Cops Didn’t Stop the Uvalde, Texas, School Shooting
▻https://theintercept.com/2022/05/25/texas-uvalde-shooting-school-police
The Associated Press reported Thursday morning that parents urged police on the scene to follow the shooter into the school after seeing him rush inside with his rifle. When they didn’t, some parents attempted to enter themselves, but the police stopped them. A video from the scene shows one cop pinning a person to the ground while another brandishes a stun gun. One of the children who survived told local news station KENS 5 that an officer instructed them to yell “help” if they needed it — and one of the kids who did was discovered and killed by the shooter.
As the number of school resource officers has ballooned over the last two decades, so has the number of school shootings. There is no evidence that police have the ability to stop these shootings from happening. “The idea that a standard armed school police officer is gonna stop someone in that situation has proven not to be true, time and time again,” said Alex Vitale, a sociologist at the City University of New York and the author of “The End of Policing,” who noted that police and security guards are often the first casualties in mass shooting events.
