‘Extremely troubling’: Law enforcement experts shocked by police response to Texas shooter
NBC News reporter Tom Winter spoke to law enforcement experts who were shocked by the police response to the Texas school shooter.
Uvalde police failed to stop 18-year-old Savlador Ramos from entering Robb Elementary School after lingering outside for 12 minutes, and officers waited outside for nearly an hour after he barricaded himself inside a classroom where he killed at least 19 children and two teachers.
"You have to ask the natural question: If this shooter was killed earlier, would more children be alive today?" Winter told "Morning Joe." "I think that's the bottom line. There are serious questions about this, not just coming from you, myself, from people that are watching this, but also from the policing community. Speaking of former chiefs yesterday who were trained, excuse me, who train people in this, that were responsible for officers that would go into these types of situations, I think they find the response to be extremely troubling. Those are the types of words they're using with me."
"There is no school of thought currently in U.S. law enforcement, and this does go back to Columbine," Winter continued, "but particularly because now we've had so many of these incidents and so many of these incidents have been studied as far as what went right and what went wrong. It is very clear here that the basic protocols of, you get a couple officers together so you have somebody on your right, your left, somebody behind you, and you go in. I'm not sitting here saying today that I would look forward to going after somebody who has an AR-15, has already shot at and killed individuals, and you've got little kids in this instance, somebody who is incredibly depraved, and withholding some of the details out of sensitivity to the poor families going through this. I'm not saying that I would jump up and be the first in line for that, but that is their job. That is the reality, unfortunately, that they have to deal with."
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"They're dealing with somebody who has a high-powered weapon, a weapon that would hurt somebody like myself -- 240 pounds, 6'3 -- one bullet could end me out of that gun, let alone little kids," he added. "So they needed to get in there, they needed to confront the threat. Somebody said to me yesterday, it is not minutes that count, it is seconds that count. That is how dangerous this situation was for those little kids, and they say they have video of this. They've said a lot of things so far. For us not to have a timeline at this stage of the information, a preliminary one, is, frankly, shocking."
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