This was not a campus shooting.
I want one, just one, example of police arriving at the scene of an active shooter on a campus and being perplexed by who is the good guy and who is the bad guy.
Cops stood around at Virginia Tech and Columbine and NIU and lots of other places.
Chief Cox's cover story is that this is a concern for his officers and it falls apart like a cardboard suitcase in the rain on cross exam. He is in favor of denying people rights based on an absurd scenario.
It is akin to the silly "what if game" of every martial arts club gets from new students. "What if space aliens were shooting lasers at Alex Jones and but our officers couldn't get to the space aliens as they had to fight Godzilla and Godzilla knew Wing Chun and then . . ."
1. I want an example of this happening.
2. I want to know how PUPD or other police departments train for this scenario. If this is a concern of Chief Cox then obviously PUPD trains for it, right?
3. I want Chief Cox to explain why PUPD cannot simply do on campus for the scenario he describes off campus. If PUPD officers came across Cox's parade of horribles at the Tippecanoe Mall, or the courthouse, or Wabash 9 theatre, or the hookah bar, or wherever, how would they handle this scenario. Do that on campus then.
How does the location of an active shooter incident change the fact that officers on scene can (and have) confuse a GG for a BG? Whether they arrive on scene of an active shooter on a college campus, in a park, or in the streets it doesn't change the fact that during the heat of the moment confusion can lead to the injury/death of an innocent person who was simply trying to help.
Like I said before, I am not agreeing with Chief Cox on the issue of concealed carry on campus. I was just addressing his comment which was quoted in the article.
“When we get that 911 call and we send two to three uniformed officers and there are two or three guys shooting at each other, who’s the bad guy?” he said. “Our officers are trained to eliminate the threat. When there’s chaos, the officers aren’t going to know who’s the good guy and who’s the bad guy."
"Unfortunately, what that means is it could end up in tragedy and I’d have to explain to someone’s parents we couldn’t tell who the good guys were and the bad guys were.”
This is a legitimate concern for all police department, regardless of the scenario that unfolds. I do not believe this is a valid reason to deny a student, or anyone else, the right to legally carry a firearm. I am only arguing that this is a real issue that LEOs face. This issue still exists whenever and wherever there is an active shooter incident. I have no idea how PUPD trains for such a scenario or if they do at all. I have never spoken to him, and I have never spoken to a PUPD officer. I do know IMPD trains for active shooter incidents. They also train their officers (at least the officers I have spoken too have received training on the issue) that if they find themselves in a situation where they are in plain clothes and responding to an active shooter/man with a gun/shots fired..etc to use extreme caution as a responding officer who has no idea who you are could see you as a threat. If you are in plain clothes and have been involved in a shooting, responding officers have no way of telling if you are a GG or a BG and thus when they encounter you, armed with a firearm, they will treat you as a threat until they are able to determine otherwise. The issue becomes more complex in an active shooter incident when the scene is chaotic and very much still an active situation.