Shoemaker added it's a good thing an off-duty officer wasn't at the theater because it's likely the officer would have engaged the actor. Had the actor not complied, the situation could have turned out much worse.
My mom used to administrate a nursing home before she retired. After about 2 years of retirement, she decided she had to do something with all of her free time, so she went back to work ( ... I will not share this trait, I assure you). She elected to run a clinic, making peanuts to do what she liked doing, but also being required to deal with the morons from the corporation that ran the place. One day, I get a call from her. "Tell me if you think this is a good idea or not," she said.Some mouth-breather at Corporate thought they should have a Man With a Gun drill. OK, fair enough. Here was the plan: They would tell no one (except the clinic administrator, THANK GOD) at the facility, they would have a man come in with a realistic toy gun, display it to the receptionist, demand drugs, and see what happened. At this point I started sputtering, coming up with about eleventy billion reasons why this was a bad idea, and trying to say each of them at once. I came up with "first off, what did the cops say about this idea?""We're not supposed to tell them.""WHAT!?!?""Yeah, they told me not to tell the cops, since Corporate wants to test their response, as well.""DO NOT DO THIS.""Oh, I'm not. I think this is beyond stupid, but I just wanted to make sure you agreed, since every monkey on the board thinks this is just fine.""Dear Lord.""Exactly. So, can you give me a list of reasons why this is bad, so I can try one last time to convince them it is a bad idea before I have to quit rather than do this?"So, I came up with a list of ideas why it was bad (to her credit, she had all of them already except for CCW permitholders and off-duty cops being present in the lobby, or on staff). I then told her to call the local cops and advise them. "Hmm...they told me not to do so, but I guess I should, since they're going to do this, anyway."I thought for a moment. "Wait, what did they tell you exactly? Don't call the *insert town name* Police Department?""Yes.""OK, fine. Call the State Police. Their barracks is one mile down the road, they'll be the first people on-scene anyway. Ask for the officer in charge of the barracks, and see what he says."Well, it turns out that the barracks commander thought it was a terrible idea, and requested contact information for the board members. Once the board was informed that their role-player would be arrested, if he wasn't shot first, they decided to stop and reconsider. Eventually they did the drill with a guy walking in with a safety vest on, bearing a letter from Corporate and saying "this is a safety drill, you are to pretend that I have a gun and am demanding drugs, do what you would really do if that was happening."I swear, some people are too stupid to live.Mike
