When seconds count, the police are only an hour away

“Boy, it’s getting loud in there — scaaaaary!”

UPDATE, 5/27: I was guilty of doing exactly what I’d promised myself not to do, which was to post on this horror before the facts had settled. It’s now being said (by some) that the police were in fact negotiating with the gunman, and not just “cooling their heels”. True? Well, the cop quoted below said otherwise, but all the same, I’ll stay off this until we know what truly, actually took place down there.

Original Post:

Texas police lieutenant says cops were reluctant to engage the gunman “because they could have been shot”. Instead, they cooled their heels for an hour waiting for a tactical squad to show up; the only action they took was to handcuff and peppers spray parents who attempted to go in and save their children themselves.

Back in 2007, when the horrible Petit murders occurred, it was revealed that the Chesire police stayed at the end of the driveway for an hour, giving the two criminals time to rape the mother and her two daughters, 16 and 11, one final time before setting fire to the house and burning them alive. I posted that here, and wondered whether our own police would show such cowardice. Reader “GPD” wrote in, saying “we’d go through the door, the windows, and the walls”. GPD and I have been friends since high school, and I have every reason to believe that that’s exactly what he and his people would do.

So that’s reassuring, but I’m still tempted to keep a gun handy.