Are we afraid won't actually do their job when it actually involves putting themselves in danger? I think the cat is out of the bag on that one.
Quite famously, the police are much better at shooting children [1] than they are at shooting to protect children.
The Uvalde PD consumes 40% of the town budget ($4m of $10m exclusive of a $500k grant they got from the state of Texas months earlier). 19 police officers were on scene and sat twiddling their thumbs for an hour despite repeated 911 calls from students inside. Oh actually not quite nothing: they threatened to violate the probation of a mother on scene [2].
There's an obvious upside to this particular shooter dying but it has one unfortunate side effect: Texas allows information to be suppressed when the suspect is deceased [3]. Had he lived it would've been inevitable this bodycam footage and other evidence would've come out. Now? We'll see.
I've now lost count of the number of times to story has changed from the Uvalde PD. But nothing here will change.
It's hard but it's important to keep faith, and to keep working to change people's minds about police. Even your comment can make a difference: a place like HN is full of intelligent people who generally come here fairly open minded. Maybe your comment - the top one right now - can open someone's eyes to what cops really are. Stay in the fight!
No one seems willing to say it out loud, but the reason we can't fire all the police at once is that they will retaliate by looting and killing civilians. This was one of the mistakes the US made after invading iraq, and also a problem the roman empire kept running into in its later years.
You can see for another example, San Fran's 1975 police riots, where the police went on strike, started assaulting both random members of the public as well as anyone from the courts trying to inform them of the court order that they needed to return to work, then left a bomb on the mayor's lawn that had a sign saying "don't threaten us" before it was detonated. All because of a push for integration that meant that a white cop's partner had a chance of being black.
The National Guard is however a state institution. You’d need the Texas Governor (in this case) to order it deployed. I V wouldn’t hold your breath. It’s more likely this is a job for the Feds.
The current argument is to slowly defund them and move that money to alternative services and police with a new culture not beholden to the current one. Many officers can move over, but slowly so the new culture doesn't get lost to the old one. Same way you modernize a company.
If they have guns issued to them, yet refuse use them even in an active shooter situation to protect the lives of innocent children being massacred, they probably don't need the guns for any situation. If police carrying all these unused guns around is any kind of liability (danger, theft) they should probably not be carrying them in the first place. (I'm okay with Police using them when the situation calls for it, but if they refuse to use them when the situation calls for it then they don't need them at all)
Something will change for sure: you'll have to surrender your legal guns.
"Just give away your guns. You don't need them for protection, you and your kids will be safe with the police" "Me? Oh it's different. See I need theses armed bodyguards with me and my kids. For security reasons you know!"
We live in a surveillance society now. This individual that attacked the school wasn’t operating in stealth: he let his murderious intentions be known on social media.
The choice now is whether to believe that law enforcement at the local and federal level simply turned a blind eye, or they knew and helped guide this individual to action in order to use the public reaction to advance the gun control agenda.
And while some will recoil at the thought of organized terror attacks in the US, we have to acknowledge that terror attacks by the state are not unprecedented. The communists, the nazis, the current russian empire all utilized terror attacks to advance their state policy. For example, right before the Crimea referendum to join Russia, terror attacks against the civilian population “were discovered” by FSB forces that swung their support to joining Russia.
Seriously though — you’re arguing this is a conspiracy to increase gun control, in which a local Texas PD is complicit? The United States is false flagging us into increased gun control by sanctioning the murder of little kids?
The only difference is that I'm asserting that this is happening in America too, which for some reason you think is bonkers. Though most likely you'd readily accept it happening everywhere else that's not America or it's strategic partner countries.
State-level elected officials in Texas ain’t exactly known for their interest in increasing gun control, and they’re at least enabling the Uvalde police department in this cover-up.
Source: grew up in Texas, still have all my well-armed family there.
You make good points, but people here are no more receptive to them than Russians are prepared to acknowledge that Putin came to power by staging false flag attacks:
I think the 'weakness' of their response is plainly obvious. If criminals can find advantages in this footage, its an opportunity to overhaul training programs and response plans. The training and response was woefully inadequate for this crisis, after all.
There should be no reasonable reality in which the release of this footage is suppressed. This is an undeniable tragedy, battening down the hatches and obstinately trying to weather the storm will do no favors for anyone.
I think the problem is that no one wants to take the blame for being wrong or unprepared and the media won't pass up an opportunity to sensationalize mistakes as incompetency, maliciousness, etc..
I wish more of the world could function like the culture adopted by the western airline industry where every incident and investigation is treated as an opportunity to learn and improve the system rather than an opportunity to lay blame.
I think it's perfectly reasonable for anyone directly impacted to expect there to be consequences for the lack of preparedness, etc., but I think the big picture needs to be more along the lines of realizing that kind of unpreparedness isn't part of some grand plan or conspiracy and that working to improve the system for next time gives us better overall value (long term) than punishing the people involved.
At least for government institutions, I think that kind of system could be mandated as long as employees get the same deal as pilots. In exchange for willful participation, with the goal of improving the overall system, you aren't punished for anything that was an honest mistake, misunderstanding, lack of training, etc..
> I wish more of the world could function like the culture adopted by the western airline industry where every incident and investigation is treated as an opportunity to learn and improve the system rather than an opportunity to lay blame.
