What pisses me off about the Orlando attack [retracted for now] · 2:22am Jun 14th, 2016
I've taken this post down until more complete information is available. It was premature of me to post in anger before having sufficient facts. Sorry. Basically, the reported timeline seems to require that about 100 police officers listened to one gunman shoot 100 people over a period of 3 hours because they were waiting for an armored vehicle and a SWAT team. Given that one of the police officers who was involved in the stand-off was already inside the club when the shooting started, and that the man was reported to have only semi-automatic weapons, it does not seem possible that he shot 100 people before the firefight began and/or during the firefight. I will be very angry if it turns out that he shot most of the 100 people during the 3 hours that the police waited for the SWAT team.
Yes. I completely agree.
A few years back, my town actually endured a crazed gunman who seemed to be exclusively targeting police, actively avoiding civilian casualties and on at least one occasion calmly and politely asking a civilian who approached him to get back inside.
The three police officers who died and the two who were wounded were treated as martyrs, Thank You messages were plastered over basically every storefront until Christmas (for context, it was the second-to-last week of school before summer vacation), and by and large I was left very confused about the shooter's attitude.
Now I am not so confused anymore.
Hostage situations are generally tricky because if the police storm in it might cause the hostage taker to start shooting the hostages. Heck, holding people at gunpoint to keep the police out is usually why hostage situations happen. However I was always under the impression that when a hostage taker starts shooting, all bets are officially off and the police are supposed to go in and try to stop it before it gets worse.
So if they knew he was shooting, and they were waiting outside, then.... Well, it's hard to come to any conclusion other than that the police, in Orlando at least, are not really concerned with people's safety above their own. That's a problem.
4020992 To be clear, I don't recommend attacking police. Besides, that would only make things worse.
I agree with you on everything but this.
Cowards or not they are putting their fucking lives on the line here. Also as far as I'm aware people are allowed to have guns in Orlando. I might be wrong on that though.
4021019 Oh, I'm not claiming that you do condone such actions. I'm just saying that this blog post goes a long way towards explaining the sentiments behind why he did what he did.
4021025
Not really. That's my point. And "cowards" is a cheap explanation, it could be some organizational dysfunction, like the person in charge has some protocol to follow, or has been trained to protect his people over civilians. I don't really care. Police are supposed to take risks. If you've got 100 police officers against one gunman and you're worried that's still not enough, something's wrong.
4020988
4020992
4021019
This is not the entire story. There were officers inside the club very early on. They tried to kill the shooter but he retreated to a restroom where there were people hiding, and took them hostage. The cops took up station outside so he couldn't leave/ That was when the standoff began.
The police made contact with the shooter via cellphone and tried to keep him talking, either until he gave up or they developed a plan to rescue the hostages. When they got the plan together--ram the wall with an armored car so the hostages could escape--they went with it.
I'm not arguing against your larger point but in this case the police seem to have done as well as could be expected.
4021037 Hmm. I could be very wrong, then. But if he retreated to a restroom within minutes, how did he shoot 100 people? You couldn't even shoot 100 people in 7 minutes. How many people could fit in a restroom?
4021037 Now, I can't speak for the others you replied to, but I don't actually care. And the general public won't care, either. The same debates about gun control, police responsibility and radical prejudice will happen regardless of the facts of this incident, because it is nothing but a match thrown onto a pre-existing pile of extremely flammable materials.
I thought Columbine was actually the incident that caused the "surround and contain" policy to change. As it is, I'm waiting for an actually timeline of when those 100 officers were there before I jump to conclusions.
4021012 No, hostage situations are not difficult. You declare the hostages preemptively dead and you take down the hostage-taker.
The lone enemy. Sorry, but this is Florida we're talking about. People there have guns.
Sorry, I know everyone has this bizarre urge to Blame Society when these things happen, but at a certain point you have to accept there are nutters out there who hate us all and want us dead because we just don't idolize them personally enough and put them at the top of the steeply hierarchical society.
4021032 I don't know if they were worried about the one gunman or the whole hostage situation thing. Police protocol requires them to put civilians first.
