What should a free man do?

Another fine kettle of fish

There's new information viz the Columbine shooters, which you can read about here, if you haven't yet.  And how come you haven't read up on that yet?  Huh?

Anyway, in that article psychologist Peter Langman writes, It is hard to prevent murder when killers do not care if they live or die. It is like trying to stop a suicide bomber.

The attack Harris and Klebold pulled off was well-planned over a period of more than a year, and Harris, who conceived the attacks, was more than just troubled. He was, psychologists now say, a cold-blooded, predatory psychopath — a smart, charming liar with "a preposterously grand superiority complex, a revulsion for authority and an excruciating need for control, according to Dave Cullen, author of Columbine.

What's the difference between the Columbine killers and the Mumbai shooters? One group was trained and sponsored by the government of Pakistan and so was better trained. And there are more Columbine killers and Mumbai shooters practicing all over the world tonight ~ gunnin' for you, butter-cup.

Okay, now read this excerpt from an article I found while researching this post:

British Columbia Psychologist Robert Hare has done some ground breaking research into the study of psychopaths and has found that psychopaths tend to under utilize regions of the brain that integrate memories and emotions. These findings helped support long held theories that the destructive nature of psychopaths was neurobiological in nature. Aside from the neurobiological aspects of psychopathic behaviour: The psychopath knows right from wrong; they are quite often charming, glib and impulsive individuals. They often brag about grandiose life ambitions, but often lack the skills or the discipline to achieve their goals. Psychopaths are easily bored and crave immediate gratification. It has been found that psychopaths, quite often, have very high intelligence quotients. When caught in a lie, the psychopath will shift blame, or switch topics with no apparent embarrassment. They do not form deep or meaningful relationships, and often end up hurting people who get close to them. While they are intellectually aware of society's rules, they feel no guilt when they break them.

While many of the aspects described above fit the profile of the Super Predator, there are some important differences. The super predator” is almost completely without ambition, they are often of below average intelligence, and they do not recognize -intellectually or otherwise- any rules of society. While psychopaths and the super-predator both share the inability to feel emotion, the psychopath can feign it to achieve a result, the super predator seems completely incapable of even that. More interestingly, the super predator is remarkably candid. They will more often than not, admit not only to their crimes, but also as to the why, and as to the fact that they did nothing wrong and would do it again.

Psychopathy does not always manifest itself in criminality. In fact, a psychopath could be a highly functioning and highly successful individual in society. In contrast, the super predator lacks the intelligence or the masking capabilities of the psychopath to achieve success outside of the criminal world. (Bennett et al, 1996, p. 29) The super predator is not psychotic. Psychotics are largely out of touch with reality. They suffer from delusions, hallucinations, or other disordered states. They are often found not guilty of crimes they commit by reason of insanity. (Kahlia, 1996). Today, especially in the inner cities, children between 5 to 9 years of age are often left to their own devices. They spend much of their time hanging out on the streets or soaking up violent television programs and violent rap music; they have easy access to guns and drugs, and can be extremely dangerous. By the year 2005 they will be teenagers, a group that tends to be, in the view of Northeastern University criminologist James Alan Fox, temporary sociopaths... impulsive and immature.''

There are currently 39 million children under 10 in the U.S., more than at any time since the 1950s. This is the calm before the crime storm, says Fox. So long as we fool ourselves in thinking that we're winning the war against crime, we may be blind sided by this bloodbath of teenage violence that is lurking in the future. Nearly all the factors that contribute to youth crime -single-parent households, child abuse, deteriorating inner-city schools - are getting worse. At the same time, government is becoming less, not more, interested in spending money to help break the cycle of poverty and crime.  

Okay, that's all you need for now.  It's a good essay, the remainder of which can be read here.

In case you're not up-to-speed on ciminal justice stuff, John DiIulio coined the phrase Super Predator some years back and wrote here of his scientific, wild-ass guesses on the subject.

And, coming full-circle back to Harris and Klebold, catch this one last piece here on how they and Cho at VaTech, though they all had "issues", could not have been identified as people sure or even likely to commit the slaughter they indeed did commit ~ and no one can ever predict future slaughterers. The best any expert can really give us is a... scientific, wild-ass guess.

So, are we going to stand anymore around bitching about which side of the psycho-argument is most true ~ or holds the most danger if all of them are true?  I don't know.  You don't know.  None of the sky-pilots who thought up this psycho-stuff know for sure either. 

