The Greatest Lesson from Uvalde:
How the recent incident in Texas can help us see opportunity in House Bill 99
In May, a madman entered Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas and spilled innocent blood. It was not the first time such an incident has taken place and it will not be the last. Evil is pervasive and long reaching and for as long as many of us can remember, it has been a part of life. We live in constant news cycles repeatedly drilling into us the fear and uncertainty that comes in tandem with freedom, but can the lessons from Uvalde help us understand the potential path forward that House Bill 99 can provide?
I want to paint you a picture for a moment. You are ten years old. You are on your way to school with your favorite Iron Man toy tucked into your backpack and you can’t wait for recess when you can show it to your friends. You sit through your boring lessons in math and science and begin to look over to your classmate sitting next to you anticipating the lunch bell. You’re about to tell your best friend about your new toy when your teacher suddenly rushes to lock the classroom door. Her face is pale white, her eyes peeled back, wide with surging adrenaline as she looks around the classroom and demands everyone suddenly rush to the corner of the room and hide behind solid objects. Your heart is punching through your chest with quickening fury. Loud crashes like fireworks start exploding in the hallway and then travel to the classroom next to you. You hear screams drowning out everything else coming from just next door followed by more booming explosions and then the door to your classroom blows open. A man in body armor walks through the threshold with a manic twinkle in his eye as he raises a rifle at the huddle of your classmates you find yourself buried in the middle of and begins to fire. Bodies kick and flail trying to climb over you to find cover as zipping sounds rip passed your ears. Kids you knew for years begin falling over and spitting red. Your teacher tries to shield you from what’s coming and tosses her body over your head. You feel her shake and jolt as several more rounds pop off before the attacker quickly leaves and makes his way to another part of the building. You are left sitting alone, covered in blood and listening to the crying pleas of people you once knew beg for their mothers and fathers. In a moment of quick thinking you rush to grab a phone, any phone, and dial 911. You tell the operator what happened. You tell them people are dead or dying. You’re hoping and praying that your call will bring relief, that the operator will give you some kind of instruction on how to stay alive until police can rush through the doors and rescue you. Instead the operator tells you police are already on the scene and you should wait for assistance. Your heart drops as you hear the attacker unload another volley of gunfire in a neighboring classroom. The Operator informs you the attacker is barricaded in the building. More screams echo from just down the hall. You begin to realize the attacker is barricaded in with you.
This is the kind of situation a young student found themselves in on May 24, when a shooter hopped the fence to Robb Elementary with the intent to kill. As usual with these situations the shooter was “known to law enforcement” as someone with intention to commit violence.
According to a timeline of events from the Texas Tribune, when a student called 911 at 12:03 p.m., officers were already on the scene and had barricaded the shooter in the school as they waited for a number of additional reinforcements. First, they waited for ballistic shielding. Then they waited for breaching tools, despite never checking if the doors were locked. Then they waited for SWAT to arrive, despite officers having everything they needed to make a difference. That same student would call back three more times to inform officers of those who were now dead, who could have been rescued if first responders had only attempted to enter the areas where the shooter was.
While some may be attempting to paint the incident as the most egregious example of poor leadership ever exhibited, the truth is far worse and far more troubling. For 77 minutes the shooter was allowed complete and total access to victims while law enforcement stood around doing nothing out of sheer cowardice. The shooter entered the school at 11:33 a.m. while officers entered the building at 11:35 a.m. Police Chief Pete Arredondo and two other officers, including Uvalde Police Lt. Javier Martinez, were among the first on the scene. By 11:37 a.m. officers had entered the school and were aware the gunman had entered classroom 111 and 112. Officers faced gunfire from the shooter and several were injured from fragments of the building material that exploded off during exchanging gunfire. The officers then retreated, except for Officer Martinez. According to the Texas Tribune, Martinez attempted to advance towards the hallway where the shooter was known to be. Seeing that his move was not being followed, he eventually retreated with the others. Had the other two officers with him followed him into the firefight, the incident would have ended right there. Instead they hid, like the scared children locked in with the shooter.
Despite never confirming any of the circumstances of the situation, Chief Arredondo switched from treating it as an active shooter incident to one of a barricaded suspect. He instructed the myriad of now responding officers to sit around and wait while they attempted to get more equipment to protect themselves and breach a potentially locked door that they never checked. Arredondo would fumble with keys that were never needed as children and teachers bled out. One victim even reached out to her husband, a uniformed police officer named Ruben Ruiz, who attempted to throw caution and orders to the wind and charge in himself. Arredondo had Ruiz tackled and restrained and had his sidearm taken. After waiting for over an hour, police would finally breach the school area where the shooter was blocked in and take him into custody. In total, 21 lives were lost as a direct result of the inaction in Texas. 376 law enforcement officers were reportedly on the scene and not one did a damn thing to stop the carnage. As bad as the situation turned out to be, it is indicative of a much larger problem.
