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| When you are bleeding from a gunshot wound, every second counts. |
After analyzing the timeline of the Orlando Pulse nightclub shooting, one thing seems painfully clear: the authorities who responded were timid and ineffectual.
The assault began at 1:58 a.m. Somehow, the shooter made it past security and onto the dance floor where he opened fire. Hearing the shots, an armed off-duty police officer working security at the club engaged the shooter briefly, but quickly felt that he was "outgunned" and retreated to the street outside the club.
By 2:05 a.m. more officers had entered the club and exchanged fire with the shooter, including members of a SWAT team who just happened to be riding shotgun in a patrol car that was nearby. They, too, felt like their lives were being placed at risk by engaging the attacker, and retreated to await back up.
At 2:22 a.m. the shooter felt safe enough to start making phone calls to 911 to announce that this was, in fact, a terror attack and that he was an agent of ISIS. At 2:45 a.m. he called an Orlando television station and speaks to a producer. He starts scanning Facebook looking for comments about the attack. He even has time to post to his timeline.
By 2:51 a.m. the shooter is still actively shooting people. One victim, Eddie Jamoldroy Justice, is texting with his mother during the ordeal. His texts start at 2:09 a.m. and end at 2:51 a.m. when he is fatally shot.
Orlando Police tries to negotiate unsuccessfully with the shooter for the next two hours before deciding around 5 a.m. to detonate explosives and breach a wall with an armored vehicle. The shooter, apparently tired of the ordeal, emerges through the hole created by the breach of his own volition, engages with officers outside, and is fatally wounded.
The timidity demonstrated by the Orlando Police is shocking. This assault should have been over by 2:15 a.m. at the latest. From the time that the first officers engaged the shooter they should have applied constant pressure, at risk to their own well-being, until the shooter was neutralized. If the shooter retreated deeper into the building, the officers should have followed. If he barricaded himself in a bathroom, they should have stormed it. When there is an active shooter every second counts. Any hostages trapped with the shooter are effectively already dead, or will soon be dead, if the shooter is not neutralized. Therefore, extreme measures, including measures that put innocents at risk, must be used to prevent wider casualties.
Finally, we need officers who are willing and able to lay down their life in the line of duty, just as we have soldiers on the front line called on to do the same thing. That the initial responding officers would have felt that they were "outgunned" and retreated is unacceptable. They should have kept pressure on the shooter until one of them got close enough to take him out.
The way our authorities handled this angers me. It makes us look weak and ineffectual in the eyes of the world and increases the risk of similar attacks. I hope that local police forces across the country use this incident as a case study of how NOT to deal with a terrorist attack and act with much greater decisiveness, courage and lethality when this happens again.