God knows, and he ain't talkin'.

The deal is this, whether you understand it or accept it or like it.  Or not. 

You can comfort yourself by noting that the homicide rate is down over the last several years ~ but that's because medical science is saving many more, Hmmm, these gates really are pearly after all people and making them into, I got my ass beat/stabbed/shot and almost died until the Doc saved me Agg Assault victims.  What does that mean? Murders are down because doctors are able to save more almost-victims but the result is that charges of Aggravated Assault, the crime just below Murder in most jurisdictions, has increased as much as five-fold in some areas.

You can comfort yourself by believing that since W is now back in Texas, the world will like and respect us again and those nasty terrorists will back off and just blow themselves up accidentally since they're all just poor, dusty knuckle-heads anyway.

You can comfort yourself with delusional hope that a suave community organizer has the brains and the balls to take on some of the worst bad-guys and savages since the Barbary Coast pirates and Hitler.  

And you can place your remaining feeble faith in stupid people who end up being cops, like this insipid POS, who, as you can see here, has clearly put her religious beliefs ahead of the safety of her fellow officers and the citizens of the fine city of Philadelphia.  How is a hijab a threat to other officers and citizens?  Some bad actor come up from behind and grabs our little princess by her tightly-emplaced scarf and then commences to quickly choke her til her knees give out and she goes down. As she's losing consciousness, because she is not a warrior her main concern will be that her head not be uncovered lest she dishonor her god, so she'll reach up to loosen the tension growing 'round her windpipe and carotid artery ~ while the bad-guy, who's doing this easily with one hand because this so-called cop is such a cup-cake, reaches down and takes her duty pistol.

And extra mags. 

Which he can then use against the real cops and any loose-change citizens in the AO.

So where am I going with this?  Here:

You don't know where they are.  You don't know who they are or where they go to church, and many of them do.  You don't know when or where they will attack so you don't know if you'll be in the AO when they do.  The only thing you do know is that you can be prepared no matter who, what, where, when, why... and how.  I've talked about this in the last few posts here and in many not so recent posts you can search out and find in just a few minutes.

Only you can care enough to be aware of suspicious circumstances and people around you.  Only you can report these observations to the proper authority.  Only you can decide if you want to prepare yourself with force of legally-carried arms and ammunition and the training that can turn you into a warrior.  Only you can protect you. But they're not just after you.  They're after all those folks around you as well.

The cops can't do it all, can't be everywhere all the time.  They didn't drive in to work today just so they could wait around the corner from your house and beat the shit out of anybody who pisses you off.  Can you believe that?

A police officer who is becoming a friend wrote this to me a few days back, viz the Binghamton, NY situation:

... In the age of the active shooter, they must be taken down as soon as possible. We can't do the old surround and wait him out anymore. I couldn't bear to know that brother officers lay dying, I would have done something more than watch.

Having gone to a two-day training course on the active shooter last year, I can tell you it was some of the most realistic training I have ever had... it was thrilling and terrifying at the same time.

These events do require skill and coordination.  It was physically grueling.  I'm in good shape for my age but many have let themselves slide after getting the job. There are no requirements or incentives to stay in shape, which is a shame, because it drags down the agency and presents health risks for the individual officers.

See?  They're going to give it their best shot.  Most of them, anyway. So, encourage the ones who are obviously warriors.  They are the bad-ass boys with the bad-ass toys.  We need more cops with nick-names/call-signs like Chainsaw, or Trouble and none called Pudge or Old Shoe.  So, don't be shy about reporting the ones who are lazy, incompetent pension-chasers.  Attend city or county counsel meetings to see if you can move the "leaders" to pay for more great training for your warriors ~ as opposed to putting down really pretty paving-stones in front of city hall, like they just did where I live.

Another attack's coming.  The cops are preparing. Training.  Staying alert.

You need to get and stay prepared, too, unerschrocken.  Suck it up.

More feckless PC "leaders"

As the dust settles from the Binghamton shooting, I found this story to be quite interesting. Notice how the prosecutor and medical examiners, all city or county employees, immediately begin to set the stage for the wrongful death lawsuits that families of the slain will surely bring against the town of Binghamton. 

The cops on scene had no way of knowing how badly anyone was hurt inside that building and for some lawyer to say they aaaaall would have died anyway is pure bullshit.  No ME in a cold morgue can say how long someone will fight for life.

