...I suspect the phrase "Officer Safety is Paramount" will figure largely.
H/T to Carl, who has more and better comments than I can think of right now. Though I do wish people would give the zombies a rest.
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Sorry, Joel; but when dead guys can hold off the cops for hours on end, I have to attribute that to zombie action.
When you're right, you're right. In this case it's certainly more appropriate than most.
Wait a minute, now.
Look at it this way:
The y didn't shoot the woman they "made contact with" on arrival. They didn't shoot any dogs. They didn't shoot each other. No buildings got burned down.
Short of them not actually answering the call and disbanding the police department, what less would you want them to do?
"There's a crazy guy in there with a gun."
"Okay, ma'am. We'll sit out here and make sure he doesn't come out and hurt anybody."
Maybe they could go back in time to '92 and '93 and offer the feds some tips...
(And, yeah, the "evacuated nearby homes" was a little over the top, but this is the Bostonian-infested 'burbs of NH we're taking about here...)
Well... They could have done less. But that wouldn't have gotten as many of them as much overtime pay.
"Short of them not actually answering the call and disbanding the police department, what less would you want them to do? Tam
I'd have commented sooner, but couldn't stop laughing. Thanks, I needed that.
As I said over at Bear's site:
"Gee Bear, last time I checked, none of my guy's cars had robots in the trunk awaiting instantaneous use. The key words in the story were that they called out the "STATE" Police SWAT Team. The local PD probably just held the perimeter until they arrived. It might have taken 4 hours to round up the robot and get it to the scene from whatever part of the state it was located in.
As my previous department's "hostage negotiator", I have stood outside a scene AFTER we got all the hostages out and tried to talk out the armed individual for 7 hours. He had fired a number of shots out the windows at the beginning of the incident, but stopped once I got him to talk. At one point during that 7 hour period we heard a muffled shot from inside the residence and he stopped talking. I tried to re-establish contact for an hour and a half before he re-engaged. I later found out that he had done that so we would THINK he shot himself and he could ambush our entry team. After an hour and a half he gave up on that plan.
I got him out without having to kill him, none of the hostages he originally had at the start of what was a 12 hour ordeal was injured and no cops or bystanders were hurt.
So I should only have collected overtime if I were shot? Actually, I talked my way into the house with another detective and we eventually physically overpowered the suspect in a moment when he was distracted and before he could swing his shotgun around and fire on us. Does that qualify as dangerous enough for the O.T. I got? Then again, since its all just part of the job, maybe I should return the "Medal of Valor" I received out of the incident.
If the guy was actually shooting people, or if the cops had knowledge that he was going to do so, then yes, they should have gone in immediately, no standing around holding the perimeter in a case like that, otherwise time is on the side of the cops in most cases. So what's the better outcome? It sucks that the guy shot himself and died. Better if the cops had gone in before the shots and possibly been forced to do the suicide by cop thing? Or, maybe if they went in a little quicker AFTER the shot they (a)might or might not have saved him; (b)might have had less of a mess to clean up or (c)had to get shot or shoot him because he did what the guy in my incident did to make them THINK he shot himself."
Oh, and as usual, Tam's right ;)
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