Broward Sheriff Office Didn’t Allow Paramedics to Enter Parkland School
Deputy chief for fire-rescue asked the captain at the scene SIX TIMES to allow paramedics into the school.
The hits keep coming at the Broward Sheriff office after the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, FL. The Miami Herald has reported that paramedics begged the office to enter the school to save the wounded, but the captain at the scene said no:
Michael McNally, deputy chief for Coral Springs fire-rescue, asked six times for permission to send in specialized teams of police officers and paramedics, according to an incident report he filed after the Feb. 14 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting that left 17 people dead.
But every time McNally asked to deploy the two Rescue Task Force [RTF] teams — each made up of three paramedics and three to four law enforcement officers — the Broward Sheriff’s Office captain in charge of the scene, Jan Jordan, said no.
“The [BSO] incident commander advised me, ‘She would have to check,’ ” McNally wrote in the report released Thursday by Coral Springs. “After several minutes, I requested once again the need to deploy RTF elements into the scene to … initiate treatment as soon as possible. Once again, the incident commander expressed that she ‘would have to check before approving this request.’ “
Thing is, even after the officers arrested the gunman, the sheriff’s office kept telling the paramedics they couldn’t enter the building.
The Miami Herald pointed out that gunshot victims can bleed out fast, which means they need prompt medical attention. These special RTF teams have permission “to treat victims under the protection of police officers in situations where a shooter has been pinned down or fled but has not necessarily been captured.” SWAT medics went into the school instead of the RTF teams.
The commanders used school security footage to monitor the situation, but the video was on a 20 MINUTE DELAY. No one knew that at the time. The shooter fled the scene “roughly six minutes after opening fire at 2:21 PM.”
The Miami Herald continued:
In his report, McNally, who had been ordered to act as a liaison between Coral Springs fire command and BSO, also claimed BSO’s command post was severely dysfunctional. Communication was difficult, McNally said, because he often could not locate Jordan, BSO’s district commander for Parkland.
“The command post was inundated with too many people and made it impossible to establish and function,” McNally wrote, echoing criticisms of the disorganization and lack of a unified command structure that plagued BSO’s response to a deadly shooting at the Fort-Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport last year.
At least three additional fire-rescue incident reports released Thursday by Coral Springs confirmed that BSO had denied requests to send in the rescue teams. Coral Springs provides fire service in the city of Parkland. BSO provides law enforcement.
McNally admitted that Jordan did not know for sure if the RTF teams would have been any help inside, but he also pointed out that she “couldn’t have realized that when she repeatedly denied his requests.”
Officials arrested the shooter at 3:40 PM. McNally stated that Jordan still denied permission for his team to enter the school.
As I said, this is only the latest criticism of the Broward Sheriff Office. They had four deputies on campus while the shooter still fired his gun and Jordan only told her ream “to form a perimeter around the school.” They also denied medical air rescue.
For our coverage on the Parkland School Shooting and Broward County, see here.
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Comments
Has the Son of a FBI Hogg weighed in on this yet?
Any way you slice it, what killed those students and staff was an AR-15 in the hands on a deranged 19 year old. What are you, Trump, the NRA, going to do to stop a deranged 19 year old from getting the weapon? That is the only thing that would have kept us from ever hearing of Parkland.
The rest is just about cleaning up the mess and assigning blame. Mistakes are going to be made by the 1st responders. The protocols will always be subject to what we learned in the last mass killing. Unfortunately, we are getting a lot of practice.
Texas still had 10 dead and a dozen wounded. What are we going to do to prevent the insanity?
Texas school shooting victim’s mother says talking to Trump “like talking to a toddler”
Let’s try what my workplaces have done over the past 35 years. Prevent psychos with guns from prancing into the building and shooting everyone in sight. It would also be beneficial for the media to never mention the shooter by name.
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There are other things that would help, but whining about the need to eliminate the 2nd Amendment isn’t really an option. So, besides that, what do you have in mind?
Best way to prevent a 19 year old from getting a weapon is to arrest him for the felonies he has committed which would disqualify him from purchasing firearm
Yellow: “what killed those students and staff was an AR-15”
No. What killed them was the 19 year old human. Take away one tool (firearm) and he will just find another (IEDs).
Yellow: “what are you, Trump, the NRA, going to do to stop a deranged 19 year old -”
Run the logic: what affect will new laws have on someone who disobeys the current laws? The obvious solution is to allow teachers and staff to conceal carry in the schools, but the Left won’t do that because it would INCREASE gun ownership, and their primary goal is to limited gun ownership not save children.
Yellow: “Where are the mental initiatives?”
Your side poisoned that well with all your “studies” declaring conservativism a mental disorder. Coupled with the Left’s global history of declaring political opponents insane and shipping them off to the gulags, we’re not falling for that one. Especially considering the deceitful way you use dead kids as props to promote your real goal – confiscation. Quite simply, we don’t trust you. We know you abuse any “mental health” prohibitions.
