Reader JaySinWA wrote in to note that the Uvalde officer who had a phone with a Punisher background was the “husband of teacher Eva Mireles, who contacted him on his phone from her classroom while he was on-scene to say that she’d been shot and was dying” according to Texas State Representative Joe Moody (D-El Paso):
Moody is part of a three-person panel investigating the Uvalde massacre. More on the testimony they heard:
In June, Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steven McCraw told a state committee that Ruben Ruiz, Mireles’ husband, attempted to save her but was escorted off the campus.
“We’ve got an officer, Officer Ruiz, whose wife called him and said she had been shot and she was dying,” McCraw said. “And what happened to him, is he tried to move forward into the hallway. He was detained, and they took his gun away from him and escorted him off the scene.”
So thanks to Jay for setting us straight on Officer Ruiz, who tried to do the right thing but was stopped by the cowards surrounding him.
Edited to add: For factual corrections like these, please do what Jay did – send an email and include a link to a reputable source. [email protected] is my email for the site. Thanks!
Baud
I saw this correction floating around yesterday. Hope it gets widespread views on the tubes.
The Moar You Know
Whoops. I personally apologize for piling on this poor guy. He’s got enough problems.
Way down the list being how could you go back to work with those guys again? I couldn’t.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Yeah! Poor guy its not enough that his wife died and he couldn’t save her. He has to be also smeared and have his character impugned in the national media
I saw the thread yesterday on here, but was too tired to post a correction. Glad someone did that.
Omnes Omnibus
Hot takes were wrong? Fetch me my pearls and guide me to a fainting couch.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
It’s a fair speculation that he would have acted like the rest of them if his wife wasn’t a victim. But the reality is, she was, and that does put him in a different position.
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: We don’t know what he would have done in a different situation. All we can know is what he did do in the actual situation.
Baud
@Omnes Omnibus:
And unlike the other officers, he’s paid a heavy personal price.
pacem appellant
I was an avid Punisher comic fan in the 90s. The character, Frank Castle, killed as many cops as drug dealers. Even the Netflix series portrayed him as someone with extreme distrust for law enforcement.
No real point to this. Just weird that police have found affinity with a vigilante and cop killer.
brantl
@Baud: WE HAVE A BINGO. I wish I had watched the video. If he stood around complacently, until he knew his wife was dying, then he did no better than those around him. That’s a big IF, I don’t know what he did, but the video should show that.
Leto
@pacem appellant: Here’s what the Punisher had to say about cops admiring him. It’s pretty simple.
Dorothy A. Winsor
OT but I’m so infuriated that I have to share. These people refuse to accept the consequences they’ve caused on abortion. Here’s a fool claiming the 10 year old could end the pregnancy because that wouldn’t count as an abortion.
TaMara
@Omnes Omnibus: I didn’t see the Punisher thing on his phone, but I did assume he was checking his phone for messages – or for outside news that he wasn’t getting from his superiors.
It makes more sense now that he was either texting his wife or looking for some kind of response from her…
my heart breaks for him.
kindness
What is going to hurt the Administration (police & political) in Uvalde will be a Watergate redux.
It isn’t the crime, it’s the coverup.
How ‘good’ people can consent to cover up the mistakes of the police I can not comprehend. But then again, I don’t think I’m a monster, so I don’t think like they do.
Baud
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
They’re quite happy with the consequences. They don’t want voters to think to hard about the consequences. So they come up with these cockamamie theories that cause voters to tune out from the “debate.”
scav
@pacem appellant: Well, they’re clearly a complicated bunch. It’s possible that the love of violence trumps whose actually the victim of said violence and their much-vaunted thin blue line of bebadged brotherhood doesn’t extend to saving a fellow officer’s loved one when the chips are down.
trollhattan
@Dorothy A. Winsor: How they glommed onto this to adjudicate abortion rights is beyond me. If a 10YO rape victim is not horror enough, they go on to claim 1. FAKE! 2. Ohio didn’t do what Ohio did, in fact, do. 3. SCOTUS had no effect on any of this, whatsoever.
Awful people doing awful things and feeling awfully good about themselves for their efforts.
pacem appellant
@Leto: @TaMara: Wife gunned down by a madman. Admiration for vigilantes. Had his gun pulled by ineffective superiors.
Guys. That’s like, the Punisher origin story.
