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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   33834 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 19, 2026

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Ex-Uvalde Officer Found Not Guilty of Endangering Children in Mass Shooting (NYT link, worked for me without an account)

Adrian Gonzales, the first officer to arrive at the school, was facing 29 counts of abandoning or endangering children, 19 for the dead and 10 more for survivors, after seven hours of deliberations Wednesday.

During the three-week trial, prosecutors argued that Mr. Gonzales, 52, failed to stop the gunman despite a witness alerting him to his whereabouts moments before the assailant stormed two connected classrooms.

Defense lawyers persuaded the jury that Mr. Gonzales had done the best he could with the information he had and that at least three other officers had arrived seconds later and also failed to stop the gunman. They also presented evidence that Mr. Gonzales had rushed into the building minutes after arriving, but retreated with the other officers after shooting began.

My immediate thought, having read about prosecutions of police officers before, was that they found the special prosecutor version of Ralph Wiggums to ensure an acquittal. However, Bill Turner appears to have been the elected DA for Brazos County from 1983-2013, so it's hard to say. Many elected DAs have little trial experience and can be ineffective compared to a regular assistant DA who grinds 4-10+ trials per year, but maybe he's been getting some trial experience since 2013.

It's an interesting disparity that many people have commented on before: officers receive all kinds of "training and experience" (as they will brag about ad nauseum when testifying or in a pre-trial interview), but when it really counts and they fail to make effective use of that training and experience, it won't be held against them. They will instead be given infinite benefit of the doubt, as can be seen when officers are sued under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 lawsuits (heavily slanted law review article, but it correctly describes the reality of trying to sue for excessive force violations).

It takes a few minutes, but it's not hard to find examples of people with no training or experience engaging a mass shooter. Or officers who did so when they were off-duty: example 1, example 2.[1]

It seems to be one more piece of the overall modern American problem of failing to hold people accountable for high-profile failures because they had the correct credentials and merit badges. It's the brain on bureaucracy that 100ProofTollBooth notes below. "So-and-so had the correct credentials and followed the correct procedures, therefore no one is to blame for this terrible outcome." And then they might not even be held accountable when they don't follow those procedures, like here.

If the rule you followed all the training and experience brought you to this, of what use was all that training?

[1]Incidentally, this one is a fine example of wikipedia's slant on defensive use of arms. If you track down the shooter's post-arrest interview, he says he dropped his gun because he saw armed people approaching him, but wiki presents some witness statements to try to make it sound like he dropped his guns and the guys approaching with guns played no role in stopping the shooting.

at least three other officers had arrived seconds later and also failed to stop the gunman

We should try this for other crimes. Your honor, there were 3 other guys also (robbing the bank|rioting against ICE|storming the capitol)!

Another random thought.

I remember when gun control laws limiting the ownership of AR-15s were dubbed "scary gun laws". The implication being these laws simply ban weapons guns the left thinks look scary. I am sure that some of the laws were focusing on the wrong characteristics, like Clinton's Federal assault weapon ban focusing on flash suppressors.

Still, looking at the Uvalde timeline, it is very apparent that pink haired leftists who have never held a gun in their lives are not the only ones who consider AR-15s "scary guns":

He's got an AR-15. He's shot a lot ... we don't have firepower right now ... It's all pistols

It seems to me that this was a major factor in the cops being reluctant to open/breach the door and engage the shooter.

I am not a gun expert, but I think there are some points which make a semiautomatic assault-style rifle much scarier than a handgun in a firefight. The 5.56x45mm is likely a lot more capable of defeating body armor than 9x19mm. If you are wearing body armor while facing a handgun, you can reasonably hope your opponent is shooting common JHPs, no such hope with an assault rifle. A rifle will enable a shooter to fire accurate shots in quicker succession than with a pistol. The magazine size is less likely to be a tactical limitation than for a handgun.

Sure, the cops will have AR-15s which fire bursts (once they fetch them from their vehicles), while civilians are restricted to semiautomatic versions, but it does not seem that this is a big difference in deadliness.

The primary purpose of an AR-15 seems to be to take out a guy in a firefight who dressed for the occasion. (Secondary purposes like sports shooting have been invented, but these seem like an excuse to own a cool gun to me. If you allowed Texans to own hand grenades, they would invent a 'sport' involving their use as well.) For home defense, they seem overkill -- the central example of a criminal home invader is some junkie carrying a stolen handgun, not a close quarter combat team in body armor.

So the point of civilian ownership would be that it is a rifle near the cutting edge of current military technology which will enable civilians to effectively engage government forces. Some consider this beneficial in itself. I think it is a bit of an odd place to set the border between prohibited and allowed technology, though.

An AR-15 might be used to effectively engage police departments. But any government (tyrannic or otherwise) faced with an insurgency (e.g. anti-government forces openly carrying long arms) will not rely on police departments to combat them. Against an infantry armed with small arms only, any commander would use armored vehicles (which are impervious to AR-15s) and helicopters (which are at least very hard to shoot down using rifles). Luckily, there are relatively cheap weapon systems which enable infantry to combat either effectively: RPGs and MPADSs. Any infantry force faced with even a third-rate military would want either. Simply having a credible threat against vehicles and aircrafts will limit the use your enemy gets out of his tens-of-million-dollar toys.

Of course, either could also do a lot of damage in the hands of someone bent on killing a lot of civilians, e.g. by shooting down an airliner, and legalizing them would by necessity also legalize high explosives. Still would be a more logical place to draw the line than at semi assault style rifles, IMO.

(Realistically, an US insurgency powered by 2A weapons would stick to the cities, hiding among a civil population a federal government might be reluctant to bomb. I just don't think AR-15s would play a big role. They are not very concealable, for one thing.)

I am not a gun expert

And it does show.

we don't have firepower right now ... It's all pistols

This is always going to be a problem when you bring only your sidearm to a gunfight. Even if your opponent only has handguns (which have the problem of being easier to conceal), you'd still be better off grabbing your long gun from the trunk. Or, more likely, for modern departments running Ford Explorers from a center console mount.

See rule 6 of gun fighting:

If you can choose what to bring to a gunfight, bring a long gun and a friend with a long gun.

Yes, any rifle cartridge fired from a rifle-length barrel will have more kinetic energy than a pistol caliber fired from a pistol-length barrel. No, this is not unique to guns that look particularly scary. No, there is nothing magical about 5.56; FMJ, varmint rounds, soft points, steel cores, etc., exist for all sorts of rifle rounds. The various American .30s used ubiquitously for game like deer in North America are all capable of being more powerful than the 5.56. The main advantage of the 5.56 is a flatter trajectory at intermediate distance, which doesn't matter indoors.

For home defense, there are different philosophies. The advantage of the 5.56 is the velocity gives you the ability to use frangible ammunition, which reduces the risk of overpenetration. There is also no need for portability or concealment for home defense, which favors the more effective long gun. See rule 6.

The cops do have other slight advantages in an indoor environment. Mainly, they can use carbine-length barrels, which are more wieldy for clearing work. The rest of us would have to fill out an eon's worth of paperwork to get permission from the ATF to make an SBR.

The AR platform is far from cutting-edge at this point, being designed in 1956 (70 years ago). They have, in fact, made a difference even if a government has armor, see, for example, the Troubles.

What I find really grating about this conversation is that you live in a deeply unserious society, and then when something like this happens people are like oh my god wow how could this have possibly happened. As if all your institutions will just somehow magically be immune to the social and moral decay of the last 100 years. Same thing with the secret service and Trump assasination attempt. I guess a similar thing with covid. All this hand wringing; no where near the root issue, nor even approaching it.

The system is much better at preventing Presidential assassinations than it was 100 years ago. There were some weird things about the Butler, PA assassination attempt, but how close it came to success didn't really surprise me. Trump does many more outdoor events than the typical Presidential candidate or President, and given enough exposure even the Secret Service will eventually almost inevitably slip up.

It's not like there are assassins at every rally. Butler isn't just the secret service happening to screw up once; it's the secret service screwing up consistently enough that about 1 in 3 untrained, civilian assassins manage to slip through.

I have not followed the case. But being a coward in the moment does not seem like a criminal charge to me.

His appropriate punishment is being fired from the police force for being a coward. Most decent jobs in his community he is rejected from. He then has to take a job paying $25 an hour as the night shift manager at McDonalds.

Yes he should have done more. But cowards are not criminals. Maybe if he has sons they have a hard year for a grade in school and the class bully gets to wail on them once. The loss of stature etc is the way for society to police someone being a coward. And then we move on.

I disagree. I think a police officer has a duty to not be a coward. When you accept that job, that role, you promise to do the right thing and stand up to evil in exchange for money and prestige and being put on a schedule filled with people who have made that promise. So that when an emergency happens, we have people who we can count on to stand up and be the hero because they have made that promise. That's what you've been being paid for all this time. You are the insurance and the emergency has happened and now you have to pay up. It is your obligation. You don't get to claim to not be a coward in order to pass a job interview and then get paid for months and months not putting your life at risk only to back out as soon as your life is at risk.

I'm not sure that I would have the courage to put my life at risk to stop a shooter or other criminal. So I'm not a police officer. They're not paying me to do the job that I'm not doing. And it's not just about the money, it's about the slot. We need people who can stand up to criminals, and if there aren't enough we go to further lengths and recruit more and pay more until we can hire enough of them. If you make a promise to stand up to criminals and then don't, you are taking up a slot that someone else could have filled. When they called the police and four officers arrived at the scene, they could have called four brave officers instead of cowards, if we as a society had done a better job of screening and training and there weren't any coward police officers because it disqualified them from the job.

It's fraud, dereliction of duty, to take up the position that requires you to not be a coward. I don't think it's criminal for just a random person to be a coward. It's criminal to voluntarily take up a legal duty and then renege on it after the fact.

"you promise to do the right thing and stand up to evil in exchange for money and prestige and being put on a schedule filled with people who have made that promise."

