Binghamton tragedy, doubled

There's an astonishing response by the Binghamton chief of police, and city DA, after this week's massacre.

The first 911 calls came in at 10:30 a.m., Police Chief Joseph Zikuski said at a news conference. The callers spoke broken English, and it took dispatchers two minutes to sort out what was happening, he said.

The first patrol cars arrived at 10:33 a.m.

Officers were on the scene five minutes before a wounded receptionist called police to report a gunman in the building, Zikuski said. Police had earlier said it was that call that brought them to the immigration center.

A SWAT team entered the building 43 minutes after the first call to police.

When police got there, the gunfire had stopped, so they believed there was no ''active gunman'' in the center and decided to wait for the SWAT team to arrive, Zikuski said.

He compared the scene with the 1999 Columbine High School shooting in Colorado, in which 15 people died, including the two teenage gunmen.

''At Columbine, there were numerous shots ringing out and law enforcement stood by,'' he said. ''I was quite frankly horrified when I knew that.''

Zikuski said his officers would have gone into the building if shots had still been flying.

''If you arrive on the scene -- the first two to four guys -- and there's an active shooter, they enter,'' he said.

Pressed on why police didn't go into building, Zikuski said information they were getting from the receptionist was still uncertain enough to warrant caution.

''He was dead. We didn't know it,'' Zikuski said. ''If there's a bunch of cops laying on the floor shot trying to rescue somebody else, it's not going to help anybody.''

When reporters repeated the line of questioning, Mollen jumped in to defend the police chief.

''I don't think it's fair to ask Chief Zikuski to respond to hypotheticals,'' he said, adding that there would be a full review and report on the shooting, including the police response.

"If there's a bunch of cops laying on the floor shot trying to rescue somebody else, it's not going to help anybody."

For cops to wait outside a building because they don't hear gunshots, not knowing if people are bleeding to death or if a shooter is still on the loose, is ridiculous.

It's precisely the job of cops to risk their lives every day trying to rescue other. That's why we honor them.