There is a sad parallel between the Orlando massacre and San Diego’s “McDonald’s massacre” of 1984. Lessons were learned from the McDonald’s massacre, and then ignored by police brass in Orlando.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Ysidro_McDonald%27s_massacre
To review, a white racist who hated Mexicans entered the McDonald’s in San Ysidro (very close to the Mexican border) and started shooting. And shooting. And shooting.
The first cops on the scene did nothing, even as the shooting continued. They contacted HQ which in turn contacted the SWAT commander, who was at a social function at Mission Bay.
Until that time, SWAT was primarily geared up for hostage situations. Nationwide they’d never faced a maniacal shooter who just wanted to kill as many people as possible before they in turn were gunned down. So the San Diego SWAT commander ordered officers on the scene (including a sniper with a clear shot at the guy) to wait until he arrived in San Ysidro to properly assess the situation. That’s about a 40-50 minute drive. Meanwhile the shooter is calmly walking around the restaurant, systematically shooting primarily Mexican women and children.
FINALLY the SDPD SWAT boss arrived, assessed the situation and gave the sniper the green light. The crackshot quickly dispatched the shooter. 78 minutes after the shooting begin, it was over.
The shooter had by then killed 21 people, and wounded 19 more. He had fired at least 245 rounds of ammunition, while the cops stood around outside, after arriving as early as 10 minutes after the shooting started. At total of 175 cops were deployed in a six block radius around McDonald’s (not counting arriving SWAT members), and nobody did anything. Dead and dying people lay outside the front door, and the cops did nothing. It was a deadly serious version of the Keystone Cops — much posturing and positioning, but no effective action.
No cop was willing to intervene — to take unilateral action to end the massacre and hence to get the wounded to a hospital quicker. None of “America’s Finest” were willing to face bullets and — even more frightening — career-ending disciplinary action for disobeying the idiotic order of a SWAT bureaucrat who was not on the scene. Perhaps a cop’s biggest fear is that he might shoot an innocent person. Better to let the shooter continue his rampage than to take such a risk.
But here’s the thing: This aspect of the story has never been discussed critically by the press. Almost no one knows this tale of gross ineptitude, though it’s public record. No adverse repercussions resulted within the police department. Everyone got their promotions and pensions.
The good news is that, as a result of this monstrous butchery, at least SWAT procedures were changed, to better deal with an active shooter. Supposedly if “McDonald’s II” happened today, the shooter would be confronted and killed much quicker by cops. I’ve heard anecdotally that this horrific tragedy resulting in changed SWAT procedures nationwide.
But according to news reports, these revised SWAT tactics have not been adopted in Orlando. It was the McDonald’s massacre all over again. Only worse.
Apparently one off-duty cop was armed and working security in the nightclub. But after facing the assault rifle the perp was firing, it appears he ran away.
More important, the cops did nothing for over THREE HOURS, trying to negotiate with a demonic terrorist who they KNEW had shot scores of people. Finally with all their ducks in order, SWAT staged the perfect entry and killed the bastard.
But in the meantime, 20-30 of the 49 people who died probably COULD have been saved if they had gotten to a hospital sooner. That’s been the experience of gunshot wounds in this day and age — hospitals are very good at saving lives. But not if the wounded are left to bleed out for up to 3 hours.
So far (and it’s early), I’ve seen no such criticism raised concerning the cowardly Orlando Police Department. Yeah, that’s strong language. But whether fear, PC concerns, or bureaucratic bumbling were the cause of such inaction, the result was far more deaths than necessary in this situation.
The shooter was a self-declared terrorist. Scores of fleeing patrons told the police about the massacre inside. There was no room for hesitancy. The cops botched it.