I knew something was rotten about how hard Governor Hotwheels was bootlicking the police response, and now we learn that the cops let that shitbag shoot up the school for ONE HOUR while panicked parents stood outside, begging for them to either do something or let the parents go in themselves. Unfuckingbelievable.
You can take it to the bank -- when a Republican says something is terrific, that thing is in fact very shitty.
I read this opinion today, and it seems to reinforce my earlier comments about the response to the shooting being a racist thing.
According to it, the white power structure keeps the Hispanic population in thrall to their power. (Just as I surmised.)
"They acted, generally, as if saving a brown child from the slaughter was not worth the price of Uvalde’s police officers, who are, by dint of having most of the guns, the embodiment of white power."
Opinion | I’m from Uvalde. I’m not surprised this happened. - The Washington Post https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/05/29/uvalde-shooting-warning-signs-racism-poverty-guns/
Saw this article that gives one an idea of the typical mind set of rural Texas politics. I found it interesting that author points out large percentage of Hispanics but all the "officials" were white Republicans during the 1st news conference with Gov Abbott. Even though both police chiefs(city and ISD) were Hispanic but were not allowed to speak.
I spent a few days away from this thread and in the meantime we have found out that the reality is, unimaginably, far worse than we feared.
Remember the unofficial police motto - "Better to be tried by 12 than carried by 6."
There's going to be an investigation and we may get a few more details, but honestly the gist is pretty simple. They didn't go in....because they didn't want to get shot.
FACT#1: Since 2015, Texas has been leading yearly gun deaths in the USA.
In 2020, Texas had a 14.2% gun death rate (4,164 deaths) and IL had a 14.1% gun death rate (1,745 deaths). I'm tired of hearing that gun crime in Chicago is worse, while people don't look at the real numbers. Gun death by crime may be worse in Chicago, but more people are dying by guns in Texas in cases such as friendly fire, accidental shootings, suicide, etc
- CDC NCHS Stats: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/firearm_mortality/firearm.htm
- John Hopkins: https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2022/new-report-highlights-us-2020-gun-related-deaths-highest-number-ever-recorded-by-cdc-gun-homicides-increase-by-more-than-one-third
FACT#2: In 1996, the Republican-congress stripped any funding for gun research on behalf of the NRA. That ban is still in place, so there is no regular gun deaths research nor better predictors.
- Non-Paywall: https://thehill.com/news/286847-gop-blocks-dem-attempts-to-allow-federal-gun-research/
- Paywall: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/10/04/gun-violence-research-has-been-shut-down-for-20-years/
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/sosmap/firearm_mortality/firearm.htm (The statistics below are pulled from death certificates and this is the only funding power the CDC has, so data is always a few years behind)
I bet the police arrived late because they had to get the Humvee out for a photo op on arrival. Why was there never any smoke deployed? Surely they had flash bang grenades, is it even possible for a lone gunman to cover both ends of the building at the same time? The inhumanity of this is ludicrous Can't wait to watch the awards ceremony for these brave officers who stopped it from becoming worse? WTF
One little girl was shot once in the kidneys. Bled out because of the police. Doctor told parents she could have lived.
New flag for chickenshit cops. Feel free to repost wherever you like.
Article https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/05/27/stopping-mass-shooters-q-a-00035762
So much for the "good guys with guns" theory.
Let's face it: for most cops, policing is an opportunity to wield authoritah over the enemy — oops, public — and play with military weapons. They are most certainly not interested in opening the door on an AK47-wielding killer just to rescue some stranger's kids. The police exist to protect The Man and that's the end of the story.
Abbott's now doing a photo op promising Uvalde all kinds of aid from state agencies and others. Notably, there's no mention of taking steps to prevent mass gun deaths from happening again. The word 'gun' is not mentioned.
EDIT: Now he's taking questions he doesn't want to answer. Keeps deflecting to his distraction, saying he'll answer *those other questions* afterward. Sure, he will. 🙄
From what I've read, his mother and father were separated, the gunman lived with his grandmother, and his parents didn't give a shit about him.
His mother is/was a drug addict, who wasn't exactly the upstanding member of society, and his father took off a long time ago.
Abuse, drugs and apathy are great ways to ruin a child who has a stutter and emotional problems to begin with. He was bullied throughout his life.
I don't know where he got the money, but it cost him over $2K for that gun and ammo. Pretty sure that it wasn't legal money, either.
Texas has some of the most purely evil elected officials I've seen in a long time-all of them Republican, who chase the almighty dollar.
If they can't run the state, how does anyone expect the cops to do a better job?
However, the top cop in Texas said, "We make big boo boo." not too loudly, though.
Why, gee whiz, ya think? Bozo! Dozens of calls, pleas from parents, and they stood around twiddling their thumbs with an active shooter in the building.
I'd suggest everyone involved in that massacre go back to basic training and get it right. The next time could be even fucking worse.