“Where are the guns that can only be fired by the owner?”
In my trash bin. They are useless. Current tech has been tested and failed to recognize the imprinted owner 17% of the time. It’s an unacceptable and additional point of failure in an already complex and lethal scenario. Plus, you get knocked out and your wife can’t use your firearm to defend herself? Madness. Even worse, any smart tech includes the potential to be remotely hacked, by criminals… and the government. In an age where people are placing tape over the laptop and cellphone cameras.
Your “solutions” are also from a dying era – in 5-10 years there will be a 3D printer in every home. We will be able to print up an M16A2 or AK47 overnight.
And just to be clear, we don’t care how many dead bodies you climb upon, we are never going to give up our right to defend ourselves with lethal force. Especially from Leftists like you.
It’s simply not going to happen. Find other ways to “save the children”. The more time you waste banging your head against the wall, the longer it will take to create a consensus on alternate solutions that could be saving lives this very moment.
Do it “For Teh Children” you claim to care so much about.
That’s you excuse for the responders not doing their duty? No one could have been saved? The shooter was gone. How irresponsible.
I guess it’s a good thing France banned private ownership of AKs, huh, shithead? Everybody had a good time at the Bataclan. There was no shootout in Marseilles.
How about an ad campaign to send psychos with guns Grifter’s way. Than Grifter would understand the need for guns for self defense. There is also the issue of having guns to protect ourselves government run amok. Say a leader like Hillary who has demonstrated that she is deranged. Imagine how Hillary would have turned out, probably worse that Obama.
Any way you slice it, what killed those students and staff was an AR-15 in the hands on a deranged 19 year old.
Silly me, what seems important is that people stay alive, and even better un-shot. Myself, I don’t care if deranged-guy gets hold of an AR15, or any other damn thing, his age, political affiliation, religion, sexual preference, personal hygiene, or BMI.
Don’t be murder-death-killing other people, whoever you are, whatever you use. Simple.
Any way you slice it, what killed those students and staff was *mayhem* by *some murderous whack-job*, then *not being treated after being shot*. Until you can guarantee no mayhem, ever, maybe we should retain and enhance the ability to deliver treatment, restrict whack-jobs, and even stop mayhem in progress.
What then killed the kids at Santa Fe? It certainly wasn’t the AR-15.
But what color was the AR-15? Clearly what we need to do is ban all weapons in that color. In fact, just to be safe we should go further and ban that color altogether. That will surely prevent such things from happening again.
Also, we should ban 19-year-olds from buying weapons. Not 18-year-olds, mind you, just 19-year-olds. To compensate people for the year of weapon-purchasing taken from them, we should allow 17-year-olds to buy any weapon they like. There should be two years of free purchasing, followed at 19 by a year of total ban, and then free again when a person turns 20. That way no more 19-year-olds will be able to do this. There, that makes sense, doesn’t it?
Now, back to reality, what did the shooter say motivated him? “I’m going to be the next school shooter of 2018.” “It’ll be a biiig event. When you see me on the news, you’ll all know who I am.” So we know there is one thing that could have prevented him. If there were a ban on excessive reporting of school shootings, or on reporting the shooters’ names at all, then he would never have even thought of doing this. Sound good, Yellow? You OK with some very minimal, reasonable common sense-regulations on reporting? Huh?
Democrats have literally blood on their hands. Especially Amazing Leader Scott Israel.
Let me take Devil’s Advocate here. There are two good reasons to hold medical personnel back during a shooting incident. The first is a shooter/bomber, who plants bombs designed to kill the first responders. (a favorite AQ tactic) If that is suspected, there is a *brief* hesitation in sending in paramedics, with the goal being to grab the patient, stop-gap treatment (pressure/tourniquets), and immediate evacuation to a safer location where they can be stabilized. As far as I can tell, there was no suspicion of any bombs.
The second reason to hold back medical personnel is if the shooter is shot and not moving, and bombs *may* be suspected. (Such as the Garland TX shooting at the cartoon art exhibit) In that case, the police withdraw to keep the bleeding shooter under observation, organize a search for the explosives, do controlled-demolitions of anything nearby that the shooter may have brought explosives in, etc… until several hours later when medical personnel are permitted to examine the body and declare it dead. This was also not the case.
This shooting was the third type. When we’re in trouble, the police are only minutes away. (waiting outside the building until the firing dies down)
Would you volunteer to explain that to the parents of the dead kids?
I think that the Sheriff owes them this explanation and why he and his subordinates chose the course of actions that they did, but it will be a cold day before that ever happens.
Very convenient to put all the blame on the sheriff.
