Cowardly police

Enraged by reports that police spent most of an hour waiting outside while the Uvalde shooter murdered nineteen kids, a thread by Dan Kim (김명준) <@danielmkim>:

I can’t fucking sleep tonight. Kept thinking about one of my last calls as an EMT after reading about cops not willingly putting themselves in harm’s way. August 2001. I pulled my bus up just outside the PD cordon at the site of a DV [domestic violence] call. Lots of nervous Barney Fife types with their hands on their pistols, taking cover behind their cars, filling the radio with useless traffic. Fire dispatch briefed me enroute. Normally, no biggie, treat the DV victim(s) & transport.

This MFer was a 10-43: barricaded, probably armed, with hostages. I introduced myself to the on-scene commander, who looked the part: lean, muscular, confident voice & demeanor, lots of service hash marks on his sleeve. I say looked the part, because he sure as shit didn’t act that way as the night went on. You see, even with 5 or 6 cops with him, not to mention probable cause to enter the domicile, he wouldn’t. He wanted to wait for the county to send Emergency Service Unit (ESU), but those heavily armed meatheads would need an hour or more to spin up. Meanwhile, we waited & sweated. No negotiator, no ESU door kickers, couldn’t even get a helo to spotlight the house. I asked SGT M why he couldn’t move in with the cops he had. His answer blew me away & still makes me angry to this day.

M didn’t want to “unnecessarily risk” his officers. I was gobsmacked. Like, MFer, that badge means we all accept that risk. Fuck it, I’ll go. M told me to stand down. I told him to go fuck himself. We heard 2 shotgun blasts inside the house. One. Pause. Pause. Two. I knew what that meant, given the math, but it never registered with M or his officers. I felt sick. I told him he needed to go in now, so I could treat the hostages. He told me to stand down, ESU was on the move. One more shotgun blast.

M’s mouth kept opening & closing like a bass you just pulled out of the water. I told him I was going in because the risk was gone. M was right, I wasn’t an LEO [law enforcement officer], I had no business going in, but deep down, I knew my bag wouldn’t help any of the 3 people inside.

The fucking door wasn’t even locked. And I was right, there was nothing I could do. Wife took a 10-gauge shell to the neck in the bedroom. Bled out through her carotid. 3- or 4-year old child must’ve been hiding in the bathroom when Dad got to them.

DV perp turned the shotgun on himself, but didn’t manage to die right away. It was messy. He sounded like he was choking on his own blood. I wanted that kid to live more than any other patient I had in my time as an EMT. But I also knew that answer was no.

I still see that kid in my dreams, now & again. I see them every time I read about a school massacre. I see the murdered child, whose last thought was probably a fear that no one — let alone a fucking goddamn child — should ever have.

The perp? Fuck him. Let him choke agonizingly on his own blood. Yeah, I disregarded my training, but fuck that guy who just killed his family. M finally entered the house & asked why I wasn’t treating the perp. AYFKM?!

Long story short, my report (I thought) was a verbal flamethrower that would tank M’s career & any possible future as an LEO. Nothing. Fucking. Happened. Because I was just an EMT, not LE. What could I possibly know? M is now the deputy chief of his department.

I told @drjchernov earlier tonight that some people who can’t accept that their badge = risking their own life aren’t meant for PD/Fire/EMS. That’s the job. I did accept that, but I also realized I had other issues to deal with, unrelated to my EMT days.

There was also a quick side trip to the World Trade Center a month later, & that only confirmed that my decision was/remains the correct one for me at that time. Then I read that LEOs waited for backup in Uvalde while kids died, & this specific call came roaring back.

Fuck, I wouldn’t wish that kind of memory on my worst enemy. I saw the child again. Younger than yesterday’s victims, but still a child. Then I picked up my kids from school, & kept my utter & abject sense of relief to myself, hidden in anodyne questions about their day.

How fucking dare you? I’ll say it again, I don’t give one tenth of half a fuck — how dare you, you cowardly pieces of shit who aren’t worthy of the badges on your chests? Children died because of your inaction. Children died while you waited for fucking backup. Children died because you were either unable or unwilling to put your body between the perp & (I can’t stress this enough) defenseless fucking children whose only sin yesterday was to go to school wanting to learn & hang out with friends.

Now, typing this, all I can see is that child huddled between the tub & the toilet, hoping his dad wouldn’t do the unthinkable. Then seeing the results of what had been unthinkable. We all see the unthinkable on a weekly basis now. At least, news of it.

It’s time for that to change. This is macabre, but not new: if the victims’ families agree, publish the crime scene photos. Let America see what their passion for unfettered gun ownership hath wrought. Then maybe we’d get common sense gun laws like a background check.

Enough platitudes, I can’t swallow another one without wanting to puke. Fuck your thoughts & prayers. Politicians, you have the statutory power to do something about this scourge. Yet. You. Do. Fuck. All.

Do it for children who just want to play during recess. Do it for folks shopping socializing at a supermarket because racist zoning rules made that a gathering place. Do it for congregants at a synagogue, patients at a Planned Parenthood clinic. Do it for Asian salon workers in Atlanta & Dallas. Do it for your country, as alien as that concept might sound to you. Like The Onion says after all such massacres - not mass shootings, these are massacres - “No way to prevent this, says only nation where this regularly happens”

HERE ENDETH THE LESSON

Keeping this one in my pocket for the next time some cop brags about being a “sheepdog” who “puts my life on the line to protect people”.