4021048
Where did I say "within minutes?"
I fully understand the anger and frustration. If you take the view that the social contract is a contract for services paid for via taxation, the state failed--again--to hold up its end of the bargain. This sort of thing happens too often for my comfort. I'll be damned if I know what to do about it, other than play the odds by avoiding large cities, avoiding large gatherings of other people, and so on. What government can or should do--well, I don't pretend that any of them thinks they work for me or much cares what I think.
And, as the Guru once said, "...Food does not come from supermarkets, that safety does not come from policemen, that 'news' is not something that happens to other people." The Guru also said that we're living in a period that historians centuries hence will call the Crazy Years. I deal with it mainly by coming to places like this to read charming stories of talking magical ponies who live in a society that is not subject to the Crazy Years, as an aid to not thinking about it.
4021065 Gunshots are very loud, and he shot 100 people, and he didn't have an automatic weapon. It would take at least 4 minutes to shoot 100 people if you aimed before each shot, even if they were all standing right in front of you and you hit someone with every shot. The gunfight started almost as soon as he began shooting, followed by the standoff, according to CNN. So when did he shoot all those people?
Or maybe he didn't, and the police killed a lot of them. I admit I'm speaking prematurely. I should have waited.
4021032
Bingo.
Risks lead to errors. Errors lead to bad press and lawsuits. Bad press and lawsuits lead to stupid fucking zero-tolerance, zero-thought regulations and procedures, which leads to more bad press and lawsuits. The cycle continues.
Slight tangent: most people, if you asked them what the most deadly jobs are, would probably, without really thinking about it, respond "well, police and firemen." Those who don't know anything about it, but who pause and engage in some critical thinking, might posit, "well, hmm. Search and Rescue teams? Deep-sea divers maybe? Heavy equipment operators of some sort, that looks pretty dangerous?" Others might challenge the priors of the question; "does being in the army count as a job?"
But it's actually none of those.
The two most deadly jobs in the US, the two most likely to get you really hurt or killed, are fishing and logging. Followed closely by work in the various building trades.
That'll make sense to a lot of people once you tell them. But you know what else is deeply unsafe? Sanitation work. Being a goddamn garbageman is actually quite hazardous. That? Usually blows peoples minds.
Being a police officer or a firefighter is actually a very, very safe line of work compared to many others, and also, contrary to popular belief, isn't physically demanding for most police officers. (Firefighters have higher physical standards if they're actually certified to be, you know, fighting fires.)
This is something to keep in mind when police say they "put their lives on the line" every day as a justification for anything. It's like... well, yes. That's true. But so does the guy collecting my trash; he's in more danger, statistically speaking, than your average cop, but we don't actually let him use that as justification for very much, do we?
Maybe we should.
So... the first assumption is that the attacker was an angry white conservative man (one statistic is that 94% of terrorism-related casualties in the US between 1980 and 2005 were carried out by Islamic extremists, and the fact that homosexuality is a capital crime in Sharia law is well-known), and the second is that the police didn't do enough to stop the attacks because they're cowards?
If they had rushed in (almost certainly breaking orders and protocol) and killed the attacker at the cost of several hostages, would that have made them heroes? Would people be thrilled at how these brave warriors saved the many at the expense of the few?
Maybe rushing in WAS the best decision. I don't know; I wasn't there. But I feel like they would be condemned and blamed no matter what they did, despite the fact that to my knowledge the only person the police killed that night was the gunman.
It's hard to pick out examples of when cops really are at fault when such a large segment of the population seems to blame them by default. ~ Sable
4021077 You didn't. The cited timeline did. One police officer involved in the stand-off was already in the club when the man started shooting. So when did he shoot 100 people? Did he somehow shoot 100 people while engaged in a firefight? Did he shoot 100 people (with only semi-automatic weapons) before the police officer present in the club began shooting back? Or did he shoot 100 people while holed up in the back half of the club, while the police were outside waiting for their armored vehicle? Only the last option seems possible, supposing that the gunman was in fact the person who shot all 100 people.