Unfortunately, the nature of US politics is such that it's impossible to have reasoned conversations about how to alter these extremely complex and dynamic systems. Entire areas of the solution space are rejected because of ideology, and those rejections, themselves, are highly politically charged.
In what should be no great surprise, later, when the problem isn't resolved, fingers get pointed at those who rejected those alternative solutions or pushed for solutions that did not work, while those who previously got in the way of a more fulsome discussion continue to do so because the foundation of their ideology cannot be shaken by real world data.
So, yes, it would be nice if the world could function as a reasonable and rational place, but when it comes to wedge issues like this, that simply will not happen without fundamental structural changes to the nature of US politics.
All that being said, given Boeing's recent performance, I'd be a little careful to hold up the airline industry as a paragon of rationality and preparedness...
> I think the problem is that no one wants to take the blame for being wrong or unprepared and the media won't pass up an opportunity to sensationalize mistakes as incompetency, maliciousness,etc
So, is it going to be Law and Order for thee, paid suspensions and additional training for me?
I wish people would realize that Law and Order is different from Orderly Justice. Law and Order allows immoral laws and actions so long as they are codified in law and the "Order" from following the law can lead to injustice. Orderly Justice means there are procedures in place to ensure order while pursuing justice. Sometimes we get ticked off at how long it takes (look at all the process and time (and delays) involved in trying to determine the truth and ensure justice around Jan. 6th).
In this case I believe a [grand] jury of peers would have found had the officers gone in and just taken the suspect out, they would have been justified.
Sadly we have more and more of a Law and Order society than an Orderly Justice one.
> I wish more of the world could function like the culture adopted by the western airline industry where every incident and investigation is treated as an opportunity to learn and improve the system rather than an opportunity to lay blame.
If the airline industry had kept that culture we wouldn't have had so many incidents with the Boeing 737 MAX.
I don't follow. Were airline investigations not able to do a proper and thorough investigation of the 737 MAX crashes?
I'm not saying no mistakes were made. Of course mistakes were made. It was my assumption that the typical "post-mortem" process of those crashes did happen.
Post Mortem means somebody died (or more generously, at least you wrote off an airframe) which means you already failed. Actual safety culture went beyond that, the 737 MAX shouldn't have happened because it was apparent this aeroplane was unsafe before it killed people.
One of the many things NASA does for the US which affects ordinary people who aren't ever going to the Moon, let alone Mars, is ASRS. https://asrs.arc.nasa.gov/
The purpose of ASRS is to report safety problems that weren't accidents yet. That's how you continue to improve safety when there are a tiny number of fatal accidents - by studying all the things which nearly went wrong. The pilot who nearly turned off his one remaining engine after losing one on a twinjet, the controller who nearly authorised a new pilot to fly straight into a mountain before checking the radar again.
Most safety culture can't aspire to that. In many cases maybe it would be overkill. Therac-25 not withstanding, most software engineers are not going to kill anybody through their incompetence, and we'd do well to even manage a Mortality and Morbidity conference culture (M&M is what medics do when patients unexpectedly die or have seriously negative outcomes, to try to prevent such things in future). Even most of aviation isn't that safe. General (the pilot isn't getting paid, they're doing it for fun or at least as their own choice) is very unsafe. Commercial (e.g. Crop dusting, News helicopter) is better but not great. However Scheduled aviation (you can just buy a ticket, like for a bus) had reached the point where ASRS was the key to likely further safety improvements, and yet somehow Boeing shipped the 737 MAX.
My father is a retired airline pilot and we loved talking about safety, how things can fail and how there is a culture of learning for everyones mistakes. I mostly remember the pilots replaying actual crash scenarios.
But you are absolutely right, ASRS and learning from almost-failures is also critical.
That leads to the most obvious question: "Are your training manuals and materials as closely guarded of a secret?" If not, then your implementation of them, however compromised, is not a secret either.
Eventually they will be ordered to release the video, at which point we will learn that much of it is missing, from multiple officers and from the school's cameras simultaneously. We will be expected to believe that officers weren't wearing cameras, or cameras were turned off, or a computer error lost the footage.
There's an outside chance it's even worse than what we know now - maybe they killed a kid or two, or did something otherwise more shameful than expected.
>“When the cops came, the cop said: ‘Yell if you need help!’ And one of the persons in my class said ‘help.’ The guy overheard and he came in and shot her,” the boy said. “The cop barged into that classroom. The guy shot at the cop. And the cops started shooting.” The police got a student killed, according to the survivor’s story.
"Other parents were pinned to the ground, pepper sprayed, or tasered, said Gomez, who said she managed to run into the school and save her child after convincing the officers to uncuff her."
Seriously... WTF! If only they showed the same balls when dealing with the gunman.
Yeah, the _best_ attempt at devils advocate I could give them would be that it should be secret just how crappy they are at following their own training/guidance. That's basically complete bullshit though, that's no reason for secrecy.
It's actually more along the lines of counter-intelligence. You have printed manuals and materials that get leaked so the attackers study those tactics. Then, during the attack, there is total confusion when the police do not react as thought by those training materials. The upper hand now resides with the police /s
They maintained control with minimal personal risk to themselves. From a "policing realism" perspective that's exactly what police do. Preventing or ending any sort of crime or violence is optional at that point, and they opted not to.
This is extremely at odds with how the police want to be perceived, and managing that contradiction is certainly their biggest concern right now. From that perspective it's easy to understand why they want to suppress this information, and who benefits if they get to.
