You’ve probably heard about the big shootout here in Washington, DC yesterday that caused utter pandemonium – complete with building lockdowns, people running for their lives, and police cars crashing into security barriers (you know, those unsightly concrete bollards that dot every sidewalk).
You’d be forgiven for thinking that not just one but a platoon of al-Qaeda snipers were (duck) hunting people all over the city. For only this would justify the kind of firepower the police deployed to combat the perceived threat.
Except that the only thing they were combating was one crazy woman – who had rammed the outer-most security ring of the many that surround the White House, and then led the police on a wild-goose car chase.
What’s more, all of the gunfire that triggered this pandemonium came from the police shooting at her car. The woman was unarmed. And, fair enough, she wasn’t a “lone wolf;” she had her one-year old “pup” riding shotgun with her.
The only explanation for this overreaction, of course, is that law enforcement reacts to every incident in big cities these days as if it were a terrorist attack. In this case, John Miller, former assistant director of the FBI, says that the police opened fire because they probably thought the car was rigged with explosives.
Right: so why not detonate it with a barrage of gunfire…? Why didn’t it occur to these robocops to simply set up a road block with their tank-like swat mobiles and let this deranged woman play bumper cars with them until her car was disabled? Moreover, having decided to open fire, perhaps Miller can explain why it took them so many friggin’ shots just to kill her? It’s clearly a miracle one of those shots did not kill her child too.
In any case, here, again, is my anti-terror lament/warning:
God help us if/when al-Qaeda decides to deploy – not a lone wolf, but a pack of wolves to open fire (or set off bombs) in DC or some other big city in the United States. Because I fear friendly fire from trigger-happy, panic-stricken policemen might kill almost as many people as shots (or bombs) from the terrorists.
Not to mention the national pandemonium such a coordinated, terrorist attack would trigger….
NOTE: As always, I see no point in making celebrities of the mentally disturbed who go off in this fashion (a la Navy Yard shooter), or of terrorists who perpetrate their dastardly deeds (a la Boston Marathon bombers).