Confronting the danger

To the editor:

All the errors that the Department of Justice found from their investigation of the mass killings of 19 students and 2 teachers at the Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, don’t specifically include the primary cause of the failure of police to save the lives of the children and teachers shot by Salvador Ramos: Cowardice by police officers, especially then-Chief Pete Arredondo.  Arredondo, who has since been fired, said he thought the classroom door was locked without trying to open it? That’s ridiculous; he didn’t want to face the shooter.  

The officers, especially the supervisors. failed to recognize this was an active shooter situation because they didn’t want to face an active shooter. Even after Ramos fired shots and the officers were nicked by shrapnel, and they heard four shots from two classrooms, the officers failed to go in and take him out.  

How can officers think the classroom was unoccupied when school was open and the children had not left the school? As DOJ found, officers delayed outside classrooms while children died inside.  

Several officers, including Uvalde Police Detective Louis Landry, said officers felt they weren’t “equipped” to face a shooter with an AR-15. The members of the Border Patrol special operations unit finally entered the classroom and took out the shooter. They arrived an hour too late to save lives.   

If a police officer is not willing to risk his or her life in order to save the lives of innocents, resign now and find a less dangerous job. 

Michael J. Gorman

The writer is a retired NYPD lieutenant.