While the media continues to twist themselves into rhetorical pretzels in an effort to not “misgender” a child murdering mass shooter, normal people are praising the Metro Nashville Police Department for their actions yesterday.

The timeline of the shooting is so tightly compressed thanks to the quick response by police. According to the security cameras in the church building (where the school was located) that the Nashville police released yesterday, the shooter shot the glass out of the locked door at 10:10:57 am. At 10:13 am, the first 911 call was placed to police. By 10:27 am, the shooter was down.

For reference, here is the video that Nashville police released yesterday from the security cameras. The school had all the doors locked. The shooter literally forces her way in by shooting and shattering the glass in the doors. While the security video has no sound, it is chilling to watch.

Active shooter Audrey Elizabeth Hale drove to Covenant Church/School in her Honda Fit this morning, parked, and shot her way into the building. She was armed with 2 assault-type guns and a 9 millimeter pistol. pic.twitter.com/mIk2pDmCwQ

— Metro Nashville PD (@MNPDNashville) March 28, 2023

Yes, we should all be concerned about “deadnaming” or “misgendering” the psychopath who shot her way into a school and killed innocent people. That’s clearly the most important thing to remember here, not the reaction of the grieving older sister of one of the victims.

The older sister of Evelyn Dieckhaus, a third grader who was shot at The Covenant School, made the comments during a vigil for the victims at Woodmont Christian Church. Dieckhaus, along with two other children and three adults, was murdered at The Covenant School, which is affiliated with the conservative evangelical Presbyterian Church in America.”

“I don’t want to be an only child,” she said.”

But yes, let’s watch the media and celebrities make asses of themselves, instead of supporting the families who lost loved ones yesterday. Six people never came home. Three sets of parents were staring at empty beds. I cannot fathom the depths of their grief.

Which makes the actions of the Metro Nashville Police Department worthy of note. It has been reported that the shooter had “multiple targets” planned. In stopping her at the school, these officers saved an untold number of lives. Just consider that response time between the 911 call and the shooter being neutralized. FOURTEEN MINUTES. The police department has put six minutes of bodycam video up on YouTube, which show how amazingly quick, efficient, and determined these officers were in finding the shooter and eliminating the threat. YouTube has slapped an age restriction on the video (which can be viewed here if you are logged into Google or YouTube as an adult), even though anything graphic has been blurred out, including the shooter’s face. Some of the clips are making their way to Twitter, if readers can’t see it on YouTube.

Nashville Police have released the bodycam footage and it cannot be stressed enough how remarkable this response was. These men are absolute heroes. pic.twitter.com/aOT8IJyH04

— Sara Gonzales (@SaraGonzalesTX) March 28, 2023

The Metro Nashville police were absolute professionals. They knew what they needed to do, and they were going to get the job done.

Nashville police have released bodycam video of the Covenant School shooting response, during which they killed shooter Audrey Elizabeth Hale, a 28-year-old transgender former student who they say gunned down three 9-year-olds and three adults Monday.”

“The kids are all locked down, but we have two kids that we don’t know where they are,” a woman told Nashville Officer Rex Englebert as he grabbed a rifle out of the back of his police SUV.”

“OK,” he said. “Yes ma’am.”

Within moments, sirens blare as he unlocked a side door and led the charge inside the building. Officers searched the classrooms with a determined urgency before the sound of gunshots around three minutes into the 6-minute video sent them sprinting up the stairs to the second floor.”

About 25 seconds later, the rampage came to an end with Hale fatally wounded.”

While the response team included several others, police credited Officers Englebert and Michael Collazo for their active roles in the response and released both of their bodycams together in a single clip.”

After Englebert is shown initially taking down the suspect, Collazo rushed in as police commanded Hale to drop the weapon and to stop moving.”

MNPD Officers Rex Engelbert, a 4-year veteran, and Michael Collazo, a 9-year veteran, were part of a team of first responders to the Covenant campus Mon morning. They fired on the active shooter, who was killed. This is their body camera footage. https://t.co/17qsZM6bNp pic.twitter.com/g4b0nMTFRD

— Metro Nashville PD (@MNPDNashville) March 28, 2023

The response of the Metro Nashville police to this active school shooter threat has obviously prompted multiple comparisons to the Uvalde school shooting last May. We all know the hideous delay by Uvalde school police cost children their lives, as they stood around in the hallway trying to figure out what to do. And within the last week, Uvalde police interviews were released that showed that they absolutely chickened out when they learned that their shooter had an AR-style rifle. The Uvalde police reaction put me in mind of a scene from the Disney movie “Aladdin” – and now the Nashville police have proved the point.

The failures of the Uvalde School police continue to resonate to this day. The Metro Nashville police chief, John Drake, even backhandedly dissed the Uvalde police while praising the actions of his officers during one of the early press conferences.

“I want to say thank you to our first responders who got there and immediately went in and addressed the threat of someone who had multiple rounds of ammunition (and was) prepared for a confrontation with law enforcement, prepared to do more harm than was actually done,” Drake said.”

“As I’ve said before — I was hoping this day would never ever come here in this city — but we would never wait to make entry and to go in and to stop a threat. Especially when it deals with our children.”

Every single police officer has now seen the scorn and shaming that has been heaped upon police who failed to do their duty, like ex-school resource officer Scot Peterson during the Parkland shooting, and the entirety of the Uvalde school police department. After those shootings, I would imagine that most police examined their consciences and asked themselves what they would have done in that situation. Unfortunately, officers in the Metro Nashville Police Department were forced to find out. Fortunately, they met the challenge with efficiency and professionalism, proving that a well-trained police force can neutralize an active shooter even if that shooter has a big scary AR-type rifle. They probably don’t want to be called heroes, but their actions yesterday were heroic. Their quick response to the scene, and methodical clearing of the building until the shooter was located is likely going to be the new gold standard for police departments responding to active school shooters.

Even though six innocent lives were lost yesterday, the Metro Nashville police’s response made sure that no more innocents would be murdered. For that, we can be extremely grateful.

Featured image: Metro Nashville Police Department patch via Dickelbers on Wikimedia Commons, cropped, Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0)