Swear words, loud and repeated:
The decision to stop cooperating occurred soon after Col. Steven McCraw held a news conference Friday during which he said the delayed police entry into the classroom was “the wrong decision” and contrary to protocol
— Aaron Katersky (@AaronKatersky) May 31, 2022
Andrew Donaldson
Born and raised in West Virginia, Andrew has been the Managing Editor of Ordinary Times since 2018, is a widely published opinion writer, and appears in media, radio, and occasionally as a talking head on TV. He can usually be found misspelling/misusing words on Twitter@four4thefire. Andrew is the host of Heard Tell podcast. Subscribe to Andrew'sHeard Tell Substack for free here:
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Cowards.Report
Can I have decisions and events which are entirely unsurprising and entirely depressing for 1000, Andrew?Report
daily doubleReport
The Uvdale police force lacks credibility as witnesses.Report
😐
This is my shocked faceReport
They aren’t protecting you.
They aren’t serving you.
I mean, jeez louise. These guys are acting in such a way that seems to indicate that QI doesn’t cover whatever it is that really happened.
How bad does it have to be in order to have QI not cover it?Report
How bad does it have to be in order to have QI not cover it?
Bad: We sat on our thumbs and did nothing for 90 minutes while kids died. No matter the oath, the procedure in the book, whatever.
Worse: When a group of outsiders that we have long denigrated — federal law enforcement agencies — did our job, there was still collateral damage.
Worst: Both of the above and… We. Lied. About. Every. Single. Fact.
Even the SCOTUS “no duty to defend” Six isn’t going to let some of the locals off this hook.Report
I’ve heard that it must be the case that at least one law enforcement person shot, er, I mean was involved in a kinetic ballistic event that also involved one of the students at the school. Or more than one.Report
If that’s that case one hopes they will be prosecuted.
Better yet, tarred and feathered and run out of the town. Because those towns people will turn on them after the funerals.Report
I dunno.
I have been thinking back to the UPS-truck thing from a couple years ago, where some guys took hostages in a truck, and the cops chased them, and everybody shot at everybody else, and the end result was one of the hostages and a bystander killed.
And I still think that chasing those guys and shooting wildly in the middle of a crowded street was a bad idea.
But I also see how people’s reaction to that, and to similar incidents, might result in someone standing outside a classroom full of children and thinking “if I go in there and I shoot a kid by accident, then it’s gonna be all over the news tomorrow, COP GUNS DOWN CHILD IN BOTCHED RAID, and nobody’s gonna care that I went in to cap a psycho who was gonna kill that kid and all the rest of them, and if it turns out that I went in without orders then my ass is grass and the newspaper’s a lawnmower. Maybe I oughta wait for some official cover before I go all Wyatt Earp on this guy. After all, those dudes in Parkland all got THEIR jobs back.”
And yeah, we don’t want police officers thinking like that, but it’s not hard to understand how they came to start thinking like that.
“Well that just sounds like you’re excusing their behavior” nah, at some point you gotta decide that being a police officer actually means something, otherwise you’re just a meter maid with a pistol. But it’s awful hard to make that decision when you know that the only thing anyone will remember about you is what you screwed up.Report
I mentioned on the other post the issue of the bureaucratic approach to law enforcement which is what this boils down to. At a certain point institutional protection (including justifying ones existence) and ass covering overwhelms first order purposes. Once that happens the incentives get really screwed up. Part of reform needs to be about re-establishing those first order purposes. However we shouldn’t kid ourselves about that being an easy task, it absolutely won’t be.Report
I am 100% down with “there are a lot of ways to screw something up, only a few ways to do it right, and probably only one way to do it perfectly”.
But in this particular situation, we had cops outside of the building for an hour and then border patrol actually shot the guy and then there were PR problems like you wouldn’t freaking believe.
Everything from cops saying that they didn’t go in because they didn’t want to get shot to lying about what happened and then their okay-here’s-what-really-happened story turned out to be a lie and then the one after that too.
