Breonna Taylor Shows The Need For Police Reform

 Everyone acknowledges that the Breonna Taylor case is a tragedy. What makes it even more tragic is that her killing, which did not have to happen, is now sparking more violence and has led to the shootings of two more police officers in Louisville. At its core, the killing of Ms. Taylor is an indictment of the current system and underscores the need for change.

For those who aren’t familiar with the facts of the case, the Louisville Courier-Journal cuts through the myths and misinformation. At about 12:40 am on the night of March 13, 2020, three Louisville Metro Police Department officers in plainclothes served a no-knock warrant on the home of Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old emergency room technician at University of Louisville Health. The case was centered on two men who were accused of selling drugs, one of whom, Jamarcus Glover, Taylor had dated two years earlier and with whom she had maintained a “passive friendship.” Glover did not live with Taylor and Kenneth Walker, her boyfriend who was present on the night of the shooting, was not named on the warrant and had no drug-related criminal history or felonies prior to that night.

What happened next is the subject of debate. The officers say that they knocked on the door, announced themselves, and then burst in. Walker says that he and Taylor were watching television in bed when they pounding on the door. He says that they asked who was there but heard no reply before the door came “off its hinges.”

Walker, thinking that intruders were breaking into the apartment, fired one shot, hitting one of the officers in the leg. The three officers returned fire with 32 rounds. The police completely missed Walker but hit the unarmed Taylor six times. She died in the hallway of her apartment within minutes.

Much of the case centers on the dispute between whether officers announced themselves. The family and neighbors say that there was no such announcement while the officers say that there was. There was no body-camera footage of the raid, but Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron said in a press conference that another witness, whose story has not been publicly heard, supported the officers’ claims.

Cameron’s statement has also been misreported as saying that the warrant was not a no-knock warrant. In Cameron’s words, the officers were “advised by superiors to knock and announce their presence in serving this specific search warrant” and that “the warrant was not served as a no-knock warrant.” The full story is apparently that a judge signed off on the no-knock warrant, but the officers were advised to knock.

It seems that both Walker and the police had reason to fire. Assuming that the officers did announce themselves, it is entirely possible that Walker and Taylor did not hear them. Imagine the scene as a police raid from television in which officers knock, yell “police,” and break the door down within the span of a few seconds. It can be reasonably assumed that Walker and Taylor, who were half-asleep and watching tv, did not process the fact that police officers were coming through their door in the middle of the night.

Compounding the problem was the fact that the police were in plain clothes. It isn’t certain whether Walker got a good look at the cops before firing, but there could be reasonable doubt as to whether someone yelling “police” but who is not wearing a uniform is really a police officer.

Nevertheless, once Walker fired, the police had a legitimate reason to shoot back. The problem here is that much of the return fire seems not to have been aimed. Interim police Chief Robert Schroeder accused Officer Brett Hankison of firing “blindly” into the apartment with 10 rounds. Hankison has been fired and was indicted for “wanton endangerment.” Hankison’s shots apparently did not strike Taylor but went through the wall to an apartment next door, which occupied by a small child and a pregnant woman. I have to wonder how well the other officers aimed since they completely missed the man with the gun and killed his unarmed girlfriend.

According to Cameron’s statement, the investigation determined that the officers were justified in the use of force but did not examine the circumstances leading up to the warrant in the first place. The reports about problems with the warrant are disturbing, but the three officers serving the warrant were not involved with obtaining the warrant and only knew what they had been briefed.

The back story is that Taylor’s apartment was raided because she police believed that she had received a package for Glover. The affidavit for the search warrant said that the requesting detective had “verified through a US postal inspector that Jamarcus Glover has been receiving packages” at Taylor’s apartment. However, Louisville’s U.S. postal inspector, Tony Gooden, told reporters that the Post Office had determined that no suspicious mail was being sent to the apartment. After the raid, no drugs or contraband was found in the apartment.

There are problems with the circumstances of the raid as well. Taylor’s apartment was known to be a “soft target.” Conducting a breaching raid in the middle of the night dramatically escalated the situation and endangered both the officers and civilians. A better strategy might have been to have uniformed officers meet Taylor outside when she got home from work.

Although many people will try to rationalize away the killing of Breonna Taylor because Walker fired first, the reality is that this could have happened to anyone. If the truth were known, many people reading this article would have behaved the way Walker did if police unexpectedly stormed through their door under similar circumstances.

And it possible that police could come through your door even if you are completely innocent. Noise complaints, bad assumptions, tips from neighbors, domestic disturbances, or “swatting” pranks could all set up a deadly confrontation.

Taylor was an innocent woman who was killed in her own home because of a very tenuous connection to a suspected drug dealer. She did nothing wrong and is dead because of police errors, both in obtaining the warrant and in their judgment in orchestrating the raid, and Walker’s reasonable defensive reaction when officers breached their door in the middle of the night.

It is not being anti-police to acknowledge that police kill innocent people far too often. The problem is not merely racial but is due to our societal decision to give police the benefit of the doubt. We rightly want to protect the lives of police so we authorize tactics that put innocent civilians at risk. In the aftermath of bad police behavior, qualified immunity often means that police departments are not held accountable. The legal standard for the use of deadly force is so low that any “reasonable” fear for their life by police officers is grounds to kill. This is true even if the officers have behaved badly up to that point and makes it extremely hard to convict officers for bad shootings.

At this point, we are left with a long string of incidents in which police have killed innocent people and got off scot-free. That has to change. It is high time for police reform.

One of the most obvious changes that needs to be made is to bring rules for raids into harmony with the fact that many law-abiding civilians are executing their Second Amendment rights to defend themselves in their homes. Officers should be required to plan raids on a level commensurate with the perceived threat. No-knock or no-announce raids might be justified in the case of a heavily armed convicted felon’s residence, a crack house, or gang hangout, but they unnecessarily make things more dangerous for both officers and citizens in cases like the raid on Taylor’s apartment.

Police should be required to take into consideration that law-abiding citizens may grab their guns if they breach their homes in the middle of the night. It is not a crime for homeowners to own a gun and rules of engagement should take lawful gun ownership into account.

The police should also be better trained in de-escalating situations. In many of the recent deaths, the first reaction of the officers has been to use force. This includes pulling a gun and opening fire as well as chokeholds and spit hoods. Citizens have a responsibility to not raise the temperature of a confrontation with police but so should the cops.

