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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   18403 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.

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.

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.

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