tvc184

Because the media and people want immediate answers and that was what had been reported at that time. Maybe a year before I retired, we had an officer involved shooting where a suspect was killed. I arrived on scene within a couple of minutes. I quickly spoke to an officer who had spoken with a witness. The information that I received was it a man approached the officer and put his hand near his back pocket like he might have been going for something. No weapon was ever displayed but the officer shot him. So I approached the chief and another commanding officer with that information. I was told practically immediately that that is not what happened. I was simply relaying the information but that information was so far from the truth. I later watched the car camera video and the officer’s body camera video and the story I was told at the actual crime scene was so far from the truth. That video was later released to the public. The point is that I was on scene within a couple of minutes and was given what appeared to be good information from an eye witness, through another officer, and it was complete nonsense. Had I spoken to the media at that time however, I might have repeated that completely bogus story. On occasion I have been the on scene spokesman and fortunately, not for officer involved incidents. That is why we do “investigations”. Remember Michael Brown and “hands up, don’t shoot”. The FBI under President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder had a year long investigation costing millions of dollars which concluded that the hands up don’t shoot, never happened. Not so strangely, the DA and local and state police came to the conclusion within a couple of days.

On the KFDM Facebook page, a guy is reporting that officers entered the school 40 minutes before the shooter arrived and took their children out. 1. where does such nonsense come from? 2. How many people will now report that as “fact”?

I heard that on the news report a few minutes ago. Assuming this information is now correct, that just negated about 50% of the millions of posts about this incident. Gee…. The original reports were wrong, who would’ve ever thought……

This is my two cents on teachers with guns. We all know that the protocol is such a situation in almost every school is a lockdown. Shelter in place behind a locked door. If a teacher is in a room with 20 students and the door is locked but the bad guy forces his way in, the incident stops right there at the door. As it is now, if a shooter forces his way into a room, the only defense is throwing books at him. I am certainly not against a teacher who sees a gunman walk by that classroom and peaks out to see the gunman’s back turned, stepping out and bringing the fight to him. Swift and aggressive force is how you can turn the tables on an ambush but I just not “expecting” teachers to take the offensive. If they wish to do so however, go for it.

That’s because in this issue (and most) it is absolutely political. The Democratic Party has had an agenda for many decades to remove all gun from private ownership. They say that it is not true but their actions and rhetoric say otherwise. Handgun, Inc. which later turned into the Brady Campaign originally had on their website that their goal was to remove firearms from private ownership. Of course that eventually lost some support even on the left so they had modified it somewhat. Still you have Beto and others saying I am coming for your guns coming for your magazines etc. Look at some of the stupidity of the 1990s assault weapons ban. Bayonet lugs? Name a person who has been murdered with a military style rifle with a bayonet attached to it. It is the same thing with flash suppressors. When the assault weapons ban came out, some A.R. 15 manufacturers simply took the flash suppressor and the bayonet lug off. Barrel shrouds? Same thing. It is this kind of stuff that shows the silliness of the politics. YouTube videos search over politicians pushing for some of these things and when asked what they mean, they have no clue whatsoever. It’s comical watching some people try to defend their position when they have no clue what their position means. It is completely political as in, vote for me because….. There are many conservatives who do not mind the thought background checks or maybe other laws to help prevent violence. Many of those same people are against any new firearm laws or restrictions because they know that each inch they give up it’s just another incu in the door. Imagine this as a scenario. The Democrats come to a compromise with the Republicans. They say we are going to ban assault type rifles and we are going to restrict all magazines to 10 rounds. To do so however, we will pass a constitutional amendment first stating that no more firearm laws can’t be enacted. This cannot be just a step in the door for a future more severe restrictions. Legally the only way any other firearm laws could be in existence would be another constitutional amendment which is practically impossible to pass. For the Democrats who claim that they are not looking to ban all weapons just certain ones, would they go for such a compromise? Once they pass such an amendment and statutory law, all gun control debates cease? I think the answer is adamantly, no. They can say this is our only issue but I will say I think we all know that it is a lie. In this case it does not turn political. It already is political.

