At least they tried.
14 Likes
1 Like
The “good guy with a gun” narrative is dead. The corpse is riddled with thousands of bullets at this point. Also any justification for school police officers has been thoroughly demolished.
Whaa… how… The NYTimes did a comprehensive report showing school police were totally useless when it came to school shootings - and did demonstrable harm to students, in addition. It wasn’t exactly a surprise for anyone who has been paying attention, but it methodically laid out the evidence such that it couldn’t really be argued with. That they’re still pushing this is insane, completely at odds with all known reality… which I guess makes it very Republican.
On the plus side, everyone knows and they’ll probably never be able to live it down.
12 Likes
Those super-soakers and Nerf Fortnights look surprisingly realistic!
2 Likes
Three hundred seventy six cops?! Jesus Fried Chicken!
I’ve taken to saying “[something is] as useless as a Texas cop at a school shooting.” I didn’t realize Just. How. Accurate. that insult was going to be.
10 Likes
Have they ever once used a key for a no-knock warrant?
9 Likes
Right-wingers are pushing a false media narrative that one of the cops had an opportunity to stop the shooter from entering the school but hesitated because they were worried about having to justify their actions in court. The takeaway being that we must make sure cops are never held to account for excessive violence.
The whole story is based on a lie, of course.
15 Likes
Weird, that never seems to make them even pause anytime they kill or maim someone who is BIPOC.
23 Likes
Right? The idea that American cops are too hesitant to employ deadly violence is such bullshit.
They didn’t hesitate here because they were afraid of facing consequences for taking down the shooter, they hesitated because they didn’t want to put themselves in mortal danger.
14 Likes
Yep, yep.
7 Likes
Just because I’ve not seen reports of them being gleefully used to serve petty no-knock warrants to the wrong address I’m not sure if cops get breaching shotguns; but they apparently had some prying implements; and it’s not exactly uncommon for doors of no particular distinction to go down to a small amount of motivated battering; unless the locking mechanism engages a suitably sturdy doorframe; also not uncommon to be able to jam a shim into the locking mechanism and get it that way. Definitely no suggestion that anyone actually tried the door like there was a simple possession case on the far side.
5 Likes
Even if the story were 100% true; wouldn’t it actually be even more chickenshit than what did happen?
The argument isn’t that the officer was swayed by liberal kumbaya policies to hold fire in order to attempt a mediation and reconciliation based approach to restorative justice, or by outrage against extrajudicial killings to reconsider just how certain he was of the facts he was about to pull the trigger based on; it’s that the cop was afraid to take the shot because it might land him in court.
By most measures ending up in court for what wouldn’t have been more than 2nd degree murder(realistically, probably rather less) is less of a price to pay than getting shot and killed or seriously injured. (edit: cop circles also appear to agree, if the cliche status of “I’d rather be judged by 12 than carried by 6” as an explanation for shooting first is anything to go by.) We(and the distaste seems to be felt more or less across the political spectrum) rightly condemn the law enforcement response for being unwilling to take the risk of engaging the gunman lest they get shot; so wouldn’t it be morally cogent to also condemn someone whose only reason for not engaging a gunman is fear of dealing with a court case?
6 Likes
During the George W. Bush years I heard the same argument again and again with people who believed we had to legalize torture (sorry: “enhanced interrogation”) against terrorism suspects. The idea was that in a “ticking bomb” scenario an interrogator might be so worried about facing legal repercussions that he wouldn’t do what it took to extract critical intel from a terrorist in time to prevent an imminent attack.
My response to that was if the interrogator really believed that torture was the only way to save hundreds or thousands of innocent lives then the threat of jail time shouldn’t be enough to change his mind one way or another. If the cause isn’t important enough to risk one’s career or freedom for then it definitely isn’t important enough to torture someone for.
14 Likes
Misremember the Alamo!
14 Likes
And it wouldn’t even be much of a risk, anyway. It’s practically guaranteed that if the torturer was able to show that he (extremely improbably) somehow saved thousands of lives by torturing a terrorist and stopping a ticking time bomb at the last minute, Jack Bauer style, he’d be just about guaranteed to receive a full presidential pardon, if not a parade. But those situations just don’t exist outside of movies and TV.
9 Likes
For at least some torture advocates, the “ticking timebomb” is simply a pretext. They’re not really imagining one interrogator torturing one suspect once under exceptional circumstances, they want routine torture of all terrorism suspects.because they think that torture “works” and/or they are sadists.
5 Likes
12 Likes
Turns out there was a sign on the wall of the school that said “Occupancy by more than 375 people is dangerous and unlawful,” so they all chose to stay outside.
1 Like
14 Likes
Of course he didn’t… what a soulless piece of shit.
15 Likes
