Texas state police will not discipline any more of its officers over the Uvalde school shooting that left 19 children and two teachers dead as heavily armed agents hesitated to confront the lone gunman, a spokesperson confirmed Friday.

The decision is a turning point nearly nine months after one of the worst school attacks in U.S. history, and the widespread outrage over the officers who allowed more than 70 minutes to go by before stopping the massacre.

It also raises new questions about how many of the nearly 400 law enforcement personnel who were at Robb Elementary School last May might face discipline. They came from a constellation of agencies in South Texas, including the Texas Department of Public Safety, U.S. Border Patrol and local police. Two DPS officers have been fired, and one of them is appealing his termination.

  • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    You don’t have to be brave to be a cop, you don’t have to help people to be a cop, you don’t have to know how to de-escalate a situation if you’re a cop, and if you murder or steal, you not only get off scot-free, it’s state-endorsed. They’re a non-criminal gang, that’s all there is to it.

    • RiikkaTheIcePrincess@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      They’re enforcing for the people who make the real rules, who get to define “crime.” Doesn’t matter if they bend a few (and show people they’re helpless against the state and its monopoly on violence!) as long as they don’t harm the system itself.

      It 100% is a state-sponsored street gang, just holding, bullying, and taking from ‘their’ territory as they please. wanders off grumbling something about taxis or something

    • Empricorn@feddit.nl
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      1 year ago

      An origin of slave-hunting, a culture of toxic aggression, a history of abuse and lawlessness, harassment and targeting any actual good cops, and immunity from any crimes they commit… What could go wrong?

  • Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    The Supreme Court ruled that cops have no duty to protect. Police chose not to protect students in Uvalde. They consistently choose to protect nazi protesters though.

  • PoliticalAgitator
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    1 year ago

    The pro-gun community love to blame Ulvade police. “The problem isn’t dogshit gun laws that allowed a teenager with a history of death threats and animal abuse to buy two rifles on a whim from a company that targets edgelords, it was those darn cowardly cops!”

    So to get the obvious out of the way first, brave cops don’t make much difference. During Sandy Hook, police were on the scene in minutes and breeched within minutes of that. The shooter still killed more people, he just didn’t get to mutilate the children beyond recognition with his cool guns.

    But the less obvious thing the pro-gun community doesn’t seem to realise is that they themselves are one big Ulvade PD.

    They too promised us public safety but stand around doing nothing while other people suffer the consequences of gun violence. They too get to dodge the consequences of their failures and joke about it with their buddies months later. They too leave it to everyone else to clean up their mess.

    Frothily blame the police all you want, but gun owners are just as spineless and useless.

      • PoliticalAgitator
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        1 year ago

        Yes, the parents. How many gun-owning members of the public without children inside volunteered to go in shooting, since they promised everyone they’d be safer if we kept the dogshit gun laws that armed the murderer in the first place?

        The reality is that for all their flowery rhetoeic, gun owners only care about their own self interests. The middle-aged, morbidly obese man who wouldn’t even wear a mask is not going to fight a tyrant for you. He just wanted to keep his toys.

        And if they don’t care about people being murdered with legal guns, why should I care about them being murdered because they didn’t have a legal gun?

        • NoneOfUrBusiness@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          The reality is that for all their flowery rhetoeic, gun owners only care about their own self interests.

          I mean yes, sorta. The selling point of guns is that you can defend yourself. The good guy with a gun part is secondary.

          Also this us vs them mentality doesn’t seem good for productive discussion.

          • PoliticalAgitator
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            1 year ago

            I mean yes, sorta. The selling point of guns is that you can defend yourself. The good guy with a gun part is secondary.

            The good guy with a gun is also a lie. If you want to strip out the flowery rhetoric and promises that are never delivered, sure, go ahead. You’re left with a group of people who are happy to put other people in danger for their own (often false) sense of security.

            Also this us vs them mentality doesn’t seem good for productive discussion.

            Nope, fuck that. They’ve had 20 years of polite discussion and potential compromise and they’ve done nothing. It clearly is us vs them.

    • Damizel
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      1 year ago

      If gun owners were allowed to use their weapons to go in there and stop the shooter … why we’re the police stopping them from going in? Almost as if they aren’t allowed to use their guns in the same capacity.

      There is nothing more to blame for the scale of this massacre aside from the Uvalde police. Pro or anti gun wouldn’t have mattered as all of them were perfectly or overly equipped to handle the situation. The uvalde police were the ones who were directing on scene( or lack of I should say). I’m not trying to say that the root of the issue wasn’t that a deranged teenager was allowed to purchase those guns, that in itself is a problem with all of America. But this incident in particular is 75% Uvalde and 25% that kid.

      Had they pushed in I would argue the death toll would be half of what it is now.

      • PoliticalAgitator
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        1 year ago

        Half the number of murdered children? . If that’s your best case with the big, brave police of your dreams, it lays bare how much a non-solution it really is.

        If you want to minimize the violence that damaged people can do, gun control can do a whole lot better than the “half the murdered children” we’re being promised if we fix the police instead.

        • Damizel
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          1 year ago

          I’d prefer to never have any more kids murdered by guns, but you open up that topic of less guns in America and it’s a 50/50 deal whether people come at you full bore or not.

          In Canada we’ve had less mass shootings in our whole history, than america has had this week alone. Maybe take a lesson from us for once?

  • originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com
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    1 year ago

    cowardice isnt exactly illegal, and i think a lot of officers learned that carrying a human killing device makes you no less of a coward.

    • laylawashere44@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      1 year ago

      It is in any military force. If cops want to be trusted to flaunt the aesthetic and use equipment of the military, it stands to reason they should then have the same responsibilities.