The President signs a historic Executive Order to advance effective, accountable policing and strengthen public safety; The President and The Vice President deliver remarks.
NPR: Biden has a new executive order on policing, 2 years after George Floyd was killed
President Biden will sign an executive order on Wednesday requiring new use-of-force rules for federal law enforcement and encouraging local police departments to make similar changes.
The measure is the product of months of consultations with police professional groups and reform activists. The executive order is the fallback position for the administration after Congress failed to agree last year on a package of reforms dubbed the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act.
Senior administration officials say relatives of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, will be present for the signing. Both Floyd and Taylor died during police action — Floyd while in Minneapolis Police custody and Taylor during a fast-entry police raid of her home in Louisville, Ky.
The order does not apply to local police agencies.
The executive order instructs federal law enforcement agencies, such as the FBI and Customs and Border Protection, to revise their use-of-force policies. According to administration officials, the new federal minimum standard will allow force “only when no reasonably effective, safe and feasible alternative appears to exist.”
Biden does everything he can, but Republicans in Congress refuse to do their jobs.
Open thread.
You do what you can. Sometimes that’s just setting a good example.
I left this comment at the end of the last thread.
It seems the gunman was in that school for ONE SOLID HOUR before he was killed by a border control agent.
Want to bet the border is about an hour’s drive away from Uvalde?
@pat
I am not understanding what you are saying there. Hoping you can explain!
Hm. A tornado warning just came through on my phone. Perhaps I’ll head for the basement
The New York Times has a report on the front page, the last time I looked, that says the gunman was in the school for an hour before a border control agent(s) was able to shoot and kill him.
My supposition is that the border control agents, part of a special team the name of which escapes me, had to be summoned from the border, which as far as I know from a glance at the map is not very close to that school.
eta: I might be wrong about the distance, but for gods sake how could they let him be in the school, shooting kids, for ONE HOUR?????
It wasn’t all that long ago when we had an occupant of the Oval Office who made speeches to law enforcement audiences and encouraged them to not be afraid “to rough them up a little” when taking a suspect into custody. Truly a sociopath.
I think there are more than a few retired cops in our development, and for the 2020 election they all had identical Trump yard signs and Thin Blue Line flags.
@DAW
Woah. I see there are some orange blobs in the northwest suburbs. Gonna get a good soaking here if they head straight east.
@pat
“but for gods sake how could they let him be in the school, shooting kids, for ONE HOUR?????”
Not interested in the answer. It’s irrelevant. A classroom full of dead kids was a result that was baked in the day that young man was allowed to purchase two semi-auto rifles.
I want to know how we can stop people from getting their hands on those weapons. Period.
I want to know where I can go with my family to live away from the people who are happy to allow guns in the hands of terrible people.
365 Data Centers has restored a temporary page at
https://temp.365datacenters.com/
They copied it from the Internet Archive so I suppose they cannot find their own copy. They haven’t cleaned up the links though – it links to
https://web.archive.org/web/20220428072101/tel:/8663656246/
“One Partner, Many Options, None of the Hassle”
“laser focused on delivering reliable and secure colocation services.”
Their recovery efforts lag somewhat behind, it would seem.
I guess this is what they’ve been working on all this time …
@pat
From what I’ve read, all the children & teachers who died were in one classroom; the shooter barricaded himself in and started shooting. The cops & other security personnel went to other classrooms, breaking windows and getting the rest of the kids out.
I don’t know if they just abandoned the kids who were in with the shooter to their fates; if they didn’t think they could get them out; what could possibly make any adult involved NOT TRY to get to the shooter. It’s unfathomable.
Yes but don’t forget that the police tried to stop him before he got into the school and seem to have backed off when he shot at them.
This is all speculation at this point, but it doesn’t seem that a “teacher with a gun” would have been able to stop it.
Horrible, just horrible to think of what was going on in that schoolroom.
@pat
Thanks for the extra information. I wonder why only the border control agents could do anything. That seems crazy.
@ glc
I saw that this morning and my blood boiled. They are so incompetent that they didn’t even remove the default tag line “Just another WordPress site”.
On the positive side, I decided that even they wouldn’t have the balls to put their site back up – boasting about their reliability – if they didn’t think everyone would get their data back.
If sites lost their data, I think that “353” would know they were dead in the water, with no future,
Per CNN:
As the shooting was taking place, officers were going around the school, breaking windows and trying to evacuate children and staff. They were then able to force entry into the classroom where the shooter was, said Lt. Chris Olivarez of the Texas Department of Public Safety.
@WaterGirl Likely this Border Agent team was trained and equipped to deal with a hostage situation. After all be between drug smugglers and terrorists the Border isn’t just beating up immigrants.
Though I have to note that the LAPD was willing to fight it out with those two heavily armed and armoured bank robbers during the North Hollywood Shootout in 1997, even though the bankrobbers had the cops outgunned, because the cops didn’t want two trigger happy luntics with every gun in the world loose in the city. Maybe Texas cops are overhyped?
The GOPers **are** doing their job. Their real job: Destroying the country.
It’s not just Republicans who refuse to do their jobs. Manchin and Sinema and any Democratic Senator who refuses to end the filibuster to pass crucial legislation is also at fault.
Did anyone watch President Biden and Madame Vice President speak?
An hour is a really long time. Unimaginable, really.
@ EVT:
I’m with you. It’s far too soon to be accusing anyone of making errors. I’ve had NPR on all day, and I didn’t hear anything about the gunman having an entire hour to roam the building. It seemed to me like it went right at it after locking himself in the room.
