California: Criminal penalties and arrests down, crime up

From The DailyWire:

California's latest attempt to handle one of the perpetual subjects of progressive complaint, jail and prison overpopulation supposedly caused by "over-incarceration," has proven once again what should not need re-proving: going easy on criminals results in more crime. 

Back in 2014, nearly 60% of Californians voted in favor of Proposition 47, which sought to thin out jails and prisons by downgrading many "nonviolent, nonserious" felonies to misdemeanors and allowing some prisoners to be eligible for re-sentencing for more lenient terms (see summary below). The measure ostensibly saved the state millions in incarceration costs, but while that particular budget line might look better, the state and its residents have suffered as a result.  

Since Prop 47 went into effect, arrests are down 30% while violent crime in Los Angeles is up a devastating 40%. And it's not just L.A. — Southern California as a whole is feeling the deleterious effects of the law's "lighter" touch.  

A major reason for the stunning increase in violent crime is the reckless way Prop 47 downgraded some offenses, including theft of a firearm, which used to be a felony but which is now treated as a misdemeanor, along with several other serious property theft offenses. . . .

Some Fact Slowly Appearing on Minnesota Police Shooting of Philando Castile

The shooting of Philander Castile by Officer Geronimo Yanez has gotten national attention, but the case might not have been quite as simple as many have thought.   Indeed, 21 officers were injured in rioting on Saturday night.  Yanez's lawyer had this to say:

“I’m not concerned about criminal proceedings here and I don’t think he is either,” attorney Thomas Kelly told PBS Saturday.Kelly said in a separate interview with The Associated Press that Officer Jeronimo Yanez was reacting to “the presence of that gun and the display of that gun” when he shot Castile multiple times.  . . .
Kelly said that Castile did not obey the instructions of the police.
“I can tell you that the driver disregarded the clear commands of Officer Yanez,” Kelly said, adding that “race had nothing to do with the shooting.” . . .
"There was more than just the equipment violation,” he said, refusing to share any more details due to an ongoing investigation.

Obama's comments surely suggested that the officer was at fault.

I want to begin by expressing my condolences for the families of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile. As I said in the statement that I posted on Facebook, we have seen tragedies like this too many times. 

The Justice Department, I know, has opened a civil rights investigation in Baton Rouge. The governor of Minnesota, I understand, is calling for an investigation there as well.
As is my practice, given my institutional role, I can’t comment on the specific facts of each case. And I have confidence (AUDIO GAP). 

But what I can say is that all of us as Americans should be troubled by the news. These are not isolated incidents. They are symptomatic of a broader set of racial disparities that exist in our criminal justice system. . . . 

The Governor of Minnesota clearly argued that racism was the problem behind the shooting.

“Would this have happened if those passengers would have been white? I don’t think it would have,” Gov. Mark Dayton said to a crowd that gathered outside his residence all day and night Thursday. . . .

The president doesn't even mention that the officer doing the shooting in Minnesota, Geronimo Yanez, was Mexican. 

Newest piece at Fox News: "Where's the coverage of heroes who stop mass killings?"

My newest piece at Fox News starts this way:

Heroic citizens stopping someone from killing a large number of people don’t seem to be considered news worthy.  Don’t people want to read about a brave soul risking his life by running towards the sound of gunfire while others run away?  Yet, such stories never get national news coverage by the national mainstream media.
While accidental gunshots get national coverage, few people have any idea how often concealed handgun permit holders stopping mass killings.
The lack of news coverage allows left wing media outlets, such as Mother Joneswhich should know better, to falsely claim: "In not a single case was [a mass public shooting] stopped by a civilian using a gun."
The truth is that the more successful these heroes are in preventing people from getting killed, the less media coverage they receive, but the lack of fatalities doesn’t explain the lack of news coverage.  And if the heroes hadn’t been there, the attacks would have been successful and the national mainstream media would have been talking about the attack for days.
Let’s look at some of the recent cases that should have gotten some national attention. . . .