This is not an adult understanding of LEO.

It is not dereliction of duty. That is a military standard that applies to the military. And it would be impossible to prove he knew in advance that he would behave like a coward once he faced real danger.

He is a disappointment as a human being. That is not a criminal offense. The punishment for being a poor excuse for a person is public shaming. Which this trial caused -- his cowardice and disregard of children's lives was exposed via mass media to the entire world. His face was on every newspaper front page, like he was a depraved criminal. He has been punished with the ultimate shaming; beyond tar and feathers and scarlet letters.

It is not dereliction of duty. That is a military standard that applies to the military. And it would be impossible to prove he knew in advance that he would behave like a coward once he faced real danger.

Right, which is why we need deterrence of punishment after the fact.

A town can only afford to hire so many police officers (and firefighters), they should be assured that the ones they hire will do the job.

People died.

Shaming is an appropriate response to things like shouting racial slurs, or cheating on your partner, or being a coward and backing down from a domestic violence abuser who is not immediately threatening anyone's life.

He has been punished with the ultimate shaming; beyond tar and feathers and scarlet letters.

No. This was mild. Tar and feathers causes massive physical trauma and can result in death. Scarlet letters require you to physically carry it around with you and everyone who sees you knows what it means and what you did. Anyone who doesn't watch the news isn't going to recognize this guy on sight. If he moves to another town then a year from now no one he meets on the street will recognize him. This was a medium sized shaming. In sheer total number of people who hate him now sure it outweighs anything anyone would have experienced a hundred years ago, because the news is so widespread. But in relative terms, the percentage of people he meets in his daily life who will even recognize him is probably less than 10%.

More importantly, shaming can't undo what he did, and clearly it can't pre-emptively disincentivize it. People died here. People died because the police were cowards instead of heroes, and taking the place of the real heroes who could have been there if people had known there was an absence. If these individuals did not exist, or refused to apply to the job, then someone else could have taken their place and saved lives.

I'm not a legal expert, I'm not concerned with the pedantic details about what the law literally says their obligations are in the specific jurisdiction this took place in, but what it should be. The police should be legally required to do their jobs, and their jobs should legally require them to intervene in this sort of situation, and police who enable this sort of mass shooting should face criminal penalties for failing to stop it. If what they did is not technically against the law then the laws should be changed, and then all the cowards can stop larping as police officers because they'll be afraid of getting in trouble, and make room for people willing to do the job and save lives.

If the only consequence is shame then cowards are going to keep being police officers, cross their fingers, and hope they don't ever encounter a shooting. Departments are going to keep poorly training people, because they won't face legal consequences either. If we want this to not happen again (because it's happened before too) there needs to be consequences.

I don't think it is reasonable to expect cops to put their lives on the line in a society that affords them no additional respect. As the saying goes, "you get what you pay for", and I mean "pay" holistically in cash but also in social status and respect. The left wants cops to be culturally conversant therapist mental health experts fluent in six languages, the right wants them to be warriors ready to give up their lives in an instant, but most cops are just people that wanted a job. We could hypothetically get warrior poet therapists willing to lay down their lives at the drop of a hat but we would have to pay them exorbitantly and afford them enormous social status in order to attract the rare person able to fulfill those qualifications.

I think of some of this stuff like an RTS game or something where a society can choose how to allocate its units. And as a society we definitely aren't allocating (through incentives) the kind of hyper-competent people necessary to fulfill the left and the right's fantasies of cops to actual police work. So as I said, you get what you pay for. So yea, this cop is shitty, but I don't blame him, that's just the caliber of person we are choosing to allocate to policing.

I don't think the far left wants cops to also be therapists, I think they want to send therapists and protective services in instead of or in addition to cops. I think this is to some degree a stupid idea, but it is different from what you described.

As others have pointed out, police officers are afforded a great deal of respect in most communities. Once you adjust for the actual qualifications required, it is hard to think of jobs that offer more respect—fireman and soldier come to mind, but there are not many. And in the few places where they aren't respected, they are at least generally well-compensated. To take an admittedly extreme example, Palo Alto publishes salaries for city employees and you'll often see fairly junior officers managing to pull in 200-300k compensation with the benefit of overtime.

Even outside of HCoL areas, being a police officer can be more lucrative than you'd think. Most departments offer full pensions after 20-25 years, and it is not uncommon for a cop to retire with a full pension from one department and then start over at a second department and collect another pension. (My elite psychiatrist grandfather had a summer house in a highly desirable part of Long Island, and his neighbor was a former NYC police captain who had employed this strategy to great effect.) Additionally, in places like Texas many cops can make more money on the side by moonlighting as armed security. Claude informs me that pay can be anywhere from 25/hr in the worst case, to 150/hr in the best, with 60/hr being typical, which is not bad for what is often just sitting around and watching a concert.

Cops also have excellent insurance and protection for any eventuality. Unlike a civilian or a private security guard, an on-duty cop can know with certainty that any medical expenses incurred will be covered, that disability payments will be generous and indefinitely provided, and that in the worst case, their family will be looked after. The family of a cop killed in the line of duty receives: a one time tax free $420,000 federal pay out, typically the full pension of the dead cop (until death or remarriage of the surviving spouse), as well as department life insurance and additional support from state programs (child subsidies, tuition assistance, state payouts—Texas gives the surviving spouse another 500k!) and private charitable orgs. Basically, society has set things up so that it is fairly easy for a cop to make the heroic decision.

So I don't find the Uvalde officers sympathetic. They took respected, well compensated positions in their community that came with a small condition: a tiny chance that they might actually have to be heroes, rather than just collect the respect and the pay for it. And they failed. I understand it can often be hard to truly know how one might behave in a situation where death is a possible outcome, but I want cops to be composed of the small fraction of the population that doesn't have a hard time answering this question. And in the event a cop that is unlucky enough to be tested finds he made a good faith mistake about his tolerance for danger, I want him to act anyway, because to not do so is incredibly corrosive to the institution of policing and to society at large.

Cowards look at the Uvalde incident and now tell themselves, "hey, I can be a police officer, and in the worse case, if it gets scary, I can just hide." In so doing, they steal the resources society has apportioned to support a warrior, as well as the equipment, the training and the badge. Citizens post Uvalde will look at the police and feel less respect, reducing the effectiveness of law enforcement, the quality of recruits, and the safety of the community. Society is coarsened more generally when the people who are entrusted to "serve and protect" others behave in such a flagrantly selfish manner. Many will look at the low standard set by the Uvalde officers and feel comfortable setting an even lower standard for themselves: "If the police, with their insurance and pensions and line-of-duty death protections can sit by and watch a bunch of little kids get murdered, why should I bother to take the slightest risk to help somebody else?" This is all unacceptable; there need to be consequences.

What consequences? In another time, perhaps shame could have sufficed. But we live in a shameless, atomized society with a lot of mobility, so I don't think shame will do. Instead, I think legal consequences were required: consequences of the sort that would clear out the cowards who know themselves to be cowards and who are currently wearing a badge; consequences that would drive the coward police officers who don't know they are cowards into gunfire, should such a situation arise, because the alternative of hiding would be still more frightening; consequences that would make it clear to citizens that the moral bar for everyone is much, much higher than what happened in Uvalde. For me, it is not about exacting revenge or making the Uvalde officers suffer (I honestly feel badly for them, and I'd personally treat them with a measure of kindness); rather, it's about excising a dangerous rot before it has a chance to spread.

It depends on risk. I don't expect a cop to sacrifice themselves to save a civilian, but I expect a cop to at least shout from a distance at an unarmed man.

I think it was these cops' duty to intervene. This case is more like the latter scenario: there was risk, but one shooter against multiple cops with bulletproof vests doesn't seem like much for the cops. It's especially egregious that they prevented parents from intervening. They did worse than nothing.

Should they face jail time for not doing so? Personally I lean towards no: the cops aren't a danger to society, and I think jail should be reserved for more obvious (serious, direct) crimes. But jail time wasn't mentioned in the NYTimes article, it may not have been certain. The cops should definitely be fired and shamed, and fining them seems reasonable (especially if the fines go to the parents).

I don't think it is reasonable to expect cops to put their lives on the line in a society that affords them no additional respect.

My former boss was a part-time police officer for the town where he lived.

The amount of stuff people would do for him completely out of the blue when he had to drive the police cruiser was surprising. We're talking 'people paying for his meal in the drive through' level of surprising.

Nevermind the attention from women he'd get when out in uniform.

I've seen a little how the sausage is made, so to speak, so I'm not going to pretend that law enforcement has an easy job, but to say that society affords them no additional respect doesn't line up much with my experience.

Nevermind the attention from women he'd get when out in uniform.

Gotta double-check on that one. Their Hinge profiles are full of ACAB and I personally heard some woman I know talking about finding out her date was a cop and getting the ick.

It's about hit rate, not miss rate. If 90% of women are ACABers and 2.42% are badge bunnies, then their dating pool has ten five women per man (better than college, which is around 1.5). As long as the selection effects aren't too severe (and the numbers are anywhere close to my wild-ass guess), that sounds pretty good.

See also serial killers. They are unattractive to the vast majority of women, but still massively outnumbered by female fans.

He'd work alot of local festivals/events(cause, y'know, part-time Police Officer) and he'd get alot of women coming up out of the blue to flirt with him. (He already had/has a girlfriend/partner, so it wasn't as if he was actively looking.)

It was just one of the more amusing things I noted.

'Badge Bunny' is the search term you're looking for.

Like most things, it will depend on location. In my flyover Red area, a cop is going to do way better on the dating market than I would as a defense attorney (if I were still single).

"Part Time" and "Town" are giveaways. The kind of town with part time officers will almost always be low crime, and cops will be respected culturally. His main job would be writing speeding tickets to out of towners, writing DUIs (but only to the REALLY DRUNK drivers), amd responding to domestic incidents. In the latter two his judgement is respected by the community and if he deems the person arrestable, they lose an immense amount of social status, regardless of conviction (which is basically guaranteed).

