The Uvalde Police were going to be very busy this weekend.
It might have been a holiday for the rest of us, but not for Uvalde’s finest.
While the rest of the people in this little town in Texas were getting ready for their barbecues and picnics, police officers would be waiting by that stop sign you don’t see until you’re right on it. They would be waiting to ticket anyone from out of town, especially if they were from out of state, who went through it.
The little yellow lights near Abbott Elementary, that normally blink at the beginning and end of the school day. The ones that warn motorists that kids are on their way too of from school, and they need to slow down, would be blinking, off and on all weekend. The school might have closed on Thursday, but the police would still be waiting, near those lights, for drivers who exceeded the speed limit.
They would be waiting at the major thoroughfares, for drivers, especially out of state drivers, who exceeded the speed limit.
They would roam the local business districts, looking for cars that were parked where they shouldn’t be.
At night, they would visit neighborhood barbecues and picnics, citing people for being loud, or leaving their cars where they shouldn’t.
They might go looking for code violations, overgrown lawns, couches on porches, untrimmed hedges.
They would bother kids on bicycles, teenagers out cruising, folks out for a walk.
Their objec in all this, would bet to write citations, and collect fines, to fund the city of Uvalde.
People don’t like paying taxes. The city government that raises them doesn’t make itself a lot of friends.
So, a lot of cities depend on fines as a source of revenue. It’s especially good if those fined are from out of town.
Of course all those officers in Uvalde would be payed overtime for working on a weekend. So it wouldn’t be too bad for them.
But you couldn’t call what they did law enforcement. It’s more like fundraising.
All in all, it’s not surprising that they were reluctant to face gunfire.
I suspect Uvalde’s finest are busy this weekend, ticketing the many people who have come to the site of yet another mass murder.
I can’t mind too much that they’re earning overtime ticketing ghouls and looky lous, who just want to see where it happened.
But the people who came to Uvalde to help are probably getting tickets too. That doesn’t seem quite right.
In a nation, where anyone past the age of 18 can buy an AR-15 we need people to maintain order. We need guardians, not fundraisers.