Arguably, we also need to do a better job of vetting police officer candidates and weeding out bad officers. Brett Hankison, the indicted Louisville officer, had a string of reprimands before he showed up at Breonna Taylor’s door. Derek Chauvin, the Minneapolis officer who knelt on George Floyd’s neck, had 18 complaints, two of which led to reprimands. Phillip Brailsford had inappropriate etched the words “You’re F***ed” onto the gun he used to kill a sobbing Daniel Shaver after issuing confusing and conflicting commands to the drunken man. That likely indicates an attitude that is inconsistent with protecting the public.

Police reform would benefit both police departments and communities by holding cops to a higher standard. Fewer innocent civilians would be killed (or convicted of defending themselves against police who raid their homes). Citizens would find it easier to trust police because they would not feel as fearful.

Many reading this will disagree. There is a disturbing tendency on the right to bend over backward to dismiss bad police killings on the grounds that they “had it coming” or because of some prior criminal history that doesn’t have any direct bearing on the events at hand. In any case, these arguments don’t apply to Breonna Taylor, an innocent woman who died in her own home through no fault of her own. If you have an acquaintance that is being investigated by police or if someone makes allegations about you to police, you could easily end up in the same position as Breonna Taylor and Kenneth Walker. Or Daniel Shaver. Or Botham Jean. Or Ryan Whitaker. Or Linden Cameron. Or any number of innocent people who have died at the hands of police.

To me, it is not a conservative position to excuse police who kill innocent people in their own homes. This is true if for no other reason than that random killings of innocent people make it harder for everyone else to trust police, which makes it harder for good cops to do their jobs. Police are morally, if not legally, responsible when they kill the people they are supposed to protect and serve.

Police reform to protect the innocent should be a bipartisan issue. Until we see change, we will continue to see bad killings. We will also continue to see the riots and violence that stem from the frustration of seeing police officers get away with murder.

Originally published on The Resurgent

Navy Yard killer shared traits with other rampage murderers

Already there are voices calling for increased gun control in the wake of Aaron Alexis’ murders of 12 people in the Washington Navy Yard yesterday. As Examiner reported, traditional gun control seems to be counterproductive in reducing crimes and mass killings, but an analysis of this and other shootings reveals several common threads between many perpetrators of rampage killings. Diagnoses are made more difficult by the fact that the killers in many of the rampages are often killed themselves, but in many cases, the killer had been diagnosed with some form of mental illness or can plausibly be considered to have an undiagnosed mental illness. Other factors, such as video games, movies, or broken families are also common.

Aaron Alexis is reported to have been undergoing treatment for mental illness with the Veterans Administration according to the Washington Times. The report indicates that Alexis had reported hearing voices in his head and suffered from paranoia. NBC News reports that Alexis had two prior arrests for gun related crimes. In 2004, he allegedly shot out the tires of another man’s car during “an anger-fueled ‘blackout’” in Seattle. In 2010, he was arrested in Texas for shooting his gun through the ceiling of his apartment. The bullet went through his ceiling into the apartment upstairs. Alexis told police that the shooting was accidental. According to Seattle police, Alexis was present at the September 11 attacks and was an “active participant in rescue attempts” [at the World Trade Center according to the Telegraph] and may have suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

The Daily Mail also reports that Alexis’ best friend, Nutpisit Suthamtewakul, 31, of Ft. Worth, said that Alexis was obsessed with violent video games. Mr. Suthamtewakul said that Alexis would often play “zombie” shooter games for much of the night. Mr. Suthamtewakul also said that Alexis was a “hard core drinker.”

Atlanta’s 11 Alive News also reported a third arrest in Georgia. On August 10, 2008, Alexis was arrested in DeKalb County for disorderly conduct. There was no indication that a weapon was used. He was also discharged from the Navy Reserve in 2011 for unspecified misconduct. None of this prevented Alexis from obtaining a security clearance to work as a navy contractor. CNN reported that Alexis’ security clearance was renewed in July.

The full details of Alexis’ family and childhood are not available, but reports of the family make no mention of his father. A Newsday article quoted a former neighbor of the family’s apartment in Brooklyn who noted that the family consisted of a mother, a daughter, and two boys. Mr. Alexis reportedly lived with his grandmother in Seattle.

In the case of last year’s shootings at Newtown, Ct., the Hartford Courant and NBC’s WPTV reported that Adam Lanza was a frequent player of violent first-person shooter video games. Police report that Lanza destroyed his computer before his rampage, so the exact extent of his video gaming may never be known. Lanza was known to have been diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, a form of autism and had not seen his father since 2010.

Peter Bell, executive vice president of programs and services at Autism Speaks told PBS that some Asperger’s patients do have trouble controlling aggressive thoughts and behavior, but that there is no evidence linking the condition to violence. Nevertheless, Randi Rentz, a teacher specializing in Asperger’s, notes that some of her students exhibit hostility. There is also the possibility that other undiagnosed forms of mental illness were present along with the Asperger’s.

James Holmes, who went on a rampage in a movie theater showing “the Dark Knight” in Colorado in July 2012, apparently came from an intact family, but had seen three mental health professionals at the University of Colorado according to CBS News. Any diagnosis is unknown due to a gag order imposed by the judge in the case, but Holmes reportedly mailed a package to one of the school’s psychiatrists. Because of the gag order, not much information is available about Holmes’ mental state, but Fox News has reported that he was a frequent player of video games including “World of Warcraft,” a role-playing game. One friend told the Telegraph that Holmes preferred “Guitar Hero” to shooter games.

The Week reported that a local gun range owner flagged Holmes after he attempted to join the range. The man called Holmes’ answering machine “bizarre or freakish” and told employees to refer Holmes to him before letting him do anything there. In the months before the killing spree, Holmes’ grades had fallen and he had dropped out of graduate school. Apparently, one of the psychiatrists at the college had become concerned that Holmes might be a potential threat, but he dropped out before her concerns could be addressed according to a report from the local ABC affiliate.

Jared Lee Loughner, who shot Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and killed six others in Tucson in January 2011, was both mentally ill and a video gamer. Several sources, including the Wall St. Journal, report Loughner’s obsession with games. Loughner had a long history of mental illness according to Time. He had made threatening and nonsensical comments to fellow students and teachers at his college. His tests and writings included bizarre and sometimes violent phrases. At times he seemed paranoid and unable to function socially. He was also a frequent user of marijuana which may have made his condition worse. He apparently was rejected for military service due to a failed drug test. He also had stalked several women and, at one point, was involuntarily committed to a mental institution.

