WaPo Columnist’s Tour of Deceit Shamefully Stains the Weekly Standard

 

About a year ago, I revealed that the Washington Post’s “Criminal Justice” columnist is a charlatan who has failed to do the most basic research. In that PJ Media column, I showed that cop critic Radley Balko openly admits to have never actually observed police work, despite having written a 400-page book on the problems with SWAT teams as observes them … but, uhm, yeah … he never actually observed one to write the book. See the problem? He doesn’t. He dismisses the question as “irrelevant.”

Notably, the Washington Post doesn’t see the problem either. They rejected the PJ Media column that would have informed their readers of their own columnist’s hollow credentials. One wonders what else they might be hiding.

Alas, Balko’s latest book tour is just as much a tour of deceit as the last, and this time it has shamefully stained the pages of no less a conservative stalwart publication than the Weekly Standard.

Worse, Balko used the Standard as a forum to smear true heroes who selflessly risked their lives in the face of the worst school killers in modern American history.

In a slavishly unchallenging Q&A with the Standard’s Adam Rubenstein, Balko incomprehensibly attacks the police officers who responded to the Virginia Tech massacre and the Columbine attack. In fact, he compares them to the apparently cowardly Broward County Sheriff’s deputies who stood by as the Marjory Stoneman Douglas school shooting unfolded.

Let’s look at Balko’s exact words to get the full context.

What happened in Parkland isn’t all that different than what’s happened in some other mass shootings. At both Columbine and Virginia Tech, SWAT teams showed up as the shooting was still happening, but deemed it too dangerous to go inside. In other mass shootings, police intervention did save lives.

In fact, with regard to Virginia Tech, nothing could be further from the truth. But don’t believe me, let’s look at the official report on the horrific events of April 16, 2007, Commissioned by the then-Governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia, Tim Kaine. The report found, in its summary findings: “The police response at Norris Hall was prompt and effective, as was triage and evacuation of the wounded. Evacuation of others in the building could have been implemented with more care.”

But, really, Balko’s smear is truly disgusting if one has even a passing familiarity with the facts. Starting on page 94, the report details exactly what the responding officers did, by name. Because the killer (whose name I will not republish) had committed a murder earlier that morning elsewhere on campus, officers were already in the vicinity in strength. The report found they arrived within three minutes of the call being received by Virginia Tech dispatch. The report states (emphasis mine):

The five officers immediately proceeded to implement their training for dealing with an active shooter. The policy is to go to the gunfire as fast as possible, not in a careless headlong rush, but in a speedy but careful advance. The first arriving officers had to pause several seconds after exiting their cars to see where the gunfire was coming from, especially whether it was being directed toward them. They quickly figured out that the firing was inside the building, not coming from the windows to the outside. Because [the killer] was using two different caliber weapons whose sounds are different, the assumption had to be made that there was more than one shooter.

The officers tried the nearest entrance to Norris Hall, found it chained [by the killer], quickly proceeded to a second and then a third entrance, both also chained. Attempts to shoot off the padlocks or chains failed. They then moved rapidly to a fourth entrance—a maintenance shop door that was locked but not chained. They shot open the conventional key lock with a shotgun. Five police officers entered and rapidly moved up the stairs toward the gunfire, not knowing who or how many gunmen were shooting.

The shooting lasted a total of 11 minutes. The first call wasn’t received until two minutes later. Officers were on-scene after five minutes. They tried three doors before shooting the lock off a fourth, then proceeded upstairs, believing they were facing two killers.

It would be most interesting to learn what the Washington Post’s resident expert on criminal justice thinks could have been done better.

Similarly, Balko’s smear of the officers who responded to the Columbine massacre is equally deceptive, if marginally more accurate.

According to page 38 of the official report to the Governor of Colorado on that tragedy, “six officers from the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department arrived within minutes. Three (Gardner, Smoker and Walker) saw one or the other of the two perpetrators and exchanged gunfire with him.”

The names of the men who did exactly the opposite of what Balko claims are right there in black and white. According to the report, the officers immediately went about securing the campus before forming a team to go in and rescue the injured. That took about 45 minutes and prompted the assailants to kill themselves. Tragically, in 1998, it was exactly what they were supposed to do.