We’re at in “no longer cooperating with investigation”. I originally said “culminating in” but realized that, no, it’s going to get even worse.Report
Someone elsewhere on this site noted that in certain situations the response to police action is, “THEY NEED TO LEARN RESTRAINT!” and in other situations the response is, “THOSE COWARDS HELD BACK!” and how are cops supposed to make heads or tails of whether we want more or less restraint.
Honestly, I don’t think it’s THAT hard: we want cops to operate with APPROPRIATE restraint based on the specific circumstances of a given situation.
In the classroom, we sometimes talk about the spectrum of intervention: sometimes it is enough to just catch a kid’s eye from across the room to resolve an emerging situation and sometimes we have to intervene physically and put ourselves between children and then there is everything in the middle.
The, “DO YOU WANT US TO GO IN GUNS BLAZING OR DO YOU WANT US TO USE RESTRAIN!” is not only a false choice — there are lots of options in between — but also assumes we want the exact same response in every situation. And if that is how cops think… that there is a singular response they should fall back on every time… holy crap is THAT a massive failure of training/thinking.Report
The present the false choice because it’s cover for screwing it up.
We the public need to not accept the false choice.
We the public love things to be black & white.
The problem seems obvious.Report
YrpReport
The question for us as citizens participating in our own governance is no longer “Are police departments generally abusive and contemptuous of the people they ostensibly serve?” [They are.]
It isn’t “Are police departments incompetent?” [They are]
The central burning question is “How do we construct a new police force, one that fulfills the mission of protecting and serving?
One of the difficulties is that we don’t really have a good American model to use as an exemplar. A plausible argument can be made that policing has always been like this, but that only now are [white] [middle class] people noticing or experiencing it so it comes as a shock.Report
There’s always Camden.Report
Yes, there is that.
But there are arguments, forceful arguments by people with very large audiences, against what was done in Camden.
Arguments about why it can’t work here, or why it is worse, or whatever.
Even today, and I would bet that even right today in Uvalde Texas, anyone running for office will be rewarded by the voters for loudly proclaiming how they will “Get Tough On Crime” and do away with “Soft On Crime Judges” and declare War on Something Or Other and Back The Blue and posing proudly with the entire family grinning as they brandish military weapons around the Christmas tree.
Because I can remember when that started, when I was a boy and started hearing about how the courts were “handcuffing the police” and returning criminals to the streets and how we needed to get tough and take the gloves off.
And TV shows routinely showed heroic cops who always knew exactly who was guilty or not and if they had to bend the rules and kick in a few doors and rough up a couple punks, well, we all knew the punks had it coming amiritie?
Willie Horton put George HW Bush into the White House. OuttaControl Crime has won more than half the Senate who installed Federalist judges willing to wink and nod at QI, no-knock raids, cruel and abusive police behavior.
It was only a few weeks ago that the newest SCOTUS member was grilled about being soft on crime. Had there been even a couple fewer Democratic Senators, she would have been rejected.
This has been going on longer than most people reading these words have been alive.Report
I’m pretty sure that “We need to replace every single g-darn cop in Uvalde” is a message that could take off.
Even in Texas.
Even if crime is bad.
You know what? Crime being bad might be an even better argument for making sure that cops aren’t bad.Report
“I’m pretty sure that “We need to replace every single g-darn cop in Uvalde” is a message that could take off.”
Replace them with WHOM…?
Would you be shocked if the person who receives the best response to that message is the jacked guy in tactical gear who says, “YOU WANT MORE COPS LIKE ME ON YOUR STREETS!”Report
Or as I put it to the “Abolish Police” folks-
Why should I exchange 8,000 authoritarians of the LAPD with 8,000 self-appointed authoritarian neighbors?Report
Or the Border Patrol guy?
I suppose “well, we should let all of these cops just get some more training and better funding” is also on the table.Report
Yep, as long as mayors and city councils turn a blind eye to PDs letting their officers take Killology seminars, and courts accept sketchy science and sketchy testimony from police, as long as officers or even whole departments can just decide to not co-operate with the investigation of a higher order agency, etc. ad nauseum, nothing will change with the police. They will continue to be paramilitary without the military discipline and order.Report
There is an interesting City Council race happening here in LA, where a veteran liberal, Gil Cedillo is being challenged by a progressive, Eunisses Hernandez.
