Near as I can tell from the actual data we have, the responding officers did precisely what they were supposed to do.
Bank is robbed, vehicle description is given. Cops find car, suspect indicates presence of bomb, claims he was forced to rob bank by man who placed bomb on him.
Cops do what they can- handcuff suspect, clear the area.
The officers were looking at a real simple binary problem set:
-
Bomb is fake. Thus waiting, etc, causes no foul.
-
Bomb is real.
Assuming (2), which the officers MUST do, they have only two more choices:
A) Secure suspect so that he cannot either escape (thus endangering innocents if the bomb goes off) nor can he trigger the bomb himself (assuming he’s part of the conspiracy, so to speak) and clear the area, since the officers have no bomb-disarming training whatsoever, and considering the fact it’s a bank robber wearing a bomb, the possibility that said bomb is either booby-trapped to detonate given any attempt to remove it, or can be command-detonated by the bomber.
Or B) Attempt to remove it. Again, given that this is not simply an errant blasting cap that some kid finds in the woods, but rather an overtly malicious weapon, the possibility it is boobytrapped or capable of remote detonation is not only plausible, but would be expected. What if the bomber was watching, and figured, okay, the carrier got nabbed, now I’ll wait until the most other people are nearby (officers or bomb-squad techs) thenthen set it off.
Thus, add those all up and you have three possible outcomes:
1- Bomb is fake. No foul.
2- Bomb is real, and if detonates, kills carrier only.
3- Bomb is real, and detonates upon attempted removal, killing both carrier and officer attempting removal.
That the point of detonation, they did not know- and likely still don’t know- if the pizza guy was in fact an innocent victim, a willing part of an organized, multi-person plot, or a single criminal acting alone.
Thus, the safest option for the police officers was to secure the suspect, and clear the area. Just exactly like they did.
The bomb squad techs could then move in, hopefully determine the bomb’s authenticity and/or triggering mechanism, and try to remove it.
Erie is not that large a place, and I would bet money they have a team of people that are bomb-disposal trained, but only “on call” like a volunteer fire department. Meaning they all had to come to the headquarters, or wherever the trucks and BD gear and equipment are stored, suit up, and then head out to the location of the bomb.
I live it a little town a fraction the size of Erie, and it still takes ten to fifteen minutes to cross town- I see no fault in the scattered techs having to drop whatever they were doing, drive twenty minutes to the HQ, suit up, get the trucks and equipment, then drive another twenty minutes to get to the scene. Is that so impossible to imagine?
As for having some brave cop jump in and try to disarm it, hell, just watching a couple of movies tells you that’s a piss-poor idea. The bomb was strapped to his chest? Okay, what if there’s a pressure switch on the back- lift the bomb away from his chest, it goes off. What if there’s a wire running through the strap, or buried under the tape? Cut the strap, bomb goes off. How about he’s got a strap around his neck and it’s hanging on his chest? Maybe it has a mercury switch, and if it’s tilted- as if it’s being lifted over the kid’s head- the bomb goes off.
What if the bomber is watching from a distance, and has a remote control- he could wait 'til there’s two or three cops around the victim, and THEN detonate it.
You starting to see a trend here? If it’s fake, you got nothing to worry about, and there’s no harm in waiting. But if it’s real, the odds are greatly stacked against you, since the thing may very well have been designed to try and kill you when you try to take it off.
You willing to risk your life, against odds of maybe 85% or better of being killed, to save a kid who may or may not be a bank robber?
