The tiny Uvalde school district has its own seven-person force; the 15,000-person city spends 40 percent of its budget on policing, and in 2020, the Uvalde Police Department proudly touted its nine-person SWAT team that was getting to know the layouts of local schools. Not only did the police spend an hour preparing to enter the school on Tuesday, but there was also this, from a fourth grader to local CBS affiliate KENS, presumably about the police’s first attempt to get into the school:
“When the cops came, the cop said: ‘Yell if you need help!’ And one of the persons in my class said ‘help.’ The guy overheard and he came in and shot her,” the boy said.
Each of these failures shows the absurdity of the GOP’s two-pronged policy response to school shootings—armed teachers and more support for law enforcement. (There was also an armed guard at the Buffalo supermarket, for what it’s worth. He fired at the suspect and was killed.) If the town SWAT team can’t stop a school shooter before 19 children are dead, what’s the point? Republicans have since moved on to other innovative proposals, like building schools with only one door, or giving up on schools altogether.
The more I learn about the deliberate inaction of these police, the angrier I get. I am so incandescently angry right now, you may want to stop reading. I’m going to do my best to seethe instead of exploding in a way I’ll regret.
I don’t know if these cops were unable to stop this murderer, because it sure looks like they chose not to try, and the department keeps changing its story to protect them.
An entire classroom was gunned down — 19 children were murdered along with their two heroic teachers who did more than any of these cops to try to protect them — while these fucking cowards tased and handcuffed the parents who were begging these useless men to do their fucking jobs.
What kind of fucked up piece of shit do you have to be to fucking HANDCUFF a parent who is begging you to do your fucking job and save their child’s life WHILE THERE IS AN ACTIVE SHOOTER IN THE CLASSROOM? What kind of fucked up piece of shit do you have to be to use a TASER on a parent who is begging you to do SOMETHING to save their child’s life? What kind of monster does that? I’ll tell you: A piece of shit who isn’t a cop to serve the public, that’s who.
Stop telling me I’m supposed to blindly support cops no matter what. Stop pretending your Blue Lives Matter shit isn’t just a racist dogwhistle. This doesn’t happen when people become cops to protect and serve the public. This is what happens when people become cops so they can bully and harass people with impunity. These cowards aren’t going to risk their lives for anyone. This police force gets FORTY PERCENT of the city’s budget. This tiny town has a SWAT team. That wasn’t enough to save these children and their teachers.
What’s the point of pouring endless money and weapons of war into civilian police forces if they consistently fail to protect the communities who are funding them? I think we all know the answer.
I wish I knew the answer. I wish I had the influence to amplify anything positive. I wish that far too many “men” (and sadly women as well) didn’t feel their hobby outweighed the right to life of children in schools, and adults in shopping markets. I wish we, as a society, actually believed in “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
However, our actions prove that these are just wishes. Just empty husks of promises we never intended to fulfill. We’ve demonstrated that insecure men being comforted by weapons of war are far, far more important than the lives of our children and neighbors.
X1000
Tl:Dr Pandora’s box: It was always about the money, power, and influence of the few who realized using manipulative fear tactics was easier and more profitable, so they made themselves Kings.
As we remain divided, seething over news that’s really “made-for-tv side shows” and only hearing ineffectual platitudes, we have become effectively conquered as a populace. “Leaders” convince us that peace is not obtainable; some adults cannot even fathom how to be chill at a kids soccer ball game. I blame this on humanity’s stress-levels reaching Critical Mass.
This subjugated indoctrinated apathy leads to higher paydays for the very few, and more cyclic suffering of the masses. Most specifically, this highly profits those who’ve “white-washed” religions, garnering billions for proselytizers
of bully-pulpit Hellfire and Damnation dogma.
Odd, isn’t it, how the very same dogma choking us today was translated B.C by those who had power, influence, money…
Those who could afford to read and write, or pay someone to scribe, cobbled together mix and match historical texts to create Kingdoms where you couldn’t eat fish on Friday because Bob wanted to sell his chickens that day. Governments have continued to use this “Frankenstein-sense of justice” to shape our political landscape today.
We have laws that clearly state who we are required to be loyal to and how, what parameters we can and cannot engage within, and what is and is not important for us to know, (like how to buy a house or pay off medical debt… smh!)
Natural Laws have been bastardized by those with money, power and influence for eons. And the longer we allow ourselves to remain divided by indoctrinated subjective bias, the worse our world becomes. Again, critical mass. What resilience is left us if we cannot even demand Peace from the very few who keep approving big red “Destroy” buttons?
TRUTH.
In all sincerity, standing by while children suffer seems to be a specialty of Texas: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.texastribune.org/2022/04/04/texas-foster-care-children-deaths/amp/https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-57561760
I’m am angry. It’s sickening. But still, shame on us for being shocked. Shame on us for forgetting. Shame on us for doing nothing and then being outraged after being told what we already knew, but stopped caring about. This is on us too.
Thank you for writing this. It echoes the rage and despair I have been feeling about the news, but more eloquently. As a teacher, the idea of more guns in schools absolutely horrifies me (in addition to everything else wrong with the whole situation).
The question isn’t about why the branches are dying but rather why the tree has rotted.
And damn.
We have a rotting tree.