The rest of the piece is available here.

Newest piece in Investors' Business Daily: "Do Blacks Really Feel Especially Distrustful Of Cops?"

My newest piece in Investors' Business Daily starts this way:

With chants of "NYPD, KKK" and signs saying "Stop Racist Police Terror" up until days before Christmas, protesters in New York made it clear that they don't trust the police.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo's second inaugural address was blunt: 

"The truth is the justice system does need review. The truth is there are troubling questions that have been raised which must be answered." 

But despite the overwhelming political and media rhetoric and the polls, there is strong evidence that blacks trust police at least as much as whites do. 

If you looked only at recent polls by Gallup and Pew, there is no question: blacks clearly don't trust police. 

Blacks were asked to explain why black males go to prison so much. Compared to other Americans, blacks were 29% more likely to say it was more a matter of racial discrimination than it was about the disproportionate number of crimes committed by black males. Blacks are much more likely to say that police treat blacks less fairly than whites. Blacks are also more likely to believe that the police are dishonest. 

The media have also bombarded people with "evidence" that blacks are discriminated against. Take the widely reported false claim that black men between the ages of 15 and 19 are 21 times as likely as whites to be killed by a police officer. Few note that these numbers are based on just 1.2% of police departments and that the ones that do report represent very heavily black urban areas. 

Politicians have supported these fears. After the Ferguson grand jury verdict, President Obama emphasized that the anger about the verdict was "an understandable reaction" and blacks' distrust of police is "rooted in realities." 

But what people say and what they do are often very different. 

A great many blacks say that Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown were innocent and unarmed. But that doesn't mean that they act like that they all believe it. . . .

The rest of the piece is available here.

A couple of notes on the recent spate of conflicts between police and blacks

Eric Garner case: Garner didn't die from suffocation.  He suffered a heart attack and later died at the hospital.  He was pronounced dead about an hour after the arrest.

People who have assaulted police officers in NYC are let go.

The City University’s refusal to act against an adjunct professor caught on video resisting arrest and assaulting a police lieutenant during an anti-cop protest becomes more absurd by the day. 

Other employers are tougher in the face of criminality. Chancellor James Milliken can see for himself by comparing CUNY’s stance regarding Eric Linsker with the decisiveness shown in two similarly recorded assaults. 

The lieutenant saw Linsker as he was about to heave a garbage can from Brooklyn Bridge walkway onto demonstrators and cops below. Linsker had already hurled two cans, according to the NYPD. He struggled with the lieutenant, throwing at least one punch, the video shows. 

CUNY is keeping Linsker in the classroom at full pay, while his union argues that he has “not yet been found guilty.” 

Meanwhile, a second of the bridge cop beaters, Robert Murray, is an organizer for 32BJ SEIU. His employer — a union — saw Murray swing away on the same video and suspended him without pay, explaining that it “does not under any circumstance condone violence of any kind, including against police officers.” 

The mess in Berkeley, Missouri: Politician feeds racial anger against police and then finds that his city faces riots

Never mind that the mayor of Berkeley, Missouri and most of the police force is black.  The shooting by a white police officer of an 18-year-old black man who police said pointed a gun at the officer has generated two nights of violent demonstrations with looting.

The mayor of Berkeley, a St. Louis suburb, called for calm on Wednesday following violent protests that erupted one day after a suburban St. Louis police officer shot a black 18-year-old who police said pointed a gun at the officer at a gas station. 

Scuffles had broken out early Wednesday between police officers and a vocal crowd of several hundred people who taunted the officers at the scene. One officer was injured after he was stuck with a brick and police reported several small explosives being used by protesters. There were four arrests. . . .

More on the violence is given here.

Four people were arrested for assaulting cops, police said.

You have to love this mayor when he says: "The Police Did Not Initiate This Like Ferguson." The mayor claims that there is no comparison between Antonio Martin's shooting and that of Michael Brown, but it is comments such as this that only feed on the notion that Michael Brown was some innocent individual and adds .

