LAW ENFORCEMENTReports Analyzing the Police Response to a Mass Shooting Can Leave Unanswered Questions — if They’re Released at All
Communities often rely on after-action reviews of mass shootings for a comprehensive and independent assessment of what happened. But even if an after-action investigation is released, a lack of national standards leads to wide variability in the detail of information in reports, an investigation found.
During an October conference to prepare law enforcement for dealing with an active shooter, Nevada State Police department Lt. Jacob Fisher played body camera footage that showed what he believed was a key misstep during the country’s deadliest mass shooting.
The footage from the 2017 massacre at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino showed a veteran Las Vegas Metropolitan Police officer and his trainee waiting on the floor below the shooter instead of confronting him as he spewed gunfire into the crowd of concertgoers outside. Six years later, Fisher told the room full of law enforcement officers and firefighters at the conference in Grapevine, Texas, that he had trained the veteran officer and felt like he had failed.
Sixty people died, including Fisher’s best friend, and more than 850 others were injured.
“I failed, and because of that I had to carry my best friend’s casket nine days later,” Fisher said. “I failed his kids. I failed his wife. I failed that organization because, for whatever reason, I couldn’t break through and find a way to convey a message to that cop to where he would run 800 yards toward active gunfire.”
While stressing the importance of training and leadership, Fisher made a stunning admission. He said he sends his children to school with bulletproof backpacks and tourniquet kits because he doesn’t trust that law enforcement officers would save them in the event of a mass shooting.
“Why do I as a parent have to arm my children at the ages of 8 and 10 and teach them those things?” said Fisher, who spoke with a reporter at the conference but could not later be reached for comment. “Because the cops in my jurisdiction, I don’t trust to go save them.”
The Nevada Supreme Court ordered the release of the video Fisher played six months after the October 2017 massacre, siding with news organizations who had sued the Las Vegas police department to make the records public. The veteran officer was fired after its release but was later reinstated, according to what the union president told newsrooms at the time.
