Absolutely no excuse for fleeing the scene

[haele]

56. His fellow officers are looking for a scapegoat, just like everyone else is.

Police wait for backup when they're outgunned in a situation all the time. And innocents can - and have - been injured or killed while they wait.
They don't get called cowards for not just running in by themselves and getting shot by someone with a high velocity, high capacity weapon.

Kids were killed, and people want to think that one guy with a pistol should be able to confront and take down someone with a weapon that is far more capable of instant decapitation than his would be.

I may be disappointed that he didn't just run in towards the shooting, like some people would, but not everyone is a "hero cop" - most - including you or I - are just average people (even if we're trained to react), and I can understand his four minute wait while he tried to figure out what was going on and get himself ready to most likely die by multiple rounds from an AR-15 or other high velocity firearm. It would be obvious from the noise what sort of weapon the shooter was using.
Especially if he was aware of what that weapon would do to him despite wearing probably the cheapest "bullet proof" vest the district could get for him.

This wasn't TV, even though it played out on TV.

Haele