That has almost nothing in common with the experience of a police officer in Chicago or Memphis.

Cops in most places (almost certainly including Uvalde) get shitloads of "additional respect". Uvalde ain't Minneapolis or San Francisco or Portland or Seattle.

It may be afforded some additional respect at a low level, but it isn't really afforded prestige, maybe that's a better word for what I'm driving at. If you came from a wealthy, elite family and attended Phillips Exeter or something, would "cop" be considered a valid and respectable career path your family would be proud of? Not really. Tech, finance, doctor, lawyer, academia, those would be considered prestige jobs that would be acceptable for a son of the elite. So while police officers get some ground-level respect at the local diner, it's not really a high prestige. Nobody with a son at an elite private school is saying "I hope he grows up to become a police officer!" And basically the same goes for the military, of course it wasn't always this way but it is now.

Upper class cops are FBI agents.

It honestly depends. You are talking about rank and file. But most elites wouldn’t be embraced about having a military son who is an officer that goes up the ranks (eg colonel is still very prestigious). But a sergeant? That’s low class.

Most would probably see a local cop as kind of low status. But an FBI agent that moves up the ranks? That’s prestigious.

Aside from the fact that ‘military officer’ is perhaps the single most acceptable career for elite young men, most people are not and never will be elites. Cops get some additional respect, and that’s all they need.

Military can still be high status but it’s far more narrow today. In WW1 from what I’ve read the British elite took a lot of military deaths. If you go into Special Ops - Seal Teams/Delta it has a lot of respect. Lesser Green Beret. Some of this is fitness bro respect. I guess this is dated now but the Pritzkers and the governors brother is a colonel (also a tranny now). It’s more narrow now but there are some paths with military prestige.

If you're a cop, you can beat up people in tech, doctors, lawyers, academia, judges, and well, pretty much anyone else with impunity. Maybe not politicians. You may not have the prestige of a top doctor, but you have deference from the legal system and respect from the community. This is certainly more than enough to support being required to actually do your job when it involves the sort of things that would actually justify that respect.

What? From article

“Raffaele says he was struck when he came upon officers wrestling with a man wielding a pipe.“

So you can hit a judge if you’re a policeman if the said judge jumps into a fight when a dude is beating you with a pipe. But to be clear you can’t as a policeman just pick a judge and beat the shit out him.

Speaking as a German, I have a relative who became a cop and I am totally fine with that. It is an important job and we need qualified and well-adjusted people for it. I would be much more reluctant to admit to admit having a relative working in marketing or yellow press journalism, actually. (Of course, Germany might have a different police culture than the US. While I did have unfortunate interactions with police, on the whole my experience is that they are generally friendly and competent.)

It's not about what cops actually do. Six years ago I had actual people I actually knew insisting that police were only invented as a concept to oppress black people and capture runaway slaves. People marched in the street without proper social distancing during a deadly pandemic, chanting that the police should be abolished (yes, sanewash that into "reform" all you want, that's what the people who claimed to speak for the movement said they wanted). 25% of all women's dating profiles have ACAB in them to this day.

25% of all women's dating profiles have ACAB in them to this day.

Citation needed? Sorry to be annoying; usually when I see an unsupported claim that looks like hyperbole I'll try to be the change I want to see in the world and find references myself rather than just asking for them, or even do the sample counting myself if I have to ... but I'm happily married and "I swear I only downloaded that dating app to tally statistics! Statistics!!" is the sort of idiot plot that I wouldn't even want to watch in a sitcom.

I'll admit to some hyperbole there, but I'm pretty sure being a Leftist requires you to hate cops, and "I'm a Leftist and you must be one too" IS on 25% of the Hinge profiles I see.

American cops are also generally friendly and competent. They’re rarely particularly bright or outside the box thinkers, but the cops killing people makes headlines because it’s so rare(and most of those killings are justifiable and well within the range of normal police behavior in Western Europe). Our police are genuinely less likely to randomly beat the shit out of people than euro cops, though.

I believe rights come with responsibilities. If cops are going to get the benefit of the doubt in use of force because it's their job (as I believe they should to some degree), then they owe a moral debt to those they defend. Laws are thin and high, but I honestly don't know how this guy lives with himself. I'd have slapped that police chief in his bitch face and gone through the door, because I don't want to spend every night for the rest of my life wishing I had. Dying is easy compared to that. A reprimand is nothing.

The law cannot solve every problem. We have to enforce the norms we want to see. My words mean nothing in society, and relatively little in the more rarified air of professional violence. But I've seen my days. I've made those calls, and there's 0-5s no doubt alive today who can tell you exactly how well their orders worked when they ran counter to the mores and interests of my team.

Every man on his worst day should be judged by his peers. For those cops, I am their peer. If there be any honor in violence, surely it is from the defense of the weak. Sixty armed men listening to children die? Utterly contemptible. Every single one should do the honorable thing, it should never have come to a court case. They should lacquer their badges into the floor under the urinals of the school. Their children should take their mother's surname. Their parents should cut them out of every family photo.

In the hierarchy of violence known colloquially as "honor", these men are the lowest of the low. Cowards who shirked their duty when it mattered most. I'd rather have a hitman for the cartels at my dinner table than one of the Uvalde cops. All who train for that terrible day that probably won't come gaze in horror, pity and contempt at those whose day came and who failed the moment. Complete moral collapse. Dishonor.

Today, we do not hold our men of violence to such standards. Which is why we are policed by dishonorable cowards.

You seem very certain of yourself and like you have experience so I'd like to ask you, what were the police supposed to do when the door was locked and the suspect was firing through it whenever he heard them messing with it?

There are close quarters combat protocols for how to go through a doorway as team. That's dangerous but with training you can minimize the danger. But what's the protocol for trying to open a door when bullets are coming through it? Are the men, unable to live with themselves if they don't act, supposed to line up by the door and take bullets until the shooter runs out of bullets, or someone manages to break it open?

AFAICT, the reason they were able to breach it is because a Border Patrol agent came on scene and was just a lot more effective at finding the master key and opening the door. Maybe he was much smarter and more competent and took his oath more seriously, but he also could have had the benefit of coming in very late with a fresh perspective and no chain of command diffusing his own sense of responsibility.

In the meantime the police were looking for keys and stealthily trying them out and none worked. It seems they got confused about locating keys and keeping track of which they tried. Everyone thought someone else was apparently on it.

This strikes me as systemic idiocy that comes up in crises, not individual cowardice. But I say this as an armchair QB.

Been a minute since I looked at the floor schematics, but I'm pretty sure the room had multiple doors. Get teams with a shield up front and a ram, charge, breaching shotgun or Halligan on each entrance and go to work. If one team is pushed back by fire, the others can work on the other doors. Yes, some guys are probably gonna catch rounds, but with body armor and a shield, plus the perp is shooting through walls and metal doors, risk of death minimal.

I also want to say there were ground level windows in the room, which could have been covered by teams outside the building. As a tactical problem, this one was pretty fucking easy.

Keys. The fuck outta here.

The standard protocol would be to destroy the door.

Honest question: how? Doesn't using, say, a shotgun on the lock risk collateral damage? Doesn't trying to use a contact tool mean whoever volunteers for that is going to get shot at?

As I understand it, if you find a need to breech a locked door in a rough and messy sort of way, you're going to use a shotgun, fired extremely close up, but also at a downward angle so as to not hit any potential friendlies.

whoever volunteers for that is going to get shot at

Well, yes. That's what they're getting paid for. Slot in the level 4 plates and get to it.

the harder and more massive a projectile is, the worse the risk of collateral damage. Hard projectiles retain more energy from a penetration or deflection, larger projectiles have more energy.

Shotguns fire shot, ie lots of small, soft projectiles. These have low individual energy and are bad at retaining the energy they do have through an impact. Dedicated breaching rounds generally use something like compressed lead dust to greatly minimize the chance of a ricochet, but even with buckshot the danger is much, much lower than that presented by an active shooter.

The short version is that any reasonable risk assessment would have held that breaching the door was a good idea, even if they didn't have dedicated breaching rounds on-hand.

It's... a little more morbid than that.

At 12:21 p.m., 48 minutes after the subject entered the school, the subject fired four additional shots inside classrooms 111/112. Officers moved forward into formation outside the classroom doors but did not make entry. Instead, presuming the classroom doors were locked, the officers tested a set of keys on the door of a janitor’s closet next to room 112. When the keys did not work, the responders began searching for additional keys and breaching tools. UCISD PD Chief Arredondo continued to attempt to communicate with the subject, while UPD Acting Chief Pargas continued to provide no direction, command, or control to personnel. After another 15 minutes, officers found a second set of keys and used them to successfully open the janitor’s closet. With working keys in hand, the officers then waited to determine whether a sniper and a drone could obtain sight of and eliminate the subject through the window. Those efforts were unsuccessful. At 12:48 p.m., 27 minutes after hearing multiple gunshots inside classrooms 111 and 112, and 75 minutes after first responders first entered Robb Elementary, officers opened the door to room 111. A team composed of BORTAC members, a member of the U.S. Border Patrol Search, Trauma, and Rescue Unit (BORSTAR), and deputies from two local sheriffs’ offices entered the rooms, and officers killed the subject when he emerged shooting from a closet. The subject was killed at approximately 12:50 p.m., 77 minutes after the first officers entered the school and after 45 rounds were fired by the shooter in the presence of officers.

With master keys in hand and confirmed to work, the BORTAC commander paused on the room entry so that a sniper and drone could attempt to get a visual on the classroom. If successful, the sniper could have mitigated a great deal of risk posed by a gun battle inside the classroom. The sniper or drone could have provided valuable intelligence on the layout of the room, location of victims, and the shooter that would create a great tactical advantage for the entry team. However, assessing these options added 10 minutes to the overall response time.

