Reporting on Uvalde: “Hands down; don’t shoot!”
The Uvalde school shooting has been a terrible thing. The murder of children and teachers by a teenaged gunman who only gained access through a fluke of a door that didn’t lock when it should have, and the carnage and heartache, are terrible. It’s a normal human response to blame someone in addition to the perpetrator – in particular, those charged with protecting us and protecting that school. How did they fail? What can we learn from that in order to protect better in the future?
Very early on the story emerged that the police weren’t doing much of anything – that they were standing around while kids got shot and parents screamed outside to be allowed to rescue their own children if police wouldn’t do it. This story was pushed by the press and pundits on left and right. Although of course the left has also used the event to push for more and more gun control, the idea that the police are lazy and self-protective and even racist has been something the left has heavily invested in for quite some time now (and by “quite some time” I mean at least since the 1960s and probably earlier). As for the right, I think there is tremendous frustration and the feeling that something more could and should have been done by those who profess to wield guns for good rather than evil.
My reaction to these events tends to be to wait and to gather information. So that’s what I’ve been doing – reading and listening and thinking about it and refusing to draw conclusions before I believe I have enough information to do so.
It’s very clear to me that neither I nor the rest of the pundits have enough information, but that doesn’t stop most people from drawing conclusions and often firm ones. And yet even many of the simplest and most basic questions haven’t yet been answered and don’t even seem to asked by the press (or by many other writers) – such as, just to take a few examples – when did the hunt for the all-important key begin? Who looked for it? What did they try? How long did it take, and why? If they got it from the janitor – and all reports are that they did – where was he until that point? Did they have to look for him? Was he hard to find? If so, why? What is the prescribed protocol in such a situation, and was it followed, or did something break down in the process that day? Were the officers waiting till they had shields? Were they waiting for the school police chief to allow them to go in? Were they waiting at all? And if so, exactly why? What was the danger to them of shooting into that room without shields? Were any children being shot by the perp except in the first few minutes of the incident, and before police even got there? Did the police know about the 911 calls from the two rooms with the victims, and if not then why not? Is there any way the police could have gotten into that room prior to obtaining the key, without running the risk of being massacred themselves as they worked on the door (I wrote a lengthy post about that latter issue)?
I’ll stop there with the sort of questions I mean, but I could go on and on and on. Such questions aren’t hard to generate. They’re very simple, really, and I believe it is very obvious that they need to be asked and answered. But I don’t see many people even asking them much less answering them, and that includes reporters who supposedly have access to informed sources.
Why so little curiosity? I don’t read everything that’s written by everyone, so I might be missing something, but I just haven’t seen people wondering about things I think everyone should be wondering about. I see people making judgments, and the judgments are quite uniform that the police were “just standing there” and were cowards or fools or both.
Let’s call it the “Hands down, don’t shoot!” meme.
Now, it may be the case that it’s true. I’m not a police apologist and I have no trouble imagining that the worst might be true. But that would be what I’d be doing: imagining. I don’t base my judgments of people’s actions in such a terrible situation – judgments that if true would be accusations of grave wrongdoing – on what I imagine when I fill in way too many blanks.
But I can hardly read a single piece about the shooting without encountering some form of this imaginative judgment that leaves so much out. I find it very frustrating. In the past I’ve seen too many errors made too many times in making a quick judgment, and too much damage done as a result.
Some writers on Uvalde are more extreme in that regard than others, and for an example I’ll just mention one whose essay has gotten a lot of favorable coverage, Michael Walsh. This article of his is fairly typical of the genre both in his intensity and his contempt [emphasis mine]:
The sight of the lard-bottomed Uvalde cops standing around while a punk with reasons was murdering the town’s children is one we won’t soon forget. Not a real man among them, and that goes for the women on the force too. Hey—a guy could get killed charging an “active shooter.” (The only adult who showed any gumption was the woman who acted on her maternal instincts and rescued her own children.) But if the first consideration of your local cops is for their own safety, get new cops pronto.
Walsh ties everything together there: his thesis that the cops weren’t real men, and the familiar claim that they stood around and did nothing while kids were murdered, and he also throws in a gratuitous slap at them for being fat, and then also ties in a quote from the shooter’s mother (about the shooter having “reasons”) as though that had anything to do with what the cops were thinking and doing or not doing and why. The “lard-bottomed” accusation is juvenile and petty, but colorful. The part about the woman rescuing her own children ignores the facts that cops and other officers called in from miles away as well were busy rescuing children in other classrooms. So while the whole thing was going on, the rest of the school was basically being evacuated.
As for the details of the story about that mother who rescued her kids, here’s a link. It apparently was US marshals, not Uvalde cops, who handcuffed her. It was Uvalde cops (whom she know personally as well) who convinced the marshals to let her go. She says no officers were going into the school to rescue the kids, but we know that’s wrong; there are plenty of stories about it as well as photos and timelines. And the US marshals say she was never cuffed, so we don’t yet know who’s telling the truth on this and who’s not (no pictures have surfaced as yet of her in cuffs). There was an ongoing and successful effort to rescue all the kids in the other rooms, an effort in which police officers were participating. That some parents were part of the effort as well doesn’t mean the effort wasn’t being made by officials – and some of those officials were also parents of the some of the kids in the school.
Even more relevant to what Walsh wrote, this woman certainly did not go to the classrooms where the shooter was holed up, nor were her children in that classroom. So to compare her bravery favorably with the supposed lack of bravery of the “lard-bottomed” cops is to compare two extremely different situations. It seems possible or even likely that the officers who supposedly restrained her initially were trying to keep her from impeding a rescue effort already underway to rescue kids in the other rooms, and to protect her from possibly going by mistake into the part of the school that involved a shooter, barricaded and/or active.
By the way, as with many but not all of those calling the Uvalde cops cowards, Walsh himself seems to have a background only in writing. I know that they say the pen is mightier than the sword, but those who wield the pen (nowadays the computer) ordinarily aren’t braver than those who wield the sword.
I agree with Walsh’s contention that there is a war on men and masculinity, and that for the most part it has been disastrous. But we don’t know how the actions of the Uvalde police figure into that war, except that they’ve been designated – way prematurely in my opinion – as an example of a lack of masculinity.
I spent hours last night writing a post tearing apart a recent NY Times article full of error after error, distortion after distortion, and extremely important omissions. I find myself too weary of this at the moment to proofread it and publish it; maybe I’ll do it tomorrow or the next day, or maybe I’ll skip it. Thing is, I could do that every day with almost every article I read on the topic of Uvalde, both in the newspapers and on blogs – and the problem is not at all limited to the left. It’s rampant on the right.
It it turns out – as it may – that the Uvalde police were cowards and are guilty of everything of which they’re accused and worse, I’ll certainly say it. It wouldn’t surprise me, exactly. But – and I know I’m repeating myself, but I can’t emphasize this enough – it is way too early to come to that conclusion at this point, and it’s unfair as well.
[NOTE: Another thing I read just about everywhere is the assertion that mass school shooters tend to be fatherless. That’s a supposed truism that got started a few years ago and spread like wildfire on the right side of the internet, but it was based on erroneous research. It would almost be nice if it were true because then at least we’d have more understanding of what causes this phenomenon, but unfortunately it isn’t and we don’t. Fatherlessness is bad and seems to be operating in the generation of many societal problems, but not this particular one for the most part. I’ve already written two lengthy pieces on that issue; you can find them here and here.]
[ADDENDUM: I’ve said before that British newspapers almost always have better coverage of these events than our own MSM, even (or perhaps especially?) for events that have occurred in the US. This Daily Mail interview with Robb Elementary fourth-grade teacher Ogburn is excellent. The teacher describes how quiet the children managed to be under duress [emphasis mine]:
They weren’t screaming. I did hear some whimpering. But they did exactly what we always told them to do in a situation like this.
The kids were frightened. As a child who is nine or ten years old having to endure that traumatic situation…I can’t even imagine. They were brave. I’m proud of them.
So those lockdown rehearsals may actually do some good in letting the children know where to go and that they must be quiet.
This teacher was a hero herself, and I also admire her for the following statement she made to the paper:
“The shooter is the person who came in the school and killed my two friends and 19 students. He is the sole blame for this situation. Right now, I’m not going to place the blame on others.
“There are always going to be mistakes made, we are all human. But ultimately the gunman is responsible. Those people didn’t deserve to die.”
She says she is going to wait for an investigation to be completed before any judgements are to be made.
“We don’t have the full story. In order for our country, my community and this world to heal from this we need to come together instead of pulling each other apart.”
Preach it, sister!]
This is the best thing I’ve read about the Uvalde tragedy. I hope that lots of people read it, but that seems unlikely.
With the DOJ now investigating forget about ever getting the truth. My bet is that we will never know the timeline, actions, etc. It will just be whatever helps Brandon and the Ds the most.
physicsguy:
I don’t trust the DOJ, but the DOJ isn’t the only one investigating and writing about this. I think we will get enough information to make some kind of a judgment, but it will take quite a while.
I had a squib from Fox News this morning that the Uvalde school board declined to fire the sheriff. That seems rather a strange extension of rule by the educational sector.
I had a squib from Fox News this morning that the Uvalde school board declined to fire the sheriff. That seems rather a strange extension of rule by the educational sector. Aren’t sheriffs elected by the public?
I suspect Michael Walsh is unknowingly being racist. Most of those people in the school and in the police force are of Mexican origin. Some indigenous to Texas. They are in the main overweight. The poor and the Mexicans of Texas eat a lot of tortillas, rice and beans. Those are fattening. I take offense for them.
