Sad news from Fort Walton Beach today. A police officer lost his life in what seems to be one of the shortest armed standoffs in history. An armed nutcase holed up in a vacant house shot and killed a special operations officer who, along with others in his team, went into the house to get him. They killed him, but not until after they lost one of their own.
It’s an awful price to pay. The nutcase is, of course, responsible for the murder of the deputy. When time was clearly on the side of law enforcement, who can justify sending those officers into that house after only three hours while knowing that the guy was armed and irrational? Now there are two fatalities that did not need to happen.
The incident is the first fatality of and officer in the line of duty since the police department was formed in 1924. You can’t read this story without questioning the judgement of the leader of the Special Response Team who decided to send his men in for a shootout.