The Columbine massacre was effectively the first such school shooting in modern American history, and one of the first of any kind ever. The protocol of the day, when confronting an armed suspect with hostages, was to secure inner and outer perimeters before attempting to contact the suspect and, hopefully, negotiating a peaceful resolution. At the time, the idea that a gunman would barge into a school and start murderously rampaging through the student body was unthinkable and unheard of.

An article in Balko’s own Washington Post marking the 10-year anniversary of the Columbine tragedy goes into great detail:

The first officers on the scene at Columbine High School had never trained for what they found: No hostages. No demands. Just killing.

In the ensuing hours, the nation watched as the standard police procedure for dealing with rampages proved flawed on April 20, 1999.

Two officers exchanged fire with one of the teenage gunmen just outside the school door, then stopped — as they had been trained to do — to wait for a SWAT team. During the 45 minutes it took for the team to assemble and go in, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold shot 10 of the 13 people they killed that day.

The killers committed suicide when the makeshift SWAT team entered.

The article continues:

Ten years later, Columbine has transformed the way the nation’s police deal with shooting rampages.

After the tragedy, police across the country developed “active-shooter” training. It calls for responding officers to rush toward gunfire and step over bodies and bleeding victims, if necessary, to stop the gunman — the active shooter — first.

Columbine changed policing as much as it changed schooling.

In American policing, confronting active shooters is divided into two eras: before Columbine, and after Columbine. Before the 1999 shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado, police strategy was to wait for the SWAT team to arrive and then attack en masse with precise force. But after the two shooters in Columbine roamed the school for nearly 50 minutes, killing 13 and wounding 21, the police approach changed: Enter now. Whoever is there with a gun, whether a school resource officer or the first patrol officer to arrive, should go after the shooter.

Who says this? Why no less a source than, again, Balko’s own Washington Post.

So, the fact of the matter is neither the officers at Columbine or Virginia Tech hesitated at all. They didn’t “deem it too dangerous” to enter. The officers at Columbine engaged the killers in a gunfight, then followed the protocol of the day. The Virginia Tech first responders followed the lessons of Columbine by deliberately and aggressively pursuing the killer.

But, apparently, it’s unreasonable for the author of a 400-page book on SWAT to know that the protocol for the most traumatic events a SWAT team deals with changed dramatically after a seminal moment in American law enforcement history.

Nor does the Post’s “Criminal Justice columnist” actually know his own publication’s factual reporting on the subject.

What Balko does know is how to ignorantly smear valiant men and women who made the best out of horrific situations that their training and equipment allowed. His disregard for the truth sullies their names for wrongs they did not commit. They deserve better, and so do the readers of the Weekly Standard.

Ironically, Radley Balko’s latest book is about experts whose negligent disregard for the truth led to the convictions of innocent men. At least he’s finally writing about a subject with which he has first-hand experience.

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  1. cirby Inactive
    cirby
    @cirby

    “Negotiate withe the bad guy and try for a nonviolent solution” was the stock answer for a lot of situations back then.

    That was the plan for aircraft hijackings, for example. I was told, more than once, that if someone tried to hijack a jet, passengers should just sit quietly and let the authorities handle it – the hijackers always had demands, right?

     

    • #1
  2. Ekosj Member
    Ekosj
    @Ekosj

    For the Left, is vital to tamp down the thinking that ‘a good guy with a gun’ who took some action could have stopped the shooting.    That line of reasoning has to be eradicated.   As long as the inaction of the police on the scene keep getting media attention it focuses thinking  on a solution other than banning/confiscating firearms.    So the narrative has to be changed.   ‘See, good guys with guns don’t make a difference.    The only answer is to ban the guns’   If changing the narrative gives cops a black eye …so much the better from their point of view.

    • #2
  3. LibertyDefender Member
    LibertyDefender
    @LibertyDefender

    Can we trust the official government reviews any more than we can trust Radley Balko?  The official government report of the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School revealed that responding officers waited outside while the shooter was still active, and yet none of the responding officers was interviewed.