I live in Texas, close to the border and know many of Mexican heritage. My own maiden name is Torres although I wasn’t raised on tortillas and beans and the typical Mexican heritage, we did eat plenty of them, too. We are in Texas, after all. Perhaps that was part of his disdain. I hope he will learn to consider his words more closely.
And still a state secret as to the criminal record of the shooter….
AOC and others talking about masculinity being a problem. You can almost bet that if the country were more masculine, we would not be protecting older juvenile delinquents. There is a reason the mothers used to say to an errant child, “ Wait till your father gets home!”
heck they swore him into the city council, if this wasn’t so tragic, it would be a python sketch, lets remember the sheriff in charge in parkland, scott israel, was fired by desantis, but yet ended up in nearby davie, so you can always fail laterally,
as always who the source is, and where he falls in the organization chart is critical
Cicero; miguel cervantes:
I just looked it up and what I see is that they declined to fire the school police chief. That isn’t a sheriff and it isn’t the regular police, it’s a special unit created fairly recently just for schools. This was the guy reported to have been in charge of the operation in Robb Elementary. I think they reserve the right to fire him later.
Seems reasonable to me at this point. Firing him would be premature – as I’ve indicated in my post.
Ruth H:
Unfortunately he won’t learn anything of the sort. The left isn’t inclined to call him on that aspect of what he wrote, and the right linked to his article often and approvingly. I haven’t seen anyone criticize it except yours truly. I bet he’s gotten a lot of readers from it.
That sort of thing is usually rewarded. It’s exciting and attention-getting and hard-hitting.
jon baker:
I said at the outset that the photo of the shooter that was so widely circulated at the beginning looked like a mug shot to me, perhaps from a juvenile offense. I’m certainly not sure – and if it were a mugshot from a juvenile offense I’d be surprised if it was circulated. But your point is well-taken. I seem to recall that Michael Brown had a long juvenile record but to this day we’ve learned very little about it.
My guess at this point, however, is that Ramos didn’t have a record. His warning signs were exhibited mainly to his peers. Otherwise I think he kept a low profile.
Ruth H,
How is it racist for Walsh to say “lard-bottomed” but not for you to say “ They are in the main overweight.” ?
I am not saying I agree with Walsh, but I am curious as to the thought process that one statement is or may be “ racist” and the other is not?
And yes, I live in Texas also, and eat a fair amount of Tex-Mex myself, but not as much as I eat McDonalds.
Neo,
Perhaps the Uvalde School district only recently created a police force, but school districts in Texas have had them for decades. I remember one of my peers working as a police officer for a school district near Houston back in the 1990s.
Jon baker:
Her comment was a factual statement that has some evidence behind it but no insult. Someone can be underweight or normal weight or overweight, and group averages vary with both blacks and Hispanics in the US tending to be more overweight than whites, with Asians even less heavy than all those groups.
“Lard-bottomed” is not objective; it’s quite obviously an insult.
Couple of notes: To repeat myself…..displacement.
We still don’t know the story of the back door. Ramos would likely have presumed it was locked and useless from the outside. But, apparently, went to it and it worked. How did that happen? Maybe he was too flaky to think about emergency exits in public buildings not opening from the outside and this one time got lucky? Maybe he saw something.
We have some Mexican friends…family going back fifty years…who are in the real upper class. I found out what we think of as Mexican cooking is called “rancheria”. One kid dared me to go to a five star in Mexico CIty and order rice and beans.
It’s apparently like our soul food and down home cookin; what was left after the good stuff went up to the Big House and now the good stuff is included, too.
Plus, some southwest Native American groups are said to have a “thrifty gene”, which allows for extreme storage of fat against bad times, bad times having been a frequent part of their evolution. Doesn’t explain me. But, anyway, it doesn’t take much to get to obese and diabetic.
I think the reports of cops in the building are sufficiently out but some haven’t read them or can’t afford to.
I wonder if accessing the master key has been part of the protocols for lockdowns and combat entries. “Mr. Jones [janitor], your role is to …..be available to law enforcement…..” Or something. What planning would anticipate having to get into what amounted to a fortified room?
Richard Aubrey:
I read one interview with a teacher that said she heard the perp trying to open another outer door near her room and failing. If that’s true, he probably tried several doors and found the open one. I also think he might have seen the teacher who propped it open and then kicked the rock and closed it, and so he may have thought that meant it might still be unlocked.
I’m not sure what you mean by, “I think the reports of cops in the building are sufficiently out but some haven’t read them or can’t afford to.” Reports of them doing what? We have no detailed reports of their activities in the building.
The rescue of children in other rooms was mostly accomplished by cops on the outside taking them through the windows, although a teacher reported one cop knocking on the door first and then being helped through windows from the outside.
neo:
Another great post, IMO, the outrage stoked by the what “we know” in the media leads to a trap of premature judgement about what happened and the character defects and cowardice of those who were there. How many times in the last 40 years have the mefia proved to be wong about essential details of tragic or major events? The pressure to say something and jump to conclusions (or lie) is a feature IMO.
You are the exceptional, exception.
Neo, your refusal to jump to conclusions about things with adequate information, as you write about in the first few paragraphs, is the primary reason why I come here. And, of course, your reasoning when you do have adequate info.
You’re an island of sanity in a world going, going, and maybe gone, mad.
Great post. Would that we all had the discipline to not jump to conclusions based on minimal or faulty info.
The number of bureaucracies involve in the investigation does not create confidence in quick and accurate answers. Like the George Floyd death, if certain people have an agenda, the truth may be ignored, or information omitted. We’ll see.
In the meantime, I’m glad I read Neo. Keeps me informed and trying to be objective.
I have some hope that the Texas Rangers will come up with a report that answers a lot of these questions. The DOJ, no chance, in my opinion. I have seen a report that some members of Congress (Democrats, I think) wrote to DHS asking why Border Patrol agents were involved at all, and what their mission is. That one bothers me a lot, since, whatever we don’t know, it is clear that the school police and the city police did not break in and kill the shooter; the Bortac team did.
I was not there, and I have gotten almost nothing but accusations from the press and media. I am waiting until we have found out what actually happened, before making judgement.
I am sticking with Neo on this.
Kate:
I read a long article about why they were involved. Don’t know how to find it now, but basically it said that in towns within 100 miles of the border in Texas, Border Patrol often acts as a supplementary police force when needed. It’s quite standard, according to the article.
I also believe is was the Border guys who had access to the shields that were needed.
From Powerline:
“America does have a critical mental health crisis. Many are sick, too few people are able to recognize their illness, and even less get help. The sad reality is there are too few resources for those who need it. Over the last 60 years, the number of beds available at psychiatric hospitals in America has dropped by 96 percent. In 1955, there were an estimated 340 beds per 100,000 people with mental health illnesses. In 2016, that number fell to 11.7 beds per 100,000 people. We must find a way to reach these people before they hurt themselves or others. And, we must fund places for these people to find refuge and treatment.
The U.S. once had a mental health care system, but it was dismantled after a couple of unusually stupid movies portrayed closing down mental hospitals as a species of liberation. Now the mentally ill are either tossed out onto the streets or remitted to the care of their families, who often are entirely unable to deal with them. The Sandy Hook murderer killed his mother; the Uvalde murder shot his grandmother. The liberals’ idea that families can cope with the seriously mentally ill is delusional.”
Entire post here: https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2022/06/a-sensible-position-on-crime-and-guns.php
Neo, yes, I am sure the Border Patrol is often involved. That’s why they responded to the report of the incident in Uvalde. The Congressional inquiry seemed to be aimed at asking why federal agents and federal funds were being used for local police response. These inquiries ignore the mess that the open border creates in all the southern border states, from California through to the Gulf Coast in Texas.
Erasmus:
I’ve written about the movement to close down mental hospitals in this post.
However, I caution you against thinking that an expansive institutionalization system would help the situation we’re talking about here. Neither Ramos nor Lanza had pre-existing mental illness of the type that would have sparked institutionalization even in the olden days. Psychopaths and other killers often don’t. They are highly disturbed but often functional enough to get by, and also psychopaths in particular are pretty good at faking being mentally healthy. Unless we are ready to indefinitely lock up an enormous number of people who have never committed crimes and are not delusional in the medical sense, on the off chance that a small number might commit dangerous crimes, it just wouldn’t help all that much. Plus, one would have to lock them up for a very very long time, because we really don’t know how to treat or change psychopaths.
Neo:
Thanks for that commentary and the link to your earlier post.
The Uvalde police were clearly derelict in their duty, clearly cowards. The force needs to be disbanded (if not prosecuted) as an example to others and to help set this event straight.
When you’ve got a shooter in the school, in the perimeter, you go in and you fuck him up. You distract him, take rounds to your ballistic vest, hope not to get shot in the face. Under no circumstances do you allow the shooter to wander up and down the rows of little wooden classroom desks shooting kids with crayons in their hands. You just don’t allow that to happen.
Thanks NEO, well done. I just shake my head at all the comments on sites that disparage the cops without real knowledge of what happened.. Yes, lets hope that there is a true as can be account of what happened.
neo.
The reports I’ve seen have it that cops were getting kids out of the building and the implication–could be an assertion but I can’t recall–was that they were working from within the school.
If the only kids killed were in one room, then it follows that the cops got the rest of the kids out one way or another and whether they were in the building is not relevant in this issue.