Since 1983, various circuits of the Supreme Court have upheld that law enforcement holds no obligation to intervene in dangerous situations at the risk of their own life, even if they know danger is imminent. Part of this has to do with understanding the concept of officer discretion. Officers responding to dangerous situations must use quick and critical thinking in how to strategically respond to a crisis so as not to exacerbate the problem or make it worse. The issue with this window of discretion is that it can be left open to accommodate for cowardice. This precedent of discretionary action has been reinforced through Warren v. District of Columbia, The Town of Castle Rock v. Gonzales and Deshaney v. Winnebago County Department of Social Services. In each of these cases law enforcement knew of imminent danger posed by a suspect, and in some instances watched it happen. Yet they were not held accountable for their failure to act because there is no constitutional or state requirement to intervene at their own expense. The problem is, in many of these instances, acting would have been obviously prudent, possible and capable of ending the incident without continued harm.
One need only look at the case of Joseph Lozito to understand the severity of this issue. During his morning commute via New York Subway, Lozito was attacked repeatedly with a knife-wielding maniac. Police watched the incident occur from the next car, separated only by their lack of will to intervene as Lozito was stabbed repeatedly in the face by his assailant. Lozito was able to subdue the suspect and disarm him and only when the danger passed did police observing the attack intervene. In the case of Lozito, officers who watched his attack take place were not held accountable for damages due to established precedent.
In case you were thinking that some of these issues could be solved by citizens simply using their God-given rights to self-defense, let me remind you of the recent case involving Jose Alba in Manhattan. Alba was a Bodega owner who was stabbed several times by assailants when their SNAP card was declined for insufficient funds and they were unable to purchase a bag of Doritos. During his attack, Alba had enough fight to remove the knife lodged in his body and fight back against his attackers and for it the District Attorney charged him with second-degree murder. Thankfully the case has been dismissed, but it illustrates a grave concern we must acknowledge here in the Heartland. Had there not been clear video evidence of the attack and his attempt at defense, he would be behind bars today.
This is not to disparage all law enforcement. Many are known to rush head-first into danger to save those in need. Recently in Clark County, Sheriff’s Deputy Matthew Yates did just that. Responding to a distress call involving an armed suspect, Yates bravely entered a dangerous situation and lost his life to the armed suspect illustrating the dedication and bravery that some exhibit with the shield.
The issue we face currently is not a matter of all law enforcement being cowards, but that some are. Our conundrum is a monopoly on use of force by the state and the over-reliance on the state for your self-preservation. In the circumstances outlined previously, the victims’ self-preservation was completely dependent on the will of a state actor who holds no legal obligation to act in their defense. This is a deeply rooted problem that needs to be addressed in some major way. The most hurtful lesson we can take from Uvalde was that everything law enforcement did was completely legal. If your current plan for self-defense and self-preservation relies on state intervention then understand it is fundamentally flawed. Whether or not they decide to intervene in a dangerous situation is up to their own discretion and that discretion is dependent on the type of character they are.
Whether or not people agree with the ramifications of House Bill 99 in Ohio, the opportunity it provides cannot be ignored. In a rare instance of clarity, the state has attempted to give citizens a bit more in the way of self-defense, specifically to education workers in schools across the state. Under House Bill 99, teachers and other staff of the school system would be able to carry firearms within school property and be exempted from standard peace officer training requirements so long as the district authority approves it and the staff have completed a certified training program of at least 20-hours. The bill also demands school districts post public notices that staff are allowed to carry weapons on the premise. The decision to carry a firearm would be completely voluntary under the current bill and the decision to permit such would be up to the discretion of the school boards themselves. Even if a school board voted to permit faculty to carry firearms on campus, staff would be under no obligation to do so and the district could simply post a sign out front indicating teachers are allowed to carry.
If we look at past mass shooting events such as the Buffalo shooter event this year or the Pulse Night Club shooter from years prior, or even Uvalde, we find a common thread. Killers choose targets that they know specifically will not put up any fight. The Buffalo shooter specifically stated he targeted the area he would eventually hit because it was known to have little civilian gun ownership and the Pulse Night Club shooter scouted multiple locations, ultimately deciding on an area known to be a “gun-free zone.”
No doubt the debate will rage among school districts in the state of Ohio as to how to handle this new bill. Most districts will no doubt not even consider it. However, some, such as Riverside District in Lake County, are going to be holding work sessions to investigate its merits. While the decision to allow teachers to carry firearms will bring up more questions than it answers, we must acknowledge that ultimately our self-defense and self-preservation is currently at the whims of state actors who hold no obligation to protect you. If your plan for self-preservation relies on waiting for someone else to come and save you, understand you may be waiting a very long time. In the case of Uvalde, around 77-minutes. House Bill 99 offers Ohioans an opportunity to take some their right to self-defense back, or at least create additional barriers to potential attackers. The true question is…will we seize this small opportunity we have been given?