And separately:

“Though the entry team puts the key in the door, turns the key, and opens it, pulling the door toward them, the CIR Team concludes that the door is likely already unlocked, as the shooter gained entry through the door and it is unlikely that he locked it thereafter”

There's a variety of failures, here, and it's very much a 'porque no los dos' situation. But the other side's more overt:

In some instances, outside the school and near the funeral home across the street, officers also used force to keep concerned parents from approaching the school or funeral home, where some of the evacuated students had been taken. One mother was handcuffed by the U.S. Marshals, who accused her of being uncooperative regarding where to park her car and remaining outside the law enforcementperimeter. As soon as she was released from the handcuffs, she ran and got her two children out of the school and to safety. She indicated that law enforcement “was more aggressive with keeping us parents out than going in to get the shooter.” In another instance, one family member who was very upset on the scene, trying to get information on the whereabouts of their child, was thrown to the ground by law enforcement and threatened with a Taser when they tried to go to their child.

Ah, but those were just the untrained, and as laudable as their bravery or desperation might have been, they could have been killed or caused further harm. Surely the officers in command didn't stop other poli--

Texas Department of Public Safety Director Col. Steven McCraw said that [Officer] Ruiz tried to save his wife, but was barred from doing so. State Rep. Joe Moody said despite what surfaced in the video, he confirmed that Ruiz had tried to engage the shooter but was disarmed.

The flip side to heroic responsibility is that once you start prevent other people from being heroes, you've picked up a lot of responsibility.

Yikes. The cringe, it's too much.

The flip side to heroic responsibility is that once you start prevent other people from being heroes, you've picked up a lot of responsibility.

Especially when an armed pack of parents would almost certainly have been much more effective than the police.

EDIT: Thinking about how much better a job motivated and armed parents would have done, I wonder if trying to train Uvalde police mopes made them more incapable of acting, not less. You have to follow the procedures! You have to listen to the chain of command! Everyone struggle to remember what you were taught. With adrenaline! If a kid dies when you did the wrong thing, it'll be your fault! Wait is this a barricaded shooter situation or a hostage situation or something else? Where are the tools? The protocols man, the protocols!

Whereas parents would just be like, do some of us have guns? Good, let's go.

Absent being inside the officers heads instead of what written down, I’m going to assume the officers froze or at best had decision paralysis. If we have an alternate mirror universe where the door was fully unlocked and open, we can then contrast and compare, but froze is froze, and others (that Nashville school shooting showed that) didn’t freeze assuming essentially the same training.

I remember saying to a friend that those cops were lucky to live in pretty much the only type of society in the long history of humanity that would permit them to live after a failure of this magnitude. In any other, either they would have been executed, or the social shame would have been so great they would have killed themself. But more to the point, they likely would not have abandoned their duty so flagrantly in the first place.

Good post. Reminds me of this comment from @KulakRevolt:

After the battle of Cannae the roman citizenry hounded and tormented the survivors who ran. Their families were hounded, they were reduced to penury and begging in the streets as citizenry who recognized them spat on them and their children.

Finally when Rome took the fight to Carthage, these men begged, pleaded, that they be permitted the honor of a suicide mission, some inevitably fatal horror that might certainly kill them but restore the honor of their families that their surviving children not starve. The roman senate, in a moment of uncharacteristic mercy, permitted them to die so.

These officers should be begging that they be permitted to join some press-ganged penal battalion in Ukraine. That they might atone for their cowardice by having their half burnt ashes scattered in the wind of Russian artillery.

Your periodic reminder that KulakRevolt is a fabulist who outright makes shit up, especially about the ancient Greeks and Romans. He is not a historian or a classicist. He embellishes history to make the ancients sound bloodthirsty and psychotic, just as he does for the Founding Fathers.

The "Ghosts of Cannae" were not "hounded in the streets, spat upon, and families reduced to penury." They were banished to Sicily. Later, they were recruited by Scipio Africanus and allowed to serve again, on the front lines in Spain and Africa, but they did not "beg for a suicide mission" and the Senate did not vote on whether to allow them to serve.

Kulak's versions of history have about the same degree of verisimilitude as a Disney cartoon.

With far less catchy lyrics, I might add.

I disagree only in that I think rights do not come with responsibilities (and saying they do is a common way of vitiating rights, "You have the right to do X, you have the responsibility to only do X the way we say"), but privileges do -- and what the police have as a result of being police is the latter.

You want be a cop, you can't use "the criminals might shoot me" as a reason not to do your job in any given instance. You signed up for that.

I keep wanting to compare this to the recent ICE shooting, loathe as I am to discuss that more here. In that case "the officer should not have put himself in potential danger (standing in front of the car) so that lethal force wouldn't have been necessary" seems a common talking point (and I'm not interested in debating the specific facts of the case further). In the Uvalde case there seems to be plenty of ire that the officers did not place themselves in such danger regardless of the risk to the suspect, especially since it sounds like they were informed of a barricaded shooter, not a spree shooting.

Both sets of logic make sense to me in isolation, but I have trouble fully squaring them. "It's good that the Uvalde cops say around: if they had charged in someone (the shooter) might have gotten hurt" is plausibly true, but laughable. It somewhat works if you assume Good wasn't intent on ramming lots of pedestrians, but that isn't always true: there was a deliberate truck attack in New Orleans last year, for example. That driver didn't have priors, and we'd plausibly be having a similar discussion if officers had blocked the car and ended up shooting the driver there, 14 lives would have conceivably been saved.

Obviously the details are quite different, but I have trouble imagining generic bright lines that don't lean heavily on verboten characteristics: "of course the white woman wasn't trying to be a spree killer."

Why can't we lean on verboten characteristics? No middle aged white woman has ever killed a cop*, very few middle aged white women are good at driving SUVs in tight quarters and really know where their wheels are pointing at any given time.

*In the line of duty, some have killed boyfriends who happened to be cops

Name: Lynda Cheryle Lyon Block
Age at Crime: 45
Race: White
Incident Date: October 4, 1993
Victim: Sergeant Roger Lamar Motley, Jr. (Opelika Police Department)

Name: Cheryl Dawn Kidd
Age at Crime: 57
Race: White
Incident Date: April 22, 2011
Victim: Officer Chris Kilcullen (Eugene Police Department)

Name: Martha Donald
Age at Crime: 60
Incident Date: August 1, 2002
Victim: Officer Melissa Schmidt (Minneapolis Police Department)

There are a number of negligent homicides as well drunk / drugged driving, etc.

Kidd killed Kilcullen

Just had to point that out.

Obviously the details are quite different,

Yes they are!

but I have trouble imagining generic bright lines that don't lean heavily on verboten characteristics: "of course the white woman wasn't trying to be a spree killer."

The best place to stop her if she was a spree killer would not have been to stand in front of her vehicle. Ross did only fire after she had hit him (slightly, because she was not aiming her car for him). If she had aimed for him, he would have been under her SUV before he had fired her first shot.

A person sitting in a car, even a bloody SUV, is not a similar level of danger as a armed suspect entering a school. You do not need to rely on protected characteristics to tell the difference. Some suspects are an imminent danger to the public and it is reasonable to require cops to risk their lives to stop them if it decreases the expected value of innocents dying. Some are not.

If Goods had already injured someone with a gunshot, then entered and locked a classroom, and shots had then be heard from the classroom, I certainly would have wanted Ross to breach that classroom and shoot her if she threatens him, not assume that as a liberal middle-class middle-age woman, she was likely only firing blanks from a prop gun and not trying to hurt anyone.

I suppose my interest here is that the two are at opposite ends of the "justified use of lethal force" scale: there is probably broad, but not universal agreement that the Good case is at least a regrettable case ("justified" is almost certainly more split), and that the Uvalde case is almost unconscionable in its lack of use of force (although this jury declined to convict in this specific case).

I was hoping to use this to better pin down clear boundaries for the acceptable range of force, but I don't see clear choices there still.

Great post! I agree completely.

If cops are going to get the benefit of the doubt in use of force because it's their job (as I believe they should to some degree), then they owe a moral debt to those they defend.

Phenomenal take. I've never thought about police in this context of bravery/honor but I really like it.

The fundamental problem is that there's just no law saying a police officer has to protect anyone. See Castle Rock v. Gonzales and Warren v. DC. That's why they've gone with child endangerment charges, which is a huge stretch compared to something more relevant. It's the same tactic they tried with that Parkland deputy who also did nothing during a school shooting, and he got acquitted too.

Police are required to protect people directly in their custody, such as the cop who left a detainee in a patrol car parked on train tracks and was convicted for the foreseeable train collision.

I don't see a general requirement to protect, but school children are placed in loco parentis. It's not like the parents can come in and defend them. It's a shame the Parkland and Uvalde school district law enforcement who were directly responsible for the school were not convicted.

It's a shame the Parkland and Uvalde school district law enforcement who were directly responsible for the school were not convicted.

The laws on child endangerment just weren't made for them. For example, in the Parkland case, for the charge to stick they had to argue with a straight face that the deputy was somehow a caretaker of the children, as in he would have been giving them meals and monitoring them to make sure they don't do anything stupid. Obviously, that's not the case, so he was acquitted.

The job of a police officer is not to protect people. Their job is to enforce the laws of their jurisdiction. It's the ugly truth.

Plenty of good police officers have the instinct and desire to protect others, like the Nashville officers. But it is not in fact their job, and they have repeatedly been found not guilty for failing to protect people. This is not the first time a police officer or police department has been sued for not protecting someone. Even under the most unsympathetic circumstances for the officers they get found not guilty.

This should be an ugly reminder for people. Self defense is a personal right, but the government will not help you secure that right. They won't even help children who are incapable of responsible self defense secure that right.

Even if you believe cops should only enforce the law, not protect people, they shouldn't actively put others' lives at stake (like these cops did blocking parents). At minimum, that will make people resent cops and the law itself, which will make it harder to enforce.