I’d be interested in the point at which Ramos was behind a steel door and the point at which enough cops were on hand do to something about him. IOW, was he a walking-the-hallways target for one minute or fifteen minutes while cops assembled and tried to figure out what was going on?
Richard Aubrey:
Ramos went to the classrooms almost immediately and shot his victims. That is evidenced by surveillance videos or tapes that show from the acoustics (they don’t have pictures in the room, but they have recordings) that he fired over 100 rounds in those rooms before police even got there.
I’ve written about this before. Now, it’s possible new evidence will emerge that contradicts it, but so far I haven’t seen any. I’m puzzled why so many people who have followed this closely seem to have missed this information and somehow think the police had a chance to shoot him as he was killing people or wandering around the school. There is zero evidence that points to that and plenty that points to the fact that officers got there after the killing was over and when he was already locked in those rooms.
Please see this. The most relevant fact in there is that McCraw said that the shooter entered those 2 classrooms and at 11:33 began shooting over 100 rounds, from audio evidence they have. The police didn’t even get into the building till 11:35.
In another place McCraw said that after the police got there, there was only sporadic fire from the gunman and it was directed at the doors and towards the police.
The kids who were killed were all in two adjoining rooms. He entered the first room as the teacher was trying unsuccessfully to lock it. The rooms were connected by an inner door that I believe was not possible to lock. The perp locked both classroom doors from the inside, it is reported. No police had yet arrived when he was in the halls, and he found a way into those classrooms very quickly and never emerged alive again.
The newspapers do NOT make this clear, I believe on purpose. I have pieced it together from interviews and articles and the press conference, however. It’s not hard to do. Any reporter could and should do it. I haven’t seen much attempt, though.
Erasmus:
You need to study the facts of the case, because you have them wrong. There is zero evidence that the scenario you sketch was what occurred.
See my comment right about this one. Also see this post and read the comments there as well.
I will not throw stones at the cops for the way that all went down. I would like them to take serious risks to save people, even though they are not required to do so by law (so be able to defend yourself), but I certainly don’t expect them to make suicidal assaults.
ChasesEagles or others can correct me, but body armor comes in different number levels 1 through 4, I think. Basic police vests are designed to stop pistol rounds not rifle rounds. Now they could and maybe should have something better than that, but it gets heavier and more expensive and less comfortable as you move up the scale.
Kate’s comment about congress is disconcerting. They are bothered by US Border patrol “wasting” their time by saving lives in a local matter? I don’t know the details, except I do know that Dems in congress routinely try to strong arm the DC bureaucracy into doing their political bidding with their missives. Often with success. The GOP almost never does this, possibly because they know it won’t work, or because it’s unethical.
neo,
“It’s very clear to me that neither I nor the rest of the pundits have enough information, but that doesn’t stop most people from drawing conclusions and often firm ones.”
The lack of information is intentional. The ‘woke’ Feds are sweeping the obvious questions under the rug because their only concern is in using school shootings to disarm the American people. Some reporters and journalists are surely asking those questions and the mass media’s failure to publicize them is intentional as well. They’re sure as hell not waiting to get all the facts before opining about it, again with the aim of disarming the law abiding.
As you know, I’m one of those who has reached a firm opinion. I am open to revising my opinion when credible information emerges that substantially explains the exculpatory circumstances that forced the delays the time line reveals. Until then, that basic timeline stands above all other circumstances.
Yes, cops did assist in evacuating children from rooms. That certainly admirable but to do nothing directly attacking the killer for so long effectively condemned the children in the rooms with the killer to their fate. IMO an unconscionable decision and action.
Just totally sucked to be them.
Add to your questions exactly how a part time job allowed an 18 yr old to acquire $9000. worth of weaponry?
“Where Did Salvador Ramos Get The 9,000 USD To Buy All Of This?”
Noe that link doesnt work, yes the actual facts are necessary to establish what goes on from here
Geoffrey Britain:
You don’t even know yet what the officers were doing or not doing that was even possible to do during that delay. And yet you rush to judgment. And at the same time you acknowledge a lack of evidence that might even be intentional on the part of the MSM. Since the MSM is leftist, and wants police discredited and reviled, it is certainly possible that the way they frame information or omit it is designed to make you blame police. And yet that’s what you’ve done.
The question about ammo has been answered several times already here. The shooter worked at Wendy’s and was not in school, so he apparently worked fairly long hours and had no expenses. He could have saved the money rather easily.
We have seen too many narratives from sanford to orlando to parkland and everywhere in between and thats only the last ten years the firsr created the foundation of susan rosenbergs extortion scheme i dont call it blm despite the zimmerman acquital he became an unperson, of course ‘hate’ is blamed on pulse but the nature is hazy i followed some of those threads on my own blog many years ago, details that are likely to recurr we know next to nothing as were being pushed toward q result that is toxic to thr body politic
Neo:
IIRC, you have wondered in two separate posts why the door did not lock after the teacher had kicked the stone away and closed it.
I am speculating here, but if the door was equipped with a panic bar (one of those horizontal bars that goes almost the entire width of the door and unlocks it when pushed), then the teacher might have made the entirely common mistake of thinking that pulling the panic bar would close and lock it. In my experience, panic bars unlock the door whether they are pushed or pulled. That might seem counterintuitive, but the locks I have tried do work that way.
So perhaps this lock was a panic bar, and it was one of those that unlocks the lock whether pushed or pulled. And maybe the teacher came back into the school through the door she had put the rock under, kicked that rock out of the way, then pulled the panic bar and let go.
If that is how it transpired, I would not be surprised if the door did not lock after she came in. Sad, but entirely possible.
Geoffrey has an incredibly high standard to refute tales built on his unproven assumptions but an incredibly low standard to assign cowardice, derilection of duty, wanton disregard for the lives of children. Funny how those “standards” work. The “we know” effect.
How many times has this happened since columbine, in how many venues it is folly not to see a pattern no i have my suspicions why this has happened.
There is zero evidence that points to that and plenty that points to the fact that officers got there after the killing was over and when he was already locked in those rooms.
Sorry but that does not explain the 911 calls from children or the fact that one cop called out “Do you need help” and a child answered and was then shot and killed.
More info.
“Uvalde mom who broke into school speaks out…”
https://citizenfreepress.com/breaking/uvalde-mom-who-broke-into-school-speaks-out/
Mike K:
The 911 calls all occurred after the shootings. It has never been ascertained whether the police were informed of the 911 calls or not – nor do we know whether they could get into the rooms during that time between their arrival and the killing of the perp. I’ve written quite a bit about this in earlier posts and comments.
As for the story the boy told about the cop yelling “do you need help” and the other child answering and being shot, that is a very strange story that no one else told and I wonder if the traumatized child was correct about it – and at any rate, even as told it has nothing to do with the cops waiting out in the hall and the inaction. Here is the actual quote from the child who told that story:
That is a description of the moment of breaching and rescue, not of the wait in the hallway. The child is saying that, as part of the rescue and gunfight, one of the cops initially said “yell if you need help” right before they entered or as they entered. If you recall, there were three Border Patrol agents who came into the room at 12:50 and their report is that the perp jumped from inside a closet and shot at them, and they killed him.
Another child mentioned that when the perp was first shooting children – before the cops had arrived – one of the children who’d been shot was crying out after being shot, and the perp came over and shot her again and killed her because she was making noise. I wonder whether the boy telling the story about a child calling “help” and getting killed and then the cops bursting in was getting the two stories confused. These children were absolutely terrified and terror can change perceptions of the passage of time. But at any rate, even if the story occurred as the 9-year-old boy told it, then it was the rescuers who burst in who made that error of asking children to call for help. The child telling that story also said he was hiding under a table with a tablecloth at the time and that means that he could not see; he didn’t come out till after everything was over.
The same boy is quoted as saying that the two teachers who were shot “went in front of my classmates to help. To save them.” But other children said the first teacher had gone to the door to lock it and the perp came in as she was at the door and shot her. So those are accounts that differ. I’m NOT faulting the children here at all; I’m just pointing out that one must get all the stories taken together to understand what really happened when the witnesses are highly traumatized and 9 and 10 years old. Actually, you have to do that with any witnesses.
Geoffrey:
Fog of war. It applies to events such as at Uvalde, TX. Put on your big boy thinking cap.
Geoffrey Britain:
I already discussed that mother in this very post.
Is there some list of stuff the lunatic had? How does it total $9K? It seems to double every time I hear about it.
Naomi Wolf has written an important article on the Second Amendment and gun rights.
She is a liberal, Democrat, former-leftist who has realized that the Constitution actually is serious about what it says.
RTWT – she is an outstanding writer.
https://naomiwolf.substack.com/p/rethinking-the-second-amendment?s=r
Neo – we do some things that are rather disturbing. For example, we know that the police department is no longer cooperating with the Texas DPS investigation. We also know that standard practice for police dealing with an active shooter is to enter ASAP in a small group in order to neutralize the shooter, yet there is no evidence that such a strategy was used here. This indicates to me that there is something wrong with the police response.
Omega
The cops need to be there in order to go in after a shooter. The question is how long from the first shots by Ramos to the point he was behind a steel door. Before the first shots, he was not a shooter and not likely to attract the kind of attention a shooter generates. And shortly after the first shots, he was in a room behind a steel door.
Only during that time can a group of cops neutralize him.
After that, the “go in hard and fast” doctrine is irrelevant.
So how long was it between first shots and locking inside the classroom?