If you don’t recognize the sheepdog thing, it is violent authoritarian propaganda commonly taught to cops which casts them as “sheepdogs” gifted with the impulse to violence which enables them to protect ordinary citizens — (sheep) from Violent Criminals (wolves). Most famous for turning up in the creepy American Sniper film.

This pairs with another bit from Cliff 🦖 Jerrison <@pervocracy>:

I feel like the facts still aren’t out on the Uvalde police response but one thing that seems really clear and not for the first time is that cops in fear for their lives act in the exact opposite manner from cops “in fear for their lives”.

if the conceit of thinbluelineism is that we need to tolerate unaccountable and vicious men among us, and the damage they cause, so that there’s someone even scarier than the bad guys ready to fight when shit really goes down

well, oops

The “in fear for their lives business” is, of course, how cops justify killing people, as they do a thousand times a year, literally. Among others.

This is reflected in another Twitter thread, from Chaos Bride Kyelaag <@Monstrous_Fest>:

Folks are talking about police a bunch, and that’s something I might actually be able to provide context for.

Police are never, and will never be, required to endanger themselves in any way for any reason. This has been litigated thoroughly.

The argument cop reps make is that nobody’s job can require that they jump in front of bullets like weird nerds for idiot tech moguls.

This argument is reasonable! Nobody’s job should demand the employee’s death as a condition of employment.

The obvious problem, of course, is that cops’ job is purportedly to protect people from violence.

The corollary is that this is not a cop’s actual job. They have no duty to prevent violence, no duty to put themselves at any risk, no duty to help anyone.

No cop will ever be punished for refusing to help, ever. Or refusing to risk anything.

This is why cops insist so hard that their jobs are intrinsically dangerous! They don’t have to take any risks, so their narratives emphasize that they are actually the victims.

Corollary: never, ever believe anything a press release tells you about what cops do or did, because cops tailor them very carefully.

This is why cops primarily assault people who are not armed, and why they do so with deadly weapons. To minimize risk.

The primary responsibility of any individual cop is to minimize risk to themselves.

No cops ‘confronted’ the shooter, because they could have gotten hurt. No cops entered the school, because they could have gotten hurt.

The tricky bit here is that they didn’t let parents help.

Because once they’re on scene, and protecting themselves, if they had let other people get involved they would have increased the risk to themselves, the cops.

And the cops’ job is to show up, protect themselves, and document their fear of risk.

That’s it.

This easily gets tangled up in the PR cops have done in the past. “To protect and serve” is not a statement of duty. No cop is required to protect or to serve. Most of us have some perception of a “good cop” who has responsibilities.

That is fiction.

Thanks, Terry Pratchett.

Any portrayal of a “good cop” is not a portrayal of a cop engaging in their job. If a cop helps someone for any reason, it is entirely external to their identity as a cop. They might have done a “good thing”, but a doctor who holds the door isn’t necessarily a “good doctor.”

Eliminate this fiction wherever you recognize yourself engaging in it.

Never fucking watch die hard again. Or a police procedural.

Because when we collectively think cops should be responsible or do any good, in the smallest way possible, they will not.

This is why it’s more dangerous to be literally anyone else than to be a cop.

Everyone’s job requires interaction with danger. Traffic. Violent customers. Dealing with cops. Hospitality is incredibly dangerous!

Cops make up a guy and then kill him for their own safety.

Institutionally, police are pretty much the only profession that permits its members to arm themselves against a hypothetical threat and then kill anyone who overlaps with it.

The rest of us have to be polite and bandage ourselves and hope. Cops don’t.

This is, as a corollary, why cops hate civilians so much.

If a cop is in danger it is because a civilian inconvenienced them.

Something bad happened, and a civilian saw a cop nearby or attempted to invoke one.

This causes risk to the cop. Punishable by death.

Takeaway: it is dangerous just to call the police. It is more dangerous, in many ways, to call them, because by exposing them to danger you give them excuses to punish, assault, or kill you.

And, as above, their job is to identify risk and then eliminate the source.

In Uvalde, this is what happened. Cops were seen by civilians, and they did what cops do. They protected themselves, and then controlled the most convenient source of risk to their jobs — the civilians that saw them.

And then they lied about it. Poorly.

The description of the lack of police obligation to help having been litigated thorougly may sound implausible, but it is true:

This case builds upon Supreme Court precedent in Deshaney v. Winnebago County Department of Social Services (1989). In that case, a young boy was repeatedly abused at the hands of his father, something that county Social Services was aware of, but made no effort to remove the child. His mother sued once the four-year old entered a vegetative state, and the Court ruled that that the state did not have a special obligation to protect a citizen against harms it did not create.

Based on these precedents, Lozito was told in the New York City case that “no direct promises of protection were made” to him, and therefore he could not sue the police for failing to come to his aid. In other words, the police do not have to act if someone is actively being harmed, they do not have to arrest someone who has violated orders, and they do not have any obligation to protect you from others.

Most of us like to imagine, or at least hope, that we would place ourselves between children and a killer, even if we were barehanded. Anyone who would not — or worse, who did not while still expecting to be called “brave” rather than feel shame for their cowardice — has no business carrying a badge, much less a gun.