    At least in the Parkland case, we know from the start that we can trust no one.

    • #3
  4. ChrisShearer Coolidge
    ChrisShearer
    @ChrisShearer

    FYI.  Balko is not “from the Left”.  He’s a libertarian and writes regularly for Reason.

    • #4
  5. Fred Cole Inactive
    Fred Cole
    @FredCole

    ChrisShearer (View Comment):
    FYI. Balko is not “from the Left”. He’s a libertarian and writes regularly for Reason.

    Yeah. Balko’s best is police mafesiance and police militarization. He wrote the definitive book on the the latter, Rise of the Warrior Cop.

    • #5
  6. Bryan G. Stephens Thatcher
    Bryan G. Stephens
    @BryanGStephens

    ChrisShearer (View Comment):
    FYI. Balko is not “from the Left”. He’s a libertarian and writes regularly for Reason.

    So, he lies in pursuit of a libertarian goals? How shameful of Reason to publish him at all.

    Explain to me again why libertarians are so much better than the rest of us. More an more, what I see is that libertarians are utopianist, and as such, no different in effect  than Marxists. After all, true Marxists want no government at all, and for everyone to just do their own thing, man.

     

    • #6
  7. Bryan G. Stephens Thatcher
    Bryan G. Stephens
    @BryanGStephens

    As for the Weekly Standard, well, they have already demonstrated they have no honor already.

    • #7
  8. Boss Mongo Member
    Boss Mongo
    @BossMongo

    Thank you, Mr. Parry.

    • #8
  9. Fred Cole Inactive
    Fred Cole
    @FredCole

    Bryan G. Stephens (View Comment):
    As for the Weekly Standard, well, they have already demonstrated they have no honor already.

    When was that?

    • #9
  10. Doug Watt Member
    Doug Watt
    @DougWatt

    Interesting, Balko writes a book called the Warrior Cop, and then chastises cops because they aren’t warriors. I’ve read Balko’s nonsense, and he is no expert on policing. Heather McDonald’s book The War on Cops is a much better book.

    The Federalization of your local police, and sheriff’s department is the problem. The politicization of law enforcement by the DOJ, and local politicians to achieve rainbows and unicorns social goals is not working.

    • #10
  11. Robert C. J. Parry Member
    Robert C. J. Parry
    @RobertCJParry

    LibertyDefender (View Comment):
    Can we trust the official government reviews any more than we can trust Radley Balko? The official government report of the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School revealed that responding officers waited outside while the shooter was still active, and yet none of the responding officers was interviewed.

    At least in the Parkland case, we know from the start that we can trust no one.

    Why do you distrust the accuracy of a report because another report offered painfully accurate information? Strange. The VaTech report provides minute-by-minute details. The Columbine report offers similarly unflattering details.

    Keep in mind that all of these reports rely on detailed police and fire broadcast audio, video from both cameras and cell phones, computer-based dispatch records and the accounts of survivors and such. It would be hard to falsify things like timelines.

     

    I suggest you read it be

    • #11
  12. Robert C. J. Parry Member
    Robert C. J. Parry
    @RobertCJParry

    Fred Cole (View Comment):

    ChrisShearer (View Comment):
    FYI. Balko is not “from the Left”. He’s a libertarian and writes regularly for Reason.

    Yeah. Balko’s best is police mafesiance and police militarization. He wrote the definitive book on the the latter, Rise of the Warrior Cop.

    Perhaps you missed the part where I mentioned he wrote that book without observing the subject matter?

    • #12
  13. Robert C. J. Parry Member
    Robert C. J. Parry
    @RobertCJParry

    ChrisShearer (View Comment):
    FYI. Balko is not “from the Left”. He’s a libertarian and writes regularly for Reason.

    I submit if you read his views on gun control you would modify that position.

    • #13
  14. Bryan G. Stephens Thatcher
    Bryan G. Stephens
    @BryanGStephens

     

    Doug Watt (View Comment):
    Interesting, Balko writes a book called the Warrior Cop, and then chastises cops because they aren’t warriors. I’ve read Balko’s nonsense, and he is no expert on policing. Heather McDonald’s book The War on Cops is a much better book.

