I don't want to diminish the very real (and in my opinion very justified) feelings of disgust and anger around this event and I quite literally have an ACAB tattoo so I'm not interested in defending the cops. That said, there is a perspective on this kind of an event that makes more rational sense than hundreds of officers just refusing to do something because they're all cowards.

It's kind of a trope in cop/law enforcement films where there's the "jurisdictional turf war" and different agencies are feuding over who's job it is to do something and the brave heroes charge in and save the day despite the bickering of their superiors.

That set up is actually kind of common in the real world and not limited to just law enforcement. If you work in any organization where boundaries are a little fuzzy and where there's hundreds or thousands of people involved, you've almost guaranteed seen that kind of dumbfounded look that people get when it's not clear who is actually in charge of a given situation or task and how major things can get overlooked because no one thought that that task was actually their job.

It's along the lines of that aphorism about the Three Bodies:

The story of Everybody, Somebody, Anybody and Nobody. There was an important job to be done and Everybody was sure that Somebody would do it. Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did it. Somebody got angry about that, because it was Everybody’s job. Everybody thought Anybody could do it, but Nobody realized that Everybody wouldn’t do it. It ended up that Everybody blamed Somebody when Nobody did what Anybody could have.

Now that's great if you're putting together a marketing campaign or the employee picnic. Initiative is usually helpful.

It's less great when there's a bunch of highly complicated moving parts and people's lives are at stake.

If you're a cop standing there on the day and you know something is going on in there but you haven't had any clear communication from the people in charge, what are your choices?

You could go in, sure, but now you're risking accidentally screwing up some plan you weren't aware of that could result in other cops or, worse, kids getting killed because you rushed in without being told to do so by someone who (you believe) has a better view on all the information involved.

That's a huge roll of the die. Best case scenario, it turns out you were right, everyone was just standing around holding their junk and waiting to be told what to do and you take down the shooter, save the lives of dozens of kids and you're a hero. Worst case scenario, dozens of kids die because you barging in messed up some kind of plan in the works and dozens more kids die, now you're the "hothead" who wanted to be a hero and instead got a bunch of kids killed.

And the information you have actual access to is spotty at best. I haven't read the report as of yet but, from what I remember, there were essentially rumors flying around that there were multiple shooters, bombs, no there was only one shooter but he was barricaded, someone saw fire - there was a huge mess of conflicting information. Again, do you want to be the guy who goes in, kicks in the door that has a bomb wired to it that you didn't know about and vaporizes you and a class full of kids?

I am adamantly against cops but...man I cannot blame someone for not wanting to roll that die.

If you watch the videos (which I unfortunately did) it's pretty clear that there's a "who is actually in charge?" vibe among the responding cops. Nobody seems to have a clear cut idea of what's happening or what to do because there are so many different cops and agencies involved.

"But they practiced there before!"

Yes, they practiced a force-on-force exercise. The problem wasn't the cops' ability to shoot people, it was their ability to coordinate.

This still absolutely falls squarely on the shoulders of the police but I would argue less in the sense of "why didn't you go in?" and more in the sense of "why did you not have a way to coordinate better such that this kind of paralysis didn't happen?"

Police don't need more training to learn to shoot people. They already spend the majority of their time training for that (and somehow are still kind of terrible at it.) Resources need to be devoted to not getting into these kinds of leadership logjams.