New information seems to show that the best and brightest of Texas law enforcement sat on their hands for an hour before breaching the door to the classroom and killing the gunman. While the police cowered, parents offered to step into the breech and enter the school to save their kids as the police tackled them.
CNN had an FBI agent who suggested, "if the police can’t breech a door, they should be teaming up with the local fire service Hook & Ladder Co. – those guys are fearless.
intercst
Totally OT rant
I find it powerful and right that the NewYorkTimes has been putting high quality powerful photos of those dead kids and their teachers above the fold in every digital and all the printed versions I have seen.
These were PEOPLE who had dreams and were loved and deserved far better than WE gave them. It should hurt, and it sure hurts me.
Husband tells me that I should, by now, after hundreds of thousands of gay suicides and murders and preventable HIV deaths, have learned to “let it go”.
Nope.
A brilliant local Catholic priest, getting to know me over Margaritas, told me (translating his colloquial Spanish through alcoholic memory is tough but I remember the essence) that I was the type of person “Who I imagine perhaps takes weird comfort that at the end of time God will have you testify at a divine tribunal of all the wrongs and horrors you have seen. You must stop thinking like that. It is false. You will not condemn, but will leave that to God, and you will forgive and understand and love them all.”
Not yet I won’t. I can’t.
david fb
There have been at least 4 other attempts in Texas in the last day that were foiled before they happened. Round Rock and Georgetown are both very close to me. Richardson is a city I used to live next door to. And a fourth in Manor, 30 minutes from here.
My girl just graduated elementary school yesterday. As you can imagine, I have a lot of not very good emotions going through me right now.
(((bjurasz & family)))
Some (many/most?) shooters are going for notoriety–dead or alive.
No notoriety = kills their incentive.
Remove them and what they do from the news–absolutely. Suddenly, the killers are in a vacuum. They have no way to be/become notorious.
No notoriety = kills their incentive.
The media gives saturation coverage to things that are “SHOCKING!!!ALARMING!!!” Whether it is a plague, or a little kid down a well, or the daily “60 million people threatened by spring weather in the spring”. If there isn’t something they can natter incessantly about, they invent something, like a “toilet paper shortage”. That is the nature of the beast. As long as people gawk at the hype and hysteria, they will provide it.
Nothing new under the sun department. I saw this film in the 60s, under the title “The Big Carnival”. It has since reverted to it’s original title “Ace In The Hole”.
Ace in the Hole | Original Trailer [HD]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AX8GLtyWpOY
On the chance someone here has never seen it, a man is trapped in a cave-in in an abandoned Indian pueblo. He could be rescued the same day, but an ambitious newspaper reporter smells an opportunity, and advocates for a different rescue plan, that will take weeks, weeks the reporter can use to milk the story for publicity. The wife of the trapped man is OK with milking it, because she is making a pile of money charging admission to all the people who show up to gawk. The rescue takes so long the trapped man develops pneumonia and dies.
Steve
And while the best and brightest of the Texas law enforcement and political persuasions were all posturing at the press conference yesterday in their cowboy hats like tough guys giving blatantly false information (no shots were exchanged as the shooter entered the school, gunman did not have to fight his way into the school, no local “resource officers” were on the campus), it was a federal Border Patrol sharp shooter who actually took out the assailant. Border Patrol? Why are Border Patrol agents handling local LEO work?
Turns out this is quite common.
https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/border-patrol-uva…
Seems some anti-government, anti-tax states have been consistently underfunding first responder functions in border areas, relying instead on resources from federal Border Patrol teams to step in for emergency scenarios – while bad-mouthing federal gummint interference and spending the entire time.
Texas-scale hypocrisy.
WTH
This is very hard, the police could not go into the classroom shooting.
It is next to impossible not to rush the classroom as well. These are small town folks. But even in the cities in a country this size how many police are rushing into totally insane mass shootings to stop them? How do you tell a man you made $60k so risk your life? How do those kids get killed?
Why are some people hell bent on profiting off of the deaths of those children? The police in Uvarde are not. The focus on the police accomplishes nothing. Follow the money.
It is next to impossible not to rush the classroom as well. These are small town folks. But even in the cities in a country this size how many police are rushing into totally insane mass shootings to stop them? How do you tell a man you made $60k so risk your life? How do those kids get killed?