A Wall St. Journal investigation of Loughner’s posts in online video game forums showed a number of disturbing posts. He pondered whether one should “hit a Handy Cap Child/Adult” [sic] and theorized that women enjoyed being raped. He also lamented his inability to find a job. According to the report, Loughner played role-playing video games such as “Starcraft,” “Diablo,” and “Earth: 2025.”

Cho Seung-Hui, who killed 32 people at Virginia Tech in 2007, had been diagnosed with mental health problems at an early age according to a well documented report on the massacre by the State of Virginia. In elementary school, he was diagnosed with emotional issues that led to communication problems. In middle school, he was diagnosed with social anxiety disorder, lack of verbal skills and immaturity. In 1999, after the Columbine murders, Cho wrote a paper for his English class that indicated that he wanted to carry out a mass murder as well. He was diagnosed with selective mutism in social situations and depression. At this point, he was given a prescription for antidepressants, after which his condition improved.

Cho had an above average IQ and, with special accommodations in high school, his grades were high enough that he was accepted at Virginia Tech. In eleventh grade, he had improved enough that he was able to stop the counseling sessions and never resumed them after he graduated and began attending college.

As a college sophomore, Cho’s grades began to drop. He changed his major to English, a subject that he struggled with. He became disruptive in class and his creative writing assignments reflected dark and violent themes. He was accused of stalking a female student and had stabbed the carpet with a knife at a party. A friend reported that Cho had threatened to kill himself and Cho admitted to having depression and anxiety, although he denied having suicidal thoughts according to ABC News. Cho talked to three counselors, but failed to come to counseling appointments and pursue treatment. Throughout his school career, Cho was known for not speaking or speaking in barely audible tones.

Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, the Columbine killers, reportedly had different motives and illnesses. According to an assessment published in Slate, Klebold may have suffered from depression while Harris was likely a psychopath. Based on his journal, a panel of psychologists, psychiatrists, and FBI agents point to Harris’ contempt for others and his total lack of empathy and conscience as evidence of his psychopathic tendencies. Dr. Peter Langman, formerly a clinical director at Kids Peace Hospital and author of “Why Kids Kill,” agrees. His analysis of the writings of Klebold and Harris agrees that Harris was a psychopath while Klebold apparently suffered from a variety of psychoses including depression, paranoia, delusions and disorganized thinking. The two teens famously enjoyed violent video games as well.

Michael Brandon Hill, the gunman who invaded a school in Decatur, Ga. last month, also had a history of mental illness and a criminal record according Examiner. A quick-thinking school receptionist was able to convince Hill to surrender after exchanging shots with police.

There seems to be broad support for a system of screening students for mental illness. Dr. Harold Koplewicz wrote in the Huffington Post that 75 percent of psychiatric disorders appear by age 24 and that early intervention greatly improves the prognosis. Dr. Bill Knaus of the Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy network points out that many mentally ill people are not aware of their illness and therefore will not voluntarily seek help. A particularly dangerous time seems to be when people stop taking their medication, especially if they do so abruptly and without supervision.

One solution to the problem of the mentally ill committing massacres would be reforming laws to allow state and local governments more flexibility in involuntarily committing people who might be a danger to themselves and others. This should include follow up visits to confirm that they remain on their medication and that their condition remains stable. This may also require that privacy laws be amended so that information can be shared between agencies. Such an approach has been used in Colorado where Gov. John Hickenlooper, a Democrat, reformed the state’s involuntary treatment laws in the wake of James Holmes’ killing spree.

A second strategy is to change popular culture. As Lt. Col. Dave Grossman describes on killology.com, violent images and games can condition children to kill in much the same manner that armies condition soldiers to be able to pull the trigger. Although popular culture does not turn all children into remorseless killers, the combination of cultural cues and mental illness may combine to push some people over the edge.

Finally, acting to preserve the family would help to grow stable adults. Children from single parent families and broken homes are far more likely to turn to crime and violence than children who come from stable families as Examiner previously reported. Single parent families are also far more likely to live in poverty and require government assistance as well.

There is a legitimate role for governments to play in keeping firearms out of the hands of potentially dangerous mental patients. However, addressing the underlying issues is much more difficult than returning to traditional and ineffective forms of gun control.

Originally published by Atlanta Conservative Examiner

Gun control and mass killings

When Aaron Alexis used several guns to commit mass murder at the Washington, D.C. Navy yard yesterday, it was only the most recent in a string of mass shootings in areas where strict gun control is in force. In fact, statistics from past rampage killings show that mass shootings and killings are more likely to take place in states with rigorous gun laws.

The Citizens Crime Commission of New York City lists 27 mass shootings (defined by the FBI as four or more victims killed) in the United States from 1984 through August 2012. When geographical location is considered, the majority of these shootings took place in states with strict gun control laws. Two of the states with the most restrictive gun control laws, Wisconsin and Illinois, were both the site of mass shootings. Two mass shootings occurred in Wisconsin. Four mass shootings took place in California, despite its gun control initiatives. Connecticut was the site of two previous mass killings before last year’s Newtown massacre, even though the state’s gun laws are considered some of the toughest in the nation according to a Washington Post article that cites studies by the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence and Brown University.

Likewise, the District of Columbia’s gun laws are also tough. For years, the District had an outright ban of private weapons until it was struck down in the Supreme Court’s landmark Heller decision. Crime rates began to drop after the ban was ruled unconstitutional according to the Wall Street Journal. Because the District is not a state, it does not rank on the Brady Campaign’s list of state gun control laws, but “Guns and Ammo” magazine ranked it dead last among the “Best States for Gun Owners for 2013.”

A common argument is that gun control fails because criminals buy weapons in states with lax gun laws. If this is true, then mass shootings should be more common in states that allow freer access to guns. In reality, many states with unrestrictive gun laws saw no mass shootings. When shootings did occur in these states, they often happened in places such as schools where guns were not allowed. In the Aurora, Co. movie theater shooting, the theater did not permit guns. In Fort Hood, Tx., like the Washington Navy yard, military personnel were not permitted to carry weapons on base.