Re Michael Walsh:
Really a blowhard. He may be right about some things, but he’s still a blowhard.
In the Irish pubs in Chicago I used to frequent (before I quit drinking) there was always one guy like him, usually seated three stools down from me. You know the type. Loud, opinionated, tough-talking, never shuts up.
I find fat-shaming repugnant. That said, I could not help but be struck by all the video and photos of overweight police at the scene in Uvalde. Not a valid statistical sample, of course, but I question the overall physical fitness of the responding police. Could they move with speed and precision? Isn’t that a requirement for law enforcement work?
Richard Aubrey:
The information we have at this point is that when the police got there he was already locked behind a steel door and had already shot his victims.
He had arrived at the school, shot from outside at windows for a minute or two, went into the school and within a minute or so was inside the classroom killing people and behind a locked steel door. He fired over 100 rounds, heard on audio recording.
The police came very quickly, 2 or 3 minutes after he had first entered the school, engaged him through the door, and were grazed by bullets fired at them. Then things were quiet from the shooter except for very sporadic firing at the door. He is said to have been behind the locked steel doors the whole time police officers were there, until the Border officers unlocked the door with the key and entered with ballistic shields as protection.
Haven’t been following this that closely the last week or so but do we know how many kids or teachers were shot but survived or how many were found alive but injured and then died at the hospital?
The DailyMail Ogburn article has the timing such that the first shots were fired at the funeral home at 11:28, then by 11:33 he is in the classroom. Actually, they say he is inside the school firing into the classroom. I presume he is locked inside at that point. So that is 5 minutes.
If the resource officer had engaged the shooter with an AR-15 outside the school when he first showed up, that would have changed everything. I tend to think that cops get cowed by rifles when they only have a handgun. Justifiably, but that doesn’t mean you are helpless. Of course, he says he didn’t see the perp.
I wonder whether Michael Walsh will apologize for his words if it turns out that the cops acted well and correctly? And will his apology be given with the same passion and forcefulness as his condemnation?
I enjoy going to outdoor festivals in my area, and usually there are large crowds listening to music.
One was an outdoor shopping mall with a central plaza where they hosted some concerts. They packed maybe 150 people rather densely into the area and had several mall security people circulating. I think this was after the Las Vegas shooting, and I was thinking that this little concert would be ideal for another mass shooting. Looking at the security people, they only had walkie talkies. Useless.
But hey, it is an upscale mall, so don’t upset the shoppers with firearms.
Contrast that with another festival which is in a tiny town on the outskirts of the urban area where they block off some streets. It is a much lower rent area with a mix of service businesses like auto repair & plumbing, but also artists and artisans and they have their own police dept.
Some of the music performers actually are proselytizing against firearms, but who is protecting them? A number of uniformed cops all of whom carry sidearms, and some of whom have AR-15’s slung over their shoulders. Hippies comingling with good old boys; it warms my heart.
I actually thanked the cops for bringing some firepower to protect us. One of them cited an outdoor festival just south of San Jose that got shot up not too long ago.
TommyJay:
One of the many tragic things about the Uvalde shooting is that the initial officer didn’t see the shooter when he was outside the school, although he passed right by him. The shooter was hiding behind a car rather than out in the open and could not be seen. The officer also was focused on a man who was walking but was actually a teacher. Had the officer seen the shooter, my guess is that they would probably have exchanged shots. I have no idea whether the shooter would have been wounded or killed or perhaps even scared off. Of course, the officer might have been wounded or killed. The shooter would have had the element of surprise.
Roughcoat and not a smoothcoat; got it. Pretty funny.
Griffin:
Here’s information on that:
A lot of information is missing from that article, information that would be helpful to know. My guess is that the 66-year-old woman still in the hospital is the shooter’s grandmother. Her injury doesn’t appear to have been life-threatening but I’ve read elsewhere it is disfiguring and she cannot speak (don’t know what her prognosis is). As for the rest, my guess is that some of them were injured when the perp shot through the windows of their classrooms as he approached the school (he was doing that for a minute or two). We don’t know how many of these children were in the two main classrooms where the perp was killing people. My guess is that the more seriously injured were from there, but I don’t know.
The article doesn’t speak of children or adults who were alive when transported but died either in transport or later at the hospital. That doesn’t mean that didn’t happen, but it’s not in that article, which is a local Texas article.
This article says that two children were already dead when they arrived at the hospital, but it doesn’t say they were known to be alive when they were put in the ambulance and died en route. We just don’t know.
Neo,
Correct (naturally). Did the officer pass him while still in his cruiser? I think that is correct. The worst possible thing is to get caught inside a stationary or slow moving car with someone shooting a rifle at you.
Part of my thinking is that if someone can engage the shooter outside and delay them or pin them down for just a few more minutes, then reinforcements will arrive. Like that pickup truck driver who normally carried a gun in his truck, but didn’t that day. Woulda, coulda, shoulda.
Neo,
I think Ogburn claimed in the DailyMail that all the bullets coming through her windows hit the ceiling and none hit her students. The windows were rather high I believe.
TommyJay:
Yes.
I think the most important thing was that the outer door was unlocked. But for that, he could not have gotten in and/or it would have taken him a long time to get in and before that the police could have arrived and taken him out before he could get into the building. He might have injured a few children or adults through the windows but that’s it.
TommyJay:
In her class they didn’t hit her students. But I believe that in a couple of other classrooms they may have, or the children or teachers may have been injured by flying glass.
IrishOtter49:
Well, you probably know my answer: I doubt he would apologize. People usually don’t in circumstances like that. They just move on to the next thing.
Also, a lot of the coverage has already set the tone for what people will believe. They already think they know what happened, and the police are at fault. Even later exoneration is unlikely to change their minds on it. That’s part of the point of early propaganda, and I’ve seen it work that way many times.
By the way, I certainly don’t expect full exoneration – I have the sense that errors were indeed made by the police. The errors may be as presently suspected, or they may not be of the nature most people think right now and/or as serious.
OmegaPaladin:
Not a single thing you say we “know” is actually something we know.
The report that they were not cooperating with the investigation was refuted in the very same article. I wrote about the topic, with a link, in this comment.
Also, the first team of police to arrive (3 officers, and then 4 more) went into the school and engaged the shooter and were grazed by him shooting at them through the steel door. When they arrived, he was already in the locked rooms and already had shot the children and the teachers. I have discussed this several times in several posts and comments, with links.
neo:
Agree on all points. And, as I’m sure you understand, I’m not arguing either for or against the cops. I’m waiting to see what transpires — to see what is revealed — before making judgements. That’s something Walsh did not do.
Tommy Jay:
“Roughcoat” is the descriptive term applied, on their registration papers, to border collies with lots of hair. There are also “smoothcoat” border collies. BTW, “Otter” is the surname of the maternal branch (great-grandmother) of my Irish family (Luttrell = Otter); they immigrated from Dublin to America in 1849, “Famine Irish.” After settling in Decatur Illinois my great-grandmother Luttrell met and married my great-grandfather Burke, a Union Army cavalryman born in Co. Tipperary.
The commenter CBD at AoS (Ace of Spades) has also been quite intemperate in his remarks about the cops; even more so than Walsh. It’s really appalling, given the lack of hard information on what happened, and will continue to be even it turns out he’s right.
Great research on the fatherlessness issue; I knew it wasn’t, but you provide the proof. Take a look at my issue # 29 of my now defunct addiction report, in which I show that Cho, like nearly all other mass and serial murderers, were alcohol and/or other-drug addicts, often with SSRIs on board. I hypothesize that SSRIs for some reason trigger extreme unprovoked (to any rational mind) misbehaviors in substance addicts. https://preventragedy.com/pages/addictionreport.php
All of this derives from Feminism. Vile and evil.
Neo: “Also, a lot of the coverage has already set the tone for what people will believe.”
That sentence covers a lot of ground in what’s driving rising national hysteria. Probably the most cogent examples are 2014’s Ferguson (the “Hands up! Don’t shoot!” mythology) and 2020’s Minneapolis (‘Floyd was suffocated by a cop’s knee on his throat’ — uh, uh). Less-lethal examples are the Left’s cultivated hysteria about the (supposedly) “Don’t say ‘gay’!” bill (now law) in Florida and the (putative) ‘revival of Jim Crow’ voting law in Georgia.
==
Neo’s ‘let’s wait for actual facts approach’ seems to me unarguably correct.
Beyond that though, how much attention does this event merit? I think John Derbyshire answered that question well in some of his “Radio Derb” musings a week earlier:
“I can never think of anything much to say about events like this. Given all the anfractuosities of human nature, this bizarre and extraordinary kind of event seems to me to belong to the random portion of our life in this universe, like asteroid strikes.
“I’m skeptical of talk about causes and solutions. I don’t believe this is a zone of cause and effect, of problem and solution: I think this is a zone of chaos; a zone where stuff happens, without any rhyme or reason we can comprehend at the present state of our knowledge.
“For sure the event itself is not an issue on which any sane person can take sides. There is no argument to be made for the mass murder of little children. Even in the worst extremes of total war, where things can get pretty indiscriminate, the deliberate targeting of children is beyond the bounds of acceptable behavior, by common agreement among civilized peoples.