I can assure you that did not happen last night, OK.  We had a policeman responding to a call protecting the residents of the City of Berkeley and the call came through the dispatch office in reference to this young man was shoplifting. . . .

So far, the two cases seem extremely similar.  Indeed, if anything, Michael Brown's actions were worse as he threatened the store clerk with violence.

When the officer came there, the video shows that the deceased pointed a gun that has been recovered, at the officer, and I think that the officer because he stumbled might have saved his life.  Because when he stumbled and had a chance to fire and take the young man's life . . .

The big difference here is really only that there was video tape.  But the rest is very similar: in both cases the officers' lives were threatened and they acted to protect themselves.

The problem here is that the mayor of Berkeley feeds on the feelings that create these riots and then he can't control them when the rioters turn on his city.

Of course, NYC mayor de Blasio has found that his calls for no demonstrations until the funeral of the two officers who were killed is ignored.

More than 1,000 anti-cop protesters defied Mayor de Blasio and flooded Manhattan Tuesday evening, marching through the Fifth Avenue shopping district before heading uptown.“The mayor says stop that, we say f–k that!” the mob chanted at one point. 

Other slogans were of the sort that Hizzoner has denounced as “hateful” and “inappropriate” in the wake of Saturday’s assassinations of two city cops. 

“NYPD, KKK, how many kids did you kill today?” the protesters shouted. 

The demonstrators, some carry­ing a banner that read “Stop Racist Police Terror,” started marching south from 59th Street on the sidewalks, but later blocked traffic on Fifth and Madison Avenues. . . .

Of course, comparing the NYPD to the KKK should draw a rebuke from the mayor.

The Friends and Family of slain NYC Police Officer Ramos blast Mayor De Blasio

My newest piece at Fox News: "Expert: Blacks trust police more than whites do"

My newest piece at Fox News starts this way:

Do blacks trust police more than whites do? Given the anger over events in Ferguson and New York City, the very question seems absurd. But it is not. Behind the polls and demonstrations, there is evidence that blacks trust police at least as much as whites do. 

The poll results are hardly surprising. A new Gallup poll confirms blacks place less confidence in police and the criminal justice system. Using survey data from 2006 through 2014, Gallup found: 

-- 31 percentage points more blacks than whites believe black males are more likely to go to prison than white males primarily because of discrimination (50 percent versus 19 percent). 

-- 7 percentage points more blacks believe the honesty and ethics of police are low/very low (17 percent versus 10 percent). 

Similarly, a 2013 Pew Research Centersurvey reveals that 70 percent of blacks believed police treated whites better than blacks. By contrast, only 37 percent of whites agreed. 

But what people say and what they do are often different. And there are both victims and criminals in black communities. 

Victims may trust the police for the same reasons that criminals dislike them. Blacks are not a monolithic group: blacks who who have been through the criminal justice system as criminals could answer these questions quite differently than those who have relied on police as victims. 

The polls don’t distinguish between these two groups. As Charles Barkley recently said: “[Police] are the only thing in the ghetto between this place being the wild, wild west.” 

Most violent crime victims don’t report crimes to police. For example, only about half of rapes are reported to police. That has a lot to do with how victims believe they will be treated by the police. In the case of rape, victims who think that the police are unsympathetic to rape victims or are unlikely to solve the cases are even less likely to report rapes. 

If black victims really believe police are racist, why would they report the crime to the police? Blacks victims don’t want other blacks locked up simply due to their race; they want the criminals who actually committed the crime punished. . . .

The article continues here.

How reticent are police in using "justifiable" force to kill criminals?

In 2011, there were 399 reported justifiable homicides by police.  There are real problems with the justifiable homicide numbers as few police departments report these numbers.  But they can still serve as a proxy for measuring how frequently police resort to deadly force when they are threatened.  In 2011, the FBI has data on the number of police officers who are assaulted (54,774) or assaulted with injuries (14,578).  Of course, police may use justifiable force to kill criminals without being assaulted, such as when a criminal is threatening to shot them, and we don't know how many of these cases there are.  But take these numbers as being correct.  These numbers imply that only about 0.72 percent of assaults and 2.737 percent of assaults that injured police end in justifiable homicides by police.