4021105
I have volunteered at sporting events where semiautomatic weapons are used. The rate of fire and accuracy necessary to cause the casualties given are not out of line with what I have observed there. And this guy was, to some degree at least, a trained professional with firearms.
He was firing at cowering unarmed people trying to hide in a packed club with limited exits and he was using a weapon designed expressly to fire a bullet just large enough to maim or kill a human being, and to fire it repeatedly, as quickly as a human could pull the trigger, for long periods of time without overheating or jamming.
This is exactly the scenario jihadis choose and plan for because it allows them to maximize casualties before the cops show up.
So yes, actually, he probably did get them all in, say, ten minutes. That's a casualty every six seconds which does not seem impossible given the constraints on the victims and the capabilities of the gun.
4021102
According to the bullshit standards of heroism that the public uses, yes. And the people in charge of police would be seen as the bad guys for trying to apply order to these selfless heroes.
4021112 But he didn't have 10 minutes. As I said, one of the police in the stand-off was already in the club with him when he started shooting.
4021102
I don't think Bad Horse ever said or implied that the attacker was a conservative white man, given how we know the attacker was a young islamic man who, as I understand it, decided to pledge himself to ISIS's cause because he saw two guys kissing.
He was evidently on the FBI watch list already, for all the good THAT did.
As for charging in and breaking protocol, I am pretty sure, if in a hostage situation, the attacker has started shooting, then protocol states to assume civilians are dead and get the guy, and hope some people might survive anyway. I think the question is: did the police wait too long, or did the attacker just manage to kill a lot of people fairly efficiently?
4021117
Did that cop survive? Also remember that cop had limited ammo and was trying to hit an armed target that was moving, and NOT hit a bystander, and not be killed himseld.
4021128
I originally said that was my first assumption. I deleted that when I deleted most of the rest of the post.
4021081
According to this article:
The phone call happened at 2:22 am, 20 minutes after the shooting began. The first police officer on the scene was actually a bouncer outside the club; he got in a gunfight with the gunman shortly after it began, who retreated inside.
It sounds like he shot almost everyone right at the start, and then called the police and took hostages (and claimed he wasn't alone and had explosives). If that is indeed what happened, then their response is more understandable - they thought there were a bunch of people inside, with bombs, and if he stopped shooting at that point, then it might mean they thought they had time to prep and set everything up (and maybe set up snipers and stuff to try and get a potshot through a window or whatever).
But this is all extremely preliminary. Until more details come out, we won't really know. It is worth noting that even when they did roll in, one of the police officers was shot in the head (and survived thanks to his kevlar helmet). The other crucial question is "Should they have rolled in immediately to shut down the gunman in order to try and get treatment for as many injured people as possible ASAP?" After all, it is possible that the delay in rolling in resulted in some people bleeding out and dying. So it might still be right to be angry, though I think Mr. Gunman intentionally put them in a lose-lose situation.
Also, I'm not sure if he actually shot 100 people; 49 people died. There were 53 injured, but it is possible that most of those were people who were injured in the mad rush and crush of bodies pouring out of the building. I'd have to imagine at least some of the injuries were from the panic.
4021105
Someone was taking a video inside the club just as the shooting began, probably by chance; they were one of the dead, so we can't really ask. But allegedly you could hear about 20 gunshots in 9 seconds in the video. That's one gunshot per half-second, which is a reasonable rate of fire for a semi-automatic weapon if you're just pulling the trigger as fast as you can. If there's a packed mass of people, if you're firing horizontally into the crowd, you probably can't miss.
The main limiting factor on how many people you can shoot in a short period of time in conditions like that is more closely linked to magazine size than anything else; as long as you don't have to reload, and your target is so large it is hard to miss something, and you don't particularly care where you're shooting people, it would be relatively easy to shoot a lot of people in just a few minutes.
Have you seen photos of the inside of the club? It was literally like shooting fish in a barrel. He didn't have to aim. If he missed one target, the bullet would almost certainly hit someone else.
