I know this isn't a joking matter, but . . .
That's my kind of report: everyone is to blame.
But wait: 400 law enforcement officers? 400? What in the everlasting fuck was going on down in Uvalde?
85 thoughts on “Everyone is to blame for Uvalde”
Comments are closed.
Yeah but I’m not sure this lets law enforcement officers offering that excuse off the hook.
To explain the reasons for human behavior is not to defend it. I frequently see this false conflation of explanation with justification on discussion boards.
+1
Many years ago I did a fair bit of hitchhiking. I found that getting a lift near a city was just about impossible. Hundreds of people would pass me every minute and no one would stop. The thinner the traffic, the faster I'd get a lift. In remote parts of Scotland people would pull over before I'd even turned around and put out my thumb.
Jharp’s point makes a lot of sense to me. These people weren’t a bunch of random civilians. These were supposedly highly trained police officers. The protocol weee the situation was clearly established in their general orders or training manuals and had supposedly been practiced repeatedly.
I understand that going through the door was extremely dangerous even with all of their protective gear. Nevertheless it’s what they signed up to do.
Amen
Yes, but the more contenders there are for the dubious honor of being first through the door, the more incentive there is to wait and see if there's a volunteer; or if the officer in charge is going to instruct someone else to do it.
Pure speculation on my part is that telling police officers they ought to rush in to confront an active shooter regardless of the circumstances clashes so violently with the training they receive to handle other situations in strict accordance with prescribed protocols, waiting for backup, observing the chain of command etc that they literally can't bring themselves to do it. Again pure speculation, but the inability to exercise individual initiative may be a kind of learned helplessness caused by the overwhelming importance of following rigid policies and procedures in every other aspect of their work.
Except that police in other cities facing other life-or-death situations actually do eventually go through the door. That’s why most (all prior?) active shooter situations don’t/didn’t last 77 minutes or whatever today’s estimate is for “the length of time police stood around doing nothing.”
At one level that’s true. Nobody wants to be first through the door—I know that I certainly wouldn’t want to be the one to kick down the door and take my chances against an AR-15 because I seen them being fired. And nobody wants to order someone else to undertake a potential suicide mission. Nevertheless, unless we remove these military style weapons from our society, school shootings are going to be a relatively common occurrence. It’s very disturbing that the city police and the school district police had all supposedly performed exercises in which they trained to immediately engage the shooter but somehow that all broke down.
The Forlorn Hope is what, back in the day, they called the first soldiers through the breach in a city wall. They offered extravagant rewards, if you survived. Maybe that would work here? Probably not. The incentives aren't the same nowadays.
Which brings us to the officer in charge. What was he doing all this time?
The EXPECTED officer in charge according to the formally documented protocol for his position (Arredondo) told the investigating committee that he expected someone else to take charge. It gets more complex and stupid from there.
As all the close to 400 responders arrived, some knew that Arredondo should have been in charge, and didn't question why he did nothing - and did nothing. Others didn't know who was in charge and apparently didn't make any attempt to ASK "who is the incident commander"? And did nothing.
Bingo!
To avoid the idiotic "thoughts and prayers" and yet, still stay catholic.
Wasn't this research largely predicated on the Kitty Genovese case, & as it turned out several neighbors called police?
Sixty years ago, though, the Fucking New York Fucking Times ran with the sensational lie instead of the mundane truth. Was Maggie Haberman's dad involved in the reporting?
but these are not bystanders. these are trained professionals on the job.
If only the students had charged the shooter....
It's like they thought they didn't have a right to interfere with somebody's sacred personal holy gun.
As long as it's his gun they can't do anything about it.
This is what you get when "the case goes green before it goes black" intersects with "better to be judged by 12 than carried by 6."
And when you expect your caste enforcers to actually keep the peace. If you want peace officers, we'll have to start training some.
It’s an odd group of ‘warrior cops” who place their own safety above the lives of innocent children. I wouldn’t want to be the first through that door, either. But that’s what these people signed up to do.
I’m no expert about these things , but wouldn’t some type of engagement, if not direct engagement, at least take the shooter’s attention away from killing kids? I may be remembering this detail incorrectly, but wasn’t shooter continuing to kill kids as they cried out while cops were in the hallway? The sounds of the crying kids and gunshots were removed from the video that was leaked. Imagine how horrific the raw footage is.
