The Next Buffalo School Shooting Threat Just Happened
One More for the Buffalo Soldier
I’m not a reporter, but I feel like one now. My older brother, a schoolteacher for over 25 years in the Buffalo school system, called me directly last night with direct news. He wanted me to hear it before I saw it on the news: The police had come into his classroom while he was teaching and arrested a student of his who brought a gun to school. (You can watch the video). He was teaching the 12-year-olds. There was just the worst violent massacre in recent memory in Buffalo, why would such a young student do something so stupid?
Inspiration happens on a negative level and is not a word to indicate just positive action.
I have been talking with him after the Buffalo massacre on May 14, 2022. My brother, a white guy, taught at the school a couple blocks away from the Tops grocery store where the shooting took place. It appears to have been the next target for the shooter. That school is also full of 10- 12 years. He taught there for 12 years before being transferred to this magnet school, Olmstead PS 156, 3.4 miles away, a six-minute drive.
Because he tends to know everyone is social and nice to the kids, I asked him if he knew any of the people shot or were related to the people shot. He answered without hesitation: Yes, this woman was the mother of two of my students I had twenty years ago, and this other woman was the mother of another boy he taught so many years ago. He remembers most all his students and their parents, having a great memory for people — and yes he is a white guy in a black “inner city” school. He has given hugs to most of them. He’s one of the “better ones” teachers in a poor school, only because he’s resilient; the rest are just worn out.
It turns out before this incident at his new school, one student had to leave class because her grandmother was one of the victims in the Tops Buffalo Massacre. So, now he is connected to three of the dead, all good people.
But then this happened. Police came into his classroom to arrest a student for bringing a gun to school. The whole school goes on lockdown and is searched. They find the gun, a realistic BB gun. I won’t share the details about the student, other than to say it is most likely a confused twelve-year-old with a difficult home life on top of identity issues. That kid will undergo punishment instead of care and treatment, “Disciplinary action will be taken,” vastly compounding an already troubled psyche.
Additionally, there will immediately be “wanding” of all students entering school, and a couple of other “security measures” used against the children. This is the immediate result so far of the gun violence that traumatized a city: treat the minority children like criminals as they enter school, showing deeper distrust than they already had administrators and government officials.
A white racist supremacist goes on rampage to massacre black Americans in a poor district, a child ends up of reacting in confusion and the rest of this mostly minority school then get subjected to treatment like they attend a juvenile detention center, not a school. Stop and frisk becomes the solution used against black American children who were the original targets twice over.
You’ll have to draw your own conclusion and tell me what it is. I just can’t seem to muster up the outrage at the injustice of it all.
