State security is often put in danger by various natural and manmade factors. Critical incidents are among the most serious situations that can undermine social stability and lead to significant losses. Waco incident is one of the most striking fatal events in the recent American history. While indicating the need to cope with dangerous sectarian movements, this incident at the same time showed that hasty and unreasonable, decisions of the law enforcement bodies can lead to catastrophic outcomes.
To understand the issue completely, one should define the notion of the critical incident. A critical incident is understood as “a relatively brief occurrence involving injury, loss, or conflict of significant proportion, with the potential to change existing societal norms” (Schwester, 2014, p. 35). Among the key attributes of a critical incident, Schwester (2014) names social trauma, extreme fear, unexpectedness, emotional effect on the trained staff, undermined trust of the public, a relatively brief period, serious injuries or loss of life, damages of property and infrastructure, extensive media coverage. Critical incidents are often hard to foresee. Responsible state authorities have to act immediately and ensure the least possible loss during the liquidation of immediate effects of the incident.
The essence of the Waco critical incident lies in the enormous amount of human victims. From February 28 to April 19, 1993, the FBI and the US National Guard was conducting a siege of the Mount Carmel ranch held by the religious sect “Branch Davidians”. The residents of the Mount Carmel were suspected of violation of the state weapon law. The FBI initiated an investigation and then started a raid where ten people died in a gunfire. The raid transformed into a 51 days siege, which ended with the final the assault of more than 700 people, armored vehicles and helicopters. During the siege, the building was set on fire leading to the death of 82 members of the sect, with 27 children among them (Lynch, 2001). According to the further government investigation, the sectarians set the fire themselves. It was stated in the report that “the FBI exhibited extraordinary restraint and handled the crisis with great professionalism” (US Department of Justice, 2014, p. 6). The critics of the official state version argued that the fire was caused by the FBI’s extensive use of tear gas (Lynch, 2001).
Evaluating the Waco tragedy, one can see that it meets the criteria of a critical situation. There was a significant amount of human deaths, including children. The events were shown on the TV covering broad audiences (Schwester, 2014). The shocking tragedy could have been avoided if the FBI decided to catch the leader of the sect, David Koresh when he was outside the building (Docherty, 2001). Schwester aptly notes that the disaster was even more that human victims, something more disastrous was coming – “a breach of trust between government and the governed” (Schwester, 2014, p. 6). Many citizens saw the government as an evil that could engage force to attain even dubious unchecked goals. The state agents applied standard operating procedures in a situation where some other more shrewd and sophisticated methods could be used (Docherty, 2001).
Overall, it can be seen that Waco 1993 tragedy was a critical incident in the pure sense of this word. And its essential nature was to a great extent caused by the actions of the state. It could have been resolved as persecution operation with minimum victims, but instead it turned into a bloody fire show claiming dozens of innocent lives.
References
Docherty, J. (2001). Learning lessons from Waco: When the parties bring their Gods to the negotiation table. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press.
Lynch, T. (2001). No confidence: An unofficial account of the Waco incident. Policy Analysis, 395(1), 170-188.
Schwester, R. (2014). Handbook of critical incident analysis. New York, NY: Routledge.
US Department of Justice (2014). Evaluation of the handling of the Branch Davidian stand-off in Waco, Texas, 1993. Web.