As I've been watching updates today, I've put together my protest poster ...
So for today's version of the story, Gee, they realize now that they should have gone in to save the children and the incident commander just made a mistake by calling it a barricaded shooter instead of an active shooter, (while this stupid fucker is hearing gunshots & little kids are calling 911). They're sorry. They just made a mistake. Ya think? I hope these useless last responder cowards feel so guilty for letting those kids die they start killing themselves. They were supposed to PROTECT & serve. If they won't even save helpless little kids what good are they.
The cops were slow to go in because they reportedly didn't understand the situation, and didn't know where the shooter was.
Now, I can see the reasoning behind this, but an hour? Come on, assholes-that is the worst fucking excuse in the fucking world. A good cop tries to scope out the situation as quickly as possible.
BTW, I'm of the mind that perhaps the cops were a little slower to react because the children there were not 100% white. Cops in a racist state can be pretty racist.
I wouldn't ascribe all of it too that, but it sure does look pretty shitty to be standing around while kids who are being terrorized are in danger of dying no matter what their skin color.
One thing I keep NOT hearing: According to the first stories, the cops were in pursuit of this shooter since 9-1-1 got the call from his grandma's neighbor, yet it's questionable how soon they even engaged with him. That gap between his grandmother's house and the school needs to be revealed.
Here are some more details:
Pictorial timeline:
This is how the shooting played out over the course of nearly two hours from when Ramos killed his grandmother at home. He arrived at the school at 11.28am and the first 911 calls were made. He then walked unobstructed into the building with his AR-15 and headed towards the classroom. He fought off cops at 11.44am, then was left alone in the room with the victims until around 12.44pm - when SWAT arrived. The incident was declared over at 1.06pm.
From Heather Cox Richardson's "Letters from an American" today...
"Parents tried to get the police to go in but instead found themselves under attack for interfering with an investigation. One man was thrown to the ground and pepper sprayed. U.S. Marshals arrested and handcuffed Angeli Rose Gomez, whose children were in the school and who had had time to drive 40 miles to get to them, for interfering as she demanded they do something. Gomez got local officers she knew to talk the Marshals into releasing her. Then she jumped the school fence, ran in, grabbed her two kids, and ran out."
All sounds about as well oiled as the Texas power grid. Way to go Abbott/Paxton/Cruz and the rest of you Texas-phucks.
They have like a predatory pack animal mindset. engaging in ruthless, vicious, and malicious acts against others or even members of their own race while in the cohort of their pack. Then stick together and lie under oath to avoid accountability or make a charge stick against a victim of their nefarious subterfuge e.g. planting evidence.
WOW! So they did have to pay the money back? Cops are the worst of everything. They are the opposite of what they are supposed to be. White supremacy-supporting thugs!
My POS sister and her filthy on the take PIG/OINKSTER hubby live there, it's very fitting, and they can keep the both of them. (she took a lot of money from my parents refusing to pay them back even though she and her hubby signed a contract, which they were forced to pay back when their employers learned about what they did).
My sister is a pro-tRump (she voted for him twice, and well we haven't talked to her since 2016 after the election because my Dad called her a moron for voting for him, and I started laughing, so yeah she was butthurt by that.
NINETY MINUTES!!!!! Couldn't some cop smashed a window or something? Couldn't they have done something!!
The rough timeline that I'm reading is that the perp crashed his vehicle outside at ~11:30, the first 911 call was at ~11:32, and the perp was shooting at various targets from the parking lot of the school until ~11:40. He didn't barricade himself inside the classroom until 11:44. Two first responders tried to engage him inside the school around that time, but were outgunned and/or couldn't get past the barricade. They waited between 40 to 60 mins from 11:44 for a tactical team to arrive, and the local police and other LEOs outside just sat around managing the yellow-tape cordon and keeping the parents from going in.
Finally, a border-patrol team or just one border patrol dude trying to save his kid went in after 12:44 and engaged the perp after getting the key to the classroom from building maintenance. The perp was neutralized at about 1 PM - making it almost 90 minutes from the first 911 call, until he was taken out.
It appears that the government and police mouthpieces are making shit up as they go. I want to see police cam footage with the timers and security cam footage at the school.
How many more reasons do we need to avoid Texas?
Texas pigs are all Abbott asshole sucking cowards. I hope the victims families hunt them down like the feral wild pigs they are!
They are tough abusive bullies when they have the upper hand.
Chickenshits when the rubber hits the road.
Can you blame the cops or law enforcement? Well, seeing that many of the cops, law enforcement professionals are Trumpsters, and pro-gun, and Republicans and support open carry laws, etc., just like Tony Gonzales, the Congressional Representative for 23rd District where the massacre occurred, I would answer a resounding, "YES". You can blame that other famous Texas Republican, George W. Bush and his wife, Laura Bush. And all the Bushs' and Cheneys'.
