EDITOR’S DESK: Buffaloes: Let’s not do this again
No one from the Pioneer was there to see the 1500 block of West Colorado Avenue turned into a buffalo killing field
May 9, but we gather from the many witnesses we've talked to that it was pretty gruesome.
![]() Now we get to wait and see what City Manager Lorne Kramer decides after investigating the matter. It's hard to predict what he might come up with. Give the police higher-caliber weapons? A training manual on animals with herding instincts? How about a trigger guard? Frank Grindinger, owner of G&C Company, is a little concerned if any fingers will point his way. After all, this isn't the first time livestock have escaped his yard and wandered the Westside. In older days, it wasn't as big a deal. But modern police have greater pressures. What if the buffaloes had gotten loose and stampeded through the Westside? That would have been a city manager investigation they definitely would not have wanted to face. What amazes me is that in the hail of lead, no person was shot. After the incredible precautions we often see - remember the Columbine High School massacre, when the police were so fearful of causing unnecessary injury that they just waited outside the school while Harris and Kleibold finished off their classmates? - this sure seemed casual. It wasn't even clear from the report, based on what Sgt. Larry Laxson told me, what residents were told to evacuate or why. The people on Cucharras were informed, as I understand it, but what if someone had showed up later? No police lines were set up over there to keep unknowing people from wandering into the path of semiautomatic bullets. So what do we say? Do a better job next time? I think Grindinger has the right idea. Build a secondary containment fence. So there is no next time. - K.J. |