There is a striking similarity to the map showing locations of mass shootings and blue states from past elections. Although the comparison is not perfect, the red states across the south from Louisiana to North Carolina had no mass shootings. Likewise, the Midwest experienced few mass shootings while liberal meccas like California, Illinois, Wisconsin, Massachusetts, and New York all made the list.

The failure of gun control to prevent mass shootings is even more stark when other countries are considered. This is true even though the United States is one of the few countries in the world where the ownership of firearms is legal and common for civilians. In fact, of the top ten rampage killings listed on Listverse.com, only two occurred in the U.S.

Lists compiled by Wikipedia concur that mass shootings are not an American phenomenon. The worst mass shooting in the world occurred in Norway in 2011 when 68 people were murdered and 110 were injured by Anders Behring Breivik. Breivik also killed another eight people with a car bomb. The second worst shooting occurred in South Korea in 1982 when a man killed 62 people and wounded another 37 before committing suicide. The worst mass shooting in the Americas occurred in Bogota, Colombia in 1986 when a man used a variety of weapons to kill 30 people and injure another 15.

In one interesting case, the same man perpetrated two mass killings in Africa. William Unek murdered 21 people with an axe in the Belgian Congo in 1954. He escaped to Tanganyika where he went on another rampage three years later, this time using a rifle as well as an axe to kill 36 people.

In Europe there have been a surprising number of mass shootings in the past few decades in spite of onerous laws against the private ownership of guns. According to the Associated Press, in addition to Norway’s Anders Breivik, there were mass shootings in the United Kingdom in 2010 and 1987, Switzerland in 2001, France in 1989 and 1995, Russia in 1999, Finland in 2007 and 2008, Germany in 2009 and 2002, and Spain in 1990. In 1996, sixteen kindergarteners were murdered in Scotland by a gunman who then committed suicide.

Even communist China, a literal police state, is not immune to mass shootings. A man killed 23 people and wounded as many as 80 in Beijing before being shot by police in 1994. Other mass murders in China used other weapons. In 2001, two Chinese men killed 14 people in China with guns and knives. In 2006 in Gongyi, China, 12 kindergarteners and four adults were killed with knives and a gasoline fire. A man killed seven children and two women with a meat cleaver in Xian in 2010. In Hebei in 2010, a man ran over 17 people with a shovel loader tractor.

Knives and explosives have been used to kill large numbers of people on many occasions. In 1950, a man killed 22 people in India with a knife. The worst school massacre in American history used explosives, not guns. According to Listverse.com, in 1927 a former school board member in Bath Township, Mich. set off three bombs that killed 45 people and wounded 58.

Conversely, legal guns in the hands of citizens have prevented several massacres. Days before the Sandy Hook shooting, Portland’s News Channel 8 reported that a concealed carry holder confronted a man who had already killed two people in a mall in Clackamas, Wash. When he saw that he was confronted by an armed civilian, the murderer then killed himself before he could take any more lives.

It wasn’t the first time that citizens had prevented such a tragedy. In 1997, an assistant principal retrieved a pistol from his car to stop a shooting spree at Pearl High School in Mississippi. In 2002, two students used their personal guns to help end a shooting spree at the Appalachian School of Law in Virginia. In 2007, a churchgoer shot a man who had killed four people in a Colorado Springs church. A Salt Lake City gun owner stopped a man who suddenly began stabbing shoppers in a grocery store. There are many other reports of armed citizens saving lives as well.

In spite of the perception that mass shootings are becoming more frequent, criminologists say that random shootings are not happening as often as in the past according to the Associated Press. Grant Duwe, a criminologist with the Minnesota Department of Corrections and the author of a book on mass murders in America, says that mass shootings increased between the 1960s and 1990s, but that mass killings have decreased since 2000. Duwe says mass killings in the U.S. peaked in 1929. In spite of the emotional impact of random killings, the majority of murder victims know their killer.

Portions of this article were originally published by Examiner on Dec. 19, 2012

Published on Atlanta Conservative Examiner

Abortion doctor guilty of killing babies

Kermit Gosnell, the Philadelphia abortionist who ran a little shop of horrors that churned out a steady stream of scarred and battered women along with untold numbers of dead babies, has been found guilty. Gosnell may be the first abortionist ever convicted of killing babies.

Gosnell was convicted on three counts of first degree murder for the killings of three babies born alive at his abortion clinic. After the babies were born, Gosnell cut their necks with scissors, a practice that was allegedly common in the clinic. Gosnell was also found guilty of involuntary manslaughter in the drug overdose death of Karnamaya Mongar, an adult patient at the clinic. The jury found Gosnell not guilty in the case of a fourth baby’s murder.

Gosnell was also found guilty of a host of lesser charges. According to NBC Philadelphia, the guilty verdicts included an additional count of infanticide, two counts of conspiracy, 21 of 24 counts of abortion of an unborn child of 24 weeks or more and 208 of 227 counts of violating Pennsylvania’s informed consent of abortion law.

Prosecutors have indicated that they will seek the death penalty for Gosnell, who is 72 years old.

Yahoo News quotes a statement by Ilyse Hogue, chairman of NARAL Pro-Choice America as saying, “Now, let's make sure these women are vindicated by delivering what all women deserve: Access to the full range of health services including safe, high-quality and legal abortion care.” Hogue added that the verdict means that Gosnell will “get what he deserves.”

The revelations from the case about the late term abortion industry have sparked a growing debate that is causing some abortion supporters to reconsider their views. Examiner reported that a prominent blogger and a reporter covering the trial were among the people swayed by testimony about the killings that went on in Gosnell’s clinic.

Originally published on Examiner.
http://www.examiner.com/article/abortion-doctor-found-guilty-of-killing-babies

Armed pilots provide roadmap for securing schools

When, in the wake of the Sandy Hook massacre, National Rifle Association President Wayne LaPierre called for armed security guards in schools, he faced widespread criticism from liberals who believe that fewer guns, not more, are the answer to the problem of mass killings. On the other side of the political spectrum, some conservatives argued that the cost of placing police officers in every school across the nation was too costly for a federal government that is already running trillion dollar deficits each year.

The concept of armed guards at schools was proven on Jan. 31, 2013 when an armed officer stopped a shooting at Price Middle School in Atlanta. A student had smuggled a gun past metal detectors and opened fire in the courtyard of the school, wounding a 14-year-old student in the neck before the officer was able to get the gun away from him according to CBS News.