These aren't unfortunate dolts who bumbled into a tragic response because they weren't equipped to deal with it. This sort of thing is a predictable result of the training and prioritization police act on every day.
>They maintained control with minimal personal risk to themselves. From a "policing realism" perspective that's exactly what police do. Preventing or ending any sort of crime or violence is optional at that point, and they opted not to.
Absolutely untrue, and has been for decades. Their hesitation to react and go in is the complete opposite of what they were trained to do, which is go in and eliminate the threat immediately. "The official narrative has shifted from a story of swift response by the local police to one of hesitation and delay that deviated from two decades of training that instructs officers to quickly confront a gunman to save lives, even at a risk to their own."[1]
>These aren't unfortunate dolts who bumbled into a tragic response because they weren't equipped to deal with it.
Except that, from everything we've learned about this event in the weeks since, they literally were not equipped to deal with it. Police chief didn't bring a radio, their own radios didn't work in the school, they bungled getting a key to the room, they didn't have their tactical materials arrive in a timely manner, I can go on and on.
The literal text of their training and the perspectives of the people who train them and work with them have very little todo with each other. Furthermore, behavior like this is fairly consistent across departments.
There is also a well-documented history of police coming up with convenient excuses to do whatever the hell benefits them most (see also: bodycam "malfunctions"). Don't want to get involved in a dangerous situation? Whoops, I forgot my radio! Whoops, we don't have the right gear! Guess we can't get involved for more than an hour!
I'm under no legal obligation to do my job either. Doesn't mean I won't face discipline if I stop working. The job of police is to protect and serve. That's what they're trained to do. Whether or not they can face legal consequences if they refuse isn't really relevant here.
That means they can't be sued for this, but GP is taking about their training, and departmental policy/procedures. It is their professional responsibility to stop the threat.
>Thinking he was the first officer to arrive and wanting to waste no time, Arredondo believed that carrying the radios would slow him down. One had a whiplike antenna that would hit him as he ran. The other had a clip that Arredondo knew would cause it to fall off his tactical belt during a long run.
There are children being shot and he's worried some radio antenna's gonna smack him as he ran, or that one might fall off his belt? Bite your lip and put up with the antenna whipping you, and/or put the other radio on your belt, hoping that it doesn't fall off, and if it does, at least you can say you tried.
I realize we're talking split seconds, but it doesn't take long to clip a radio, as you're walking, to your belt.
"To Arredondo, the choice was logical. An armed killer was loose on the campus of the elementary school. Every second mattered. He wanted both hands free to hold his gun, ready to aim and fire quickly and accurately if he encountered the gunman."
If you don't want to find yourself in harm's way, don't become a police officer. Legally required or not, they knew the risks when they signed up, they knew what they were trained to do, and then they... didn't.
The problem is that they're equally as likely to be crucified if they jump in, and do a dumb thing and accidentally kill someone when others think that it was avoidable. There are just as many people crying "why didn't they just shoot the shooter in the leg to incapacitate him".
I'd rather someone be crucified for fucking up than for not doing anything at all, in this instance. Time is a massive factor in these situations, and time was massively wasted.
This is just unreasonable. Humans have a natural desire to preserve their own lives. First responders aren't any different. The idea that first responders are superheros is a fallacious trope. The vast majority of police never use their gun over their entire career.
Putting themselves in harms way is the deal. It’s why they get to retire over a decade earlier than the rest of us with a nice pension. It’s why they get qualified immunity for a whole bunch of actions.
They aren’t holding up their side of the deal here.
Well said. In addition to what you've listed, it's also why we give them a monopoly on the use of force. The belief that they will protect is why we don't have vigilantes and mercenaries roaming the streets (for the most part). These cops were worse than useless. If they weren't present, there's no way the parents and the rest of the community would have let the shooter stay in that school with their children for so long.
Yes, it's expected that first responders may do things that are generally dangerous but they're not on kamikaze missions, it's completely normal for them to back out when they believe their own life is in danger.
This is not any different for any first responder. Firefighters will run right back out of your house if they think it's required to save their own lives.
Having a large number of police doesn't decrease the risk to the first person to jump through the door. And most police body armor is only effective against handgun rounds, across part of the body.
Police militarization helps the police protect themselves when a situation gets out of control. I don't think there's much evidence to show that it ever helps police protect others. Although, there's a lot of reasons why people might be misled to believe so.
Don't soldiers have to undertake such dangerous actions? What's the point of militarizing all of these police departments with actual War on Terror surplus if they're not going to make use of it? So that weaponry can be misused in disproportionate responses in less dangerous situations?
They do make use of it, to protect themselves. I've never seen evidence of police using that equipment to swoop in and save anyone.
Soldiers use that equipment in a very different way, are way better trained and compensated, and have a very different set of rules to work with. And very rarely is it their mission to swoop in and save innocent people.
Fine. But seeing as how SWAT teams have at least police-grade tactical equipment and training, and are expected to burst through doors, and this town had a SWAT team, you would think this was their moment to act.
Saving a house is not the same thing as saving children.
People risk or sacrifice themselves to save others with some frequency. Just a week before Ulvade, Dr. John Chang gave his life to tackle the shooter at his church in Orange County. Bravery exists. The belief in bravery is why we give special privileges to law enforcement. If we knew that police would never put themselves in harm's way to save children, we would never tolerate law enforcement as it currently exists.