Moreover, enforcing the law is not just arresting people, but preventing the law (e.g. murder) from being broken.

Even if you believe cops should only enforce the law

Emphasis added. There is a difference between talking about what Ought to be and what Is. I was mostly talking about what Is. I agree that there Ought to be a police like force that is responsible for protecting us, and if the police are not gonna do it they Ought not get in the way of others doing it.

This ruling did not surprise me, I was only slightly surprised that the officer was charged in the first place. It seems to have surprised others, so I was sharing my mental map of the situation. It is possible to be unsurprised and disappointed in the way the world works, that is how I feel here.

I wonder how gun control advocates have responded to the fact that police have no obligation to protect anyone, if they have even addressed that at all. It's already bad enough that in the best case scenario, the police are only minutes away when seconds matter. But the fact that police can and have done nothing at all? I would be interested in seeing their counterargument for why people shouldn't arm themselves and have the ability to be their own first responder.

I wonder how gun control advocates have responded to the fact that police have no obligation to protect anyone, if they have even addressed that at all. It's already bad enough that in the best case scenario, the police are only minutes away when seconds matter. But the fact that police can and have done nothing at all? I would be interested in seeing their counterargument for why people shouldn't arm themselves and have the ability to be their own first responder.

I'm not a gun control guy, but my justification for opposing it isn't this particular self defense line. I think a gun control advocate would say that guns don't really protect you either in the sense you're looking for. Both guns and police are post crime tools. They can be used to punish/kill criminals but by the time you're using one you're already in a situation where you've been aggressed upon. Yes, there are high profile weird cases like rittenhouse or the few times a lady shoots her night time assailant, there are definitely some situations where a gun will help, but it's not a talisman and mostly it helps by making possible aggressors afraid on consequences, which is also how the police function.

Even given SCOTUS precedent in Castle Rock, "This decision affirmed the controversial principle that state and local government officials have no affirmative duty to protect the public from harm it did not create" (WP), I think there are legal workarounds. My parsing of that sentence is that they have no implied legal duty. You could just add a law to the books that a police officer who fails to stop a victim from getting hurt because he deviates from standard police protocol without sufficient excuse will get punished. We do punish air traffic controllers who fail to prevent planes from colliding (even if they did not set the planes on a collision path), or teachers who fail to report sexual abuse of kids.

Even if the ruling applied more broadly, e.g. that no official could ever be held responsible for stopping a harm they did not create, and any law to such an effect was void (which would severely limit what tasks we could trust officials with, e.g. an EPA chemist might decide to just affirm that all measurements are below thresholds instead of actually running his measurements -- he did not create the harm, after all), I think there would be some workarounds.

A city could only hire cops who are also willing to work as civilian guards concurrently, and give them the obligation to protect people in their capacity as civilian contractors. Or you could try some legal trickery to make them national guards and place them under the UCMJ (or state level equivalent), then issue them a general order to follow standard procedures to keep civilians safe. § 892 is very broad in what punishments you can get, after all.

But also, the fact that there is no affirmative duty for cops to protect you is not in itself very relevant. The relevant question is, when you call 911 to report an intruder in your home, what is the probability that the cops will respond "not now, baseball is on"? Them getting in trouble over failing to act will not resurrect you.

If the probability of a grossly unprofessional response is high, then that is indeed a reason to rely more on self-defense. Just the fact that it would be legal (but still involve professional repercussions, the Uvalde officers will probably not find a PD willing to employ them again) is not particularly relevant.

For example, I do not know if an EMT who decided they can make a quick detour to McDonald's while responding to a medical emergency would face criminal charges. Knowing the answer to that question is not very relevant to the amount of first aid I would want to learn. OTOH, if I knew that ambulances were notoriously unreliable, that would certainly motivate me to learn more first aid and keep more supplies ready.

In the end, it is a numbers game. You have to weigh the probability that you will use a handgun to defend yourself (which is certainly related to the competence of your local PD) against the probability that it is used to kill an innocent, either because your toddler finds it, a tinder date who is a lot crazier than you thought finds it, you use it recklessly while dead drunk, etc. Looking at statistics, gun deaths from accidents and civilian self-defense are actually quite rare, and the likeliest use a non-criminal will find for a gun is suicide. (Which might be an argument for or against gun ownership depending on your other beliefs.)

When they address it, it’s usually some variation of ‘guns don’t help’ with true but misleading statistics about running away saving lives in confrontations or dogs deterring burglars well.

I wonder how gun control advocates have responded to the fact that police have no obligation to protect anyone, if they have even addressed that at all.

Mostly they ignore it. Warren v. DC comes up all the time in online Second Amendment discussions, but since the anti-gunners and the mainstream media are on the same side, they don't have to address it in public.

I imagine it's not a conversation they enjoy, since inevitably it would force them to address the fact that unless we increase the amount of cops by orders of magnitude, they simply cannot be there to protect people in many or most cases. Not that their policy choice cannot be defended despite this, after all the optimal number of children drowning in pools is not zero. But the gun control side puts a lot of effort in thinking around this, as it feels wrong in a primal way, especially for men (and blue tribe men are still men, they do feel the macho impulse to be providers and protectors), that they are not trusted with the tools to defend their family or themselves and need to rely on people who are not likely to be present when it counts. It's not great to have to go and acknowledge "Yeah, some people are going to die helpless without means to defend themselves, but such is the price of safety", the same way the opposite side doesn't enjoy acknowledging that "some people are going to get shot with guns being legal but such is the price of freedom and self-reliance".

I imagine it's not a conversation they enjoy, since inevitably it would force them to address the fact that unless we increase the amount of cops by orders of magnitude, they simply cannot be there to protect people in many or most cases.

We've already had cases where police were present and watching things unfold and did not intervene until the civilian in question had subdued the attacker.

So even if you increase the number of law enforcement in the field to a stratospheric number, that still doesn't mean they have to do jack all.

So even if you increase the number of law enforcement in the field to a stratospheric number, that still doesn't mean they have to do jack all.

Yeah, but what we're talking here is an hypothetical scenario where we were addressing the fact that they don't have to do anything. My point was that the gun control side doesn't want to get into this discussion because discussing this gets to close to discussing how even if they were forced to defend the population, you'd need even more police than in the worst police states for them to actually be close enough to stop most violent crimes in time.

We've already had cases where police were present and watching things unfold and did not intervene until the civilian in question had subdued the attacker.

It was New York City, that guy should count himself lucky they didn't arrest him after all was said and done.

Most of them are fine with only the police having guns. They will generally argue something about stricter gun control making school shootings less frequent because the shooter wouldn't be able to get a gun in the first place. Yes, you can readily pick at this, but you aren't going to cause them to segfault by proposing a dilemma like "police don't have to protect you, but school shootings happen."

I wonder how gun control advocates have responded to the fact that police have no obligation to protect anyone, if they have even addressed that at all.

The fact that (American) cops are under no obligation to protect anyone isn't a law of nature.

Just like a gun control advocate can advocate for changing the laws with regards to who can own which gun, he can obviously also advocate for actually forcing the cops to protect people.

You can probably count the actual people who hold the implied opinion "nobody should be allowed to defend themself, and cops shouldn't protect anyone" on the fingers of one hand.

Just like a gun control advocate can advocate for changing the laws with regards to who can own which gun, he can obviously also advocate for actually forcing the cops to protect people.

I mean, he can. Does he? Could be my own ignorance talking here, but I don't think I've ever heard this point from gun control advocates. It ought to be a lot easier to get passed than gun control, since the committed opposition is... the police union, I guess? Not half the country; you can see the rightists in this thread agree cops should have that duty. And by doing so first they'd make gun control more likely by neutering this argument against it. So where is the advocacy?

I think the answer is that the vast majority of gun control advocacy is a poorly thought through emotional reaction, and not something based on considering the issue. This is not the same thing as gun control advocates being low IQ, they just aren't really thinking. Some of this is for tribal reasons and some of it is for normal toxoplasmosis but most of it is because it's predominately an emotional reaction to extreme tail events. Very, very few gun control advocates are focused on handguns- statistically the firearm used in such an overwhelmingly large percent of our gun deaths that it rounds to 100%. Add in the outright fabulists like the violence policy center and the tribally-driven shitflinging and you tend to wind up with gun control advocates that stop, research, and think about the issue being notably different from other gun control groups; the Brady campaign isn't welcome at their dinner parties ever since it decided to do the research.

The gun control side doesn't want to discuss self-defense and protection, it's not a productive topic for their side. Having to rely on the police for your protection is something they want to steer the conversation away from, because even if you did neuter the anti control argument that the police don't have to protect by making it that yes the police does have to protect people, they are still not likely to be present when it matters, and neutering that argument is not really possible.

OK, but which one actually gets done? WA is passing a law to handicap 3d printers (and cnc lates and end mills, because they're idiots) in order to stop ghost guns. Have they done anything to require police to protect people?

No. Instead, and you'll never believe this, they vote to protect criminals instead.

Maybe they're just communists who want to take away all the guns, let loose all the criminals, and steal all my wealth through taxation. And maybe if the gun-grabbers didn't want me to think they're nothing but communists, they wouldn't always be on the side of criminals and taxes.

But the typical self-defense gun owner does not 3d print a ghost gun- in fact very few people do. They buy their guns at a regular gun store.

Now I don’t really think there is much of a reason for passing this law, but it’s not ipso facto an attack on self defense. It is merely an attempt to address a non-problem.

Their problem is real, it's just not the one that they are claiming to address.

Maybe they're just communists who want to take away all the guns, let loose all the criminals, and steal all my wealth through taxation. And maybe if the gun-grabbers didn't want me to think they're nothing but communists, they wouldn't always be on the side of criminals and taxes.

Or maybe laws are made by voting among a body of legislators, and are differentiated in regard to the ease with which they are passed.

You'll also note that making it harder to create your own guns is orthogonal to whether guns are allowed in the first place; it is perfectly cromulent to have legal recreational McNukes (for example), but where the government wants to know who happens to own WMDs.

