So let's say a bank robbery is taking place and a police officer enters. One of the robbers grabs a woman and puts his gun to her head. Do you think the officer should aggressively try to stop the robber while he's holding the woman hostage?
Authorities are trained to protect the innocent when they are unfortunately in the middle of a situation. That's why they don't storm a house when they know a hostage is in there. They stay outside and try to reason with the suspect unless it gets to the point they believe the hostage will die no matter what they do, or they see a break such as a SWAT sharp shooter having a clear shot at the suspect. When police are in a high speed pursuit of a vehicle, they are instructed to call off the chase if the vehicle starts moving too fast. They do so to protect the suspect and more importantly, the innocent public.
The children in that compound were innocent, I don't care what their parents were involved in, and precautions should have taken place because in a sense, those children were hostages. Even if children know their parents are wrong, they have to follow their orders because they are the parents.
I didn't want to get involved in this debate, but I have to chime in when you say that it's nobody else's fault. It was badly planned, badly executed, and it doesn't matter if Koresh was right or wrong. They made a huge mistake.
What the hell are you talking about? The US police forces are some of the most gung ho there is out there. In fact, when I was training to be an LEO in NZ we were shown example after example of how NOT to do something. 99 percent of those examples were from the US.
I'm not saying they could have done it better. They probably could have. Hind sight is 20/20. I get pissed every time I hear a family whine and moan that their son, 17 year old Johnny was killed in a car chase because he refused to stop. "Oh the cops should have stopped chasing him". These day in NZ, police have to stop chases if they become too dangerous. I go back to the beginning. If Johnny hadn't been driving like a fuckwit in the first place it never would have happened. If Koresh didn't think he was god, wasn't armed to the teeth, and did what he was told, it never would have happened.
Don't blame the police for that piece of shit's action.