The auto manufacturers used to blame every crash on the ‘nut behind the wheel’. Then Ralph Nader called bullsheet and we, as a nation, started keeping statistics, doing studies and implementing the recommendations. What do you think happened?
Bad analogy. The firearms aren’t malfunctioning. It’s the angry shooter who is defective, its the cowardly Sherrif who is defective.
Did you blame Boeing for 9-11?
And as a result, we put undercover armed Marshalls on every flight. Teachers volunteering to conceal carry would have the same effect.
“they’ll say that this is impossible, and give me all sorts of terrible worst case scenarios about all of the horrors that will happen with a gun in the classroom… No problem, because this has happened before. In fact, my state laws allow for somebody with a concealed weapons permit to carry a gun in a school right now. Yes. Utah has armed teachers. We have for several years now.”
https://www.google.com/amp/s/larrycorreia.wordpress.com/2012/12/20/an-opinion-on-gun-control/amp/
Ralph Nader didn’t call bullsheet, he spouted it. His claim that the Corvair was “unsafe at any speed” was a deliberate lie, and should have completely discredited anything else he had to say.
What dead kids?
Since Columbine the recommended protocol for an active shooter in a school has completely changed. As was explained by the Texas Rangers, the school resource officer or uniformed officer is to rush in and engage the shooter with no warning or call for surrender. The officer is to keep shooting until the perp is down, then to call it in and determine if there is another. Wounded are to be attended without hesitation, students are to led outside by school personnel, or if now present, law enforcement.
Note: not all municipalities follow the new protocol. A vast majority do, but some do not. This one clearly did not and is constantly evading answers as to why they didn’t.
The same way that you, Trump and the NRA have deflected.
Deflected what?
I was a HazMat/emergency response responder and trainer for nearly 20 years. I have worked with state and local police as well as the Feds and various arms of the military on HazMat response, shooting/terrorist events, and so forth, so I may have a bit more insight into incident management that most.
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In a situation like this there are two competing priorities -finding/stopping the gunman or men and getting treatment to the victims as quickly as possible. One critical aspect to all of this is setting up an incident command system where information must be relayed to the incident commander (IC) as quickly as possible. It is imperative that the IC take the known information and tease it apart so facts can be separated from the unknown/rumor.
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In this case is it known that there are dead and dying victims within the school? Yes, absolutely. Was the gunman/men still at large in the school? Unknown. Was there any evidence that bombs in the school? Unknown, but it seemed there was little evidence of this. The proper call at this time would be to immediately send in law enforcement to clear the building piece by piece as quickly as possible followed immediately by the medic teams with the idea of finding and triaging the students as quickly as possible. Medics doing this should treat those students in immediate danger while support personnel relayed back victim location to the awaiting ambulances. While all of this is being done, those responders tasked with protecting the medics should be performing a sweep of the immediate area for gunmen and explosive devices. The purpose here should not have been as absolute clearing of the entire school with 100% certainty, but instead should have been doing a good enough and fast enough job to get the medics in so they could start saving as many as possible.
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At this point I should acknowledge that being a first responder, especially at a leadership level, can be terrifying. There are a great many unknowns and there are many victims. You also know that one major mistake and the guys you know so well and train with all the time could be killed or injured. You not only know these guys, buy you know their wives and children because they are family to you. This lads many ICs and others to unconsciously adopt an overly cautious approach to the incident scene. This is why it is so imperative that these teams train constantly and why seasoned people with a history of being able to rapidly make good decisions with little solid information are identified and put in charge. It is an extremely difficult job to get done right.
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Time and again I have see horrific incompetence among first responders. In mock events they often go through incredible mental gymnastics to justify why they did a fantastic job while ignoring all of their mistakes. These people are in it for the ego trip and not to be responsible and learning/perfecting their trade. When the real event then occurs, they fail and many suffer needlessly. A common characteristic of these failures is to blame the uncertainties at the time, the possibility of a bomb, shooters, pregnant elephants, or anything else they can think of to get the blame away from them. They will use these issues as excuses as to why they failed because they have never learned how to say “I don’t know”, “I screwed up”, or “I take full responsibility for I was in charge”.
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How bad can this get? I was kicked off of two emergency response teams because I was vocal about accountability, identifying mistakes so they could be corrected, and so forth. By far and away the worst actors screwing up HazMat or emergency response events were the feds, some military, and sheriff’s offices when these people had an arrogant “I’m in charge” attitude for they could never begin to understand what a real event would be like or how it all could go south in a hurry. I have seen too many debacles like the one described here and I can only hope the parents and state government holds these people accountable for their incompetence. In fact, the failures described here are no longer in the “incompetent” category, but should be listed in the “Evil” category.
There is a National Tactical Medical Competition for First Responders that is actually quite effective in training EMTs in dealing with active shooter scenarios.
