it next to the school. At 11:28, the shooter gets out of the truck, fires in the direction of two people walking from a funeral home. The two withdraw and call 911.
- The shooter enters the school at 11:33am, then starts to shoot towards Rooms 111 and 112.
- At 11:35am, three Uvalde police officers walk in, received fire, backed off.
- At 12:50pm, the Border Patrol SWAT team gains access to the room the suspect was in with a key, and shot him dead.
I leave a lot of the details out, and that is for a reason. Because I don’t know for certain what happened over the time the police were engaged with the suspects, and I’ll be the first to say that. But we have a lot of people making statements and they don’t know what was going on either. Three examples:
- Initial reports a school resource officer followed the suspect into the school and exchanged fire with him. The governor briefed that. Not accurate, but not having a SRO present is plausible. The school police department has 6 cops, including the chief, to cover 10 campuses.
- Follow on reports were that no cops were in the building while the shooting was going on, but police held a line outside. Not accurate.
- Immediate reports stated the shooter wore body armor. According to the latest reports, he had on a tactical vest, but no armor plates inserted.
In the hours after the shooting, I got into a heated Facebook discussion with someone who was screeching, “We can do something…” Big mistake on my part, I asked what, exactly. Things got ugly after that, but a point I made to him, multiple times, calm down, let the process work its way through, find out the facts, and go from there.
I reminded him of the “murder” of Michael Brown by Officer Darren Wilson, who “Shot him like a dog!” Only, he didn’t. After being shown forensic evidence of Brown’s blood in Wilson’s vehicle, and gunshot residue on Brown’s hands, the witnesses “revised” their statements, i.e., changed their lies when they knew they had perjured themselves.
My Facebook friend was having none of that. He later posted a piece that the cops never entered until the SWAT team entered, comparing it to firemen not entering because the building was on fire. And he said our “heroes” let the kids get shot.
By all accounts, police were in the building from the time the suspect entered and engaged him. But the suspect had entered Rooms 111/112 and locked the doors behind him. Multiple reports are that the SWAT team needed a master key to enter the room. Speculation on my part here, but in the years after Columbine, many schools reinforced doors to keep active shooters out. The problem is it also keeps the police out. If it was a standard door fame, any fire engine (And many police vehicles) would have breeching gear onboard to easily pry the door open. Again, we don’t know the details, we need to find them out.
An issue I haven’t seen clarified is where the rooms are in the building, and were their windows on one or more sides. Obvious area to breech and enter, but if the rooms were interior only, that is not an option. Again, more information to know.
Latest information I’ve heard is the Uvalde school police chief believed the shooter had stopped, and was no longer an active shooter, but barracked suspect incident. Again, the details are not fully out, but that would be consistent with post Columbine guidance and training. The first priority is to stop the killing. In the Pulse nightclub attack, the shooter had ceased fire, but had hostages. As long as he has stopped shooting, it gives the responding units what they need more than anything, time. Time to get a diagram of the building, locate good breeching points, obtain needed resources if you must force entry, letting the hostage negotiators speak with the suspect and hopefully peacefully settle the incident.
I’ve written on what is expected with police in situations like this.
Another point I will bring out goes back to the men at Columbine. An academy classmate ran our agency’s active shooter training a few years ago, and he made an insightful point about the officers responding to an active shooter: “I’m not going to second-guess them, but we all have a badge, and we entered this profession knowing what was expected of us. And people have to know we will do what has to be done.” Four SROs followed the orders of a captain while there were kids being murdered. They will have to live with their consciences, wondering from this point forward, “Should I have just said, ‘Screw you, I’ve got to look myself in the mirror and there are kids in there’?”
We are back again at an active shooter in a school, and how it was handled. I have seen too many people calling the responding officers cowards at best, inhuman criminals at worse. I won’t go there at all. My personal policy over almost a quarter century of wearing a badge is I will not judge their actions until I know all the facts in the case. And I will not judge from the perspective of an idiot or politician (Yes, I repeat myself), sitting in an office with a cup of coffee, but from the view the of a man under fire. Decisions needed to be made on the spot are often a choice of bad and worse, and under pressure, the worse one may be made. But would you or I have done better with people screaming and bullets flying? You will never know until you have to make that choice on the ground.
Again, I’m not defending or criticizing the officer’s actions. I will say it again, wait till everything is out, and judge accordingly. Then learn from it, so we can do better the next time.
Michael A. Thiac is a retired Army intelligence officer, with over 23 years experience, including serving in the Republic of Korea, Japan, and the Middle East. He is also a retired police patrol sergeant, with over 22 years’ service, and over ten year’s experience in field training of newly assigned officers. He has been published at The American Thinker, PoliceOne.com, and on his personal blog, A Cop’s Watch.
Opinions expressed are his alone and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of current or former employers.
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