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-05-31/rising-rents-and-police-abolition-roil-an-eastside-race-for-city-council
One of her platform promises is police reform, and her platform page has a laundry list of reforms such as “care first” i.e., increasing mental health treatment and carceral reform and so forth. But she has also tweeted “Abolish Police”.
What makes it so interesting is that she is not suffering much blowback for that, but instead is on the verge of defeating a long term incumbent.
So in this one district, “Abolish Police” is not a political death sentence.
On the other side of the coin, billionaire Rick Caruso is running for mayor on the platform of, wait for it and this will shock you, devoting more money to the police department and hiring more cops because and I swear this will blow your mind, crime is OUTTA CONTROL!!
And police reformer District Attorney George Gascon is fighting for his political life, and the Police Union is spending big on the elections.
So the picture is mixed. Its possible that police and carceral reform can become a winning political message, and that banging the drum about OUTTACONTROL crime (for there is no other kind) may not have as much power as before.
But it comes down to us as citizens, and that old adage about the two wolves inside us: Which one do we feed?Report
Americans could always copy what is done in other developed democracies but every American seems into on reinventing the wheel rather than copying. Even the activist class wants to do something new and untried when it comes to policing rather than something boring like instituting Peelian principles or lets imitate what the Germans or Danish do. Since Americans are intent on innovation rather than replication, the best solution would be to combine the fire departments, EMT, and police into one group and put people on rotating duties.Report
I have been watching some of these “Scandi-noir” tv shows, showing cops in Scandinavian countries. What’s striking is how they treat guns.
Like, the cops don’t carry their firearms, they keep them locked in the trunk of their car, and in a couple scenes they confront bad guys and have to ask permission from headquarters to access the weapon.
Its like I was talking about the administrative state, where the cops live in a culture of restraint and cooperation. There isn’t the mythos of the Lone Ranger or Dirty Harry. The culture of the cops is inculcated and nurtured by the same emphasis on cooperation and trust in the group.
American culture of the kind that valorizes young men who take a gun and anoint themselves the righter of wrongs, the Punisher, the Dark Knight, is described as individualistic but it has at its core raw authoritarianism and a deep yearning for absolute power to Make The Rabble Obey.
There is no room in Gotham for two Dark Knights, or a negotiated set of laws and rules. Its strictly command and control at every level. There is a powerful fear of uncertainty and a loathing of ambiguity.
This is played out in gun culture, where every gun owner is assured of becoming his own self-appointed Punisher and never, ever, having to negotiate his boundaries or yield to anything he finds disagreeable.Report
Americans have strong anti-state tendencies and this is fueled by the Right. In American movies and TV shows, civil servants trying to enforce proper regulations are seen as not being very fun. This goes from cops using guns to making sure a bar has the right license and is following safety procedures in case a fire breaks out.Report
The right may bang that drum, but the drum exists because of stories of elected officials and bureaucrats who abuse their position and authority and aren’t held accountable.
Currently the left is focused on police abuse of authority, but doesn’t seem concerned about other instances of abuse from other institutions.
Guess who most middle class people are more concerned about?Report
you mean white conservative middle class. The black middle class is definitely focused on abuses by police.
And let’s be frank – a lot of what passes for discourse on institutional abuse these days is really just stuff people don’t like or don’t want money spent on. Like mask mandates. Or vaccination to work requirements.Report
This is true as far as it goes but based on the polling I’ve seen the black middle class also wants effective law enforcement. And I mean it makes sense. They’re people, not some avatar, and I think your average person of any race wants both to have their rights respected by the police but also for the police to prevent lawlessness and disorder. It’s only once we get to the higher levels of ideological discourse that we get into this issue of where it is appropriate to pursue one of these things at the expense of the other.Report
“I want non-corrupt cops keeping law and order.”
