Thursday, March 28

Editorial: Where were the heroes? Police stood by as Uvalde students died, begged for help


Frantic, wailing parents confined by yellow crime scene tape plead with police officers outside Robb Elementary, pushing and pacing with the desperation of pent-up animals headed to slaughter. Except it isn’t their own slaughter they’re trying to stop; it’s their children’s.

In cellphone footage that’s emerged from the chaotic scene that unfolded Tuesday as a teen gunman rampaged inside with an AR-15-style rifle, mothers and fathers are seen pleading, screaming for officers to do something to save their children, or at the very least, to let parents — without guns, without armor, with bare hands, if need be — charge into the school and give their babies a fighting chance.

“You know that they are kids, right?” a man yells in one video. “They’re little kids and they don’t know how to defend themselves!”

The officers refuse. Instead, as children faced an imminent threat inside, officers busied themselves corralling parents, patrolling the barrier with Tasers and even handcuffing and subduing parents on the ground if they didn’t comply, according to video and witness accounts.

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