Courage Took a Leave of Absence

"At Robb Elementary, law enforcement responders failed to adhere to their active shooter training, and they failed to prioritize saving innocent lives over their own safety."

"Other than the attacker, the Committee did not find any 'villains' in the course of its investigation. There is no one to whom we can attribute malice or ill motives."

"Instead, we found systemic failures and egregiously poor decision-making."

"In this crisis, no responder seized the initiative to establish an incident command post."

Uvalde Shooting Investigative Report

In this still image, taken from surveillance video inside Robb Elementary school on May 24, law enforcement officers are told to stay back as shots are heard down the hall. The video was obtained by the Austin American-Statesman newspaper. (Austin American-Statesman/Reuters)

The mass shooting that took place in Texas on May 24 where grade four children were faced with a gunman who shot 19 of their classmates to death, along with two of their teachers was a malodorous display of cowering cowardice. Heavily armed and armoured police from all divisions, local, state and federal were on scene, close to 400 police respondents, and no effort was taken to apprehend the gunman and to save the lives of the vulnerable.

 

The United States has become a nation of pop-up slaughter, where suddenly deranged, hate-filled bigots and psychopaths armed with semi-automatic guns and rifles attack the weak and the defenceless, their goal to murder as many victims as they can before they are themselves killed or apprehended. In the case of the Uvalde tragedy, none of the police agencies that responded to this dire emergency have any reason to polish their badges with pride.

 

American citizens must live with the knowledge that at any given time a random attack may take place and they may become a victim. Gun laws in the country enable citizens to take possession of powerful weapons, to have licenses to carry them in public, and should they encounter a violent assault taking place, they may use the weapon in their legal possession to intervene at a time when no official policing agents are on scene.

 

As happened in Indianapolis in the latest assault in Greeenwood, when an assailant fired on people in the mall, shooting three to death, injuring two others. He was in legal possession of an AR-15-style rifle, and shot off 24 rounds in the space of two minutes. He also had another rifle with over 100 rounds of ammunition as well as a handgun. As it happened another shopper was in the mall, and he responded by shooting the gunman dead, bringing the attack to a halt.

The city's police chief called the intervener's action "nothing short of heroic. Many more people would have died last night if not for a responsible armed citizen", he said. None of the close to 400 police who responded to the Uvalde emergency could be spoken of as heroic. In is hard to imagine any other society dependent on the safety and security of its population by arming citizens to respond to the actons of mass murderers.

The report on the Uvalde school shooting was 80 pages in length and it was critical of not only local authorities for the inaction that led to the deaths of so many children, but state and federal law enforcement as well, for their inadequate, unprofessional and disastrous response. About 142 rounds were fired by the Uvalde gunman; at least some of the children's lives could have been saved had officers at the school responded in a timely fashion. 

The majority of law enforcement agents showing up at the school were state and federal responders, according to the report. They were well trained and better equipped than were the school district police. The head of the Texas Department of Public Safety, (the state police force) had, before the report was circulated, faulted those forces for having failed to confront the Uvalde shooter before he ended up having over an uniterrupted hour to shoot terrified schoolchildren.

Family members and friends participate in a march in Uvalde on July 10, 2022, in support of those killed and injured in the school shooting at Robb Elementary   Evan L'Roy/The Texas Tribune