I worked a homicide back in '85 where a 100#, healthy Korean woman was stabbed seventeen times by an angry ex-lover.  The crime scene was horribly bloody and initially we thought she had fought her attacker. Evidence showed later that the blood spatters and patterns all over that bedroom were from her twisting and writhing there on the floor, fighting desperately for her life.  Medics who made it to the scene and tried to stabilize her there said they'd never seen so small a person fight so hard for her life with so little blood left in her body. They felt they could have saved her had they arrived sooner.

It was the sworn duty of those Binghamton cops to protect the people who were in danger inside that building, not stand around opining that everyone inside was already dead, so why bother going inside.  In my opinion, this is another case of political correctness getting someone, a lot of someones, killed. 

I am sure those cops would have stormed that building and bravely taken that shooter down... if they'd been lead from the front by their Chief who, by his own words, arrived on scene less than three minutes after the initial 911 call.  And then did nothing.

He didn't know how many people were inside. 

He didn't know how many were wounded or the seriousness of those wounds. 

He didn't know how many shooters there were nor what weapons they had or had used.

But it was most certainly his job to go in and find out to keep the loss of innocent life to an absolute minimum by way of proactive, aggressive police work. But I think something was there in the back of his mind that scared him into waiting when he should have lead courageously.

But, Undaunted, they were all dead inside.  There was no point in him and his troops going on active shooter response.

I'll say it again: he didn't know they were all dead.

Following a soon-explained nexus, here we can read about how PC crap may have had something to do with the deaths of three Pittsburg cops.  How so?

Paraphrasing the story: With one AK47 and two pistols, the shooter kept police hiding behind cover for four hours while their brother officers were left bleeding to death nearby, on-scene police leadership unwilling to try to reach them.  More than 100 rounds were fired by the SWAT teams and the shooter.

WTF?  One AK47 and two pistols?  Just how many freakin' automatic weapons and pistols did the cops have?  And with all those cops there, only 100 rounds were fired?

What. The. Fuck. Is. That?

Every cop there with a pair should have fired at least 100 rounds into the house where this POS was hiding.  As he kept his head down so's not to get it shot off, a couple cops could have run up and grabbed their comrades and dragged them to safety and waiting medical aid.  You know why PPD could have done it and should have done it?  Because that's what our soldiers do every day. When there are wounded who need evac, some of the guys lay down suppressive fire, lots of bullets fired all at once and for an extended period of time,  while a couple others in the squad rush out and drag the wounded warrior out of the line of fire.

Why didn't this get done here? 

First, there may have been officer safety concerns: they didn't want any cops to be shot by friendly fire as they rescued the wounded.  So they did nothing.  But the rescuers could have ducked a little as they approached and then dragged out those now-dead officers.

Second; because PD leadership is afraid of the media singing that tired old song about bad-ass, aggressive, over-reacting cops and how they shot the shit out of a perfectly peaceful neighborhood in order to arrest one measly misunderstood yoot who'd just had a bad day and lost his job. So, because of cowardly, PC leadership, three more fine police officers died. 

Get it?

As if that's not sad enough, we can all see here that VaTech doesn't get it yet.  Nobody brings to pass peace by studying non-violence nor by setting up some dopey Center for Peace Studies and Violence Prevention anywhere there are humans. 

I got a clue for you, Mr. Mark McNamee: human bad-guys only understand one thing and that's aggressive, brutal force.  They will always try to use it on those they see as easy prey... unless that prey is demonstrably capable and willing to use aggressive, brutal force to preempt any attack, a/o to play catch-up for any attack that a bad-guy might get lucky enough to pull off successfully.

"It was an opportunity for something new and different and hopeful to emerge," said provost Mark McNamee.  Why didn't you just say, I'm a pussy and anyone can come and kick my ass any time they want and terrorize and hurt my family and any student at VaTech because I'm such a coward, I'll just let you do it.

There.  I said it for him.

The aforementioned nexus?

Cops are great.  God bless them and protect them.  But for different reasons, they can't or won't always respond in a way that saves the most lives. Too many people in leadership positions in this country have no appreciation for the fact that we're at war ~ against terrorists and gang-bangers, losers and loners ~ and all the rest of the riff-raff.  They think we're all just learning to adjust to new challenges in inter-personal relationships and the way to peace and safety is to take one more class, get one more line on the old resume' showing you're staying ahead of the power curve on the subject of abnormal psychology.

