Uvalde School Shooting, 21 Dead

[tvc184]

2 minutes ago, PN-G bamatex said:

I don't think you need an officer per door. I think one officer per campus is enough. That's partly based on the psychological impact.

The Uvalde shooter wasn't from Uvalde, only attended the high school there for a short time, and likely had no idea he'd encounter an officer on the campus of that elementary school. He very likely picked what he believed would be a totally defenseless target. In the end, he didn't meet much of a defense, sure, but do we really think he would have picked that elementary school out if he thought he'd come across any defense at all?

These shooters have a consistent pattern of picking defenseless targets, or at least what they perceive to be defenseless targets. Put a visible law enforcement presence on every campus in the state, even a minimal one, and I think you significantly reduce the odds of a shooter even attempting a massacre.

Your points regarding equipment, training and leave are well taken. Even so, the Legislature and the school districts in the state's population centers have the money available, through one avenue or another. PN-GISD doesn't have anywhere near the resources on a per pupil basis of a Round Rock or Lake Travis ISD, and still manages to keep four resource officers total on three of its campuses every day.

Columbine. School Officer on scene and they planned to take him out at the outset. He foiled their plan by not eating him typical cafeteria lunch but maybe oddly (premonition?) brown bagged that day and decided to eat in his car. In fact he engaged them almost immediately but as a school officer was on scene, they knew that and prepared to take him out.

Parkland, FL Stoneman Douglas high school, school  officer on scene…. 17 dead, 17 wounded.

 The largest school shooting, VT. An entire police department on campus and moments away… 31 dead victims at the school and 17 more shot.

[tvc184]

Oh yeah, Sandy Hook. No officers but campus secured by locked doors which worked as planned. Adam Landsa shot out the door and stepped through… 

[BEARCPA]

2 hours ago, tvc184 said:

That is what I was talking about. If they were in position to do so. Do you have any information that they were in position failed to stop him?

I was chasing a felony suspect one time and he went over the fence of a fenced in school and broke into the school while I was chasing him. There were no kids there and he turned out not to be armed but we did not know that at the time. The guy was ahead of me however and running away.

So, were these officers in position to stop the guy? Do we have any information that their training failed at them?

If you want to see criticism, go behind the scenes in a shift meeting, a locker room, a secure police forum or on the back lot of the police station and watch officers criticize other officers. We aren’t exactly shy about calling them like we see them. We don’t  always do it in public but we typically don’t defend what we think is stupidity.

Totally understand your points and appreciate your real world examples/service. Sgt. Estrada with the DPS said the shooter was “engaged” by law enforcement outside of the school. Once again, I’m not well versed in the technicalities of this stuff, so there’s a good chance that “engaged” doesn’t mean what I think it means in this sense. 

[Unwoke]

 

 

 

[tvc184]

11 minutes ago, BEARCPA said:

Totally understand your points and appreciate your real world examples/service. Sgt. Estrada with the DPS said the shooter was “engaged” by law enforcement outside of the school. Once again, I’m not well versed in the technicalities of this stuff, so there’s a good chance that “engaged” doesn’t mean what I think it means in this sense. 

I read some news reports that said the school had an officer on scene and he exchanged gun fire with a suspect as he was entering the school, so almost immediately.

A follow up said the school security officer might have exchanged gun fire, they were not sure. That is the problem with the news media. They are not worried about facts, they worried about innuendo and getting clicks on the articles. I don’t think they out right lie most of the time, they just do not check their sources. A rumor repeated becomes fact.

There was a school resource officer on scene at the beginning of the Stoneman Douglas high school shooting in Florida. He refused to respond and stayed outside of the door while he heard shots being fired. I was told that if you hear a shot being fired, that is another child dying. Any officer who refuses to enter in that situation, in my opinion, is a coward and needs to drop his badge and his gun on the desk on the way out the door. I made several posts and comments at my police department ripping that officer apart saying that he was an disgrace. I have no problem making such a criticism.

I would simply like to know what actually happened before I started pointing fingers.

 

[tvc184]

On the news media angle….

One Saturday morning probably 15 years ago, I was the commanding officer on duty at my police department, in charge of maybe nine officers. Basically at that time I was the acting chief of police or the highest ranking officer on duty.

An officer got out on a car on the frontage road of a freeway.  I cannot remember now if he was dispatched after a passerby saw the car or if he just rolled up on it while on patrol  The roof of the car was crushed and it appeared as though the vehicle had flipped off of the overpass. The vehicle was not occupied. I arrived a couple of minutes later and we secured the scene by shutting down the roadway. It appeared a person lost control of the vehicle and flipped off of the highway overpass.  With no one in the vehicle and no known witnesses, we didn’t know if the person was thrown from the vehicle and into a ditch, in a drainage canal nearby, had crawled out may be intoxicated and gotten a ride home, etc. In such a situation, out of caution we assume the worst because you cannot usually re-create evidence later. 

