There should be no reasonable reality in which the release of this footage is suppressed. This is an undeniable tragedy, battening down the hatches and obstinately trying to weather the storm will do no favors for anyone.
I wish more of the world could function like the culture adopted by the western airline industry where every incident and investigation is treated as an opportunity to learn and improve the system rather than an opportunity to lay blame.
I think it's perfectly reasonable for anyone directly impacted to expect there to be consequences for the lack of preparedness, etc., but I think the big picture needs to be more along the lines of realizing that kind of unpreparedness isn't part of some grand plan or conspiracy and that working to improve the system for next time gives us better overall value (long term) than punishing the people involved.
At least for government institutions, I think that kind of system could be mandated as long as employees get the same deal as pilots. In exchange for willful participation, with the goal of improving the overall system, you aren't punished for anything that was an honest mistake, misunderstanding, lack of training, etc..
Unfortunately, the nature of US politics is such that it's impossible to have reasoned conversations about how to alter these extremely complex and dynamic systems. Entire areas of the solution space are rejected because of ideology, and those rejections, themselves, are highly politically charged.
In what should be no great surprise, later, when the problem isn't resolved, fingers get pointed at those who rejected those alternative solutions or pushed for solutions that did not work, while those who previously got in the way of a more fulsome discussion continue to do so because the foundation of their ideology cannot be shaken by real world data.
So, yes, it would be nice if the world could function as a reasonable and rational place, but when it comes to wedge issues like this, that simply will not happen without fundamental structural changes to the nature of US politics.
All that being said, given Boeing's recent performance, I'd be a little careful to hold up the airline industry as a paragon of rationality and preparedness...
If the airline industry had kept that culture we wouldn't have had so many incidents with the Boeing 737 MAX.
I'm not saying no mistakes were made. Of course mistakes were made. It was my assumption that the typical "post-mortem" process of those crashes did happen.
One of the many things NASA does for the US which affects ordinary people who aren't ever going to the Moon, let alone Mars, is ASRS. https://asrs.arc.nasa.gov/ The purpose of ASRS is to report safety problems that weren't accidents yet. That's how you continue to improve safety when there are a tiny number of fatal accidents - by studying all the things which nearly went wrong. The pilot who nearly turned off his one remaining engine after losing one on a twinjet, the controller who nearly authorised a new pilot to fly straight into a mountain before checking the radar again.
Most safety culture can't aspire to that. In many cases maybe it would be overkill. Therac-25 not withstanding, most software engineers are not going to kill anybody through their incompetence, and we'd do well to even manage a Mortality and Morbidity conference culture (M&M is what medics do when patients unexpectedly die or have seriously negative outcomes, to try to prevent such things in future). Even most of aviation isn't that safe. General (the pilot isn't getting paid, they're doing it for fun or at least as their own choice) is very unsafe. Commercial (e.g. Crop dusting, News helicopter) is better but not great. However Scheduled aviation (you can just buy a ticket, like for a bus) had reached the point where ASRS was the key to likely further safety improvements, and yet somehow Boeing shipped the 737 MAX.
My father is a retired airline pilot and we loved talking about safety, how things can fail and how there is a culture of learning for everyones mistakes. I mostly remember the pilots replaying actual crash scenarios.
But you are absolutely right, ASRS and learning from almost-failures is also critical.
So, is it going to be Law and Order for thee, paid suspensions and additional training for me?
In this case I believe a [grand] jury of peers would have found had the officers gone in and just taken the suspect out, they would have been justified.
Sadly we have more and more of a Law and Order society than an Orderly Justice one.
They pretty obviously are just embarassed by their failure.
This is my sneaking suspicion.
>“When the cops came, the cop said: ‘Yell if you need help!’ And one of the persons in my class said ‘help.’ The guy overheard and he came in and shot her,” the boy said. “The cop barged into that classroom. The guy shot at the cop. And the cops started shooting.” The police got a student killed, according to the survivor’s story.
https://www.vox.com/2022/5/27/23143997/the-uvalde-police-kee...
Seriously... WTF! If only they showed the same balls when dealing with the gunman.
It seems not: https://www.tcole.texas.gov/sites/default/files/CourseCMU/Ac...
