1 Hmmm. Seems a bit of an overreaction to say that the only reason people are criticizing the assignment of the particular court guard in question is because she is a woman. She's a grandmother. I mean, really. She has a child who has a child. I'm not in favor of refusing a woman a particular post because she is a woman. But if she's statistically bound to inadequacy? Sure thing. I prefer my rapists behind bars, and my innocent bystanders and civil servants bullet-free.

2 That's my point: gender is not the sole summary of a person's qualifications for a post, even one that requires upper-body strength. There were plenty of things that went wrong in Atlanta, and as some of Michelle Malkin's commenters have pointed out, a lot of them were procedural: many men could have been overcome in the situation in question.

3 Woman, man, or oragutan noone should have been alone with this violent brute. There should have been 2 other officers there as backup. I live just outside of Atlanta and fulton county is notorious for these kinds of screwups. They are so understaffed it's pathetic. Fulton county commissioners misallocate so much of the revenue they can't protect there people. It's beyond rediculous, it's criminal.

4 What is the gender, race and I.Q. of the watch commander and the Sheriff?

5 I have a few guesses about the first and the last. Don't care about the middle one.

6 Late to the party here but allow a few observations. Take a look at the Officers or Deputies on duty the next time you're in the courthouse. Notice how much older they are than the onces you see on the street? An unfortunate fact of life is that bugetary limitations mean that people who don't begin their law enforcement careers until their late twenties won't be eligible for their full pensions until they're near their sixties. Courthouse duty is one of the jobs that LEOs are put into when age, illness or injury make them unable to handle the footchasing and brawling that are part of policing. That Deputy could have been a six foot, once strong man. I worked with several that got relegated to court duty, one was all ate up with cancer, one didn't go into the job until his thirties, with 28 years in he was holding out for his thrity year pension. I myself worked the courtrooms a couple of times, once the county couldn't really afford to pay me through the full year's recovery from knee surgery, another after I broke more ribs than anyone ought to have totalling a county cruiser. Neither time could I have chased down or beat down a Nichols for love nor money. I depended on the Armed Deputies for that. The culprit in this case is Nichols. The jackasses that made the whole goatscrew possible were the clowns that were supposed to be watching those video monitors. It's worse than we thought, according to the best I can piece it together. Nichols didn't snatch Deputy Granmaw's gun out of her holster. He overpowered her, took her keys, strolled to the gunlocker, found the right locker, unlocked it, got the gun, strolled to the courtroom, blew three people away, waltzed out to the street, lit up another Deputy, all while the jackasses at the security desk ignored the monitors in front of them. Then he pistol whipped a reporter, took his car, parked it right there, walked to the train station and got away. Then, nobody from the law enforcement agencies looked at the parking garage crime scene and for thirteen hours, until a civilian found the green Honda, they were looking for the wrong car. Sure, blame Deputy Granmaw. Ask me, that whole crowd should be standing on the roadside with signs. "Will write tickets for food." Trouble is, the whole lot put together ain't worth a donut, without sprinkles. Bunch of waterheads set back the idea of law enforcement as a profession back about forty years. Oops. Sorry, LMA, those few observations turned into a rant.

7 That's the point. Procedures were lax enough in terms of how he was actually handled, and then the people who were supposed to be watching over things weren't. What do you want to bet no one gets fired for this, or only one person does? I like your image of them standing by the roadside. That would make me . . . well, almost happy.