“There are of course related issues on which we can take sides; but the arguments on those issues are so well-worn, have been so often heard, my reading eyes find it a struggle to get all the way through any commentary on them. …
“Aside from recording what happened, expressing proper condolences to the bereaved, and mocking some of the sillier statements of our politicians, there is not much for either news journalists or opinion journalists usefully to say about a lunatic shooting up an elementary school. Unless you are a lunatic yourself, it’s a horror beyond imagining …
“That’s just saying the obvious, though — something we all know by instinct. Beyond that, what’s worth saying?
“About the incident itself, nothing that I can think of.”
https://www.johnderbyshire.com/Opinions/RadioDerb/2022-05-27.html
==
So should the Uvalde horror provoke some change(s) in public policy? Perhaps. A crisis is a terrible thing to waste, after all.
But what’s more likely to happen, in our increasingly non-serious country, is stuff served up that sounds good while, at best, accomplishing nothing.
And then we’ll move on to the next bout of hysteria.
How on Earth is calling fat cops fat racist? The premise behind such a stupid remark is racist in and of itself. Do only the brown people get cut this sort of soft bigotry of low expectations? Or are all Mexicans fat? Certainly not in my experience.
For all of the railing against the Left I’ve seen on this blog, it’s unfortunate to see their tropes make an appearance with nods of approval here. If you want to take umbrage at people pointing out the obvious, and that people who have chosen a profession where being overweight is a clear detriment to the performance of their duties is “shaming”, then make an argument. But the kneejerk vomiting out of “RACIST!” is just the typical thought-terminating cliché.
A shame to see such nonsense on an otherwise thoughtful post.
gmmay70:
Are you one of the “we know?” Untwist your nappies.
Did you just not read for comprehension, or are mindless accusations of racism your thing?
No, I read your over reaction and responded as deserved IMO. Still twisted it seems.
You be you.
So it was both. Got it.
gmmay70; om:
People seem very touchy these days. I’m saying that in all seriousness. I’ve noticed it a lot both in life and on the internet.
I took the original “racist” comment about Walsh calling the cop “lard-assed ” as being slightly tongue-in-cheek, and slightly mocking of the left and their approach to everything.
By the way, here are the stats (also see this).
gmmay70:
No you don’t have it. You assume that there was no racism in Michael Walsh calling the cops “lard asses” and then you join in about how they may not be of the optimum BMI for your tastes. As if that has anything to do with their response to the murders in the school. Can an Adonis be a coward or incompetent as a policeman? Do tell.
You have a lot of “we know” showing it seems to me.
You be you.
Paul Nachman:
The random and cold-blooded murder of 19 children and 2 teachers by an 18-year-old is a horror that gets people’s attention, big-time. It’s not only an act of evil, it’s also a mystery that defies all rational explanation except – as Derbyshire says – chaos. However, of course that’s not the real explanation. If we were omniscient, we would know the real reason or cause or causes and might even be able to eliminate them in the future for future would-be killers.
But we are extremely far from omniscient. That doesn’t stop us from wanting to know, wanting to control, wanting to prevent, wanting to blame a group such as police who at least aren’t crazy and who are supposed to be protecting us from crazies. The desire to not have any children (or anyone, really, but especially children) murdered in this way is where all the attention and all the solutions-that-aren’t-really-solutions come from.
om; gmmay70:
First of all, please try to tone down the personal insults.
But I also see this as an interesting issue – not the “racism” part of it, but the overweight cops part (I think we can all agree that “lard-assed” was uncalled for). Are overweight cops unfit? I don’t think so. It depends on how overweight, what their overweight is composed of (how much muscle is there under the fat), and in what general cardiovascular condition they are.
Not all bouncers or bodyguards, for example, are Mr. America. Some very bulky BIG guys with a fair amount of fat are quite intimidating and most people wouldn’t want to mess with them. Some of the cops who have recently gotten in trouble with shooting black perps (Darren Wilson; Derek Chauvin) were quite small and lean, if memory serves me, and they were up against very large guys who probably were emboldened by their relative size against the cop.
When I was a kid in NYC, the cops tended to be big beefy guys. They weren’t pushovers.
Lastly, are you sure you were looking at the Uvalde cops? There were a lot of other officers at the school as well as volunteer firefighters.
gmmay70; om:
Here’s a photo of the school police chief, the one who’s come in for so much criticism for his decisions. But let’s talk about his physique instead.
If you look at him, he seems physically like the kind of guy I’m talking about in my comment right above this one. I don’t know how tall he is or how strong, but he looks to me like a big strong guy, kind of like a smaller version of a heavyweight weightlifter such as this guy, whom I remember from my youth.
Neo,
‘People seem very touchy these days’
After two and a half (maybe 6) years of constant drama and tumult many people are just burned out by it all. This has been the worst time this country has endured since WW2 in my opinion. No one has been completely untouched by it all and that is partly why so many are on edge.
Griffin:
Yes, I think the lockdowns were a big part of it, and now that we thought we might get back to “normal” we have this disastrous administration, inflation, etc..
neo,
Throw in the riots and homeless everywhere and rampant crime in the cities.
Bad times.
Off topic here but we are two years this week from the George Floyd riots. That was a big turning point in so many ways from the destruction to the ‘experts’ proclaiming that protesting was A-OK after pressing lockdowns non stop.
There are a couple of other commenters who seem to enjoy picking fights here, and though I generally don’t engage out of respect for your space, I was a bit surprised to see flat-out trolling. My apologies for not leaving well enough alone.
To your point about racism, perhaps the comment was tongue-in-cheek. I don’t recall reading enough comments from Ruth to know. If so, it was damn subtle and a fine parody.
To your larger point about the size of cops, I don’t recall seeing the school PC on any of the videos. I recall seeing most of the LE personal there as overweight. From a purely medical standpoint, yes, the cops I saw on that video are unfit. You can reasonably assume any number of health conditions arising from being that overweight at the apparent ages of the officers on video. They might be strong, which is great in a situation where they need to physically subdue.
But in a scenario where they need to run and/or have to endure severely elevated heart levels due to the danger involved? Most of those guys are at increased risk for cardiac events. No question.
I’ll also say that I’ve been waiting for more information on this scenario, but I’ll freely admit that I’ve seen enough verifiable info at this point to start drawing some conclusions. At very minimum, what happened in the parking lot was extraordinarily bad PR for local LE with a small platoon of LE standing around in tens of thousands of dollars in tactical gear, putting it to use in controlling parents, who were clearly ready to risk more than they were, wearing nothing but the clothes on their back.
I’m hoping more information comes to light that contradicts appearances, because what appears to have happened in Uvalde has irreparably harmed LE in more eyes than those who have been calling to defund them. At some point, it’s not going to matter what truth comes to light to contradict the various narratives, and that point is coming soon.
Have you heard of this issue?
After the Uvalde mass murder/mass killing, Pres. Biden wants “more gun control laws” to stop similar killings, and reduce number of “Assault weapons + assault rifles”, that killers could buy.
OK…
If he wants to keep AR-15 rifles, + other rifles, + other kinds of guns, harder to get, then- how about having Biden [shut] the USA + Mexico border, so that criminals, + criminal gangs can’t take- AR-15 rifles, + pistols, + other guns, back + forth over the USA and Mexico border?
How about it, President Biden?
Please, would you secure all of the United States’ borders, to keep illegal guns from being carried into the USA?
President Biden?…
*cricket noises*
*cricket noises*
neo:
We can all keep fit and trim if we keep our jumping to conclusion count above the recommended media metric. It may not help our mental fitness however.
I dont want to think poorly of law enforcement but its hard to find an alternate explanation,
Miguel cervantes:
An alternate explanation for what, and instead of what?
gmmay70:
I’m certainly no police officer and not even close. But even I can easily see that the police must secure the area in a situation like that and must keep parents and other random people in a crowd (they don’t even know that the people who say they are parents of the kids in the school are in fact parents of the kids in the school) from racing into the school in that situation. It seems extremely obvious that some number of officers must be doing that or it will be even more disastrous than it already is.
There were police and other officers in the school at that point, and there were police and other officers rescuing children at that point. I have no trouble whatsoever seeing why it would be vital to keep a crowd of unknown and hysterical people from racing in as well, particular since the shooter was still in the building.
Speculation continues to run amok.
Yes, flood an active crime scene with panicked parents. Panic, chaos, wonderful idea. Otay.
Yes, an amazing telepathic power to know the medical conditions of complete strangers. They were there. You were, or not? Can you also discern how good they could shoot, or if they had more than one bullet (most assuredly the were of the Deputy Barney Fife school)?
Enough.
gmmay70:
Also, you write “Most of those guys are at increased risk for cardiac events. No question.”
Actually, there’s quite a bit of question.
How many of the cops there did you see? What percentage? I doubt you saw most of them. And you have literally no idea what the fitness level of the officers you did see might be. Thin people can be very unfit and unhealthy. Fat people can be quite fit and healthy, as long as they aren’t extremely obese or very sedentary. There are athletes (such as the weightlifter I linked to, or sumo wrestlers) who are quite overweight and whose cardiovascular status is fine.
Here’s a recent article on the issue.
And here’s the scoop on sumo wrestlers, who are both fatter and fitter than those officers.
Ever think what happens when people panic, say by gunshots, and exits are blocked or obstructed? People get trampled and die. Inconceivable.
neo,
I didn’t say it wasn’t necessary to secure the area and prevent parents from rushing in. I said that what we saw was incredibly bad PR. And how the Texas DPS and Uvalde PD have been addressing it has not been handled very professionally from a PR standpoint.
