Matthew
Touchdown! Greaser!
I watched it again last week.DUDE that Tower documentary? Just amazing. A few things stuck out to me:
- The hardware store employee. He hears shots, and walks TOWARDS them. He also casually asks some young guys outside if any of them have a rifle, which one of them does, and gladly hands over to the fella to use "just in case", or whatever. I guess it was a different time back then.
- Again, the nads on the hardware store guy. After he gets shot at, he keeps advancing towards the guy. You don't know how armed the guy is, if he has explosives, how many there are, yet the hardware store guy keeps advancing. He even berates the cops for not advancing aggressively enough! They assumed he WAS a cop, the way he kept going towards the guy in the tower.
- Finally; being a cop, with only a .38, and going around the edge of the tower, where you were guaranteed to find some kind of trouble. Was the guy in complete body armor? Did he have a barricade on either side of himself with explosives or firearms set up? He has had forever to plan this day, the cops are coming in cold, they don't have drones, they don't know what this guy has or doesn't have up there.
Since I had seen it once already, even though it was a year ago, I figured I wouldn't be surprised. But it still had a pretty good punch.
I watched it, thinking about that deputy sheriff in Florida that stayed outside the school. Then I thought about the lightly armed cops in that documentary - especially the guy you mentioned with the .38 - that had to walk past the bodies in the hallway to get to the guy that was around that corner. Take that deep breath, and do it.
The one officer, who saw his buddy get killed, was haunted by the idea that he woulda, shoulda, coulda, acted more quickly but didn't.