- Panic sucks, but see what happens when you have someone so scatter-brained that they can't croak out "the Burlington clothing store in North Hollywood".
- Trusting initial reports always sucks, but it's never clear whether the first 911 caller was ever inside the store, or whether it's just a bystander who sees the store vomiting customers and staff like a kicked-over anthill, is dropping a dime, and is boosting what she's witnessed with hearsay from the refugees about shots fired. And I don't mean "it sucks that the 911 operator took the word of callers who claimed 'man with a gun'". I mean it sucks if the 911 caller parroted gun reports from other idiots.
- Can you imagine if the second 911 caller who said that her mother and sister were hiding "behind" the store, "and I don't know if he has uh the gun" was talking about the victim (and her mother)? (Does "behind" actually mean "in the back part of"?) And how brilliant was that mother/sister combo, that the first person they called when they're hiding from an attacker is another member of their family instead of 911?
The police were obviously executing tactics they had been trained
to use in specific situations. "Diamond, guys!" "Slow down!" "Speed up!"
"Let me get in front with my <patrol rifle>".
Maybe they were the right tactics for what they were told.
NES will
really deliver if someone links to a PowerPoint
that contains some version of the doctrine they were using.
The cops were hardly a well-oiled machine -
struggling to remember their training;
but Military Operations on Urban Terrain is not their day job.
Saddest part is that the kid and her mom were huddled on the floor and the stray round came through low on the dressing room door. If they'd been standing up they might have been hit in the knee at worst.
If I heard shots in a mall, or a
significant ruckus,
my Plan A is to head for the closest exit,
emphatically including those in store back rooms,
private service corridors, and the like.
If it sounded like a full-on terror attack,
I might have the presence of mind
to kick the external door's crash bar to open it,
and stand back in case someone outside
was waiting to snipe at people running.
(And that includes arriving cops).
Otherwise, it's movemovemove.
But if cornered in a store, Plan B is to hide someplace obscure,
such as the storage space underneath
the island counters used to display shirts, towels, etc.
The bullet collimating effect of hard surfaces is the
least of my worries.
Assume that the changing rooms are on the boundary between
the sales floor and the storerooms, staff break room, offices, etc.
NFW does that backroom area not have fire exits.
The fundamental mistake the victims made was freezing in place
(albeit inside a changing room locked from the inside),
rather than fleeing an assailant who was in another room entirely
and didn't even know they existed.
Fight or flight (or freeze) is a biological reaction.
They just biologicaled poorly, sigh.
Tox screen on the perp is gonna break the lab computer, I bet.