If the cops were on hand as long as claimed, and it took parents as long as it took them to get there, something is amiss. There’s a lot that isn’t adding up, and the people responsible for doing that math aren’t doing a good job trying to control the flow of information.
gmmay70:
That story got out as a video taken by parents and released to the press, and then hyped by the press and just about every pundit alive in order to condemn the police for doing what the police had to be doing in order to keep the situation from descending into complete chaos and probably allowing more casualties to occur.
I have no idea what you’re talking about when you say the response from Texas DPS and Uvalde PD in addressing it is not “professional from a PR standpoint.” Do you mean they should hire a PR person to handle it? How would that person be handling it? What would that person be saying and doing to counter the inflammatory videos and the inflammatory press? And do you know everything the Texas DPS and Uvalde PD have already said and done to try to counter it “from a PR standpoint”? I certainly don’t, and I follow this very carefully. If you know, please be specific about what they did do or didn’t do or should have done in terms of PR, once those videos were out and played constantly on TV and online.
Once the public has been stirred up in that way, it’s almost impossible to undo the damage done. We’ve seen it time and again. Plus, this is a smallish town unused to being in the spotlight. I wouldn’t expect some sort of slick PR capability.
I also don’t know what you mean when you write, “and it took parents as long as it took them to get there.” The cops came extremely quickly, and that’s when the first responders were shot and grazed by the shooter firing from behind the door. The children and teachers were shot by the the time of the police getting to the classroom door, but that occurred within 2-3 minutes of the perp entering the school. That is not a long time for cops to get there. Unfortunately, this killer was a very fast worker.
When the parents were yelling at the cops who were outside, other officers are reported to have been already rescuing the children in other rooms. The timeline I have read is that the perp killed the children at 11:32-3, the first cops arrived at 11:35 and got shot at from behind the door, and much of the school had been evacuated by 12:00.
Over the last few months I have been covering for a coworker who is out on short term disability because although he appeared quite fit trim and healthy he had an aortic aneurism that required open heart surgery. He was fortunate that the workplace cardiac event that required his medical evacuation resulted in testing that immediately revealed his potentially fatal heart problem.
I was called in (he works for a different contractor) to cover for him and he came in to his workplace to give me a job/task turnover while waiting for his surgery to be scheduled. It was our first meeting. He looked quire fit and healthy. Fortunately he is almost done with his post open heart surgery physical therapy. I am amazed how calm he was, He had to wait about a month before surgery.
Outward appearances were and can be deceptive.
Let me clarify – most of the cops I saw on in the video clips were overweight. Obviously I have no idea how well that represented the LE population that was on hand. So, of the ones I saw, they were unfit.
Of course thin people can be unhealthy. But it’s inarguable that the more overweight you are, the more prone you are to health risks. This is well documented. The chances that all the overweight cops I saw on the video (one in particular I recall vividly) are professional weightlifters or sumo wrestlers is slim, if you’ll pardon the pun.
This is starting to get into the [redacted] “Healthy at any weight” movement territory, so perhaps we need to agree to disagree here.
neo,
Regarding the PR response, surely you’re aware of the statement by Abbott about the information he initially received not matching what he learned later? That situation alone shows that somebody, somewhere spoke out of turn. Small town or not, slick PR team or not, this was an extraordinary misstep on someone’s part. I’d like to know whose.
My point was that the cops were there quickly and it took the parents far longer to arrive. If most of the action was over in the first few minutes, and the order was given (the wrong call, according to the Texas DPS) that it was a barricaded situation, then the chaos that ensued when the parents showed up requires some explanation. I haven’t seen a good explanation for this. I’ve never claimed to know everything, so if there is a good explanation for it, I’m all eyes.
}}} Michael Walsh.
Not to be confused with conservative writer Matt Walsh.
😉
Speculation built upon generalities and bolstered by assumptions. Any knowledge of the officers Lean Body Mass, Aerobic Capacity, exercise regimen, or personal or family medical history? No? Never mind.
Keep digging you are almost there.
gmmay70:
First of all, Abbott is the governor of Texas and he’s facing an election. He’s nervous about that and almost undoubtedly worried about his own PR. We have no idea what Abbott was actually told or whether he jumped the gun – as it were – in making a statement. I would have thought he should have expressed horror at the tragedy, anger at the gunman, sympathy and empathy for the mourners, and an intense determination to get to the bottom of everything that happened in terms of the response, combined with a caution that we don’t know enough yet to say.
Instead, he made a lot of statements – based on what? – early on, that turned out to be untrue. We do not know what he was told or not told, and at any rate what Abbot said is Abbot’s PR, not the police PR. The police and all the authorities are faced with a dilemma after these situations, because the public is crying out to know everything and yet even the authorites don’t know much yet. The public – and the all-important press – demand more and more information. So the police and the other officials put out a little, and caution that it’s early and that information will almost certainly change, but then when it does change the public and press scream how incompetent the officials are, and someone like Abbott blames whoever told him whatever they told him when in fact one thing Abbott should have done is hold back on making any judgments till he knew more.
You don’t have a clue who spoke out of turn. Maybe it was Abbott.
What’s more, someone is ALWAYS going to speak out of turn. What sort of perfection are we demanding, in a time of huge crisis, grief, and turmoil, involving enormous numbers of officers of many kinds?
Speaking of which – you think that there was a way to prevent what you call “chaos” when the parents arrived? How many officers were available for that task, and how many parents were there? Hysterical, desperate parents, screaming at the officers. (By the way, the officers who were acting the toughest on the parents at that point were US marshals, not Uvalde police). How on earth could the scene have been anything but chaotic – parents screaming, everyone stressed, the shooter still holed up in the school, children being evacuated from all the other classrooms, and some of the children being united with the parents? I have read there was an area where that was happening, as well.
How on earth can you envision that this would have been handled or could have been handled in some tidy little way?
om,
Call it life and professional experience. If you want to think those guys are sumo wrestlers or professional athletes, I’ll not attempt to disabuse you of it.
neo,
If we’re going to speculate that Abbott was lying about being misled, then there’s no real point in continuing, is there?
The initial statements from the Texas DPS spokesperson (a lieutenant whose name I can’t recall) turned out to be incorrect as the 911 calls later indicated. A higher ranking Texas DPS spokesperson later contradicted his underling’s statements. I’m inclined to believe the governor was briefed more in line with that initial Texas DPS statement.
As for me not having a clue who spoke out of turn, I made it quite clear that I didn’t know. That’s what the indefinite pronouns were for. Was it Abbot? No idea, but I doubt it, given the changing statements from the Texas DPS, who later publicly stated that the local LE made the wrong call.
gmmay70:
No one said they were professional athletes or sumo wrestlers. You are creating a strawman.
We all have “life and professional experience” at something. I offered links about how you can’t tell someone’s health or lack of health by their weight, and that tons of other elements come into play. You choose to disregard that article, as well as the fact that of course you haven’t a clue what the fitness levels and overall health of these particular officers are. Had you said there’s a higher likelihood of their being unfit than if they were lean, I would not be disagreeing with you. But you didn’t say that. You made a categorical statement, and I quote, “From a purely medical standpoint, yes, the cops I saw on that video are unfit.”
This entire thread is about the danger of jumping to conclusions based on inadequate evidence.
gmmay70:
I did not say or even suggest that Abbott was lying about anything. I said that he may have spoken prematurely based on inadequate and incomplete evidence and said more than he should have. We also don’t know exactly what he was told, and whether he embroidered it in some way or got it wrong in some way. My point is that he was angry that he spoke out too soon, having relied on (or misinterpreted) things he was told, and that he has a lot to lose, because he’s up for re-election. So he implies – angrily – that it was the police who lied to him, when in fact they might have completely believed what they said at the time. He should have known better than to make such definitive statements early on.
You talked about police PR as being to blame, not about Abbott’s PR, which I think was clearly at fault. He’s actually the one who is more experienced at PR, as well, being a politician.
neo,
Oh come on. I’m not the one who offered up examples of sumo wrestlers or professional weight lifters in a thread about overweight cops. Perhaps a more apt comparison is in order, rather than accusing me of making a strawman.
And we’ll have to agree to disagree on ascertaining health by appearances, especially when someone is overweight. We can all come up with exceptions to the rule, but being overweight carries too many well-known health risks, in addition to physical performance hindrances. It doesn’t appear as if we’re going to persuade one another on this.
As for Abbot, you can assign whatever metaphor you’d like to Abbott’s response, or chalk it up to a miscalculation. As I clearly said, I don’t know. Given the Texas DPS’s conflicting statements – and that first one was delivered without caution, but rather authoritatively – I’m wiling to accept that perhaps Abbott can be blamed as well as the statements by the on site LE, and the statements by the Texas DPS. I’m willing to accept any permutation there.
But the point, as you made originally and have continued to make, is that these are open questions, and questions I’d personally like the answer to. Your mileage on this particular one may vary, and that’s fine.
gmmay70 appears to consider himself (?) able to divine the medical and health status of the Uvalde police. Do they work out or just eat donuts or casadias? Do tell, or just keep the BS rolling. So much you “know.”
Keep digging that hole of yours. You still haven’t quite gotten around to explaining how BMI correlates to courage or intillegent ploicing. Must have been those wind sprints those cops failed? BS on stilts.
om,
Speaking of holes, would you mind pointing out where I said BMI correlates to “courage” or “intelligent policing”? Scroll up and take your time. If that’s too much trouble for you, allow me to help: I said that being unfit interferes with an officer’s ability to perform his physical duties. Are you mashing together two separate points I was making about fitness and operational handling of the scene?