    The Federalization of your local police, and sheriff’s department is the problem. The politicization of law enforcement by the DOJ, and local politicians to achieve rainbows and unicorns social goals is not working.

    I agree with that. We need the Feds out of local law enforcement.

    Though, I am sure, if we just made the police all private, it would be unicorns and rainbows. Just ask the libertarians.

    • #14
  15. Quake Voter Inactive
    Quake Voter
    @QuakeVoter

    Balko is as libertarian as the ACLU.  Meaning not much of one at all.  Libertarians in full make the hard arguments against some pretty calcified thinking and practices on the left and right.  Balko’s columns at the WaPo are straight from the liberaltarianism playbook:  cop bashing, prison emptying, racist America, open borders and drug legalization.

    Looking for some hard hitting pieces from Balko on the racial grievance industry of the left, environmental extremism, campus political indoctrination and violence, overtaxation and overregulation, the Orwellian gender lexicon being imposed by speech code?

    Forget it.  He knows who is buttering his bread.

    If you want libertarians in full I’d suggest John Tierney, Lew Rockwell and Tom Woods.

    • #15
  16. Quake Voter Inactive
    Quake Voter
    @QuakeVoter

    Robert C. J. Parry (View Comment):

    Fred Cole (View Comment):

    ChrisShearer (View Comment):
    FYI. Balko is not “from the Left”. He’s a libertarian and writes regularly for Reason.

    Yeah. Balko’s best is police mafesiance and police militarization. He wrote the definitive book on the the latter, Rise of the Warrior Cop.

    Perhaps you missed the part where I mentioned he wrote that book without observing the subject matter?

    Which is why his books have that same gritty, on-the-scene realism of American life you see in the films of Lars von Trier.

    • #16
  17. LibertyDefender Member
    LibertyDefender
    @LibertyDefender

    Robert C. J. Parry (View Comment):

    LibertyDefender (View Comment):
    The official government report of the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School revealed that responding officers waited outside while the shooter was still active, and yet none of the responding officers was interviewed.

    At least in the Parkland case, we know from the start that we can trust no one.

    Keep in mind that all of these reports rely on detailed police and fire broadcast audio, video from both cameras and cell phones, computer-based dispatch records and the accounts of survivors and such. It would be hard to falsify things like timelines.

    The Sandy Hook report was conducted in secret, took over a year to complete, and was not discussed after publication by the Attorney General, particularly the part about the police waiting outside while the shooter was still active.

    I see no reason to regard any government report as unimpeachable.

    • #17
  18. Robert C. J. Parry Member
    Robert C. J. Parry
    @RobertCJParry

    LibertyDefender (View Comment):

    Robert C. J. Parry (View Comment):

    LibertyDefender (View Comment):
    The official government report of the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School revealed that responding officers waited outside while the shooter was still active, and yet none of the responding officers was interviewed.

    At least in the Parkland case, we know from the start that we can trust no one.

    Keep in mind that all of these reports rely on detailed police and fire broadcast audio, video from both cameras and cell phones, computer-based dispatch records and the accounts of survivors and such. It would be hard to falsify things like timelines.

    The Sandy Hook report was conducted in secret, took over a year to complete, and was not discussed after publication by the Attorney General, particularly the part about the police waiting outside while the shooter was still active.

    I see no reason to regard any government report as unimpeachable.

    The report said the police response was not to standard. What is it you think they are hiding?

    • #18
  19. Fred Cole Inactive
    Fred Cole
    @FredCole

    Quake Voter (View Comment):
    Looking for some hard hitting pieces from Balko on the racial grievance industry of the left, environmental extremism, campus political indoctrination and violence, overtaxation and overregulation, the Orwellian gender lexicon being imposed by speech code?

    Forget it. He knows who is buttering his bread.

    That’s because his area of focus is … criminal justice and civil liberties.  Complaining that he doesn’t write about gender lexicon issues is like complaining that an oncologist doesn’t write about Estonian folk dancing.

