Top Texas cop describes Uvalde police response as “abject failure”

Photo Credit: Reuters.

A top Texas cop has described the response by police officers to the shooting incidence at an Uvalde Elementary School as “abject failure”. Col. Steve McCraw who is the head of the Texas state police announced that the law enforcement response to the mass shooting incidence was flawed while speaking at a State Senate hearing on Tuesday, according to The Associated Press.

He said that officers would have found the door to the classroom where the assailant barricaded himself unlocked if they had bothered to check it.

Police officials stood in a hallway for over an hour waiting for more weapons and gear before they finally entered the classroom giving the shooting more time to execute more innocent and helpless children.

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

McCraw said the classroom could not be locked from the inside by design, adding that a teacher reported before the shooting that the lock was broken. He noted that despite available information, officers never made any attempt to open it during the standoff but instead waited for keys.

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

McCraw took a swipe at the Uvalde school district police chief, Pete Arredondo saying “The only thing stopping a hallway of dedicated officers from entering Room 111 and 112 was the on-scene commander who decided to place the lives of officers before the lives of children,” according to The Associated Press.

Arredondo made “terrible decisions,” said McCraw, who lamented that the police response “set our profession back a decade.”

McCraw said Arredondo was in-charge despite denials by the school district police chief who said he never saw himself in-charge of the situation but thought someone else was in-charge.

McCraw also testified Tuesday at a closed door hearing of a Texas House committee investing the mass shooting, the panel chair said, according to The Associated Press. Federal, state and local investigators are investigating delays in response to the lone gunman who murdered about 19 pupils and two of their teachers. The Testimony would resume Wednesday.