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When Lt. Craig Cardinale arrived at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School while a mass shooting was taking place last year, he found MP Scot Peterson pacing up and down. Outside, repeating, "Oh, my God. Oh my God."
The deputy minister, who was assigned to the school, had a behavior typically associated with fear or panic, the lieutenant told investigators. He moved "backwards", talking to himself and "breathing with difficulty".
What he was not doing, was what the current law enforcement protocol said was his primary responsibility: to enter the building. Stop the shooter.
Mr. Peterson was disciplined and this week charged with endangering children and culpable negligence in the attack that killed 17 people. The case he is accused of is quite unusual and promises to raise all kinds of legal issues, such as whether the fact that a police officer does not perform his task with the training he was subjected to can lead to prison.
[[[[Learn more about what Scot Peterson failed to do in the Parkland shootout]
But it also raises a broader moral question: how much do we expect or demand the courage of law enforcement officers? How much courage goes up to the level of heroism – and what is part of making money?
The officers themselves are likely to hear inconsistent, even contradictory, messages that reflect the public's polarized view that the police are protectors or oppressors. The police rushed into the twin towers as they collapsed; they also shot people unarmed for fear of losing their lives.
"Every policeman heard a variation of" Your first job is to go home at the end of your shift, "a version of" It's better to be tried at age 12 than six. "And every police officer has also heard "You are the heroes, you are the front lines of the defense, you are the ones who are supposed to run towards the shots," said Seth Stoughton, a former police officer who currently teaches the right to fire. 39, University of South Carolina.
In many minds, the latter goes with the territory. "They have an obligation to put themselves in danger," said Ken Murray, who runs an association for the training of law enforcement and armed forces based in Orlando, Florida. "Now, if you do not want to do this work, go for something else."
But the idea of bravery and cowardice, in the world of law enforcement, can be situational. What the public might call courage, an expert called "rational bravery" is a behavior to be expected, since officers with bullet-proof vests and tactical expertise are in the best position to respond and have been set up to do it.
The response of a police officer depends largely on the situation. Officers are usually instructed to slow down and use tactics such as taking cover to give them more time to accurately judge a situation. But active shooters now call for a totally different answer. The affidavit relating to Mr. Peterson's arrest indicated that he had been trained to immediately confront the armed man in the hope of saving lives.
Expectations and training have changed dramatically since the Columbine High School massacre in 1999, when law enforcement officials were criticized for their inability to deal with the attackers quickly and the deaths of 13 people. Until then, the typical protocol of the police was that officers wait for a relief or that the SWAT team arrives.
But after that, many departments rewrote their policies to emphasize that every minute could mean a new death. The officers were instructed to prevent or immediately kill the armed man. Dan Oates, who was the police chief in Aurora, Colo., Killed 12 people and wounded 70 others during a shootout in a movie theater in 2012, saying the police were now immersed in a tactical that endangered the innocent hostages first.
"That's what you're going to do if it's happening under your watch," said Chief Oates, now head chef in Miami Beach.
None of the officers who reacted to the filming of the film hesitated to enter, said Lt. Jad Lanigan, one of the first to arrive, but that did not mean that they did not feel the fear; some had difficulty coping with the horror around them and went into what he compared to a "blue screen".
"I had people literally walking towards me and they had empty faces," he recalls. "The human brain had too much to treat. We had to take them out a bit, give them a clear direction and they could reconnect. "
"We are expecting more and more from our police," said Murray, who is responsible for training law enforcement. "They are supposed to be snipers, mixed martial artists, caring and caring healers, social scientists at the level of psychologists, they should be able to diagnose at a distance a poor, oppressed individual who moves to We expect that they will be able to distinguish a real weapon from an identical replica and with very little training.
"If society knew how badly trained officers are, they would never let them do this job."
"Bravery should not be equated to running to danger, no matter the problem," said Maria Haberfeld, expert in police training at the John Jay Criminal Justice College in New York. "It really has to be understood and analyzed in the context of everything that happens and the discretion of the agent."
If the idea of rushing towards a shootout plays for the hero in each officer, the narrative can change drastically in cases involving excessive force claims. In these cases, fear, not courage, is the officer's best defense. Many officers spoke to convince a jury that they had a reasonable reason to be afraid when they pulled their weapon, even if it turned out that they had misjudged the situation.
"I was scared to death," said officer Jeronimo Yanez during his lawsuit for the death of Philando Castile, a black Minnesota motorist who fired a few seconds after informing him of the incident. agent that there was a handgun in the car. "I thought I was going to die."
Whether by heroism or fear or the safety of a police officer, the police often unfold the story that seems to justify the use of force in such situations, said Professor Stoughton.
Officers are not often praised for their break, instead of shooting first, in the uncertain times when an arrested person reaches out for his belt or when a cell phone looks like a gun. Professor Stoughton said, "Wow, you really had the courage to accept more risk than me."
As an officer, he remembered a roadblock in which he approached the passenger side of the car and saw what appeared to be a shiny firearm on the driver's lap. He raised his own weapon and asked the driver to put his hands on the steering wheel, then quickly established that what he had seen was actually a medallion of Jesus.
Every part of him was on maximum alert. He was scared.
"If he had caught his locket," Jesus, help me here, "I might have – but not, I would have shot this guy," he said. declared.
The active shooter training that Mr. Peterson received clearly indicated how he was supposed to react. He described what the Broward County Sheriff's Office identified as "life priorities" in descending order: "1) hostages / victims, 2) innocent bystanders, 3) police / MPs and 4) suspects."
But some experts say things are not always so clear and agents have a duty towards even those they monitor.
"There is a constant tension between the subjects to be taught to officers and the priorities in situations where they face a person who looks troubled and threatening," said David Alan Sklansky, a former federal prosecutor who teaches criminal law to the police. 39, Stanford University.
"It's part of the job of putting yourself in danger to protect others," he added. "And I would say it's also part of the job of putting yourself in danger to protect the person you're trying to control."
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