So lets think about LEO at school... Should they be young fresh trained fit men and women in their first assignment? Or seasoned officers who have seen a ton an know how to deal with disturbed and distraught individuals?
My guess is that the "system" assigns senior officers to schools as a light duty assignment as they near retirement ... Sometimes they act as informal counselors, sometimes as first line of communication with the force at large. Prolly the case here.
Standing up in front of semi-auto rifle fire is scary. Everyone naturally uses caution. If you see collateral damage like breaking glass coming toward you, you will hunker down. The crack of one supersonic round snapping by your head will make you take cover. Everyone would do it for a few seconds.
But, if there is no projectile debris coming your way, and you have walked the corridors of the school many times, you are not in unfamiliar territory. You have hundreds of hours of range time just qualifying periodically. You know what guns do. You shoot AR's at the range. None of this is completely foreign to you. How you handle it is your choice...
The kids in the line of fire have none of this in their head ...
I'm seriously disappointed in the School Officer. I wish he had engaged or distracted, or done something other than call for back-up. He
WILL become the training Bozo poster of who not to become. He
will go to his grave looking over his shoulder... Eventually he may become depressed and take his own life - we'll see...
It's all a tragedy
I suspect that a national alert computer system that automatically parses alerts and passes them along to local LEO's will be the next step... Yes, it could be a bit big brother'ish. But there has to be more and quicker exchange of data between jurisdictions. And it does not touch the gun control hot button.
We are just beginning to enter the real age of big data. Social agencies and local LEO's will be exchanging more info in closer to real time as we move forward. The FBI will be housing a lot of this, just so they can mine it ... In 25 years this will all be automated.
Until then keep your eyes open and speak up.