Yay! YEEHAW, it's Shootin' Time

[Jolene Benoir]

Another factor, I think, is that the Supreme Court ruled in 2005 that police officers do not have a constitutional duty to protect an individual from harm. We have these officers who have zero issue with killing unarmed individuals and using more than necessary force in any given situation except one in which they, themselves face harm. We've been beefing up police departments with military grade hardware ever since the Iraq War so they very much treat many situations as a war-like one, yet they are at heart, ALWAYS, concerned for their own safety, first and foremost, very often to the detriment of the public.

As an aside, one of the police officers present was the husband of Eva Mireles, one of the teachers murdered. While he was standing in the hallway, he opened his phone which showed his home page picture. It was the Punisher symbol, that of the comic book vigilante, often seen in far-right circles. The reason I mention this is that in many departments, it does not matter if it's large or small, they are filled with that mindset, us vs. them, that they are above the law, and that their lives, above all, are the most important thing. In addition, there is a direct line of white supremacists infiltrating police departments. I'm not stating the he was of either mindset, but that it's very pervasive within ALL departments across the country.

Justices Rule Police Do Not Have a Constitutional Duty to Protect Someone - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

 

[Essence Lumin]

Headline translation: Unknown number of people shot, all by police.

Multiple people injured during officer-involved shooting in LoDo

Multiple people were injured in an early morning officer-involved shooting on Larimer Street.

kdvr.com

 

[Aribeth Zelin]

Headline translation: Unknown number of people shot, all by police.

Multiple people injured during officer-involved shooting in LoDo

Multiple people were injured in an early morning officer-involved shooting on Larimer Street.

kdvr.com

I read it and it looks like it was a cops actually dealing with an active shooter? Its not clear and I'm not up for listening right now.

 

[Soen Eber]

Yes, It is very common for the entire metro area to respond to a violent incident including Metro Transit PD and sometimes even the State Patrol. Not an active shooter situation but over this summer they've had the State Patrol and BATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms) working with them to curb the violence, in particular carjackings and shootings since the police force is down 300 officers (majority of which quit or retired after Chauvin was held responsible for the George Floyd murder).

Uvalde is much smaller, but multiple other divisions did respond. The problem was that they all just stayed in the hallway while others were sent outside for "crowd control", including handcuffing/restraining parents. There were more than enough officers there to have been able to end the killing. They just chose not to do so.

Oh, I'm not defending anyone in Uvaalde (I think the police chief responsible for not doing anything should be criminally charged). Just describing how it works here in the U.S. for those in saner, safer countries.

 

[Jolene Benoir]

Holy crap. I did not even realize just how many law enforcement officers had actually responded to the Uvalde shooting, having only read of the 20+ in the hallway and seen so many in the video (not sure of their final total number) and knew that *some* were outside of the school. 376 officers massed at the school. This report was completed by an investigative committee from the Texas House of Representatives. 376...so, so many and yet such failure.

'Systemic failures' in Uvalde school massacre, report finds - StarTribune.com

"At Robb Elementary, law enforcement responders failed to adhere to their active shooter training, and they failed to prioritize saving innocent lives over their own safety," the report said.. According to the report, 376 law enforcement officers massed at the school. The overwhelming majority of those who responded were federal and state law enforcement. That included nearly 150 U.S. Border Patrol agents and 91 state police officials...

The report noted that many of the hundreds of law enforcement responders who rushed to the school were better trained and equipped than the school district police — which the head of the Texas Department of Public Safety, the state police force, previously faulted for not going into the room sooner. "In this crisis, no responder seized the initiative to establish an incident command post," the report read.

 

[Argent Stonecutter]

There were more than enough officers there to have been able to end the killing. They just chose not to do so.

The problem isn't that there aren't enough officers, it's that there are zillions of tiny underfunded postage-stamp-sized police departments all trying to do everything that a large regional police department is expected to be able to do, so the result is that none of the departments even manage to get basic training right and most of them don't want to.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

So there were 376 good guys with guns on the scene, but since there was no overall plan, nor any chain of command, they might as well not have bothered.

Who decided they needed the best part of two infantry platoons to handle a single shooter, for heaven's sake, or did the local police chief just put out a call for help and hope for the best, since he had no idea what else to do?

 

[Katheryne Helendale]

I don't know. It just, there is something off here.

I can pretty much guarantee that if the children in that classroom were all white, and the shooter was black or latino, there would have been no delay at all in breaching the classroom and killing the shooter.

 

[Aribeth Zelin]

So there were 376 good guys with guns on the scene, but since there was no overall plan, nor any chain of command, they might as well not have bothered.

Who decided they needed the best part of two infantry platoons to handle a single shooter, for heaven's sake, or did the local police chief just put out a call for help and hope for the best, since he had no idea what else to do?

