How did the police believe this was a lone barricaded suspect? The Texas school massacre.

[Desk trauma]

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott wants to block records about Uvalde school shooting response from the public
Texas public safety officials cite the "dead suspect loophole" to prevent records from being released

In the past week, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has joined the growing list of state and local officials fighting the release of records that could help bring clarity to how the emergency response unfolded during last month's deadly shooting in Uvalde.

[Ordinarily, records are withhold to protect the official investigation as well as the rights of the accused.] "not to protect law enforcement for their actions in circumstances like this, where the shooter is dead."

In a totally unrelated matter that has nothing whatsoever to do with the the Gov getting on board with the cover up preventing records being released the police department is cooperating with the investigation again.

 

[Desk trauma]

It gets even worse:

Uvalde police never tried to open doors to classrooms where shooter was inside

 

[Skye1300]

It gets even worse:

Uvalde police never tried to open doors to classrooms where shooter was inside

It's just unbelievable! They were all a bunch of clowns. Maybe they SHOULD have let the parents in there, they would have done a better job I'm sure.

 

[Skye1300]

WHY didn't they go in? Chilling first image emerges from inside Texas school showing cops with rifles and ballistic shields in corridor 19 minutes after gunman entered - but they waited another FIFTY-EIGHT MINUTES to storm classroom

• A freeze-frame from surveillance cameras inside Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas, show police inside the building at 11:52am on May 24
• The gunman, Salvador Ramos, had entered the school 19 minutes earlier, but was not shot dead until 12:50pm
• Serious questions have been raised as to why the police did not immediately storm the school and end the massacre
• Monday's new detail will heap further pressure on Uvalde police as the grieving parents and relatives of the 19 children and two teachers demand answers

First pic inside Texas school shows cops with rifles and shield NINETEEN MINS after gunman entered | Daily Mail Online

Unbelievable!

 

[Desk trauma]

Texas top cop: Uvalde police response an ‘abject failure’

 

[Skye1300]

Worse police department in the history of the world!

"AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Police had enough officers on the scene of the Uvalde school massacre to have stopped the gunman three minutes after he entered the building, and they would have found the door to the classroom where he was holed up unlocked if they had bothered to check it, the head of the state police testified Tuesday, pronouncing the law enforcement response an “abject failure.”

Officers with rifles instead stood in a hallway for over an hour, waiting in part for more firepower and other gear, before they finally stormed the classroom and killed the gunman, putting an end to the May 24 attack that left 19 children and two teachers dead.

“I don’t care if you have on flip-flops and Bermuda shorts, you go in,” Col. Steve McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, said in blistering testimony at a state Senate hearing.

The classroom door, it turned out, could not be locked from the inside, according to McCraw, who said a teacher reported before the shooting that the lock was broken. Yet there is no indication officers tried to open it during the standoff, McCraw said. He said police instead waited around for a key.

“I have great reasons to believe it was never secured,” McCraw said of the door. ”How about trying the door and seeing if it’s locked?”

 

[Desk trauma]

Interrogative: is it acceptable for us non LEO scum to say the police preformed poorly now that their fellow most honorable LEO brethren have taken that position as well or must we still remain in our lane?

 

[JosephZ]

Officer husband of slain Uvalde teacher was detained, had gun taken away after trying to save wife

Texas DPS director said Eva Mireles told her husband she ‘had been shot and was dying’

Ruben Ruiz is a police officer for the school district and was on the scene after the gunman entered the school and opened fire.

McCraw said Mireles called Ruiz and told him that “she had been shot and was dying.”

“And what happened to him, is he tried to move forward into the hallway,” McCraw said. “He was detained and they took his gun away from him and escorted him off the scene.”

 

[essentialsaltes]

Interrogative: is it acceptable for us non LEO scum to say the police preformed poorly now that their fellow most honorable LEO brethren have taken that position as well or must we still remain in our lane?

Maybe we have to wait until the circular firing squad is finished picking winners and losers.

Uvalde mayor accuses state police head of lying, leaking and misleading as new timeline of police response reveals excruciating missteps

Officers from at least eight law enforcement agencies were in the hallway outside the classrooms, the mayor said, and accused the director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, Col. Steven McCraw, of trying to direct attention away from the response by the department and its Texas Ranger Division.

"Col. McCraw has continued to -- whether you want to call it -- lie, leak, mislead or misstate information in order to distance his own troopers and Rangers from the response. Every briefing he leaves out the number of his own officers and Rangers that were on-scene that day," McLaughlin said.

 

[essentialsaltes]

Texas to spend ~$100 million on school safety measures out of the education budget.

Nearly half the money — $50 million — is going toward bullet-resistant shields for school police officers, a priority of Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick.

 

[RDKirk]

A feature of US policing seems to be multiple jurisdictions that lend to this kind of confusion.

