That actually happened back in the late 1990s during the North Hollywood shootout with those two men covered from head to toe with body armor. Except the policemen didn't go home to get guns, they went to the nearest gun store and borrowed some AR-15 rifles.
Well Doug, that didn't happen in the 1990s (1997). The police did get AR15s from a gun store, but they weren't their own guns and so there isn't a conflict on using their own guns. Plus, those guns were NOT used in the shootout. Good initiative, but no effect for it. It was just more officers out of the fight. By the time the two officers got the guns from the gun store, SWAT had finally materialized on scene, figured out what they were going to do, and responded. The sad thing was that SWAT arrived with their own arms long before they mounted a response as they didn't want to go into the fight without a plan... and while the plan worked, it wasn't a good one...chasing down the bad guy, using an unarmored squad car, with 4 or 5 SWAT officers inside. As near as I could tell, they spent so much time on a plan, they were forced to act when the bad guys decided to leave.
I don't see how the police could evacuate a highly populated area like a college campus or downtown area from someone shooting down on them. Many of those people were pinned down inside buildings or behind whatever solid object they could get cover behind. Trying to evacuate them would put them, and police, in even more danger it seems to me.
This is because you do not know how to conduct an evacuation from a shooting situation. Actually, a college campus would be one of the easier places because most buildings have doors, often multiple sets of doors on each side of a building. You evacuate via the cover shadow afforded by buildings. Given the all sides access, you can work across campus, remaining out of sight, passing through the cover shadow, building to building. The tough part to evacuate would be the commons area where so many people were shot and were down. Besides, you don't have to evacuate everyone, just move them to safe areas. If a sniper is somewhere to the west of the building you are in, then you move folks to the east side of the building and to levels higher or lower than the sniper. Snipers tend NOT to shoot at targets they don't see. Whitman didn't.
Have you been to UT? You can actually travel across much of campus inside of buildings, such as during the summer or during a rain storm when you might want to avoid being outside much. You end up simply passing short distances between buildings. The route across campus is actually much longer, but you spend the vast majority of time inside and safe.
True, but Richard Hanson's point still stands: Martinez, the other officer and the bookstore owner went in and got the job done in 1966. The policemen at Columbine stood outside talking on their radios and frittering around trying to figure out what to do in 2004.
I don't think it has to do with training or equipment, but rather the man in the uniform being able to take the initiative and do what he has to do with whatever is available
In fact, I think the N. Hollywood police did just that when they went to the nearest gun shop and borrowed AR-15s to stop those killers.
Here, I would say that you are dead wrong. First, officer Neal Gardner was the first officer on scene and traded shots with the Klebold and Harris. Smoker, another early arriver, also exchanged shots with the gunmen. Their training was to contain the situation and deal with the wounded. They did this. That is what they were doing and that was their training. They knew the shooters to have rifles as Gardner was shot at with a rifle.
It is almost amusing that you would be critical of officers going against their training and charging into a situation against long guns used by an unknown number of bad guys, armed only with pistols, and yet LAPD SWAT, one of the most highly trained police organizations in the world, arrived on scene and then camped out until they had enough intel on the situation dealing with just two know bad guys to effect a response felt to be prudent while their fellow officers who were not as well armed as the SWAT guys, did battle with pistols and buckshot.
It was incidents like Whitman at UT (
http://swat3.sierra.com/lapdswat/timeline.html) that resulted in the development of SWAT units. It was incidents like Columbine that resulted in the development and use of active shooter response here in the US.
Keep in mind that when officers do something that is counter to their training and it turns out bad, training being aligned with departmental protocols and regulations, their departments disavow them, punish them, or pay for their medical care or funerals. If they are found to have acted wrongly as per procedure, they may get fired.