It would seem to be well established from the reporting that the agreed upon protocol is to engage school shooters immediately. Without waiting for backup or SWAT. This was apparently in the recently completed “training” there (which, in light of events, might more accurately be described an afternoon frolic devoted to LARPing).
To be clear, it’s worth repeating that nobody with any sense whatsoever would want to go through that door against that kid’s firepower. And it’s inappropriate to expect that level of sacrifice from anyone. The only solution to mass shooting is to remove these weapons from our society right now and then begin working on sensible gun control regulations for all other firearms.
“And it’s inappropriate to expect that level of sacrifice from anyone.”
It may be inappropriate in a perfect world, or even in countries where gun control is prevalent, but in this country… it’s totally appropriate to expect the people who volunteered to be the first ones to face the gunfire to do so, especially when we reward them for volunteering with such generous pay and benefits. (Not many people get to retire with full pensions in their 40s, nor get a free pass to break most laws like we give our police.)
Qualified Immunity for QANON's Military Wing is unQuestionably a thing.
I think the last thing you would want would be for a bunch of newly arrived officers from another law enforcement agency to walk into an active shooter incident and replace the commander on the scene.
You have to assume the guy in charge already knows what is going on and is in a better position to manage the situation than you are if you are newly arrived even if you have the legal right to replace him.
So I am reluctant to condemn the agencies that arrived later and did not insist on taking charge.
Didn’t the border patrol unit that confronted the shooter break protocol to do so? It took that long to realize that whoever was “in charge” really wasn’t. And in the meantime, the shooter kills any kids in hiding who made noise. Imagine if the border patrol had not taken charge.
Technically, and somewhat bizarrely, the officers who went through the door were actually following the established protocol by engaging the shooter. They were just doing it well over an hour too late. Both the school district PD and the city PD supposedly had long established protocols directing officers to immediately engage with school shooters, no matter what, and not to consider the active shooter a “barricaded suspect” unless he was isolated and unable to harm anyone.
From what I can gather, this was rehearsed in several exercises. Including, I think, one at that very school.
Reportedly nobody knew who was in charge, including the guy who was supposed to be.
The report says they made no effort to find out who was in charge and connect with them.
Since everyone agreed that the school shooting protocol in effect was to immediately engage the shooter without waiting for backup or SWAT or orders from on high, it’s obvious that the first cops on scene were most at fault but clearly none of these people covered themselves with glory.
And it’s actually easy and reasonable to second guess them because the general orders, the training manuals, and the LARPing exercises they’d recently participated in were explicit: immediately engage no matter what and do not pretend that it is a barricaded suspect situation.
I wouldn’t want to go through that door. But a police officer takes a police officer’s chance, just like a soldier takes a soldier’s chance in battle. If that’s not something those officers were prepared to do, they should resign (logically they should also be moving heaven and earth to remove military style weapons from our society—which is exactly what the police did before they became “warriors” instead of peace officers).
This. If those police officers realize that they aren’t actually willing to do what they signed up to do - run into dangerous situations to stop them from affecting everyone else - then they should resign immediately. That they haven’t done so proves that they have no honor: they want the benefits that come with being a cop without actually doing the job of a cop. They should all be fired.
"Honor" in Texas? Pulease. I am sure you can find one or two honorable police officers, but, over all, they think their job is to chase speeders to make sure the driver is white.
Of course you are loath to condemn the officers. A GQP governor leads the state.
Now, had the response in Bakersfield to the Muslamiac shooter in 2014 been this bad, you would have been calling for Gov. Moonbeam's head.
Blame everyone so no one is responsible.
From snafu to FUBAR
I don't recall a similar situation when law enforcement or anyone successfully took out a shooter under these conditions, that is while he was in a restricted area with a number of victims. Apart from any danger to oneself, most people do not want to rush in with guns blazing and be responsible for killing bystanders or victims, in this case the kids. Is there a standard procedure for such cases that has been proven to work? It's not likely that a small town police department would have the personnel for such a thing, which is one reason that the Uvalde police were waiting for the SWAT team.
