Reading the breaking news about the horrible bombings at the Istanbul Airport, where I have been many times, I was struck by the stark difference between Turkish and American police tactics. In Orlando, Virginia Tech, and elsewhere, we saw how the police “created a perimeter” around the buildings occupied by various mass murderers, usually for several hours or until the murderer commits suicide, while he kills dozens of people. It took the Orlando police three hours before deciding to break into the building. In Baltimore a couple of years ago, after a man shot a doctor inside the Johns Hopkins hospital, the police “created a perimeter” for about 15 hours until a robot with a camera was sent in to inform them that the shooter had committed suicide. All those cops-as-daring-and-self-sacrificing heroes shows on TV have little to do with reality.
In contrast, at the Istanbul Airport today Turkish police immediately confronted and shot at the perpetrators, with one officer wrestling down one of them until he set off his suicide vest. I’m not saying the police should wrestle down suicide-vest-wearing killers, only that if the population is unarmed it cannot expect the police to do much of anything to prevent these mass killings.
4:27 pm on June 28, 2016
