When It’s OK to Kill

Inside the School Teaching Cops When It’s OK to Kill - Bloomberg Business:

 Forty cops are in a classroom, watching recent footage of protesters in San Francisco denouncing the police. “Your children are ashamed of you,” a black woman in the video tells a black officer, who looks away. “Coward!” others shout. A young demonstrator walks up to a cop and sticks out his middle finger. A female officer trips, and the demonstrators laugh.
The volume is way up, and the cops in the room are leaning back in their chairs, crossing their arms, getting tense. Jim Glennon steps to the front of the room and stops the video. Glennon, 59, spent 29 years as an officer in Lombard, a suburb of Chicago, at one point running county homicide investigations. He’s 6-foot-1, 210 pounds, and has the gravelly voice and bearing of the desk sergeant on the 1980s TV show Hill Street Blues who told cops to “be careful out there” before the squad cars rolled. “Welcome to our world,” Glennon says. “It’s as bad as it’s been since the ’60s and ’70s.”

I spent a few days on Whidbey Island this week, visiting my son and his family.

Said son (aka "The Squid Kid") is a Master at Arms in the U.S. Navy.   He was recently promoted to E6 (Petty Officer Something ... I never was any good at Navy Ratings, but that's the equivalent of Staff Sgt. in the army) and in part my visit was an opportunity to again tell him how proud I am of his hard-earned promotion.

We had a chance on the last day of my visit to chat in private, without his wife and children listening to our conversation.  It was a bit of a letting-down of the hair; shared war stories, and he described many of the training operations he was becoming responsible.  



Some of these, such as the "Active Shooter" scenarios, were enacted during a normal workday in offices on-base.   The workers (civilian and uniformed both) were there when the exercises began;  they had been warned that a 'role-playing' exercise would be interrupting their work day, and they should cooperate with the 'officers' running the exercise.    But in the actual event, as soon as the blank rounds were heard, the workers panicked and bolted.  Sometimes, workers fell while running out the doors and the exercises had to be stopped to provide first-aid and ambulance transport for the injured.

In one exercise, office workers hid behind chairs and under the desks.  The M.A. playing the "active shooter" role walked around with his dummy rifle, pointing at each cowering worker, and saying "BANG!"  For the workers, it was frightening for the civilians and embarrassing for the military staff members.

Training, especially for an "armed response", is critical for an armed policeman ... civilian and military both.

Unfortunately, much of that training requires learning how to contend with a building full of sheep fleeing in all directions from an attacker.