From the cell phone video taken outside the club, he was firing about one shot per second. It would take less than three minutes to fire a hundred shots, assuming he was not proficient at changing magazines. If you've practiced at all, you can change a mag in an AR or Glock in under 5 seconds, easily. If you're good, it's about 1-2 seconds. He had been to Afghanistan recently for training, according to some reports.
Also, he was using full metal jacket ammunition, which could easily pass through 2 or 3 people, depending where they were hit. With all this in mind, the fish-in-a-barrel scenario could have easily happened in under two minutes.
From reading many articles and interviews, I believe most of the carnage took place immediately - within the first three minutes. I've heard lots of conflicting reports from witnesses, police, and reporters. Some say he first shot the off-duty police working security, then went inside. Some say he went in and had a drink first. Who knows how it exactly happened.
From the best information available, the police were as fast-acting as possible, until he barricaded himself in the bathroom and was no longer actively shooting people. Then, they did their best to evacuate the wounded while keeping him contained.
Of all the criticisms and MMQB'ing that can be hurled about, I don't think the local or responding police deserve any of the blame here. I'm not saying you're being unreasonable, but you are working off of both unreliable information of the event itself (as we all are, to lesser or greater degrees) and the background information regarding technical capabilities and training.
4021098 I mean. The sanitation worker can be pretty easily treated for a garbage disease or his hand caught in machinery. There's not much we can do for a bullet in the forehead.
As for the esteemed Bad Horse, blame a mixture of conditions. The SWAT guys probably had to be woken up out of bed, or at the very least gear up, then drive to the location. Blame protocol. SWAT guys get paid more because it's their job to walk into a hail of bullets, and the regular uniforms are supposed to keep the guy in one spot.
4021137
The best/worst thing about all this is that he may be yet another example of the self-hating religious gay homophobe according to reports:
4021140
Also remember that the shooter was a licensed armed security guard, with several years' experience. He probably knew the likely responses from the club's security and local police departments. Knowing what the "good guys" are supposed to do in that situation, he'd know how to create a worst-case scenario as the bad guy.
Australian here, who had his old favourite cafe ISIS'd December 2014 and watched the whole thing on the news live as it happened.
Lindt Cafe siege, Sydney.
Police stayed outside the whole time, trying to negotiate, bringing in Imams to try to talk the man down. The very second they heard a gunshot, they moved in and saved all but two hostages in the building. The reaction was swift and efficient, and he didn't get a chance to execute a second hostage. This was not for his lack of trying.
Of 18 hostages in the tiny mid-city cafe, there were only two casualties. The first was the victim of the gunshot. The second had a heart attack from the stress of the situation.
In further "wait, what the fuck?!" twists, the Orlando shooter was probably gay. The guy arrested for bringing a bunch of guns to the LA Pride festival? Also gay.
Yes, folks, it looks like this whole mess was gay-on-gay violence. Huzzah for religious extremism and whatever the other guy's problem was.
Edit: apparently, the Orlando shooter was planning an attack regardless of the gay issue, as he and his second wife were also scouting Disney World as a potential target.
4021163 NY Daily News says:
4021173 True, though the standards for "armed security guard" class G license are laughably low. He was known to be a wannabe cop, and had been to shooting ranges with police officers. The fact that he was a regular at the club was probably of more benefit to his attack plan than anything having to do with his guard license or time trying to schmooze with real officers.
4021164
According to another report, he may not have understood the difference between ISIS, Al-Qaeda, and Hezbollah; he claimed allegiance to ISIS in his phone call, but the other two dudes he mentioned were members of Al-Qaeda, and he previously (in 2013) claimed he belonged to Hezbollah. Al-Qaeda and ISIS are actively fighting each other in Syria, while Hezbollah is Shiite rather than Sunni.
It may just be that he was a usual garden-variety sociopath who claimed to belong to ISIS because he wanted to actually be remembered, rather than just being Crazed Gunman #342. Or, you know, he was just totally crazy and had no damn clue what he was talking about. Or maybe his copy of "Islam for Dummies" hadn't arrived in the mail yet and he just wanted to kill people because he was a self-hating homophobe whose religion/dad told him that it was evil. I mean, it is probably at least a little bit of all of the above.
