I read this post from Miguel over at Gunfreezone. His words reminded me of the UPS standoff in South Florida, where the police shielded themselves with soccermoms and children when they took cover behind vehicles filled with families. For those who don’t remember the incident, you can read more about it here.
There were cops who actually defended this by saying
You’re demanding perfection in an imperfect world. Where should the cops have stood in that situation, right out in the open where they would have been shot? You’re confusing prudent behavior with suicide.
The behavior of the police at Uvalde seems to be a pattern. Every time a cop is faced with the choice of personal safety or the safety of the citizens in their community, they choose self preservation.
During my decades in the fire department, we regularly were forced to enter unsafe environments in order to rescue members of the public from that environment. Over decades, fire departments worked out tactics for accomplishing those rescues. The saying in the fire service has been “The procedures of today are written in the blood of dead firefighters.” Supervisors in the fire service spend quite a bit of time on safety, strategy, and tactics. The spend nearly as much time on communications and learning to maintain control of an incident, even when it is spiraling out of control. We learned from the loss of 343 firefighters on 9/11, and saw major policy changes as a result. No matter what, if there are saveable victims, you go get them.
The police, who are the ones in charge of violent incidents (after all, they have the guns) have not done the same. They obviously don’t feel the same way. Their focus is elsewhere. Maybe it shouldn’t be, but that is how it is.
No matter what else you should take away from the cowardice and self preservation of Parkland, Sandy Hook, and Uvalde, remember this: The people who are the intended victims of these killers have skin in the game. They don’t get to choose whether or not to engage the shooter. That choice has been made for them, by the shooter himself. If it turns out that you have been selected, make sure that you are armed. You are your own first responder. The shooter has already chosen the day, the time, the location, and the manner of the fight. Don’t give him the luxury of choosing an unarmed victim. Have the means for effective resistance, and don’t deny those means to others. No one is coming to save you. They are waiting outside the door while you bleed to death.
5 Comments
G-man · June 13, 2022 at 9:13 am
Preliminary response coming out of the Uvalde ISD Chief: They weren’t ‘just waiting’, but instead couldn’t make entry because they couldn’t acquire a key to the door in question. He says they evacuated all the other rooms in the school, and it took them some 45 minutes to acquire a key.
So, they upgraded the security for all the doors, but completely boloed the SOP for gaining entry, namely having the principal, assistant principal, janitor, SRO, and at least 2-3 other members of their team carrying school-specific (or hall specific) master keys. So despite seeing no videos thus far of the other children being evacuated as is claimed, we’re supposed to believe they ‘just couldn’t get a key’. So you’re not cowards, just completely and totally incompetent. Should get fired either way, but at this point who knows.
Divemedic · June 13, 2022 at 12:35 pm
The words of the Police Chief are complete BS. He also says he didn’t have his radios, and didn’t know that he was in charge. That makes him a coward AND a liar.
One of the things that happened as a result of the 9/11 commission report was a requirement from the Feds that every single first responder in the nation had to take classes on the Incident Command System. The higher you are in rank, the more classes you are required to take.
As a scene commander, I had taken all of the midlevel classes. As a police chief, he would have taken those, as well as the executive level classes. He would have been well aware of how ICS works, and known that he was in command.
Had it been done properly, there would have been radio traffic indicating who had assumed command. What does the radio traffic say? I’m betting that the 8 minutes of missing recordings is where that will be found.
Dumb Ass · June 14, 2022 at 9:47 am
I’m an ignorant dumb ass, but is there some kind of common extra extension handle and periscope sight that can be attached to a standard weapon to allow the shooter to stand to the side of a door frame but still allow the weapon to have a clear line of sight through the door’s window?
TRX · June 13, 2022 at 9:48 pm
There was an incident some years ago in Tennessee, where 911 got multiple calls about gunfire. The cops didn’t roll until 20 minutes after the last 911 call, which they claimed was department policy. The money quote was “Our first duty is to go home safe at night.”
They may have uniforms and badges, but they fall far short of any reasonable definition of “police.”
Anonymous · June 15, 2022 at 9:19 pm
The powers that be are slowly but surely winnowing out all of the brave white men who used to be the backbone of the police departments and replacing them with lesser men who lack the bravery and moral clarity to attack the bad guys. But hey, they are more diverse!
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