School shooting officer charged with inaction. Should ‘cowardice’ be criminal? | Hacker News Reader

School shooting officer charged with inaction. Should ‘cowardice’ be criminal?

washingtonpost.com

23 pointshoward94123 comments

This is what irks me about the current setup: we put people everywhere with guns. We turn schools into what are essentially prisons. We let officers shoot unarmed people because they’re afraid, with no consequences. But if there’s someone actively killing kids it’s acceptable for them to be too scared to do anything.

The right to be an executioner comes with the potential to be killed - that’s literally there job and the reason for their elevated privilege: they are given these tools because they have to put themselves in the line of fire to protect the public. If they are unwilling to do that they shouldn’t have a gun. Otherwise the only time they shoot people is when they aren’t in sufficient danger to be scared.

To achieve that does it require criminal charges though?

It seems we’ve gotten pretty far already without it - but it’s an open question.

Actually I suspect this won’t go anywhere - I recall a story that reached HN a few years ago from the (I think) N.Y. subway where a wanted criminal attacked (and stabbed) someone and the police literally just stayed on the other side of a door while watching and doing nothing. The attacker was eventually subdued by the other passengers. When they were taking to court they were found to have done nothing wrong: the opinion said something along the lines of “police are not required to intervene”, eg stopping attempted murder is apparently not part of their job requirements. Yet they have tasers and guns “to stop crime”

Found it!

"Why The Cops Won't Help You When You're Getting Stabbed" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAfUI_hETy0

On HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15590479

"stopping attempted murder is apparently not part of their job requirements."

Or rather, not doing your job requirements is not illegal.

> Otherwise the only time they shoot people is when they aren’t in sufficient danger to be scared.

I hadn't really thought about it like that until after I read your comment. It's really making me second-guess my prima facie opinion on this whole thing, thanks.

"Duty to act" is a well-defined idea in most places for emergency responders.

In New York State, police and firemen have an unqualified duty to act: if you're on shift or off, and you see a crime/a fire, you are obligated to do something about it or you're criminally liable. If you're an EMT, duty to act only pertains if you're on duty -- but if you initiate care, you are subsequently bound and liable if you abandon your patient.

Most of the "no duty to act" precedent revolves around normal cops on patrol who witness crimes and don't stop them or who don't show up expediently when a crime is called in. Being tasked with securing a school likely establishes a specific duty do do that job regardless of whether or not there's other state law establishing that duty.

"Supreme Court ruled on Monday that the police did not have a constitutional duty to protect a person from harm" https://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/politics/justices-rule-po...

For EMS, sure. For law enforcement officers, their only duty is to "the public at large". They are not liable if they let an individual die. (Regular civilians have this right, too, in most jurisdictions)

IANAL

in new york, anyway, it's the other way around. Here are the examples we were given in EMT training:

If you're an off duty cop at a convenience store getting a slurpee at 3 AM, and the guy in line in front of you robs the place, and all you do is stand there, you are (potentially) liable. In practice, enforcement is pretty lenient here, especially if you don't have a service weapon on you, but you're legally required to make at least a token effort.

If you're an EMT in the hypothetical 7/11 with your slurpee and not on shift (or, i believe, in uniform) and the guy in front of you keels over from a massive heart attack, you can stand there and watch him die and nobody can touch you. IF you touch him (and start chest compressions or whatever), now you can't leave until you hand him off to an ambulance crew or someone more medically qualified than you. If you _are_ on shift, you must act no matter what.

There are additional complications for volunteer EMTs versus paid EMTs that don't pertain here but relate to at which points which legal statutes cover you or don't.

"Peterson’s perjury charge is clear-cut, Martin said. According to the affidavit, Peterson not only failed to go inside but then lied about how many gunshots he heard after arriving at the school."

This seems reasonable to go after him for. If they had ordered him inside and he refused, he essentially is not doing his job and should be fired/responsible for it. How much responsibility depends on whether he would have actually saved anyone if he had done his job as intended in my opinion.

For not going into a live situation without orders they should not hold him accountable for that as there is no clear cut S.O.P. when it comes to school shootings.

FTA, "According to a 2018 study of the sheriff’s department in Palm Beach County, which neighbors Parkland, the Forum found there was ambiguity about how officers should act during active-shooter situations — whether they should wait for backup or rush inside."

the perjury charge about the gun shots is the only one founded in law, the rest are , lets try to word it a certain way so he can be charged. Culpable negligence might float under Florida's wording.

the danger is twisting criminal statute to prosecute someone who probably be held accountable but there is no clear cut law they can be charged with that meets the satisfaction of grand standing prosecutors, media, and judges. Yes, they are grand standing here. They need to blame someone, not the system, and they have a candidate.

A good analysis of this was over at Reason [1]

[1] https://reason.com/2019/06/06/was-scot-petersons-cowardice-a...

> For not going into a live situation without orders they should not hold him accountable for that as there is no clear cut S.O.P. when it comes to school shootings.

FBI training, which his department had been through, teaches engaging active shooters, and is absolutely SOP.

Knowing that he had been through that specific training and he failed to follow S.O.P. then I would be much more harsh on him for acting in that manner.

I would definitely question how prepared he was made for this situation. How many active shooter drills did his employer run him through? Everyone isn't a natural born hero. In reality, rushing in could have caused more deaths, or it could have saved lives if he was mentally and physically prepared for it.

Everyone wants someone to blame in these horrific situations, and a cowardly officer who I would imagine doesn't get paid as much as most of the people on this forum, is as good a person to blame as anyone. After a single New Zealand shooting, they vowed to take action in policy. We'll see how it plays out but it seems a more appropriate response than focusing a lot of attention on one ill-prepared officer.

IANAL, but hasn't SCOTUS repeatedly ruled that police inaction is not a crime?

"Castle Rock v. Gonzales, is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court ruled, 7–2, that a town and its police department could not be sued under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for failing to enforce a restraining order, which had led to the murder of a woman's three children by her estranged husband."

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Town_of_Castle_Rock_v._Gonzale...

Avoiding negligence doesn't conventionally require you to endanger your own life. This seems a proxy for creating a "desertion" or "dereliction of duty" charge within policing.

If the expectation of assuming a policing role is to put your life on the line in situations where that can be avoided, then that should be made explicit, and enforced with a similar doctrine as with military law.

I'd guess the officer is already in their own hell of regret or second-guessing, and perhaps also PTSD from the event itself.

Instead of making the officer a target for outrage over the event, why not instead focus on learning what can be learned from this event, including with the help of the officer?

If someone wants their pound of flesh, it's not like the officer hasn't likely already suffered and won't keep punishing themself. And it's not like further punishment needs to be seen for some kind of deterrent effect.

Uncredited press pool photo by Wes Anderson. It's a somewhat sympathetic image.

I’m torn about this. Fear can crush a person, gluing them in place. There’s a difference between willful in action, and fear.

What is the difference? Willful inaction being the internal rationalizations around the crushing fear?

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