This isn’t *THAT* much of an ask, you’d think.
My part of town has it, more or less.
(“I want acceptably corrupt cops keeping the peace” might be an easier ask.)Report
Acceptable by degree or direction?Report
I was just thinking stuff like “free haircuts” and “10% discounts” and whatnot.
You know, like the ones in Uvalde got.Report
So degree.
I imagine some folks would be more focused on direction.
Like, they don’t want cops who let folks off the hook… that’s corruption!… unless of course those folks are them.Report
“Eh, the shooter is Hispanic. We don’t want to harsh his mellow.”
(Border Patrol shows up.)Report
To the extent we’re talking about what we can do with the police, and the police alone, I think the Camden, NJ thing is probably our best hope.Report
And your point is?
Saying that a given demographic is focused on things you consider trivial is only effective if you can convince them it’s trivial.
If you can’t, then you are just discounting their concerns, which doesn’t actually help your side of the discussion.
PS Masks & Vax is only at the forefront because of the pandemic. There were still valid concerns prior to 2020.Report
My point is that it was wrong of you to say the middle class isn’t focused on issues of police accountability or police corruption, because a sizable chunk of the middle class who doesn’t look like me is in fact focused on those things. You need to be clearer about that.
My second point – which I think still stands – is thata LOT of what is talked about as institutional abuse is not that at all. as a Fed my agency is regularly accused publicly by all sorts of people of engaging in waste fraud and abuse, but invariably when you dig in to the actual programs or the actual issues it boils down to something someone doesn’t like.Report
I think POC middle class is worried about bureaucratic abuse of position right alongside police abuse of authority.
I’m talking less about waste/fraud and more about the kind of stuff the IJ tackles.Report
I agree with you that we need to do some very determined cultural work but I also think there’s an input-output issue. As an example, when one of my brothers first moved to Germany, he was living in a city that is considered rough by their standards. Parts of it have higher than average violent crime rates for Germany, and it has a bit of a reputation as a place you need to watch your back.
However, he moved there after living in Baltimore city for nearly a decade. I struggle to explain to you how humorous he found the Germans perception of this place. According to him, even in those supposedly scary parts of town you won’t see a soul cross the street against a signal, including late at night with no traffic on the roads.
The point I think, is that there is a a larger social and cultural context that enables the gentler and more professional form of policing we want. European welfare states and, frankly, their more aggressive imposition of a national culture do a good job at taking the edges off the social dysfunction that in turn leads to demand for more aggressive, militarized police responses. While it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try, there are a lot of things that go into those outcomes which I think would be pretty controversial across partisan corners in the US. It also doesn’t mean what they’re doing is cost-free, and wouldn’t come with some other trade offs we would need to be ready to make.Report
Aided and abetted by people who fear loosing power.Report
Life in America, 2022:
https://twitter.com/girlscoutsswtx/status/1531645593092857856?cxt=HHwWgIC9oanjv8EqAAAA
Last week, Girl Scouts of the USA posthumously bestowed upon Amerie Jo Garza, 10, of Uvalde, Texas, one of the highest honors in Girl Scouting: the Bronze Cross. The Bronze Cross is awarded for saving or attempting to save life at the risk of the Girl Scout’s own life.
A ten year old child. Given a medal of valor due to heroic actions during a mass shooting.
Something praiseworthy, but as common and ordinary as getting an honor for a spelling bee or recycling drive.
While the adults stand around and dither, asking themselves “Is there anything that could end this?”
And then answering themselves smugly, “Why no, there is simply nothing we can do to make this stop. Except craft new medals and ribbons for the children who, unlike us, take action,”Report
Dithering for an hour wasn’t in the protocol. Lying about their own blamelessness, hiding behind the honor of their badges afterwards was, though.