There was no confusion. Pete Arredondo was chief of the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District Police Department, and the incident was in one of his schools.

 

[Desk trauma]

Speaking of Pete Arredondo , he resigned! Well, from the city council he's on paid vacation administrative leave from his other job until the heat is off investigation is completed.

 

[Desk trauma]

Uvalde school board votes to fire Police Chief Pete Arredondo

Took them long enough.

Oh wait, how dare they fire him when they are lowly civilians who couldn’t have done any better.

 

[Skye1300]

Good!

 

[essentialsaltes]

Texas police made ‘wrong decision’ waiting outside classroom, says official

seriously how? Emergency phone calls where coming from the classroom, yet they waited outside and did nothing.

Sorry for the necro-thread. Story from Texas Tribune.

Editor’s note: This story includes graphic descriptions of injuries, and one graphic image taken from inside a classroom. We are not publishing images of injured or deceased victims.

“He has a battle rifle”: Police feared Uvalde gunman’s AR-15​

In previously unreleased interviews, police who responded to the Robb Elementary shooting told investigators they were cowed by the shooter’s military-style rifle. This drove their decision to wait for a Border Patrol SWAT team to engage him, which took more than an hour.

Once they saw a torrent of bullets tear through a classroom wall and metal door, the first police officers in the hallway of Robb Elementary School concluded they were outgunned. And that they could die.

The gunman had an AR-15, a rifle design used by U.S. soldiers in every conflict since Vietnam. Its bullets flew toward the officers at three times the speed of sound and could have pierced their body armor like a hole punch through paper. They grazed two officers in the head, and the group retreated.

Uvalde Police Department Sgt. Daniel Coronado stepped outside, breathing heavily, and got on his radio to warn the others.

“I have a male subject with an AR,” Coronado said.

The dispatch crackled on the radio of another officer on the opposite side of the building.

“[Fudge],” that officer said.

“AR,” another exclaimed, alerting others nearby.

Almost a year after Texas’ deadliest school shooting killed 19 children and two teachers, there is still confusion among investigators, law enforcement leaders and politicians over how nearly 400 law enforcement officers could have performed so poorly. People have blamed cowardice or poor leadership or a lack of sufficient training for why police waited more than an hour to breach the classroom and subdue an amateur 18-year-old adversary.

But in their own words, during and after their botched response, the officers pointed to another reason: They were unwilling to confront the rifle on the other side of the door.

“Had anybody gone through that door, he would have killed whoever it was,” Uvalde Police Department Lt. Javier Martinez told investigators the day after the shooting. You “can only carry so many ballistic vests on you. That .223 (caliber) round would have gone right through you.”

“I knew too it wasn’t a pistol. ... I was like, ‘[Poop], it’s a rifle,’” [Coronado] said. He added, “The way he was shooting, he was probably going to take all of us out.”

--

The gun store’s owner told investigators he was an average customer with no “red flags,” though patrons told FBI agents he was “very nervous looking” and “appeared odd and looked like one of those school shooters.”

An online order he’d placed for 1,740 rifle cartridges arrived at 6:09 p.m. on May 23. In the eight days after he became eligible to purchase firearms, he bought two AR-15-style rifles and 2,115 rounds of ammunition.

--

When a gunman began firing an AR-15-style rifle in 2016 at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, an officer providing security waited six minutes for backup before pursuing the suspect into the club; he later said his handgun was “no match” for the shooter’s rifle.

Two years later, a sheriff’s deputy at Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida did not confront the AR-15-wielding shooter there, either. Investigators said he instead retreated for four and a half minutes, during which the gunman shot 10 students and teachers, six fatally.

In some instances, police have confronted the rifle without hesitation. Officers killed a gunman who had fatally shot seven people in a 2019 shooting spree in Midland and Odessa. During the 2021 supermarket shooting in Boulder, Colorado, one of the 10 victims the gunman killed with his AR-15 was one of the first responding officers.

 

[RDKirk]

Sorry for the necro-thread. Story from Texas Tribune.

Editor’s note: This story includes graphic descriptions of injuries, and one graphic image taken from inside a classroom. We are not publishing images of injured or deceased victims.

“He has a battle rifle”: Police feared Uvalde gunman’s AR-15​

In previously unreleased interviews, police who responded to the Robb Elementary shooting told investigators they were cowed by the shooter’s military-style rifle. This drove their decision to wait for a Border Patrol SWAT team to engage him, which took more than an hour.

Once they saw a torrent of bullets tear through a classroom wall and metal door, the first police officers in the hallway of Robb Elementary School concluded they were outgunned. And that they could die.

The gunman had an AR-15, a rifle design used by U.S. soldiers in every conflict since Vietnam. Its bullets flew toward the officers at three times the speed of sound and could have pierced their body armor like a hole punch through paper. They grazed two officers in the head, and the group retreated.