Scout211
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
What!? A medical exception to an anti-abortion law suddenly, magically, becomes a non-abortion?!
WTH does she think it would now be called?
ETA for clarity.
ETA: I know! A medically assisted magical miscarriage?
trollhattan
@kindness: Whatever consequences are rained down upon those cops will be a sliver of what they deserve.
Profiles in cringe.
pacem appellant
@scav: I honestly think that they aren’t complicated. They see Frank Castle as a guy who kills bad guys without a warrant, and they wish they could do that, too.
Ken
@Dorothy A. Winsor: So a 10-year-old can choose not to carry a baby, but an adult can’t? When do women lose that ability to make a choice?
Baud
@Ken:
When they become unsympathetic to the public.
Bugboy
As tragic as this may be (if it is indeed true, and not an attempt to redirect media attention), it does not in any way excuse the officer’s use of the “Punisher” screen. As many others have said, it’s a perfect distillation of the cowardice evident in American LE.
JaySinWA
Thank you mistermix for responding and for front paging this.
scav
@pacem appellant: Well, insofar as they get to decide who the bad guys are and bypass the whole fudge jury and trial nonsense along with the warrant folderol — that’s direct enough. King, no .god-Emperor, of All They Survey. It was merely the complete indifference as to fellow officers being among their chosen pool of possible bad guys that introduced a modicum of complexity.
Paul in KY
@pacem appellant: They can’t use the Totenkopf of the SS (thank you, Hitler!), but can use this one.
JoyceH
When you see all these heavily armed guys hanging around a hallway, not wanting to go up against one teenager with an assault rifle, I have to ask – when did law enforcement turn against the assault weapons ban? They used to be all for it, but now, not so much. Did the police just get more GOP-extremist?
Also – you guys seeing hints about a J6 Hearings season 2, to start in late August? I so hope it’s true!
Paul in KY
@Dorothy A. Winsor: No 10 year old can/should make that adult decision. At least in modern, non-barbarian times. What a messed up ‘question’!!!
Old Man Shadow
How that guy resists the urge to use his nightstick to beat the ass of every one of his coworkers is beyond my understanding.
Paul in KY
@JoyceH: And they have all kinds of assault rifles themselves. Just cowardly weenies who love being a cop when their asses aren’t on the line and then shirk their duty when it is. Murca!!!
Dorothy A. Winsor
@JoyceH: Yes. It’s the guns
different-church-lady
I didn’t say it last night, but “Hey, we need to resist a pile-on” was a thought going through my head. Jackals is supposed to be self-effacing humor, not a real behavioral model.
Clearly there was a lot of fuckup involved, but just screaming that all cops suck ain’t gonna help nothing.
Scout211
So this is interesting. Ted Cruz is getting visitors at his home.
Be sure to see the aerial photo of the school busses lined up before they leave—in a formation in the shape of an assault rifle. Sweet.
JoyceH
@Paul in KY: Well, I’m kind of curious – if the cops had gone in earlier (as they certainly should have done), how many of them could the shooter have killed before they killed him?
VOR
@Paul in KY: It’s cognitive dissonance. I think the mentality is that Conservatives are always nice polite people who do good things. Therefore J6 rioters who attacked cops must have been Antifa or other bad actors, they simply could not be Our Nice People. And since forcing a 10 year old rape victim to carry a baby to term and risk her life is a bad thing, therefore it cannot be a consequence of the policies they promote. It’s just unpossible that conservative policies could lead to bad outcomes. As Atrios noted today, focus groups have found people don’t believe it when real conservative policies are accurately described.
Jerszy
I’m sorry to be harsh, but, *please*: Typical Rethuglican Wingnut behavior.
Lean back, check your Punisher phone – and only ACT and GET CONCERNED *AFTER* you find out that YOU and YOURS are *PERSONALLY* at risk. THEN the importance of the situation snaps into focus. ONLY then.
And his fellow officers STILL DIDN”T EMPATHIZE OR ACT.
THAT”S “context” for you.
different-church-lady
@Scout211: Ah, so we can expect anti-buses-outside-Senators-residences ordinances within the week.
Paul in KY
@JoyceH: If he was really handy with that weapon and it had a full magazine, etc. and they had a bad tactical plan to assault the classroom, he could have killed several. No doubt.
