Uvalde

[Rajflyboy]

Police didn’t go in. This has happened multiple times in school shootings. What are your thoughts?

[Raceready]

Somebody evidently dropped the ball 0n this one. Back in my day when the men were men the janitor or the gym teacher would have probably found a way to stop the shooting long before those police arrived at the scene . . .

[Buford.Justice]

Oh they went in all right, but they stood in the halls with cell phones and comm. devices and using hand sanitizers, waiting for instructions. But for 77 minutes, good grief, they let them die!!!

[Rajflyboy]

Good point race 👍 they didn’t go in and wouldn’t let parents in (parents would have destroyed this shooter

[Raceready]

I have heard the same thing about the Catholic priest abuse issue . I've know a couple that said that if they knew for sure that it was going in with their boy,then they'd a beat the priests silly ! ! Trouble is that the boys were under threat that the violaters would make it sound as if the child was lying . . .Maybe this was an influence on Creepy Joe Biden what with him being Catholic and all ? ?

[Morgs153]

Uvalde was a failure on so many levels and from the get go I was personally p!ssed on so many levels. I spent 1988-2018 in the job and right around 17 years of that was on tactical teams with two different agencies. The last 12 years I spent in supervision and many years also as a training officer. The whole Uvalde thing smacked of not doing things right. The Texas report on the matter was very telling.

After Columbine there was a wholesale reassessment of response protocols. No longer was there a contain and wait for SWAT mentality. All the training was geared toward an active response, get in, go in, find the target, crush the target. I used to assist in this training and we invited all the agencies in our area to participate with us. My agency was rural (county) and it was understood that if one of "those incidents" happened at a school in one of our outlying villages - everyone was going. By everyone, that didn't mean just our deputies, detectives, and staff, it meant officers from other jurisdictions, municipalities, State Troopers, DNR Wardens and everyone who got the call so we invited them all to our training. Before I retried we were outfitting our paramedics with helmets, vests and shields and including them in the training for casualty recover in a hot zone.

I read where 376 responded to Uvalde in the span of about an hour. 376! I've been to conferences with far fewer than 376 officers. I couldn't probably ever hope to find 376 sworn law enforcement officers in my immediate four county area. They had plenty - way plenty of help. They lacked leadership and decision.

When I would train people in this I would always say this, "A killer is killing kids, they need to be killed. You must get to them and end this." Now there were plenty of times I would train people and remind them, "You're not disposable, so don't take dumb stupid chances on something foolish." But an active shooter in a school was understood to be that different kind of thing.

Now I will say this, from doing the training where we fired blanks in the building as the search team would come in, it can be disorienting. Gunfire in a building rings and echos around and it can momentarily fool you into a wrong turn, or a reassessment. We were taught to expect that because we experienced it in training. Uvalde didn't have that, they knew where he was.

So that leads to the decision matrix. Paralysis by analysis versus simply deciding to make a decision. The job is paramilitary in nature so when rank says, "Do this." - you wind up doing what the "this" happens to be. Some idiot(s) not close enough to the decision matrix gave an order and it was followed. Why they are still ruminating over firing that chief is beyond me. Chiefs don't really run the show in these situations, not on the contact and tactical level. As soon as they had three/four competent responders they should have been going in and going after the target. That first entry team goal - get the threat. You may have to move right past wounded crying for help but you have to end the killing.

We had access to our schools and some other important buildings in our jurisdiction. We carried copies of school floor plans in our squads and also had them loaded on car computers. We included our school staffs in our various trainings and we rotated the locations of the training to the different schools in our area. Doing the training once didn't cut it. You have to be a practitioner and your agency must commit to it.

I can't help but think, of 376 responders, many of them knew exactly what needed to be done and why they didn't just decide to make a decision and act is confounding to me. They had a lot of chances to end this and this one is really embarrassing to me personally and I'm over 1500 miles away and four years removed from the job.

In the wake of this, to make matters worse, they lied. They covered their @sses with one lie after another. Those who did that, they suck. In a chaotic situation, the first few reports are usually wrong and that's understandable. No, these idiots lied and lied again. More than just the incompetent chief needs to go.

[Rajflyboy]

Thanks for the info Morg 👍 I think there will always be a time element and there will always be a chain of command with approvals needed. Most of the school shootings have had chain of command issues. I still think the teachers and students will have to fight their way out (unfortunately)

[Morgs153]

Real courage when - facing the elephant (so to speak) is a confounding and tough one to call. A lot of folks like to talk a good talk about shooting a bad guy and most have never viewed another human through gun sights knowing the next thing might be a pull of the trigger. It's different.

The school shooting at Marjorey Stoneman Douglas (Florida) was such a case. The school resource officer was there and on the campus and got a real case of the chicken sh!ts. That one could have ended quickly had that officer mustered the courage to do the right thing, at the right time. Finding your real trigger pullers isn't always an easy thing. People may think it is, but it really isn't. Most cops who gravitate toward patrol and tactical functions are usually of that cut of the jib. Some cops who gravitate toward the kiddie cop functions and school resource positions, might be there for a reason. Even in the military, not everyone who wears the uniform has the where-with-all to be a killer. Many hundreds, if not thousands, of personnel are tasked with functions of logistics and support to keep the trigger pullers at the tip of the spear. Even in the field, good commanders and NCOs know who to put up at the point and who should run and get more ammo.

In a moment of action, it is not so much about chain of command decisions as you might think. It is about deciding to act. I used to tell people I trained - always keep moving forward. I would rather settle for having you be 70% right, right now - than having to wait for 100% right much later if the consequences dictate. When lives are on the line, you act.

But that is a devil in the details. So much training today pounds liability and accountability into the heads of the new recruits that it sometimes slows judgments. When the focus of training shifts to, you're gonna lose your job, you're gonna get sued, you're gonna be charged criminally if you screw up, it winds up sometimes slowing reactions.

People would often ask me about things like concealed carry and 2A, even folks in the state legislature would pose the question to me. I always told every single one of them - I do not fear honest, law abiding, men and women exercising their Constitutional rights because they do not want to do me harm. But, anyone who does decide to carry concealed, or open, must know that even if that moment comes upon them to where they have a justified use - it can be a life changing moment. That can be emotionally, legally, or financially, so be prepared. It might be easier as a homeowner to act under a Castle Doctrine situation than it is to act as a police officer, however justified, in today's climate.

I applaud some of the situations I see today where justified self defense and defense of others is quickly decided on and even encouraged. I'm aghast at the situations such as recently in New York where the bodega clerk stabbed an attacker in self defense and the DA went after him (although after all the public outrage the charges were dropped).

Just things to think about.

[Rajflyboy]

So true  We set up a system in which its better to do nothing than it is to go do your actual job.