A children's hospital worker was asked to play "the gunman" at work, walking the halls with fake rifle, as part of their active shooter drill. Except ... the hospital management forgot to tell the patients, their families, most of the other staff, or the police, they were doing an active shooter drill. Patients and family members, rightfully, freaked out and called 911, when the police arrived, they arrested him ... lucky he wasn't killed by a cop or an armed family member. ... Spoiler alert ... it's real. A black laborer at a Detroit psychiatric hospital for children is suing after he was asked to play a gunman for an active shooter drill which ended with him being arrested after his bosses failed to share their plans. Brandon Woodruff, 32, had been working at the site for five months when his supervisor asked him to participate in the drill four days before Christmas 2022. But neither the police nor patients or their families were informed of the plan, and many staff were also unaware of what was going to happen. When Woodruff - a dad of one - appeared with a fake rifle, patients panicked and dialed 911, prompting 50 cops in tactical gear to race to the scene and arrest Woodruff. Black Detroit hospital worker sues after he was asked to play gunman at work, only to be arrested (msn.com)
Horrible. Hope he wins a nice settlement considering he could have easily been killed in the confusion. Not sure why being Black was a part of the headline as there was nothing in the article that supported any relevance and in fact noted his white coworker was in handcuffs and detained as well. Regardless, I'm not a fan of our litigious society but this guy and others affected deserve compensation. Terrible.
I think it was a brilliantly smart drill. You get to see how the patients' reaction in a crisis will affect staff actions with some realism. Also having the police swat the hospital is more realism. If I was a crazy I would stay away from this well trained bunker of preparedness.
The planners probably thought it would be obvious this wasn’t real since the would be mass murderer wasn’t white. Uh oh, War on Whitey alert!!
Ok..... I really don't get the need for that. It's a genuine question about today's reporting. I don't deny race plays a part in many situations I just don't see it in every one of them.
Well I’ll take a serious shot at it. There is a well-known phenomenon that is in the news about every 48 hours in which police seem to be quick to kill black people at the scene. At the same time there is another phenomenon about every 24 hours in which non-police shoot up public places. So management here had a black dude pretending to shoot up a public place but didn’t feel it necessary to tell anyone. It would seem that panicking your employees into calling in an active shooter is a good way to get anyone killed by police. Make that dude black and it seems like the survivability of this exercise goes down even more. I don’t see why this little detail isn’t meaningful.
White mass shooters generally survive? Sorry but I'll Respectfully disagree that cops routinely go in and treat mass shooting suspects during an active shoot with any discretion because they see a white guy doing the shooting. Again, I don't disagree that prejudice clouds police interactions but I'm failing to see where it's relative in this case at this time. The whole thing was a travesty of incompetence.
As I said. Now you are hoping that the cops will take the time to figure out this is just a drill. White people seem to be able to talk their way out of police misunderstandings at a more successful rate than others. Basically you are saying that the odds of survival here aren’t in Bob from IT’s favor. Agreed. I am saying that if Bob from IT is black, his odds are even lower. It’s OK to see that two things can be bad simultaneously.
It bolsters his claims that he feared for his life. Police don't treat Black people and white people equally.
It's truly a miracle that nobody fired a shot. Fifty amped up cops vs. A black man with a gun for whom they have been dispatched because he's holding children hostage.
He'd only been working there 5 months, so he was still on probation. If they wanted to get rid of him, all they had to do was fire him.