Bullshit.

You want peace?  You gotta beat a little ass now and then.  Period.

So, since it's not going to get any better, you need to take responsibility for your own safety and that of those you love.

You.

And to cop leadership: man up.  We're tired of your lame-ass excuses.

Upstate Shooter Update

Some preliminary and follow-up observations about the 4-3-09 shootings in Binghamton, NY.

Schools near the scene were put on lock-down but apartment buildings in the same area were evacuated.  WTF: apartment dwellers are somehow less intrinsically valuable than students? 

It was the same scenario whether one was stuck in Algebra or watching Frazier re-runs: there was a guy with a gun in a building surrounded by cops.  To keep the kids in the building because they might wander over to the scene and be hurt is one thing.  But to assume no apartment residents would stroll over to see what was going on and also might be hurt  is absurd. 

Better that the cops have a radio/TV announcement telling people there was danger close and they needed to stay inside than to have cops go through buildings telling people to leave, which is what they did as far as reports inform us.  One patrol car could have gone through the area broadcasting a warning to stay inside with doors and windows locked until the area was declared clear of danger.

But, no.  Evidently cops were sent to evacuate people from surrounding residences.

This is inadvisable in a number of ways.

• If there are armed attackers, the best place for unarmed civilians who are not located in the same building as the attackers is probably behind locked doors.  If the shooters move toward the building you're in, it would be best to get out of Dodge before they get there.
• If there are armed attackers, the best thing for cops to be doing is moving aggressively against those attackers to minimize the death and destruction they might cause. 
• If there are armed attackers at one location, there is no reason to believe that is the only site at which an attack will be launched.  Rather than going through apartment buildings and neighborhoods telling people to leave their homes and flee for their lives, those cops should have been at least on stand-by; fully armed and equiped and on the way to other likely targets in the city.
• Mumbai had multiple attackers at multiple locations.  Given that attack, there is no reason to think any attack in any town of any size will be just one guy who's pissed off because he lost his job. 
• Any Chief of Police who trains and deploys his troops as though that's true needs to be fired.

Period.

I watched the coverage of the incident.  There were emergency lights flashing from all sorts of vehicles.  But if a building's not burning down at the moment, the firemen can direct traffic while cops deploy to potential secondary targets.  Like schools.  And malls. 

The most annoying thing about the coverage was, to me, the apparent obsession the news-reader had with the fact that the cops took two people out of the building in flex-cuffs, as opposed to steel hand-cuffs.  She mentioned more than once the training she'd "seen and received" from SWAT guys and how all that training didn't suggest to her why those two guys were taken out in flex-cuffs.  I guess she wasn't paying attention or was busy applying her own "enlightened" perspective to the training... so she missed that part.  She sounded like a fool. But that's what CNN is all about.

My guys and I used to carry at least two sets of steel cuffs on our gun-belts and three or four flex-cuffs between our pants belt and our gun-belt.  Why?  Because sometimes we needed all the restraints we could carry.

I'll write more on this later but I just want you to be brave.  A dozen or so people were killed today and some of them wouldn't have perished if they'd been brave. 

In Israel, civiliams are taught to attack shooters like the one in NY today.  Attack the shooter.  Swarm him though you are unarmed... or risk being that sitting duck about which we all hear.

That's what I'd do if I was unarmed.  You decide what you're going to do when the time comes. And don't think it won't.

Now, some more information which I've gathered from public sources, the same ones you all have, and some observations and questions that spin naturally from them.

Chief of Police Joseph Zikuski said cops arrived on scene two minutes after the initial 911 call and he arrived on scene one minute after that, and that there were no shots fired after his arrival. 

The shooter fired 98 rounds in around a minute.  That means you have to know ahead of time what you're going to do, since this guy did and so will the guy(s) you're up against.  You have to have some idea how you're going to respond given the building a/o terrain you're in/on.  You need to know where exits are if that's what you'll be heading for and where the hallways lead in case you decide/plan to head courageously for the sound of the guns when you hear them. 

