Lakewood Church (Joel Osteen's) Shooting

[Renegade]

One HPD officer hid in a broom closet for the whole shooting and didn't come out until the shooters was down.

She was also face deep in her phone and missed the shooter walk through the door with a rifle.

 

[Lead Belly]

She kept laying her rifle down on the ground. It would have been fair snap judgement that she wasn't all too good at making bombs, either.

 

[Renegade]

It certainly helps to hire off duty TABC cops.

Fixed

 

[DaBull]

Fixed

Thanks.

I just watched an episode of Frontline dealing with the Uvalde response. Pathetic. The only good thing was watching the do-nothing cops slowly realize the classrooms actually had kids in them and later, that some of them contain wounded kids and teachers. 77 minutes is beyond the "golden hour" to get wounded to a trauma doc.

Two things I did not know before watching the documentary:

One Uvalde cop's wife was a teacher in that school and she was wounded in the initial attack. She called her husband (who was outside the school) and told him she was wounded. Understandably, he wanted to go in. The other cops pushed him out...even though all admitted no one seemed to be in charge as an incident commander. She didn't make it.

The other thing I learned was they spend many tens of minutes looking for a master key to open the door. Afterwards, an investigator said the door was probably unlocked the whole time. Nobody checked the door. They assumed the door auto locked when closed. Just like they assumed the shooter was alone in the classroom "barricaded" and waiting to kill cops when they enter. Why did they think this? Because the classroom was dead quiet after the initiate attack on the cops. But just maybe it was really because kids are taught to be quiet during an active shooter situation? Or maybe because the shooter would shoot you if you stopped playing dead? Absolutely infuriating.

 

[DaBull]

How about that unarmed man following the cop around...

That was the Helpful Henry bozo I referred to earlier. Kept going in front of then behind the TABC officer who was in the midst of a firefight. Then he drags the injured kids body "to safety"--needlessly--since the shooter was down--then he picks up the AR with his bare hands, even as the cop was putting on gloves in order to pick it up. I am not sure he knows anything about shooting, head wounds, or evidence.

 

[Texasjack]

Having watched the videos from the Lakewood shooting, I noticed a couple of things:

First, none of the good guys can shoot worth a damn. Yeah, yeah, I realize that adrenalin is flowing and they are surrounded by chaos, but they shot up everything but the crazy woman. This is not the first time we see this in security videos or body cam videos. I think it was last year when some cops tried to serve a warrant and the guy shot at them with a Glock modified to automatic. Some of the cops in that incident ran out of ammo, shooting blindly without a target. If you have a job where you might have to depend on your gun to save your life, then you need to practice with that until you can shoot the left nut off of a mosquito.

Second, stress was super high. One of the videos shows the officer (a woman) switching her pistol from hand to hand at least a dozen times. Do LEOs not train for stress? Wouldn't that be a logical thing to practice? I would worry about having a LEO that nervously shifted the pistol back and forth.

Third, I was shocked at how many officers hid from the shooter. Considering that hundreds of potential victims were just a few yards away, nobody had the balls to get in there and attack the shooter. I suspect that might be how they are trained, but it seemed like they could have ended things sooner.

Fourth, they were all panicked by the idea that she had a bomb in her backpack. The only way to keep her from detonating the bomb was to kill her faster, not give her more space! It would be highly doubtful that bullets would set of a bomb, but it's not unreasonable to assume that the officers didn't have that kind of knowledge or training

Finally, did no one tell the total dips**ts that were unarmed and wandering around with the LEOs to get out of there? I bet that sort of thing irks responders to no end. It is human nature, but sometimes you have to order people to go away. When I worked for chemical plants and refineries, we had issues when we put out alarms because of fires, explosions, leaks, etc. and more people would show up to look at the danger than would take shelter like we told them to do.

 

[DocBeech]

Lack of firearms training is hardly rare in the law enforcement world. Also lack of maintenance on duty weapons is also unfortunately not always rare. I have seen some pretty neglected, borderline unsafe from neglect, duty weapons and talked to officers who never train outside their annual qual. Not every department is the same for sure...

 

[angel71rs]

I dated a cop that never cleaned her weapon. Never wanted to go to the range with me, only shot during required quals. She said she only had to put it on paper to pass. What she meant by that I'm not sure, but impressed me as completely unmotivated to do her job to the best of her ability, just did the minimum to get by.

 

[DaBull]

I don't think cops value accuracy. They mostly carry pistols and, given their capacity and inaccuracy and lethality relative to long guns, their strategy is to mag dump until the perp is down. So getting them down on paper sounds about right.

 

[DocBeech]

I don't think cops value accuracy. They mostly carry pistols and, given their capacity and relative inaccuracy and lethality relative to long guns, their strategy is to mag dump until the perp is down. So getting them down on paper sounds about right.

Seen plenty of that in recent videos. Watch the Lakewood video and pay close attention to wall above his head. Rounds are slamming the wall 2 - 3 feet over the top of his head. Completely missing by the dozens.

 

[Lonesome Dove]

I dated a cop that never cleaned her weapon. Never wanted to go to the range with me, only shot during required quals. She said she only had to put it on paper to pass. What she meant by that I'm not sure, but impressed me as completely unmotivated to do her job to the best of her ability, just did the minimum to get by.

Some people got it some people dont. For many shooting quick and accurately just comes natural. I'm not so lucky.

 

[DoubleDuty]

Some people got it some people dont. For many shooting quick and accurately just comes natural. I'm not so lucky.

