Generations worth of TV and movies have created a distorted expectation of what the police can be expected to do.
1. The police are a deterrent, preventing crimes before they happen through foot patrols and such that convince criminals that there are eyes on them.
2. They’re the clean-up crew after the fact, taking reports, conducting investigations, making arrests.
Very little of what law enforcement actually does involves direct intervention during a crime.
Mostly what the police do in their interventions involves disorderly conduct, calls to homes about one of the people living there, and that sort of thing. In a crisis, you can expect them to “secure the scene” and wait for a tactical team.
That’s what happened at Uvalde. People are angry and they should be.
But paradoxically, all the LEOs at the scene made things worse. An individual or a few of them might have done something more directly. As a group, everyone was following procedures. And that’s what procedures look like.
Law enforcement, like everything else, has been heavily bureaucratized. Initiative is discouraged. And yet it’s initiative that was desperately needed here.
Emilie Green says
It may say “To serve and protect” on the sides of their cars, but the police are under no obligation to protect you from danger even as they collect their paychecks and pensions. Most will be shocked to know this. These USSC cases will help to explain,
2005
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Town_of_Castle_Rock_v._Gonzales
1989,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeShaney_v._Winnebago_County
Spiro says
Many years ago when I was a cop most of us were veterans
We would have gone in without instructions or permission that’s just the way it was
Now it’s run by the PC gang and they are to follow instruction or else
Yes Hollywood has created a make believe world were cops serve and protect solving crime in the time allowed between commercials
Serve and protect. Hollywood
We were told our job was to maintain the status quo
This article has it pretty correct and gone are the days of the best cop who knows the neighborhood and has neighborhood support
Our so called progressive experts have caused this problem
PMK says
“An individual or a few of them might have done something more directly.”
Why, when they know they will be second-guessed and possibly even prosecuted if something goes wrong? Their good intentions and bravery won’t save them. Not even their training will save them if the procedures they were taught lead to a bad outcome. Why should any officer want to be the next Derek Chauvin?
The politicians run the PD. They’ll take the credit if everything goes well, so let them take the responsibility when bad things happen.
Savvy Kafir says
Agreed. The fact that police officers in TEXAS, of all places, failed to enter that school and deal with the problem immediately, while an active shooter rampaged among defenseless kids and teachers, is truly disheartening. Twenty years ago, this would have been unbelievable. Incomprehensible. And it’s not a good thing that, in 2022, this pitiful display of timidity and inaction (in TEXAS!) doesn’t seem quite as surreal as it ought to.
Political correctness is toxic stuff for everything and everyone it touches; but especially when it infects those people, departments, & agencies that are supposed to serve as sheepdogs, ready and willing to face down the wolves. People in whom boldness and manliness are sometimes essential qualities.
It’s astonishing that NONE of those officers said: “F**k it! They can take my badge if I live through this — I’m going in to sort this s**t out or die trying!” I’m pretty sure that many patrol cars in Texas have AR-15s in their trunks these days. And even if that weren’t the case, some (if not ALL) of those officers should have been simply unwilling to stand around and wait while kids were being slaughtered.
This sorry episode needs to serve as a cautionary tale that alerts the public to the sometimes lethal dangers of political correctness in police departments — rather than firing enthusiasm for gun bans among the woefully ignorant sheep who refuse to take responsibility for their own safety and that of their loved ones.
somehistory says
Even if the “incident command chief” had been right about the shooter not shooting any more, the kids he had shot were in need of medical help while they died.
He was stupid and inept and someone should have overruled him and busted the door in or gone in through a window. finally, the border patrol guys did go in, but one must wonder how long it would have taken before the inept chief of the ISD would have waited.
OT, but still a police story
“DUI arrest of Pelosi’s husband came after California crash”
If only it had been the female half of the couple. Driving a porsche…a new one…wonder where the money is made? not a serious question…we all know
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/dui-arrest-of-pelosi-s-husband-came-after-california-crash/ar-AAXT6EN?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=2017
James Lincoln says
somehistory,
The best chance for surviving a traumatic injury is when appropriate emergency medical care is administered within the first 60 minutes – sooner if at all possible.
This is known in medicine as the “golden hour”.
We’ll never know, but it’s possible that some of the shooting victims could’ve survived if they had received timely emergency medical care.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/338999083_Early_management_of_trauma_The_golden_hour.
somehistory says
Thank you, James.
Yes, I have read many reports over the years that said, “he/she bled out”.
It’s kind of like having an appendix ready to burst. If help arrives right away, the patient can live, but wait a little too long to have it removed, the patient might not survive.
It was a terrible situation and I feel for the other students who witnessed it and for the parents and other family who lost a loved one.
The husband of the teacher who died while planning her funeral, had just days before the murders, been trained to deal with “an active shooter.”
gravenimage says
+1
OLD GUY says
It is always easier to call the plays after the game is over. Arm chair quarterbacks are seldom wrong, but in the heat of things they sit quietly on the side lines and let someone else make the decisions and then take the heat for those decisions. You can’t say police shouldn’t arrest criminals and shouldn’t carry guns and then expect them to run in guns blazing and risk their life and the hostages to take down a criminal.
Everyone would have liked to see a different outcome where everyone including the shooter would have walked out of that school.
The gun was not evil the man was.
gravenimage says
The Police Aren’t Coming to Save You
……………..
That police waited *over an hour* before going in sure as hell didn’t help.