    • #19
  20. Quake Voter Inactive
    Quake Voter
    @QuakeVoter

    Fred Cole (View Comment):

    Quake Voter (View Comment):
    Looking for some hard hitting pieces from Balko on the racial grievance industry of the left, environmental extremism, campus political indoctrination and violence, overtaxation and overregulation, the Orwellian gender lexicon being imposed by speech code?

    Forget it. He knows who is buttering his bread.

    That’s because his area of focus is … criminal justice and civil liberties. Complaining that he doesn’t write about gender lexicon issues is like complaining that an oncologist doesn’t write about Estonian folk dancing.

    Campus speech is not a core civil liberty Fred?  What about widespread speech codes on issues of race, gender and entire intersectional agenda?  Oppressive taxation and green regulatory stranglehold over personal liberty?

    Guy’s got to make a living.  Balko is expert at marketing himself by paying almost exclusive beseeching attention to those aspect of the libertarian agenda which line up with leftist editorial priors.  There are plenty of gutty libertarians in full who don’t make nice with conservative or liberal audiences.

    Balko is simply not one of them.  You know the type.  In a liberal setting, they fold on taxes, the Second Amendment, campus speech, federalism, green extremism, racial quotas.

    You can hear the gears in their heads.   “How do I defend gun rights??????  Well Trump is a fascist.  His supporters are fascists.  And do you know the first thing southern states did after Reconstruction?  They confiscated …”

    It’s so predictable and so weak.

     

    • #20
  21. Bryan G. Stephens Thatcher
    Bryan G. Stephens
    @BryanGStephens

    Fred Cole (View Comment):

    Quake Voter (View Comment):
    Looking for some hard hitting pieces from Balko on the racial grievance industry of the left, environmental extremism, campus political indoctrination and violence, overtaxation and overregulation, the Orwellian gender lexicon being imposed by speech code?

    Forget it. He knows who is buttering his bread.

    That’s because his area of focus is … criminal justice and civil liberties. Complaining that he doesn’t write about gender lexicon issues is like complaining that an oncologist doesn’t write about Estonian folk dancing.

    So Fred, you are defending a man who “openly admits to have never actually observed police work, despite having written a 400-page book on the problems with SWAT teams as observes them”?

    Seems like it to me. If you think the OP is lying in this statement, please, by all means defend it. If you think it is true, please, by all means, tell us why it is worth defending someone who wrote a whole book which is a lie.

     

    • #21
  22. LibertyDefender Member
    LibertyDefender
    @LibertyDefender

    Robert C. J. Parry (View Comment):

    LibertyDefender (View Comment):

    The Sandy Hook report was conducted in secret, took over a year to complete, and was not discussed after publication by the Attorney General, particularly the part about the police waiting outside while the shooter was still active.

    I see no reason to regard any government report as unimpeachable.

    The report said the police response was not to standard. What is it you think they are hiding?

    They investigators – who spent more than a year investigating in secret – didn’t interview the police who responded.  How then can the investigation be regarded as thorough?  I don’t trust government as much as you do to be forthcoming about investigations conducted in secret.

    • #22
  23. Fred Cole Inactive
    Fred Cole
    @FredCole

    Quake Voter (View Comment):
    There are plenty of gutty libertarians in full who don’t make nice with conservative or liberal audiences.

    Like Lew Rockwell, right?  And the nice thing about Lew Rockwell is that you also get alt health and Kennedy conspiracy stuff too.

    • #23
  24. Percival Thatcher
    Percival
    @Percival

    Fred Cole (View Comment):

    Quake Voter (View Comment):
    There are plenty of gutty libertarians in full who don’t make nice with conservative or liberal audiences.

    Like Lew Rockwell, right? And the nice thing about Lew Rockwell is that you also get alt health and Kennedy conspiracy stuff too.

    Throw in chemtrails and cattle mutilations or it’s no deal.

    • #24
  25. Robert C. J. Parry Member
    Robert C. J. Parry
    @RobertCJParry

    LibertyDefender (View Comment):

    Robert C. J. Parry (View Comment):

    LibertyDefender (View Comment):

    The Sandy Hook report was conducted in secret, took over a year to complete, and was not discussed after publication by the Attorney General, particularly the part about the police waiting outside while the shooter was still active.