I saw a video just now that purportedly shows police officers failing to enter the school at the screaming and urging of distraught parents. Without having any other further information and only looking at “this” video (knowing that others might show something different), you can see all the screaming and pleading and anguish but several officer standing around. But I also saw crime scene tape around the school. What it appears to be is the incident is over but now several hours of investigations must be made. A justice of the peace or coroner has to pronounce the bodies deceased, the injured have to be attended to, crime scene photographs must be taken of the disgusting and horrific scene, a more thorough sweep needs to be made of the school which itself might take hours, etc. Emotional video such as this without context and a timeframe show almost nothing. I can’t remember the amount of crime scenes that I have stood at and had to restrain people from going inside. Yes they want to see their dead relative, yes they want to come to the realization of what happened at that point and actually see the results but it is a crime scene and has to be preserved. Imagine if the investigation leads to a couple of other people who helped perpetrate this absolutely horrible crime. Unfortunately, the police let everyone trample through the crime scene and now the evidence is lost and these two people who theoretically might’ve helped kill many children, might go free. Sorry folks, we found out that this guy had a friend who helped him get the guns while knowing what he intended to do but…… No, at that point it is a crime scene to be secured. Even the police officers on duty outside are not allowed to just go in and gawk at the crime scene. Looking at this video, it demonstrates the problem of looking at something when you don’t know what you’re seeing and making a conclusion with absolutely no knowledge whatsoever except perhaps that it is at the school where it happened.

That is one of the most despicable things I have ever seen. It is par for the course for him. When they had the memorial service for the five police officers murdered in Dallas at the BLM rally,, he spoke at the service. He mentioned the sacrifice of the officers but then at what is basically a funeral, he started talking about Jim Crow laws. Let’s see, five officers were murdered but you know, 100 years ago they made those laws against us…. Imagine if someone spoke at one of the memorial services for these innocent children and teachers and…..

I guess that means they are still open but might not be for long….

I just thought of another one of my war stories. This was about 25 years ago when I was a patrol officer. One of our officers shot and killed a man after a traffic stop. The officer tried to make a traffic stop but the man drove to his house and that is where the incident took place. I was not on duty at time but was working the next shift and spoke with some of the officers and supervisors who gave us the details as best they could. The chief at that time was fairly new in our department and did not like giving information to the media. I was just the opposite and wanted to give them as much as we could give them without jeopardizing the investigation but, I was not the chief. I happen to be working the desk the next day and did not actually go out on patrol. I was given specific orders by the chief of police, do not give any information to the media. Any information will come through his office. Sure enough he local television station called me that evening and ask some follow-up questions. I said that I could not answer and that any information would be coming from the Chiefs office. That is when it got interesting. The reporter told me that they had spoken with a neighbor on camera who said that it was thought that the shooting resulted from a family disturbance and did I wish to simply confirm or deny that. I again said that I could not answer any questions however let me call the chief and I will call you right back. So I called Chief and said this is what they want to know, one question. Was it a family disturbance or not and I would like to tell them no. The Chief said I appreciate you being helpful but don’t tell them anything. I told the Chief the news media going to run with a lie and his comment was something like, that’s on them not me. True…. I called the reporter back and said the Chief will not authorize me to release any information. The reporter said that they were going to run with that story then and say that the police department refused comment. I told the reporter that is fine but I will tell you, I would try and talk to some other people that claimed to be witnesses or get some detailed information as to why they think it was a disturbance. I really don’t remember if that popular news station ran with that false information or not. I figured out long ago how rumors start… except the ones that are intentional. It starts at usually with something like “I think” or “I heard that maybe”. A person or two repeats it but they drop the words “think” or “maybe”. The rumor or speculation then becomes fact. I used to say all the time at the police department, say it once and it’s a rumor, say it twice and it’s a fact. I could just about guarantee that some other topic will come up in this forum and if somebody says, well I heard that blah blah blah said blah blah blah…. a person will read it and will make a comment to someone on a text message or in another forum on what was said. When the person who received the message tells the story again, it will be, well I have a friend that I trust and he said….. ANNNDDD….. we are off to the races.

…… which is why I take news report with a grain of salt. What a reporter calls engaged, might mean absolutely nothing in the terminology from the police officers’ point of view.

