Pretty far down in the CLB’s “random quotes” section there is John Donne’s famous Meditation XVII, best known by the opening phrase that “no man is an island.” Donne’s thought continues to “any man’s death diminishes me.” Donne’s observations are not applicable to the death of Salvador Ramos of Uvalde, Texas. We are not diminished by his death. It was his existence as a living person that diminished us. It is good and proper that Salvador died in the Robb Elementary classroom where he slaughtered the innocent. But that observation is not the central topic of this Article.
We must ask why Salvador Ramos: shot his own grandmother; stole the family pickup truck; drove it into a ditch; shot at (and missed) a couple of folks near a funeral home; hopped a fence; entered an unsecured building and unsecured classroom; and began murdering the fourth grade students. Some blame the AR-15 rifle that he carried.¹ It would be as easy to blame the building door left propped open by a teacher or the classroom door that was unlocked. It would be as easy to blame the school “resource officer” who was somewhere other than his assigned location.
The central topic of this Article is the inexcusable incompetence and cowardice of school district police responding to the incident. It appears that the school district had its own dedicated police force. Chief Pete Arredondo of that force and around 18 others arrived soon after the killing began. They entered the building. They heard gunfire. They exited the building to a safer location where there was absolutely no chance of disarming or wounding the killer.
The only initiative exercised by the school district police was their counterproductive intervention with newly arriving Border Patrol officers, insisting that they stand down. In the meantime 911 calls kept coming in from terrified students. Finally the Border Patrol officers entered the building, breached the classroom door, and killed Salvador Ramos.
The cowardice of the school district police in Uvalde is similar to what we witnessed just a few years ago in Parkland, Florida. School district police chief Arredondo should be fired. All those officers who were on scene without entering the classroom should be fired. The teacher who propped open the building door (if still alive) should be fired. The teacher who failed to lock her classroom door is almost certainly dead.
Of all the breaches of duty enabling young Salvador the least forgivable is the cowardice of school district police who were deterred by the very gunfire that should have motivated them to fulfill their protective duty. We may never know how many children were shot after school district police withdrew from the building. We may never know how many children died during the delay, bleeding out from wounds that were not necessarily fatal. Even the junior officers who were “just following orders” are worthy of no more than contempt of those whose children were entrusted to them.
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¹ While the CLB remains a defender of Second Amendment rights, it favors raising from 18 to 21 the legal age for purchase of an AR-15 or any other rifle. If the AR-15 is banned, the young Salvadors among us will find alternate firearms that are no less deadly.
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