You'll also note that making it harder to create your own guns is orthogonal to whether guns are allowed in the first place

This is flatly not true and it's laughable on its face, especially in light of the comment you're responding to. The same people making it harder to make are the ones making it harder to own, and they're doing both for the same reasons. There's nothing orthogonal about it, these are highly correlated events.

There is a fundamental tension between protecting people and enforcing the law.

There are plenty of "victimless crimes" on the books. And way more laws where the act of arresting and imprisoning a person is way more dangerous and harmful than what you are trying to prevent.

It's why "police" didn't really exist until the 1800s. Prior to that time the roles were more split up and dispersed. Sheriff's would form a posse to go catch criminals. Standing armies were typically the way governments enforced their edicts and laws. Towns and cities sometimes had proto-police forces called a town watch, but usually they were more oriented towards protecting the rich and politically powerful.

Town watches were most frequently militia organizations oriented towards external defense.

England and Philadelphia had proto police town watch.

Most != All

And I'm talking about history of police so context clues should lead you to think about the proto police town watches not the defense force town watches.

It appears to be the actual position of multiple major governments, however. I think for iron law reasons we can just kind of assume that that’s the equilibrium we’ll wind up at if self defense is more restricted.

This should be an ugly reminder for people. Self defense is a personal right, but the government will not help you secure that right.

If all they did was not help people secure that right, that would be not ideal, but tolerable. They actively prevented people from securing it.

I see what you did there, friendo.

Shout-out to the Nashville officers - Jeffrey Mathes, Rex Engelbert, Michael Collazo, Ryan Cagle, and Zachary Plese - who were true heroes. They went in without hesitation, clearly ready to stop the shooter or die trying, and they earned the Medal of Valor for it. The body-cam footage is amazing. The way Mathes enters is exactly the kind of bravery all men should aspire to. But that's kind of the thing, isn't it? Is the binary really criminal or national hero?

That doesn't seem quite right to me. When someone is given the chance to be a hero and doesn't take it, they should feel deep shame. If it's part of their job, they should be removed from positions that expose them to situations requiring valor, or they should lose their job altogether. But convicting them of a crime seems too far. With this though, if being a hero is not the expectation you are not treated as a hero for just having the job. I have similar feelings about "public-servants".

I see roughly three levels of response for professionals. You can fail to do your duty. You can do your duty. You can be heroic. I will admit that the lines are not always very clear.

It is easiest to recognize clearly heroic actions. The unarmed street vendor who rushed that Australian beach shooter. The civilian running into a burning house without protective gear to save another.

But there is no clear line separating heroism from doing one's duty. If you abandon your MG nest because the enemy is firing rifles towards your trench line, that might be seen as a dereliction of duty by most -- a soldier who curls up behind cover any time there is lead in the air is not very useful, after all. If you get hit, I would personally consider your duty to man your post discharged, and consider a decision to continue to fire (and likely learn how many more shots it will take to disable you really soon) as going beyond what can be expected. (If I would consider it as 'heroic' depends on the specifics, most warfare conduct being roughly zero sum.)

Of course, different cultures have different expectations there, and some did and do expect people to have a duty to engage in suicide missions.

And in the military, where most state-sponsored gun use tends to take place, a failure to do your duty is generally seen as worthy of criminal punishment. Historically, pretty harsh too, especially when your self-preservation instinct got a lot of the wrong people killed.

I will grant you that cops are not soldiers and we actually require them to have a vast skill set to employ outside of Rambo violence, and that even most militaries today are very reluctant to actually hang someone for cowardice even if they caused deaths on the wrong side (though I would imagine that Ukraine would be a lot more willing to do so than the US in GWB's oversea wars).

Moral philosophy draws a distinction between ethical actions which are expected of you (i.e. which you will be condemned for failing to carry out), and supererogatory actions, which are "beyond the call of duty" (i.e. you will be praised for carrying them out, but no one will blame you if you don't do so). Obviously, which category a given action falls into varies from person to person, depending on their skills and responsibilities. If someone suffers from a medical emergency in front of me, obviously I should put a sweater under their head and try to keep them comfortable, but it's not really expected of me to do more than that. But if I was a doctor, rendering proper medical assistance to that person is my responsibility, and failing to do would be a serious derelection of duty.

Likewise, if you're just a private citizen, an ordinary civilian, no one expects you to intervene in the event that an active shooter scenario erupts in your vicinity. Elisjsha Dicken deserves praise, commendation, every honour that his government can bestow on a civilian: his courage in the face of extreme danger is awe-inspiring, breathtaking. But I don't think anyone would have held it against him had he failed to intervene and ran for cover: he did more than could reasonably be expected of him, because it wasn't his responsibility.

It is a cop's responsibility. While police officers who intervene in active shooter scenarios will receive praise, this is really just a courtesy masking the fact that, for a police officer, intervening in situations like this is not a supererogatory action: they will be condemned for failing to do so, and deservedly so. Being a hero is the job you signed up for. If you weren't willing to put yourself in harm's way to protect vulnerable people, what the hell did you become a cop for?

(The same argument applies, obviously, to the Secret Service agents who could be seen cowering behind Trump while he was being fired upon. "Interposing the principal between an active shooter and yourself" is pretty much the exact opposite of a bodyguard's job.)

Maybe criminal conviction would be too harsh a punishment, although maybe not: imagine some other hypothetical in which 21 children were killed as a result of an adult's derelection of duty (e.g. a schoolbus driver who literally fell asleep at the wheel and survived a crash while 21 of his passengers were killed) – I find it hard to imagine no criminal convictions would be sought in such an instance.

Either way, none of these men are fit to be police officers, and should be forced to resign.

No, this guy was a police officer. If he didn't want to risk his life in that situation he shouldn't have become a cop- there's tons of other careers available. Notably, they don't involve carrying guns.

No, it should never be a crime to fail to act. Otherwise would be literal slavery, simple as. Justify your knee-jerk vengeful reaction to dead children all you want. Yes conscription is wrong too.

I don't care how much training he had. Don't care that he was on premises. I could have training myself. I could have been passing by myself. Don't care who was signing his paychecks.

It should never be a crime to not act.

An air traffic controller who fails to stop two planes from colliding will merely have failed to act.

A teacher who keeps his mouth shut about the sexual abuse of a kid merely fails to act.

A doctor who does not render assistance merely fails to act.

A lifeguard who falls asleep and lets a kid drown merely fails to act.

A truck driver who fails to hit the brakes when someone is standing in front of him merely fails to act.

In Germany, we have a general duty to rescue. If on my way home, I see a car crashed into a tree, and decide that I will not miss the start of the Tatort for some stranger, I could go to prison for up to a year for that. I can report that I do not feel very enslaved by that rule.

An air traffic controller who fails to stop two planes from colliding will merely have failed to act

should be fired and subject to penalties that were articulated and agreed to beforehand, not dragged to prison and killed if he resists being dragged to prison.

A teacher who keeps his mouth shut about the sexual abuse of a kid merely fails to act.

A doctor who does not render assistance merely fails to act.

A lifeguard who falls asleep and lets a kid drown merely fails to act.

Etc.

A truck driver who fails to hit the brakes when someone is standing in front of him merely fails to act.

Driving a truck is not inaction, come now. This isn't hard.

In Germany

My brother let me stop you right there. German law is not the standard for morality. I could take rhetorical cheapshots and point to its history of laws. Or I could point to the heresy laws that are on its books now.

Okay, so. Where are the goalposts going now? May I suggest attacking my use of the word "slavery"?

I could take rhetorical cheapshots and point to its history of laws.

Come on. Two (small!!1) World Wars, one reference-class-defining genocide and now we are the bad guys forever?! Most of us were not even born back then, and the ones who were had absolutely no idea what that guy and a handful of his followers were (allegedly!) doing, should we be really blaming a whole people for a few bad actors, etc.

(I jest. As a left-leaning German, I am perfectly fine with Germany firstly being known for being crazy genocidal for the next 10 billion years or so. I would slightly prefer for us to be known for having been crazy genocidal but become civilized (and strongly prefer for that distinction to continue to hold, naturally), but I will take what I can get.)

Or I could point to the heresy laws that are on its books now.

Nasty old § 166 (warning: Kraut WP), yes. Some 15 convictions a year, apparently. Should we get rid of it? Totally. Does it mean that German law, or the French/Continental tradition of law in general, is ipso facto not a standard for civilized people and not worth more moral regard than the mutilation rites of some cannibal tribe? I think not.

Driving a truck is not inaction, come now. This isn't hard.

Physically speaking, it is. Well, not going up to speed. But if you let go of the gas once you see the kid, you should be in the clear. In your frame of reference, you are at rest, and the kid is recklessly approaching you at 100km/h. Not applying any force and having your truck follow Newton's first law of motion seems like a textbook example of inaction.

The thing is, society restricts the use of trucks. Once you have started up a truck, you are obliged to take further action to keep it from harming bystanders, a process known as driving. While driving, you can and will go to prison for mere omissions of action.

Likewise, there is a widespread understanding that ending up in charge of a baby (either through your or your partner giving birth to one and not giving it up for adoption or through adopting one) will force you to take some actions on pain of imprisonment. "Oh, I simply did not feed her, can't punish me for not doing something" will not convince anyone.

Or in countries which do have a draft (which includes god's own country, in theory), you can take a young man and make him perform all sorts of dangerous and morally questionable actions on pain of imprisonment. (I'm not personally a fan of that one, but it is widespread.)

Or consider the Kindergarden teacher who goes on record "yes, I saw Kevin play with a fork in the power socket, but to be honest he was the single most annoying kid in the class, so I merely watched and made sure that none of the other kids were touching him. Smelled terrible, though. Anyhow, good thing we don't punish omissions, right?"

