Watch closely nothing up my sleeve, I will now confuse and confound you by arguing both sides against the middle. The pundits are making a big deal that BCSO giving the stand own order violated their own training protocols and policy. Yawn, so what. Polizette/training-manual-clearly-tells-Florida-deputies-to-confront-the-shooter.

There is a second story involving Miramar three SWAT officers who were suspended for issues surrounding their response to the Broward Co school shooting. There are two issues, their response, and their response to the Chief’s actions. The loudmouth who whined in the press is on his own. Two Miramar SWAT officers were close to the scene, had their equipment and responded to the scene, without informing their department. Miramar SWAT officers suspended for Broward response.

Back in the dark ages police had rules and regulations. Rules were the standard that cannot be violated. Regulations told how to meet the standard either by act or omission. In the late seventies, rules and regulations evolved or were supplemented by Policy and Procedure. From my view the difference was that policy attempted to cover more ground than rules and offered a philosophical standard as a goal. The procedure was more expansive, an admission that no one course could anticipate all the contingencies and consequently offer a solution to meet all circumstances. A procedure could be violated successfully if it was shown that the actions taken were reasonable. Guess who judges the reasonableness of the actions?

I don’t know where the Captain of Broward County stands in the chain of command. The Captain may ultimately be proved wrong and should pay the consequences for the mistake. However, the administration has the ability to ignore their own policy documents.  All the BCSO officers who decided to follow her orders, you are good little bureaucrats and bear no further responsibility for your actions. For those officers that ignored her orders, God Bless You, keep fighting the good fight! It seems policy violations only apply to the guys living in the valley.

The Miramar Chief has an entirely different situation on his hands. If his SWAT guys had been in the high school office consulting with a counselor about little Timmy’s college prospects when the shooting started and they responded, I would offer to buy the gasoline to burn the Chief in effigy.

This was not the case, they were nearby (with cops that means within a hundred miles) when they took it upon themselves to respond. I don’t have a problem with that. Where they screwed up is they should have found a Sergeant or crossing guard and volunteered their services. Once their offer was accepted, they could then report to their command that they were on scene, had been shanghaied and then asked for instructions. Had they done this they probably would have been told to remain in place. But they didn’t do that which added to the potential for additional screwups. (My bet is that the Chief was proud of his guys for stepping up and mad as hell at them for putting him in that position.) This will be lost on civilians but, the Miramar SWAT guys did the right thing, but they did it the wrong way and for that, they need to be punished.

The other thing to consider is that SWAT is an assignment. Officers serve in assignments at the pleasure of the Chief. There is no need to “suspend” an officer from an assignment (OK there could be a local union rule). These guys weren’t suspended from duty, they will be OK.

Prior to the Branch Davidian raid, AANTF had a group of SWAT trained, licensed police officer, paramedics attached to us. Paramedic was their full-time job. Police and SWAT training so that we could take them into harm’s way. As their reputation grew, requests for the services expanded. SWAT teams started recruiting paramedics and our team would offer training, organizational and operational advice. Some of our paramedics were attached to the Branch Davidian raid.

When it became obvious that the raid was going to be a siege. Our lead paramedic stepped in when nobody was paying attention and reached out to the liaison between  Texas Narcotics Control Program and the Army National Guard. By five o’clock that afternoon, the perimeter checkpoint is confronted with a convoy of Army trucks. Texas DPS had taken over the scene and didn’t want to be bothered and knew nothing about any Army trucks.  Our paramedic stepped up and assured them he would take care of it. They let him.

By ten o’clock the FBI HRT showed up. They spotted the tents and sent their paramedic to talk medical with the interlopers. What he found was a fully equipped US Army Field hospital, mess hall, sleeping facility and latrines. His report back to HRT, “don’t let those people go, get them to sign a contract.” Our paramedics remained for the duration of the siege. They did the right thing the right way.