There was a mass shooting at the high school in Oxford, MI a few months ago. Four dead, seven wounded. Shot by an emotionally disturbed 15 year old student at the school, with a SIG Sauer automatic his parents had given him as a birthday present.
Oxford PD had the perp in custody within 5 minutes of the first 911 call being received.
The worst part of the Oxford case is, that morning, the teacher noticed some very disturbing things the kid was writing in his notebook. The parents were called in to the school that day to discuss what the kid was writing. The parents were urged to take the kid home that moment, but they refused, so the kid went back to class.
The Buffalo shooter arrived at the grocery store at 2:30pm. By 2:36, the police talked him into surrendering.
So why did the police in Texas hold back for nearly an hour? Did they try to engage the perp by any means?
Steve
Texas-scale hypocrisy.
================================================
We see that in the news almost daily.
Jaak
So why did the police in Texas hold back for nearly an hour? Did they try to engage the perp by any means?
The perp was in the schoolyard shooting at people in a funeral home across the street for 12 minutes, before he entered the school through an open door. Observing this, the police retreated to their “secure perimeter” and heroically “called for backup”.
Since the embarrassment of Columbine in 1999, police procedure has been to enter the school building and engage the shooter with whatever resources are at hand - whether that be a police sidearm, a rock, or stick. The thinking is that if the perp is shooting at the police, he isn’t shooting at the kids.
Apparently the Uvalde Police Dept conducted active shooter training at Uvalde High School on March 22. Proper procedure should have been fresh in their minds.
The Uvalde police station is 1.4 miles from the Robb Elementary School. With sirens blaring, it should have been a 3 minute trip.
https://nypost.com/2022/05/25/texas-shooting-salvador-ramos-…
I note that during the Parkland shooting in Florida, the $90,000/yr police resource officer assigned to the school ran outside when the shooting started. He’s currently under criminal charges.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoneman_Douglas_High_School_s…
SRO Scot Peterson, who was armed, on-site and in uniform[176] as a Broward Sheriff’s Office deputy, was accused of remaining outside Building 12 during the shooting. Eight days after the attack, he was suspended without pay by Sheriff Israel, and he immediately retired. Sheriff Israel said “Scot Peterson was absolutely on campus for this entire event,” and that he should have “gone in, addressed the killer, [and] killed the killer.”[114][177][178]
In June 2019, following an investigation that included interviews with 184 witnesses, Peterson was arrested and then bonded out for the crime of failing to protect the students during the shooting.[179][180] He faces 11 charges of neglect of a child, as well as culpable negligence and perjury.[179] Peterson pleaded not guilty and has filed a motion to have all charges dropped.[181][182]
intercst
So Texas has reduced its Thin Blue Line to heavily armed meter maids and mall cops.
WTH:Seems some anti-government, anti-tax states have been consistently underfunding first responder functions in border areas,
Uvalde had their own SWAT team. They just stood around.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/wxdwgn/uvalde-swat-team-brag…
https://www.thecanary.co/trending/2022/05/26/uvaldes-heavily…
https://reason.com/2022/05/26/witnesses-video-suggest-stunni…
intercst:Since the embarrassment of Columbine in 1999, police procedure has been to enter the school building and engage the shooter with whatever resources are at hand -
That may the stated procedure. It ain’t what happens.
https://wsvn.com/news/local/report-commanding-officer-initia…
Report: Commanding officer initially ordered Parkland 1st responders not to enter school
https://www.police1.com/mass-casualty/articles/report-deputi…
The newly released report suggests the problems with BSO’s response to the Parkland shooting go beyond the school’s resource officer, Deputy Scot Peterson, who was at the school when the shooting began but never went into Building 12. At least three other BSO deputies arrived on campus in time to hear gunfire but said they couldn’t locate where the shooting was taking place.
BSO deputies didn’t immediately attempt to track down shooter Nikolas Cruz or aid the wounded, according to the report by Coral Springs officer Bryan Wilkins, which recounts his actions at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Feb. 14.
Thankfully a Border Patrol agent having lunch heard the call on his radio-drove 40 miles joined up & led a tactical team into the building & killed the shooter sustaining a minor head wound.
https://www.click2houston.com/news/local/2022/05/27/border-p…
Who knows how many children could have been saved if the police entered & engaged the shooter.
intercst:I note that during the Parkland shooting in Florida, the $90,000/yr police resource officer assigned to the school ran outside when the shooting started. He’s currently under criminal charges.