A few minutes later a reporter from a local news media outlet showed up. The reporter was actually just driving down the highway and saw the police cars blocking the road and stopped to check. The reporter naturally did his job and asked what was happening. I said exactly what I said in the previous paragraph. It might just be a drunk who went off the highway and crawled out and hitchhiked home. The reported followed up with, but why is everything locked down. It is just like I said, we simply don’t know. We don’t want to find out this was a road rage incident and a guy’s body is in the canal and we simply drove away. I told him what I always say, in a situation like this we assume that it is a homicide and start from there. Hopefully in a short time we will find out that there is not much to it and we can go in about our business but you have to gather evidence now or never.

He drove away and a few minutes later we located the guy at home. Yes he had lost control and gone off of the side of the overpass and had called a friend to bring him home. I am guessing that he did not call us because he was intoxicated but there was nothing we could prove at that point. We were probably on scene for a total of about 30 minutes and had the case wrapped up.

No big deal….. right????

Well the next morning I got a call from the chief of police who was maybe a little bit angry. He asked me why he was not notified of a homicide and why were detectives not called out.  My thoughts were like….. HUH???

Hahaha….. the lead story the next day in the news was, police working a possible homicide on the highway.

Uhhhhh, chief, that is not what I told the reporter. I said we locked the scene down like we always do until we could confirm what we had. It was probably just a drunk that went off the highway and we wrapped it up within a few minutes and there was nothing else to do or anyone to notify. Ahhhhh……

There in lies my opinion about the news media. They did not outright lie because I did tell him that we were working a possible homicide but I also told him that it may have just been a wreck with no injuries. There was no follow up later by the reporter, he had the stunning headline that he wanted… And it turned out to be false.  In the news story he could have at least cited information by me that the police had nothing to follow up on but we’re gathering evidence just in case something serious happened.

[tvc184]

…… which is why I take news report with a grain of salt.

What a reporter calls engaged, might mean absolutely nothing in the terminology from the police officers’ point of view. 

[tvc184]

I just thought of another one of my war stories. This was about 25 years ago when I was a patrol officer. One of our officers shot and killed a man after a traffic stop. The officer tried to make a traffic stop but the man drove to his house and that is where the incident took place.

I was not on duty at time but was working the next shift and spoke with some of the officers and supervisors who gave us the details as best they could.

The chief at that time was fairly new in our department and did not like giving information to the media. I was just the opposite and wanted to give them as much as we could give them without jeopardizing the investigation but, I was not the chief.

I happen to be working the desk the next day and did not actually go out on patrol. I was given specific orders by the chief of police, do not give any information to the media. Any information will come through his office.

Sure enough he local television station called me that evening and ask some follow-up questions. I said that I could not answer and that any information would  be coming from the Chiefs office. That is when it got interesting. The reporter told me that they had spoken with a neighbor on camera who said that it was  thought that the shooting resulted from a family disturbance and did I wish to simply confirm or deny that. I again said that I could not answer any questions however let me call the chief and I will call you right back.

So I called Chief  and said this is what they want to know, one question. Was it a family disturbance or not and I would like to tell them no. The Chief said I appreciate you being helpful but don’t tell them anything. I told the Chief the news media going to run with a lie and his comment was something like, that’s on them not me. True….

I called the reporter back and said the Chief will not authorize me to release any information. The reporter said that they were going to run with that story then and say that the police department refused comment. I told the reporter that is fine but I will tell you, I would try and talk to some other people that claimed to be witnesses or get some detailed information as to why they think it was a disturbance. I really don’t remember if that popular news station ran with that false information or not.

I figured out long ago how rumors start… except the ones that are intentional. It starts at usually with something like “I think” or “I heard that maybe”.

A person or two repeats it but they drop the words “think” or “maybe”.

The rumor or speculation then becomes fact. I used to say all the time at the police department, say it once and it’s a rumor, say it twice and it’s a fact.

I could just about guarantee that some other topic will come up in this forum and if somebody says, well I heard that blah blah blah said blah blah blah…. a person will read it and will make a comment to someone on a text message or in another forum  on what was said. When the person who received the message tells the story again, it will be, well I have a friend that I trust and he said…..

ANNNDDD….. we are off to the races. 

[SmashMouth]

7 hours ago, tvc184 said:

That would be a nearly impossible task since you would have to find their social media and have them admit that it was theirs. I know as background checks we have checked social media pages but you never know if someone has something hidden under a false identity.

