About $213,000 in federal tax dollars went to produce a controversial report about the Pulse Nightclub massacre, according to financial records released by the U.S. Department of Justice last week.
The Police Foundation, a D.C.-based nonprofit organization, produced the 198-page report last month at the request of the DOJ.
The report commends Orlando police for a “strong” response to Omar Mateen, the lone gunman who embarked on a shooting spree inside the LGBT nightclub in 2016, killing 49 patrons and wounding 58 others.
But critics say the report fails to properly evaluate major aspects of the Pulse incident. Those aspects include a six-minute interval during which Mateen shot about 100 people inside Pulse while Orlando-area police remained outside; a three-hour period during which Mateen was barricaded in a Pulse restroom, while victims in a separate restroom and other parts of the club weren’t rescued promptly; and a 13-minute interval during which police attempted to breach an exterior wall of Pulse to rescue victims in two separate restrooms.
Additionally, the report fails to acknowledge that law-enforcement authorities have not reported any of Mateen’s casualties as hate-crime victims.
Budget items for the report include $75,874 for “personnel”; $15,366 for “travel expenses”; $44,038 for “contracts/consultants and other expenses”; $64,089 for “indirect costs”; and $13,549 for “other costs.” The grand total is $213,001.73.
Chris Grollnek, an active-shooter expert based in McKinney, Texas, expressed mixed feelings about the expenditures.
“I would say the money was spent with good intentions but was not spent wisely in the long run — as the report is lopsided and written by a police-centric organization,” Grollnek said. “It simply lacks objectivity and was done by a police foundation and not an independent council on safety and risk.”
Adam W. Lankford, a mass-shooting expert based in Tuscaloosa, Ala., stopped short of saying the money was wasted.
“As you know, there are many things I find problematic about the report and many things that could have been done better,” Lankford told PGN. “But I also tend to think that the information it contains is worth knowing, and thus it is perhaps better to have that information in the public domain than if the report didn’t exist at all.”
A spokesperson for the Police Foundation had no comment for this story.
Palma M. Rasmussen, a civil-rights advocate based in Titusville, Fla., defended the Orlando Police Department. Her son Matthew patronized Pulse as a straight ally, she said.
“I know Orlando police did everything they could at Pulse,” Rasmussen told PGN. “There will always be mistakes. There will always be people who say the individuals going into a burning building or a shoot-out are moving too slow. But other people don’t want to be rescuers or don’t know how to act or what to do when all hell breaks loose around them. You must keep your cool; you can’t run away because you’re the one that’s supposed to be the rescuer. I come from that first-responder world. My husband and I were paramedics and my son is a police officer. We have a bit more insight on these issues. For the most part, everyone does their part and does it well. On occasion, there are those who never should have been allowed to be a police officer or paramedic. But that’s in every profession.”