Anyway it's probably not constructive to concentrate so much on the incompetence and/or cowardice of the Uvalde and other police. If someone decides to shoot up a bunch of school kids, or any other concentrated group of people, there is not much that can be done to stop him before a lot of people are killed. The problem is not the reaction of law enforcement, it is the too ready availability of rapid-firing guns. Nor is it specifically AR-15's - many other guns can be and have been used in mass killings. And mass killings are only a small part of murders in the US. Most are done with hand guns and for that revolvers can serve as well as semi-automatic weapons.
I have to disagree with that. The right wing response to every school shooting is more cops in schools. This is a glaring example of how that doesn't work.
I have to disagree with that. The right wing response to every school shooting is more cops in schools.
You disagree with him? I believe skeptonomist is saying we can't police our way out of Somalia. Policy-wise, we have to become like Canada or Finland or Australia when it comes to guns. But we're not willing to do that.
In other words, the right wing is wrong to say we can turn to policing to solve our gun violence anarchy. The United States of America cannot eschew standard-issue, high income country gun policies and expect to enjoy standard-issue high income country results wrt gun violence.
We know what works. We're unwilling to do what works.
As long as we insist on being an outlier on gun policy, we'll continue to be an outlier in terms of gun violence levels. It really is that simple.
Finally, while I have zero doubt (based on the reportage I've read, at least) that law enforcement failed badly in Uvalde, I also have zero doubt that angry recriminations about insufficiently brave or competent police officers are an exercise in futility—doomed to fail to solve a problem that can only be solved by a sea change in policy (which itself will require that Democrats win a lot more legislative races—especially in the Senate—and demonstrate an ability to engage in deep reform of the federal judiciary).
If they thought the shooter had full body armor, like in Buffalo, then the hesitation is more understandable.
But it's clear their training was pathetic. The shooter can shoot through the doors and walls. So they didn't have a way to open the door from a distance, or with a shield that will protect the officer opening the door?
They had shields at three minutes.
But they weren't PROPERLY CERTIFIED for protection against rifle fire! How could you expect those officers to do their duty without properly certified equipment?
I wouldn’t disagree that the first mover advantage in school shootings and other gun massacres is almost impossible to overcome until substantial damage has been done. The only realistic solution is to ban the types of military style weapons and ruthlessly remove them from our society. There is no other way.
And yet, the specifics of this school massacre are depressing and infuriating, even within the context you are suggesting. Both the school district PD and the city PD had well established protocols for school massacres directing the immediate engagement with the shooter. The was to be done by the first officer on scene and hunting down and engaging with the shooter was to be the imperative for everyone arriving thereafter.
It was clearly stated in the training materials and during the training sessions and practice exercises that immediately engaging the shooter was the protocol. Everything else would necessarily take a backseat. Specifically, officers we’re supposed to be trained not to wait for backup, not to wait for SWAT, and not to wait for an incident commander’s instructions or the establishment of a command post.
Instead, the rapidly growing army ignored the protocols and did not aggressively engage with the shooter but instead waited as he slaughtered more kids and teachers and then waited some more while those he’d shot but not immediately killed bleed to death waiting, pleading for rescue by the army of heavily armed LARPING bullshitters.
We Flood the country with these weapons then expect the police to die to protect us? Yeah… Everyone is to blame.
You forgot the /s tag after "Everyone is to blame."
I lived in Texas for four years and a neighbor, who wrote for Rich Little said that all she has to do is to read the police ledger to get (some of the best -- her words) material for his comedic work.
400 doesn't surprise me. Our response to everything is to hire more police. We have way more cops than are needed pretty much everywhere.
It reminds me of Lord Jim. Early in the book, when Jim is in maritime school and another boy saves someone from drowning. Jim thinks little of the boy who did the saving. As far as Jim is concerned, it was just luck. Jim would have done the same and even better. So much of the book is about what one would do as opposed to what one actually did. Jim thinks life is a schoolboy adventure. He would have saved that person if he had only had the opportunity.