To steelman this position - there are certain situations (which bear a passing resemblance to this one) in which failing to act (and actively restraining others from doing so) could be the right decision. For example, in a situation where someone has rigged the school with lethal traps, not entering (and preventing parents from entering) would be the right decision, even if you can hear him actively executing the children within. Likewise, a situation where the shooter has hostages (and is being negotiated with) is a fairly well known one, and one where it would make sense to keep bystanders away even when it seems like the cops are doing nothing. Likewise, a situation where it is guaranteed lethal or nearly so to enter (I'm thinking the hallways flooded with a poison gas or similar) would also justify not acting. I'd also say that a situation that falls far outside normal training and expectations is one in which the cops should be given the benefit of the doubt on not acting (like, hypothetically, if sorcerers took children hostage, I don't expect police to throw their lives away against literal magic that they have no idea how to handle).

I think the problem here is that this situation doesn't come close to falling into those buckets - it's a situation we expect cops to handle routinely (aka, armed person attempting to threaten harm to innocents). And the solution of firing them and giving them a dishonourable discharge feels inadequate to the magnitude of the action. So in addition to feeling like they had a gross dereliction of duty, we also feel like they betrayed the societal covenant of "you are given the right to use violence, but in exchange you must protect us."

And more personally, I know that this would never be respected in any other situation; if I'm a nuclear plant engineer, and I decide to not check up on the error code that I'm seeing and the plant explodes causing a second Chernobyl, there is no chance in hell that I'm getting away with just a firing. If I also lock the error manual away and physically restrain my coworkers from checking on it, I'd be lucky to get away without treason charges, let alone life in prison/the death penalty.

It should never be a crime to not act.

  • If I'm a teacher, and one of my students confides in me that another adult has been sexually abusing him, I should not face legal repercussions if I fail to report it?
  • If I'm in a room when two of my friends are plotting a murder, I don't bother to report it, and they succeed in killing their victim, then I shouldn't be charged with conspiracy or being an accessory before the fact?
  • If I'm a doctor, I see one of my patients choking, and I don't bother to try to save his life, then I shouldn't be charged with gross negligence?
  • If a lifeguard sees someone drowning but doesn't try to save his life because who is he to play God, he shouldn't be charged with gross negligence?
  • If I work in a pharmaceutical company, I know that a specific batch of drugs my company has produced has been tainted, but I don't bother to call attention to it, I shouldn't be charged with gross negligence?

I have to admire the jump straight to reductio ad absurdum when I professed to believe in any kind of principle at all.

You all have been great sports, truly. I know I’m coming off as aggressive but I truly don’t know how to argue any other way. I love you all and I love this place!

Well yeah, it's a bad principle. Dereliction of duty should be punished.

“Slavery is okay if I really care about what should be done” is not an acceptable substitute for my principle.

The bar is finding where the actor in question agreed affirmatively to imprisonment if he fails to act to a certain standard. That will change my mind!

You throw around the word “duty,” so it shouldn’t be hard to find terms of the duty.

I think you're using the word "slavery" in a nonstandard way. The fact that someone will be punished for inaction doesn't imply that they are therefore owned by another individual.

I don't understand why you're demanding that an actor must affirmatively agree to do something in order to face punishment for failing to do so. This isn't how we treat crimes of commission ("well we found Bob standing over Carol's corpse holding a bloody knife – but he never explicitly agreed not to murder anyone, so legally our hands are tied"), so why should it be the case for crimes of omission? This sounds like some sovereign citizen nonsense: the laws of the country in which you reside apply to you, whether you approve of them or not.

If Alice knows that Bob is planning to kill Carol and does nothing to prevent it (say, reporting him to the police), that obviously implies that Carol's murder could have been prevented had Alice acted. The fact that she didn't personally stab Carol doesn't make her any less party to the crime. The fact that she never explicitly agreed to report any instances in which she had foreknowledge of a murder doesn't either.

More comments

While I agree with you on most of your scenarios that there should be repercussions, there is a distinction between crime and legal repercussions (which could be civil lawsuits).

No, it should never be a crime to fail to act. Otherwise would be literal slavery,

There exists zero jurisdictions in which it is a crime to not be a police officer. Police officers are not drafted. Being forced to do your job, that you volunteered to do and get paid to do, isn't slavery.

Once you've signed up to do certain jobs, not doing those jobs should certainly be criminal. If you call 911 and the EMTs show up just to watch you die, I'd certainly be in favor of a legal regime that sees them charged with something.

UCMJ Article 99: Misbehavior Before The Enemy

Is a thing.

Also

The 15-year-old German girl who knew the Uvalde shooter's plan and failed to alert the authorities was prosecuted for her inaction. She was found guilty of "failing to report planned crimes," she was issued a warning and required to undergo "educational measures".

That's a neat law but it's not a rebuttal. I'm not like some lawyers here to spin a mile-long yarn about how incredibly nuanced I find this whole situation. I now this is nails on a chalkboard to those who love hair-splitting and reading 300-page pdfs to point out a single contradiction, but my views on this are relatively simple and they don't rely on laws.

Clearly.

Your views seem to be ought rather than is, as clearly there are at least some situations where failure to act is a crime.

Your claim that this is literal slavery seems a bit thin on evidence.

The 'payment' received making this not slavery in this incident is the literal salary collected by the officer and the participation in online social media and instant messages with strangers by the German girl. Both had other options. Not being a cop, not talking to weirdos on the internet. Both of those come with potential obligations to act.

The military has dereliction of duty - if you refuse to perform your duty or are willfully negligent, that's a UCMJ charge. I think you could apply a similar argument to police. This is not slavery or conscription. A soldier who voluntarily signs up for the military, knowing what it entails, can do a significant amount of harm by simply refusing to do their job in a critical moment. The time to make that call is before enlisting, not months or years later when lives are on the line. By commiting to performing an action and then intentionally failing to perform it in a way that cases harm, that creates liability, potentially criminal liability.

Another good example is fraud. If you pay someone $10k to fix your roof, and two weeks later they "refuse to act" and keep the money, that's a crime. This case is less black and white obviously, but police officers receive pay and benefits in excess of comparable jobs because of the potential danger. Police officers who defect on this social contract should be punished accordingly, whether that's administratively or through criminal charges in the most extreme cases.

You and Walruz make a good point.

I obviously don’t believe that if a man rips open another’s throat and puts his hands in his pockets to watch him bleed and insists that he’s being prosecuted for “doing nothing,” that he’s innocent, but the thing is he wouldn’t be prosecuted for the nothing, but the ripping.

So your position must be that police officers are conscripting themselves to battle whenever they agree to join the force. That’s a defendable position but it’s not one I think I agree with.

They’re being paid to respond first, but they don’t hold moral powers beyond civilians. They can only use force if it’s confirmed ex post that it was a valid arrest. They can only use deadly force in fear of grievous harm to them. These also hold for civilians (even if judges will be much harsher about valid arrests). The only difference is that they’re compensated and dedicated actors to these functions. But I don’t think that rises to a solemn covenant to do battle on pains of imprisonment.

I would change my mind if you could find some affirmative vow among the force agreeing to consequences if they fail to act in some situation. All I know of is an oath to the law.

No, it should never be a crime to fail to act

So... abolish "criminal neglect" as a concept?

Also does the combination of refusing to act, while also forcefully preventing others from acting not strike you as deeply perverted?

Central examples of criminal neglect usually refer to reckless driving or a doctor incompetently misdiagnosing a patient to catastrophic effect. Would you convict the doctor in the next room over who could have prevented it by eavesdropping and intervening?

What about both not acting and forcefully acting? Is that the same as not acting?

What? I'm unfamiliar with the particulars of the Uvalde shooting response. Did he turn his gun on his colleagues and order them to stop? If he did something like that, shouldn't that have been more central to our discussion here, and not job expectations?

Central examples of criminal neglect usually refer to reckless driving or a doctor incompetently misdiagnosing a patient to catastrophic effect.

Central examples of criminal neglect are parents refusing to feed or otherwise take care of their children, or generally speaking - people refusing to take care of others who are under their custody. You could probably also find examples of neglecting the maintenance of buildings and machines being criminal.

What? I'm unfamiliar with the particulars of the Uvalde shooting response

Uh... then maybe lower the levels of confidence with which you are speaking?

Did he turn his gun on his colleagues and order them to stop?

It wasn't just him, the entire police force deployed to the location was forcefully preventing parents from entering the school to save their children. Some of the parents were armed, so they could have taken on the shooter.

Though I think one officer who wanted to enter was also prevented from doing so.

As a reminder, here's the comment I responded to originally. It in turn is responding to "Is the binary really criminal or national hero?" and "But convicting them of a crime seems too far."

No, this guy was a police officer. If he didn't want to risk his life in that situation he shouldn't have become a cop- there's tons of other careers available. Notably, they don't involve carrying guns.

I don't think it's terribly productive to add to the tragedy of a passed child by dragging the parents into prison, no. They've been punished enough. There's one example that comes to mind where the parents declined medical interventions for their sick child, who died. The state decided that children are actually the state's, and not the parents', and the state disagreed with that child-rearing decision, so off to prison. Yes I disagree with that. Yes I disagree with "turn this wrench or you come with us downtown."

Child handcuffed to her bed and starving to death? Sure send the boys in to liberate her. Is handcuffing inaction?

It's not like I'm opposed to other solutions or repercussions. I just think bringing the physical force of the law to bear on those who decline to do things is obviously wrong.

It wasn't just him, the entire police force deployed to the location was forcefully preventing parents from entering the school to save their children. Some of the parents were armed, so they could have taken on the shooter.

Did the parents have legal access to the property? If they did, did the police batter the parents to keep them out? If they did, were battery charges brought against any police? If there were, I don't think my statements about inaction would apply. Do you agree?

I don't think it's terribly productive to add to the tragedy of a passed child by dragging the parents into prison, no.

It's not much of a tragedy if they do it knowingly, and it's productive to deter other parents from acting the same way.

