Officials Agree To Release Uvalde Surveillance Footage Showing 77 Minutes Of Inaction By Cops

The police response to the mass shooter in Robb Elementary School in May was absolutely shameful. The public will soon learn just how shameful it was.

For weeks, there has been a battle between victims’ families and law enforcement in Uvalde to release surveillance footage of the police inside the hallway of the school while the shooter was still in the classroom. A student inside one of the classrooms was repeatedly begging for help from 911. The release of the footage may be able to answer the many questions that people have about the slow law enforcement response.

The families of victims and the general public will soon be able to see for themselves what happened during the 77 minutes of inaction by law enforcement now that the Texas Department of Public Safety has agreed to release the footage.

State and local officials have agreed to release surveillance footage from inside the hallway of Robb Elementary School during the May 24 mass shooting that ended the lives of 19 students and two teachers, a key Texas state legislator said Monday.

The development appears to end a weeks-long dispute between the Texas Department of Public Safety and the mayor of Uvalde over how to handle the sensitive video, although it is not clear when the video will be made public.

The public back-and-forth ultimately became a source of conflict between some family members of the victims and officials who claimed to represent their interests.

At a Monday hearing in Austin, Rep. Dustin Burrows, the chairman of a special Texas House panel investigating the Robb shooting, said the video “would contain no graphic images or depictions of violence,” but supported releasing footage of the police response to help the public better understand what happened inside the school.
Source: ABC News

Burrows said, “I can tell people all day long what it is I saw, the committee can tell people all day long what we saw, but it’s very different to see it for yourself, and we think that’s very important.”

It’s unclear when the video will be released, but Burrows said that he has made the commitment to “continue to put pressure on the situation and consider all options in making sure that video gets out for the public to view.”

The situation could have been stopped within minutes, but law enforcement didn’t act for over an hour.

Texas DPS agreed to release the footage after parents marched through the streets of Uvalde on Sunday demanding accountability. Police Chief Pete Arrendondo ordered cops to continue to wait for backup because — despite the 911 calls from inside one of the classrooms stating the contrary — he thought the gunman was barricaded inside and away from children.

He also insisted that the door to the classroom was locked and part of the delay was in locating the key. That was a lie.

The chief of DPS in TX stood up in TX Senate today & demo’ed that classroom doors couldn’t be locked & Uvalde cop’s claim of trying keys in door was a lie pic.twitter.com/NzMCWEZJq2

— Gabe Hudson (@gabehudson) June 21, 2022

Arrendondo has been placed on administrative leave.

Officials have previously admitted that the situation could have been stopped within just three minutes after images from surveillance footage inside the school showed heavily-armed police officers holding ballistic shields aiming their rifles down the hallway.

The image was taken at 12.04pm on May 24 – 46 minutes before Border Patrol agents entered the classroom and fatally shot Ramos, and more than half an hour after he first entered the building and started firing.

The officers were stopped by police chief Pete Arredondo, who claimed the suspect had barricaded himself inside and said he needed a key to get inside.
Source: Daily Mail

ABC News provides the timeline here:

The law enforcement response in Uvalde will be forever be cited as the “what not to do” in an active shooter situation.