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by anonymousguy 3633 days ago
In situations like this mood is extremely relevant. Its what separates the disciplined professional from people who whine and second guess things.

What many people don't understand is that a wrong decision is better than no decision at all. The world isn't going to wait for you to call an assembly and have a cordial discussion about how to delicately make a possibly-suicidal suspect feel happy. It sure as hell isn't going to wait for to conduct an online survey to discover what makes people less sad. People are dying. The suspect is threatening to have explosives and claims to want to kill more people. The first order of business is to eliminate the threat. This is an active shooter incident. Once negotiations failed the only right decision is how to terminate the suspect. This is operational doctrine.

Stalling and feeling it out is a horribly bad decision to make and indicates a lack of professionalism for active shooter scenarios.

3 comments

You didn't explain how mood should inform operational doctrine.

My claim is that it should not.

You misread "mood". "In a guessing mood" is another way of saying "Willing to take time to consider all options."

Operational doctrine here suggests that, with active shooter, you prioritize removing the shooter once negotiations have failed. The "probably would have" the poster is referencing is a what-if they didn't have time for.

> with active shooter, you prioritize removing the shooter [...]

... to save hostages, of which there weren't any.

Except if he'd had planted bombs on a deadman switch, which would have been triggered by taking him out.

They're lucky he was lying. Not smart, not skilled, lucky.

And to save officers.
Not true. The officers weren't in danger at that time. He was hemmed in, and bleeding.

They killed him because they were mad and didn't care about the consequences (unfound bombs) to civilians.

> What many people don't understand is that a wrong decision is better than no decision at all.

100% wrong. That reasoning justifies all decisions.

This is what's wrong with our institutional thinking these days.

> This is an active shooter incident.

This stopped being an active shooter situation when they pinned him down without hostages.

> he suspect is threatening to have explosives and claims to want to kill more people. The first order of business is to eliminate the threat.

Fatally wrong again. Eliminating the threat would involve eliminating the bombs, not just the gun.

If they truly believed there were bombs they'd have had more motive to question the shooter, not less, because a single missed bomb could sit for days until triggered inadvertently.

But isn't this the whole point of BLM? The fact that the police don't treat black people the same as others? This exacerbates the argument