Child handcuffed to her bed and starving to death? Sure send the boys in to liberate her. Is handcuffing inaction?

How about a child that's simply too young to leave on their own? Or even one that leaves, but just ends up being more abused by people they encounter on the streets?

I just think bringing the physical force of the law to bear on those who decline to do things is obviously wrong.

And I'm saying you're obviously wrong. There are cases were people are obligated to act, under penalty of law, that's a good thing, and this case should obviously be included.

Did the parents have legal access to the property?

The access not being legal just confirms my point that the state was preventing parents from entering. In itself that's not wrong, but in doing so, the state assumes responsibility for what happened in the area they restricted. This is exactly what creates the obligation for the police to act against the shooter.

If they did, did the police batter the parents to keep them out?

Yes, they were tackled, handcuffed, and pepper-sprayed.

If they did, were battery charges brought against any police?

I'm not sure, but I don't think so. Why would they? The police are generally allowed to batter uncooperative people in order to detain them.

If there were, I don't think my statements about inaction would apply. Do you agree?

I don't. I think you these questions are completely irrelevant to what you said about inaction.

As a reminder, here's the comment I responded to originally. It in turn is responding to "Is the binary really criminal or national hero?" and "But convicting them of a crime seems too far."

Your comment was so extreme that whatever you responded to doesn't really matter. Again, you said: "It should never be a crime to not act", twice.

More comments

At the same time, we have a draft. It's not foreign to our country to have a concept of, "We will force you, at the penalty of a worse fate, to do something dangerous and heroic for the benefit of society."

To be a devil's advocate (I don't morally agree with Gonzales' acquittal), we have the draft because it matters quite a lot to the continued existence of our country. Some kids dying in mass shootings is tragic, but rare, even when compared to other gun deaths, and it's not a threat to the nation as a whole. An invasion from a foreign power has much more serious consequences.

Now I'm just saying that's the platonic ideal of the draft. Whether in practice the military actually wages wars that are necessary for the survival of the US, that's an entirely different matter.

Whether in practice the military actually wages wars that are necessary for the survival of the US, that's an entirely different matter.

Of course, in fairness it must be said that we do not in practice have a draft either. Theoretically we do, but the last time soldiers were drafted was what, Vietnam? Long enough that many men in the US today will never have been at risk of conscription, even if they did have to register with the selective service.

Eh, there’s certainly a case that many of the soldiers in the GWOT did not want to join even if there wasn’t a formal draft.

I'm not sure what you mean, but on the face of it I'm extremely skeptical that we should care. If they were not forced, then they are responsible for their decision to join even if they later came to regret it. But perhaps there is some context here I'm missing.

The only war that was existential for the US that I can think of is the Civil War.

The revolutionary war, a good chunk of the Indian wars, and the pacific theater of WWII surely qualify.

the pacific theater of WWII

I am not an expert, but I am dubious. I mean, it certainly was existential for the US territory of Hawaii, but losing control of Hawaii (or even Alaska) would not have placed the US in an existential crisis. Did imperial Japan really have the manpower to take even California, never mind fight their way towards the East Coast at the end of a very precarious logistics trail?

The war of 1812 felt existential at the time (once it became clear to the Americans that the British would actually fight back - something Madison had assumed they wouldn't), even if modern historians with access to British archives think it wasn't.

Is the binary really criminal or national hero?

When someone is given the chance to be a hero and doesn't take it, they should feel deep shame.

The missing middle option is "don't become a police officer." For the civilian in the Greenwood Park mall shooting I linked to, I would totally understand him having feelings of shame had he been carrying and chosen to retreat instead (not saying that action would be shameful, but that I would understand the feelings). But retreating wouldn't be criminal.

For someone who has signed up for a job where they get treated as a hero for just having the job (plus an incredibly cushy pension in many states), then perhaps it really is binary: engage in the risks that you have been trained for and paid for (both financially and with social status), or risk the criminal prosecution.

Elisjsha Dicken, the 22-year-old civilian at the Greenwood Park mall shooting, struck the shooter with 8 of 10 shots at 40 yards with a Glock 19 while underfire.

I'd be more afraid of being demoralized - and less dramatically, constantly annoyed and frustrated - than killed and maimed, as a cop. The engagement with parts of the public most of us can just walk away from. I'd be eager to take a desk job as soon as possible, actually.

From watching way too many body cam videos, my biggest fear that would keep me being a cop is having to deal with nasty smelly hobos and druggies and their bodily fluids.

followed the correct procedures

But is that what happened in Uvalde?

Two months before Tuesday's mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas, that left 19 children and two adults dead, the Uvalde school district hosted an all-day training session for local police and other school-based law enforcement officers focused on "active shooter response."

"First responders to the active shooter scene will usually be required to place themselves in harm's way," according to a lengthy course description posted online by the Texas agency that developed the training. "Time is the number-one enemy during active shooter response. ... The best hope that innocent victims have is that officers immediately move into action to isolate, distract or neutralize the threat, even if that means one officer acting alone."

The excuse for ignoring all that was that the cops supposedly thought the shooter was barricaded in there alone, not with children, hence they were in no rush to assault the shooter and were free to assault the kids' parents instead.

The excuse for ignoring all that was that the cops supposedly thought the shooter was barricaded in there alone, not with children, hence they were in no rush to assault the shooter and were free to assault the kids' parents instead.

Interesting.

According to this timeline of events https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uvalde_school_shooting#Timeline_of_events

They originally thought this and began the barricaded shooter playbook. But then they were informed there were kids inside and failed to process the update and switch tactics.

Replying to myself, having read the timeline, can we all just recognize that the off-duty Border Patrol agent came on scene, saw how retarded the Uvalde police were, ignored their command structure, asked a school administrator for the master key, opened the door, and then organized a breach party in like 5 minutes? Bro got shit done.

To be fair, according to the timeline there were only 19 of them, sitting on their backsides for the better part of an hour while kids were bleeding out. And there were multiple border patrol agents, per official reports.

It seems that Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District (UCISD) Chief Arredondo was in charge for most of the situation, until the CBP breached protocol by going in and saving the remaining kids.

If their is a villain in this story apart from the shooter, it seems that guy is it.

Now, I know nothing about how schools in Uvalde work, but I would be surprised if that guy was actually the one with the most tactical experience in gunfights. A protocol where a school cop is in charge seems bad. (Funny side note: Germany (and Europe in general, I think) does not have police units for schools. Even large universities do not have their own police units. Instead, we rely on municipal police departments.)

But also, it means that 18 of the 19 cops were following procedures in so far as they were obeying the orders of their commanding officer.

This is not a case like the Floyd murder, where Chauvin's colleagues were convicted of abetting manslaughter. Arredondo was not obviously engaging in a criminal act. Ideally, the other officers would have voiced their disagreement with his tactical decisions, but at the end of the day, a police operation is not a democracy where cops vote on what they feel their next tactical step should be.

Even if they were all telling him "that guy has an AR-15, don't make us go in there", that makes them cowards, but there is generally no law against that.

OTOH, from the timeline, it seems like Arredondo belongs in prison. Oh, and if the acting UPD chief did have the authority to overrule him he should join him.

The Texas State Police on site outnumbered the school police and appeared much better armed. One wonders why the ranking officer with the Texas State Police did not get frustrated with the slow progress, walk up to Arredondo, say you suck, you're out. My men are in. Have your people stand outside and try not o shoot your own dicks off when the action starts.

One of the unspoken assumptions about our legal system is that it isn’t illegal to be bad at your job. The defense made a decent argument that the officers initially thought that the suspect went into the school to flee from the cops. This was a bad assumption with massive downside risk in the event they were wrong (which they were), but it was still explainable as a good faith mistake.

He wasn't 'bad at his job' he didn't do it in the first place. We punish people for criminal negligence all the time.

Actually, it can be illegal. A doctor whose defense is "Yes, so I confused milligrams and micrograms and so injected the patient with 500x the maximum dose, silly me" will end up in jail. So will a civil engineer who miscalculated a bridge because he assumed that a bus would weigh no more than 50kg.

Nor is this limited to academic professions. A truck driver going 80km/h in a 30km/h zone and running over a kid will go to jail. So will a lifeguard at a swimming pool who falls asleep on the job and lets someone drown. (I will grant that both of these examples are of criminal negligence or recklessness.)

My gut feeling is that if 30% of your profession would have made the same mistake (e.g. not tested for a rare disease, not spotted a badly visible tumor in an MRI image, failed to take a life-saving shot or missed that shot), we can not really send you to prison for being subpar and unlucky (unless you were doing something illegal at the time, like going above the speed limit).

OTOH, if 99% of your profession would have made your mistake with a lower frequency than you would, then it is less of a "you got unlucky to get into that situation" or "you got unlucky and made a mistake that anyone might have made with a small probability" and more of a "the victim got unlucky by having someone so incompetent as a professional", and I generally have no problem with punishing people for that. (This is assuming that 1% of the professionals in most professions have a grossly inadequate skill level, which in my experience is a conservative estimate.)

failing to hold people accountable for high-profile failures because they had the correct credentials and merit badges

I mean, of course they wouldn't be held accountable- for the credentials exist solely to front-load accountability (and act as a form of corporate welfare for the class of people who work for the organizations that bestow them). So...

If all the training and experience brought you to this, of what use was all that training?

...sure, maybe doing that is destructive, but it justified the education-managerial complex for a while and that's what actually matters.

If they followed the correct procedures, they should be held blameless. Although that should often mean the people who created the procedures should be blamed. (And if the situation could not reasonably be anticipated by even the people who created the procedures, nobody should be blamed, though the procedures should still be fixed.)

If the rule you followed all the training and experience brought you to this, of what use was all that training?

When something bad happens, it allows the organization responsible to say, "well, we have a training program in place, so we did our due diligence and are not responsible." See also diversity and sexual harassment training sessions. At worst the organizational fix is to just hire a new set of training consultants to revise the training program.

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New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


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