If Uvalde becomes the time when the public started to see through it and say so out loud, that will be something of a silver lining to this very dark cloud.Report
Putting aside the failures of officers on the scene, while it’s not entirely clear to me what “not cooperating” means, isn’t something that could be characterized as such what any competent legal team would advise them to do when there’s potential for an eight- to nine-digit lawsuit?Report
I think “cooperating” means “you have full access to our files and video archives, and you don’t have to inform us when you’re looking at them or what you’re looking at; you can interview officers and department employees without asking management first”.
“not cooperating” means “you have to file a request with our Public Affairs office to get files or video footage, and you only get exactly what you put in the request; if you want to interview a police officer you have to ask management, and they won’t let you do it until they’ve had time to talk to that person first and get the story straight.”Report
Management and/or union repReport
Probably worse: you want to ask our officers questions, bring a subpoena. From a grand jury that can guarantee the answers can’t be used in criminal proceedings later.
That’s pretty understandable. Certainly Abbott is making thinly veiled threats that one or more of the locals are going to pay.Report
To a degree, yes; “Shut up!” is usually the first thing a lawyer tells a client who looks like they’ve done something culpable.
Government entities refusing to cooperate with other government entities, particularly within law enforcement, has some substantive differences to private litigants circling the wagons, including that taxpayers have a pretty principled reason to get upset about it no matter who they think the bad guy is, and the near-certainty that at least one of the actors in the conflict (if not more) is behaving in bad faith.
As you point out, it’s not entirely clear what “not cooperating” means in practice.Report
Why do so many want to live in America where stories like this occur daily?
https://twitter.com/emzorbit/status/1531703223123419138?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1531703223123419138%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fdisqus.com%2Fembed%2Fcomments%2F%3Fbase%3Ddefaultf%3Dlawyersgunsmoneyblog-comt_i%3D12521020https3A2F2Fwww.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com2F3Fp3D125210t_u%3Dhttps3A2F2Fwww.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com2F20222F062Fcontinuing-the-blame-everyone-else-for-our-cowardice-tourt_e%3DContinuing20the20E2809Cblame20everyone20else20for20our20cowardiceE2809D20tourt_d%3DContinuing20the2022blame20everyone20else20for20our20cowardice2220tour20-20Lawyers2C20Guns202620Moneyt_t%3DContinuing20the20E2809Cblame20everyone20else20for20our20cowardiceE2809D20tours_o%3Ddescversion%3D9db7f31f906666f4d56c3f4488ea0e6cReport
because having those guns and fighting back like that is they only personal power they perceive they have.Report
Bingo!Report
and because it doesn’t even happen in most places? america is a big place. otherwise you’d be posting from somewhere else. i know i would!
i live in trumpland, but it’s not open carry tactical jackass trumpland, it’s handpainted let’s go brandon house sign trumpland.Report
The reaction to people who open carry, at least here, is so clear and unmistakable that I assume that must be part of its appeal. Like, the dude who open carries a handgun in Walmart, and everyone stays as far from them as they can while continuing to shop or check out or whatever. Or the guy who goes to the dog park with a long gun, and the dog park pretty much empties in minutes.
The people who open carry are like 1-year-olds who, upon realizing that some action they do affects the behavior of others in an observable way, repeat over and over again, because they love observing their own ability to cause change in others’ behavior.Report
its common enough here no one bothers to notice. It is amusing though the people who open carryReport
You have to admit that people whom open carry at least have object permanence.Report
Huh. CNN actually isn’t sucking today.
Report
Well, you know, it’s Uvdale, not a major metro PD that would shut off the information spigot if the media got uppity with them.Report
If you read the story he didn’t actually answer any questions.Report
Reporters have interviewed the mom that got handcuffed:
Report
Welp. This is what they’re going with:
Report
Apparently moving about trying to get better radio comms is prohibited? Don’t they have signal boosters?Report
If you wanted to make the argument that this could have been avoided with funding, there are only but so many avenues.Report
Actually, I was just trying to understand the mindset, which I understand as “gee, I’m having trouble with radio reception. 1) I, or someone else, should try and find a place with better reception (or break out signal boosters if they have them) so we can talk to HQ, or 2) Nah, I’ll just park my ass here and wait for someone else to fix the issue. I’ll choose 2.
