Just a reminder – In America, the police have no legal duty to protect you or to intervene in any way – and they probably won’t.
An old NYT article: https://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/politics/justices-rule-police-do-not-have-a-constitutional-duty-to-protect.html
A more recent reiteration: Police Have No Duty to Protect the Public - The American Prospect
While true and depressing, the fact remains that our taxes shouldn’t go to fund them if they don’t even protect property.
And, since the Right views children (and women, the other victims here) pretty much solely as property, well, there you go!
Exactly; those LEOs failed to protect the building and all the “property of men” that it contained.
It’s driven me crazy for at least a couple decades that this is not where all discussions about police conduct/policy/reform begin and that most people seem to regard me as a conspiracy theorist when I bring it up.
I’ve given up hope, mostly, that anything meaningful can change if the popular understanding of the role policing is intended to play remains based in myths about protecting the public and preventing crime.
Yeah, making the statement as the answer to a question no one asked was instantly suspicious. In the context of a torrent of lies, it’s pretty damning. Refusing to cooperate with an investigation is, as the cops like to say, not a good look either.
There’s no obligation to cooperate, they can’t jail you for refusing to cooperate. You only get in trouble if you take active steps to impede the investigation (destroy evidence etc.)
However, it should be the law that any public servant (specifically including elected officials) who refuses to cooperate automatically ceases to be a public servant.
This should surprise nobody. The role of the police is to protect the power, property and privilege of the one percent, as marvellously demonstrated in the UK back in March when eight van- and two carloads of police were deployed to protect a Russian oligarch’s mansion from four unarmed squatters.
Everything else the police do is PR.
That’s very likely what they have done and are still doing.
Also, weird use of first person phrasing there.
I agree wholeheartedly, but I’m having a hard time figuring out the logistics of actually doing it. I may be paranoid, but I imagine if the officers knew it was going to happen, they would either violently harass the council members pushing for it, and/or they would hoard equipment and ammo.
So you would want to keep it quiet working through the legal steps, then do basically a raid of the station while it’s at low-occupancy - secure all the equipment and records, serve whatever proper dismissals are required, probably having news crews and extra security on hand.
So, necessary and doable, but scary and requiring strategic planning, for sure.
Probably a good idea to request a consent decree from the FBI so that any officer or staff who fails to comply can face federal rather than state or local charges.
Always good to remind people of this.
Yeah, reminds me of this meme:
What they’re worried about here is how many many children the cops shot.
Not a preview.
A standard operating procedure, implemented in varying degrees, by the powerful, covertly or overtly.
And it’s not just a Texas tactic, or a this-millenium tactic, either.
One of the guys involved in that kidnapping was Cult45’s ambassador to the Czech Republic.
Yep.
Getting legal representation / a lawyer sounds like a reasonable way for her to protect herself.
Whistleblowers can end up dying in mysterious accidents, or in prison after getting beaten up and/or having been denied medical attention, or are imprisoned for speaking the truth to power.
It’s a dang miracle that people still do have the courage to blow the whistle, tell the truth, and risk their lives and the lives of their loved ones.
Oh, the cops will protect property quite aggressively. Try to destroy or deface a building with a cop watching you, and you’ll see just how effectively that building is protected.
From what I understand, the cops were quite effective in preventing parents from entering the building as their children were being murdered.
Saw a guy walking on a trail with a “I am not an oppressor” shirt on. 
The TX cop union has finally cocked an eyebrow.
Has hell frozen over? I agree with something CLEAT said!
“We believe that a strong, independent investigation by the US Department of Justice with assistance from the FBI will discover what really happened, thus helping agencies everywhere to understand how best to stop a similar compounded tragedy from happening again,” the police union said.
OTOH, a really nice, older white guy I used to work with sometimes wore an, “I am not a racist” t-shirt to work functions. I commented on it once, and he said it had prompted some interesting exchanges, and some good ones. 
Clears throat…
Delayed only. Swearing in will most likely be behind closed doors.