Kudos Cleetus. I have a friend very similar to you. Was military/LE first, EMT after, says the same thing.
At what point does malfeasance and deriliction become accomplise to murder?
at the point Sheriff Israel signed on to Obama’s Promise Program
“The first is a shooter/bomber, who plants bombs designed to kill the first responders. (a favorite AQ tactic) ”
And according to footage from Iraq a favorite tactic of the US military, but it uses missiles or a chain gun on an Apache. But that is different, huh?
Your point is ???
Troll.
Try to have a comment that relates to the thread / blog posting / subject, please.
Sounds like they have too much organization.
Poor organization is still organization; it puts someone “in charge”, someone who can prevent individuals or smaller units from functioning.
A complete replay of the incompetence, cowardice and passivity of Columbine.
A lot of cowardice to go around by conservative politicians. Where are the GVRO statutes? Where are the mental initiatives? Where are the guns that can only be fired by the owner?
When are we going to start at the beginning and stop claiming this can be fixed at the end?
If you want to go down that path, how about reporting the medications these mass shooters were on and the reason for the prescription
You know, you show a tendency towards rashness, inability to discern, irrational anger etc. You might want to look into that.
Yellow: “Where are the mental initiatives?”
Your side poisoned that well with all your “studies” declaring conservativism a mental disorder. Coupled with the Left’s global history of declaring political opponents insane and shipping them off to the gulags, we’re not falling for that one. Especially considering the deceitful way you use dead kids as props to promote your real goal – confiscation. Quite simply, we don’t trust you. We know you abuse any “mental health” prohibitions.
Yellow: “Where are the guns that can only be fired by the owner?”
In my trash bin. They are useless. Current tech has been tested and failed to recognize the imprinted owner 17% of the time. It’s an unacceptable and additional point of failure in an already complex and lethal scenario. Plus, you get knocked out and your wife can’t use your firearm to defend herself? Madness. Even worse, any smart tech includes the potential to be remotely hacked, by criminals… and the government. In an age where people are placing tape over their laptop and cellphone cameras.
Your “solutions” are also from a dying era: in 5-10 years there will be a 3D printer in every home. We will be able to print up an M16A2 or AK47 overnight.
Which is most deranged, Rags or Grifter?
Wrong question. Ever notice how those two trolls rarely encounter each other?
https://youtu.be/yIMaaqe9LCk
Where are the guns that only fire for their owner? I don’t know but why don’t you invent one that fires reliably. Every police department in the world would beat a path to your door you’d be richer than Bill Gates.
What? You’d rather whine like a little girl? If it’s so vital, so important so urgent, stfu and go do it. Or at the very least go find it. You have the resources to pester normal people all day, you have money to fund a reliable safer firearm.
Or just keep whining. We both know what you are, the last time you did anything constructive was last 13th of never.
Yup. Home invader can jam the frequency your “smart gun” operates on, rendering it useless.
Husband helplessly watching his daughters “entertain” the thugs: “I’m sorry girls, your mother married an idiot”
https://youtu.be/ANllOmgJH9Y
OMG smart guns are even dumber than I thought.
They needs batteries to operate. Yes, batteries.
And they don’t work if they get wet. Like in rain.
Bwahahaha!
The same place as the flying cars, personal force fields, ray guns, the city on the Moon and the thriving asteroid mining industry, and all the other things we were promised. A perennial panel discussion topic at SF conventions is
“I was promised a flying car”. All of these things will be coming eventually, but they’re not here yet.
This is what happens when your responders are political creatures instead of leaders.
Sure is a whole lot of unexplained weirdness surrounding this story.
>>tinfoil hat ON{
thinking more and more that this was contrived
}<<tinfoil hat OFF
That’s ridiculous. Next you’ll be telling us the CIA and FBI ran a counter-intel op against the American people to launch a soft coup to remove the President.
(seriously, knowimg what we know now, the idea they would stage shootings to create an emotional wave of gun grabbing is not so far fetched)
One holds back rescue personnel when one has reason to suspect further injuries — that is some probability based on some evidence. One does not hold back rescue personnel simply because it might be possible that explosives MIGHT exist. There were injured kids in there. That fire officer should have told Jordan they were going in and she could try to stop them. I respect competent authority not morons and cowards.
I fully understand having some paralysis when first on a scene like this, but they are supposed to act within reason to be of help for the victims. It seems they were afraid to act and afraid to allow others to act. This is a department paralyzed by cowardice. I think it comes from the top, where the sheriff was afraid to do anything to harm his reputation in any way, and that message is loud and clear to the troops.