Oh, at least some of the Border patrol people were there because they had kids in that school. So, while they were on duty, they were there to get their kids, and from at least some of what I've seen, they wanted to know why no one was doing anything about the shooter. The whole thing is an absolute disaster [and not just because of the lives lost.

 

[Jolene Benoir]

So there were 376 good guys with guns on the scene, but since there was no overall plan, nor any chain of command, they might as well not have bothered.

Who decided they needed the best part of two infantry platoons to handle a single shooter, for heaven's sake, or did the local police chief just put out a call for help and hope for the best, since he had no idea what else to do?

Appears to have been the latter.

 

[Katheryne Helendale]

Another mass shooting in a shopping mall:

Chief: 3 dead in Indiana mall shooting; witness kills gunman

GREENWOOD, Ind. (AP) — Three people were fatally shot and two were injured Sunday evening at an Indiana mall after a man with a rifle opened fire in a food court and an armed civilian shot and killed him, police said.

apnews.com

This time, a "good guy with a gun" killed the gunman. But, given that Indiana's governor just recently signed into law an act that allows anyone and everyone to carry without a permit, this could have very easily turned into a wild-west shootout with dozens or more casualties.

 

[Aribeth Zelin]

Another mass shooting in a shopping mall:

Chief: 3 dead in Indiana mall shooting; witness kills gunman

GREENWOOD, Ind. (AP) — Three people were fatally shot and two were injured Sunday evening at an Indiana mall after a man with a rifle opened fire in a food court and an armed civilian shot and killed him, police said.

apnews.com

This time, a "good guy with a gun" killed the gunman. But, given that Indiana's governor just recently signed into law an act that allows anyone and everyone to carry without a permit, this could have very easily turned into a wild-west shootout with dozens or more casualties.

The stuff came over a scanner app my spouse has on his phone but they didn't have much info on it earlier.... this has got to stop.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

 

[Free]

Denver police injure 5 bystanders in LoDo while shooting man who allegedly pointed gun at officers

Denver police injured five bystanders when they opened fire in the busy Lower Downtown nightlife district as bars closed early Sunday, shooting a man they allege pointed a gun at officers.

www.denverpost.com

Denver police injured five bystanders when they opened fire in the busy Lower Downtown nightlife district as bars closed early Sunday, shooting a man they allege pointed a gun at officers.

Those bystanders — three women and two men — were either shot by police or injured with shrapnel from the officers’ bullets, Denver police said in a news release Sunday afternoon. All five are expected to survive.

 

[Rose Karuna]

I haven't been following these threads much; I prefer to put a bag over my head and pretend everything is alright ...

The UK "specialist firearms officers" Innula mentions, appear to be similar to what is called a police S.W.A.T. (special weapons & tactics) team in the U.S. but maybe not?

A couple years ago I watched a documentary (unfortunately I forget the name) about the "militarization of local police forces. British police officer specialists were interviewed and seemed upset at the poor training U.S. SWAT teams received in tactics, especially in de-escalation of violence. Retired U.S. military experts said the best, well-funded, SWAT teams in large cities received relatively good training (not as good as military training) but every medium and even small city in the U.S. wants to have its own underfunded and under trained, under prepared, SWAT team and this is much worse than not having a special team at all.

I hope I've remembered this accurately, but I admit that I I might not have it right.
Is anyone here better informed?

Yes, poorly trained and utterly ridiculous vehicles that they just LOVE to ride around in and look tough.

This is the SWAT team for the city I live in



And this is the SWAT team for the county I live in



Why do both the city and the county need trained SWAT teams? Because they can. Honestly, when it comes to this shit I think that the public needs to begin defunding it and that the federal government needs to stop giving them this stuff. As proved in Uvalde, they are useless anyway. They kill far more people than they save.

 

[CronoCloud Creeggan]

Yes, poorly trained and utterly ridiculous vehicles that they just LOVE to ride around in and look tough.

This is the SWAT team for the city I live in



And this is the SWAT team for the county I live in



Why do both the city and the county need trained SWAT teams? Because they can. Honestly, when it comes to this shit I think that the public needs to begin defunding it and that the federal government needs to stop giving them this stuff. As proved in Uvalde, they are useless anyway. They kill far more people than they save.

Are they afraid of an invasion of pirates and princesses from the Reedy Creek Improvement District? ;-)

 

[Lexxi]

The more I see coming out of Uvalde, the more I think that it was -allowed- to happen.

Yeah, sometimes it seems police just allow crimes and murder to happen.

The below story is about how a man burst through the balcony window on the second level of an apartment building and killed a woman. 12 hours later. People started calling the police before that, when he banged on the front door. Police finally appeared, slowly walked up, could easily see the broken glass, knocked on the door (and called), and got no response. So left. Next day the guy who had burst in came out and said the woman dead.

(as seems to almost always happen, the police, of course, said they didn't do anything wrong, and, in fact, did the correct stuff.)

MSN

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

how my day started:

how you doin'?

 

[Innula Zenovka]

 

[Innula Zenovka]