JUNE 2022. Blues Vol 38 No. 6.1

READERS SPEAK OUT your

READERS SPEAK OUT your views ONE DAY, IT COULD BE YOU If you haven’t already heard it, by the end of today you will hear that the first three officers in Uvalde are cowards for not going in the school even though they were being shot at. I’m going to tell you a story that no one has ever heard in its entirety. I don’t know what you will think of me afterwards, and I don’t care. I just got back from testifying in federal court in Ft Worth. You can’t carry a weapon in federal court so I had my Browning Hi Power stuck in the back of my belt. No holster. I was going home to change out of my suit and didn’t need a holster just then. I heard on my radio that there was a hostage situation at MHMR. I didn’t work Patrol, I didn’t work Day Shift, it wasn’t my business. I went anyway. When I got there I saw the Day Shift Lieutenant, several patrol officers, two detectives, the Chief of Police, what was the assistant chief at the time and others I don’t remember. I looked for someplace to go and saw that no one was in the room beside the office where the hostage situation was. I don’t remember if anyone told me anything about who was inside the office with the closed door. I pulled my gun out and I’ll let you figure out who told me to put it up. I didn’t like it but I did it. I thought about getting on a chair and removing a ceiling panel so I could peek under a ceiling panel in the closed office. I looked up the hall where a big meeting with the rank was going on. They had to be making a plan. That’s what rank does. I looked back at the closed door. I saw the handle start to turn. I was ninety degrees to the door and couldn’t see inside the office. I waved my hands wildly and pointed at the door. The rank scattered and the Chief of Police dived over the reception area counter. I watched the door come open and a psychiatrist that I knew slowly came into my view. His neck tie was standing out horizontally behind him. I saw a hand, then a gun to the back of the psychiatrist’s head, then the face of the guy holding the gun. The gunman looked around. He looked at me. We were six feet apart. He had a gun and I didn’t. The hostage taker started to pull the psychiatrist back into the office. The psychiatrist turned pretty quickly and grabbed for the gun. The psychiatrist was middle aged, short and fat. The hostage taker was at least 6’ 2” and fit. The psychiatrist was going to lose, but it is safe to assume he thought someone would come to help him. I did. Right here is the part of the story that matters. If one person makes a move, others will follow. If no one moves first, no one moves at all. It’s easy to say you would move since you don’t have to. That’s all I have to say about that. I grabbed the gun as I went in. In a split second I saw it was a small caliber semi-automatic. It wasn’t the first time I had thought about something similar happening. I knew if one round was fired with me holding the slide the gun wouldn’t cycle and wouldn’t fire another round. I moved one hand to the slide and squeezed the gunman’s other hand that was on the trigger. I had the gun pointed up as far as I could, but he was taller and stronger than me so the gun wasn’t pointed straight up. I took the chance and made the gun fire. I was hoping for a click that meant the gun wasn’t loaded, or nothing happened at all that meant the safety was on or the gun wasn’t even cocked. My plan was to pull my gun once his gun was disabled and shoot him in the head, but that didn’t happen. A detective got there and added his hands to mine just as I made the gun go off. Luckily his hand wasn’t in front of the barrel, because the gun went off and fired a round into the ceiling. One more detective came in the door and all four of us went down against the wall of the office before I could get my gun out. By then we were in a pile on the floor and it was too dangerous to shoot. A few seconds later the gunman was on the bottom, I was on top of him trying to choke him to death with my forearm, five or six people were on top of me and the Chief of Police was trying to twist my right leg off at the knee because my leg was the first leg he saw. No one has ever heard the full story because I never told the full story. Now I’m old, lots of the others involved are dead and I don’t really give a shit who knows at this late date. The point of the story is you don’t have time to think about it because that takes too long and there won’t be a second chance if you miss the first one. That psychiatrist thought someone would save his life and that was my job. It was everyone else’s job, too, but they didn’t go. It was two or three seconds before anyone else showed up and in two or three seconds the door would be closed again and maybe the psychiatrist would die. Maybe everyone else thought they would save him, but they didn’t. If you weren’t there, you don’t know what you would do. If you were there, you still don’t know what you would do. Don’t judge other people from behind a keyboard. Ben Brown THOUGHTS TO ALL BROTHERS IN BLUE As the nation mourns the tragedy in Uvalde, Texas at Robb Elementary School, the tragedy also effected members of the law enforcement family. Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District Police Officer Ruben Ruiz tragically lost his wife Eva, who was killed protecting her students. Uvalde County Sheriff’s Office Deputy Felix Rubio’s 10 year old daughter Alexandria “Lexi” Rubio, was also one of the victims. our thoughts and prayers are with our brothers in blue and their families during this gut-wrenching time. Please keep them and all the families effected by this unspeakable tragedy in your thoughts and prayers and give them strength as they try to get through each day. They say it takes a village to raise a child, but it’ll take the nation to help these families move forward. WRONG MOVE CHIEF There is a big issue with the school police chief down grading the call to barricade suspect. Anyway you look at it kids would be bleeding out in there. Live kids were killed n there calling for help while the shooting was going on I think there is a big issue there. Tobe Whitley SERIOUSLY? MENTAL ILL- NESS? How about mental illness, easy access to weapons and the over saturated weapons on the streets! Not just one thing .. all three .. the NRA creates the problem by saturating our streets with weapons then come up with the solution of arming more people so more weapons … haha!!! Genius!! Not every mass murder has had mental issues … just like not every gun owner will become a mass murderer … it only takes one live changing dramatic event in a persons lives and BOOM!!!! They become a mass murder .. never had a mental issue or diagnosed with mental illness and all of a sudden… he was because the person became a mass murder first!! Take the dude who lost his life savings in Vegas .. or the dude that lost his job at the post office .. or what about the dude that lost his mind over road rage .. or the murderers that went to El Paso, the church and grocery store to murder out of hate! ….. naw .. it’s not only mental illness… it’s all the above … but hey … let the NRA tell us that what are country needs is more weapons on the streets.. let them continue to saturate our streets with more weapons .. let’s make it safer lol