The errors that were made in this case were the results of the attacks on police for every thing that was deemed wrong by an unknowing populous ready to blame the police for all social ills. Not having a strong leader in charge of the police hurt them as well. It might not have changed the ultimate results of this shooter’s actions and deeds, but it might have prevented some bloodshed. It seems making an error under a circumstance like this might be preferable to doing nothing, or less than nothing, where you don’t even let others go to help.
Re: Old Goat:
Considering the chief went on TV a day or two later and blasted the NRA, this seems more utterly inept and practically calculated.
It’s been done before.
At Sandy Hook, a triage area was set up outside the school, but no victims were brought out of the school to be triaged (responders are even supposed to bring out the obviously dead, because some may be revived). Medical personnel were kept blocks away and an offer of a commercial medevac helo was declined.
The fire commander described the medical teams as “Rescue Task Force (RTF)” comprising both paramedics and police officers. That leads me to believe that someone in the past had anticipated a need for such response teams and trained some up. These were not just a group of ambulance attendants (“scoop and scoot”) but a trained team. The imposed delay at the hands of an apparently incompetent scene commander may have raised the body count and/or exacerbated damage from wounds received by the immediate survivors.
Reports within days of the event identified this commander (Jordan) identifying her as a captain and a relatively recent transfer from a local police agency. No indication as to whether she was a captain at the other agency or whether she moved to take advantage of the promotion. She probably handled the roll-playing of an event of this magnitude quite well in the hiring/promotional process, however. /sarc/
The major players in this (Israel, Jordan, the superintendent of schools) need to be closely examined for their roll in the run-up to this. The voters of Broward County need to be a lot more discerning as to who they elect to power.
The practice of delivering police services is a hazardous endeavor by nature. What “might” happen is always a concern, but should not be a controlling factor.
What’s a legitimate reason for having a security can on 20 min delay?
I can imagine several illegitimate reasons. And the school was already engaged in corrupt practices, like whitewashing misconduct to stay under some beurocratic threshold of violence.
If the camera’s are hacked this an unknown time delay, stymies current information would be unavailable for nefarious means. This information could be used by a parent attempting to kidnap a child and has gained access to the school’s cameras.
It’s kind of laughable, because most of the worry about threats is focused on the external, when over and over again the threats have come from within.
We’re going to deny ourselves real-time useful security coverages because the cameras *might* be hacked in an extremely unlikely case? Sounds to me like a sec camera with a 20 min delay did more harm than good here, might’ve killed some kids.
Shane, that sounds plausible. Is it speculation on your part or the official reason the schools give?
How’s this for a “valid” reason?
There’s footage of several FBI agents going inside the building and removing something using an unmarked pickup truck.
It’s the footage that shows the driver of the truck throwing fast food out of the vehicle.
This is why rescue teams were delayed. To allow for FBI goons to remove evidence that would show it was a setup.
BS. Get lost, kooks like you are not wanted here. We have more than enough already.
I’m female and served in the Army for only three years. We had a female police officer in Euharlee Georgia that killed Christopher Roupe, who was 17 years old and in high school, when he opened the door to his home after they knocked.
She shot him in the chest. They were there to arrest his Dad; it was Friday, February 14th.
If the women don’t have the chops to handle difficult situations, they need to be canned. Surely there are psychological tests for this. If they fail them, they shouldn’t be hired.
Christopher Roupe, good kid, killed at 17. How many of these kids would have lived had Jan what’s-her-name had a clue?
My son is part of a “Tactical Medical Team” that is present when their SWAT team is serving warrants. The medical officers don’t go in side by side with the other officers, but are in position until the all clear is given. The EMTs are geared up with protection just like the SWAT guys. This entire incident is FUBAR from start to finish, starting with the insane coddling policy protecting the punks from justice.
I’m not the least surprised that the incompetent Sheriff Israel wants everyone to focus on the NRA.
Admittedly, we are not asking civilian medics to act the same as combat medics… but they asked to go in… they wanted to go in… the mindset of the cops was pre-Columbine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jDkNpzRGRI
Benny Hill nailed it…
So, if the parents of the students wanted to go in, the LEOs on scene should have allowed it? I realize that handling active shooter situations is a specialized skill set, but this is simply against common sense.
An active shooter is looking for targets. That is why he is there. To locate and kill people. Anyone you send into the shooting gallery is simply another target. LEOs are at least ARMED targets. Paramedics and firefighters are UNARMED targets. Also, it is a tactic of guerrilla fighters [like the Viet Cong and the Apaches] to use a wounded person as bait to draw in rescuers and kill them.
There are protocols and strategies for handling situations like this. Some are not pleasant and some seem counter intuitive. But, the object of the response to these incidents is to minimize the number of victims.
Keep in mind that many EMTs are trained to work with police in situations like this, and many are combat veterans themselves. David Hogg wanted to know who with guns is going to protect kids in schools when an armed officer at the scene appears to have chickened out? The answer is – plenty of people. If there’s someone qualified to do something needful (whether its shooting or patching up someone who has been shot) at a scene like that and they want to go to work, let them. That’s why they are there.