On the news media angle…. One Saturday morning probably 15 years ago, I was the commanding officer on duty at my police department, in charge of maybe nine officers. Basically at that time I was the acting chief of police or the highest ranking officer on duty. An officer got out on a car on the frontage road of a freeway. I cannot remember now if he was dispatched after a passerby saw the car or if he just rolled up on it while on patrol The roof of the car was crushed and it appeared as though the vehicle had flipped off of the overpass. The vehicle was not occupied. I arrived a couple of minutes later and we secured the scene by shutting down the roadway. It appeared a person lost control of the vehicle and flipped off of the highway overpass. With no one in the vehicle and no known witnesses, we didn’t know if the person was thrown from the vehicle and into a ditch, in a drainage canal nearby, had crawled out may be intoxicated and gotten a ride home, etc. In such a situation, out of caution we assume the worst because you cannot usually re-create evidence later. A few minutes later a reporter from a local news media outlet showed up. The reporter was actually just driving down the highway and saw the police cars blocking the road and stopped to check. The reporter naturally did his job and asked what was happening. I said exactly what I said in the previous paragraph. It might just be a drunk who went off the highway and crawled out and hitchhiked home. The reported followed up with, but why is everything locked down. It is just like I said, we simply don’t know. We don’t want to find out this was a road rage incident and a guy’s body is in the canal and we simply drove away. I told him what I always say, in a situation like this we assume that it is a homicide and start from there. Hopefully in a short time we will find out that there is not much to it and we can go in about our business but you have to gather evidence now or never. He drove away and a few minutes later we located the guy at home. Yes he had lost control and gone off of the side of the overpass and had called a friend to bring him home. I am guessing that he did not call us because he was intoxicated but there was nothing we could prove at that point. We were probably on scene for a total of about 30 minutes and had the case wrapped up. No big deal….. right???? Well the next morning I got a call from the chief of police who was maybe a little bit angry. He asked me why he was not notified of a homicide and why were detectives not called out. My thoughts were like….. HUH??? Hahaha….. the lead story the next day in the news was, police working a possible homicide on the highway. Uhhhhh, chief, that is not what I told the reporter. I said we locked the scene down like we always do until we could confirm what we had. It was probably just a drunk that went off the highway and we wrapped it up within a few minutes and there was nothing else to do or anyone to notify. Ahhhhh…… There in lies my opinion about the news media. They did not outright lie because I did tell him that we were working a possible homicide but I also told him that it may have just been a wreck with no injuries. There was no follow up later by the reporter, he had the stunning headline that he wanted… And it turned out to be false. In the news story he could have at least cited information by me that the police had nothing to follow up on but we’re gathering evidence just in case something serious happened.

I read some news reports that said the school had an officer on scene and he exchanged gun fire with a suspect as he was entering the school, so almost immediately. A follow up said the school security officer might have exchanged gun fire, they were not sure. That is the problem with the news media. They are not worried about facts, they worried about innuendo and getting clicks on the articles. I don’t think they out right lie most of the time, they just do not check their sources. A rumor repeated becomes fact. There was a school resource officer on scene at the beginning of the Stoneman Douglas high school shooting in Florida. He refused to respond and stayed outside of the door while he heard shots being fired. I was told that if you hear a shot being fired, that is another child dying. Any officer who refuses to enter in that situation, in my opinion, is a coward and needs to drop his badge and his gun on the desk on the way out the door. I made several posts and comments at my police department ripping that officer apart saying that he was an disgrace. I have no problem making such a criticism. I would simply like to know what actually happened before I started pointing fingers.

Oh yeah, Sandy Hook. No officers but campus secured by locked doors which worked as planned. Adam Landsa shot out the door and stepped through…

Columbine. School Officer on scene and they planned to take him out at the outset. He foiled their plan by not eating him typical cafeteria lunch but maybe oddly (premonition?) brown bagged that day and decided to eat in his car. In fact he engaged them almost immediately but as a school officer was on scene, they knew that and prepared to take him out. Parkland, FL Stoneman Douglas high school, school officer on scene…. 17 dead, 17 wounded. The largest school shooting, VT. An entire police department on campus and moments away… 31 dead victims at the school and 17 more shot.

And what does that mean? They yelled at him 50 yards away? They put him on a wall and were frisking him? Please let the rest of us know these details that you have. I am truly curious.

