I have been a teacher for 25 years, beginning with the fall after Columbine. I have been heartbroken by the deaths of children, confused by the complicated motivations, in charge of classrooms during code red drills and code yellow events, and bothered by the lack of response from our public servants. But no single event has outraged me more than the massacre at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. After the report came out this week, I expressed this on Twitter, referencing the horrifying story of the girl who put her friend's blood on her own face so the gunman would believe she had already been shot.
In Parkland, there was only one security officer who failed to do his duty. He went out of the building instead of into it, but you could make the case that it was one man who didn't deserve to have the job and that someone else might have made the difference. After all, Second Amendment zealots always assert that "the best way to stop a bad guy with a gun is to have a good guy with a gun on site." The armed officer at Parkland didn't stop the incident, so maybe he wasn't a "good guy with a gun" but rather a cowardly guy with a gun.
Uvalde is different. There were 376 members of law enforcement in the halls of the school, about a dozen of them in less than 3 minutes from the gunman's entry. But instead of responding to it as an active shooter scenario and entering the room to stop the shooter, they treated it as a "barricaded subject." Although they could hear gunshots (active shooter), they approached the situation like a bank robber holding hostages. They ignored the gunshots, the screaming of children, and the pleas of desperate parents for 77 minutes. For forty of those minutes, they looked for a key to the adjacent classroom. I've been in schools long enough to tell you that the classroom was almost certainly not locked and that multiple adults in the building had keys, so there was no reason for that kind of delay. Unable to decide who was in charge, they stood in the hallway talking for over an hour.
For the first day or two after the incident at Robb Elementary, there was a story going around that a teacher had propped open a door to the school and that this was the way the gunman gained entry to the school. Then, they said it wasn't propped open when he entered but that it had been earlier. Then they said it was closed but unlocked. The report isn't clear on why these stories all conflicted. But for me, and I speak only for me, when the bodycam footage was released, it was clear that this was an early attempt to divert attention from the inaction of the police and to blame the school for lax security measures. Make the school look bad first, get that story on FOX News, and let those who already disrespect teachers blame them. It may have worked for some, but the report makes it clear that this tragedy was made far worse by the inaction of the police and not the educators.
I respect those who choose careers in law enforcement precisely because they choose jobs that put their lives at risk. They go to work every day, knowing they are armed for a reason and that there is a chance they won't come home. When fourth graders are in danger, it is not their job to figure out how to protect themselves. That's the job of those who chose to "protect and serve" the community. The police in Uvalde were from all levels of enforcement, and they chose to protect themselves, not the children. I think often of what it must have been like for the children huddled in those classrooms, hearing the police in the hall, believing they would soon come in to help. What kind of therapy is it going to take for survivors to recognize that those who were charged with helping didn't help, for over an hour? What was it like to know that the NRA held a convention the next week in nearby Houston? Did they hear people say their rights are more important than the lives of kids, including their own governor and senator?
I think a lot about the girl who put her friend's blood on her face. First of all, I respect that a fourth grader had that level of insight. Surely, no one had told her to do this, so it was a pretty genius thought to have during such a high-stress moment. Second, as I said in the tweet, I think about how she protected herself because the police weren't protecting her. But mostly, I wonder about the lifelong PTSD she will certainly have and hope she is getting the help she needs.
And that leads me to wonder whether we will have a generation of kids with PTSD. At this point, there are very few kids in America who haven't experienced some level of threat. Some were at a shopping center when shots rang out or sat through a lockdown of their classroom. Others have friends or family members who experienced violence in their homes or schools. After these incidents, we talk a lot about the dead and injured (as we should), but it may be time to expand our definition of injured beyond those whose bodies were invaded by bullets. The long-term damage will be to mental health. There is not one member of the Uvalde community who isn't in need of care. (Add Parkland, Nashville, Sandy Hook, Columbine, the Aurora movie theater, the Charleston church, the Pulse nightclub, the Buffalo grocery store, and the rest of the survivors of what is rapidly becoming countless events.) While I would rather prevent these events from occurring, we may have to face the fact that it won't happen because there isn't the political will to do so. While I would prefer a proper response from the police when these incidents occur, Parkland and Uvalde show us there is no guarantee that will happen.
So, at the bare minimum, can we invest in mental health responses for those who survive? If they can't protect them, can they at least be served?
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