Active Shooter Uvalde TX Elementary School

[HCM]

How are people feeling about the news media releasing this tape just a few days before the government was going to show it to the victims' families, and then release it to the public?

They had plenty of time to show it to the families. I’m just surprised it took that long for it to come out.

[blues]

It was the right decision. I was a supervisor when I left the local PD for my current agency, and there is no way I would have let someone go in under those circumstances (of course, I wouldn't have guys standing around in the hallway, either).

Agreed. Even when I was running ops and entries for the Florida Joint Task Group back when, I wouldn't let a guy who had been working UC be on the entry team due to their personal involvement in the matter...let alone a family member.

[CraigS]

I am having a real hard time understanding how an officer going in 'with personal involvement' could have made things worse. What is the danger? He might shoot a 12 year old instead of the shooter? He might get killed? I am thinking that if this guy had gone in, there is a possibility that others might have followed him. I don't remember exactly where in the time line that occurred but I think it is safe to say there was 30-45 minutes of everyone else doing nothing after that. Please explain to me what could have been worse if he had gone in than the NOTHING that actually happened.

[RoyGBiv]

The issue of sidelining the teachers husband is separate from the cluster in the hallway. With all the failures (leadership and otherwise) in that video sidelining him is one of the few things which was done right.

I'd agree with this if the folks who stopped him were in the process of doing "Right Things". Or doing anything other than nothing.

If my wife calls me on the threshold of dying and I see the good guys getting ready to "do something about it", I'd certainly agree that they can justifiably stop me from acting on my own.

Not the case here.

[Casual Friday]

To be blunt arguing that injecting someone with a personal connection and compromised judgement is likely to make a bad situation better tells me that you have no experience or background on this. Uvalde is not first time personal involvement has been a factor in a critical incident. Sidelining personnel with personal connections and resulting compromised judgement is critical incident management 101.

The officer in question was the husband of a teacher. There is definitely more going in there than just “scared” going on. Obviously he’s gonna be scared for his wife but he’s also going to be distraught and angry none of which = good judgment. Not only does that reduce the chance of him being effective but he’s a distraction and there is a very real possibility harming himself.

You're right, I don't have any experience taking cover in a hallway while kids die and denying a man the ability to enter a school to save his dying wife.

Sarcasm aside, I said I had a hard time seeing him making it worse. There was already a fuck ton of cowards hanging around doing absolutely nothing, at least he was willing to go in. He might have ran in there and shit his pants, but we'll never know. There's a lot of scenarios where I would have agreed with keeping him out, like say, Uvalde PD was actually making a halfway decent attempt to put an end to this rampage. They weren't, and God only knows how long it would have went on if BORTAC hadn't got there. By letting him go in, we may have ended up with a worse outcome, but I highly fucking doubt it.

As husbands and fathers, our duty is to protect our wives and kids to the best of our ability. Even if that means laying down our lives. You may die, but you have to try. That's the bare minimum.

[TAZ]

You're right, I don't have any experience taking cover in a hallway while kids die and denying a man the ability to enter a school to save his dying wife.

Sarcasm aside, I said I had a hard time seeing him making it worse. There was already a fuck ton of cowards hanging around doing absolutely nothing, at least he was willing to go in. He might have ran in there and shit his pants, but we'll never know. There's a lot of scenarios where I would have agreed with keeping him out, like say, Uvalde PD was actually making a halfway decent attempt to put an end to this rampage. They weren't, and God only knows how long it would have went on if BORTAC hadn't got there. By letting him go in, we may have ended up with a worse outcome, but I highly fucking doubt it.

As husbands and fathers, our duty is to protect our wives and kids to the best of our ability. Even if that means laying down our lives. You may die, but you have to try. That's the bare minimum.

Knowing what we know today or even the day of the event, its hard to imagine things getting much worse. They did not know that at the time. In all honesty the situation was a giant CF. Pathetic leaderhip, pathetic all around. The decision to remove a person who had a vested interest inside the room is not a bad one. Probably the only decent one if we think about the event with some objectivity. My initial gut reaction was the same, what a bunch of pussies. However, if I honestly assess the situation with my brains and not gut, the conclusion to remove and emotional individual was a good one. There were plenty of other officers to take his place, well not that there needed to be anyone taking his place waiting, but you get the idea. Maybe if he was part of the initial entry team and they still had initiative to move and quickly deal with the shooter you take the chance and not remove a gun from the fight, but by the time this happened the initiative lost.

