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Nevilledog

(50,659 posts)
Tue Jun 21, 2022, 12:33 PM Jun 2022

TX Officials Say Officers Had Resources to Attack Uvalde Shooter Three Minutes After Gunman Entered





https://www.politicususa.com/2022/06/21/uvalde-police-3-minutes.html

Shock and outrage are springing forth over breaking new information released from the Texas Department of Public Safety. The parents and grandparents have had to endure the unthinkable over the loss of their child, and now they must absorb the finding that the police had everything they needed to engage the shooter and attempt to stop him within three minutes of the gunman entering the school. We will never know how many lives may have been saved. Instead, questions continue to build over how the police could have waited well over an hour as 911 calls came from children whispering into cell phones, begging for help.

And now this. According to KTBX:

Law enforcement authorities had enough officers on the scene of the Uvalde school massacre to stop the gunman three minutes after he entered the building, the Texas public safety chief testified Tuesday, condemning the police response as an “abject failure.”

Police officers with rifles instead stood and waited in a school hallway for nearly an hour while the gunman carried out the May 24 attack that left 19 children and two teachers dead.

Col. Steve McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, testified at a state Senate hearing on the police handling of the tragedy.

The officers and departments on scene at the school during that hour may face criminal liability over the response. At every stage, the more the public learns about the timeline of the incident, the more the fury builds over the lack of responsibility, courage, and sense of duty. The questions will only get more difficult and the criminal exposure broader as possible federal charges are considered alongside those already being considered by the state of Texas.

*the end*



Tweet text:

The New York Times
@nytimes
·
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Breaking News: The head of Texas' state police called the police response to the Uvalde shooting "an abject failure" that ran counter to decades of training. He said officers wasted time looking for a classroom door key that was "never needed."
Surveillance video shows a scene at Robb Elementary School outside a pair of connected classrooms where a gunman was holed up in Uvalde, Texas last month. Minutes later, officers entered the classrooms, to the left, right past the divider in the hallway. Visible are officers from the State Police, the Sheriff’s Department and the Border Patrol.
nytimes.com
Head of State Police Calls Response to Uvalde Shooting an ‘Abject Failure’
The director of the Department of Public Safety said that police officers wasted time looking for a classroom door key that was “never needed.”
9:10 AM · Jun 21, 2022


https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/21/us/uvalde-legislature-police-mccraw.html

No paywall
https://archive.ph/7IVgD

AUSTIN, Texas — The head of the Texas State Police offered a pointed and emphatic rebuke of the police response to a shooting last month at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, calling it “an abject failure” that ran counter to decades of training.

In his comments before a special State Senate committee in Austin, Steven McCraw, the director of the Department of Public Safety, said that just minutes after a gunman began shooting children inside a pair of connected classrooms on May 24, the police at the scene had enough firepower and protective equipment to storm the classroom.

But, he said, the on-scene commander “decided to put the lives of officers ahead of the lives of children.” Mr. McCraw, speaking forcefully, said the same commander had delayed confronting the gunman because he “waited for a key that was never needed.”

Mr. McCraw said that the doors to the classrooms could be locked only from the outside. “There’s no way to lock the door from the inside. And there’s no way for the subject to lock the door from the inside,” he said, adding that a teacher had made a request for the locks to be fixed, believing they were broken, before the shooting.

“I don’t believe, based on the information that we have right now, that that door was ever secured,” Mr. McCraw said. “The door was unsecured.”

*snip*
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TX Officials Say Officers Had Resources to Attack Uvalde Shooter Three Minutes After Gunman Entered (Original Post) Nevilledog Jun 2022 OP
ABC article Nevilledog Jun 2022 #1

Nevilledog

(50,659 posts)
1. ABC article
Tue Jun 21, 2022, 01:06 PM
Jun 2022


Tweet text:

Emily Shapiro
@EmilyShapiroABC
·
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NEW from TX school shooting hearing: "3 minutes after the subject entered the west hallway, there was sufficient number of armed officers wearing body armor, to isolate distract and neutralize the subject"

abcnews.go.com
Texas hearing updates: In wake of Uvalde, committee hears testimony on mass shootings
The Texas state Senate is holding a committee hearing on school safety, police training, and social media in the wake of last month's deadly school shooting in Uvalde.
7:57 AM · Jun 21, 2022


https://abcnews.go.com/US/live-updates/texas-hearing/?id=85516525

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