Judging Freedom - Uvalde schools Police Chief Defends Delay

Episode Date: June 10, 2022

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Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Friday, June 10, 2022. It's about 2.10 in the afternoon here on the East Coast. I'm shaking my head, my dear friends, about Uvalde, Texas, because the story just keeps getting worse and worse. The facts just keep pouring in. I got to take that back. The facts just keep pouring in. I got to take that back. The words just keep pouring in. We don't know if they're facts. The version of events, this happened two weeks ago. Most of these babies have been waked and buried.

Their funeral masses have already been held. The school is obviously closed for the summer. The school officials are deciding whether to send the children elsewhere in the fall and demolish this building, which is, of course, what happened in Sandy Hook in Connecticut, the last one of these mass shootings of young children in a school. But the facts of what happened here, the versions keep changing. So the chief of police of the school district police, the school district has its own police, at least to me in New Jersey and with all my years in the criminal justice system, I never heard of that. But anyway, the school district has its own police force, the chief and six members of the force, so seven of them. There is, of course, also the police force for the town. But in this town in Texas, the police force for the school district has priority. The chief arrived with his six policemen.

They didn't have body armor. They didn't have helmets. They didn't have shields. But, of course, they had guns. And they couldn't get in the building. They couldn't get in the building. Somehow, the killer got in. He walked in.

The doors weren't locked. He locked the door behind him, we surmise. Originally, we were told one of the teachers had left the door ajar to let fresh air in, but that teacher has very credibly, and she's beside herself, but very credibly said, no, I didn't leave it ajar. I opened it, I let the fresh air in, and I closed it. And it locked. And you couldn't get in from the outside. So the police chief of the school district police department is there with his six policemen waiting for a key. During that time period, 12 of the 19 babies that were slaughtered in the classroom were still alive. We know this because the wife of one of those six police officers was a teacher in the next classroom, and she called her husband to say she had been shot, The children have been slaughtered, but it looks like a lot of them can be saved. Get in here. Get them to EMS. Stop the bleeding. But the chief insisted on waiting for a case that we couldn't break through the door. You can break through a window. There's got to be a way to get in, or you ought to have had the key, or you ought to have found somebody with a key. Look, I know that Monday morning quarterbacking is flawless.

It breaks my heart for what happened, but we know that the Uvalde police chief was aware of the nature of the injuries. Those seven cops, the chief and the six policemen, knew that the kids were bleeding. They should have done everything humanly possible to get in there and get those kids out, even if the killer had barricaded himself in another classroom. classroom, but they didn't. And to think that this happened in Texas, a state known for good government, lean but efficient government, at least on the law enforcement side of things. Texas, a state known for rugged individualism where people can defend themselves, and yet they were defenseless in this school because a Texas statute prohibits the carrying of guns in the school. I get it. I get it.

It also allows a school district to ask for an exemption. The school district did not ask for the exemption. The 137 of the 1,000 school districts in Texas, the 137 that asked for the exemptions, they all got them, no killings whatsoever, no problems with guns in any of those school districts because everybody knows that the police carry guns, they qualify, they're trained, they know how to use the guns. We all showed you that sign. It's the opposite of the sign from you're entering a gun-free school zone. It's a sign that says, in this building, the children are protected by armed guards. So what has this done? Have you ever heard of this? Sales of bulletproof bookcases. This is what America has become, my dear friends. Sales of bulletproof bookcases are soared and are already on back order. wheels on the bottom, which will allow the teacher and the students to wheel them in front of doors

and windows and then lock them in place. And then these killers can't shoot through them. What a terrible state of affairs. Could get worse, of course, if you're in New York and you want to protect yourself with a bulletproof vest, you can't do it. Those bulletproof vests are now illegal. You want to protect yourself with a bulletproof vest, you can't do it. Those bulletproof vests are now illegal. You want to protect yourself with Kevlar or any type of armor because you're a journalist and you're going to be in a dangerous area or just because you're terrified of being shot to death by a crazy person? Can't do it. Legislature of the state of New York just prevented you from wearing that type of gear to protect yourself. The legislature thinks it can tell you what to wear and what not to wear.

And how much debate was there on this package in New York that emasculates people even more of their right to protect themselves? Zero debate. The Democratic governor just sent a list of eight laws that she wanted to the legislature. The legislature dispatched their in-house lawyers to write up these laws. The Democrats control more than two-thirds of each house, so the Republicans are numerically fruitless and helpless. Zero debate. Legislation passed. Nobody even examined it. No committee hearings.

No challenge. No nothing. The government's going to tell you what to wear and what not to wear in New York. The government's going to tell you you can't protect yourself in a school in Texas unless you ask for an exemption. You all know me. I have been arguing for years that the right to keep and bear arms is a natural right. A natural right is a right that comes from your humanity. It is a claim against the whole world. Once you permit the government to regulate the tiniest part of that natural right, It's not a right. It's transformed into

a privilege. A privilege is something the government gives like a driver's license and the government can take back, like if you have too many accidents or if you're caught speeding too many times, you get too many points. The right to protect yourself, my friends, is not a privilege. It's a natural right. The right to protect yourself using the same means that the bad guys use and that the government interfere with that natural right. It transforms it from a right into a privilege. I mean, it transforms it theoretically. You still have the right, but they're going to interfere with it by punishing you if you exercise it. All these people all over the country dragging the survivors before legislative committees to tell their stories which are

tearjerkers. It's very difficult to watch this stuff. They're all looking at it the wrong way. Anybody willing to kill babies in a classroom or defenseless people in a supermarket with one entrance and one exit. It's not going to obey the gun laws. The only law those monsters will understand is their own. Superior firepower. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom.