Liberty Sanders
Master
All very true. I only have one thing to add, and that is that the citizen to whom you refer MIGHT be a LEO, if he happens to be present when this happens, or s/he might not be. The point I'm addressing is that when it comes to situations where bad people do bad things, good people, no matter their work uniform, need to come together and work together to end the threat. In short, the relationship between LEAs and the non-LEO-citizens they are hired to protect does not have to be an adversarial one. There was a time when both groups considered themselves members of a single, larger group, "Peaceable Citizens". Granted, that was when LEOs were known as "Peace Officers".. The goal was to preserve the peace, not to enforce the law, which are wholly different goals.
Campus police are no different. The Campus Police could very easily look upon the students not as children they are hired to babysit, upon the staff not as peons they are tasked to defend, but rather look upon all who obey the law, who wish only the same thing the police claim to want: To go home safe every night, as being allies in the same fight. It is this attitude that the Powers-That-Be at the state universities and other locations need to inculcate into their thinking. An easy method to implement this would be to offer firearm safety and marksmanship training classes-a few hours on a weekend, for example, or on the occasional Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday night. Get the people out to come learn about things that they're uneducated regarding. Let them learn, "These are the Four Rules. These are the parts of the gun. This is how you unload it safely." Let more experienced students practice their marksmanship... hell, they could even block off a specific building once in a while and practice in a real setting, using simunitions. Let them learn how to act and react safely.
As for those CDOP plans... Would those be public documents? That is, if, say, Purdue or IU has one, could the citizens see them and determine if they were really "do-able", as you did?
Blessings,
Bill
Bill, that's a very interesting question.
I'm sure the attitude that any campus LEO agency is going to take is that the plan should be kept secret to prevent a potential suspect from learning its contents and trying to counter them. Were I still on the job that is certainly how I'd see it.
Are they legally public documents subject to disclosure? One of the legal types here will have to weigh in on that.