Even though armed guards are effective, they are also prohibitively expensive for many school districts. According to Craig Steckler, president of the International Association of Chiefs of Police, as quoted in the Wall Street Journal, the average salary of a police officer is $55,000. There are 98,817 public schools in the United States. According to the Department of Education, about 25 percent of these already have armed security officers on campus at least once per week. The cost for providing officers for the remaining 74,113 schools would be more than $4 trillion. In spite of the recent high profile school shootings, fewer than two percent of all youth homicides occur at or on the way to school.

The school protection dilemma is analogous to the problem of protecting airline flights in the wake of the September 11 attacks. One proposal was to put Federal Air Marshals on all flights, but with tens of thousands of airline flights each day the plan was prohibitively expensive. Training enough air marshals to guard these flights would also have taken years.

An alternative solution was to create the Federal Flight Deck Officer program. This program took volunteer airline pilots and deputized them as federal agents to protect their airplanes. The volunteers were issued pistols and then trained to use them effectively. The volunteers received no federal salary or extra pay from their airlines. Instead they use vacation time to travel at their own expense to the federal training center where FFDO training is conducted. They even paid for the training themselves.

The number of FFDOs is secret, but since the program’s inception in 2003, there have been only two public incidents involving FFDOs who caused safety issues with their guns. In 2011, NBC News reported that a passenger mistakenly picked up a bag containing a JetBlue pilot’s gun. More seriously, in 2008, a US Airways pilot accidentally fired his gun in flight according to Reuters. The aircraft landed safely and no one was injured.

The FFDO program has been spectacularly successful in terms of safety, cost and fulfilling the mission of protecting airline flights. Federal Air Marshals, full time agents, are used as well, but are deployed on flights deemed to be at high risk for attack.

A similar approach could be used in schools to allow volunteer teachers and school employees to become “Federal Classroom Officers.” As with FFDOs, the teachers would be federal officers and would be exempt from local gun ordinances that prohibit gun ownership. As with other law enforcement officers, they would also be allowed to carry their guns in the “gun free” school zones.

Teachers would not be forced to carry a weapon. The program would be for volunteers only. Teachers who do not like guns would be free to choose to remain defenseless. Those who prefer to be able to defend themselves and their students would be issued a weapon and trained to use it safely. They would be required to demonstrate competency with their gun at regular intervals to maintain proficiency.

Teachers who choose not to take part in the program would still benefit from it. First, they would be the direct recipient of protection from the Federal Classroom Officers in the event of a school shooting or terrorist attack. Second, the mere presence of Federal Classroom Officers might well deter many prospective murderers from attacking the school. In the past, many mass murders have taken in place in areas that were deemed to be “gun free.”

There is no doubt that many will oppose the idea of bringing guns into schools. Many of the same arguments that will arise were presented against the idea of arming pilots 10 years ago and have been refuted by the success of the FFDO program.

In reality, guns are already present in our schools. Thousands of schools are already patrolled by armed officers. Federal Classroom Officers would have the same training in firearms that these school security officers receive. All too often others, people like Adam Lanza, bring other guns to school when police officers are not present. In the end, that is why teachers should be given the option to arm themselves. There is no foolproof way to keep bad guys with guns out schools, but we can give our teachers and students a fighting chance.

 

Originally published on Examiner:

http://www.examiner.com/article/experience-with-armed-pilots-can-help-secure-schools

Myths, lies, and conspiracies about the Sandy Hook massacre

Often after a violent event that leads to a dramatic shift in public opinion or government policy, conspiracy theories abound. The Kennedy assassination, the moon landing, and the September 11 attacks all spawned numerous conspiracy theories. Now the Sandy Hook school massacre in Newtown, Ct. is becoming fodder for the purveyors of conspiracies.

Second shooters and the man in camouflage

One of the first conspiracies about Sandy Hook is that there was a second shooter. News coverage on the day of the murders showed a man in camouflage who had been arrested in the woods near the school. Bystanders reported that the man said, “I didn’t do it,” but no information on the man’s identity was forthcoming.

The mystery was quietly solved two weeks after the murders. On Dec. 27, the Newtown Bee reported, almost as an afterthought, that “a man with a gun who was spotted in the woods near the school on the day of the incident was an off-duty tactical squad police officer from another town.” The article does not explain what the officer was doing in the woods, but his identity was probably withheld because of his status as a SWAT officer. It is plausible to think that he might have been nearby and responded to the shootings. The Bee cites a “reliable law enforcement source.”

The SWAT officer was not the only person detained by police near Sandy Hook that day. Chris Manfredonia ran around the school trying to find his six-year-old daughter when he was handcuffed by police according to a Dec. 14 Los Angeles Times report. Manfredonia was released and found his daughter alive. Another unidentified man was detained according to Snopes, but was released when it became clear that he was not involved in the murders.

Chris Rodia was also accused of being the second shooter by some conspiracy theorists. In reality, the Connecticut Post reports that Rodia was being stopped for a traffic violation in Greenwich, Ct. at the time of the murders. Connecticut State Police spokesman Lt. J. Paul Vance told the Post that Adam Lanza was the only gunman and that the car belonged to his relative (Nancy Lanza, his mother, according to other reports), not to Rodia, whom Vance had never heard of. Apparently, the officer who stopped Rodia was using the same police frequency as units responding to Sandy Hook, causing bloggers monitoring scanners to become confused.

The Post tracked the Rodia conspiracy to several websites including one called “USA Hitman.” The administrator of the site admitted that “"I have a full-time job and don't have time to research the stories.”

Did Lanza use an assault rifle?
The weapon used by Lanza has also been the source of confusion. Paul Vance of the State Police confirmed to CNN that Lanza carried three guns in the attack. The primary weapon was a Bushmaster AR-15, but he also carried Glock 10 mm and Sig Sauer 9 mm pistols. The Newtown Bee’s law enforcement source confirms this information.

Early reports that the AR-15 was found in the trunk of Lanza’s (not Rodia’s) car were not correct. The weapon recovered from the trunk was actually a shotgun. CNN noted that authorities had not released details of the shotgun. A Youtube video shows police removing the gun, which does not appear to be an AR-15, from the trunk of the car.