>>Michigan election bureau says 2 leading Republican candidates for governor filed fraudulent signatures, disqualifying them
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/michigan-election-bureau-says-two-leading-republican-candidates-for-governor-filed-fraudulent-signatures-disqualifying-them
On the other hand, there’s this tweet:
“The cops got Beto out of there about 100x faster than they got the shooter out of the elementary school.”
https://twitter.com/mrbenwexler/status/1529521782558019584?s=20&t=ZWtAuj_I-4MB50O7vH1g3w
@DAW – Dorothy, take care!
@Baud
I heard about that in a meeting with a group from Michigan yesterday. Apparently the R front-runner was one fo the ones who is disqualified. Apparently a shocking level of fraudulent signatures.
“Lord, please make my enemies ridiculous.”
That’s not enough, of course, but every little bit helps.
@Enhanced Voting Techniques The LAPD went to a gun shop to commandeer some higher-powered weapons and talked I think Loomis into letting them use an armored car for cover.
SWAT showed up eventually.
“A team of three Border Patrol agents from the agency’s elite BORTAC swat unit entered the school with a ballistic shield and killed Ramos, The BORTAC unit had been investigating stash houses used by smuggling organizations along the border west of Uvalde when agents received the call. They arrived to the school at 11:59 am, the official said.
BORTAC units are Border Patrol tactical agents who are trained to confront armed trafficking groups or work in high-risk environments and operations.”
This is from the WaPo. It’s kind of stuck in a whole series of updates.
Is irony dead?
If you want to attend TFG’s speech at the NRA meeting this Friday, you cannot bring your guns. What? What about the second amendment?
https://www.npr.org/2022/05/25/1101181842/nra-trump-speech-guns-banned-houston
“Former President Donald Trump is scheduled to speak at the National Rifle Association’s Annual Leadership Forum on Friday. But audience members at the group’s annual meeting, being held this year in Houston, won’t be able to carry guns during his address.”
That’s nothing new, no one is allowed to take a weapon into an NRA gathering.
Hmmm, wonder what they are afraid of?
I learned this in the Navy when training as topside watch in a sub (in port, of course!):
===
Deadly Force
That force which a person knows, or should know, creates a substantial risk of death or serious bodily harm. Its use is justified only in extreme circumstances, as a last resort, when all lesser means have failed or cannot reasonably be employed.
===
…then there is an additional line about protection of nuclear weapons, as I was on a boomer.
I think about that in the context of that guy who was pulled over by the cops and tried to run away. He was fat and out of shape and could have been caught by any eight-year-old. Instead he was caught by a cop’s bullet. They knew who he was: they had his car. They could have tackled him. Whyever they pulled him over, the blue-clad judge and jury decided it was a capital offense.
@pat
>>Hmmm, wonder what they are afraid of?
_______________
Justice
Just gave up on dark mode. Too depressing.
The “18 years old” fact is central to this one, I think. That’s a clear cause and effect.
It is nuts to allow 18 year olds to buy firearms, just on its face and separate from all the other issues.
If they want to know where to start, start there. Bump it up to 21. I mean, Jesus Christ- at least make it SLIGHTLY difficult for them to plan and execute one of these slaughters. It’s as if we’re encouraging it.
Actually I believe Texas bumped it down, from 21 to 18.
pat May 25, 2022 at 5:21 PM
Actually I believe Texas bumped it down, from 21 to 18.
So did Ohio. It’s insane. They know teenagers have lower impulse control then adults do (varies of course) and they know teenagers don’t have a good sense of the permanence or profundity of their negative actions. Talk to anyone who was imprisoned at 18 and they’ll tell you – “I just didn’t think it through”. They KNOW MORE at 25. They’re also attention seeking and they fantasize a lot. So you give them a high powered weapon? Insanity.
I think this kid did a lot of research before going on his planned murder.
Heartbroken that he shot his grandmother.
@Kay – I think all GOPs (and their voting public) have their own fantasy about how each kid bonds with their dad as he shows them how to use gun, clean it, etc. This isn’t the wild west.
Not sure where I saw it, WaPo or NYT, but he did not have a happy life. Mother on drugs, bullied in school because of a speech impediment (stuttering and lisping, I believe) and living with his grandmother…. I think he hated his life.
A massive rifle and 365 rounds of ammo must have made him feel in control and powerful.
cain May 25, 2022 at 5:30 PM
Sandy Hook, 20. Parkland, 19. Buffalo, 18. This Texas shooting, 18.
Stop allowing teenagers to buy guns. Won’t cost a penny and might have stopped 1 or 2 of these slaughters.
Is there any news on the motive for choosing this elementary school?
@cain – The grandmother is still alive, but in critical condition. Not that that makes it any better that he shot her.
I just reread what I wrote about the rifle and 365 rounds of ammo. What do you suppose the person who sold this to him thought he would do with it? I would like to see some responsiblity/ liability for
the markets where this is available.
@Baud – Motive is still unclear yet.
@Old School
Thanks.
I don’t anyone should have assault rifles, except for law enforcement. And raise the age for buying guns to 21.
These military weapons are just not controllable. Enough. Save them for the military, and for law enforcement.
Elizabelle May 25, 2022 at 5:42 PM
I don’t anyone should have assault rifles, except for law enforcement.
You’re going to have to convince me that cops need them. The military, yes, assault rifles were developed for the military. But police, sheriffs, other local law enforcement, I’m not seeing it.