To the extent that the FBI's count of justifiable homicides by police underestimates the true number, the true percentages are higher.  Suppose that justifiable homicides by police is three times higher than reported, that would imply that about 2.16 percent of assaults ended in justifiable homicides by police. For assaults where police were injured, about 8.2 percent of those cases would end in these justifiable homicides.  People can adjust these numbers as they think best.

The problem with FBI justifiable homicides by police is no where near as bad as the numbers for justifiable homicides by civilians, but we don't really even know the size of the errors here.

To the extent that this measure of assaults doesn't include all cases where police might feel threatened, these percentages are too high.

Big increase in Federal undercover operations over recent years: Agents being used by at least 40 different agencies

From the NY Times:

The federal government has significantly expanded undercover operations in recent years, with officers from at least 40 agencies posing as business people, welfare recipients, political protesters and even doctors or ministers to ferret out wrongdoing, records and interviews show. . . . .
At the Internal Revenue Service, dozens of undercover agents chase suspected tax evaders worldwide, by posing as tax preparers or accountants or drug dealers or yacht buyers, court records show. . . .
“Done right, undercover work can be a very effective law enforcement method, but it carries serious risks and should only be undertaken with proper training, supervision and oversight,” said Michael German, a former F.B.I. undercover agent who is a fellow at New York University’s law school. “Ultimately it is government deceitfulness and participation in criminal activity, which is only justifiable when it is used to resolve the most serious crimes.” . . .
But many operations are not linked to terrorism. . . . 

Police in Britain now regularly carrying guns, anti-gun activities upset, claim no benefit

From the BBC:

In a little-noticed move, a small number of police officers are now routinely carrying sidearms while on patrol in parts of the mainland UK. . . .
It's a sight that once would have been unthinkable. In this corner of the Scottish Highlands - an area with one of the lowest crime rates in the UK - the officers showing up to a relatively workaday disturbance are armed.
Although every police force has a firearms unit, for decades it has been an article of faith that in the mainland UK, almost uniquely among major industrialised nations, the police do not carry guns as a matter of course.
But with little fanfare at first, a policy of routinely allowing specialist officers to wear sidearms as they walk the streets of Scotland has come into being. . . .

Meanwhile, an anti-gun activist in Scotland opposes police carrying guns.  From the UK Daily Record:

. . . Dr Mick North lost his five-year-old daughter Sophie when killer Thomas Hamilton struck at her school.
The anti-gun activist has slammed Police Scotland Chief Constable Sir Stephen House for suggesting armed bobbies could have stopped the massacre.
At a force summit in June, the country’s top policeman highlighted the mass murder of Sophie, her 14 primary 1 classmates and teacher Gwen Mayor as a reason why units should not spend “an extra five, 10, 15, 20 minutes” arming themselves.
Dr North said: “I can’t see how any armed police would have stopped Dunblane.“It took 15 minutes until any police officer arrived at the school when the incident was all over in three minutes.” . . . 

Some notes: I agree that it is very doubtful that police could have arrived quickly enough to stop the attack at Dunblane.  But does that mean that there won't be a few other times when speed might save some lives.  Of course, my response is to speed up response time to these tragedies by getting rid of gun-free zones, not by disarming even police.  It is hard to see any benefits from having police being disarmed.

UC Berkeley police officer hailed as a hero is denied the ability to carry a concealed handgun

I am still surprised the extent to which people are willing to go to stop off-duty or retired police officers from carrying guns.  From the San Francisco Chronicle:

The UC Berkeley police officer hailed as a hero for helping to rescue kidnap victim Jaycee Dugardis now suing her former employer, saying she was wrongfully denied approval to carry a concealed weapon after she retired on medical disability. 

