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It depends on what was going on. It’s the hunting of additional victims part rather than those who are bleeding out that would say it was or wasn’t a barricaded hostage situation. For example, the Pulse nightclub shooting became a hostage situation. And victims bled out.
Just adding something to think about since they appear not to have had eyes on what was going on in the classroom.
The local DA feels the defendant saying "I didn't realize I was a felon" is an airtight defense to a prohibited person trying to buy a firearm from an FFL.
I think a lot depends on the individual agency and the individual head but, yeah, many heads just need to go deal with other things.
A chief of a 5 man department is probably still on patrol himself..
No matter the size , they have other jobs and being point in a fast moving crisis / tactical decision is a horrible combination I have never seen it end well.
And he has other jobs and likely would not be in charge once it reaches the level this situation did . This agency had a SWAT team .
In my opinion only, yes and no. If it’s a smaller rural agency they might be among the first on scene, the most experienced, the best trained, and the cavalry might be 30 minutes away. They’ve got to get stuck in and get the job done.
This situation should have been over in 30 minutes I am not talking about a 2-5 man response . As a general rule the boss has no business running a tactical crisis scene .
Of course I agree that in an ideal world the chief isn’t running the tactical scene. As you know, better than I, I suspect, the world isn’t always ideal. For larger agencies the boss can and should let the on scene experts handle it. Stay the hell out of the way and do Chief stuff. For smaller agencies this simply isn’t always an option. If there’s only a few boots on the ground and one of them is El Jeffe, he’d better be taking charge and doing grunt work, at least until he can be relieved by someone else.
In short, the rest of those 19 guys standing around with their thumbs in their ass.
Where I worked, a boss is the one who runs such a scene. A junior boss like a sergeant but it moves up as the bigger brass arrive. Not the tac teams themselves but rather the operation . Even the Alerrt active shooter training goes into the management of the scene for bosses from who is running the tac teams, staging area, EMT escorts etc.
Those 19 guys weren’t there yet when the true decision needed to be made, when the push forward needed to be done . Before the killer could set up.
I don’t know because I wasn’t there, but perhaps it was a jurisdictional issue? I work for the largest agency in my area, but if we go into a smaller neighboring city, we pretty much have to abide by their requests. Their house, their rules. Never mind that we have more resources than they do. It’s just the way it is.
Those 19 were there very early on, shortly after 12. Get that janitor moving earlier, instead of 45 minutes later.
I work for a larger agency and the way it works is that the incident commander is generally a sergeant or a lieutenant. They are actively running the tactical incident. However, when Captains and Commanders and Chiefs start to show up, the incident commander will ask if they are assuming incident command. In almost all circumstances, the command staff will defer to the tactical incident commander because they don’t want to or can‘t run an active tactical operation. That being said, inexplicably, some command staff will try and interject and give directions anyways. It’s totally disregarding incident command protocol, but it’s not unusual for a member of the command staff to override a tactical decision made by the incident commander. In the past, we have had some infamous incidents when things went terribly wrong, and the command staff tried to throw the incident commander under the bus for a decision the higher up made. In the end, it becomes a mess settled in the courts, and usually results in a retirement or two.