This is extremely at odds with how the police want to be perceived, and managing that contradiction is certainly their biggest concern right now. From that perspective it's easy to understand why they want to suppress this information, and who benefits if they get to.
These aren't unfortunate dolts who bumbled into a tragic response because they weren't equipped to deal with it. This sort of thing is a predictable result of the training and prioritization police act on every day.
Its why I'm not above calling for purges and complete overhauls of the approach to policing.
Absolutely untrue, and has been for decades. Their hesitation to react and go in is the complete opposite of what they were trained to do, which is go in and eliminate the threat immediately. "The official narrative has shifted from a story of swift response by the local police to one of hesitation and delay that deviated from two decades of training that instructs officers to quickly confront a gunman to save lives, even at a risk to their own."[1]
>These aren't unfortunate dolts who bumbled into a tragic response because they weren't equipped to deal with it.
Except that, from everything we've learned about this event in the weeks since, they literally were not equipped to deal with it. Police chief didn't bring a radio, their own radios didn't work in the school, they bungled getting a key to the room, they didn't have their tactical materials arrive in a timely manner, I can go on and on.
[1]https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/09/us/uvalde-shooting-police...
There is also a well-documented history of police coming up with convenient excuses to do whatever the hell benefits them most (see also: bodycam "malfunctions"). Don't want to get involved in a dangerous situation? Whoops, I forgot my radio! Whoops, we don't have the right gear! Guess we can't get involved for more than an hour!
trained to do, not compelled to do
they won't be charged with a crime because they broke no law
they probably won't be fired either because their union will sue and probably win if so
they won't all be put on desk duty because the local govt cannot afford to hire replacement better-cops while also paying all of the worse-cops to sit at a desk
Right, and it's pretty fucking sad that "kids getting shot" isn't enough to compel them to do their jobs.
https://www.texastribune.org/2022/06/09/uvalde-chief-pete-ar...
In particular he did bring a radio but decided to remove it. Read the article for why.
There are children being shot and he's worried some radio antenna's gonna smack him as he ran, or that one might fall off his belt? Bite your lip and put up with the antenna whipping you, and/or put the other radio on your belt, hoping that it doesn't fall off, and if it does, at least you can say you tried.
I realize we're talking split seconds, but it doesn't take long to clip a radio, as you're walking, to your belt.
The "someone" might have a little more skin in the game than you do, though.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
And this is where, circumstantially, you and I seem to have a fundamentally different viewpoint. We'll just keep going in circles.
This is fundamentally wrong. If it were ok, let's just disband them all and save a lot of money since their responsibility doesn't benefit anyone other than themselves. I reject the concept of a society where this is somehow ok.
The idea that first responders can solve anything is a very comforting idea that resonates with many people. That doesn't make it true.
If the police cannot do their jobs to save children from being killed by a school shooter then they should not be police officers. They should not be militarized and given advanced equipment, they should not pretend that they ever need it and their budget shouldn't be the majority of a town's spending. And if they don't like it, then maybe the police and the police union can do better campaigning on actual ways to stop school shooters instead of using it as an excuse to further increase their own budget.
Over the lives of children, though? Putting your life in danger to save a random guy's life is heroic, but not expected. You're both adults, your safety isn't guaranteed, and it's not guaranteed that you'll be able to save him. But it's quite different when, instead of a random guy, it's a group of children.
I think that's the striking difference with Uvalde. It's really, really hard for me to imagine firefighters not rushing into a burning elementary school to get the kids to safety. Societally, we expect them to, and they know we expect them to.
Society also expects the same from police (laying down your life to save a child), but I'm not sure these police fully understood this societal expectation at the time of the incident, or else they would have acted differently.
And yet...
>“People are going to ask why we’re taking so long,” a man who investigators believe to be Chief Arredondo could be heard saying, according to a transcript of officers’ body camera footage.
>By that point, officers in and around the school had been growing increasingly impatient, and in some cases had been loudly voicing their concerns. “If there’s kids in there, we need to go in there,” one officer could be heard saying, according to the documents.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/09/us/uvalde-shooting-police...
They aren’t holding up their side of the deal here.
This is not any different for any first responder. Firefighters will run right back out of your house if they think it's required to save their own lives.
What's the point of militarizing the police if they can't handle 19-on-1 situations?