    I see no reason to regard any government report as unimpeachable.

    The report said the police response was not to standard. What is it you think they are hiding?

    They investigators – who spent more than a year investigating in secret – didn’t interview the police who responded. How then can the investigation be regarded as thorough? I don’t trust government as much as you do to be forthcoming about investigations conducted in secret.

    Well, if they hadn’t interviewed the responding officers and then said everything was totes okiedokie, I could see your point.  But that’s not what happened. They said they failed.  So, what’s your gripe?

    • #25
  26. Columbo Inactive
    Columbo
    @Columbo

    Bryan G. Stephens (View Comment):
    As for the Weekly Standard, well, they have already demonstrated they have no honor already.

    Harummpphhh! I resemble that remark!

    • #26
  27. Columbo Inactive
    Columbo
    @Columbo

    Bryan G. Stephens (View Comment):

    ChrisShearer (View Comment):
    FYI. Balko is not “from the Left”. He’s a libertarian and writes regularly for Reason.

    So, he lies in pursuit of a libertarian goals? How shameful of Reason to publish him at all.

    Explain to me again why libertarians are so much better than the rest of us. More an more, what I see is that libertarians are utopianist, and as such, no different in effect than Marxists. After all, true Marxists want no government at all, and for everyone to just do their own thing, man.

    Yeah … do our own thing, man.

    • #27
  28. Doug Watt Member
    Doug Watt
    @DougWatt

    Columbo (View Comment):

    Bryan G. Stephens (View Comment):

    ChrisShearer (View Comment):
    FYI. Balko is not “from the Left”. He’s a libertarian and writes regularly for Reason.

    So, he lies in pursuit of a libertarian goals? How shameful of Reason to publish him at all.

    Explain to me again why libertarians are so much better than the rest of us. More an more, what I see is that libertarians are utopianist, and as such, no different in effect than Marxists. After all, true Marxists want no government at all, and for everyone to just do their own thing, man.

    Yeah … do our own thing, man.

    This is one of the things that shows you that Libertarians are all over the map, not unlike any other political party. Although if I saw him lying on a beach I’d start looking for some help to try and drag him into the ocean.

    • #28
  29. Misthiocracy, Joke Pending Member
    Misthiocracy, Joke Pending
    @Misthiocracy

    Two Florida SWAT members have been suspended because they responded to the Parkland shooting without permission:

    https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/03/florida-swat-team-members-suspended-for-response-to-parkland-shooting

    • #29
  30. LibertyDefender Member
    LibertyDefender
    @LibertyDefender

    Robert C. J. Parry (View Comment):

    LibertyDefender (View Comment):

    Robert C. J. Parry (View Comment):

    LibertyDefender (View Comment):

    The Sandy Hook report was conducted in secret, took over a year to complete, and was not discussed after publication by the Attorney General, particularly the part about the police waiting outside while the shooter was still active.

    I see no reason to regard any government report as unimpeachable.

    The report said the police response was not to standard. What is it you think they are hiding?

    They investigators – who spent more than a year investigating in secret – didn’t interview the police who responded. How then can the investigation be regarded as thorough? I don’t trust government as much as you do to be forthcoming about investigations conducted in secret.

    Well, if they hadn’t interviewed the responding officers and then said everything was totes okiedokie, I could see your point. But that’s not what happened. They said they failed. So, what’s your gripe?

    You’re very generous to the original November 2013 report, which certainly wasn’t characterized as criticism by the State’s Attorney who authored the report:

    “With the release of this report today the investigation is closed, and no additional release of information or documents by this office is anticipated,” State’s Attorney Sedensky said.

    Again, I don’t trust government as much as you do to be forthcoming about investigations conducted in secret.

    FIVE YEARS LATER, the CT State Police released a report on the police response:

    The report, which characterized the overall response to the shooting as “commendable,” …
    Sedensky’s 2013 report said it took nearly six minutes for officers to enter the school after they arrived.

    But they were not criticized for that.

    • #30
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