Police response to Texas school shooting ‘abject failure,’ says top official

WASHINGTON (AA) – A senior law enforcement official said Tuesday that police response to the school shooting last month in the US state of Texas was an “abject failure.”

“There’s compelling evidence that the law enforcement response to the attack at Robb Elementary was an abject failure and antithetical to everything we’ve learned over the last two decades since the Columbine massacre,” said Steve McCraw, the Director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, during testimony before a Texas Senate Committee.

He said three minutes after Salvador Ramos, 18, entered the building, there was a sufficient number of armed officers wearing body armor to isolate, distract and neutralize the gunman.

“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. The officers had weapons, the children had none,” said McCraw. “The officers had body armor, the children had none. The officers had training, the subject had none.”

Texas police have been broadly criticized for failing to respond timely to the shooting.

Ramos, who used an AR-15-style semi-automatic rifle, killed 19 students and two teachers May 24 in Uvalde.