Rapid Deployment: Find and Eliminate Threats
Some special tactics practiced by police today were borrowed from the military after the bitter lessons from the Columbine High School shootings.
Inspired by the Columbine High School massacre in April 1999, rapid deployment training represented a radical departure from the way law enforcement long had approached actively violent situations. Prior to Columbine, in 12 students and one teacher were slain and 23 other people were wounded, the approach toward a gunman with potential hostages was to “isolate, wait for SWAT, and negotiate,” meaning to maneuver the bad guy into a place he could not leave, bring in a tactical team and a hostage negotiation team, as well. Columbine changed that: The two gun-wielding students entered the school with no apparent thought of taking hostages, intent only on killing people, rapidly. “That didn’t work, and that probably was the genesis of this to …
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