Bravery is why you give people medals, it makes no sense to give Police Officers privileges on the guess that maybe some of them will be brave.
In the Commonwealth a police officer would likely get a George Cross for extraordinary bravery (the Victoria Cross is the medal for extraordinary bravery in the face of the enemy and so accordingly it is awarded to the military). New Zealand police officer Stewart Guthrie was awarded (posthumously) in 1990 for confronting a gunman who'd killed a dozen people. Guthrie warned him, "Stop or I shoot" but the gunman shot him first.
But of course such awards are rare because such events are rare in Commonwealth countries.
If a soldier goes AWOL because they're "scared" of fighting or consistently straight up neglects to do their job, I'm sure "natural self preservation" will be a stunning and effective defense at the court martial regardless if they're ina combat role or not.
There are many, many stories of individuals putting themselves in danger and in cases dying to protect others. Just the one that came to mind while reading about this sad story, done by a bunch of teens saving their fellow school members.
>>Koen, Petrus Lucas received the Wolraad Woltemade award posthumously. The 17-year-old drowned after rescuing his cousin and five fellow school pupils.
>>Du Toit, Daniel Sarel, aged 14, dived back into the water three times and saved three lives.
>>Mahner, Alfred who drove to the site, jumped into the water and helped several children to safety and assisted the fire brigade to attach cables to the bus.
>>Opperman, Gotlieb Rudolf, aged 15, was rescued in an unconscious condition from the bus after jumping back into the water three times to rescue children.
I'm sure there's a constant stream of similar stories every day.
Out of the 700,000 police officers in the US, there are undoubtably hundreds, maybe thousands, of them that would voluntarily sacrifice their life to save others. The other 99.9+% of them do as much as they can and but still want to go home to their own children.
Calculated risks, yes, like going in to the same building as an active shooter. They're not going to jump in front of a bullet to protect anyone else, though. The primary responsibility of any first responder -- police, fire, or EMS -- is to preserve their own lives.
Firefighters can and do frequently put themselves at far more risk than any police officer ever will. Police don't even rank up near the top of the list in terms of most dangerous jobs to hold.
If the police cannot do their jobs to save children from being killed by a school shooter then they should not be police officers. They should not be militarized and given advanced equipment, they should not pretend that they ever need it and their budget shouldn't be the majority of a town's spending. And if they don't like it, then maybe the police and the police union can do better campaigning on actual ways to stop school shooters instead of using it as an excuse to further increase their own budget.
> The primary responsibility of any first responder -- police, fire, or EMS -- is to preserve their own lives.
Over the lives of children, though? Putting your life in danger to save a random guy's life is heroic, but not expected. You're both adults, your safety isn't guaranteed, and it's not guaranteed that you'll be able to save him. But it's quite different when, instead of a random guy, it's a group of children.
I think that's the striking difference with Uvalde. It's really, really hard for me to imagine firefighters not rushing into a burning elementary school to get the kids to safety. Societally, we expect them to, and they know we expect them to.
Society also expects the same from police (laying down your life to save a child), but I'm not sure these police fully understood this societal expectation at the time of the incident, or else they would have acted differently.
>Society also expects the same from police (laying down your life to save a child), but I'm not sure these police fully understood this societal expectation at the time of the incident, or else they would have acted differently.
And yet...
>“People are going to ask why we’re taking so long,” a man who investigators believe to be Chief Arredondo could be heard saying, according to a transcript of officers’ body camera footage.
>By that point, officers in and around the school had been growing increasingly impatient, and in some cases had been loudly voicing their concerns. “If there’s kids in there, we need to go in there,” one officer could be heard saying, according to the documents.
Socially, there's an expectation that all other considerations are disregarded when children are involved. But you really can't save anyone if you're dead anyway. People want to think that heroes will die trying, but those heroes also want to go home to their own children. There's really no black-and-white line here, it's a big grey area.
> The primary responsibility of any first responder -- police, fire, or EMS -- is to preserve their own lives.
This is fundamentally wrong. If it were ok, let's just disband them all and save a lot of money since their responsibility doesn't benefit anyone other than themselves. I reject the concept of a society where this is somehow ok.
It's 100% the truth. First responders are neither instructed to nor required to sacrifice their lives at work. They're required to take upon some amounts of risk as a matter of circumstance, but that line stops far before death.
The idea that first responders can solve anything is a very comforting idea that resonates with many people. That doesn't make it true.
>They're not going to jump in front of a bullet to protect anyone else, though. The primary responsibility of any first responder -- police, fire, or EMS -- is to preserve their own lives.
And this is where, circumstantially, you and I seem to have a fundamentally different viewpoint. We'll just keep going in circles.
Police departments are budgeted and equipped on the assumption it will be useful in situations like this, but the equipment isn't used in situations like this. Instead it's used for the abuse of defenseless civilians.
If we're willing to remove these things, then I'm more than fine with not expecting them to handle dangerous situations.
You're removing all the oxygen from the real debate: police officers are expected to rush an active shooter scene to end the threat. Containment only increases the casualties. This has been the best response for a long time. Read this: https://www.theiacp.org/resources/policy-center-resource/act...
What has seemingly happened in Uvalde is a complete betrayal of that typical response. Officers contained the threat, allowing it to fester inside the school for an hour. When going in, they focused on the children instead of the shooter, getting even more children killed because of this.
