By any measure, the law enforcement response to the May shooting at Robb Elementary School was an abject failure. At a Senate hearing Tuesday, Texas Department of Public Safety Director Col. Steven McCraw testified about failure after failure from the responding officers.
“Three minutes after the subject entered the west building, there were sufficient number of armed officers wearing body armor to isolate, distract, and neutralize the subject,” he testified. “One hour and 14 minutes and eight seconds: That's how long the children waited, and the teachers waited, in room 111 to be rescued.”
Most of the heat is falling on Uvalde School Police Chief Pete Arredondo, who has not testified in public but has been identified as the officer in charge at the scene. He reportedly told officers in the hall, who were ready to go, to stand down while he may have been waiting for the key to a door that was not locked.
Randy Sutton, a former police lieutenant who leads The Wounded Blue, tells AFN he is surprised none of the officers broke rank and took matters into their own hands.
“I would have punched my commander in the face,” he insists, “and gone in and got the guy.”
That is an easy thing to say today when you are weeks past that terrible day, Sutton allows, but the decisions made outside Robb Elementary that day could be some of the worst ones ever made in policing, he predicts.
