>> The only thing stopping the 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.
The officers had weapons, the children had none.
The officers had body armor, the children had none.
The officers had training, the subject had none.
One hour 14 minutes and 8 seconds,
that's how long the children waited and the teachers waited in rooms 111 to
be res- >> So what you just heard is an excerpt
from testimony that happened earlier today by Texas Department of Public Safety,
Director Steve McCraw, who is laying out very clearly how terrible
this response actually was and how high the cost was.
The fact that the cops did not do not just what was necessary, but
virtually any of the different things that might have helped to save lives.
And instead, a lot of people died that day tragically.
Now, we've known a good bit of this, but we're learning more and
more of the details.
By his estimate by the way, there were enough cops with enough equipment and
weapons, riot shields and all of that to have moved in and neutralized
the shooter in Uvalde inside of three minutes of the beginning of that shooting.
That was his estimate.
And we're gonna have more specifics, but obviously that's not what happened.
As he laid out, the shooter was allowed to go on his rampage for
more than an hour and we know the cost from that.
He also, by the way in his testimony pointed out that there was evidence
that Ramos, the shooter in Uvalde had engaged in acts of animal cruelty,
which is considered one of the stereotypical things used to figure out if
someone might progress to acts of violence against humans.
He did say that there was nothing in the disciplinary files for
the student that raised any red flags, but obviously if you were aware of him
engaging in animal cruelty that would serve potentially as a red flag.
But I will remind you that while in the wake of the Uvalde shooting,
the Republicans in Texas seem to have landed on...
Well, we're not gonna do anything about guns, but
we should care about mental health, mental illness.
We're worried about that.
So then what if you found out that he had been doing things like torturing or
abusing animals, would you have barred him from buying a gun?
No, basically not.
There's a few Republicans nationwide that do believe in these red flag laws, but
the vast majority of Texas Republicans don't.
They wanna focus on mental health.
And when there's indications that someone might not be well,
they don't wanna to do literally anything about it.
And because of that sort of approach,
we ended up with the situation that we did in Uvalde.
Now in a minute, we're gonna give you a lot more details.
Granular details on exactly how the response could have gone.
But Alonso, I wanted to give you a chance to weigh in.
What do you think about what's been revealed?
>> Well, this is another one of these situations
where they talk about good cops, bad cops.
I have a friend who's a retired police officer and
she told me she was involved in two active shooter situation.
She said it is scary.
The adrenaline is super high.
They're obviously nervous and unknown.
But you know what they do and what they did?
They went in, they went in, they didn't stand around waiting.
This is a case of these cops, blame your commander or
whatever, it's all talk now.
Why didn't they storm the gates?
John, and and these are the ones where
I have to be disciplined in language because I get so upset.
There is no excuse, but he's got all this tough talk,
good guys with guns, blah, blah, blah.
You stood outside while children were being shot.
You didn't rush in, you're not heroes.
It's all a bunch of crap.
I don't wanna hear about your blaming too many doors on the school.
You didn't have a key blah blah.
I don't wanna hear any of that.
Some people said this.
I don't know if you remember Emmett Till, the story of Emmett Till.
Emmett Till was a 13-year-old boy beaten to death in Mississippi for
supposedly looking at a White woman.
And his mother said, have him buried with an open casket, so
people can see what was done.
Somebody mentioned this about Uvalde.
Show the kids, show what an AR-15 does to a body.
Some of the children had their heads blown off.
Some of the children could only be identified by pieces of clothing because
the bullets ripped through their bodies.
The police claimed they were outgunned and scared of AR-15s yet
they continue to sell them to 18-year-old kids.
So John, how do I feel about it?
I am tired of this nonsensical talk and inaction by our politicians.
If the Republicans are for sale to the NRA,
fine, why aren't the Democrats stepping up?
Why isn't there an executive order to stop the sale of these guns?
Enough is enough.
See, once we've accepted killing children, which we did in Sandy Hook,
then everything else becomes pretend, everything else is just talk.
Once it's okay to kill children with assault rifles, then we're just talking.
We're all complicit in wasting time because children's bodies were blown
to pieces while cops were standing outside and now they're trying to talk about it.
How do you justify?
What do you have to say?
Well, this is why we allow children to be blown to pieces for an hour.
Shut up.
Exactly.
>> Yeah, they seem to think that they need to explain themselves.
No, that's not the response that you should give or that we want from you.
What we want you to do is resign in shame.
That's what you should do. That's the thing that I think socially is
demanded of you.
You had a job.
It is admittedly a difficult job, a taxing job, and a scary job.
I can't conceive of running into a building against someone
that has an AR-15.
But you'll notice that I haven't applied to become a cop.
They did.
They knew that was the sort of situation that they could be up against.
It sucks that we live in a country where so
many of our elected representatives are perfectly fine, as Alonso pointed out,
with us selling weapons to teens that can scare an entire squad of police officers.
But that's a decision we've made and
I'm not even necessarily convinced that most of the cops who were terrified
on that day believe that that policy should be changed.
