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  • Targeting

    The incident of the past week has caused me to think of past training, past cases, such as the kidnapping of General Dozier.

    You remember it, yes? James Dozier was kidnapped by leftist Marxists in 1981 where he was the secondary target. Their primary target wouldn't open the door for them, wouldn't accept their deceptive ploy. Unable to get through the front door, they had to go to their secondary target.

    Hence here. It seems, from the little bits I see in the press, that the primary was the sorority house, but he couldn't get in. So he went to his secondary or perhaps his target of opportunity?

    If so, then two things. First, did we see a "well planned" operation go to pieces a lot sooner than he planned? If so, it's a pity we can't use such an operational disaster as a counter, a deterrent to those who might think so in the future.

    Secondly, like Dozier, like Bundy and his sorority house hit, we are learning to harden targets just by locking the doors and not answering to every knock.

    Thoughts?

  • #2
    The trend in schools and law enforcement is now leaning towards an active response to disrupt the plans of an active shooter as opposed to passively hiding and trying to contain and wait it out. The police are now instructed to enter immediately and try to engage the shooter and teachers and students are advised to use their best judgement in confronting the shooter when possible and if taking shelter to barricade (they are teaching methods of barricading doors) and evading/escaping when possible.
    The main thought is that when confronted with unexpected difficulties or resistance, the shooters plans come apart immediately and they are likely to commit suicide or flee.
    Analysis of shootings and attempted mass shootings have consistently shown a much lower death toll where potential victims fought back or acted in their own defense.

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    • #3
      Isla Vista Shootings: Lessons in Mental Health - TIME

      Police missed an opportunity to thwart Elliot Rodger’s plans before he killed six people

      On April 30, deputies from the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department, which has jurisdiction in Isla Vista, visited Rodgers at his home to assess his mental state. They had been indirectly summoned there by Rodger’s mother. Reportedly disturbed by videos her son had posted on YouTube, she called a therapist who had been treating him, who called a mental-health hotline, which contacted the authorities. The deputies interviewed Rodger and determined that he was shy, according to Santa Barbara County Sheriff Bill Brown — but polite and did not pose a risk to himself or others. Absent that, they had no legal right to take him into custody. They urged him to call his mother and they left.

      In a departing manifesto, Rodger wrote of the April 30 encounter: “For a few horrible seconds I thought it was all over. When they left, the biggest wave of relief swept over me.”

      As became painfully clear weeks later, Rodger posed a grave threat. He had recently purchased several guns, along with hundreds of rounds of ammunition. And he had been plotting for several years to exact revenge on “humanity” — particularly women — for rejecting him socially, according to a final YouTube video and a manifesto he wrote before stabbing his two roommates and another man to death and then fatally shooting three others. He wounded 13 more.

      A spokeswoman for the Santa Barbara Sheriff has said the department was not aware of Rodger’s YouTube posts until after he went on his killing spree. If they had been, it’s possible the outcome might have been different. “They should have definitely been made aware of those videos in my opinion,” says Kenton Rainey, chief of police for Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) in San Francisco and a board member at the National Alliance for Mental Illness (NAMI) in California. “It would have been impossible for them to make an informed assessment without those.”

      An official from a local chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness said there was a program in Santa Barbara County to provide officers with so-called crisis-intervention training (CIT) that has been utilized elsewhere to help officers detect signs of mental illness, but it’s unclear whether the deputies who check on Rodger had received this training. Only about 30 law-enforcement personnel in the entire county receive such crisis intervention training annually, according to the NAMI chapter official.

      “Crisis-intervention training is a national movement,” says Dr. Kenneth Duckworth, medical director for NAMI and a professor at Harvard. “But even that may not be enough to respond to this from an upstream perspective.”

      If the deputies who met Rodger had been specially trained, it’s possible he could have simply fooled them into thinking he was mentally stable.

      “My guess is he was on the best behavior possible for him,” says Kristine Schwarz, executive director of New Beginnings Counseling Center in Santa Barbara. Schwarz, who has no direct knowledge of Rodgers or his mental state adds, “It’s not out of the ordinary or out of the question that somebody could miss something in a wellness check like that. There are always people who are able to present perfectly functional.” Schwarz says law-enforcement officers in Santa Barbara County regularly collaborate with mental-health professionals and appear well trained. “But it depends on the individual law-enforcement officer and the individual client,” she says.

      Jessica Cruz, executive director of NAMI California says programs like CIT are helpful, but that “more importantly, we should be able to call somebody other than the police for our loved ones going through a mental-health crisis.” NAMI is among the organizations that regularly lobby to train more mental-health professionals and provide more services, including prevention and treatment. Funding for the latter is often inadequate, says Cruz. California, for example, has less than half the number of hospital beds dedicated to in-patient mental-health care than recommended by a panel of psychiatric experts convened to study the issue.

      There have also been efforts to reach more mentally ill people in outpatient settings, but here too, intentions sometimes fall short. Laura’s Law, passed in California in 2002, would allow counties to mandate outpatient treatment for some mentally ill adults, but the law includes no dedicated funding, most counties have not adopted it and the criteria for applying the law is very strict. (Laura’s Law would likely not have applied in Rodger’s case.) Cruz also points to a program in San Diego County that sends mobile teams, including clinicians, to the homes of severely mentally ill people who are reluctant to get treatment. Such non-law-enforcement approaches, if adequately funded, are often more effective, says Cruz.

      As for Rodger’s parents, it appears they took appropriate steps to help their son and keep him from hurting others. They called police upon seeing his manifesto and final YouTube video, in which he outlined his plans to “slaughter” sorority members and kill others. They raced to Santa Barbara County in hopes of intervening directly, only to find their son and six others already dead.

      “The family did everything they could have done,” says Cruz. “If a family is worried about their loved one and they call who they think they’re supposed to call, what else can you do?”
      What disturbs me is how the shooter was able to easily acquire multiple guns and hundreds of rounds of ammunition without so much as a red flag to authorities, especially after being previously referred to by the Sheriff's office and mental health services just a short time ago. Aside from this, it appears that the proper channels were indeed followed. Unfortunately, Rodger was able to conceal his true intentions right until the end. An extremely sad situation, and yet another example of the need for enhanced community/family awareness, adaptive laws and a robust mental health system.
      Last edited by Red Team; 29 May 14,, 20:43.
      "Draft beer, not people."

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      • #4
        Originally posted by Red Team View Post
        Isla Vista Shootings: Lessons in Mental Health - TIME



        What disturbs me is how the shooter was able to easily acquire multiple guns and hundreds of rounds of ammunition without so much as a red flag to authorities, especially after being previously referred to by the Sheriff's office and mental health services just a short time ago. Aside from this, it appears that the proper channels were indeed followed. Unfortunately, Rodger was able to conceal his true intentions right until the end. An extremely sad situation, and yet another example of the need for enhanced community/family awareness, adaptive laws and a robust mental health system.
        Noted.

        Not going to comment on that as that I hope this to be more of a looking back discussion as oppose to the outrage of what needs to change that is on most of the fronts.

        But if it goes that way, oh well...........................

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        • #5
          Oh in terms of the actual 'in the moment' actions I concur, things could definitely have gone worse if it hadn't been for the defensive mindsets of the sorority house and many of the citizens in the affected areas. IMO the shooter's own extensive premediation played a huge part in his own demise; he so believed in carrying out his plan to the absolute letter that any deviation from it threw him off his game bit by bit. Considering the amount of ammunition he had, and the relatively high population density of the areas he attacked, it's a miracle that more weren't killed.
          "Draft beer, not people."

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