That is true about the husband. I saw him deliver flowers to the memorial and later on he had the heart attack and died. It looked like the children were all adults. How terrible to lose your parents within a few days of each other. I have not seen anything about law enforcement going in for their own child. I did hear reported on the day it happened that a parent broke the window to his child’s classroom and pulled he/she and a few other kids out. But I have never heard that since Tuesday.
I read multiple sources saying that the cops were going in - to get their own children out. I'm not sure how true that is. I certainly hope it's not true because that will erode any trust in their law enforcement that I might have had.
Republicans are the enemy of the US. This IS political without anyone on the left making it so. It becomes political when politicians take money from the gun lobby and the NRA (yeah, I know, same thing) to NOT do their jobs of protecting the citizens of this country. The GOP just loves to throw around the whole "don't make it political" thing to confuse matters.
And I saw another story that the husband of one of the two teachers killed died from a heart attack, leaving four children without any parents. I sure as fuck hope that isn't true because imagine what those kids would be going through. Lose one parent to a school shooting and lose the other parent the next day because of a heart attack. I had to check out after seeing that because quite frankly, I'm not in a good emotional state right now, thinking about those poor children and their parents and how this was all FUCKING PREVENTABLE. All the fucking Republican assholes had to do is stand out of the way and let those more capable than them work it out.
Ted Cruz in Uvalde today saying the words to use from the repug playbook, EVIL, MONSTER, DEMOCRATS MAKING THIS POLITICAL.
This is a FB post from someone I follow. Shitty, shitty, shitty situation. Of course there will never be an enquiry or investigation. If you need DNA samples to identify your kid from a mess of blown tissue and bone fragments while the Ted Cruz wannabes are running things and making endless bank from the gun makers and there's a bottomless supply of disenfranchised young boys being primed by Joe Rogan and the dark web, this 'civilization' is most definitely fucked beyond repair. "We been told over and over and over again the solution to violent crime is to put more police in place and in the case of schools, have armed personnel on campus. Senator Ted Cruz reiterated this point yesterday during an interview.
As we are seeing in the tragedy in Uvalde, Texas, the school safety budget was doubled while the teachers themselves noted the educational aspects were under resourced. If we follow the scenario, almost immediately, the gun man faced a police officer and yet he still managed to get inside a classroom and barricade himself.
We are now seeing video of parents literally crying and begging officers to rush the classroom as they heard gunshots. Police didn’t enter the building until 60 minutes later. They had a police rep trying to spin it and say police were inside the school. He was essentially gas lighting the parents and videos we saw of frantic parents begging for intervention. This makes this story even more tragic.
It was the teachers Eva Mireles and Irma Garcia who put their bodies on the line to protect those kids. With everyone from local police to Border patrol armed to the teeth, why was this gunman not stopped??
On the local newscast in Dallas, their initial news coverage centered around a retired cop who talked about the type of mental impact this would have on officers seeing dead bodies. This was before we heard about the state of mind of parents who still did not know the plight of their kids.
Do we need more guns or do we need other forms of intervention..?
Lastly this morning in Texas. A student was arrested in Berkner HS in Richmond, Tx . He had an Ak-47 .. and a replica rifle in his car.
In another school district in Texas, Donna independent school district, there was threats made against the school. Officers acting on a tip found 2-3 students were planning on shooting up the school.. They had assault rifles and a list of students to target. No details on the arrests have been released as of this writing."
Rafael Cruz is getting a little testy under intense questioning by the press. He may be scampering off to Cancun.
Cops are not required to put themselves in harm's way to protect anyone, ever. This was also an issue at the Parkland shooting, where the sheriff or whatever stood outside and waited for backup while all the shooting went down inside.
It's obviously VERY telling that the cops knew that anyone going in there would be putting their lives in danger.
People don't really understand that most police work consists of cleaning up after a crime has already been committed. This is the ONLY scenario I can think of where a militarized police force might actually be useful???
By all appearances, these police were ill-prepared, out-gunned, and outfoxed by a teenage psychopath. And that is very fucking scary.
I don't even know as I blame the cops. It's just an excellent example in my mind that "all is takes is a good guy to take down a bad guy" is stupid. When someone is in that situation you don't know how they'll react. Some people will freeze, some people will act but it will be stupid, and yes some people can stop someone else. But there's no way to predict who that will be. So no, putting guns in the hands of more people is not the answer. We have guns in the hands of just about everyone and in this case it literally happened. Tons of armed people were around this guy and he still managed to kill 21 people. The problem is fucking too many guns in the hands of too many people who want to kill others. Yes we need to address our people problem but our gun problem needs to be addressed just as much.
Jesus Christ! So at what point did the Border Patrol agent decide to circumvent that cops and go inside and kill the shooter? Republicans never want us to see how our $ is being wasted, how useless the cops are and how we need to change everything. They rely on their people being more outraged and louder than the majority. They rely on the majority being cowed by lunatics. So far it’s worked pretty well since the cops have so much power. Unreal.