I can understand if the protocol is that the front line cops don’t move from a site, but i’d expect that the highest ranking cop on the site has authority to direct other cops, and it would be HIS responsibility to establish comms with HQ if they are having trouble with that. But maybe my assumptions aren’t valid.Report
The whole “arresting moms who want to go into the building” thing seems to undercut “we didn’t have decent information” thing as well.
But, hey, I’m just here Monday morning quarterbacking.Report
Welp, another good example that cops have no duty to individual people and that the iron rule of bureaucracy is to cover your own ass, and expand the bureaucracy.Report
DING! DING! DING!Report
You know how bad you thought it was last week? It’s likely worse than that:
Report
The uvalde cops have a preternatural ability to make the absolute worst decision possible at every moment. Truly epic skills. There guys would f*ck up choosing between cake or death.Report
This particular play makes me think that the bodycam footage shows that one of the officers (or, heaven help us, *MORE* than one) was adjacent to a student-involved ballistic incident that occurred immediately following the officer’s firearm discharging.Report
Either that or 60 minutes of pissy arguing and infighting while kids were getting killed with a fair amount of slurs about Latinos.
Or all of the above. They shot some kid while screaming slurs and the pettiest arguing between themselves ever. About the only thing that might, might, surprise me at this point is if they helped the shooter reload and gave him ammo. But it’s still early so you never know.Report
Erstwhile sister Elizabeth Bruenig makes an excellent point:
Report
The evolution from honor culture to dignity culture to victim culture is complete.Report
“No police chief in history — and I say this with great surety — has been treated worse or more unfairly.”Report
If she’s really that upset, she hasn’t been paying attention. We’ve seen the police circle their own wagons after bad shoots for decades. This is not new behavior.Report
I was more interested in her point than to using her point as opportunity to question the amount of attention she’s been paying.
Perhaps she was paying attention to the whole sub-text of the multiple “bad shoots” which was “cops go in and shoot”.
Which is not what happened here. The playbook for “yeah, I put my ass on the line and I made a call and I made it!” followed by circling the wagons might work okay when you put your body in harm’s way.
It does not work when you haven’t gone into the room for an hour and are refusing investigators access to body cam footage.
And to be honest, I don’t see the relevance of how upset she is nor whether she’s been paying attention prior. It can still be a good point even if this is the first “bad shoot” she’s ever paid attention to.
Wait, calling it a “bad shoot” isn’t a good framing. Because it wasn’t, was it?Report
Correct. You’d think that after such an egregious example at Uvalde that the locals would rise up, pitchforks in hand (or maybe ARs) and demand that the whole group be fired–or worse.Report
Apparently a number of parents did at the the most recent school board meeting.Report
Ulvalde just keeps getting worse. Jebus,
https://www.poynter.org/reporting-editing/2022/police-bikers-blocking-stonewalling-journalists-reporters-uvalde/?utm_source=pocket-newtab
https://www.vice.com/en/article/jgpe3g/texas-police-say-body-camera-footage-from-uvalde-could-be-used-to-find-weakness-by-other-shooters-ask-ag-to-suppress-it
https://www.vice.com/en/article/88q95p/uvalde-contracts-private-law-firm-to-argue-it-doesnt-have-to-release-school-shooting-public-records
Having “friends” threaten reports, and “lawyering up”. Wondering if these cops/leadership are going to have their jobs in a year or two.Report
Its Texas, so probably.Report
How many more times will this story change?
Report
Just to be clear, not all ballistic shields are rifle rates, although it is common for them to be so.Report
They knew what he had. Why even carry it then?Report
Habit? Maybe they knew what the weapon was, but not the round it was chambered for, and they were afraid it wouldn’t take multiple hits? Maybe they had no idea how ballistic shields work?
I’m pretty sure they could have all been wearing Iron Man armor suits and they still would have waited an hour.Report
Apologies for the strong language in this next tweet:
Report
At best, this whole thing is a cluster fish of command and control and communication.