Then, Jim is faced with an opportunity. He is one of the crewmen on a decrepit ship carrying pilgrims to Mecca, and the ship seems to hit something. The captain and the rest of the crew abandon ship. Jim has his moment of truth, as it were, and abandons ship with the rest of them.
That's the whole theme of the book. We read it with a high school student studying for his SATs. He wanted to go into law enforcement, but I don't think he recognized what the book was about. Everyone and especially young men has that fantasy, the fantasy of being the hero, being the one with the gun who does the heroic thing. The reality is so often different. In Uvalde, we had 400 peace officers of various sorts, and they did nothing but make the situation worse.
I know Conrad is out of fashion, but many of his stories have great relevance today.
You make a very good point. Which highlights the necessity of removing these weapons from our society rather than hoping that a hero is available whenever needed. We need to ban these weapons completely and require them to be immediately surrendered to the police and anyone who fails to do so should be imprisoned for not less than ten years without the possibility of parole.
Wasn't that basically El Jefe Maximo de Maralago's claim about the Parkland shooting? He said he would have rushed into thr school & neutralized the gunman with his bare hands?
Well, slowly lumbered into the school, given those bone spurs in his heel (and he can't remember which heel they were on.).
I thought I had read somewhere that current accepted practice for an active shooter scenario was for the first officers to engage the shooter ASAP. I get that they have a high risk of being wounded or dying, but that comes with the job.
Who am I to judge?….,
Is it part of the job? I don’t think so. Not any more.
Yes, that is part of the job.
A close friend of mine graduated from the police academy. His first assignment was to engage with a person shooting up a neighbor's house with an AK-47, all by himself, no one else went with him.
Now, it is teams that engage, retreat, then another team goes in after learning from the first team. The video shows just the first team, then, no one went in for an hour.
Cowards. Texas is full of them.
Yes, it is the CORE part of the job. The free donuts and coffee are just side benefits.
If it’s not part of the job, then what is? Why are we paying them generous salaries and pensions? Why do we let them break laws with impunity? The entire bargain we’ve made with them is “we’ll give you whatever you want and let you do pretty much whatever you want, and in return you’ll be the first ones to charge any violent criminals.” If they aren’t going to actually do the latter, why are we doing the former?
I understand the desire to have police be heroes and risk their lives. Sometimes we give them awards and medals for heroism when they are successful. To me that’s an acknowledgment that they went above and beyond. I don’t think suicide missions are in the job description regardless of the active shooter training and protocols. I share your frustration and sadness at this tragedy.
There was a shooting in a mall yesterday near Indianapolis. An armed bystander is reported to have killed the murderer. Time will tell if that story holds up but… there you go. Everyone’s got a gun these days. Sometimes the cops shoot first and make mistakes. They are criticized for that. Charged with murder even.
So I’m just not going to be all that surprised or upset when they refuse to take a risk. Letting the shooter exhaust themselves or commit suicide is ok with me if there isn’t a clear way to end it. Maybe that wasn’t the case in Texas, but If I were on a jury, I wouldn’t call them liable or say they should be fired.
It also appears they were at least trying to negotiate his surrender…
“…recently released bodycam footage featuring Uvalde school district police chief Pedro "Pete" Arredondo attempting to negotiate with the gunman inside Robb Elementary School.”
Regrettably, this is far from the first school gun massacre. The many examples since the Columbine High School massacre have been studied very carefully and it is universally accepted by everyone except Arredondo that the only response is to immediately engage the shooter. In this case, to kick in the door and shoot him—which is what the police eventually got around to doing.
Allowing the children and teachers in that room to be slaughtered was absolutely inexcusable.
I get it. If there were a god, these men might face some hard questions from it. But…
WASHINGTON, June 27 - The Supreme Court ruled on Monday that the police did not have a constitutional duty to protect a person from harm, even a woman who had obtained a court-issued protective order against a violent husband making an arrest mandatory for a violation.
The decision, with an opinion by Justice Antonin Scalia and dissents from Justices John Paul Stevens and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, overturned a ruling by a federal appeals court in Colorado. The appeals court had permitted a lawsuit to proceed against a Colorado town, Castle Rock, for the failure of the police to respond to a woman's pleas for help after her estranged husband violated a protective order by kidnapping their three young daughters, whom he eventually killed.