Keep in mind that most paramedics are NOT armed. Because of this, you have to assign armed resources to them to protect them from being shot by the active shooter, whose location is unknown. If you just let people who can not defend themselves wander around in an area where someone is actively shooting people, those people are going to get shot. This means that you now have MORE victims to deal with. And, the people who would deal with such victims are the VICTIMS. So, who is going to treat them? Why is this so hard for people to understand?
Now, having spend a good amount of time in LE, I’ll let you in on a little secret. Paramedics do not enter active shooting scenes, riots or other dangerous situations until LE has made the area safe or under sufficient police escort to guarantee their survival. If the Coral Springs paramedics had gone into the school, encountered the shooter and been shot, the Fire Chief would STILL be blaming the Sheriff’s Office.
Medics are always going to be a scarce resource, if they are taken out, many more people will die from lack of care. I am not supporting the chicken crap sheriff who should have taken point in making sure it was reasonably safe for medics to go in.
My question is why is the decisions were made from an off site location, ie “headquarters”. It is impossible to assess the situation if you are not on site. The command decision authority should be transferred immediately to the field to the highest ranking person on the scene. If that person is the janitor, so be it, he is still in better position to assess the situation and respond appropriately.
That’s an excellent point lost in this discussion. It’s like being on trial for your life and your defense attorney is teleworking from office desk.
Sounds like a culture that avoids accountability. I bet that police department’s personell play daily CYA gambits that rival the shenanigans of Game of Thrones.
The entire leadership needs to be fired.
“No one knew that at the time.”
I’m thinking that a certain resource officer did.
Intentional mass casualty training is available to all law enforcement and first responders. It doesn’t seem as though the broward county sheriff had implemented any of the new protocols, since they resorted to the pre-Columbine tactics. I haven’t heard any legal chatter regarding the promise program. Seems this program not only allowed some crack slipping, but created and widened the cracks.
A couple of things here.
First, the commander has several concerns in a situation such as this. The first is to locate and neutralize the threat. Egress and ingress routes have to be identified, or established, and protected. Evacuating people from a building does no good, if you evacuate them right into the crazed gunman. That is the reason for the current hunker down strategy. Getting rescue personnel to victims in an unsecured shooting scene is sort of like moving through a minefield. You have to stay to a specific lane and area to avoid running into a threat. And, these people require protection, at least a half squad [5 armed personnel] which has to get them in and out, until the scene is cleared.
Look, the Broward Sheriff’s Office had a multitude of problems in this incident. From the initial reluctance of personnel to enter, locate and neutralize the shooter to the lack of knowledge that the surveillance system was on a 20 minute delay, instead of being real-time[not the smartest way to set up such a system]. But, this is simply piling on and the Coral springs Fire Chief should really know better.
Second, the injured are not the only potential victims in this type of scenario. Besides those already shot, you have other non-combatants inside the building who must be protected, as well as those outside the building. Until the threat is located, running people around the area is just establishing more targets.
Third, is communications. I am not sure what kind of communications compatibility we are talking about in this case. There might be established inter-agency radio channels. Or there might not. The last thing that you want is for uncontrolled first responders running all over an active scene where the threat has not been found and neutralized.
Congratulations, you just laid out a scenario in which gunshot victims can bleed out before help gets to them.
Although I appreciate caution, such situations require aggression, swift action, and sometimes immediate violence. Your last sentence reminded me of the anti-gun crowd’s fear that the armed citizen at the scene of a mass shooting will make things worse – something that has never happened. If we don’t train EMTs to follow police into situations like this, and then actually deploy them the way they’re trained, we’ll never know if it works or not. Even if it does work most of the time, it will fail (as all plans do) now and then. (“No plan of action survives contact with the enemy.” “A good plan, executed violently today, is better than a perfect plan tomorrow.”)
Police/SWAT needs to enter immediately. Medical personnel can follow the sweep and be left behind with wounded as areas are secured. It is essential to get medical aid to shooting victims as quickly as possible. Is it dangerous? Of course. Can it be done more safely. Yes, but possibly at the expense of lives (ironically lost for safety fears).
I have explained this until I am blue in the face and STILL you do not understand.
Any person in an active shooting area is a TARGET. It is possible, even likely, that the gunman will attempt to shoot that person. Now, a LEO is armed, possibly armored, and in a position to effectively neutralize a shooter. An unarmed paramedic, parent, school official or any other unarmed person has very limited, or no, resources to defend himself from a man with a gun. Anyone who is shot may or may not be dead already. Nothing that the entry team can do is going to reverse that. However, the main job of the entry teams is to locate and stop the shooter before he can harm others. It doesn’t do much good if the shooter is allowed to rack up another 5-10-20 victims while previous victims are being aided. Is it possible that some of the wounded might have been saved if they received immediate medical care? Perhaps. We’ll never know that for sure. Is it possible that paramedics entering the building until it was cleared of threats could have been killed as well? Perhaps. As they waited until the building was cleared, we’ll never know that either. Life is filled with what ifs.