He used two semi-automatic pistols and carried a bag in which was lots of ammo.  He probably had several magazines fully loaded and ready to go in that bag ~ that's how he got so many shots off so quickly.  But he had to have practiced shooting and reloading in order to have done what he did so effectively.  So, are you going to practice?  Are you going to have a proper pistol and several loaded magazines ready to go when it comes time for you to respond to a shooter like this? If that's what you decide to do.  BTW, if you're maybe thinking of getting a pistol, you'd better get off the pot, buster.  I stopped at a large local sporting goods store this afternoon and saw their handgun racks were about 60%... empty.  People are stocking up on guns and ammo.

I'm just sayin'...

He wore SBA.  Soft Body Armor.  It's not called a bullet-proof vest because nothing is bullet-proof. This shows even more the depth of his preparation.  To you this means that, if you decide to respond to an active shooter and you decide to shoot him and he doesn't fall after you've put several adequate-sized bullets into his torso, you're going to have to shoot him in the head.  If that's what you decide.

"...took the SWAT team several hours to clear the place due to the information that kept kept coming in about possibly the shooter may still be in the building..."

SOP since Columbine has been for the first two or three cops on the scene of an "active shooter" to team up and go in the building to stop the shooter.  Waiting for SWAT to show up is not how things are done anymore.  Training for active shooter response has become a number one budget item for many if not most of the law enforcement agencies in this country and around the world.  There are no indications from anywhere that support the early report that there were hostages in the building.  Because I know, I can tell you there isn't a hostage situation until some bad guy puts a weapon to some good guy's head and says, Nobody moves or this guy gets it right in the melon. Until that time, there are too many unknowns and unknowables to have fully-armed cops waiting behind patrol cars. My guess is that the cops thought the silence meant the shooter was gathering people as hostages a/o barricading himself somewhere.  Okay.  If that's what they knew he was doing then letting him settle down is a wise thing to do ~ then try to talk him out without anyone (else) being hurt.   But they didn't know.  Because they were outside. For all they knew, there were bodies piling up inside as Voong and an accomplice or two shot people with silenced HK 45s and then chopped off their heads.  Silence can mean many things.  IMHO, as soon as he arrived at the American Civic Association building, the Chief should have gathered the cops who had gotten there just before him and, leading from the front, advanced into the building to locate, engage and destroy the threat.  Why didn't he?  I don't know. 

The Chief said that along with his guys, he had the assistance of the "full force" of the Broome County Sheriff's Department, and the NY State Police, and that they, along with the INS, ATF and the US Marshal's Service "were at my side, start to end."

My guess is that all those troops were not literally to his immediate left, right and rear ~ though the tactical leadership of those groups certainly should have been right there in his hip pocket.  But what I'd like to know for sure is: exactly where were all these extra troops deployed?

• Were all BPD officers at the scene? 
• Where were the 2d shift BPD officers? 
• Where was BPD 3rd Shift? 
• Where did BCSO deputies deploy and what was their task?
• Where were the Feds deployed and what were they tasked with?

These things are important to you now because we're seeing more and more of these incidents and the next one could involve you or someone you love.  So, to the extent possible, you need to prepare.  One of the things you need to do to prepare is to have some sort of idea what your local PD plans to do in a situation like this.  Will they let you in on their secrets if you ask them to share? No.  And they shouldn't.  But they should have this sort of general plan:

• An active  shooter at any location will be responded to with an appropriate level of force, both in terms of the numbers of police officers, and the weapons and tactics used to control and defeat the threat.
• But, at the same time this is happening, an adequate number of officers with appropriate weapons and tactical know-how will deploy to the area of other high-value targets in town and be prepared to respond in force should the initial incident be a decoy, designed to draw critical resources to a minor incident and away from what is intended to be the main attack location. 

Plainly said: Don't send all your guys to a house where one guy is shooting at his neighbors with a .22 when he could be doing it merely to draw all the cops to his area while his bigger, badder buddies attack the middle school on the other side of town.

You need to know if your Chief of Police or Sheriff has this sort of contingency plan.  Why?  Because if they don't and you work or spend significant time at one of those attractive targets, or love someone who does, then you'd like to be able to do something other than weep and scream in fear a/o sorrow as your world a/o theirs is changed forever. Too, it may not be a bad idea for cop leadership to let bag-guys know that running a diversion on one side of town while they terrorize the other just ain 't gonna work.

Part of being prepared is to try reasonably to be sure others are prepared, too.  Especially those who are paid and sworn to protect you. Pray for 'em.  But hold 'em accountable.