Deadly Police Mistake: Waiting To Confront Shooter
Uvalde Schools District Police Chief Peter Arredondo is not the only one to blame for the lengthy delay in neutralizing the shooter who brutally slaughtered 21 people in Texas, including 19 elementary-school children (“Failure to Communicate,” May 29).
Most troubling is the lack of coordination among the various lawenforcement agencies involved. Whether due to confusion, lack of radios or turf battles, these entities performed poorly, and their hesitation cost innocent lives.
A class-action lawsuit should be filed against them. It won’t bring the kids and their teachers back, but it would hold the people charged with protecting them accountable for their grievous errors.
Stuart Ellison
Brooklyn
The one word I thought I’d never use to describe Texans is “cowardly.”
On 9/11, New York City’s Bravest and Finest rushed into the towers to save lives and do their job to protect and serve.
I can now imagine if 9/11 had happened in Texas, the police and firefighters would have waited for the fires to go out or for the buildings to collapse before they to did anything.
A slogan for Texas is no longer “Remember the Alamo,” but “Remember Uvalde.”
Cowardice was on full display by the police, but bravery was also on display from an unarmed mother, who had been handcuffed by the cowards before saving her children in the face of danger.
Francis Rushford
Brooklyn
As we mourn the innocent victims of the horrific Texas massacre, we are left wondering why the police delayed in taking out the shooter, even as children inside the classroom kept making 911 calls desperately asking for police assistance.
Call it poor judgment, lack of training or possibly even cowardice. Out of respect for the victims and their families, the police chief, Peter Arredondo, and the head of the Texas Department of Public Safety, Steven McCraw, should resign. And if they don’t, they should be fired.
I don’t pretend to know the first thing about being a police officer, but what I do know is that if you choose that profession you have sworn to protect the people, and that is what they miserably failed to do.
Bert Wedemeyer
Bensonhurst
The police response in Uvalde was inexcusable; that much is obvious. However, there is a lot of blame to go around. We can’t lay everything on the cops.
According to news reports, a teacher propped open an outside door, and the shooter had easy access to the school.
Also, the classroom where the children were was unlocked, giving the shooter access to his victims.
Then the shooter locked the door behind him, so when the Border Patrol agents finally arrived, they had to get a key from a janitor to make entry. They apparently did not have breaching tools themselves.
Schools can have all the active shooter drills they want, but they are useless unless the people believe that “It can happen here.”
The school system must not have stressed how important these drills were or carried out follow-up inspections to see if the staff were complying.
I hope every school system in the country learns the terrible lesson of Uvalde.
Robert DeCandia
New Hyde Park
A key point made by Texas Department of Public Safety Regional Director Victor Escalon when asked about the slow police response to the Robb Elementary School shooting was that Uvalde is a small town.
Very often, small towns have small police departments that are undertrained and unprepared. It is apparent the supervisor who responded to this incident was inept and made poor decisions and lost control of the situation.
Police officers need to be better trained and better equipped. This is no time to defund the police and abolish ICE. After all, it was Border Patrol Agents who courageously stormed the school and killed the gunman.
Nicholas Maffei
Yonkers