Don't get near me I suck at shooting

 

[Lonesome Dove]

Don't get near me I suck at shooting

I don't suck but I ain't good either.
I've witnessed good and great and it's something I wish I was. I stopped chasing that dream because it was quite obvious it wasn't gonna happen.

 

[Johnny Diamond]

Better as a rifleman always have been.

Sent from my SM-G973U using Tapatalk

 

[Double Naught Spy]

First, none of the good guys can shoot worth a damn. Yeah, yeah, I realize that adrenalin is flowing and they are surrounded by chaos, but they shot up everything but the crazy woman.

You aren't wrong, but I want to expand on a couple of your points as thoughts for consideration.

This actually seemed like one of the least chaotic active shooting deals that got stopped before being a mass shooting. In reality, the cops were in something of a catbird seat for this one. Think about it for a second.

1. The cops are trained professionals
2. The cops have their duty gear (guns, vests, radios, etc.). The cops outgunned the shooter with pistols and 2 rifles (but only one rifle was used).
3. Homefield advantage. It isn't like the cops rolled up on a giant facility they had never been in before and had to do a search and destroy mission while learning the layout of the building. Nope, the shooter came to where the cops were working.
4. The cops had superiority of numbers, not just weapons. There was only one shooter.
5. Not a target rich environment compared to many other such shootings. The shooter didn't show up and enter the chapel filled with many hundreds of people and start shooting while Olsteen passed out Bibles. Nope, the shooter seemed to start shooting in the lobby where there were 10s of people going about their business, distributed in 1s, 2s, or small groups over a very large hall and lobby area. Imagine if the shooter had showed up and started shooting as a service was letting out.
6. Less bystanders means less chance for the cops to shoot an unintended target (see NY Empire State building).
7. There were lots of alcoves and doorways by when the intended victims (or the cops) could seek shelter and/or make egress to safer areas.
8. The shooter was not highly mobile. It wasn't like she shot people in one place and raced to another location and shot people there, confusing the hell out of responding officers as to where the shooter is (as happens in some school, mall, and workplace shootings).


As far as active shooters go, this was the nearly the best case scenario for the cops in terms of advanges. That isn't to say that the situation wasn't highly dangerous, terrifying, or anything like that, and as a result a significant number of the LEOs and security (assuming the security was armed) failed to engage.

 

[DaBull]

You aren't wrong, but I want to expand on a couple of your points as thoughts for consideration.

This actually seemed like one of the least chaotic active shooting deals that got stopped before being a mass shooting. In reality, the cops were in something of a catbird seat for this one. Think about it for a second.

1. The cops are trained professionals
2. The cops have their duty gear (guns, vests, radios, etc.). The cops outgunned the shooter with pistols and 2 rifles (but only one rifle was used).
3. Homefield advantage. It isn't like the cops rolled up on a giant facility they had never been in before and had to do a search and destroy mission while learning the layout of the building. Nope, the shooter came to where the cops were working.
4. The cops had superiority of numbers, not just weapons. There was only one shooter.
5. Not a target rich environment compared to many other such shootings. The shooter didn't show up and enter the chapel filled with many hundreds of people and start shooting while Olsteen passed out Bibles. Nope, the shooter seemed to start shooting in the lobby where there were 10s of people going about their business, distributed in 1s, 2s, or small groups over a very large hall and lobby area. Imagine if the shooter had showed up and started shooting as a service was letting out.
6. Less bystanders means less chance for the cops to shoot an unintended target (see NY Empire State building).
7. There were lots of alcoves and doorways by when the intended victims (or the cops) could seek shelter and/or make egress to safer areas.
8. The shooter was not highly mobile. It wasn't like she shot people in one place and raced to another location and shot people there, confusing the hell out of responding officers as to where the shooter is (as happens in some school, mall, and workplace shootings).


As far as active shooters go, this was the nearly the best case scenario for the cops in terms of advanges. That isn't to say that the situation wasn't highly dangerous, terrifying, or anything like that, and as a result a significant number of the LEOs and security (assuming the security was armed) failed to engage.

The cops were also somewhat "gun" ignorant...having listened to too many anti-gun tropes. Many who were interviewed said the reason they were inclined to wait for SWAT was the shooter had a "high powered" AR15 which would go through everything they had to protect them...doors, walls, vests...and would massacre them.

The research has already been done--the guy will fold or die fast if confronted by determined LEOs. As he did when they finally did.

 

[Double Naught Spy]

The cops were also somewhat "gun" ignorant...having listened to too many anti-gun tropes. Many who were interviewed said the reason they were inclined to wait for SWAT was the shooter had a "high powered" AR15 which would go through everything they had to protect them...doors, walls, vests...and would massacre them.

The research has already been done--the guy will fold or die fast if confronted by determined LEOs. As he did when they finally did.

No argument that the cops had issues. I am just saying that this was literally in their fricking wheelhouse, physically and professionally. This should have been about as much as a cakewalk active shooter event as it could have been. The cops literally had nearly all of the advantages. The only thing they didn't have is knowledge of the attack in advance.

That they may not have been up to the task is a whole other issue. The were professionally trained. They were hired to protect the church with law enforcement powers. When they get on the radio and cry for help, help comes as brothers in blue drop what they are doing and respond to Officer Needs Assistance or Officer Down calls. When you or I get on the phone and call 911, we are lucky if anybody shows up quicker than an oil change.

He was a she, BTW.

 

[DaBull]

He was a she, BTW

Oops...I am on the Uvalde and Osteen threads...I replied to your post thinking we were both on Uvalde!