Allison "Ally" Jacobs' instincts helped lead to the 2009 capture of Phillip Garrido, the man who kept Dugard captive for 18 years at his home near Antioch. A year later, Jacobs suffered an on-duty injury and, in April 2013, she accepted a disability retirement. 

Under state law, retired cops are entitled to a permit to carry a concealed weapon. But Jacobs was told she was ineligible for a retired officer card with an endorsement to carry a concealed weapon because UC, in a policy shift, no longer considered her and others receiving disability income to be "retired." 

Jacobs' attorney, Michael Morguess, said UC officials were "playing semantics" with officers who "put their lives on the line at UC and got injured in the course of performing their duties." . . . 

When police disappear, people forced to defend themselves: Josephine County, Oregon

People in one Oregon county are substituting private for public provision.  From Fox News:

. . . The government in Josephine County, where nearly 70 percent of the land is owned by the U.S. government, had long relied on federal timber subsidies to pay the bills. When the feds terminated the funds, county officials scrambled to pass a May 2012 tax levy to make up a nearly $7.5 million budget shortfall. 

However, the county's residents voted against the levy, and as a result the Josephine County Sheriff’s Office was gutted. The major crimes unit closed, dozens of prisoners were released from the county jail and the department reduced operations to Monday-Friday, eight hours a day. 

The Sheriff’s Office then issued a press release announcing their deputies would only be responding to what they deemed “life-threatening situations.” 

Ken Selig -- who was the longest-serving law enforcement officer in all three local agencies when he was forced to retire from the department due to cuts -- told FoxNews.com he found the sheriff’s declaration unacceptable. And he felt compelled to guard his community’s vulnerable members. 

“Who else is going to protect you when your government can't?” Selig said. . . . .  

Selig's community watch group, looking to fill in the law enforcement cracks, now meets once a month to discuss crime and teach its approximately 100 members about personal safety. The group also has a trained “response team,” which consists of 12 people who will respond to the scene of a reported non-life-threatening situation if called. . . .

More on comparing crime by police and permit holders

I had a discussion last year where I compared the firearm violation rates for police and concealed handgun permit holders. Permit holders were at least as safe as police and possibly safer.  Dean Weingarten has some discussion available here where he claims that police officers are three times more likely to murder than concealed handgun permit holders.  From Ammoland.com:

I found two sources of data that seem roughly comparable:  One being the anti-gun Violence Policy Center (VPC) ( http://www.vpc.org/fact_sht/ccwtotalkilled.pdf ) who attempts to track all homicides that are committed by CCW permit holders.   The data is incomplete, in that it relies on publicly reported stories, but it gives us a useful figure.  It does not seem likely that many reported stories are missed. (we can also assume by the source that VPC data is biased against lawful  gun owners) 

For police, I used a web site that tracks domestic homicides committed by police officers, and another that does the same for police involved domestic violence.   The data is comparable to the VPC data in that it relies on publicly reported stories.  Data was available for complete years from 2008 – 2011 for comparison of the two groups. . . .

Weingarten seems unfamiliar with the discussion about the Violence Policy Center claims in my book or other places.  For those who don't have the extended discussion in my book, here is a discussion that I had at Fox News about their claims regarding Florida.

How bad is Chicago's crime problem?: Chicago's clearance rate and Gov. Pat Quinn discusses using National Guard to help fight crime in Chicago

With all the gang violence in Chicago, Gov. Quinn suggested that he might get involved, though so far it is only a suggestion.  From CBS Chicago:

Gov. Pat Quinn says he would consider using state resources to help combat Chicago street violence. 

Speaking about this week’s mass shooting in the Back of the Yards neighborhood, Quinn says he’s open to talking with Mayor Emanuel or Chicago Police Supt. Garry McCarthy about supplementing Chicago law enforcement with state police or the Illinois National Guard. 

He said he’s had no specific conversations but noted state police are helping patrol in East St. Louis, another city that has its challenges with violent crime. 

