 |
||||||||
 |
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
Police retrained to act, not wait
By RYAN DAVIS, Times Staff Writer It was maybe 25 minutes into the shooting when Evan Todd escaped from Columbine High School, wounded in the eye and back. It took Todd several more minutes to find a cop. He told the officer there were two gunmen in the library; he described their weapons. As he spoke, he could hear shots. "All you have to do is go through that door right there," he said. "I've got to watch the school," the cop replied. Todd, who was 15, remembers thinking, "What are you watching for, more kids to die?" Eventually, more than 300 law enforcement officers responded to the suburban Denver school that day in April 1999. But for as long as they could hear gunshots, not one went inside. Police did not reach the library until nearly four hours after Todd pointed to it. In the interim, a wounded teacher bled to death. Almost two years later, a fleeing murder suspect ran into a Tampa schoolhouse packed with kindergarteners. In seconds, the talk on the police radio was of "establishing a perimeter." Hillsborough County sheriff's Cpl. Al Brackett didn't like what he was hearing. Another deputy thought: Columbine. They rushed into the school. It was a controversial move at the time. But no more. At law enforcement agencies around the Tampa Bay area and the nation, waiting is out. The new creed: If people are in imminent danger, go get the bad guys. There's no good reason why police didn't immediately pour into Columbine High School, concluded retired Colorado Supreme Court Justice William Erickson, who led the governor's investigation into the response. "They would have saved some lives," Erickson told the St. Petersburg Times. But on that day, there was no debate. There was just police policy. Policy said to establish a perimeter. Policy said to call for a SWAT team. Policy said time was on their side. It took 45 minutes from the first shot until a SWAT team entered the school, according to the governor's report. At that point, the two shooters -- outcast students who had planned the attack for nearly a year -- were either dead or minutes from shooting themselves. But it took more than two hours after their deaths for cautious SWAT teams to reach wounded teacher Dave Sanders. Sanders' sister-in-law told reporters, "If SWAT had gotten him out of there, he could have made it." On Jan. 12, 2001, Hillsborough deputies and Tampa police did not know if their suspect was armed. They did know he was dangerous. Two weeks earlier, they say, he had shot and killed a defenseless convenience store manager. On the 12th, the suspect led them on a 30-mile chase. Then a tire blew on his stolen car, and the suspect fled into Meacham Early Childhood Center near Nebraska Avenue. "He's desperate," said Hillsborough Lt. Rod Reder, who was at the scene. "He knows if you catch him he gets life or the chair." Some of the cops arriving at the school were ready to establish a perimeter and wait for SWAT. "We had some people standing outside because that's what they were taught to do," Cpl. Brackett said. Brackett and another deputy thought differently. "There were children in the school," Brackett said. "I didn't think it was diligent to stand around and wait." They yelled for administrators to lock down the school, securing the kids inside their classrooms. Just in time. The suspect tried unsuccessfully to storm one of the locked rooms. In less than 45 seconds, he was in custody. Wide-eyed children watched as deputies hauled away the man and flashing lights filled the parking lot. To anyone who read about it in the next day's newspaper, it was no big deal. A Hillsborough sheriff's press release stated that the suspect had been "apprehended without incident." Inside the agency, the reaction was not so simple. Reder said, "It caused a little controversy." Brackett said the ensuing discussions likely led to new training last year for all Hillsborough deputies. From now on, in situations like the one at Meacham, deputies will act rather than wait. In fairness to the first officers on the scene at Columbine, the governor's report says, they did what they were trained to do. They followed a theory that evolved from the creation of the first SWAT (special weapons and tactics) teams in the late 1960s. Snipers had killed civilians and police in several high-profile cases nationwide. Fifteen people died in Austin, Texas, and there were sniping deaths at the Watts riots. Police needed a way to fight back. Los Angeles police established the first full-time SWAT unit in 1971. By the 1980s, most areas had one. The teams traded information. They became more specialized. Other cops turned to them when situations got ugly. Soon that didn't just mean snipers, it meant hostage negotiations as well. "That creates a one-size-fits-all atmosphere," said Mike Gillette, the director of training at the National Law Enforcement and Security Institute in Des Moines, Iowa. "One size does not fit all. That was strikingly portrayed at Columbine." The Columbine shooters didn't want to negotiate. They wanted carnage. In all, they killed 12 of their classmates, a teacher and then themselves. "We all just sat there and watched Columbine unfold and we were thinking, 'My God, I never saw this coming,' " said Jim Scanlon, a Columbus, Ohio, SWAT team member and national training expert. "We put so much in the hands of SWAT for all these years. "It's the patrol cop or the school resource cop who's got to deal with this. And we've got to teach them to be SWAT cops." As Tampa Bay area schools begin to open this week, the change is nearly complete. "It's everywhere. It has literally spanned the country," said training director Gillette. "I've never seen a movement be embraced so quickly." In Hillsborough, all deputies have been trained to rush in. In Pasco, school resource officers have been trained and other deputies will soon get training. The agency is writing a new general order. In New Port Richey, the police have practiced in empty schools. In St. Petersburg, police discussed the situation, but officials said the agency's policy never stood in the way of action. In Clearwater, police have changed their policy and training. In Hernando, school resource officers are preparing for the school year by conducting computer-simulated training. Most shooting rampages are over in five to seven minutes, according to Scanlon's North American SWAT Training Association in Columbus. In the Tampa Bay area, SWAT teams can't be assembled in less than an hour, said Gary Lemberg of the Southeastern Public Safety Institute at St. Petersburg College. It takes that long for people to grab their equipment and gather. At best, local agencies have one part-time team. So the first responders at a scene have been trained to assess the situation. Primarily, they are looking for what are called "active shooters." To attack, four officers are ideal. "God bless you if you're willing to go in by yourself," Scanlon said. The officers grab bigger weapons, if they have them, and form a diamond-like formation to close in around the shooter. "It's a hostage rescue, that's all it is," said Scanlon. "It's very quick movement. You're going right to the shooter." Often, a contain and wait approach still applies. If no one has been killed, running into a hostage situation can cause unnecessary deaths, officials said. When it comes to negotiations, time really is on the side of the police. It can calm the suspect. The gray area is when the officer thinks the situation could turn into an active-shooter situation, but it hasn't yet. The new training puts more decision-making on individual officers, said general manager John Gnagey of the National Tactical Officers Association in Pennsylvania. If they think they can save lives, policy no longer stands in their way, at schools or elsewhere. Last month, Hillsborough Deputy Preston Barfield chased a gun-toting suspect 25 miles into Zephyrhills. The man ditched his car and ran into a convenience store. Barfield thought the man was going to take hostages. He looked inside and saw seven women. Gun drawn, he chased after the suspect. Another deputy followed him. At gunpoint, they wrestled the man to the ground. "The (new) training made it a natural instinct," Barfield said. "If you call in a SWAT team, we're talking several hours. We're talking an ordeal those ladies didn't have to go through."
 © 2006 • All Rights Reserved • St. Petersburg Times
490 First Avenue South • St. Petersburg, FL 33701 • 727-893-8111 
|
From the Times wire desk
From the AP |
