It is not possible to defend the Florida sheriff’s deputy who, when a gunman opened fire inside a school building on Feb. 14, stayed outside instead of seeking a confrontation.
However, it is possible to explain what may have been going through the mind of the school “resource officer” during the shooting.
A story on The Washington Post website observed that the two standard responses to a threat are to fight or to flee. Usually it takes a healthy dose of courage to fight — such as the morning dozens of New York City firefighters went into the burning buildings at the World Trade Center.
Police psychologists, reported the Post, often encounter a different reaction to a threat: Freezing.
“When our brains perceive danger, adrenaline floods our body,” said the story. “The amygdala, a part of the brain in charge of emotional responses, becomes more active and can overrule the prefrontal cortex, which is in charge of nuanced cognitive functions such as complex decision-making. Our senses can become distorted. Many officers describe experiencing tunnel vision or tunnel hearing, where they become entirely focused on something like a suspect’s gun or voice. Their sense of time becomes distorted.”
Many police officers, firefighters, soldiers and airline pilots undergo training to help them overcome such responses in a crisis. A former police officer told the Post that the training is a type of “stress inoculation,” allowing a person to see how he reacts to a situation and teaching him how to overcome poor decisions so he can do his job properly.
In the Florida case, one question to ask is whether the school officer got enough of that crisis training. It certainly is possible that tight government budgets prevented it.
Another possibility is that the relative lack of danger at a school reduced the officer’s ability to respond effectively. If every day is routine or even boring, it may become difficult to react to a sudden change like an armed intruder.
Experts in the Post story also worried about what will happen to the officer in the months to come. They fear that because he failed to act and resigned in shame, he and his family will not get the support or counseling that he needs. To abandon this man now would be immoral.
But there are plenty of school officers around the country who must ask themselves how they would respond in such a situation. If they would not enter a building to face an armed shooter, it’s time to find another job.
The Florida officer’s lack of response, by the way, is a good argument against the idea of arming teachers.
If this particular officer, who had been a well-regarded member of the sheriff’s department for more than 30 years, was unable to respond effectively, it’s easy to predict that most teachers would react the same way in a crisis.
As sick as this is to say, the Florida tragedy reinforces the fact that many schools are vulnerable to attack. The obvious solution is more trained officers on hand. Schools must assess how many officers their buildings need and start hiring accordingly.
Jack Ryan, Enterprise-Journal