As was mentioned in an earlier thread by someone quoting a retired cop friend: “Sometimes it’s a bad day to be a cop”
Ohio Mom
It’s conventional wisdom that having more diverse police forces — having a force’s makeup reflect the community they serve — will make police more responsive and effective, and less abusive.
I think that may need to be rethought. Police culture appears to trump all else (damn auotcorrect wants to capitalize “trump.”)
gvg
I am beginning to speculate that police force was totally toxic, maybe corrupt, possibly murderous before this happened and that some of the cops hated and or feared other cops on that force before that day……at any rate not only would I not want to stay on that force if I was that husband, but if I was the other cops who did nothing or restrained hime from doing anything or especially the supervisor who didn’t give the go ahead orders….I wouldn’t want that guy with a gun anywhere near me. A sane governor would put that force on leave and send in some other state cops for not just an investigation, but a cooling off period. Possibly forever.
Paul in KY
@VOR: The stuff you mentioned would (to me) go beyond cognitive dissonance.
How can you think that a total abortion ban would not lead to a pregnant female (of any age) being forced to carry the fetus to term?!?!?
gvg
@Jerszy: If a semi honest guy was on a force with corrupt guys in control or the majority, he may have been thinking about going vigilante on the police more than the citizens. Its not the most likely scenario, and it did not cross my mind until I heard about his wife, but people are saying the punisher went after bad cops too.
I did not read that comic. Not my taste.
ian
@pacem appellant:
100% agree with this
Paul in KY
@different-church-lady: The ordinances are being drawn up as I type…
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Paul in KY: Apparently in your head, you reclassify it as not an abortion.
Paul in KY
@Ohio Mom: In Shameless, the young stupid one somehow gets on the CPD. His primary trainer is a black lady who tells him the only colour she cares about is ‘blue’.
Paul in KY
@Dorothy A. Winsor: A depregnancying? Removal of an internal growth?
JML
@Ohio Mom: The reality is you need a much bigger influx all at once and you have to be very careful & smart about who is allowed to train. Otherwise the old culture tends to stick in place and co-opt the new people, or the new people quit/leave.
The police desperately need more accountability internally, less internal silence, and much less hiding behind the Blue Wall but there’s a ton of fear that anyone who speaks out will get hung out to try if/when they ever get in a situation where they actually need real help and support. There’s some real rot at the core and too many copy who perpetuate it by silently walking on by.
pacem appellant
@gvg: Punisher guy is going to go all Punisher on the cops that he’ll blame for letting his wife die.
pacem appellant
@Jerszy: I agree with you. I don’t think it paints the officer in a more sympathetic light. It just underscores how utterly despicable the whole force is.
Ohio Mom
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Oh yeah, the other thing the forced birthers are saying is that ending an ecoptic pregnancy is not an abortion. It’s a treatment, or maybe something else but definitely not an abortion.
Around here the big talking point about the ten year old rape victim case seems to be, “Why didn’t the Indiana doctor make a report, she’s a mandated reporter, she broke the law and should be arrested!”
The sequence of events is, the mother called CPS, CPS contacted the police and the child abuse doctor (one assumes both phone numbers are in CPS’s metaphorical speed dial). The child abuse doctor, finding the pregnancy is three days passed the Ohio 6 week limit, calls his colleague in Indiana. Meanwhile, the police are working on the case (I assume, the ball was in their court).
The righties just like dunking on the doctor who performed tne abortion, but when they stop for a moment, they insist the girl could have had the abortion in Ohio, and some even venture that the law should allow for young incest victims to have abortions.
It looks like a few of them are slowly realizing that old saying about be careful what you wish for — ecoptic pregnancies and young rape victims are messing up their scenario.
I gotta stop reading the local papers’ online comments. It’s a new and digesting habit of mine.
WaterGirl
@Scout211: Wow.
NRA children’s museum, buses in formation of a rifle.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
They had the sand in them to confront and disarm a fellow cop, but didn’t go after the mass murderer? That is sure as hell strange. I am going bet what behind this outrage is some girft, like state of Texas mandated school shooter training that was done by some conmen.
JoyceH
@JML: I remember years ago (think it was at the start of the Iraq War), I read a piece saying that the US should expect an uptick in police brutality, because it happens after every war – returning veterans join police forces and they’re used to being an occupying force in hostile territory, so that’s how they treat the citizens, like any one of them could turn out to be an armed insurgent. I’d think just a few guys with that attitude could infect a whole group. Might explain the sheer hysteria you see in some of these traffic stops, you wonder how such panicky overreactors ever got accepted onto a police force.