I’m perfectly fine making rational inferences about things I see based on my experience. If I turn out to be wrong, I’ll gladly adjust my opinion, since I have no ego tied to what is clearly just an opinion.
You seem to want to be irrationally confrontational about this. If you’d like to verbally spar about this, I’ll be more than happy to give you my e-mail and I’ll eagerly respond to you in-kind. If you’d like to discuss without wagging your little e-peen, then I’m happy to continue here.
Ball’s in your court, Sport.
I think there was a catastrophe once where everybody got it right the first time, speaking of public statements. I mean, I have faith in probability theory despite not doing so well in a stat course.But I’m only seventy-seven years old and it’s not likely to have happened in my lifetime.
Anybody know?
There was a Lieutenant colonel Richard Aubrey, commander of the Glamorganshire Militia a couple of hundred years ago. I’d like to think he was the one.
When I was in the service, there was a push to be in shape, at least by weight since running senior noncoms and field grade officers through an annual PT test wasn’t practical.
There were some field guys–Infantry, etc.–who looked like a beer keg walking on two fire plugs–not my term–who could go all day. And skinny guys up at Brigade who couldn’t.
Asked a doc about the severity of the push. Didn’t matter what shape you were in, hauling mass upstairs is the same, flab or muscle. Didn’t think much of it, since the point was–this being an Army–what you were prepared to do when you got up the stairs.
This is a horrible situation and it’s useful not to think about the worst part, the shootings in the classrooms. So all that energy goes to something else.
But if, as seems to be the case, there were only a couple of minutes from Ramos becoming somebody who should be the subject of the cops”–or anybody’s–attention and the time he was behind a door and the kids were dead.
And once he was behind that door, it was a barricaded shooter situation no matter whether he was still shooting kids actively.
There’s endless talk about the external door and that’s because of the difference it might have made if it had been locked. But, apparently, there steel door to the classroom which was locked was no more an obstacle than a spider web if you listen to the “go in hard” types. Yes, we learned from Columbine to go in hard and immediately. But we didn’t learn, once that yummy slogan got passed around, what was supposed to happen next.
If the guy was wandering the halls trying to figure out how to reload his weapon, that was one thing. Or if he’s fortified behind a steel door, that’s another. But not to the “go in hard” types.
Once you “go in hard”, what’s next?
I say again, from a position of no authority; “displacement”.
gmmay70;
Just posing a question to you, the expert who has focused on the purported fitness of the Uvalde policeman. Its been work to get you to admit that their “lard asses” (appearance) may not have contributed to the deaths of the children. You seem to be a bit slow taking what “you know” to another obvious “known” conclusion.
I’ve got 10 hours of work to do, you can spin your knowns alone now.
I don’t have time to look up once again exact times, but the “active shooter” entered the school about 11:35 AM. Every cop in the country, since Columbine, knows that their response should be to immediately do whatever is necessary to immediately take him out. He was finally killed at c. 1PM. That response time is unconscionable.
https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2022/06/05/toomey-my-hope-is-well-get-half-of-senate-republicans-to-vote-for-gun-deal/
And dr oz doesnt even pretend to be better
grandpagrumble. Your complaint presumes shooting the guy immediately was practically possible. Whatever is necessary includes whatever is possible. See “steel door”. Do you know that the local cops or those showing up from someplace else had breaching charges–which might have killed any kids then alive–and declined to use them? Tell us about that.
I presume you aren’t talking about artillery or something, so that means bullets from guns. Which can only be useful if you can see the guy which you can’t if he’s behind a steel door.
Current time is maybe five minutes from the time he entered the school to the time he was forted up with the kids. And the response would have started at or maybe just before he entered–reports of shots fired at a funeral home–and how do you expect there to be sufficient cops on hand where there was not a problem until…it started?
So, yeah, it was an hour and a half until he was killed. Since, as far as we know, the kids were dead in the first few minutes, that means….?
Richard, you have lots of questions and lots of excuses, none of which respond to the bottom line, which is that in an active shooter situation, cops MUST take immediate action and do whatever is necessary to take the shooter out, and that they did NOT do. I could respond to each of your excuses, but as I said, I don’t have the time.
Gramps. How long was there an active shooter before he was barricaded in the room with the kids? Looks like maybe five to seven minutes and were there cops on the scene in that time?
After that, he was a barricaded shooter surrounded by mostly dead kids.
So if you want to repeat the go-in-hard mantra, knock yourself out.
Point is the practical, physical aspects. Did they refuse to shoot the guy when they had a chance? How did several cops get wounded?
What if you go in hard and….nobody’s in sight? Then what? You keep going until…you come to a locked steel door. Then what? You’ve gone in hard and satisfied Gramps but….
om,
If you’re going to pose dishonest questions and then duck out, I’ll ensure to move you to the ignore column from here on out.
Richard,
The Texas DPS said the police made the wrong call. The Uvalde PD’s own training dictated a different approach. These two points are not matters of speculation and have been offered by experts and authorities. How do you consider those two factors in your assessment?
As for your Army experience, I can’t speak to that. As I said, you can find exceptions to any rule. In my Marine Corps career, we found physical fitness to be remarkably valuable in the performance of our duties, and it seems to have worked very well for us.
gm. Right call, wrong call. When you go in hard and….you can’t see anybody, what’s the next step?
How’d the two cops get hit?
The Columbine guys were wandering around the school shooting people. Ditto Nicholas Cruz. And Adam Lanza. If somebody had gone in hard and fast, they’d have had been targets.
So, if the Uvalde cops made the decision to go in as protocol requires…who would they shoot?
They can easily be said to have made the wrong call, whatever the call actually was. But, had they gone in…what would the difference have been? Ramos was not visible. He was fortified in a room with a steel door.
There’s protocol which you do no matter the circumstances or outcome and it’s the right call because in the procedures manual it says you should.
But we’re talking about results. What would the result have been if the call had been made to go in hard? How long between the cops’ being alerted and Ramos being sheltered from cops going in hard?
How long?
Is this a disagreement or critique of the accepted protocol for mass shooters? As you have made clear, you aren’t an authority on the subject. Neither am I, for that matter. Are you disagreeing with those who are? If so, that’s fine, but I’m not quite grasping your position.
To your question about how the cops got hit, I don’t know. I would assume it was from the shooter. As for your other questions about what you do when “going in hard”, or what the results would be from that, we could look to the Border Patrol agent/s who did.
As the Uvalde training made clear, if officers weren’t prepared to go in and confront an active shooter (“get shot”), they should “consider another line of work”. It seems the local command issued the order not to confront, so I’m not willing to condemn the officers for cowardice based on what we know right now.
But I’m not clear what your recommendation would have been here. It wasn’t a hostage situation. So it was possibly a barricaded shooter situation? What is the appropriate response to that in your view? Wait while students are bleeding out and the perp kills the remaining survivors?
BORTAC obviously didn’t hold your view, and the results were that they ended the event.
Checking in mid day and gmmay70 has his nappies back in a twist. gmmay70 can’t recognize a rhetorical question about his “knows” or is his nose out of joint? It appears to be dishonest to ask him to think beyond his assumptions, whatever.
Regarding, “ducking out,” I have work to do, you know, a “job” and I have no desire to extend a conversation in email or by phone with some random dude who reads Neo’s blog. Neo’s commenters are a reputable bunch (excluding me) but that wouldn’t be prudent gmmay70, and it would waste Neo’s time.
So let’s agree to disagree gmmay70 about the breadth and depth of what we know about the murder of the children and teachers in Uvalde TX. It ain’t about us after all.
om,
Out of respect for our hostess, and since you can’t seem to abide by her caution, e-mail me at qwchrbichn@yahoo.com if you’d like to discuss this in the manner you prefer. This will be my last response to you or about you on her blog.
gmmay.
Within a few minutes, it went from an active interloper who had shot at some folks to a barricaded shooter. One question is at what point did Ramos become a concern for anybody? Yeah, he crashed the truck. Were you thinking a traffic report was the issue? Should that roll the SWAT?
He fired a few rounds outside, according to reports, and within moments was barricaded inside the room…with a steel door.
At what point should there have been sufficient cops on hand to make a go-in-hard assault? What is the expected response time?
From current reports, by the time anybody twigged to the situation with sufficient force, there was no active shooter situation but a barricaded shooter situation. Most of the kids, it would seem from reports of gun shots from within the room, had been shot.
BORTAC got the job done once somebody found–and this is important even though it transgresses the go-in-hard vicarious heroes–the EFFING MASTER KEY.
The real hero is whoever wondered whether there was a master key and whether whoever had it was on campus that day or had the week off.
The rest of the kids and staff were rescued/evacuated, which would not have been possible if Ramos had been wandering around shooting people. Of course, then he might have been engaged and shot but…maybe after even more kids had been killed. He ran out of targets in the room he was in. Might not have if he’d done as the Columbine guys did, or Cruz, or Lanza.
I’m on our church security team. I hope I will run toward trouble. But until that situation arises, I don’t know. Nor do many people know that about themselves, no matter the temperature of their keyboard.
A bit of humility is appropriate.
Still, as I say, it looks as if there was no time for the protocol to work.
gmmay70:
Posting your email address on line is profoundly foolish, unless you like
spam and worse.
Neo could delete that for you, but you be you.