To expect at the point of a gun sale to start checking someone’s thousands of posts on maybe a dozen different social media sites, would be an almost impossible task. If assuming that became a standard, people would simply start with a falsified name in that post under their true identity. Maybe while on the way to perpetrate an act they might change to their real identity or something like that but unfortunately, these people aren’t stupid.

That was the point I was trying to make in my post you responded to regarding responding to a threat made on Facebook. Unless the individual did it well in advance, I would think in many instances he would beat LE to the punch. 

[SmashMouth]

7 hours ago, baddog said:

What I want to know is how this guy bought so much ammo. 

I literally buy rounds 1 or 2 thousand at a time. It’s honestly not difficult. 

[bullets13]

8 hours ago, tvc184 said:

My favorite overpriced sporting goods store is/was (?) in Uvalde… Oasis Outback.

Saw a news report that this is where he bought the guns.

[tvc184]

2 hours ago, bullets13 said:

Saw a news report that this is where he bought the guns.

I guess that means they are still open but might not be for long….

[Unwoke]

12 hours ago, tvc184 said:

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Mass murder, not suicide except the guy that did it. 

We could go back to Cain and Abel. All he needed was a rock. Hate has been around a long time. The break down of the family is the root of most of this country’s problems. The unconditional love of Jesus Christ in an individual’s heart can solve this country’s problems. Always enjoy reading your insight on these type of matters tvc. Your experience and knowledge is appreciated. 

[CardinalBacker]

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I really thought this was fake when I saw it…. It’s not. 

[5GallonBucket]

12 minutes ago, CardinalBacker said:

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I really thought this was fake when I saw it…. It’s not. 

It’s expected

[SmashMouth]

48 minutes ago, CardinalBacker said:

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I really thought this was fake when I saw it…. It’s not. 

That’s literally unbelievable. I just can’t fathom it. SMH 

[tvc184]

54 minutes ago, CardinalBacker said:

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I really thought this was fake when I saw it…. It’s not. 

That is one of the most despicable things I have ever seen.

It is par for the course for him. When they had the memorial service for the five police officers murdered in Dallas at the BLM rally,, he spoke at the service. He mentioned the sacrifice of the officers but then at what is basically a funeral, he started talking about Jim Crow laws. Let’s see, five officers were murdered but you know, 100 years ago they made those laws against us….

Imagine if someone spoke at one of the memorial services for these innocent children and teachers and…..

 

[LumRaiderFan]

1 hour ago, CardinalBacker said:

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I really thought this was fake when I saw it…. It’s not. 

🤦‍♂️ Good grief!

[tvc184]

I saw a video just now that purportedly shows police officers failing to enter the school at the screaming and urging of distraught parents.

Without having any other further information and only looking at “this” video (knowing that others might show something different), you can see all the screaming and pleading and anguish but several officer standing around. But I also saw crime scene tape around the school.

What it appears to be is the incident is over but now several hours of investigations must be made. A justice of the peace or coroner has to pronounce the bodies deceased, the injured have to be attended to, crime scene photographs must be taken of the disgusting and horrific scene, a more thorough sweep needs to be made of the school which itself might take hours, etc.

Emotional video such as this without context and a timeframe show almost nothing. I can’t remember the amount of crime scenes that I have stood at and had to restrain people from going inside. Yes they want to see their dead relative, yes they want to come to the realization of what happened at that point and actually see the results but it is a crime scene and has to be preserved.

Imagine if the investigation leads to a couple of other people who helped perpetrate this absolutely horrible crime. Unfortunately, the police let everyone trample through the crime scene and now the evidence is lost and these two people who theoretically might’ve helped kill many children, might go free. Sorry folks, we found out that this guy had a friend who helped him get the guns while knowing what he intended to do but……

No, at that point it is a crime scene to be secured. Even the police officers on duty outside are not allowed to just go in and gawk at the crime scene.

Looking at this video, it demonstrates the problem of looking at something when you don’t know what you’re seeing and making a conclusion with absolutely no knowledge whatsoever except perhaps that it is at the school where it happened.

[CardinalBacker]

I’m well aware that a rifle is just a tool made of iron and wood… it’s a hard heart that kills. 
 

I also understand the 2A as my right to protect myself from enemies… whether they are an intruder or a tyrannical government. AR owner here. 
 

But is there anything else that we should be doing legislatively? I’ve made a few personal suggestions (lock your guns, don’t sell them to strangers, etc…) but it seems like this kid followed the law, and even if this retailer (who I’m certain is losing quite a bit of sleep) hadn’t sold this rifle to this kid, the kid was going to get his hands on one sooner or later. 
 

Does anybody have any workable ideas or suggestions that would make these scenarios less likely?

[baddog]

2 hours ago, CardinalBacker said:

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I really thought this was fake when I saw it…. It’s not. 

There is not a nasty enough word to describe what I think of Beto, even before this. 