There are reports that the gun in the trunk was a Saiga 12 gauge shotgun, but these could not be verified. The Saiga 12 gauge is a combat shotgun that can accept a large capacity magazine and could easily be mistaken for an “assault rifle.”

Ryan Lanza’s ID

Ryan Lanza’s role in the massacre has also been the source of confusion. Initial reports were that Ryan, Adam Lanza’s brother, was the killer. In reality, Ryan Lanza was at work in New York City when he heard about the shooting according to the Daily Mail. Lanza was picked up by police for questioning and was later released.

The confusion stems from the fact that Adam Lanza was reported to have carried Ryan’s identification. Precisely what sort of identification cannot be determined from the information that has been released. It is possible that the identification was old and out-of-date since the Lanza brothers did not live together.

Peter Lanza and LIBOR

There were also reports that Lanza’s father was scheduled to testify before Congress in the LIBOR scandal. The conspiracy theory claims that the father of James Holmes, the “Dark Knight” killer from Aurora, Co., was also scheduled to testify on LIBOR. The problem was that no such hearing was scheduled to take place according to Talking Points Memo. Holmes worked for FICO and Lanza worked for GE. Neither is connected to LIBOR scandal, which is not even an American scandal.

Victoria Soto

Another myth involves Victoria Soto, one of the teachers murdered by Lanza. Early reports indicated that Soto had hidden her students in a classroom closet and then told Lanza that they were not in the classroom. In reality, one of Soto’s students said that Soto lined her students up and put herself between them and Lanza. The student, Aidan Licata, told CNN that he had been taught to run if they saw someone with a gun. Aidan and several of the other students ran past Lanza and escaped. Aidan was picked up by a woman who took him to a police station, but some of the students from Miss Soto’s class ended up in Gene Rosen’s driveway.

The closet tactic was used by another first grade teacher, Kaitlin Roig, according to ABC News. Roig hid her class in a bathroom and wheeled a storage unit in front of the door. She piled some of her six- and seven-year-olds on top of the toilet to fit everyone inside while telling those “who believed in the power of the prayer, we need to pray and those who don't believe in prayer" to remain positive. When the police came, Roig refused to open the door, thinking that it might the murderer trying to trick her. She told them that if they were really the police they could find a key to open the door themselves. Roig and her students all survived.

Gene Rosen

Gene Rosen, who opened his home to several Sandy Hook survivors, has also been the target of the conspiracy buffs. Rosen’s home is slightly more than a tenth of mile from Sandy Hook, an easy walk for first graders. (Examiner is not publishing Rosen’s address to protect him from further harassment.) In spite of claims to the contrary, Connecticut’s News Times reported that Rosen did invite the bus driver who was with the six children into his home. The children eventually told Rosen what had happened. One of them even said that the killer had “a little gun and a big gun,” supporting the claim that Lanza carried the Bushmaster into the school. The original article does not specify whether the bus driver was male or female.

Much has been made of Rosen’s delay in contacting the police, but the News Times article indicates that he was initially somewhat skeptical about the children’s story. He did not realize that it was true until he watched the news that night.

It is not clear how much the bus driver knew about what had happened at the school. The driver may have even been in shock, since Rosen focuses mainly on the stories that the children told after they came inside. A Fox News report indicates that Rosen and the bus driver called the driver’s supervisor, who helped them to contact the children’s parents. It is reasonable to assume that the police would have been notified, either by Rosen or the supervisor, even though this is not specifically mentioned in the story. The bus driver’s name is apparently not mentioned in any news story. With the negative attention that Rosen has received, who can blame the driver for remaining anonymous?

According to the article, parents of four of the children were contacted and picked up their children at Rosen’s house and then the group went to the firehouse next door where other parents were gathering. Presumably, the other two children were either reunited with their parents or turned over to authorities there.

According to Snopes, Rosen was never a member of the Screen Actors Guild as some have claimed. This was a case of mistaken identity with another Eugene Rosen. The Eugene Rosen who lives near Sandy Hook has been a lifelong Connecticut resident. This is easily confirmed through online address searches and background checks.

Emilie Parker

Six-year-old Emilie Parker has also been the target of conspiracies thanks to a photo of President Obama surrounded by children. A girl in the picture bears a striking resemblance to Emilie and even wears the same dress that Emilie wore in a family portrait. The girl with the president is Emilie’s sister, Madeline, who is now four-years-old.

A collection of pictures posted on Metabunk helps clear up the confusion. The family portrait was taken in 2010 when Emilie was four and Madeline was two. Two years later, Madeline is at the same age that Emilie was in the family picture. She obviously wore a hand-me-down dress in the picture with the president.

Actors and smiling parents

Other conspiracies revolving around the massacre are more subjective. Conspiracy buffs claim that the parents interviewed on television are too happy to be grieving parents and that they are actually crisis actors employed by the government. There are many reasons that a parent might laugh after the death of child. There might be anxiety and nervousness about going on television, they might remember a happy moment with their baby, or they might even be in shock and not yet fully comprehending the loss.

An online conspiracy video states that Robbie Parker, Emilie’s father, is listed in an internet search as being 57-years-old. This is another obvious case of mistaken identity. An internet search performed by Examiner found no fewer than 12 Robert Parkers in Connecticut, including two in Sandy Hook. What the video fails to note is that the Robbie Parker interviewed on the news is the same man in the 2010 family portrait with Emilie and Madeline.

An Anderson Cooper podcast shows Veronique Pozner, another parent who is obviously distraught and says that she is still numb from the loss of her son. Lynn McDonnell, also cited on the conspiracy video with her words dubbed out, was on Anderson Cooper as well. A transcript of the interview shows that she was talking about her daughter’s sweet spirit, how she loved school, and how she would blow kisses as she got on the bus. These are memories that could easily make a grieving parent smile for a moment.

It is not reasonable to judge a parent to be an imposter based solely on their facial expression. People grieve in different ways. There likely were parents who fit the stereotype of grief in which they constantly cry and are totally inconsolable. It is reasonable to assume that these parents declined to do television interviews.

The claim that the parents are actors is easily debunked. Crisis Actors is a private business that provides actors for mock disaster drills. This is not a secret government organization. These are private citizens who work with government agencies to help them train for disasters, terrorist attacks and mass killings. The Crisis Actors website states, “We do not engage our actors in any real-world crisis events, and none of our performances may be presented at any time as a real-world event.”

