By Howie Katz
Officer Michael Collazo stands over and finishes off the fallen he-she school shooter
First
of all, I want to congratulate the Nashville PD and its officers for
the way they swiftly dealt with and ended the recent Christian school
shooting. They shot dead transgender Audrey (formerly Adam) Hale before
he-she could shoot any more children
Nashville was no Uvalde.
Unlike in Uvalde, the Nashville officers did not stand around waiting for someone to give some orders. Immediately upon their arrival at the school, the responding officer grabbed their assault rifles out of the trunks of their police cars and ran to enter the school. Once inside they conducted a methodical search until they found the he-she shooter on the second floor.
Upon spotting the shooter, Officers Rex Engelbert opened fire and brought he-she down. Officer Michael Collazo then stood over the fallen shooter and finished he-she off.
Transgender Audrey (formerly Adam) Hale killed three nine-year-old children, the school principal and two other staffers at the Nashville Christian school
The police heroics aside, this brings up the legal issue of Officer Collazo shooting he-she Hale after the shooter was downed by Officer Engelbert. Was he-she reaching for one of three guns as Collazo stood over her? If so, there can be no doubt that the shooting was legal. But if he-she was still alive and did not try to reach for a gun, Collazo's shooting amounted to an execution and that would not be legal.
As for the Uvalde school shouting, one should not question the bravery of the officers who stood around for an hour and 14 minutes while a shooter was killing 19 elementary schoolchildren and two teachers.
There was a multi-agency response involving school officers, Uvalde city cops, sheriff's deputies and state troopers, all waiting for someone to order them to go after the shooter, an order that never came. It wasn't until a Border Patrol tactical team took it upon themselves to go after the shooter that the waiting officers joined in.
Who's in charge? That's the problem with hastily assembled multi-agency operations.
Fortunately for the children that he-she Hale was prevented from shooting, Nashville did not have the problem of a multi-agency response.