Judging Freedom - What Does the Uvalde TX School Shooting Teach Us_

Episode Date: July 18, 2022

City of Uvalde releases bodycam footage showing police response to Robb Elementary shooting https://www.statesman.com/story/news/... #uvalde #uvaldepolice #secondamendmentSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hi, everyone. Good morning. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Welcome back, my dear friends. I guess the East Coast of the United States. As you know, I was away for a couple of weeks, did do some podcasts, two from a beach in Sardinia and one from a street corner in Zurich, Switzerland, to address which were the present burning issues of the day, the Supreme Court opinion invalidating Roe versus Wade and the Supreme Court opinion recognizing the right of individuals to keep and to bear arms. Many of you responded very enthusiastically to those and I deeply appreciate it. But I'm back home in New Jersey. We're back with our regular system of being on every day, either with the solos like today, where I talk about individual discrete topics, or with the many wonderful

guests who have explained to us what's going on in the world from the point of view of maximum individual liberty and minimum government. Minimum government unfortunately fails even at what a minimal government should do. The report of the Texas state legislature came out over the weekend on the failures in Uvalde, Texas. That's the place where the school was located, where 19 children and two teachers were slaughtered by a madman. Wow. You ready for this number? 376 police stood around doing nothing. Now, I'm not making the number up.

376. That's local, state, and federal. And the report of the Texas legislature identified problems which are apparent to all of us. The first is that all law enforcement failed. We were originally giving a lot of credit to the feds who were on the scene. Well, the feds failed as well. It was the feds that eventually stopped the killer, but nobody stopped him midstream. Nobody ran to take him on. All 376 of those cops, now not all of them had the authority to make decisions, but whoever was making the decisions for all of them decided to opt for police safety rather than the lives of the children. The second problem here is a lack of command. Nobody knew who was in charge.

Under Texas law, police chief Peter Arundando, whose name and image you've seen all over the place, was in charge. He claims he didn't know who was in charge. He claims that he didn't have a means to communication. There was a terrible breakdown in communication. They waited 45 minutes for the key to a door, which was unlocked. Nobody actually tried the door. The confusion and chaos was monumental. The deaths were horrific. But think about this from the perspective of the relationship between individuals and the government. We give the police guns and badges, and we give them a lot of authority and a lot of leeway to use those guns and badges. The least we can expect

of them is that they will use those guns and badges to keep our children in school safe. That didn't happen. Can the parents of the children who were murdered sue the police for their failure to perform the basic duty of safety? Well, the answer is a trick question. It's a trick question. The answer is, yeah, of course they can sue, but they'll lose. They'll lose because the Supreme Court has ruled, much to my utter, utter dismay, I condemn these rulings,

even though one of them is by my late great friend, Justice Antonin Scalia. The Supreme Court has ruled that the only time the government is obliged to provide safety is when the government is restraining you. When you're a prisoner, the government has to provide safety. And the government has to provide safety. The police have to provide safety for government buildings. This is insane for government buildings, but not for human beings. So these parents can sue, they'll lose because the Supreme Court has given the police such vast discretion that they can exercise their judgment to do nothing, literally nothing, and get away with it.

Under these Supreme Court rulings, 10 police could stand around and watch somebody being raped, could watch a bank being robbed, could watch innocents being slaughtered and do nothing, and there is no cause of action, no legal recourse against the cops. That is reprehensible, and that needs to be changed. The police need to know that if they don't do their basic job, the reasons for which we give them a gun and a badge, the consequences to themselves personally will be catastrophic. How would a jury of 12 people in South Texas evaluate the behavior of the police? It would award huge judgments to the parents of the children

who were slaughtered, particularly when you realize that this crazy shooter was shooting his gun outside the school before he even got in the school. He should have been taken out right then and there. Instead, the police waited 77 minutes. 376 cops waiting 77 minutes. Not acceptable in a free society. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom.