The Robb Elementary School shooting left 19 kids dead including two teachers. Salvador Ramos, 18, the shooter, is dead. It once again spurred the anti-gun Left to exploit the situation to make calls for more restrictions on firearms that wouldn’t have prevented the shooting. Yet, the other part of this story is the police response which from what we can tell now was nothing short of abysmal. What the hell happened? It was a Mickey Mouse exercise. The response with regards to police arriving on the scene was great. It’s what happened after that has drawn much-deserved scrutiny. There was a stand-down order that lasted for an hour. In that time, who knows how many kids were killed. They were trapped in that classroom with Ramos. Texas Department of Public Safety was caught off-guard when parents shared videos of police standing around and not confronting the shooter.
Timelines were changed. Official statements retracted previous reports. It was a public relations nightmare. The shooter entered through a door that was propped open. That was proven to be incorrect. The shooter was confronted by a school resource officer. That was also incorrect. Ramos entered the school unopposed. In all, Texas police changed their story 13 times. I know there’s been whiplash on how many times this timeline has shifted, but number 13 is where we are with the alterations in the timeline here (via Business Insider):
Uvalde Police initially said the gunman was in custody
In one of the first statements about the shooting, the Uvalde Police Department said on Facebook that the gunman was in police custody.
"Update @ 1:06 Shooter is in Police Custody," the department said in a Facebook post on May 24.
The department later revealed that a US Border Patrol tactical team fatally shot the gunman inside Robb Elementary.
[…]
The gunman did not enter through a door propped open by a teacher
On May 27, McCraw had claimed that the shooter entered the elementary school via a door that was left propped open by a teacher and that they had reviewed video footage of the teacher leaving the door propped.
But by Tuesday, May 31, the teacher's lawyer pushed back, saying the teacher actually pulled the door closed but it didn't lock.
In a statement confirmed to Insider on May 31, DPS Chief of Media and Communications Travis Considine reversed course again, acknowledging that the teacher had closed the propped door when she realized a shooter was on campus, but that the door did not lock.
It's unclear why the police initially cited video evidence alleging the teacher had left the door propped open.
Police arrived on scene quickly but backed off for more than an hour
[…]
…Texas authorities' news briefings have often left reporters and the public with more questions than answers. Even as of May 27, it was unclear if 911 dispatchers alerted police at the scene to the children still trapped inside with the shooter and police did not say what ultimately convinced the tactical team to breach the classroom and shoot the gunman.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on May 27 reacted to the new information that was revealed earlier in the day about the police response to the mass shooting, saying, "I was misled."
"I am livid about what happened," said Abbott, who days earlier praised the response by law enforcement.
It’s been a rollercoaster. It’s why the Department of Justice is investigating the response. It’s why the school police chief is no longer talking to investigators. It’s all bad. Maybe some lives could have been saved if the 19 officers who were already inside the school confronted Ramos. It’s an all-around nightmare that I’m sure we’ll revisit when the DOJ investigation has concluded.
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