Police officer husband of slain Uvalde teacher detained, disarmed after he tried to save his wife
Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steven McCraw on Tuesday told state lawmakers the police response to the massacre at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas on May 24 was an “abject failure.”
McCraw also revealed the husband of slain elementary teacher Eva Mireles, identified as Uvalde CISD Police Officer Ruben Ruiz, tried to save her but officers in the school prevented him from doing so.
McCraw said the teacher called her husband shortly after the gunman attacked her classroom and told him “she had been shot and was dying.”
“(Ruiz) tried to move forward into the hallway,” McCraw said. “He was detained and they took his gun away from him and escorted him off the scene.”
An armed officer gets a call from his wife that she was shot, bleeding, and in the room with the shooter.
The officer tried to go in and was escorted away by fellow officers.
His wife died.
Three things come to mind.
This feels like the opening to a cop goes rogue against his corrupt department revenge action movie.
This stinks of corruption. Why did his fellow officers stop him. This looks sketchy as fuck.
I don’t know this officer but I know myself, and if my wife was in a room with a gunman and I had a rifle, I would go into that room and kill that motherfucker and everyone who got in my way of going into that room.
I would vote Not Guilty of all charges.
Is this how you get Chris Dorner? It sure seems like this is how you would get a Chris Dorner.
The ghost of Michael Collins stirs.
It’s amazing that someone was giving these orders at the same time that the guy named as the scene commander claimed he had no idea that he was supposed to be the commander. If that were true, who was giving those dishonorable orders?
The issue I read wasn’t that they were given bad orders; it was that they were given no orders at all.
–
Which is almost worse than bad orders. Someone should have authority, know they have it, and be able to communicate with the other officers. If the brass isn’t stepping up, someone on site should, and they should be secure in the knowledge their “Good Faith” efforts won’t be punished (which isn’t currently the case at all — quite the opposite — but it should be).
–
Poor leadership is excusable to some extent. No leadership is not.
–
Then again, it’s possible I misread it entirely.
Well, the excuses from the ordinary cops is that they were ordered not to move. They didn’t claim that orders weren’t given. Also, the subject of this article (officer stopped from moving and disarmed for trying) clearly implies direct orders, not lack of orders.
I’m not from Uvalde, I’m to old to be in that situation, but,,,BUT if I was in that guys situation years ago, I guarandamntee you I would have gone back to my car/house/store and come back shooting, within that one hour circlejerking clusterfuck. And I don’t mean shooting the perp, I would have assaulted every motherfucker between me and my wife.
BetOnIt: Word. “You don’t *have* to step out of my way. You can die there, or kill me. And, you had better decide more quickly than I will. “
Wouldn’t take me an hour, I suspect….
Via Tam, an article from Greg Ellifritz.
–
He points out that non-action and non-intervention is the default, because those are the rules of engagement and risk aversion society has placed on cops. He also points out that this event could well be the one that causes society in general to lose all faith in policing.
–
I can’t disagree. Every time I’ve started thinking the police response couldn’t have been worse, I’ve been proven wrong. “Abject failure” is an understatement; they couldn’t have made it worse if they actively tried (and don’t think that possibility hasn’t occurred to me).
–
One big question that’s been nagging me, and the classroom layouts and external photos of the school are really driving it on: They say they couldn’t breach the doors. Whether that’s true or not [and appears to be not], did nobody think to try the windows?
–
I’ve been in several elementary school buildings — albeit in Oregon, not Texas. Some have windows for every class and others don’t (the elementary I attended didn’t, actually didn’t even have doors for most classrooms; energy-efficient open-concept interior design, or something — but the one my kids attended has every class on an exterior wall with big, bright windows that double as fire escapes. If the cops couldn’t breach the doors, couldn’t they have tried the windows?
–
Another nagging thing: They say they were set up to breach, but didn’t because they didn’t have orders to breach? This is a failure of command hierarchy. Basic “chain of command” stuff. Squad-level groups can’t and shouldn’t always wait for brass to issue orders before acting; someone in each group should have “go/no-go” authority. If it’s not a designated person, then the most senior on-site and on comms.
–
It goes back to the RoEs society puts on cops, but nobody should have to wait for orders to do the right thing.
Archer,
–
I agree. Load up the box of a pickup truck. Drive up and scrape the outside wall. Fire through the windows. Assault through the windows. Leave the tailgate down, and the second / third waves can continue the assault if needed.
WTF? curiouser and curiouser said Alice.
“This feels like the opening to a cop goes rogue against his corrupt department revenue action movie.”
First, the top bad cop would have to go to the hero’s house and shoot his dog. That’s on top of his wife dying. Throw in a sad looking child and a vague threat against said child. But the dog thing is key, if my 80’s movie math is correct. The dog has to die first, valiantly, then the revenge happens. Plus there has to be karate.
Wouldnt be any karate in my movie…. Just faint sounds that they never hear…. Geezus what a blow to every thing…
“This stinks of corruption. Why did his fellow officers stop him. This looks sketchy as fuck.”
This gets back to the conspiracy and tin foil hat stuff…shit isn’t making sense.
I listened to a podcast that went this way (https://thearmsroomvom.podbean.com/e/off-topic-rants-about-current-events/) and I think it’s worth thinking about deliberately, now while there’s time and no stress. I can’t disagree at all with the folks who’d roll over the cops with a dozer/truck/whatever who would stand between us and the bad guys.
(We know this now, can ANY of us ever trust the cops again in a similar situation? Fair or not, Uvalde should cement in all of our minds what the cops are and heroes isn’t what they are)
I think it’s important to reflect on now so that if, God forbid, we’re in that situation later, we can recognize it and blow past or through the cops to do what has to be done.
The podcast I linked (Drew and Glenn from The Arms Room podcast)- Glenn I think rightly makes the point, we’re all way too afraid of what they’ll do to us, to do the right thing.
Can almost guarantee that same mindset was at work in the cops on-scene and why they behaved the way they did.
The hell with that- now we know better and we must do better, whatever the situation that’s next!
Re: can we trust the cops again in a similar situation? The law says no, and you never could. That’s why I said earlier that “no duty to protect” needs to be repealed. If that were done, and cops actually are on record that they DO have a duty, they might actually act honorably just to avoid being liable for not acting.
As it stands, there will be lots of noise, and maybe at the next town election some elected officials will lose, but beyond that I expect no consequences. The chief hasn’t even been fired — it seems the mayor has his back. And even if he were, I’d expect him to sue, and win, because legally what he did was perfectly ok. It’s not morally ok for anyone with morals better than Lavrenti Beria, but that would not matter.
This evening I saw a short video on the news showing the Uvalde mayor vehemently defending the police, and getting yelled at by angry citizens. I understand the police coverup, but I wonder why the mayor would support that coverup.
Also, while we’re talking tin foil, the new gun bill pending in the senate is being pushed through at extremely high speed. It’s almost as if they are trying to get it voted into law before the Uvalde coverup implodes.
Absolute human fucking garbage. I can’t even properly coordinate what I want to say, I’m so disgusted and furious.
And these fucking pieces of shit think they are in the right. And the fucked up thing they’re not even going get get fired. They’re actually going to get their pensions. I don’t think there’s anyone in the country that supports these walking piles of excrement except for maybe some local politicians. They won’t be local politicians much longer. at least if the population of that count has any brains in their head.
Why do people keep saying Uvalde cops failed?
Their demonrat paymasters gave the gestapo an order to make some dead kids for the narrative, and they succeeded resoundingly.