At worst, it’s rank cowardice on the part of local police (leadership for not issuing orders to act, and officers for not acting on their own given the information the had on scene).Report
“At best” keeps changing to “the story the cops were telling yesterday”.
Report
No, at best is fixed, at worst just keeps getting more evidence in support.Report
Yesterday, the best case scenario included “the door was locked, we didn’t shoot the doorknob because this is not a movie”.
Today? The best case scenario does not include the door being locked.Report
“don’t risk your pension” is a hell of a drug.Report
If I may engage in projection, Maribou is the reason I have a 401k. I’m not planning on spending that money. (I mean, it’d be *NICE*… but that’s not the way I’m betting.)
She’s the reason I’d have had the pension in the first place.
You go in there to face the shooter and get your wife and get her to the hospital so that she can spend your pension even though you got shot making sure the guy behind you could get the shooter.Report
I’d like to apologize for slandering this guy.
Report
It gets worse. Ruben Ruiz was one of the trainers for active shooter training just a few short months ago.Report
From just below that when I click on the Tweet:
“Investigators believe this is significant because it indicates they had more than enough firepower and protection to enter the classroom before they did. Officers were growing impatient far sooner: “If there’s kids in there we need to go in there,” one said on body camera video.”
Who has viewed the body camera video? And if that cop really said that and his sentiment was felt by others, why didn’t they go in? And if they were ordered not to, are we going to get an, “I was just following orders” soon?Report
I have *ZERO* idea of how much worse it’s going to get.
Every day I figure “oh, that must be what they were covering up” but then three or four more days pass and it turns out that there is another fact that is even worse that comes to light.Report
One of the MANY things that stand out to be is the blatant lying and cover up they’ve already engaged in.
I mean, it’s not like we were just conjecturing about the locked down.
“Why didn’t they go in?”
“Well, the door must have been locked.”
“Oh, yea, of course… that must be it.”
They said the door was locked. They knew the door wasn’t locked. Someone decided to just… lie about that. And so many other things. And they just assumed they’d get away with it.
And lie after lie is being uncovered and in a weird way — while we are outraged to learn how much worse the story gets — we’re almost ignoring all the lies and cover up because we just seem to sort have expected it.Report
Holy crap. How bad is it?
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From the linked article:
It’s so bad even the Republicans are raising questions.Report
One can only hope the DoJ investigation uses its federal subpoena power to overcome this.Report
The fact that Abbot is moving to side with the Uvalde cops shows indicates to me that the Republican Party and its base won’t be far behind.
I would like to be proven wrong, but my gut tells me that within a few months this episode will be memoryholed in all conservative circles, and the Thin Blue Line/ Punisher mythos will regain its stature.
Somewhere there will be a website or commenter who will assure us that this was all a conspiracy of crisis actors and anti-2nd Amendment activists. A year from now OT will get a drive-by commenter pushing this line.Report
This is the first news that isn’t worse news than the news we had yesterday in weeks.
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I’m not the paranoid type, but this whole fiasco is starting to sound, ever so slightly, like a badly planned/implemented false flag opReport
*Checks the calendar*
A bit early, but still just as predicted..Report
Hey, don’t blame me. When you can easily document many instances where the federal gov’t lied to the American public, you gotta start to wonder.Report
Its just as easy to count all the ways the media has lied.
How do you know this entire thing even happened? Maybe it is all a giant lie concocted by the media to make you believe there was a shooting.Report
The only people who seem to believe that a shooting wasn’t going on were the cops who were there at the scene.
(Not counting the one who had his guns taken away by the others, of course.)Report
Hardly. You had several jurisdictions responding with no clear plan on who had primacy, which in any emergency is a disaster already happening. You had cops present with no established or codified duty to protect (as we keep being reminded constantly). You had teachers and kids doing what they were taught to do and it not working because how things moved.
There’s nothing organized or planned about that. You couldn’t keep a conspiracy like that together.Report
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.Report
Agreed.Report
That and…
Three people can keep a secret, if two of them are dead.Report