Police militarization helps the police protect themselves when a situation gets out of control. I don't think there's much evidence to show that it ever helps police protect others. Although, there's a lot of reasons why people might be misled to believe so.
Soldiers use that equipment in a very different way, are way better trained and compensated, and have a very different set of rules to work with. And very rarely is it their mission to swoop in and save innocent people.
What about all of the times heavy-armed police teams burst into residences during Swatting incidents?
https://www.vice.com/en/article/wxdwgn/uvalde-swat-team-brag...
People risk or sacrifice themselves to save others with some frequency. Just a week before Ulvade, Dr. John Chang gave his life to tackle the shooter at his church in Orange County. Bravery exists. The belief in bravery is why we give special privileges to law enforcement. If we knew that police would never put themselves in harm's way to save children, we would never tolerate law enforcement as it currently exists.
If we hired every one-in-a-million hero as a police officer in the US, we'd have 165 police officers.
There's about 700,000 police officers in the US, and we can barely hire them as it is.
In the Commonwealth a police officer would likely get a George Cross for extraordinary bravery (the Victoria Cross is the medal for extraordinary bravery in the face of the enemy and so accordingly it is awarded to the military). New Zealand police officer Stewart Guthrie was awarded (posthumously) in 1990 for confronting a gunman who'd killed a dozen people. Guthrie warned him, "Stop or I shoot" but the gunman shot him first.
But of course such awards are rare because such events are rare in Commonwealth countries.
I agree, but that has always been a perception, and it has never been a reality.
Evolutionarily we have even higher desire to protect our young(so does most of animal kingdom).
The instinct to protect young children is stronger than desire to protect self - the trait is easily strongly selected under evolutionary pressure.
https://westdene1985.co.za/reports/the-survivors/
"
>>Koen, Petrus Lucas received the Wolraad Woltemade award posthumously. The 17-year-old drowned after rescuing his cousin and five fellow school pupils.
>>Du Toit, Daniel Sarel, aged 14, dived back into the water three times and saved three lives.
>>Mahner, Alfred who drove to the site, jumped into the water and helped several children to safety and assisted the fire brigade to attach cables to the bus.
>>Opperman, Gotlieb Rudolf, aged 15, was rescued in an unconscious condition from the bus after jumping back into the water three times to rescue children.
"
Out of the 700,000 police officers in the US, there are undoubtably hundreds, maybe thousands, of them that would voluntarily sacrifice their life to save others. The other 99.9+% of them do as much as they can and but still want to go home to their own children.
If we're willing to remove these things, then I'm more than fine with not expecting them to handle dangerous situations.
What has seemingly happened in Uvalde is a complete betrayal of that typical response. Officers contained the threat, allowing it to fester inside the school for an hour. When going in, they focused on the children instead of the shooter, getting even more children killed because of this.
That they are not legally required to put themselves in harm's way does not mean their coordinated response must be whitewashed.
Expecting the police to follow those best practices every time is not any more reasonable than expecting any other profession to follow best practice every time. The reason we don't legally require them to prevent crime is that it's an unachievable standard.
Expecting i follow the industry best practice is the MINIMUM. It is reasonable that my employer expect me to store my passowrds/api keys everytime and that i do not publish them on github/gitlab. It is also reasonable that my APIs are protected. Its is also reasonable that i monitor if my services are up or down. I don't understand why a police officer would not be held by the same standards.
Also, ~7 years ago, i was a counselor at a youth camp for police orphans. The three directors were from the RAID (SWAT equivalent in my country) and the medical assistant from the CRS (specialized police for riot control). They might have oversold their heroics, and those of the parents of the children we created activities for, but even then, any one of them would've gone inside as soon the shooter was contained.
If your data isn't protected by law in the US, chances are that data processors are most likely not following many data protection best practices.
The police are under no legal obligation to protect and serve, https://mises.org/power-market/police-have-no-duty-protect-y...
It's hard to fault the cops on this one. The 2012 Florida nightclub shooting was a roughly comparable situation - barricaded shooter, substantial firepower, hostage situation.[1] It took three hours to stop that guy, and the cops had to punch a hole in a wall with explosives and an armored vehicle.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orlando_nightclub_shooting
If so, that is a clear cut case for banning it completely.
https://www.facebook.com/uvaldepd/photos/a.935317536501604/2...