I don't see tons of cops joining us at gun control protests and saying, yes,
they shouldn't have large capacity magazines,
they shouldn't have ammunition that can blow a hole in my body armor.
They shouldn't have a weapon that can gun down a ton of cops all at once.
I would love to have them be allies in this movement.
But so far, Alonso, I haven't really seen it.
And also, the story is that they were too scared to go in.
That certainly seems to be true that they were outgunned or whatever.
That by the way is what Pete Arredondo, the chief in charge there,
although he seems to not have known that he was in charge.
He says that the guy had shot a lot with an AR-15-style rifle and
that they were outgunned.
They only had pistols.
I can't imagine a scenario in the United States, let alone specifically in Texas,
where a bunch of cops rolled up and all they had between them were pistols.
That doesn't seem generally how this works.
But it also the story as with so many other aspects of this,
just falls apart almost instantly as they talk to not like Peter Arredondo and
people who are covering their ass, but talking to other witnesses who don't have
to defend themselves, they're revealing the truth.
So just four minutes after that particular comment was made, at 11:44, body camera
video recorded the sound of gunshots, at 11:52, the first ballistic shield arrived.
Something that could have been used to defend the cops as they breached the door.
Okay, so at that point Arredondo is saying, we're trying to find the key to
the door, although it has become increasingly clear and
at least one witness has confirmed they do not seem to have tried to open the door.
They keep saying they need the key,
there is no evidence that they tried the handle at all.
That is a new level of fear.
Arredondo had said that he called for tactical gear, a sniper, keys for
the classroom.
He said that when he got the keys he tried dozens, but they didn't work.
But that turns out also to have been a lie.
It seems like what he really did was they had tried keys in other doors looking for
the master key that they thought they needed, but
they didn't necessarily need it because there's no evidence that one even jiggled
the handle on the door that they should have been breaching at that point.
And by the way, even if it had been locked and
there's no evidence that that is actually the case,
they had what's called a halligan bar and acts like tool that can open locked doors.
And by the way, Alonso, I don't think we need to point out that there is abundant
evidence from around the country that when cops wanna breach a door,
they're gonna breach the door.
They don't often freak out about the need for keys.
Can you not aim down at the lock and shoot it?
Can you not This is an ele This is not Fort Knox,
this is the door to an elementary school classroom.
You're telling me none of those cops could have kicked it open with riot shields
to defend them?
The initial story that they gave made no sense.
To even say what they said was an insult to everyone that heard that cover story.
But the fact that seemingly nothing about that cover story was even true Alonso,
makes it even worse.
This is one of the most shameful moments for
law enforcement that I can remember from our life.
And it's not like there's not a lot of competition.
>> Well, you And you're right, it's the shame of law enforcement.
And again, where are the good cops?
Where are the real cops, the brave cops?
Cuz there's a lot of cops that would have stormed in that door.
They have those little battering rams, the handheld ones.
Those seem to breach doors pretty well.
They have that crowbar-like tool.
Do you know who never needs a key for the door?
The fire department.
I never saw a building burning down because the fire department said,
you know what, we don't have the key.
Now, as far as being outgunned.
Back in the 80s, I believe it was in the 80s, might have been the 90s, but
I think it was the 80s, there was a bank robbery in North Hollywood.
They did a movie about this.
These guys went in, they had all kind of guns, they had some powerful weapons.
And you know what the cops did?
They went to a gun store, there was a gun store less than a mile away.
The cops went in and said, we need guns.
And they grabbed the biggest guns from that gun store and they raced over and
they shot at these guys.
You cannot tell me that these cops, if they didn't have the guns with them,
how far away are more powerful guns?
This is Texas, okay?
This is Texas.
This isn't, I don't know, Asheville, North Carolina or some pacifist college town.
No disrespect to Asheville.
Don't know their gun capacity.
But this is Texas.
You're a cop without a gun.
How far away are the guns?
This is an hour.
Are you kidding?
No, every excuse they have is BS, the door was locked.
Is that all it takes to keep...
You know how many criminals would...
How many drug dealers are like, wait a minute,
all we had to do was lock the door and they don't come in?
Well, I wish we knew that.
Please.
It's an embarrassment.
As you said, this is an embarrassment to law enforcement and
it's an embarrassment to everybody who tries to protect these cops.
Now these cops will talk tough, right?
And if they saw you or me on the street and they said, hey,
you were talking smack about us and they would be big tough men then.
But when an active shooter is killing children, they're like, I'm scared.
I'm not going to You know who's not scared?
Honestly, fire department.
Firemen go in.
You talk about impossible situations, firemen run into burning buildings,
they don't sit around with a plan, they don't look for a key.
If there were kids in a burning building,
no commander is going to stop firemen from going in.
No, this is inexcusable.
It's beyond an embarrassment.
It is horrific.
And the idea that anyone would try to justify or
defend these cops for what they did and
what they didn't do is beyond anything one can imagine.
And yet, John, business as usual, businesses as you guaranteed.
I hate to say this.
I hate to say this, but you know this as well as I do,
there's a crazed shooter out there who's gonna wanna kill more because of this.
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