I am not against any of that. I have said probably a couple of times in this thread, harden the schools, arm the teachers and if you want to, add police officers. At least make it hard and when somebody does start the attempt at mass murder, at least cut down the casualties. The point I hit is mainly at politicians and the news media that repeo the mantra that we have to stop this from ever happening again and the fact is you cannot. You can minimize the impact. Your numbers are a little flawed however. Counting equipment, training and the stuff you’ve mentioned, every officer probably costs $125,000 a year. You say a trooper per school. Oooookay….. It would be more like 3-4 per school so about $3-$4 Billion extra per year. A single officer, working a single door and taking absolutely no break, even to go to the bathroom it’s what your numbers would entail. Realistically it would take at least 3 to 4 officers to secure a school somewhat effectively. Even that is just getting by. That does not account for sick days, vacation, mandatory training, etc.

Out of curiosity, do you have any experience shooting man size targets with a handgun under a severe time constraint, while under extreme stress and then at other targets that are moving?

School shootings are probably not mass murders. I think if a guy accidentally shoots a gun in the parking lot, they call that a school shooting. In other cases might be one guy got mad at another guy and shot him in the leg. I tend to think that such person-to-person shootings happen more in larger inner-city areas than in rural areas. ND is pretty rural. The entire state has roughly twice the population of Harding, Jefferson and Orange counties. That is sometimes the problem with statistics. Many times the people that are anti-gun report how many gun deaths happen every year in the United States. What they call a gun deaths are not all homicides because it turns out that at least half of them are suicides. In some discussions however, the numbers are put out to imply that they are murders when in fact they are not. I have not checked in the last year but in most years approximately 2 to 3 times as many people are murdered with hands and feet than there are with rifles. Here is the FBI report on the known murders (criminal homicide) in the United States over a five-year period ending in 2019. Look at 2019 rifle murders, 364. Now look at personal (hands, feet, etc.), strangulation (which is also Personal however you are not beaten or kicked to death) and blunt objects such as striking someone with a hammer, ain personal but the hand held weapon killed instead of the hand itself. So The numbers for being hit with a hammer, beaten, kicked or strangled comes to more than 1,200. Toss in knives and the total goes to almost 3,000. Let’s see, 364 killed by those evil rifles and 1,200 with hands or blunt instruments held by the hand and 1,600 on sharp instruments held by the hand. So hands, feet or handheld items are 800% more likely to kill you than a rifle. Is it the weapon that is the problem or the person? So in 2019 we had 13,927 people murdered. If we could have saved the life of 100% of the people killed by a rifle, murder total and that year would drop to….. 13,563. Wow, getting rid of rifle would have a huge impact!!! In reality, most of those killed with a rifle could have been killed with a pistol but the actor simply had a rifle available. Therein lies the politics of gun control. If we could just get rid of those rifles and those high-capacity magazines……

And those theoretical sprayed bullets would have gone where?

That is what I was talking about. If they were in position to do so. Do you have any information that they were in position failed to stop him? I was chasing a felony suspect one time and he went over the fence of a fenced in school and broke into the school while I was chasing him. There were no kids there and he turned out not to be armed but we did not know that at the time. The guy was ahead of me however and running away. So, were these officers in position to stop the guy? Do we have any information that their training failed at them? If you want to see criticism, go behind the scenes in a shift meeting, a locker room, a secure police forum or on the back lot of the police station and watch officers criticize other officers. We aren’t exactly shy about calling them like we see them. We don’t always do it in public but we typically don’t defend what we think is stupidity.

Oops…. it went over my head.

Yep, that is why I prefaced it with overpriced with a pretty cool store. They used to have a decent restaurant inside. It has been about 10 years since I’ve been there. Buc-ee’s…. corn, restrooms, ice…. keep heading south.

I think it was during the Obama administration that many conservative organizations tried to get 501(c)(3) non-profit tax exemptions and were repeatedly denied but when looking into it, similar liberal groups were easily certified.

That would be a nearly impossible task since you would have to find their social media and have them admit that it was theirs. I know as background checks we have checked social media pages but you never know if someone has something hidden under a false identity. To expect at the point of a gun sale to start checking someone’s thousands of posts on maybe a dozen different social media sites, would be an almost impossible task. If assuming that became a standard, people would simply start with a falsified name in that post under their true identity. Maybe while on the way to perpetrate an act they might change to their real identity or something like that but unfortunately, these people aren’t stupid.

It would not take long. I was directly involved in such an investigation which fortunately turned out to be negative. We got information of an online threat and jumped all over it and had what we needed within an hour or so should we have needed to act. That is not the end or nearly all of the investigation but it gives enough to start confronting someone and doing some fairly quick intervention.