Snopes believes that it has traced the origin of the actor conspiracy to Wellaware, another conspiracy site. This site apparently promotes the idea that many famous people have been replaced by actors. Among their theories are that Jerry Sandusky was replaced by Kevin Costner, that George Herbert Walker Bush was really Joseph Kennedy, Jr., that Queen Elizabeth is really Betty White, and that Kermit Roosevelt, son of President Theodore Roosevelt, portrayed both Adolf Hitler and Walt Disney.

The idea that actors are portraying the parents defies logic. If the parents on television are actors, then where are the real parents? If actors were being used, wouldn’t they be trained to portray stereotypical grief instead of laughing? If parents are not really grieving, where are the children? If the children and teachers were really killed in a “false flag” operation then why bother to hire actors? Wouldn’t the real parents be more convincing since they were really grief-stricken?

Ambulances, Lanza’s accuracy and controlling the crime scene

The conspiracy video also refers to news camera pictures showing the lack of activity around the school in the wake of the shooting. The answer here is simple: Most of the news crews arrived long after the action was over. The famous photo of a teacher leading a line of children was taken by the Newtown Bee, the local paper and apparently the first and only reporters on the scene for a time. The video says that there are “no ambulances” while simultaneously showing a video in which ambulances are clearly present. By the time video news crews reached the scene reached the scene, the children had already been removed from the school, to the fire station if they were uninjured or in ambulances if they were. NBC News reports that ambulances were even called in from neighboring towns, but most were unused. The majority of the victims were dead, not injured.

Adam Lanza’s accuracy has also been questioned due to reports that all victims had multiple wounds. The Hartford Courant reports that Lanza was a frequent player of first-person shooter video games and, according to MSNBC, he was familiar with guns and marksmanship. Children in the classrooms with one door had little room to escape. Many of the bullet wounds were probably inflicted after the victim was already dead or injured and unable to run.

Conspiracy buffs have keyed in on a comment about “controlling” the scene by Connecticut’s chief medical examiner, Dr. Wayne Carver. A full transcript of Carver’s comments indicate that he was talking about controlling access to the crime scene to spare the families more emotional distress.

Carver’s full comment was, “We did not bring the bodies and the families into contact. We took pictures of them of their facial features. It’s easier on the families when you do that. There is a time and a place for up close and personal in the grieving process. But to accomplish this, we felt it would be best to do it this way, and you can sort of – you can control the situation, depending on the photographer and I have very good photographers.” This explains why the parents were kept from the crime scene and not allowed to see the bodies as well as why any closed circuit camera images have not been released.

Bridgeport FEMA conference

Conspiracy sites have also pointed out that FEMA was holding a conference in Bridgeport, Ct. on the day of the massacre. The topic of this sinister conference? “Planning for the needs of Children in Disasters.”

The location of the conference was not on the same road as Sandy Hook as some sites claim, although Highway 25 does connect both towns. According to Yahoo Maps, the two locations were 20 miles and about half an hour apart. It should be remembered that Connecticut is a small state with an average length of 90 miles and width of 55 miles. This means that the conference in Bridgeport was halfway across the state from Sandy Hook.

None of this is in the least incriminating or suggestive of FEMA involvement in the shooting. In fact, the Connecticut Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection calendar reveals that the same course was offered a total of four times in December. On the days of three of the four classes, no mass murders occurred.

Dates on internet postings

One of the last conspiracy items is the claim that news stories and Facebook pages about the murders were posted to the internet before the shootings actually occurred. This is based on dates posted on Google search results.

To see the fallacy in this theory, go to Google.com and type in a search term, something along the lines of “Sandy Hook shooting.” Click “search tools” in the menu below the search field. Click the arrow beside “any time” to open up a time range menu and then select “custom range.” Select a date range before the Sandy Hook shooting to search, for example, you can search the dates between January 1 and December 1, 2012. The results show news stories about the Sandy Hook massacre from as early as Jan. 14, 2012, far beyond the day or so early claimed by the conspiracy buffs. When dates are expanded, search results dating back to 2007 and 2008 can be found. This should be too early for even the most ardent conspiracy believers to justify as secret operation.

A similar search on Bing does not yield similar results. Bing does not offer custom date range searches, but after scrolling through many pages of search results, nothing prior to Dec. 14, 2012, the day of the shooting was found. The same is true of other search engines including Ask and Yahoo. Obviously, there is a flaw in Google’s methodology.

Without a doubt, President Obama and the Democrats are using the tragic murders at Sandy Hook for their own political ends. There is no evidence that they actually carried out the shootings or orchestrated a hoax of any sort. They didn’t need to. Mass murders happen on occasion and this one, happening just after the election, came at an opportune time.

A hoax would have been much smoother. They would have hired actors who knew how to cry. They might have set up websites in advance, but they would not have activated them, much less more than one, before the shooting. Eyewitness testimony would have matched. In reality, conflicting testimony is not a sign of a hoax because people perceive things in different ways and remember things differently. Stories that match up perfectly are more likely to indicate that the testimony was planned in advance.

For Sandy Hook to be a hoax perpetrated by the government, the conspirators would have to be exceedingly incompetent. They would have had to execute the killings and plant Adam Lanza as a patsy, but forget to plant the AR-15 on his body. They would also have to inexplicably put one of the “dead” girls in a photo opportunity with the president and launch websites several days early. Actors portraying the parents would have to all be so incompetent as to forget their roles on camera.

In any unfolding news story, there is a lot of erroneous information at the beginning. The “fog of war,” conflicting information coming in from different sources and all presented as fact, means that some of the early information is not true. The news media are not intentionally lying; they are just reporting the story as they know it at the time. When this information is corrected later, it isn’t a hoax or a cover up; they are just setting the record straight.

As with any conspiracy theory, the best solution is to apply Hanlon’s razor to conspiracy claims about Adam Lanza and the mass murder at Sandy Hook. “Never accept for malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.”

Originally published on Examiner:

http://www.examiner.com/article/myths-lies-and-conspiracies-about-the-sandy-hook-massacre?cid=db_articles

Gun control not the answer to mass killings

In the wake of last week’s school shooting in Newtown, Ct. there have been many renewed calls for gun control from the left. On Monday, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Ca.) said on MSNBC that she will introduce a bill to ban “assault weapons” and magazines that hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition. Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) called on President Obama to “exploit” the killings according to the Washington Times. Today, President Obama announced that Vice President Biden will head a group to craft new gun control policy and that the issue will become a second term priority. Many pro-gun Democrats, such as West Virginia’s Joe Manchin, are changing position.

