Binghamton: Where Were the Cops?

A question raised a couple of times:

“Police said they arrived within two minutes. . . . Police heard no gunfire after they arrived but waited for about an hour before entering the building to make sure it was safe for officers.”

The chief defended the time it took officers to go into the building — an hour to 90 minutes.

"If some crazy lunatic decides to pick up a gun and go someplace and start shooting people, I really don't have the answer how long for us that could prevent anything like that," Zikuski said.
"What I will tell you is that the police did the right thing," he said. "We have procedures and protocols."

This is despite the fact that a mortally-wounded receptionist was continually feeding intel to the cops from inside the center during the attack.

The female, 61-year-old Shirley DeLucia, now in critical condition, pretended she was dead to fool the shooter, then ducked underneath her desk to make the 911 call that alerted police.

Zikuski, the police chief, said she stayed on the phone for 90 minutes, "feeding us information constantly," despite a serious wound in the abdomen.

Were there any folks who died because the LEO's would not enter the building?

It is now known that the shooter had a couple of pistols. Typical body armor is effective against pistol-fire.

At the ConfYankee site, a commenter opines that the Binghamton PD is not up to speed on the "newer model" of response to a shooting incident:

The more contemporary model requires that the first officers on the scene immediately assault and engage the shooters in the hope of saving lives. This model recognizes that shooters are not common criminals, intend to die by their own hands or by forcing the police to kill them, and will kill as many innocents as possible until they are stopped or choose to kill themselves. In this model, time is not on the side of the police. In this model, even with the fastest possible police response, tens will die if the shooter is not a common criminal.

While the contemporary model is unquestionably the most potentially effective model in terms of saving innocent lives, it requires courage, daring, and most importantly, it requires that police administrators give substantial authority and power to the lowest ranking members of their forces. It also requires substantial training and a sea change in mindset. It is clear that not every America law enforcement agency has recognized the need to make this change, or having recognized it, has yet to surrender authority, do the necessary training, or fully implement it.

That model also requires that the LEO on-site is able to determine rather quickly whether the shooter is a "hostage-taker" (the old model), or whether he is a "suicide shooter," (the case in Columbine, VTU, and Binghamton.)

Given that there was 'continuous intel,' seems that there was a command-level problem here.

HT: Confederate Yankee