Citizen Alan
@WaterGirl: Degenerate swine
Bugboy
@Jerszy: Exactly. Obviously (if this is indeed Ruiz) the video precedes the “…they took his gun away from him and escorted him off the scene” stage…
O. Felix Culpa
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
Something about this story doesn’t add up. Cop’s wife is shot, and he stands around looking at his phone while she’s bleeding out and his fellow cops are running away from the scene? I get that he might be trying to get a message to or from her, but I’m not seeing what I would consider normal signs of concern from him that someone should, you know, DO SOMETHING to save his wife and the kids. Something smells.
Paul in KY
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: I think they had a barbeque scheduled at Jimbo’s house next Friday and I sure as Hell ain’t missing that…
Roger Moore
@kindness:
I assume a big part of it is the sunk cost fallacy. At the start, there was a bunch of incorrect information that naturally cast the police in a better light. People went along with that and defended the police. Then information started to trickle out that made the police look worse. People who had started by backing the police were afraid to reverse themselves because they had already used some of their credibility supporting the police and didn’t want to look foolish for turning on them over this one thing. Then the next thing and the next thing came out, and they felt more and more compelled to defend the police because they had staked more an more of their credibility on supporting them. Now, they feel like the only way they can have any credibility is if the police are somehow vindicated, so they have to back them to the hilt.
Paul in KY
@O. Felix Culpa: Until the officer in question says ‘Yeah, that was me’, I’m going to have a bit of skepticism.
Paul in KY
@Roger Moore: Probably right, Roger, but if they could reassess, based on all the new info, then maybe they’d end up with even more credibility! However, they know that these new ‘facts’ are bad, bad, bad, for cops & they love cops who protect us all from the Brown Hordes ™ so they keep on digging…
I know you know that :-)
O. Felix Culpa
@Paul in KY:
Yes. In his shoes, I would be frantically trying to get someone to take action, or do it myself, even if I had been disarmed. Color me sceptical about this story.
Roger Moore
@pacem appellant:
Yep. They just wish they could kill guilty people without bothering with all that meaningless legalism that just gives them a chance to escape their just deserts. And, at least in the Punisher comics I remember, he always attacked people who “deserved” it; when he killed cops it was because they were dirty.
JoyceH
@Roger Moore:
Huh – so did Dexter, but he was a serial killer who knew he was a monster.
Scout211
@Scout211: @WaterGirl:
Added from the linked article and aerial photo:
Paul in KY
@Roger Moore: His motives may be ‘pure’, but The Punisher is a vigilante nutwad who needs to be behind bars for rest of his life or in a secure insane asylum (don’t know which, as I haven’t read the comic).
Paul in KY
@Scout211: I wondered about that, but thought the NRA would probably (in Texas) have a museum about all the wonders of the firearm.
I hope he has that name copyrighted…
Halcyon
@Jerszy: Also, why are we taking the cops at their word about this story, while we’re at it? I see no reason to assume this story about the brave man trying to save his own is more true than any of the others we’ve gotten from these people.
VFX Lurker
@Paul in KY:
Fun fact: The Punisher got his start as a Spider-Man villain in 1974.
Miss Bianca
@Scout211: And now my brain is jumping to calling an interstate abortion run a “Magical Miscarriage Tour” and I don’t know whether I want to laugh or hurl.
Urban Suburbanite
I don’t think the cop with the cringey phone screen was the one whose wife was shot. The timeline is still hazy with the department trying to hide its incompetence and cowardice, but I think that guy was outside the school.
And I saw someone mentioned veterans moving into law enforcement possibly shaping the violent panicking from cops. I don’t think that’s it. I think it has more to do with people like Dave Grossman (fuck that guy and his killology bullshit, anarchists in Portland have seen more combat than that grifter) teaching them to be panicky and twitchy at all times and no fucking accountability ever.
prostratedragon
@Scout211: It’s brilliant!
prostratedragon
@JoyceH: A Vietnam veteran I once knew was rather annoyed by people not getting the difference between policing in a society at peace and having a Bill of Rights, and what Marine infantry or whomever get up to. Makes a person think.