When did the Uvalde shooting happen, before or after?
That ruling by the court? It was years ago.
As would be obvious from Scalia writing the majority opinion.
Who knows? Maybe the particular circle of hell in which Scalia currently resides allows him to write opinions on some kind of senior status?
And here you go… anger at the police and sympathy for the shooter. It’s a crazy world.
https://www.kare11.com/article/news/local/search-warrant-two-snipers-shot-killed-man-in-standoff/89-55b84393-6634-43e7-b1f9-40a590a36d2f
Please show me where in that article there was anger at the police and sympathy for the shooter other than his parents.
It was a goddamn protest. And when a victim showed up and said “what the fuck is wrong with you people?”
Well, their sweet innocent boy suddenly wasn’t so cuddly. Good grief. What is wrong with you people?
If you don't think it's part of the job, then don't apply for a job as a firefighter.
I contrast this (and many other) police responses compared to the actions of firefighters in similar-risk scenarios. And it makes me think our recruiting and training of police officers has jumped the tracks.
The people who sold him the gun… the business owner and / or the employee… plus the people who knew him best… family. They are the ones I want hung out to dry. The cops just clean up the mess. These others made the mess to begin with.
We've built an environment where everyone has to act perfectly both before and during a catastrophic crisis, or else children die. School bureaucrats must make sure every broken lock is fixed immediately. Police must have perfectly functioning lines of command. Individual law enforcement professionals must never have a failure of courage. Every background check must be processed on time. Every teenager must report their dangerous peer to the police. Every social network algorithm must surface the exact right posts and pictures. Every social worker or psychologist must fill out the right form.
And when something goes wrong, we seek someone to blame for *this* mass murder -- as if there won't *always* be someone to blame.
And why have we done this to ourselves? Because right-wingers demand to reserve the right to overthrow the government if they -- regardless of anyone else's views and with no accountability to anyone else -- decide they're being tyrannized. Because those people refuse to buy into participation in a democratic republic, all the rest follows, as day follows night.
The Founders were not as stupid as those right-wingers claim. We wouldn't be here if they were.
Everything is second guessed. It's not just a right-wing problem.
The real problem is that you can make a series of good decisions but rarely is everything a 100% guarantee of success. Good choices sometimes have bad results and bad decisions sometimes have good results. The trick is to figure out who is making good decisions.
It's like playing poker. You can do everything right and end up broke that night, or even several nights and weeks in a row, but keep on making good decisions and it will work out in the end.
I'm pretty certain we aren't making a lot of good decisions these days and it seems like we aren't very good at sorting out the good from the bad either.
The obvious thing is that we’re looking at everything except the one common factor, namely, guns. It would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to stage such a massacre and hold 400 police officers at bay with a 12 gage over-under shotgun. The obvious solution to gun massacres like these is to remove military style weapons from our society.
"Because right-wingers demand to reserve the right to overthrow the government if they -- regardless of anyone else's views and with no accountability to anyone else -- decide they're being tyrannized."
This is exactly right, and it's not said out loud often enough. It's not about feral pigs, or roving bands of dark hungry people, or home invasions. It's about the right's belief (which cannot be logically disproven) that the only reason the American people are not under the heel of the jackbooted leftists is that the people have the weaponry to keep the government thugs at bay.
I suppose the math has changed. It now takes 400 good guys with guns to take out one bad guy with a gun.
I suppose it’s a bit sad that the guys who actually went in and did what they were supposed to do are somehow sharing in the blame for the incompetence and cowardice of the guys who didn’t.
True. I have not read the report, but I hope that it carved out from its weak blame allocation the people who actually first went through that door.
What those officers did was commendable and extremely brave. Nevertheless, the protocol to immediately engage with the shooter was clearly established for both the school PD and the city PD.
As I understand it they entered shortly after they arrived. The other cops were waiting for them.
They weren’t supposed to wait for anyone or anything. The instant they found the shooter, they were supposed to do their jobs by opening the door and killing him. It’s what they were supposedly trained to do and had regularly practiced doing.
Yep, 400 "good guys with a gun" who can't do dick. Ain't that some shit? 19 babies and two underpaid, underappreciated teachers.
