From the BBC:
“Uvalde shooting: Texas
shooting response was 'wrong', says official”
Police made the "wrong
decision" by failing to storm a classroom in Robb Elementary School as a
gunman killed 19 children inside, the chief Texas safety official has said. "If
I thought it would help, I would apologise," Steven McCraw said during a
heated press conference on Friday. He said officers delayed entering the room
because they didn't believe it was still an "active shooter"
situation.
But pupils inside made multiple
calls begging for police to come. Mr McCraw confirmed there was a 40 minute gap
from the police unit's arrival to the moment they decided to storm the
classroom where the gunman had barricaded himself. The senior officer on the
scene decided to wait until the school janitor arrived with the keys because
they thought that either "no kids were at risk" by then or "no
one was living anymore". The delayed police response, combined with video
footage showing frustrated parents being tackled and handcuffed by police while
the gunman was still inside the school, has led to growing public anger and
scrutiny of how the police handled the situation.
Anger as Texas police alter
key details of shooting The gunman crashed his car near the school at about
11:30 local time, Mr McCraw disclosed, and walked around the building firing
"more than one hundred rounds" into classrooms as he looked to get
inside. An officer for the school district, who was not on campus at the time,
drove immediately to the scene following a 911 call but "drove right by
the suspect who was hunkered down behind a vehicle", Mr McCraw said. By
11:35, the assailant had entered the school through a door that was propped
open earlier by a teacher, and barricaded himself into a classroom. Police
officers followed him into the building minutes later but remained in the
hallway.
Mr McCraw confirmed that as many
as 19 police officers had gathered outside the classroom but they made no immediate
effort to get inside. It was not until 12:51 that a tactical unit entered the
classroom and killed him - about 75 minutes after the attack began. The
commanding officer on scene - the Uvalde school district's chief of police, who
was not present at Friday's news conference - believed the situation was no
longer one involving an "active shooter". The description is at odds
with the disclosure that at least four emergency 911 calls were made from
within the school - some from children barricaded inside with the gunman -
begging for police to come.
'Please send the police now' Texas'
chief safety official Steven McCraw recounted the emergency 911 calls made from
inside the school after the gunman entered.
12:03 - A student called 911,
identified herself and whispered that she was in room 112 at the school.
12:10 - She called back, advised
there were multiple dead.
12:13 - The same student called
for a third time.
12:16 - She rang 911 back and
said there were eight to nine students alive.
12:19 - A 911 call was made, by
another person - in room 111. She hung up when another student told her to.
12:21 - You could hear over the
call that three shots were fired.
12:36 - The initial caller called
back, was told to stay on the line and be very quiet. She said he [the gunman]
shot the door.
12:43 and 12:47 - She asked 911
to "please send the police now".
12:46 - She [the student] said
she could hear the police next door.
12:50 - Shots were fired and
could be heard over the call.
12:51 - It was very loud, sounds
like officers were moving children out of the room. At that point, the first
child that called was outside before the call cut off.
"With the benefit of
hindsight where I'm sitting now, of course it was not the right decision. It
was the wrong decision. There's no excuse for that," said Mr McCraw. Growing
emotional amid a barrage of angry questions following the admission, he called
the mistakes "tragic". After the gunman was shot dead, police found
as many as 1,657 rounds of ammunition and 60 magazines in his possession. They
later ascertained he had forewarned of some of his actions in private messages
to a Facebook friend. It was earlier alleged he made the declarations - "I
shot my grandmother" and "I'm going to shoot up a school" - as
public posts on the platform. Mr McCraw said the suspect had asked his sister
to buy him a gun last September but "she flatly refused". In private
chat messages with four people on Instagram earlier this year, he discussed
buying a gun and asked questions about it. One user responded: "Are you
going to shoot up a school or something?" "No, and stop asking dumb
questions and you will see," came the reply.
^ Every single Local and State
Police Officer that was outside the School while the Massacre was taking place
should be fired and criminally charged. The same with their Superiors. They
should NEVER be allowed to “protect” anyone else anywhere in the US ever again.
They are a bunch of disgusting
cowards that instead of stopping the murder of Children (that that could
clearly hear from outside) they attacked and threatened the Children’s Parents
outside who were begging the Police to go in and stop the killings.
Ever since Columbine in 1999
(where 13 People were killed and 24 injured) Police Departments at every level
across the whole country have been told to not wait inside where there is a
School Shooter.
The Local and State Police waited
outside for an hour – until the US Federal Border Patrol came and shot the
Shooter. There is no excuse anyone can make for that long of a wait. ^
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