Ignorance Is Bliss. Also Death.
By Mitch Berg
After a year and a half, the final report on the Uvalde Massacre was released last week.
And it told us something we knew within about a year of the Columbine Massacre – because the Secret Service reported it, after doing a deep study of spree killers: when someone is engaged in a spree killing (a mass murder with no other motivation), the best response is to meet them with violent opposition. Spree killers almost invariably operate in a psychotic reverie – and violent resistance shatters that fugue state. The directive: Don’t negotiate. Don’t wait for SWAT. Go in – if you’re a cop, do it as soon as you have another cop to cover you. Move in in mutualliy-supporting groups of 2-4 cops, and get rounds on target. If nothing else, violent resistance breaks the fugure state, and usually causes the spree killer to give up or kill themselves. (The Secret Service report didn’t endorse armed civilian resistance – but the real-world record shows a myriad of cases of regular schnooks ending spree killings. It’s the principle, not the actor, that gets the spree killer to point the gun at their own head.
And the Uvalde cops? Like the Parkland cops before them, they didn’t forget all their training…:
Eleven officers from the Uvalde school district and Uvalde Police Department arrived on the scene within three minutes of the shooter’s entry into the school. Five advanced initially and two were hit by shrapnel. Police made three attempts to enter the classrooms, which are adjoined by an interior door.
But as at Parkland, there was apparently crisis in leadership:
Pete Arredondo, then the chief of the Uvalde school police department, “directed officers at several points to delay making entry into classrooms in favor of searching for keys and clearing other classrooms,” the report found. He also tried to negotiate with the shooter, and treated him as a barricaded subject instead of a continuing threat to children and school staff, the report says…”The report concludes that had law enforcement agencies followed generally accepted practices and gone right after the shooter to stop him, lives would have been saved and people would have survived,” [US Attorney General Merrick ]Garland said.
The only “negotiating tactic” to which spree killers respond is shots on, or near, the target. They are the target.
January 24th, 2024 at 12:41 pm
Spree shooters should be negotiated with in the same fashion as the scene in The Fifth Element: Terrorist aliens take hostages aboard a cruise ship in space. One of the cruise ship’s hands tells the hostage-takers that they’re sending someone in to negotiate. Bruce Willis’ character, Korben Dallas, walks in and shoots the terrorist leader in the head, then asking “Anybody else want to negotiate?”
Since Uvalde, we’ve seen how a rapid armed response dashes a spree shooter’s hopes for long-lasting fame/infamy: Nashville cops entered the school 10 minutes after the 911 call and shot the perpetrator 2 minutes later. Predictably, Biden and Harris invited the so-called “Tennessee 3” to the White House, but not the families of the victims nor the officers who killed the shooter.
January 24th, 2024 at 1:53 pm
Not only did law enforcement fail to attack out of concern for officer safety, they physically restrained parents who were willing to attack heedless of their own safety, to rescue their children.
How can society adequately shame those responsible, that it never happens again?
January 24th, 2024 at 3:00 pm
What strikes me is that you cannot really depend on people to risk their own lives–blessedly many do, but you cannot count on that. Hence your best shot is to…arm the teachers. They at least have a likelihood of fighting when their lives are involuntarily at stake.
January 24th, 2024 at 3:44 pm
I would suggest that if teachers and school administrators are not willing to arm a few teachers with a firearm, I suggest they put a can of mace (NOT pepper spray), a taser with the leads and or a paint ball gun. None are deadly, but should at least incapacitate or distract a shooter enough to stop them.
January 25th, 2024 at 8:52 am
I generally find myself in a weird No-man’s-land when it comes to law enforcement.
I generally am supportive of officers, but I’m well aware that they can act in bad faith.
I think that qualified immunity needs to go away, but I don’t want an officer that is acting in good faith suffer life long consequences when they follow their training.
I understand and agree that the government shouldn’t be held liable for every crime that happens within its jurisdiction.
BUT
When officers failed to follow the best practices that are known and taught since before most of them became officers, heads should be rolling. Merely losing a job and career isn’t enough punishment for negligence at the level committed that day.