Uvalde Police Department Sgt. Daniel Coronado stepped outside, breathing heavily, and got on his radio to warn the others.

“I have a male subject with an AR,” Coronado said.

The dispatch crackled on the radio of another officer on the opposite side of the building.

“[Fudge],” that officer said.

“AR,” another exclaimed, alerting others nearby.

Almost a year after Texas’ deadliest school shooting killed 19 children and two teachers, there is still confusion among investigators, law enforcement leaders and politicians over how nearly 400 law enforcement officers could have performed so poorly. People have blamed cowardice or poor leadership or a lack of sufficient training for why police waited more than an hour to breach the classroom and subdue an amateur 18-year-old adversary.

But in their own words, during and after their botched response, the officers pointed to another reason: They were unwilling to confront the rifle on the other side of the door.

“Had anybody gone through that door, he would have killed whoever it was,” Uvalde Police Department Lt. Javier Martinez told investigators the day after the shooting. You “can only carry so many ballistic vests on you. That .223 (caliber) round would have gone right through you.”

“I knew too it wasn’t a pistol. ... I was like, ‘[Poop], it’s a rifle,’” [Coronado] said. He added, “The way he was shooting, he was probably going to take all of us out.”

--

The gun store’s owner told investigators he was an average customer with no “red flags,” though patrons told FBI agents he was “very nervous looking” and “appeared odd and looked like one of those school shooters.”

An online order he’d placed for 1,740 rifle cartridges arrived at 6:09 p.m. on May 23. In the eight days after he became eligible to purchase firearms, he bought two AR-15-style rifles and 2,115 rounds of ammunition.

--

When a gunman began firing an AR-15-style rifle in 2016 at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, an officer providing security waited six minutes for backup before pursuing the suspect into the club; he later said his handgun was “no match” for the shooter’s rifle.

Two years later, a sheriff’s deputy at Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida did not confront the AR-15-wielding shooter there, either. Investigators said he instead retreated for four and a half minutes, during which the gunman shot 10 students and teachers, six fatally.

In some instances, police have confronted the rifle without hesitation. Officers killed a gunman who had fatally shot seven people in a 2019 shooting spree in Midland and Odessa. During the 2021 supermarket shooting in Boulder, Colorado, one of the 10 victims the gunman killed with his AR-15 was one of the first responding officers.

Not that long ago, it was pretty common for police officers to have heavier weapons--rifles and shotguns--in the trunks of there patrol cars. That wasn't considered "SWAT" equipment.

However, it may be a matter of the average officer today being less capable with multiple weapons.

 

[Ana the Ist]

Not that long ago, it was pretty common for police officers to have heavier weapons--rifles and shotguns--in the trunks of there patrol cars. That wasn't considered "SWAT" equipment.

However, it may be a matter of the average officer today being less capable with multiple weapons.

Well recent years have heard a call to "demilitarize" the police... so it's quite possible they never had anything other than their service pistols.

 

[JosephZ]

Well recent years have heard a call to "demilitarize" the police... so it's quite possible they never had anything other than their service pistols.

The Uvalde police and other responding agencies to the scene had plenty of firepower available to them.

 

[RDKirk]

Well recent years have heard a call to "demilitarize" the police... so it's quite possible they never had anything other than their service pistols.

The police officers I was talking about were carrying long firearms in their trunks decades before the military-weapons-to-police program started. They weren't using military weapons back then.

A squad of police with Ruger Mini-14 rifles (same capability of the AR-15, just doesn't look as "wicked") could deal with one man with an AR-14.

I suspect they had nothing more than their service pistols because they don't train and didn't want to train with multiple weapons. There is both a training cost and training motivation factor to that.

I personally train weekly (pretty much...say three times monthly at least) expending about 100 rounds per session. That costs me $90 a month in handgun ammunition and three hours a month in time. That would add up for a department...but, frankly, it's not overkill for a police officer.

 

[RDKirk]

The Uvalde police and other responding agencies to the scene had plenty of firepower available to them.

View attachment 329307

View attachment 329306

They said it took an hour for the Uvalde SWAT team to arrive. It seems strange that it should take that long in a community so small...what, were they all at home in bed? But remember that the Uvalde Police are actually a whole different jurisdiction.

The school was the jurisdiction of the school district police force, an entirely different entity.

That was a huge part of their problem, as they reported considerable confusion in determining "who is in charge?" and it undoubtedly delayed pulling in the Uvalde SWAT team. It shouldn't have been difficult...the chief of the school district police force should have been instantly recognized as the person in charge. That there was confusion sounded to me like they'd never exercised (or even conceptualized) a school shooting scenario that called in the Uvalde SWAT team.

However, to my point with Ana the Ist, if all officers had Ruger Mini-14 rifles in their trunk, they certainly could have kept the shooter worried about them while they waited for the SWAT team.