> 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.
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.