That they are not legally required to put themselves in harm's way does not mean their coordinated response must be whitewashed.
I don't disagree that it's a best practice, or that those best practices are a good idea.
Expecting the police to follow those best practices every time is not any more reasonable than expecting any other profession to follow best practice every time. The reason we don't legally require them to prevent crime is that it's an unachievable standard.
I'm sorry, i worked with patient health data, and i'm currently working with people banking informations.
Expecting i follow the industry best practice is the MINIMUM. It is reasonable that my employer expect me to store my passowrds/api keys everytime and that i do not publish them on github/gitlab. It is also reasonable that my APIs are protected. Its is also reasonable that i monitor if my services are up or down. I don't understand why a police officer would not be held by the same standards.
Also, ~7 years ago, i was a counselor at a youth camp for police orphans. The three directors were from the RAID (SWAT equivalent in my country) and the medical assistant from the CRS (specialized police for riot control). They might have oversold their heroics, and those of the parents of the children we created activities for, but even then, any one of them would've gone inside as soon the shooter was contained.
> Their hesitation to react and go in is the complete opposite of what they were trained to do
trained to do, not compelled to do
they won't be charged with a crime because they broke no law
they probably won't be fired either because their union will sue and probably win if so
they won't all be put on desk duty because the local govt cannot afford to hire replacement better-cops while also paying all of the worse-cops to sit at a desk
Charging in against someone with an AR-15 and some cover is suicide.
It's hard to fault the cops on this one. The 2012 Florida nightclub shooting was a roughly comparable situation - barricaded shooter, substantial firepower, hostage situation.[1] It took three hours to stop that guy, and the cops had to punch a hole in a wall with explosives and an armored vehicle.
I thought body cam footage was public data, discoverable and releasable under the law.
There is no one left to prosecute here since they killed the shooter so there is no reason to delay disclosure.
That thin blue line looks more and more like a line for cowards to hide behind while they seek to escape accountability for actions they know would have them arrested if they had no badge. Simply holding their noses while a colleague escapes prosecution for criminal acts by hiding behind a badge or a brotherhood of LEO is about as chickenshit as it gets.
> That thin blue line looks more and more like a line for cowards to hide behind while they seek to escape accountability for actions they know would have them arrested if they had no badge.
Half the country has known this for a couple years now. It's a shame it took the deaths of children for the rest to start to figure it out.
I'm a serial litigator of Freedom of Information requests. The reason I have to even litigate is because the public bodies believe every tiny thing they do is not disclosable.
I'm about 6 years into one lawsuit to disclose the contents of a jail Policy and Procedures manual. The AG ruled that it was all subject to disclosure except the bits about locks and keys and where the weapons are stored. The jail is free to ignore the AG ruling and continues to maintain that even the sections on how the jail library books are top secret.
It's absolutely impossible to know if the jail employees are doing their jobs as they are supposed to without the public knowing what those roles are and what the job requirements are. You can't keep these people honest without knowing if they are abusing their positions.
Public disclosure should be the mandatory default for public bodies.
I'm actually a developer for pretty much the last 40 years :) I ended up in a county jail due to some mental health issues, and my coding slowed down in there so I needed a new hobby. I put all my energy 24/7 into trying to get the detainees all the rights they were entitled to. A lot of that was trying to get information to prove the terrible things that the Sheriff's office was doing.
Public bodies definitely need to be careful about what they write in emails. It's funny to read about how yourself in their internal emails and what they are planning for you.
No problem. I wish what I didn't wasn't necessary. I'm helping others to try to make changes to the FOIA laws to fix the slew of problems. It's baby steps. It's like hacking - laws are written, the bugs are found, they are fixed, it's just that it takes decades to make the change, unlike coding where it takes 2 minutes to recompile.
The AG's legal team in Illinois can issue binding or non-binding rulings. So, even though they gave a detailed legal breakdown of their ruling and why it applied, and (bless them) having read through the entire 800 page manual, they still only issued a non-binding ruling which the Sheriff's office just laughed at.
For some reason they only issue binding rulings in a tiny fraction of very contentious cases. It sucks. It doesn't make any sense to me. It can take two years to get a non-binding ruling on a case just for the public body to ignore it.
It's one of the best ways to keep a government honest. The people own the government, therefore they should know what the government is doing in their name. I hate governments keeping secrets from me, especially when they are doing it simply in the name of control and power.
I’ve wondered if someone could run for mayor of Uvalde on the simple platform of firing everyone in their police force, and eliminating pensions for any police officers deployed to the school.
There would be a very real chance the police would simply just murder you and your family. There is ample precedent, in the united states, in most of our lifetimes.
we are here in this debate over and over after columbine, sandy hook and countless others because there is strong minority who either don’t care or believe gun freedom is worth the cost. I don’t think uvalde is going to change that overnight
I misread that, the point is still the same though, Police reformation[1] is even more murky in terms of support than gun control, proposals for changing qualified immunity, national background check for officers, privatization, use of force , no knock warrants have gone nowhere for the most part.
[1] What defund the police really is or should be about
Yeah, sure. The "weakness" they don't want exposed is them standing around in the hallway doing nothing while the murderer took his time in a classroom full of kids.
