This is a story of police cowardice the likes of which we've either never seen before or cannot recall seeing before if we have. If you have not been in solitary confinement for the past week, you've no doubt heard about the massacre of 21 people including 18 innocent children at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. When we first heard about it we didn't pay much attention because it sounded like just another school shooting. We heard about the hero that killed the shooter who happened to be an off duty Border Patrol agent and thought it was nice to hear about a law enforcement officer going above and beyond the call of duty by taking it upon himself to put in work while off duty. Then today we noticed headlines saying that the Uvalde Police Department (UPD) had already been at the scene for the better part of an hour protecting the shooter from the victims' parents.
Not long ago we thought about adding a tagline/slogan to our site as a message for law enforcement. That line was "do JUST your job!" What we were thinking by that was that we wanted to tell police officers to do just their jobs and nothing more. We didn't get around to ever using the tagline, but are giving it second thoughts. We want police officers to do their jobs first by upholding the Constitution because defending the Constitution is their most important job. Upholding the Constitution might sound simple because it is, but police officers often view the Constitution as a obstacle to getting what they want and decide to consciously disregard it. When officers refuse to do just their jobs there can be benefits like fewer innocent people in jail, but it can also have far worse consequences like preventable innocent deaths. We've said before that there are some functions performed by police officers which every community needs to function, but we've also seen proof that police officers are not necessary because if a function is important enough there will be others willing to perform it.
The case of the inmate government at the United States Penitentiary this author was incarcerated in is a good example of an alternative government. That government handled issues such as theft, dope debts, snitching, and sex offender management. If someone stole from you, didn't pay a debt owed you, snitched on you, or was known to you to be a sex offender, there was a government for that. If you went outside that government then you would have a problem and rightfully so because the inmate government is better than the federal government. This is just one example of why abolishing the current institutions of police is a good idea because they won't be replaced by anarchy. They would be replaced by something better. Something new that only has the time and resources to intervene in life or death emergencies, but leaves everyone alone otherwise for the most part.
Had the shot callers this author remembers from prison been in charge, they would not have let Salvador Ramos waste oxygen for 10 minutes let alone 40-60 minutes as the UPD are alleged to have done here. This author knows guys that have taken on entire SWAT teams by themselves without guns. They didn't come out looking well, but the fact that they have the balls to do stuff like that suggests that they would have been better suited to handle Ramos. Those guys would have put holes in Ramos just like they did the only white guy dumb enough to set foot on the yard as a convicted rapist.
In the video below, CNN pelted law enforcement officials with questions highlighting their epic failure. As is typical, other LEOs are jumping to their defense with a fog of war defense. As if nobody can put themselves in the shoes of an officer at all let alone a reasonable officer in the position of officers on the scene at the time. Eventually, Texas Department of Public Safety Steven McCraw admitted that responding officers screwed up, but seems to defend them still by saying they were confused and thought they were dealing with a barricaded subject, not an active shooter. News footage from the time of the shooting however shows officers stopping parents from trying to do their jobs for them. In hindsight, those parents would have been better off shooting the police and going after Ramos themselves.
We like to stay away from discussing publicly scenarios in which shooting police officers is morally justified because we've learned in the past that the government is quick to twist such things to make them appear as if they're attempts to incite violence. Despite this concern, we feel the need to point out that there are some situations in which parents might need to choose between securing the lives of their children and not shooting police officers. In such scenarios, we will always argue that the wellbeing of children supersedes the wellbeing of officers. That is based on the simple fact that an innocent child with his/her entire life ahead of them is more deserving of survival than an adult because no adult is without sin. We hope that any officer reading this will understand that while we do not wish to see them shot that we would much prefer to see them shot instead of kids. That said, we think that the next time parents hear gunshots from a school and the police seem more interested in holding them back than neutralizing the shooter, the parents should strongly consider shooting the police and then going after the shooter themselves.
If you're a police officer concerned that someone might shoot you the next time you ask them to stay back during an active shooter situation, remember to do just your job. That job is to neutralize the shooter, so there shouldn't be a conflict of interest between neutralizing the shooter and protecting parents. We can think of no justifiable excuse for Ramos to have still been alive when most of the parents were still being held back. The police say he was barricaded in a room, but that is no excuse. Police have tear gas, concussion grenades, and other ways to incapacitate people when breaching a door. A blinded suspect with his ears ringing is far preferable to one with all the time and ammunition in the world.