Yep low on totem pole always takes it in the shorts. What about the guy ordering Parkland 1st responders not to enter the building. Nada.
Lt Calley got stuck with the My Lai Vietnamese massacre of women & children.
His superior Captain Medina had top notch legal representation-F Lee Baily.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Medina
Medina was court-martialed in 1971 for willingly allowing his men to murder noncombatants.[5] Medina denied all the charges and claimed that he never gave any orders to kill Vietnamese noncombatants.
Medina’s defense team, led by F. Lee Bailey
Despite his acquittal, the court martial and negative publicity brought Medina’s military career to an end.
After resigning from the Army, Medina went to work at an Enstrom Helicopter Corporation plant owned by F. Lee Bailey in Menominee, Michigan
Writer Nick Turse after the trial look up platoon members.
https://www.fernandoescalante.net/nick-turse-kill-anything-t…
The visceral horror of what happened at My Lai is undeniable. On the evening of March 15, 1968, members of the Americal Division’s Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry, were briefed by their commanding officer, Captain Ernest Medina, on a planned operation the next day in an area they knew as “Pinkville.” As unit member Harry Stanley recalled, Medina “ordered us to ‘kill everything in the village.’” Infantryman Salvatore LaMartina remembered Medina’s words only slightly differently: they were to “kill everything that breathed.” What stuck in artillery forward observer James Flynn’s mind was a question one of the other soldiers asked: “Are we supposed to kill women and children?” And Medina’s reply: “Kill everything that moves.”
Based on his interviews Turse wrote:"Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam "https://www.amazon.com/Kill-Anything-That-Moves-American/dp/…
So Texas has reduced its Thin Blue Line to heavily armed meter maids and mall cops.
Have you noticed that all the spokespeople we see are from Texas DPS, not the local police or sheriff departments?
DPS spokesperson says the officers did not engage the perp because they didn’t want to be shot.
Apparently, their plan was to wait until the perp ran out of ammo. Only the Federal Border Patrol officers seem to have had a sense of duty.
Uvalde Police Didn’t Enter School As ‘They Could’ve Been Shot’—Lieutenant
Olivarez said: "What the American people need to understand is that officers are making entry into this building. They do not know where this gunman is.
"They are hearing gunshots, they are receiving gunshots. At that point, if they proceeded further without knowing where this suspect was at, they could have been shot, they could have been killed.
https://www.newsweek.com/uvalde-police-school-shooting-texas…
Steve
Texas officials just had a presser. By their timeline, officers were on site for 80 minutes before the perp was taken out.
Supposedly, the site commander decided to treat it as a barricade situation, rather than “active shooter”, so no time pressure, in spite of the fact people were calling 911 over the course of an hour saying there were still people alive in the room and begging for the police to do something.
Steve
Well, you know…everything is BIG in Texas…
Texas-scale hypocrisy.
I blame us for routinely selling automatic weapons to felons and crazy people while cutting funding for mental health services.
It is interesting to note that when a Federal officer (an off duty border patrol agent)finally got in and snuffed out the shooter, he gets lumped in with “cowardly police” by those ranting.
Are you on drugs?
Now the same ranters want to insist this local police department to be more accountable than most insist from the Leader, Biden himself…well the hypocrisy continues to rein.
I’m sorry you’re upset that police are asked to be responsible for their actions when 2 teachers and 19 school children were gunned down and murdered in cold blood.
The police have been completely dishonest about their actions and the story changes everyday. Even Governor Abbott has complained about being given incorrect facts.
This has nothing to do with anyone else.
This has to do with holding police accountable for their actions that may have resulted in unnecessary deaths.
Insist? You bet I insist.
If you think it’s a rant now, wait until the facts come out. And they will.
AW
Funny how the same dishonesty about those border patrol agents using whips on innocents, eh?.. by the POTUS, VP giggles and the woke/racist crew. Yet when it is obvious now that the blame placed on the border agents was misplaced and bogus you hear no outrage or apologies. Some folks are ok with that.</i
The fact that people make posts like this leads me to believe there is at least a 30% chance I’m living in the Matrix.