TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WCTV) – Editors note: This story discusses details of a campus shooting. It may be distressing to some. Continue with care.
Policing experts say FSU PD and other officers responded appropriately last year when they shot suspected school shooter Phoenix Ikner.
According to an official police timeline, Ikner was shot less than ten minutes from the time he left the parking garage.
Experts say that’s a sharp contrast to other high profile school shootings.
A longtime homicide detective who spoke to WCTV said the response at FSU was basically the opposite of what happened in Uvalde, TX. FSU Police officers did not wait, and did exactly what they were trained to do.
Body cam footage shows Officer Cody Poppell shooting the suspected FSU gunman last April. According to policing experts, this is textbook.
“I don’t want to be a part of anything that’s associated with Uvalde,” said John Creamer, the deputy executive director for the Florida Deputy Sheriff’s Association. “It’s not going to happen while I’m working. And I guarantee that all the first responders that were involved in Florida State that day said, “Not today.” So that’s one of the first challenges.”
Since Columbine, policing expert Dr. Lee Bushong said the protocol is to rush towards a school shooter, regardless of how many officers there are or how well the suspect is armed.
“They’ll stop in one of three ways. Either they’ll be confronted by an authority figure and they’ll just drop the weapon and surrender, or they’ll be neutralized like this guy was, or they’ll neutralize themselves,” said Dr. Bushong.
Experts say local law enforcement training was on display on April 17, 2025.
“There’s an old adage about we don’t rise to the level of our training during an emergency. We sink to it,” Creamer said. “Everybody performed to task. There was nothing negative in the press, nothing. It was just a stellar response by everybody involved.”
Bushong said the unknown “fear” some felt leading up to the shooting may actually have been a sign that many suppress. Members of a political debate club said the alleged shooter was open about his extremist beliefs. Thousands of messages with an AI chat bot appear to confirm that.
“But that gift of fear is actually alerting us that something’s not right in the environment, and I would urge more people to pay attention to that. And if something’s out of line, that’s not going to hurt. Pick up the phone and call. You might be saving lives,” Bushong said.
He added it is not uncommon to dismiss the uncommon as common.
“If something doesn’t feel right, something looks out of place, for whatever reason, in our country, our culture, we’re hesitant to say something. It’s like we’ll be labeled as a scaredy cat or something like that,” Bushong said.
Experts say there are always things to learn from these crisis events. Many outside police officers responded to campus, but were not in consistent communication with dispatch.
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