I don't want to be Conspiracy Guy here but I read that the officers on the scene fired 26-27 shots into the classroom where the shooter was. 26-27 sounds like a LOT of shots. I get it that this isn't some sniper rifle on Call of Duty but is this going to end up like a Pat Tillman situation where we find out later that one of these kids was hit by friendly fire? Where did those 26-27 shots end up? Sounds a bit reckless in those close confines without more details.
It sort of blows up the whole pro gun control argument that citizens shouldn't be expected to have to protect themselves but instead rely on law enforcement :p
People who want weaker and stronger gun control laws can find consensus for the idea that trained police are the most tactically equipped to deal with an ongoing crime, and that you should not interfere with professionals who are already on the scene. 40% of Uvalde's city budget is going to police.
The police went in to save their own kids, but detained and chastised parents who went in to do the same. How many more trained experts with guns we do need to stop school shootings? Should townsfolk have enough guns and force on their side to subdue the police so that they can go into classrooms themselves as an impromptu tactical force?
If by "chastised" you mean "threatened to tase", yep. They're also retaliating against one woman who went in to save her own kids. IIRC, she's on probation and they're trying to take her kids away now.
Online publication "The Root" paraphrased this (source: https://www.theroot.com/uvalde-mom-who-saved-her-children-sa...) as: "Angeli Rose Gomez told CBS News that she was informed that if she continues to talk to media about her fearless actions, she would be charged with a probation violation for obstruction of justice."
Thankfully, a judge nixed that threat. Still, that the threat was even made in the first place is disgusting.
"But Gomez said the judge overseeing her probation told her she did not face new legal problems and that her bravery would be rewarded with a shortened probation."
I'm pretty sure since that time a judge ruled in her favor and the previous probation history is no longer a threat to her maintaining custody to her kids.
You can watch the hundreds of videos on the PoliceActivity youtube channel showing how terrible "trained police" are at using guns (or doing anything really). Any shooting hobbyist is going to be a better shot than most police officers. My favorite video is the one where the cop empties an entire magazine at a stationary guy 7 feet away and misses every single shot. The one thing cops are really good at though is multiple cops screaming conflicting commands all at the same time. Freeze! Don't move! Hands up! Turn around! Get down on the ground!
An antiquated notion of a profession is some "job" that has a primary responsibility to the public: nurse, doctor, lawyer, police officer, firefighter, etc.
You should not go into a profession that entails personal risk if that prevents you from meeting your obligations to the public. I surely wouldn't call actually following the department's policy and training in response this event superhuman in any way, though pretending it is serves to absolve those who failed in their duty.
There's a large difference between taking on expected amounts of risk, and engaging an active shooter. Most of the risk that police officers are expected to take on are struggling with an arrest suspect, being in the vicinity of violent people, standing along a busy roadside, or the potential of being in car accidents. Most of their obligation to the public is to show up after a crime has happened, writing a report, and investigating the high priority crimes. About 3/4 of police in the US never use their gun over their entire career.
When a group sees themselves superheroes, are treated like superheroes, put superhero slogans on their vehicles, are given weapons and armor and hazard pay based on their imminent superhero behavior, only to run and cower at the first sign of danger...
Perhaps it's not the rest of us who are the problem.
If we could choose our police like our cell service, I'd pay for the police force that required military service or punished officers who did not act when they should
"protect and serve" is a motto that originated from a contest in a magazine. It's not a quote from a legal text.
We vote by wallet for our cell service and we vote by ballot for our police budgets. If you can only afford a house in a neighborhood with a Cricket Wireless tax base, then you get Cricket Wireless quality police.
Creating a new police force is probably not any harder than making an MVNO and probably much easier than acquiring spectrum to create a real wireless carrier.
Other take: north of a dozen "good guys with guns" didn't do jack-shit.
Other other take: military bases have very strict gun control, far in excess of the civilian world, despite hopefully being far more reliable, stable, and law-abiding than the general population. It makes them more vulnerable in certain rare cases, but they judge it to make them far safer in general, so the rules stick.
Other other other take: pro-gun people and pro-gun organizations sure are eager to keep gun-toting randos way the hell away from themselves, most of the time. Super weird behavior if they think more guns make them safer. See also: most courthouses even in red states, et c.
When it actually matters, it's pretty clear what is regarded by basically everyone as making a place safer: fewer guns. It's only when people are talking a big game that they absolutely aren't willing to back up, that they claim to believe the opposite is true.
>north of a dozen "good guys with guns" didn't do jack-shit.
The "good guys with guns" clearly had no investment in a positive outcome, unlike the parents who were fighting the police to save their kids. A "good guy with a gun", by definition, has a personal, moral obligation to save lives...something that those police obviously lacked, so classifying them as such is disingenuous.
OK, so we've solved school shootings, let's say (ignoring that when it actually matters ~everyone agrees removing guns makes things safer, let's just grant that for the sake of argument). How about when it's not kids, with relatives nearby? Vegas shooting? Malls? You gonna run in and risk your life to save some strangers? These cops didn't, despite guns and training and all that "warrior mentality" shit.
[EDIT] My main point is just that we already know how to reduce gun violence. People with power, even if they're publicly extremely pro-gun, don't want people with guns around them unless they're paying them or they're cops. Organizations with the ability to curtail gun possession do so enthusiastically and almost universally, even if their members & leadership claim the solution to shootings is more guns in more places. So we flood the world with more guns and save (let's be extremely generous) 5% of the people who'd have been murdered with guns. Great. Wonderful. Could have done a lot better by doing the opposite, though.