[Sensei]

The issue of sidelining the teachers husband is separate from the cluster in the hallway. With all the failures (leadership and otherwise) in that video sidelining him is one of the few things which was done right.

To be blunt arguing that injecting someone with a personal connection and compromised judgement is likely to make a bad situation better tells me that you have no experience or background on this. Uvalde is not first time personal involvement has been a factor in a critical incident. Sidelining personnel with personal connections and resulting compromised judgement is critical incident management 101.

The officer in question was the husband of a teacher. There is definitely more going in there than just “scared” going on. Obviously he’s gonna be scared for his wife but he’s also going to be distraught and angry none of which = good judgment. Not only does that reduce the chance of him being effective but he’s a distraction and there is a very real possibility harming himself.

I’m inclined to agree with this 99.99999%. Unfortunately, this is one of those times when I’m not. My reservation is that what you wrote assumes that the police on scene are making a good faith effort to stop the killing process that is actively happening in front of them. That does not appear to be the case here. Quite the contrary, the publicly available evidence indicates that the police were giving the shooter a private, secure environment to execute children at his leisure over the course of an hour. So, if the police on scene have abdicated their responsibilities in such a manner, then the play book that you use in 1st world policing goes out the window. This is like one of those situations in Kenya or some Banana Republic where the cops are no longer cops and any able-body person is called on to resist. Yes, more people are going to die when the cops stop being cops. But those kids stood a better chance of survival had the cops who had committed to inaction not stopped the able bodied adults from resisting simply because they had an emotional investment. I know, you probably didn’t think that we would get to this point in America so fast. Well, time flies when you’re having fun.

In other words, how would you respond if that was your jurisdiction, with your wife and kids in that classroom, and all of your fellow officers were telling you head back to the station while they waited for the SWAT team…that would be there in 60 minutes or so? Would you just turn your cell phone off so that you wouldn’t need to hear it dinging every time your kid texted you pleading for help?

Of course, I reserve the right to resume our regular programming and agree with your post if you can show me some evidence, any evidence, that the police on scene were doing anything other than give the shooter a private, undisturbed environment to kill as many kids as possible.

[Paul D]

I can see how not letting a parent charge in there to confront the shooter makes sense. We don't allow doctors to operate on their own sick child. Recently in my own backyard, a Yavapai County Sheriff's deputy was ambushed and the suspect was barricaded. A colleague who is the doctor for the Maricopa County Sheriff's SWAT team said their team took over the standoff for the Yavapai Sheriff's team. Apparently this prevents a possibility of them just smoking that suspect (or smoke each other in their eagerness in getting that guy).

As for those 'officer' on scene. They will need those avoidance and hiding skills when they eventually get doxed. Especially Officer Checkmypunisherphone and handsanitizer guy.

[TC215]

I can see how not letting a parent charge in there to confront the shooter makes sense. We don't allow doctors to operate on their own sick child. Recently in my own backyard, a Yavapai County Sheriff's deputy was ambushed and the suspect was barricaded. A colleague who is the doctor for the Maricopa County Sheriff's SWAT team said their team took over the standoff for the Yavapai Sheriff's team. Apparently this prevents a possibility of them just smoking that suspect (or smoke each other in their eagerness in getting that guy).

As for those 'officer' on scene. They will need those avoidance and hiding skills when they eventually get doxed. Especially Officer Checkmypunisherphone and handsanitizer guy.

Exactly. I realize it’s hard to say these dumbasses did anything right in such a terrible event where they failed in so many ways. But removing that officer was the right thing to do (one of the very, very few examples that day).

Obviously, we know that the suspect in this case shot it out at the end. But what if that distraught officer went in and smoked a surrendering suspect, avenging his wife? Yeah, dude deserves it, but the Constitution applies to even the worst of suspects.

I detest defending these dickheads, by the way.

[El Cid]

As for those 'officer' on scene. They will need those avoidance and hiding skills when they eventually get doxed. Especially Officer Checkmypunisherphone and handsanitizer guy.

Actually it might be time to shelve the one meme.