A week ago last Sunday I got up at 6:00 am Central time, as is my custom, to feed my dogs, make my coffee, and review my sermon notes. I don’t watch or listen to the news on Sunday mornings. On June 12th, I was preaching on the story in Luke, chapter 10 about a woman who anoints Jesus in the home of a Pharisee. Among the points was a challenge for my congregation and myself to see that although we want to see ourselves as Jesus, we’re more often the Pharisee, and where we really should be is standing with the woman, weeping.
Later in the week, congregants confessed to me that they had heard about the shooting, but expected that “someone else” would mention it during the time where we raise up concerns for prayer. It wasn’t until I arrived at the ordination service for a friend, the first openly transgender lesbian pastor in the Fox Valley Association of the United Church of Christ, that I heard what had happened.
Over the course of last week, more details have emerged about the events at Pulse, but some things remain unknown. As I’ve been following this story on DKos a question keeps coming to my mind, and it’s a difficult one to ask, one that we can’t know the answer to, but one that’s relevant to some of the intersecting issues raised by the massacre and the police response. I believe that questions are important, sometimes more so than answers. So I invite you to consider a tough one.
Head below the fold for the nitty gritty.
It was my wife who got me thinking.
She’d been reading the reports and was trying to describe to me what had happened. She referenced the “good guy with a gun” comments that she’d seen, (like these, from Trump) and said, “this time, there WAS a good guy with a gun, and it didn’t help”. The hard question is, did it do more harm than good?
Orlando police officer Adam Gruler was off-duty, but working in uniform providing security for Pulse. As Omar Mateen enters the club apparently through the main entrance with his Sig Sauer MCX and Glock pistol, Gruler is outside in the parking lot looking for an underage patron with a fake ID. Gunfire erupts in the club, at first mistaken for part of the music. Hundred of people were inside dancing, and many victims never even saw their attacker.
As people begin to flee the building, Mateen exits Pulse through the main entrance and is apparently fired on by Gruler. A gun battle begins, Gruler realizes he is “outgunned” and calls for backup, which arrives within a couple of minutes in the form of SWAT team members Scott Smith and Jeffrey Backhaus. The three of them enter the club and secure the main area, exchanging fire with Mateen who retreats to the bathrooms at the rear of the building, beginning the “hostage” situation.
So, recognizing that there may have been no good choices available, was Officer Gruler’s decision to shoot at Omar Mateen while he was outside the building ultimately helpful or harmful? The reports of people in the club were that when Mateen re-entered the building he used that time to deadly effect, and when he was driven into the rear of the building, some of those who had taken refuge became casualties as a result.
This is not to diminish the efforts of law enforcement in dealing with a nightmarish situation, rescuing and defending folks trapped inside the club, and working to resolve a tense standoff with a clearly deranged and dangerous murderer. I don’t pretend to know what Standard Operating Procedures or best practices are for this type of situation. Orlando PD acknowledges that their choice to breach the back wall of the club was contrary to conventional tactics and driven by the possibility of the use of explosives by Mateen. There is some indication that that choice saved lives.
I have to ask though, would it have been better to have allowed Mateen to move away from the club, away from where targets were concentrated and compacted, where darkness and confusion impaired the responding officers’ ability to clearly identify (and obviously to bring down) the shooter? A law enforcement source reported that 202 rounds were fired over the course of the night, and it’s not clear whether that total includes the shooter himself. We don’t know yet how many of those were fired by police, or if any of the victims were injured or killed as a result of so-called “friendly fire”. Orlando police chief John Mina has laid responsibility for any such casualties squarely on Omar Mateen.
But for those first few minutes, that tiny window where a bad guy with a gun (which he could have carried, concealed, legally in Florida) was confronted by a good guy with a gun, I can’t help but wonder, what if Adam Gruler had waited? What if Omar Mateen had not gone back inside?