I'm not sure I understand your point. The shooter was stopped by border patrol officers who risked their lives to end the shooting, so yes, there are people willing to step up and save lives. In this situation, these people were rarer than anyone would have liked. But we will always need them to stop violence, regardless of if guns are generally banned.
> It sort of blows up the whole pro gun control argument that citizens shouldn't be expected to have to protect themselves but instead rely on law enforcement :p
Maybe it was a joke, but it's a bad one when some people actually think that.
I'll reconsider my position when major organizations and government buildings and such start shifting to encouraging gun possession by people who aren't in law enforcement or the security staff. Meanwhile, it doesn't look like it's even controversial in any context other than partisan hacks promoting positions they don't (apparently) believe: keeping guns away is much safer than allowing them. I can tell this is true based on how, again, damn near everyone behaves when they have the choice to ban them or allow them, including the very people promoting more guns as the solution to gun violence. It is only not the obvious solution when the game isn't safety, but politics.
Unfortunately I am not going to bite on "everywhere is safer with more guns" argument because I also don't believe it :)
You can believe that people shouldn't want/need guns while also believing they should be able to exercise that right if they want to. I hold that belief. Guns aren't for everyone, but who am I to deny someone of their right to defend themselves, for example, from an abusive ex-partner.
parents tried to go in UNARMED and the cops arrested them. Bringing a gun wouldn't have helped them, unless they had mowed down every cop first. Do you think they should have done that?
Isn't it implied? If you remove my ability to protect myself am I not forced to rely on the police to protect me? Unless they are arguing that gun control will solve all future violent crime I don't see how you could say this with a straight face.
If they are "serious" about gun control or not would certainly be up for debate, but I have heard this argument many many times.
In this case you would've needed enough guns to subdue the police, as the police were threatening to taser and arrest parents who wanted to save their kids.
There's sufficient consensus on both the stronger/weaker gun control sides to agree that police are the most tactically equipped to deal with an ongoing crime, and that you should not interfere with professionals who are already at the scene.
Saying that you shouldn't interfere with an ongoing crime implicitly assumes the police are doing something about the crime and not just watching children be murdered. Best case is parents stand back while the police engage - but if the police aren't doing that then all bets are off.
The police were doing something. They were threatening the parents with tasers and arrests if they interfered. Does "all bets are off" mean that parents should have enough tactical force to subdue the police? In evaluating potential scenarios, is a shootout with the police on the table of possibilities?
The police even threaten parents with obstruction of justice and violating probation for merely talking to the media about running into the school.
If I happened to be on the jury for a case assessing the murder of an Uvalde police officer by an Uvalde school parent I would not vote "Guilty" under any circumstance.
Realistically, I think what this situation means is that the police, at least in Uvalde, need to be disbanded and reformed and serious steps need to be taken to ensure their failure is not repeated. I think such serious steps include charging the cowardly officers with murder. Future Uvalde officers should know it is more dangerous to refuse to face the school shooter - and one path for that is if they know they will get the death penalty for being complicit in the mass murder of children if they just cower outside while the massacre happens.
You're basically asking for a Supreme Court shakeup and an overturning of stare decisis. That's the only way any criminal charge would even be on the table for discussion.
If I were an Uvalde prosecutor (and I'm not even a lawyer so I have limited knowledge of the law) then I would charge the police on the grounds that they protected the murderer from the parents without actually doing anything to arrest or kill the murderer. The police were effectively serving as protection for the murderer. It would be legal for the police to detain the parents in the course of the police doing their duty - for example, the police could hold the parents back while other officers engaged the shooter, but if the police aren't fulfilling their duties then they have no legal reason to detain the parents and are therefore engaging in criminal acts to facilitate the murder of children.
I would take a list of the children who died and charge all of the non-responsive officers with the murder of the first child on the list under this theory. If a jury rejected it then I would charge the officers for the second child on the list, possibly with an updated theory of the crime to account for double jeopardy or to anticipate the police officers defense, and keep going until I found a sympathetic jury or ran out of victims.
If the supreme court, or any superior court, would overturn this case that would have to happen after the case was decided in the lower courts and while the officers languished in jail and I would fight to delay any overturning as long as possible.
Apart from the law, the basic facts of the matter are that nineteen children were murdered and the police are largely responsible for that fact. Of course the murderer is the one who ultimately killed the children, and bears the most culpability, but the police had ample time and opportunity to engage the murderer and save the children and did not. Morally, the police are absolutely responsible and I think a creative and aggressive prosecutor could find a way to present the fact pattern such that a jury would agree.
> There's sufficient consensus on both the stronger/weaker gun control sides to agree that police are the most tactically equipped to deal with an ongoing crime
I disagree because I use a different bar for "sufficient". I never have a conversation with people (or online) within the midwest states without a jab at the ineffectiveness of LEOs. There's been a national consensus for awhile, which has been diminished, for sure. For many, Jan 6 was another event showing that the lack of police action can lead to outrageous events that were previously fantasy. Confidence in police (local or not) has been eroding for decades and this is a tentpole event that will be referenced in the future.
> If you remove my ability to protect myself am I not forced to rely on the police to protect me?
Gun control does not remove your ability to protect yourself. This is a false premise. Even in a world where the US government institutes mandatory buy backs of anything that looks like a gun, you are not completely devoid of options to protect yourself.
