UVALDE, Texas (AP) — An investigation Uvalde city leaders ordered into the Robb Elementary School shooting cleared local police officers of wrongdoing Thursday, despite acknowledging a series of rippling failures during the fumbled response to the 2022 classroom attack that left 19 children and two teachers dead.

Several family members of victims walked out in anger midway though a presentation that portrayed Uvalde Police Department officers of acting swiftly and appropriately, in contrast to scathing and sweeping past reports that faulted police at every level.

“You said they did it in good faith. You call that good faith? They stood there 77 minutes,” said Kimberly Mata-Rubio, whose daughter was among those killed in the attack, after the presentation ended.

Another person in the crowd screamed, “Cowards!”

Jesse Prado, an Austin-based investigator and former police detective who made the report for the Uvalde City Council on Thursday, described several failures by responding local, state and federal officers at the scene that day: communication problems, poor training for live shooter situations, lack of available equipment and delays on breaching the classroom.

“There were problems all day long with communication and lack of it. The officers had no way of knowing what was being planned, what was being said,” Prado said. “If they would have had a ballistic shield, it would have been enough to get them to the door.”

  • not_that_guy05@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    Did anybody honestly think they were gonna do something to them? There was a whole reason while there were marches for police accountability, BLM, and racism during covid.

    Nothing changed.

    ACAB

    • Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      Nothing changed.

      Not true!

      A bipartisan bill was passed to increase Federal police budgets by something like $40 billion.

      Nevermind all that police protest, we just need to give cops more money, I guess, and that will solve everything. /s

        • Quetzalcutlass@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          Hey, give them a break. They’re a persecuted minority!

          Or they persecute minorities. One of the two.

          • Passerby6497@lemmy.world
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            8 months ago

            Hey, give them a break! They work a dangerous job and just want to go home every day! Never mind that they’re not even in the top 10 most dangerous jobs, or that they’ve willingly signed up to put their lives on the line. No, they just want to go home at night donchaknow!

          • SoleInvictus@lemmy.world
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            8 months ago

            When you’re a cop, you can be both persecuted and persecutor. If only we could harness the power of their flip flopping to generate electricity, the police would finally do more good than harm.

      • theneverfox@pawb.social
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        8 months ago

        Didn’t you read their quote? They didn’t go in not because they were cowards who shirked their duty, it was because they didn’t have a bulletproof shield

        Clearly we just need to keep arming the police until the protection trickles down

  • TransplantedSconie@lemm.ee
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    8 months ago

    if they just had a ballistic shield they could have made it to the door

    The state trooper that finally shot the fucker literally ran in with a shot gun. Fucking cowards.

    • Milk_Sheikh@lemm.ee
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      8 months ago

      … This ghoul seriously forced in a talking point asking for more equipment? To grieving parents who watched their kids die while the police were derelict in their duty? 50% of the city budget isn’t enough huh?

      The report for the Uvalde city council… was conducted by Jesse Prado, an Austin-based investigator and former police detective.

      Ah. “We’ve investigated ourselves and found no wrongdoing” despite the feds openly stating the opposite

    • Frozengyro@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      Yup, once a team decides not to go in, they won’t go. There will always be another goalpost to move. If they had the shield, they would be waiting for one more guy, or a specialized unit or a robot to go in.

  • stoly@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    I dunno. If only people had voted in a change of leadership after a failure of leadership or something.

    • smolyeet@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      Uvaldes is majority conservative according to Google, so that wouldn’t have happened. I expect nothing less of Texas

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        That’s what makes me saddest. Their community was wounded directly and that wasn’t enough to cause change. There’s no hope for them.

    • Passerby6497@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      Yeah, unfortunately they got the government they voted for, and decided that nothing was good enough.

      • Traister101@lemmy.today
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        8 months ago

        Are you actually doing a “Look at the bright side of a child massacre the police did jack shit about”??? Wtf is wrong with you people why are your brains so broken

        • Zaktor@sopuli.xyz
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          I’m sure this is a bit, but it’s a bad bit that doesn’t make much sense.

          • Traister101@lemmy.today
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            Nah I don’t think it’s a bit. They said they want to vote for RFK Jr in another thread and that’s equally stupid behavior

          • BaronOfHair@lemmy.world
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            That benefits arise from events which seem, at first glance, horrific doesn’t make sense to you?

        • BaronOfHair@lemmy.world
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          “Are you actually doing a “Look at the bright side of a child massacre the police did jack shit about”???”

          Benefits emerge from even the most dreadful events, just as success yields it’s share of drawbacks. Incidents of mass child murder are hardly exempt from this principle

              • BaronOfHair@lemmy.world
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                Salvador Ramos was a true Progressive, unlike celebrity posers in the mold of Greta Thunberg. Most yap about the dangers of overpopulation, yet do very little to rectify this malady. Ramos went out and decreased the number of humans on this planet, rather standing in front of the cameras, yapping about how much he cares

            • BaronOfHair@lemmy.world
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              8 months ago

              Is it not more horrible for those who’ve experienced an event they find unpleasant to stay locked in a cycle of telling themselves “This is horrible… I can’t bear it!!!”? Nothing but further misery can come from that

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        8 months ago

        Emotions have cooled as much as they ever will, or should. Do you think parents will forget about children who died while the cops stood around and prevented the parents from going in to save them? They never will.

        And parents whose kids survived, you’re wrong about them. They’ll never think “Thank god it was my neighbor’s kid who died, not mine.” That’s not how decent humans think.

        • BaronOfHair@lemmy.world
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          I never asserted that they would “forget”, just that they’d come to appreciated the potential perks which came out of these events, rather than viewing them in a one-dimensional fashion

          "And parents whose kids survived, you’re wrong about them. They’ll never think “Thank god it was my neighbor’s kid who died, not mine.”

