Actually, the shooter did not have the body armor inserts. He was using the gear to hold clips, not as body armor. They may have thought he was in body armor, but he was not.
The reality of the situation was that the police could have gone in half cocked, with no plan, and adding forces as they show up. This would have caused many police officers to die, but would have saved many children. It appears the police chose the safer route for themselves.
I do not think this is about the money. The military asks people to run into near certain death, for some of the worst pay around. Meanwhile, I have never heard of a 7 figure income job in America that is particularly risky. Or put another way, do you think the police would run into certain death for $120k, but not for $60k?
Almost all police departments have bullet proof vests at least, and can get almost any body armor they want. I doubt they wanted body armor, because they were thinking more of the hot Texas weather than the remote possibility of this happening.
if the kid was wearing the suit you have to assume he's got the protective panels, just common sense.
cops have protocols to specifically prevent doing things willy nilly. and while they may have gotten lucky and nailed him they also risked their stray fire causing collateral damage. very real possibility there Walt.
we know they chose to not follow their protocol and that was wrong but this is also not an everyday occurrence for them and they f*cked up. maybe it was fear, maybe it was 'they aint paying me enough for THIS shit' and yes they have vests but you can still get damaged very badly elsewhere.
I know cops and they are under appreciated (defund the police) I have to cut the some slack over this.