[LumRaiderFan]

1 hour ago, CardinalBacker said:

I’m well aware that a rifle is just a tool made of iron and wood… it’s a hard heart that kills. 
 

I also understand the 2A as my right to protect myself from enemies… whether they are an intruder or a tyrannical government. AR owner here. 
 

But is there anything else that we should be doing legislatively? I’ve made a few personal suggestions (lock your guns, don’t sell them to strangers, etc…) but it seems like this kid followed the law, and even if this retailer (who I’m certain is losing quite a bit of sleep) hadn’t sold this rifle to this kid, the kid was going to get his hands on one sooner or later. 
 

Does anybody have any workable ideas or suggestions that would make these scenarios less likely?

I've always thought allowing teachers to carry, after going through training, was a good idea.

But if someone gets it in their sick mind to do something like this, it would be almost impossible to stop.

I think armed teachers could at least minimize damage.

Also have specific gates that have to be accessed to enter a campus like a refinery, with campus LE if possible.  I understand this would make drop off and pickup more difficult and would take some logistic problem solving but lots of traffic is managed through plant gates.  I also understand this would be very costly to implement and maintain.

Just throwing it out there.

[LumRaiderFan]

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Some solutions from teachers themselves...from the article:

 

Payge Guenzler, a teacher in Montana, called on parents to become more involved in their children's lives. 

"What happened today in Texas was horrible," she wrote on Facebook. "As a society we can start blaming politics or being in favor of certain laws or lack of them. We can start pointing fingers and saying it's one sides fault or the other's. It seems like social media allows people to be quite the screen warrior when promoting their opinions... But here is the downright problem of society that I see as an educator... Start parenting your own d--- kids and quit relying on schools, daycares, and the rest of society to do it for you."

Rebecca Friedrichs, who was a public school teacher for 28 years and is the founder of For Kids and Country, told Fox News Digital she believes schools need to teach values and morals.

"We cannot create enough laws to stop this school shooting problem, we instead need a rebirth of the value of human life that we used to have in this country," she said. "And, beyond human life … in America's schools, we used to teach morals." 

Friedrichs blamed teachers unions for the change in schools, saying they pushed curriculum that is "divisive." 

"They have removed the moral compass," she said. "Thanks to the teachers unions and their policies… now you can't really discipline kids who are out of control." 

Freidrichs said it was "tragic" that the solution may be increasing school resource officers and a police presence on campuses.

"Of course, somebody should be able to defend these… innocent victims," she said. "Some force on campus who would hopefully scare off someone who would come to shoot up innocent people." 

[CardinalBacker]

That part about the value of human life is something that I think about a lot. It’s just commonly accepted that a person’s life just wasn’t worth as much in parts of Africa, The Middle East, South America, etc… then it kinda came to be that a person’s life wasn’t worth as much in our inner cities and even some rural areas. I think what we’re seeing is an overall decrease in the overall value of a human life anywhere in our country. I think it’s just a symptom of the degradation of our values collectively as a nation. 
 

I couldn’t help but notice Gayle King on CBS News this morning crying about “the babies” when last week she was mad as hell that the Republicans were gonna overturn Roe v Wade and make it harder for women to to abort their babies. The hypocrisy is mind blowing. 

2 minutes ago, LumRaiderFan said:

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Some solutions from teachers themselves...from the article:

 

Payge Guenzler, a teacher in Montana, called on parents to become more involved in their children's lives. 

"What happened today in Texas was horrible," she wrote on Facebook. "As a society we can start blaming politics or being in favor of certain laws or lack of them. We can start pointing fingers and saying it's one sides fault or the other's. It seems like social media allows people to be quite the screen warrior when promoting their opinions... But here is the downright problem of society that I see as an educator... Start parenting your own d--- kids and quit relying on schools, daycares, and the rest of society to do it for you."

Rebecca Friedrichs, who was a public school teacher for 28 years and is the founder of For Kids and Country, told Fox News Digital she believes schools need to teach values and morals.

"We cannot create enough laws to stop this school shooting problem, we instead need a rebirth of the value of human life that we used to have in this country," she said. "And, beyond human life … in America's schools, we used to teach morals." 

Friedrichs blamed teachers unions for the change in schools, saying they pushed curriculum that is "divisive." 

"They have removed the moral compass," she said. "Thanks to the teachers unions and their policies… now you can't really discipline kids who are out of control." 

Freidrichs said it was "tragic" that the solution may be increasing school resource officers and a police presence on campuses.

"Of course, somebody should be able to defend these… innocent victims," she said. "Some force on campus who would hopefully scare off someone who would come to shoot up innocent people." 

 

[baddog]

This has been mentioned by several, including myself. This evilness can’t be legislated away. 
 

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