          You’re engaging a great deal of mind reading/jumping to conclusions there

          • orcrist@lemm.ee
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            If you write in ways that suggest that people should look on the bright side after a mass shooting, I think the conclusions are merited.

            • BaronOfHair@lemmy.world
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              You really believe it’s healthy for folks to exacerbate and prolong their misery, by NOT developing alternate ways of viewing an event they find unpleasant?

      • bryan@lemmy.sdf.org
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        He got 64 percent of the vote in the primary. He’s running against two other republicans. The do-nothing incompetent sheriff is still likely to win.

          • reddig33@lemmy.world
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            8 months ago

            What do you call it when an incumbent wins his primary against same party challengers if not re-elected?

            • Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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              I mean, the Clown with Short Bowels is being annoyingly pedantic, but they’re not wrong.

              What do you call it when an incumbent wins his primary against same party challengers if not re-elected?

              I would personally go with “The Party’s Chosen Candidate” but I understand that’s pretty wordy.

              • ShortBoweledClown@lemmy.one
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                I feel that with the general turmoil of US politics in recent years, providing correct information is becoming increasingly important. How are people supposed to take part in a system they don’t understand?

                Even if OP was saying it flippantly, the next person reading it may not know that.

                • Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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                  8 months ago

                  I agree, but unfortunately being a pedant can be annoying, even to other pedants.

                  Accuracy is indeed important, but that’s not going to make humans, you know, stop being human and stop responding emotionally instead of thoughtfully. Humans are gonna human and damn it if they aren’t irrational beasts. I should know, I am one.

      • meco03211@lemmy.world
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        But what are his chances in the general? Is it a location where the “real” election is the primary and whoever has an R by their name in the general will win?

        • PM_Your_Nudes_Please@lemmy.world
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          Yup, Uvalde is majority Republican and the election is expected to go to Republican candidates. Since he won the Republican primary, he basically already won the general.

  • paddirn@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    “The officers didn’t actually shoot any of the children themselves, so therefor they did nothing wrong.”

      • Aniki 🌱🌿@lemm.ee
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        That footage will never, and I mean, NEVER see the light of day. It will have to be leaked to get out.

        • BassaForte@lemmy.world
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          If they did no wrong, then they would release it. Since they haven’t released it and never will, wrong has definitely been done.

        • CosmicTurtle@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          I could have sworn they did release it. I remember people saying that it was graphic because you should see dead children on the floor as the police, nonchalantly, walked around the building.

          • PM_Your_Nudes_Please@lemmy.world
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            There have been a few mass shootings with released footage, but Uvalde isn’t one of them. The prevailing theory is that a cop (or multiple cops) accidentally shot a kid (or multiple kids) in the classroom so the footage has been buried. IIRC, at least one kid in the classroom had gunshot wounds that weren’t consistent with the caliber of gun the shooter was using, but matched standard police issue.

            • daltotron@lemmy.world
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              Holy fuck, really? I didn’t keep up with it at all, but that seems like a pretty significant indictment of the department and the officers there, way beyond even just the extremely laggardly response time and very poor tactical decision making. That’s also what I would say is pretty definitive evidence, caliber mismatch isn’t something you can really handwave away. Do you got any sources on deck for this?

    • IninewCrow@lemmy.ca
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      At this point, I’m starting to think that the officers delaying so long might have actually prevented more children and bystanders from getting killed … if they had gone in earlier with guns blazing at everything that moved, they probably would have killed a lot of innocent bystanders before realizing who they were actually supposed to shoot in the first place.

  • Dead_or_Alive@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    Since the last yellow drop of piss leaked out of the cowards who were at that school that day the city was always going to find that every single law enforcement officer onsite at the Uvalde massacre acted appropriately.

    They are facing massive lawsuits and they will do nothing to give the opposing litigants any ammunition to use against them in court.

  • ProfessorProteus@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    So they’ve (officially) done nothing wrong? Does that imply that it’s not wrong to laze about while a shooter—who they obviously knew about—works unimpeded to hollow out classrooms with a fucking carbine?

    • BassTurd@lemmy.world
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      Legally I think that’s exactly what that implies. Cops are under no obligation to defend anyone. They are law enforcement officers, not protection for civilians.

      ACAB. Their job is to keep us in line, not protect us.

  • dangblingus@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    “Missteps” implies that the police did things.

    They failed to act and instead they let children get murdered. I know the SC said that cops don’t have to protect you whatsoever, but this is beyond the pale. You have a duty to the American people given that they pay your salary, you fat fucking worthless pitiful excuses for law “enforcement”.

    • theyoyomaster@lemmy.world
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      The precedent is that an individual officer has no duty to protect any given individual on the basis that the collective police have a responsibility to the public as a whole that outweighs an individual. That argument doesn’t work when the entire department stood by and actively prevented any action against the shooter.

  • Nualkris@lemm.ee
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    Didn’t they just overwhelmingly reelect the sheriff that was part of that fiasco?

    • Ann Archy@lemmy.world
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      I always saw them more as cunts, personally, but I suppose they can be more than one thing.

  • Souyo@lemmy.world
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    Where was this outrage when it came to voting against the same sheriff? Or voting for Abbott?

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    The investigator who presented the report blamed families who rushed to the school that day for compromising the police response, prompting an eruption of anger from several families and some stormed out.

    Classy, investigator-who-prepared-the-report. What are you, some dumbass cop?

    Jesse Prado, an Austin-based investigator and former police detective who made the report for the Uvalde City Council,

    Oh. Yeah. Well.

    Yeah.