Another stand down order give and more people die

[Revmitchell]

The board that oversees the U.S. Capitol Police has opened an investigation into whether a tactical team of officers that was one of the first on the scene during the Washington Navy Yard shooting was ordered to stand down.

Several sources confirmed the probe to Fox News. The investigation follows reports that a highly trained and specialized Capitol Police team arrived soon after the shooting started, but was told by a supervisor to leave the scene.

The BBC, which first reported on the allegation, quoted a Capitol Police "source" as claiming "lives may have been saved" if the team could have intervened.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/201...ce-unit-blocked-from-navy-yard/#ixzz2fJErKnKR

 

[thisnumbersdisconnected]

I'm not supporting a stand-down order if it wasn't warranted. However, there were numerous non-uniformed agents for NCIS and other security services in the building, and given the fact the CERT team would have represented one more of several different law enforcement units, and that there was no centralized command structure coordinating the initial response, standing the team down would have made sense. The two "suspects" that were identified as having "escaped" the area turned out to be uniformed military or police personnel. It would have been dangerous to have a CERT team active in a shooting zone when it was impossible to identify all the "good guys", thus avoiding a potential friendly fire incident.

I don't know if that's what happened or not. I'm offering a scenario under which a stand-down order could be validly issued. This all ignores the fact that NCIS is almost across the street, and Shore Patrol is assigned to security in the Navy Yard, and arrived on scene several minutes before the CERT team did, and had dealt with the gunman within five minutes. I doubt the D.C. CERT unit would have been able to deploy before it was all over anyway, and I imagine -- despite the continued media report of "multiple shooters" that went on for hours after Alexis was brought down -- the on-scene personnel knew he was a lone gunman.