Only a Broken Society Would Focus on the Police Failures in Uvalde

[Celerity]

America seems to have given up on preventing mass shootings and has resigned itself to responding faster and more courageously.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/06/uvalde-police-response-failure-mass-shooting/661167/

https://archive.ph/UQe5c



Did the police response in Uvalde get anything right? From the moment a gunman arrived at Robb Elementary School in the Texas town, law enforcement seems to have erred over and over: A school resource officer did not, it now seems, engage the shooter; officers waited outside the classroom even as the shooting continued; and initial statements about the response have been withdrawn or disproved. Understanding what really happened and why is essential. The officers who responded appear to have disregarded more than 20 years of consensus, developed after the Columbine massacre, that says officers should intervene as quickly as possible in an active-shooter situation, rather than waiting for tactical teams to arrive, the better to prevent further loss of life and to get aid to the injured. Experts on active-shooter response told me they are baffled by choices made on the ground in Uvalde. In part because official statements have changed so quickly, we don’t know how many lives (if any) a faster intervention might have saved.

Read: ‘This is the price we pay to live in this kind of society’

The chaos also shows why it’s important to be skeptical of official narratives from police departments, a lesson that Governor Greg Abbott has learned the hard way. Whether through duplicity, as in the initial account of George Floyd’s death, or simple confusion in a hectic case, the first things the public learns are often wrong. Now the Uvalde school police have stopped cooperating with a state investigation, and because cops are usually happy to argue that you should talk to the police if you have nothing to hide, that’s a bad sign about what an investigation might find.

The police errors make for an alluring target, because they are so glaring and because they appeal to both sides of our intense partisan drive, catering simultaneously to progressive skepticism of police and conservative desire to change the subject away from guns. As the epidemic of school shootings continues, many policy makers have argued that better policing and security protocols are the best way to keep children safe when violence strikes. Without minimizing the police failures, though, I worry that too much focus on them risks eclipsing the bigger picture, which is that the gravest failures happened before the gunman arrived at the school and opened fire.

The fundamental problem, of course, is that semiautomatic weapons are easily available to nearly anyone in the United States with relatively little trouble. Some reporting indicates that the Uvalde shooter was a victim of bullying, and though this may have played a role in his psychology, bullying is universal and timeless; readily accessible assault rifles are not. Gun-rights advocates used to try to sidestep this argument, arguing that prospective killers would find other ways to kill if guns were harder to find, but these days, with their position ascendant in the legal system, they hardly bother, instead pointing out that courts are interpreting the Constitution to block most gun laws. They are correct, but that doesn’t negate the simple fact that easy access to guns is what makes this country different. The guns and ammunition used in Uvalde were legally purchased, and no police officer could do anything about them until the shooter began committing crimes—by which point even an effective police response would have merely limited, not stopped, the slaughter, given how much death a shooter armed with an AR-15 can inflict, and how quickly.

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[Dorian Gray]

1. Agree

that our focus should be on the dangerous nature of the guns, but the police were so inept and incompetent here, it's hard not to allow that become one of the driving issues in this case.

It's possible that they're somewhat culpable for the death toll being so high by not going in sooner.

I also think it puts to bed the whole notion: "All you need to stop a mass shooting is a good guy with a gun." Because we had a whole team of "good guys" (Debatable with their inaction) who did jack squat.

[Baitball Blogger]

2. I don't know. This was pretty bad.

Sometimes you have to multi-task.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

3. Oh but I've BEEN focusing on police failures

[Scrivener7]

4. That is a really good point. And this is the first I have seen it stated, I think.

[genxlib]

5. They are connected

The police were afraid to the point of paralyzing inaction.

The reason they were afraid is the gun.

That's the entire point in this argument.

Police aren't afraid of just any mentally ill person or teenager. A weapon of war turns them in a killing machine that even the trained and well equipped police could not handle.

If properly framed, the failure of the police could help to turn this argument because they proved the point themselves.

[kacekwl]

6. To me it's as clear as can be. Gun

sellers are required by law to register every single purchase with a central data base. There needs after a complete background check and a month long waiting period before delivery. If there is more than one weapon involved in the purchase or a abnormal amount of ammunition wanted this request is immediately flagged and the seller must contact law enforcement and bring it to their attention for in person questioning, social media search etc. Assault weapons will not be sold to the general public, period. I don't believe the 2nd amendment I don't believe requires immediate delivery and at this time public pressure to do something something like this is a no brainer IMO.

[Paladin]

7. No way in hell should we look away from the Uvalde travesty.

The complete and utter fuckup by law enforcement puts a bullet through the idiotic "Good Man With A Gun" myth that the pro-gun movement has relied on for decades. It leaves Republican shitheads like Ted Cruz spewing idiotic notions of reducing the number of doors at schools. And last night, it allowed Joe Biden to deliver a forceful gun control speech, the likes of which no Democratic president would have dreamed of presenting, prior to the Uvalde tragedy. The same old whining about "too many guns" doesn't get us anything---other than a few hundred more mass murders. Count me in on the side of a "broken" society, where there appears to be a chance of fixing things.