Richard,
Your second and third questions are silly and in no way related to my response to you. And the rest of your comment is non-responsive to the questions I asked. The Texas DPS is on the record as saying the locals made the wrong call. Upon what grounds are you disputing their assessment? Are you privy to information that they weren’t?
LE had more than gunshots from which to assess the survivor situation – they had 9/11 calls from inside the school. The PC claims he didn’t receive that information, but the dispatchers claim they informed the police. There’s at least a system failure there.
We have statements that the 19 cops in the hallway (as an answer to your 4th question) didn’t do more because they “could’ve been shot”. So there’s some suggestion there that a platoon of cops weren’t stymied because they lacked a key. As you pointed out about the two that were shot – how were they shot?
Ramos wasn’t walking around, so that’s a pointless hypothetical. I’ll ask you again, what are you basing your opposition to the Texas DPS assessment and the Uvalde PD active shooter training on?
This isn’t about humility or other personal character assessments between anyone commenting here. The idea that there was no time for the protocol to work is dubious, at best.
gmmay70:
Yes, it’s a good idea if people can’t stop with the personal insults, to take this argument elsewhere.
You say that om seems to want to be “irrationally confrontational .” And yet you ignore or are unaware of your own display of that same tendency, which you have exercised in my direction on this thread.
Addressing me, you wrote:
What is with this “Oh come on” to begin that statement? It’s rude and condescending.
And I did not compare the Uvalde police to sumo wrestlers or weightlifters. I used the latter two as examples of how it’s possible to be fit – in their case, hyperfit – and very heavy, and why it’s therefore not a good idea to make categorical statements (as you had done) about the fitness or lack of fitness of some heavy people you saw on a video, without knowing a thing about their actual health status. You had written earlier in the thread, “From a purely medical standpoint, yes, the cops I saw on that video are unfit.”
Not only that, but you insinuate that because of a supposed speculation of mine that Abbott was lying about being misled (something I actually did not do), then it might be pointless to continue to discuss the topic with me: “If we’re going to speculate that Abbott was lying about being misled, then there’s no real point in continuing, is there?”
Again, condescending.
In addition, you wrote at 1:31 PM today (addressing Richard Aubrey I believe): “To your question about how the cops got hit, I don’t know. I would assume it was from the shooter.” At this point, if you’re going to actively argue about these topics, that’s something you should know. It’s pretty basic, and has been discussed on this blog many times both in posts and in comments. Plus, it’s easy enough to do a little research and discover the answer, and it’s actually relevant to any position a person might take on the topic of what the police should have done or could have done.
You also write to Aubrey:
Yes, we could and do. If you’ve been following the descriptions of the situation, the Border Patrol officers went in with a key and ballistic shields to protect themselves from a substantial likelihood of death or major injury if they didn’t have them. So in order to “go in” like those agents, the other cops would have needed those two things: a key and the shields – plus training in how to use the shields. As I’ve already said many many times, we don’t know at what point it was possible to get a key or how long it took and why. We also don’t know anything about whether they knew how to use the ballistic shields (the shields belonged to the Border Patrol and they had brought them). But both were necessary in order to go in.
You write:
That required two things: the perception that this was an active shooter situation (he apparently had stopped shooting at everyone except the cops and only very sporadically at them), and a way to get in. I’ve written reams already on that latter issue, so I’m not going to into it here, but suffice to say that without a key and some sort of protection they had no way to get in and even if they did have a way to get in, they needed the shields or it could easily have been a massacre of police as they entered. And that wouldn’t have done the children any good. I doubt the protocol suggests that the police force commit suicide without a very good chance of attaining its objective.
I could write much much more on this, but for the most part I already have.
If we subsequently learn that the police had ballistic shields and people able to use them, as well as a way to get the key faster (or some other way “in”), and delayed with no good reason for a delay, then it’s definitely time to harshly condemn the police or whomever ordered them not to do what was necessary. But we don’t know that.
om,
It didn’t occur to you that I gave you an alternate e-mail address? I eagerly await your responses there.
Neo, you are a shining example of how people should think, or at least try to think, when confronted with volatile events. Thanks.
neo,
After you mistakenly accused me of creating a strawman? Saying “oh come on” is rude??
If this is what you’re going with as evidence of my “tendencies”, then physician, heal thyself. Because this is your space, I didn’t respond in-kind when you said I “didn’t have a clue who spoke out of turn” when my language clearly indicated that I wasn’t claiming specifics. Talk about condescension and rudeness.
Your citation of Sumo wrestlers and professional weight lifters was inherently comparative. Not that I think it was a big deal, but a quick search confirms that the life expectancy of Sumo wrestlers (and other large athletes) is about twenty years shorter than average, so it’s perhaps not the best example to go with. I have no problem making categorical statements about the health risks associated with being overweight, as it’s a completely non-controversial opinion that’s supported by medical facts and probabilities.
That you read condescension in the line about Abbot is surprising. But again, you seem completely unaware of your own provocative language. My point about Abbot was that it was purely speculative on your part and that further discussion along those lines would be pointless. There’s a strong implication in your speculation there that he was lying, but if I misread it, you clarified that and I acknowledged that, yet you’re bringing it up again.
I haven’t claimed to know everything, despite the numerous times such a claim has been imputed to me. This also may surprise you, but I haven’t read every post you’ve made on the topic. If I’ve missed something, then I would appreciate you or anyone else pointing it out. It wasn’t central to any point I was making, but someone put the question to me, so I responded because I try to respond to every argument or question.
The whole paragraph following this is nothing I dispute. I answered a question that was asked. According to the Uvalde training for active shooter scenarios I’ve seen, I didn’t see the requirement for ballistic shields before taking down an active school shooter. If you have, I’m all eyes. The BORTAC team also went in despite the locals asking them to wait. Did that change? The point was about “going in hard” that Richard was making. So, in the whole tone of your original post, there are questions that need to be answered. The Texas DPS seems to think there was at least one failure that occurred.
As for your closing paragraphs, I mostly agree. In fact, I’ve mostly agreed with your stance here. People on the ground with far more information than you or I have made the determination that the locals made the wrong call (not to mention the alleged breakdown in the communication chain between 911 dispatchers and the PC). The BORTAC team overrode the local PD’s call to wait before breaching. These two facts aren’t in dispute at the moment, and it points to mistakes in judgement by the local PD. Is that definitive? Of course not, but it doesn’t look good for the home team right now.
gmmay70:
Do you read and understand English?
I have no interest in continuing a further conversation in email or on the phone or taking the trouble to set up an alternate email account for some random ex-Marine and what he “knows.” Shout at the clouds.
gmmay70:
You did create a strawman – actually several of them.
And yes, very rude – which you continue to be, at least on this thread (I’ve not noticed it otherwise, so it seems to be something about this particular thread).
If you had actually read the link I included on sumo wrestlers, it talks about their life expectancy, which drops if they later on in life stop exercising, which they often do. That further proves my point; they are healthier if fat as long as they train, unhealthy if fat if they don’t.
You either lack understanding, aren’t actually reading carefully, or have some desire to be “irrationally combative” with me in this very thread.
Commenting is a privilege here. I have zero desire to ban you, so please stop the rudeness.
om:
Please also de-escalate the insults. This thread has seen enough of them, and I’d like to focus on the substantive issues.
gmay. The cops were supposed to have made the wrong call. Not the issue. The issue is whether making the right call would have changed things.
Ramos was, according to reports, forted up before a sufficient number of cops was on hand to make the assault. 9-11 calls from inside the room with a locked steel door increase the pathetic quotient but tell us nothing about what could have been done with a door the cops were unable to open.
So you make the right call–afterwards somebody looks in the procedures manual and congratulates you–but what would be the result of going in hard–which presumes a vulnerable shooter–against a locked steel door?
You can’t shoot the shooter unless you can see him and if he’s behind a locked steel door, you can’t see him. The question which must be answered is how long was he vulnerable after it was discovered there was a shooter in the school. And in that time, were there cops there who knew what was happening. Calls from inside later don’t count.
Richard Aubrey:
Indeed.
And as far as we know, the answer is “never.” He was never vulnerable while cops were there. They arrived after he was locked behind that door.
Again, though, if we learn otherwise, then it will be time to say they could have done something and didn’t. Same goes if we learn they had protective shields and people trained to use them and could have gotten the key earlier and didn’t even try.
It does appear there was some kind of communication breakdown on the side of authorities. I plan to write about that soon. But – of course – the details of that are murky as well, so far.
Neither one of us wants to budge, so I’ll bow out of this thread. I have no desire to be combative with you, nor disrespect you in your space or elsewhere. You have my sincere apologies for the impression I’ve given you. It wasn’t my intent.
Neo. WRT the key. I wonder if the issue of finding a master key is mentioned in any procedures manual. Seems as if that would be the last thing somebody would think of when writing the thing. Up until now.
I don’t recall when schools put locks on classroom doors. The CRASE presentations I’ve seen talk about ad hoc methods of locking doors. Would not be necessary if locks were generally presumed, so perhaps it’s pretty recent. OTOH, there are lots of rooms in schools which are not classrooms and may not have locks anyway.
When I was in high school, sixty years ago, the head custodian didn’t like kids and tried to screw with extra curriculars by locking various facilities. Some of the guys knew how to read keys and made up some masters, so we did okay. Point is, even making it tough to open facilities might not…make it tough to open facilities.
But when adrenalin is flowing and kids are screaming, does the banal thought of a banal issue like a master key come to mind?
gm No worries. FYI, you’d have called me O3 plus airborne quals. Then I went over to the dark side.