Whew! I just saw the shocking online videos from the shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas on May 24, 2022.
How could this have happened? How about the two officers who confront the gunman outside the school and then retreated past the cover of a parked vehicle? Three officers who drive by the shooter when he was still outside the school building? Why waiting in the school hall even after officers with long rifles and ballistic shields arrived?
This was a sad day for American policing. I am afraid this wasn’t a matter of a training problem. Surely most of the officers present had knowledge of current “best practices” to immediately confront a shooter and NOT wait for a SWAT team.
Where were the leaders? Where is the courage to put oneself in harms way to save another — especially young children!
See for yourself HERE.
Then listen to the wounded teacher who lost all the children in his class HERE:
What to do? What needs to improve? Training? Leadership? Working values? Courage?
All four.
Then strongly regulate the possession of firearms including prohibiting the carrying of a concealed firearm. We need also to restrict military-style weapons and high capacity magazines. We must also strengthen our systems of caring for those among us with mental health problems that could lead to violent behaviors.
Interim Report on the tragedy from the Texas legislature.
Improving Police: A Necessary Conversation 
If the cops were a military force, they would have been court-martial and either got executed or a long prison sentence for cowardice in the face of the enemy. Conservatives are always talking about the lack of real men in America. Seems to me that we lack real people who don’t hesitate to take action even it if means the cost of their own lives. How many of those cops at the shooting were in the reserves or Guard or were in the regular armed services and saw action in Iraq and/or Afghanistan? Funny, how they would lay down their lives for their fellow soldiers, but as police officers, it is not laying down their lives for the community but all about going home in one piece. They tried to put that kind of stunt on the battlefield, their fellow soldiers wouldn’t have hesitated to shoot them and save the expense of a court-martial or would have fragged them when they had a chance.
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