By Lee Williams
SAF Investigative Journalism Project
Law enforcement is dangerous. That’s why departments issue handguns, spare mags, Tasers, pepper spray, batons, shotguns, ARs and body armor, and spend millions of taxpayer dollars every year making sure their officers know how to use deadly force with some modicum of proficiency.
If you can’t accept the danger, do not apply.
Pinning on a badge once came with an implied consent. It meant you were willing to risk your life to protect the lives of others, regardless of how the courts have ruled. Sadly, that is no longer the case, at least not in Uvalde.
More than 400 hundred law enforcement officers from multiple departments waited 77 minutes outside a classroom of Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas while an active shooter killed 19 children and two teachers inside. They allowed an 18-year-old madman to kill 21 people while they waited in a hallway outside the classroom, milling around, talking on their radios and checking their cellphones.
Now, a report from the Texas Tribune and ProPublica shows how the officers involved in the worst active-shooter response in police history are attempting to shift the public’s focus away from their own cowardice. They didn’t make entry, they told investigators, because the suspect had an AR. In other words, instead of blaming themselves, they’re blaming a gun, even though police had hundreds of ARs on scene.
“You knew that it was definitely an AR,” Uvalde Police Sgt. Donald Page told investigators after the shooting, according to the report. “There was no way of going in. We had no choice but to wait and try to get something that had better coverage where we could actually stand up to him.”
Sgt. Page was not alone in his excuse making.
“We weren’t equipped to make entry into that room without several casualties,” Uvalde Police Department Detective Louis Landry reportedly said, adding, “Once we found out it was a rifle he was using, it was a different game plan we would have had to come up with. It wasn’t just going in guns blazing, the Old West style, and take him out.”
So much for the simple but effective run-to-the-gun active-shooter response that’s ingrained into every single police officer in the country. Uvalde police reverted to the chill-out-and-wait-for-SWAT response that ended after the Columbine massacre. And now they want you to believe that a rifle is responsible for their failure to act.
The country’s entire law enforcement community let out a collective groan of horror and disbelief once it was learned what happened in Uvalde, or more accurately what didn’t happen. Sure, there were a few officers who tried like hell to get into the classroom and shoot the bad guy, but they were waved off and held back by the feebleminded pussies who were running the show, who are still trying to justify their craven abdication of their sworn duty by blaming an inanimate object.
Officers had one job: They should have made entry immediately and engaged the shooter, regardless of how he was armed. He was killing children, after all. Each second could cost a precious life and they gave him 77 minutes.
The gun-ban industry was already using Uvalde as a talking point in their war on our gun rights. Given this new report, their clamoring will only grow louder.
Nowadays, rather than investing in armored fighting vehicles and weapons that rival those of Tier One JSOC units, perhaps police departments should invest in better quality personnel. It’s been nearly a year since the Uvalde mass murder and those responsible are still making excuses. But now, by blaming a gun rather than themselves, they’re putting our civil rights further at risk.
Investigative editor Lee Williams is a former police officer who earned three medals of valor. He is based in Florida.
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(This article also appeared in The Gun Mag.)