Statistically, aside from some very specific places in the US like the bad parts of LA/Chicago/New York, you are far more likely to die of suicide by firearm than you are of homicide by firearm.
What self defense tool is as effective as a firearm, especially in hands of a smaller or elderly person? Any gun control measure that restricts firearms makes it harder to defend yourself. I'd like to think you can depend on the police but that's not always the case.
> Any gun control measure that restricts firearms makes it harder to defend yourself.
Bump stocks were outlawed. What impact did that have on self-defense?
What impact did restricting assault weapons have on self defense?
You are making a claim here. It is necessary for you to back up your claim with evidence. The goal post already moved from the original comment I replied to, which is fine. To avoid further wriggling, though, we need data.
You brought up the point of banning (restricting) all firearms. No sense arguing about assault weapons since that's a loosely based term. I think the fact that all the world's police use firearms should point to their effectiveness.
They are suggested. Many people carry mace/pepper spray. Tasers are finicky and require a fortunate prong placement in the attacker, and the attacker to not be wearing thick clothing, or it just doesn't work. Stun guns require you to be upclose and personal with the attacker. If you're a smaller/weaker person, this is extremely risky.
Most non-lethal weapons are for you to get away from an uncommitted attacker as quickly as possible, not to stop a serious threat in its tracks. If someone has a weapon and intent on killing you, a firearm is your best bet in stopping them.
Makes me wonder why we haven't seen more advancements in this space in the last few decades, especially with the U.S. military overseeing multiple occupations where sublethal weaponry would've been helpful. No startups trying to invent sci-fi stun guns at all?
Years ago I once made a joke that Tesla could pivot into that by inventing a "lightning gun." Given Musk's descent into attention-grabbing memelordom, I'm surprised he hasn't suggested such a possibility yet, to unilaterally solve all these controversies in the news, himself.
The argument is that fewer guns in circulation decreases violence. That is to the point where cops are unarmed in Norway, most of the UK and Ireland, Iceland, New Zealand, Botswana and a dozen smaller countries.
This sounds like a "no true scotsman" fallacy. If your definition of someone who is not serious includes people who say "rely on police to help", then it is circular logic.
Yes, which completely ignores the difference between a person who has had this situation forced on them (A teacher or school administrator) and someone who has to choose to enter it.
I think it might be quite a bit easier to confront a shooter when its obvious that doing nothing will result in your death. In this situation in particular I can't imagine how armed teachers would have made it any worse, but can certainly imagine it making it better.
Or, we could mitigate the active shooter problem by making guns less easily available. Bring back the assault weapons ban and strict licensure for all other firearms and ammunition.
And what exactly would stop that from happening now? Do you really believe the only thing stopping a teacher from a rampage is the fact that its illegal for them to have a gun on campus?
I think it’s funny that this footage is deemed to dangerous for the public, but the weapons used by the gunmen are totally safe for the public to purchase.
The language quoted looks like some absolutely generic form response that they probably give to every request. Pretty wild to send that garbage in a high-profile case like this.
Videos establish a chronology, and precise locations for each officer. Even if it's an hour of them sitting on their hands, it's important (and rightfully public) evidence.
Knowing a lot of police officers and having worked with them for years to address gangs/gang violence among other things, I have to say that painting all law enforcement with one brush is not helpful or useful.
Even if it did: the courts have repeatedly held (to my disdain) that the police are not required to enforce the law. My guess is that they're trying to hedge against the inevitable wave of civil suits against them, which will ultimately compel the release of the bodycam footage. But their hope is to run out the clock on public outrage.
Fair point but no, I expect the legal system to incriminate them. My issue isn't that the cops are acting in self interest, it's that they are systematically enabled to get away with it.
Or more like just create transparency in this case, I don't know if they did anything criminal or not.
If you block an ambulance and someone dies that can be considered manslaughter. Likewise, if a cop prevents people from trying to save others which they obviously aren't going to do, then that would be very similar.
Even for negligent manslaughter, that would require a "specific duty" to act, which police officers do not have towards individuals unless there is a special prior arrangement in place.
Not if they prevented parents or someone else from entering who could have saved lives. It would be hard for them to argue they don't have a specific duty but can prevent other people from fulfilling that duty.
There isn’t much of an argument to be made about that at all.
“Specific duty” has an established legal meaning here. It means that the police have already established some agreement to protect an individual beyond what they normally do for the general public. That’s clearly not applicable to this situation.
Quite famously, the police are much better at shooting children [1] than they are at shooting to protect children.
The Uvalde PD consumes 40% of the town budget ($4m of $10m exclusive of a $500k grant they got from the state of Texas months earlier). 19 police officers were on scene and sat twiddling their thumbs for an hour despite repeated 911 calls from students inside. Oh actually not quite nothing: they threatened to violate the probation of a mother on scene [2].
There's an obvious upside to this particular shooter dying but it has one unfortunate side effect: Texas allows information to be suppressed when the suspect is deceased [3]. Had he lived it would've been inevitable this bodycam footage and other evidence would've come out. Now? We'll see.
I've now lost count of the number of times to story has changed from the Uvalde PD. But nothing here will change.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Tamir_Rice
[2]: https://sports.yahoo.com/uvalde-mom-ran-school-save-02574885...
[3]: https://www.texastribune.org/2018/04/22/texas-law-allows-pol...