“I think anyone who saw what happened in Cornell Park the other night was horrified by the violence. I live on the West Side of Chicago. It is an area that has been inflicted with violence, and we’ve got to protect the people,” Quinn told reporters Saturday. 

Talk about using state firepower in Chicago isn’t unprecedented. In 2008, then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich suggested using the state police and National Guard to help Chicago police with “out of control” violence. . . .

So how bad is Chicago's crime fighting efforts?  Last year, "Only 132 of the 507 murder cases in the city last year were closed last year. That makes for a homicide clearance rate of 26 percent—the lowest in two decades, according to internal police records provided to Chicago." 

But how does that compare with the rest of the US?  The clearance rate for the US as a whole for murder in 2012 was 62.5 percent.  For all cities, it was 60.3 percent.  For cities over 1 million in population, it is 57.0 percent.

New York 419 8,289,415
Los Angeles 299 3,855,122
Chicago 500 2,708,382 (the FBI numbers are slightly different from Chicago's)
Houston 217 2,177,273
Philadelphia 331 1,538,957
Phoenix 123 1,485,509
San Antonio 89 1,380,123
San Diego 47 1,338,477
Dallas 154 1,241,549

With 2,179 murders in the cities with more than 1 million people, a 62.5 percent clearance rate implies 1,362 cases were cleared.  So take out the numbers for Chicago: that leaves 1,679 murders for the other cities and 1,230 cleared -- a 73.26 percent clearance rate for the other large cities.  Thus the clearance rate for the other cities over 1 million people would be about 2.8 times greater than the rate in Chicago.

Did surge in number of concealed handgun permit holders more than make up for the reduction in the number of police officers in Michigan?

From a Michigan Live investigation by John Barnes:

. . . • Ann Arbor lost 31 percent of its officers, to 111. Population stayed nearly stable. Still, violent crimes dropped 11 percent; property crimes dropped 23 percent.
• Lansing lost 26 percent of its officers, falling to 187. Population fell just 4 percent. But violent crime fell 8 percent, and property crimes fell 20 percent.
• Saginaw lost 22 percent of its officers, to 86, and 15 percent of its population from 2003 to 2012. But violent and property crimes dropped much more, both nearly 30 percent.
There are exceptions of course, Flint lost half its force and violent crime soared. Detroit lost one in four officers, but it also lost about a quarter of its population. Per capita violent crime was up only slightly, about 6 percent.
Still, the downward trend in crimes and cops holds up statewide. . . .
More guns, less crimeAnother factor must be considered. Michigan adults have more guns.
In 2001, Michigan made it much easier for residents to carry concealed handguns. Permits have risen ever since.
Last month, 405,408 adults could lawfully carry concealed handguns. That’s up from 53,000 after the first year of Michigan’s shall-issue law.
That means one in 17 adults 21 or older is licensed to carry. Countless more people have guns for sport and protection in their homes.
John Lott, an economist and national pro-firearms commenter, authored the book, “More Guns, Less Crime.”
”When you see the percent of the population with permits rising, and how Michigan has seen a very substantial increase over almost the same period of time (studied by MLive), you are looking at the fact that victims can defend themselves and also deter criminals, just as police can deter criminals,” Lott said. . . .

Milwaukee Sheriff David Clarke educates Piers Morgan and Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett

The link is also available here.  The mayor explains that he has been assured that reductions in the number of police will have no impact of people's safety.  He also notes that people should just call 911 when they are in trouble.  Sheriff Clark notes the obvious: that the police can't protect people all the time and the question is what people should do when they have to defend themselves against criminals.

Woman, threatened with rape, calls 911 only to be told: "there are no officers on duty to help her"

It sounds as if this woman should have invested in buying herself a gun.  From the UK Daily Mail:

A terrified woman from Josephine County, Oregon, dialed 911 to report that her violent ex-boyfriend is trying to break into her home, but in response she was told that there are no officers on duty to help her.  . . .

Eventually, the crazed man forced his way into the house, choked his former girlfriend and raped her without no one there to stop him.The suspect, Michael Bellah, was later arrested and pleaded guilty to kidnapping, assault and sex abuse. . . .  