Of course, his dad claims to be the president of Afghanistan. I'm not sure his family are the most stable of people in general.
4021242
Well, if he and his wife were scouting non-gay targets like Disney World, I think it's a bit of A, a bit of B.
4021254
He must have seen Aladdin and Princess Jasmine there and decided they were okay.
4021242 This shouldn't be used to pretend that Islam was not a factor, though. Few "Christians" who fought in the wars of religion of the 16th & 17th century understood the theological disagreements at stake, but that never got them off the hook. The people who do understand the theology and politics teach things that they hope will encourage nutcases like him to do things like he did. Such nutcases are seldom good at drawing theological distinctions.
(The cases aren't directly comparable because Islam has a better history of sticking closely to the Quran than Christianity does of hewing closely to the New Testament. Operationally, criticism of the cultures that have accreted around Christianity are more important in cultural arguments than criticism of the true doctrines of Jesus and Paul.)
ISIS has claimed responsibility anyway, or at least endorsed the act.
Neither should his mental illness (or gayness) be used to say Islam was not a factor. Operationally, the probability P(X kills innocent people | X is Muslim) is more important than P(X kills innocent people |X is Muslim, X is straight and sane). The question of policy interest is not the moral status of Islam when properly interpreted, but the expected cost of having a large Islamic population. Every religion has its nutcases, and if a religion has some attribute which tends to lead its nutcases to kill people, that's still a problem.
4021254 How do they discern between "scouted" and "visited"? He had a kid, right? Maybe he just wanted to take his kid to Disney.
4021280
In all fairness, it isn't really contradictory in the end. There's nothing that says he can't be a gay Muslim self-hating homophobe crazy Floridian alcoholic who thought ISIS and Islamism are totally awesome and doesn't really care about the specifics at all.
Really, most self-hating gay people are driven there by religiosity.
4021204
I know of at least one Fimficcer who is at Disney World right now. I was already worried for her when I heard there was a shooting in Orlando...
So, you're apparently not the only one with this question.
According to the Orlando police, the shooting stopped after the guy made the phone call, at which point it became a hostage situation. Other people are questioning their decision not to go in anyway.
I suspect we'll find out more as the investigation goes on.
4021288
Um, because the wife said they were scouting it for an attack? From the linked article:
4021297
Exactly. Sounds like a toxic, self-reinforcing mix of extremist religion and self-loathing because of his homosexuality. The planning means it wasn't a spur of the moment thing, but the whole "self-hating gay" thing probably made it easier to go on a suicidal rampage, especially if you're told it'll get you bonus points with God.
EDIT: I think I was a bit rude in this comment. I wrote it quickly and didn't think it through. I appoligize for my lack of consideration.
4021589
One of the articles I linked to noted that the overall average math is that in a spree killing situation like this, you end up with one corpse about every 15 seconds while the shooting is going on. People actually have done math on this in order to determine whether or not police officers should just go in guns blazing during active shooter situations, and this is why they've decided that rolling in guns blazing is the correct solution while a mass shooting is going on.
4021589
That's not how hostage situations are currently handled in the West, but there's at least a sane argument that could be made for it. In many jurisdictions, even accomplices (getaway drivers, etc) can be found guilty of murder for any deaths that occur in relation to a crime, even deaths caused by police. That could easily be applied to hostage situations.
If you accept that hostage-takers are likely to kill the hostages anyway, you may well save more lives by saying "fuck it" and taking out the criminals as fast as possible. For better or worse, it'd never fly in such a litigious society as the US, though.
4021601 In the end, math or not, it is the police officer who shows up at a 'situation' who makes the decision. If it's relatively quiet, and the people who have escaped from the building are saying things like "He took X with him and is holed up in the office" they will generally treat it as a hostage situation, control the area, and try to de-escalate the situation. If people are still running out of the building with the sound of shooting, they go in, because the faster they can stop the shooter, the more people live.
It's a decision I could never make, because I'm a little bit of a chicken at heart, but they put on the badge and the gun every day with that possibility. God bless our police officers.