The liberal position is that if there had only been more laws, Adam Lanza would not have been able to steal the guns that he used to kill 26 people at Sandy Hook Elementary School. A look at past mass killings indicates that the opposite may be true.

The Citizens Crime Commission of New York City lists 27 mass shootings (defined by the FBI as four or more victims killed) in the United States from 1984 through August 2012. When geographical location is considered, the majority of these shootings took place in states with strict gun control laws. Two of the states with the most restrictive gun control laws, Wisconsin and Illinois, were both the site of mass shootings. Two mass shootings occurred in Wisconsin. Four mass shootings took place in California, despite its gun control initiatives. Connecticut was the site of two previous mass killings before Sandy Hook, even though the state’s gun laws are considered some of the toughest in the nation according to a Washington Post article that cites studies by the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence and Brown University.

A common argument is that gun control fails because criminals buy weapons in states with lax gun laws. If this is true, then mass shootings should be more common in states that allow freer access to guns. In reality, many states with unrestrictive gun laws saw no mass shootings. When shootings did occur in these states, they often happened in places such as schools where guns were not allowed. In the Aurora, Co. movie theater shooting, the theater did not permit guns. In the Fort Hood, Tx. shooting, soldiers were not permitted to carry weapons on base.

There is a striking similarity to the map showing locations of mass shootings and blue states from past elections. Although the comparison is not perfect, the red states across the south from Louisiana to North Carolina had no mass shootings. Likewise, the Midwest experienced few mass shootings while liberal meccas like California, Illinois, Wisconsin, Massachusetts, and New York all made the list.

The failure of gun control to prevent mass shootings is even more stark when other countries are considered. Without even considering mass killings perpetrated by governments (the Holocaust, the Armenian genocide, the Rwandan genocide, etc.) and terrorist groups (the Palestine Liberation Organization, al Qaeda, the Irish Republican Army, etc.). Governments and paramilitary terrorist groups have murdered far more innocent civilians than any lone gunman could ever hope to.

Even without considering killings by organizations, mass shootings occur around the world. This is true even though the United States is one of the few countries in the world where the ownership of firearms is legal and common for civilians. In fact, of the top ten rampage killings listed on Listverse.com, only two occurred in the U.S.

Lists compiled by Wikipedia concur that mass shootings are not an American phenomenon. The worst mass shooting in the world occurred in Norway in 2011 when 68 people were murdered and 110 were injured by Anders Behring Breivik. Breivik also killed another eight people with a car bomb. The second worst shooting occurred in South Korea in 1982 when a man killed 62 people and wounded another 37 before committing suicide. The worst mass shooting in the Americas occurred in Bogota, Colombia in 1986 when a man used a variety of weapons to kill 30 people and injure another 15.

In one interesting case, the same man perpetrated two mass killings in Africa. William Unek murdered 21 people with an axe in the Belgian Congo in 1954. He escaped to Tanganyika where he went on another rampage three years later, this time using a rifle as well as an axe to kill 36 people.

In Europe there have been a surprising number of mass shootings in the past few decades in spite of onerous laws against the private ownership of guns. According to the Associated Press, in addition to Norway’s Anders Breivik, there were mass shootings in the United Kingdom in 2010 and 1987, Switzerland in 2001, France in 1989 and 1995, Russia in 1999, Finland in 2007 and 2008, Germany in 2009 and 2002, and Spain in 1990. In 1996, sixteen kindergarteners were murdered in Scotland by a gunman who then committed suicide.

Even communist China, a literal police state, is not immune to mass shootings. A man killed 23 people and wounded as many as 80 in Beijing before being shot by police in 1994. Other mass murders in China used other weapons. In 2001, two Chinese men killed 14 people in China with guns and knives. In 2006 in Gongyi, China, 12 kindergarteners and four adults were killed with knives and a gasoline fire. A man killed seven children and two women with a meat cleaver in Xian in 2010. In Hebei in 2010, a man ran over 17 people with a shovel loader tractor.

Knives and explosives have been used to kill large numbers of people on many occasions. In 1950, a man killed 22 people in India with a knife. The worst school massacre in American history used explosives, not guns. According to Listverse.com, in 1927 a former school board member in Bath Township, Mich. set off three bombs that killed 45 people and wounded 58.

The worst school massacre in the world occurred in Beslan, Russia in 2004 when Chechen terrorists took 1,200 students and adults hostage. In the ensuing gun battle, 355 people were killed (not including the 31 terrorists) and more than 700 were injured. Of the dead, 186 were children between the ages of six and 16.

Conversely, legal guns in the hands of citizens have prevented several massacres. Days before the Sandy Hook shooting, Portland’s News Channel 8 reported that a concealed carry holder confronted a man who had already killed two people in a mall in Clackamas, Wash. When he saw that he was confronted by an armed civilian, the murderer then killed himself before he could take any more lives.

It wasn’t the first time that citizens had prevented such a tragedy. In 1997, an assistant principal retrieved a pistol from his car to stop a shooting spree at Pearl High School in Mississippi. In 2002, two students used their personal guns to help end a shooting spree at the Appalachian School of Law in Virginia. In 2007, a churchgoer shot a man who had killed four people in a Colorado Springs church. A Salt Lake City gun owner stopped a man who suddenly began stabbing shoppers in a grocery store. There are many other reports of armed citizens saving lives as well.

In spite of the perception that mass shootings are becoming more frequent, criminologists say that random shootings are not becoming more frequent according to the Associated Press. Grant Duwe, a criminologist with the Minnesota Department of Corrections and the author of a book on mass murders in America, says that mass shootings increased between the 1960s and 1990s, but that mass killings have decreased since 2000. Duwe says mass killings in the U.S. peaked in 1929. In spite of the emotional impact of random killings, the majority of murder victims know their killer.

It seems that no amount of gun control, even outright bans, can effectively prevent mass shootings from occurring. In fact, by disarming legal gun owners who are often on the scene before police, strict gun control laws might often make these rampage attacks even worse.

Originally published on Examiner.com:
http://www.examiner.com/article/gun-control-may-make-shooting-sprees-worse?cid=db_articles