The woman explained that her ex-boyfriend, Michael Bellah, had put her in the hospital just weeks prior, and she has been trying to keep him away. . . .  

'Uh, I don’t have anybody to send out there. You know, obviously, if he comes inside the residence and assaults you, can you ask him to go away? Do you know if he’s intoxicated or anything?' the officer, who identified himself as Ray, told the caller.  

The woman explained that she has already asked Bellah to leave and warned him that she was going to call police, but that did nothing to stop him from trying to break down the door - something he had done in the past, according to the girlfriend. . . .

The solution pushed by this news article is that the county should have voted for higher taxes.  Of course, a lot can happen even in 15 or 20 minutes. 

UPDATE:  Megan Kelley has the audio available here.

Dallas: Store owner uses gun to stop four robbers, police don't arrive for 75 minutes after 911 call

The 911 call was somewhat difficult to understand, but that isn't the issue.  Whatever the reason, the point is that it took 75 minutes after the 911 call for the police to arrive.  My point isn't to blame the police dispatcher or an immigrant who may not be able to speak without an accent, but to note the benefit of letting people own guns for self protection.  The 911 call was made after the attack and shooting had already occurred so the police response time at that point was irrelevant.  

On Sunday night, four men tried to rob Pepe's Grocery on Bernal Drive in West Dallas. One of them was carrying an assault rifle, but the manager of the closed store drew first, hitting his target with two shots from his .38. The would-be robbers fled, leaving a trail of blood behind.The manager, Joe Cho, called police and waited. And waited. And waited. And finally, 20 minutes after shooting an intruder, he locked up and went home. Officers arrived at the store some 75 minutes later.
"I'm at home safe, everything, I relax right now," Cho told the Morning News' Scott Goldstein. "Then you call me about an hour something later, you want me to come back over here." . . .

Who was to blame for the delay?

The Dallas Police Department was quick to shift the blame over to Cho. A spokesman said,  “The caller had a very heavy accent and was speaking very quickly…The call taker had a very difficult time understanding the information and did not hear the caller say ‘shot’ or ‘shoot.’” . . . 

I could understand much of the call, and what I couldn't understand the first time through I figured out after listening to it a couple more times.  If the dispatcher couldn't understand whether the caller was saying "shot" or "shoot," she should have asked him to stay on the phone longer.  In any case, these calls are recorded, and the dispatcher could have presumably listened to it again if necessary.

Progress on what people should do during mass shootings

Well, at least they are now encouraging active resistance by victims and faster responses by police.  It would be even better if they left people defend themselves with guns, but this is a small start.  From The New York Times:

The speed and deadliness of recent high-profile shootings have prompted police departments to recommend fleeing, hiding or fighting in the event of a mass attack, instead of remaining passive and waiting for help. 

The shift represents a "sea change," said Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, which recently held a meeting in Washington to discuss shootings like those in Newtown, Conn., and Aurora, Colo. 

The traditional advice to the public has been: "Don't get involved, call 911," Wexler said, adding that "there's a recognition in these 'active shooter' situations that there may be a need for citizens to act in a way that perhaps they haven't been trained for or equipped to deal with." 

Wexler and others noted that the change echoes a transformation in police procedures that began after the shootings at Columbine High School in 1999, when some departments began telling officers who arrived first on a scene to act immediately rather than waiting for backup. . . . . 

"We used to sit outside and set up a perimeter and wait for the SWAT team to get there," said Michael Dirden, an executive assistant chief of the Houston Police Department. "Now it's a recognition that time is of the essence, and those initial responders have to go in," he said, adding that since the Virginia Tech shootings in 2007, the department has been training first responders to move in on their own when they encounter active gunfire. 

Research on mass shootings over the past decade has bolstered the idea that people at the scene of an attack have a better chance of survival if they take an active stance rather than waiting to be rescued by the police, who in many cases cannot get there fast enough to prevent the loss of life. . . . .