As to your tactical plan, that was exactly what occurred. LE entered, eventually, and began sweeping the building for the shooter, whose location was unknown. The paramedics were staged outside until it was safe for them to enter the building. In order to effectively control the building, the victims have to be located. It has to be determined that there is no, or a very limited, further threat in the building. Then unarmed personnel have to be escorted for their own safety and to limit contamination of the crime scene.
I know that it feels good to think that a person armed only with good intentions can walk into the lion’s den and exit unscathed. But, this is not real life.
Now, my take on the comments of the Coral Springs Fire Department is that they are designed to deflect criticism of his department, because the paramedics remained outside while the LEOs swept the building.
“Until the threat is located, running people around the area is just establishing more targets.”
With respect, I find your other points sound even though I don’t agree with all them. However in this case the “people” running around are adults, maybe bullet proofed (vest) maybe armed (9mm). They are what Larry Correria refers to as speed bumps. If the shooter chooses to engage them or is even distracted, those are precious seconds where he is facing hardened trained targets instead of slaughtering defenseless teenagers.
“However in this case the “people” running around are adults, maybe bullet proofed (vest) maybe armed (9mm).”
You have to actually read what I write on these subjects. The LEOs were armed, and hopefully armored. So, they are hardened targets who are capable of effectively responding to an armed threat. The paramedics were not. Nor were the firefighters, or the school employees. So, the non-LEOs were simply harmless targets.
Right. I didn’t misread you. I’m saying that in the *future* EMTs should be hardened and armed. Even if it’s just a vest and 9mm.
Larry Correria is a subject matter expert on this topic. He says that as soon as school shooters meet the slightest armed resistance their fantasy bubble pops and they either surrender or kill themselves.
“The vast majority of the time, as soon as a mass shooter meets serious resistance, it bursts their fantasy world bubble. Then they kill themselves or surrender. This has happened over and over again.”
https://www.google.com/amp/s/larrycorreia.wordpress.com/2012/12/20/an-opinion-on-gun-control/amp/
They would likely surrender to a CNN camera crew.
Wrong.
The 20 min delay on the tapes is part of the “Promise Program”. This way the deputy(s) at the school can kill the tape before a ‘crime’ is recorded by the system.
All part of ‘sweeping-it-under-the-rug’.
The deputies at the school are NOT there to protect anyone. Their job is to prevent crime from being reported. “Promise Program” remember?
Sorry, but nothing that I said was wrong. The purpose of the tape delay rendered it useless for the purpose of real time surveillance. Now, it was being recorded in real-time. This has to occur in o0rder for there to be a DELAY. The suspected purpose of the delay in projecting the view of the cameras was so that no one would be likely to actually see what happened, except those who were actively editing the recordings. This limited the number of witnesses to any incident.
The deputies and other LEOs, who responded to the active shooter call, WERE there to extend protection to those inside the school. There were a few who chose not to do that. But most did their jobs. And, they ran into they problem of the delayed feed from the surveillance cameras.
MAC45- I’m not looking to start one of those urinating contests, but I think you might be the one who is not understanding. Your original comment (“A couple of things…) is a wonderful dissertation regarding how things should be done; I expect that everyone sitting around the Chief’s conference table listening to it is impressed. In reality it is just another battle plan that will not survive initial contact with the enemy.
The original issue with the medical teams is that they had on scene teams of officers and medics ready to take action. Because they have an official designation for these teams (TEAMS) one has to consider that they are trained for this sh… er, stuff. The officers are armed and prepared to meet the shooter should he choose to take them on, and the medics are equipped to administer aid to the wounded. Everyone most likely should be in body armor. Drydocking them probably cost a couple of lives, in my opinion.
All the rules and protocols must operate under the umbrella of protection of life and property, in that order. Improvisation due to unique factors at the scene must at least meet that overall charge. The most valuable thing at a scene like that is someone close to the point of the spear to make a decision and act on it. A captain who must check with “higher ups” in a situation like that is no better than a janitor; where were their sergeants? They are the ones who are not consumed by “career” and they know that it is easier to get forgiveness than it is to get permission.
If the Broward upper command does not trust their Sergeants and Lts on the scene to make good decisions, then they need to do some serious house cleaning. [I recall that in a comment thread on a previous article on this topic you expressed a degree fo experience in the business, so I will leave it at “that makes two of us”.]
