As teased by Karen earlier, here it is. Or at least, here’s a heavily truncated version edited by the Austin-American Statesman.
It’s not awful because it’s graphic. It isn’t. Even the children’s screams have been removed from the audio, the viewer is gently reassured at one point.
It’s awful because it brings home the extent of the cops’ paralysis in a way nothing else can. Even at just four minutes in length, with cops visible in the hallway for only about half that time, the extent of the delay is maddening. You’ll want to crawl through the screen after 60 seconds or so and head down towards the shooter yourself.
They’re outside the door of the classroom at 11:37 a.m. but a few shots from the gunman send them fleeing in terror. That’s when the long wait begins.
An officer briefly checks his smart phone at one point. Another, later in the standoff, helps himself to some hand sanitizer from the dispenser on the wall as he waits around. Ballistic shields are on scene at 11:52, but nothing happens.
There’s finally movement at around 3:15 of the clip, but pay close attention to the “real time” clock in the upper left-hand corner. The police begin making their way down the hallway at 12:21, shortly after they hear the gunman fire four more shots. But it’s another *half-hour* before they finally enter and take him down. Watch, then read on.
The Times reported yesterday on the mood in Uvalde before the video was released. Imagine what the mood will be now.
Kimberly Rubio and her husband, Felix, took the stage on Sunday evening at Uvalde Plaza next to City Hall while holding a photo of their slain daughter, Alexandria Aniyah Rubio, known as Lexi, and read aloud part of the mission statement of the Uvalde Police Department.
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The department “is committed to providing superior police service to the public in order to protect life,” Ms. Rubio said, her voice quavering. She recalled testifying before Congress to plead for more gun control measures in the aftermath of the mass shooting in her city.
Then she looked up and gained fire in her voice. “What I want no one can give me,” she said. “I want my daughter back. If I can’t have her, then those who failed her will never know peace.”…
Vincent Salazar, who lost his granddaughter Layla Marie Salazar in the massacre, came to the march sporting a black T-shirt with a photo of Layla wearing angel wings. He said he wanted the resignation of every officer who failed to breach the doors and stop the gunman in time.
“If you’ve taken a badge to protect the people, protect the babies, why didn’t they do it?” he asked. “This is just the first step, the first march. This is far from over.”
The question remains: How was the gunman able to enter the classroom in the first place? NBC has a smart piece about that today examining a flaw in the security mechanism in classroom doors at Robb Elementary, the fact that they could only be locked from the outside. That means every time a teacher and her class left the classroom for lunch or recess, she had to remember to set the lock on the door from the outside before entering again. Forget to do that and the door would remain open to anyone who came by. One teacher told NBC that she actually stepped out into the hallway after the shooter entered the school to check that the door to her classroom was locked. It was, and one of the students inside quickly let her back in. She missed the gunman, who ended up entering a classroom across from hers, by seconds.
What schools need are so-called “Columbine” locks that can be locked with a key from the outside *or* inside. Those locks also unlock from the inside by pushing on the handle, allowing for quick escape. But Columbine locks don’t come cheap at $200 to $900 apiece. On the other hand, notes NBC, schools already spend big bucks on security measures of dubious value. Why not direct the money towards better locks instead?
You can tell how high distrust is in Texas over the Uvalde response and the attempted cover-up of the humiliating police response based on the fact that the footage has leaked. The Texas House special committee investigating the massacre was already weighing whether to release it, but evidently someone with access to the video wasn’t confident that they or local authorities in Uvalde would do the right thing. So they took matters into their own hands. Which is more than the cops in the hallway did.
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