In an active shooter situation when are the police justified in waiting for backup before engaging?

The deputy that didn't go in was wise.  He had no idea how many shooters there were, or how many automatic weapons he was up against.  

Police are first responders;  the guy hired to protect the students has a different, more specific job---protect students from harm when its happening..

Common sense.

If the situation would be more secure with backup, then wait.

If the situation cannot wait for backup, then try and act in as safe a manner as possible.

In a active shooter situation the protocol since Columbine is the officer (s) on scene are to go to the shooter. To stop the shooter. Not to set up a perimeter or to wait for backup. Lost minutes count in these situations amount to lives lost.

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"You're going to the sound of the guns," he said. "The No. 1 goal is to interdict the shooter or shooters. In the old days, you took land. You went in. You clear the room. Then you slowly and methodically move to clear the next room. In this instance ... get to the shooter as quickly as possible and that's what they clearly did here."
(This was interviewed before it was know the SRO  and three other sherriff deputies stayed outside....added by m2c)
The tactic, known in law enforcement circles as rapid deployment involving the first officer at the scene, began in earnest after the Columbine shooting.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/15/us/florida-school-shooting-columbine-lessons/index.html This post was edited by my2cents at February 24, 2018 5:58 PM MST

Ooh... I haven't been over to the other discussion yet today. Perhaps I should have looked at it. Did you see the pamphlet for law enforcement I posted that covered active shooter training and solo entry?

There isn't a definitive answer to this. Pre-Columbine, officers always waited for backup and often waited for SWAT. It wasn't until then that they started realizing that active shooter situations aren't like typical hostage situations. Generally speaking, an officer entering solo will be shot one-third of the time, but that goes up substantially when there's an automatic or semi-automatic being used. And, a lot of the current data is including situations where the officer has a clear shot- in grocery stores, malls, and so on- not in crowded school hallways, which would make it even harder for an officer entering solo to be effective. 

Ideally, an officer wouldn't enter unless he was in a group of four or more. Two is risky. Solo is basically a suicide mission. 

I second a lot of what Sunshine says, but will rephrase it a bit. An officer has to be able to quickly evaluate what will result in him being the most effective at preventing loss of life. If he can enter and thinks he can get to the shooter and take him out, he should probably go for it. If not, he should wait for backup. 

When we talk about waiting for backup, the big issues usually surround smaller communities, where no other officer will come on the scene for an extended period of time- usually 20-30 minutes. There are municipalities like this. In those cases, the first on scene really has no choice but to go in. With the recent one, he called for backup and it was there in minutes. We're talking about him being outside for a four-minute period, during which he was making arrangements, coordinating, and may have done things that resulted in fewer lives lost. Moreover, the guidebook I posted earlier talks about how SROs should be leading the teams through the school when backup arrives because the SRO knows the school. He cannot do that if he's dead.

There are just so many unknowns with these things. A single officer on scene cannot help anyone if he runs in to play the hero and is shot and killed before killing the target. With nobody to lead and coordinate, even more lives could be lost. And, the first officer on scene has to analyze a million variables before he decides if he can be effective going in alone. 
-Can he shoot the target?
-What is the likelihood that he will die before he hits his target?
-What action will result in the lowest body count? 
-How many shooters are there- will he be ambushed?
-Can he make an educated guess as to where the shooter is headed and what his next action will be?
-How long until backup arrives and what will the likely life cost be from waiting? 

I'm not a cop. I don't have this training. Moreover, even different police forces apply different rules to these situations. I can't say this officer made the wrong call here because I have no idea what he was doing or thinking during those four minutes. Even if we can evaluate later and say he could have gotten a clear shot at the killer, hindsight is 20/20. You have to make a judgement call based on the info you have at that exact moment. 

From what I can see of the timeline, maps, and interview from those on-site, the shooter was already on the third floor when he arrived. Here's the weird part, I think there's a chance the shooter actually passed the SRO when he left the building. If so, the officer clearly did not know who he was looking for. I don't know what entrance the SRO was at, but it sounds like the shooter really walked past him. But, let's play devil's advocate for a moment. 



The shooter was active from 2:21 and left the building at 2:28. I haven't seen anyone confirm what time he made the last shot. It sounds like he discarded the rifle before he came back down the stairs and some sources say there was active fire for six minutes and that the officer arrived at the building two minutes after shooting started. So...

2:21 shooting starts
2:23 SRO arrives at building
2:27 Shooting stops
2:28 Shooter leaves building

Now, at best, if this timeline is accurate, a person could theoretically run down all three flights of stairs in one minute, so, if the officer actually knew the shooter was on the third floor, upon his arrival, he could have run up the steps and possibly shot the suspect and saved three minutes of carnage. However, if it's correct that the suspect passed him on the way out, he clearly had no clue who he was looking for or how many were inside. He would have had to have moved slowly through the building one floor at a time- at least glancing in each room to make sure nobody was going to come out behind him and kill him. Could he have cleared 20 rooms and gotten up three flights of stairs in three minutes? No... I cannot imagine a planet on which this is possible. He had zero chance of stopping the carnage. Not alone. He needed a team of at least three- an officer on each side checking the rooms with one covering the front, all moving forward in tandem. Otherwise, he would just be darting into harm's way with no strategy. It's not realistic. It's not strategic to do anything else. He could not have made it to the third floor before the shooting was done anyway. Not alone. If, for argument's sake, he simply listened for the sounds and followed them (skipping the room checks), he still would have been slow as he rounded corners and went up stairs. I doubt he could have known which floor the shooter was on for sure unless he swept them all. Moreover, with multiple stairwells and an elevator, he's also got to be listening closely to see if the sounds are moving from one floor to the next, even after he has swept an area. Four minutes. Could you find a shooter in a three-story building with 30-ish rooms in under four minutes? This is an officer who knew this building. I'm betting he knew he needed help to sweep it properly. Had he waited for backup and the shooting continued, and they caught the guy, nobody would be calling him a coward. He'd be a smart strategist. If he knew he only had four minutes, and he knew there was a single shooter on the third floor, I'm betting he would have gone in. But, he didn't know that. He couldn't know that.

Based on the timeline, I don't think any lives were lost due to him being outside. Moreover, I still don't think he would have caught the shooter if he had gone in alone. If we want to weigh the pros and cons of waiting for backup in general, ok, I guess, but waiting doesn't reflect poorly on this officer unless we can find evidence that he was actually trained to go in and that the training was regular and ongoing. 

People talk about the heroic efforts of a few who took bullets for others and died holding doors open- those who went in when the officer didn't. Ok... sure... I'll grant them that. Those people died heroic deaths, but let's be clear- they're dead. If you or anyone else can tell me what good it would have done for this officer to have died the same way- by charging in solo without intel and a strategy- I'd like to hear it. From where I stand, a living officer is more helpful than a dead one, especially when we have no way of knowing that the shooter is going to just up and walk away.