As regards EMTs my military background can provide some expertise. I volunteered to join the Marines, I volunteered again to serve in the 03xx MOS, ie. Infantry.
But the Navy Corpsmen (ie EMTs) attached to our Battalion did not. Nor did they get the benefit of Marine Corps boot camp, Infantry School, Squad Leaders Course, etc.
But these are the bravest men I have ever known. No Infantry training, no weapon, but three they are out on the FEBA skylining themselves by holding an IV bag up in the air over a fallen Marine. Without any regard for their own safety.
Couple that with the Broward EMTs demanding entry into a hot zone so they could save lives, and it’s not unreasonable to give them the authority and training to enter a school shooting ahead of cowardly corrupt incompetent local police.
Hell, in this age of terrorism where follow-on EMTs are targeted with snipers and secondary IEDs, it only makes sense to harden them.
Fen, first of all, thanks for your service. My son is a former Marine, two combat tours and presently an EMT assigned to a SWAT team. They are highly motivated and trained. (See prior comment on “Tactical Medical Competition “.
My son’s first Navy Corpsman, Mark Cannon, (Silver Star; Purple Heart) was KIA doing exactly what you described, saving the lives of his men. Thank you for giving me a chance to honor Mark.
Maybe I can offer something from experience. I was undergoing COMPTUEX (Composite Training Unit Exercise) and I was hit with a first aid question. And I knew what to do. And later the evaluator singled me out for knowing what to do. It was the highest accomplishment I achieved, ever. Later I when I was a trainer in the training battle group I always made sure to put first aid problems in in the situations I’d throw at the trainees.
My first aid kit fills up a Sear’s Craftsman tool box. Ok, that’s just my chainsawing kit. I also have my zippered backpacking kit and my vehicle kit, which fits under the seat. I’m qualified on the M14, the M16 the M590, the M11, the M9, the M1911. But it always seemed my highest and best use was to render aid. You are the rifle men, Marines.
*sigh* There is a reason why paramedics and firefighters are not given firearms and trained to enter active shooter situations. It is liability. Their employere do not want to spend the time and money necessary to properly train these individuals to use deadly force. Also, to the people trying to equate the situation in this case with the situations in which military medics find themselves. In the first place, even unarmed combat medics work surrounded by armed troops. While combat medics are extremely brave and dedicated individuals, they are not superman. These paramedics could have been escorted into the building by LEOs [you should have 5 armed men to provide effective security for the paramedics] who would then have stayed with them and protected them. Then it would have required an armed escort to move the wounded and medical personnel out of the building safely. Also, it is not impossible for armed responders to carry wounded out of the danger zone to waiting medical personnel. It happens on the battle field all the time. Again, it depends upon the situation, the environment, the number of potential victims remaining and the number of armed responders available.
It seems like the compassionate thing to do to place people in jeopardy, unnecessarily, to perform humanitarian services. But, sometimes it is simply not a good idea. The armed responders go in to neutralize the ongoing threat. Then the rescue portion of the operation kicks in. And, simultaneously, if possible, or shortly there after, the investigative portion of the operation kicks in.
I still wouldn’t have waited six minutes. I wouldn’t have waited one second. I know that may seem like big talk but I didn’t train for ship’s security reaction force for nothing.
If I remember correctly, didn’t two officers get disciplined for “disregarding orders” to stand down and went into the building?
This involved two Miramar police officers who responded on their own initiative without authorization or even seeking authorization. Bad move. If they had contacted anyone in authority at the Miramar PD and obtained authorization then their actions would have been covered. Their employer can be liable for their actions, in an official capacity, even if the department knows nothing about that activity. In this case, they were outside their jurisdiction and were not actively involved in a breaking incident. Discipline has to be maintained.
Yup. http://www.sun-sentinel.com/local/broward/parkland/florida-school-shooting/fl-sb-miramar-swat-cops-disciplined-20180307-story,amp.html
The dumbassity here is astounding.
$1500 machine produces as many AR15s as you want.
https://youtu.be/BTojV_NqWCA
This heralds the death of the gun control movement.
They have already sold 1000+
Well, to be more precise, 1001+ 🙂
A year ago ,I would have called myself crazy ,but where I work I have access to several data collection services that collect public info .
I can look up dob ,ssn date of death ect .
You can also look up date of death from name and State of residence .
Not all who are deceased get in those systems ,but usually 70 % or so show up in three months .
None ,absolutely none of the adults at Sandy Hook, the 58 in Las Vegas or the adults at the high school in Florida show up deceased.
None of the three at Charlottesville either.
Coincidence ,possible ,incompetence possible, close to 70 deceased and none showing ,Priceless
Interestingly I was able to locate 3 of the 6 from the Gabriela Cliffords shooting.
Perhaps he did not let them in because there was need to.
Correction
Perhaps he did not let them in because there was NO need to