My blood is still boiling.
This 'who's to blame' narrative is all a distraction. We sell weapons to people that can kill mass numbers of other people with no strings attached. Want to buy a license to kill animals?--Well then you need training. Want to drive a car?---Well, then you need training. It is nuts. Unhinged, unstable, chemically-altered people, will always be with us and we are letting them buy guns made for killing others, and waiting for Clint Beastwood to show up and save us.
👍🏼
Completely agree. The solution to school massacres and other such massacres is to remove military style weapons from our society and make obtaining them as close to impossible as can be done by the full weight of our legal system. That’s the immediate response that must be undertaken. Nothing less is meaningful.
Ask any soldier who has been in combat or just read about combat and FUBAR happens all the time. Unfortunately, we put ourselves in the position of being in combat with citizens armed with military grade weapons. Bad stuff happens when in combat, and this is just one of many examples. Sure, they should have rushed in without hesitating, but the shooter discharged over a hundred rounds within a few minutes. Many of those kids were dead or dying within minutes because we allow people to easily purchase military grade weapons designed to do exactly this.
OK this may sound cruel but here goes
You blow the door off the hinges and send in 2 police dogs
As the shooter starts to realize whats about to happen to him he trains his weapon on the closest dog
The police then have the opportunity to fire at the shooter or at the very least take him down after the dogs get at him. I love dogs but if you are looking at protecting the first responders this is the way to go if in fact to you intercede immediately.
Yes I also agree that large capacity weapons should be banned. There should be a searchable gun registry AND more importantly there should be a codified law that gives police the right to search the domicile of the shooter for additional weapons without the need for a warrant
A legit, legal gun owner should have NO PROBLEM with this because the bad guy with the gun is the only person being addressed here.
We are crazy about guns thats for sure
if you fail to intercede immediately
I have hard time with this because on the one hand I have a CCP but on the other I know that some police departments and some police officers act stupidly.
Want to turn the tide? Show the violent pics from the scene
We LOVED the violence in movies
We loved Scarface, and WWII movies like the invasion scene from Saving Private Ryan. We loved the old news paper pics of Bonnie and Clydes shot up bodies in their bullet riddled car
Then show little Susie with her face blown off
Johnny with his body laying in a pool with his own blood.
Yeah, I know parents wouldn't agree to that. So, in the alternative show the criminal after the police blew him away. Show the public what guns DO. This ain't the movies. This is our kids and their safety we're talking about here.
As a Vietnam Vet yeah its unfortunate that I have seen vets and enemy soldiers with grotesque bullet wounds. It is awful, and the memory stays with you
Which is EXACTLY what the NRA wants. They want you to forget that guns kill and maim. There are some images that stay with a person. Seeing a dead child is one of them. Seeing a bullet riddled child would make most Christians anti-gun. The gun nuts do not want that
What kind of men are these that can stand in a hallway and do nothing while someone is actively shooting kids?
Cops have no affirmative responsibility to engage threats. They can stand back and watch you be murdered and suffer no constitutional liability for their inaction.
This is affirmed by Deshaney v. Winnebago County Department of Social Services, where it was decide that the state does not have a special obligation to protect a citizen against harms it did not create.
So, before anybody tries to confiscate the guns of law abiding citizens, thus forcing them to rely upon the police to protect them, you really need to guarantee to those citizens that the police WILL protect them. For now at least, this is NOT the case.
F' that, Starglider. The police take an oath to "preserve and protect". That the Supreme Court said there was nothing in the Constitution that required them to actually do their duty does not mean they are not oath breakers. All societies of the age the Supremes are trying to take us back to know how to deal with oath breakers.
The least punishment is to slit the nostril of a cheater. Next is cutting off the right hand of a thief. It goes up from there. Start killing and maiming police that break their oath - that's proper Republican/Russian asset discipline. Why not give that a try? /s
I'm not advocating one way or another on this. I'm simply forwarding facts. The reality is that police can break that oath and there's nothing that you can legally do about it.
One thing the cops DO care about however is protecting their own. Just you try killing and maiming cops, and it will end badly for you.
As for me, I'll keep pushing for positive changes to our laws instead.