Uvalde shooter Salvador Ramos is not the only one to blame for massacre

‘Kids are getting murdered. Get in the room. End of story.’

 This was one of several impassioned tweets posted in the last 24 hours by Rob O’Neill, the Navy SEAL Team Six hero who shot and killed Osama Bin Laden.

Another read: ‘Hey cops, get in the room! The kids are calling you. Get in the f*cking room!’

And a third said simply: ‘I would never have left you alone, kids. I’m heartbroken.’

He wouldn’t.

And if someone like O’Neill had been in Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, last Tuesday, then I would have given the sniveling little coward of a shooter two hopes of surviving longer than a few seconds: no hope… and no hope.

Yet incredibly, there were up to 19 armed police officers inside the school for 70 minutes before 18-year-old Salvador Ramos finished his hellish homicidal rampage.

That’s one for each of the 9 and 10-year-old children who were murdered.

 These cops were all trained to use guns to protect the public and were all carrying guns to protect the public. 

 But when the moment came to protect the youngest, most vulnerable and defenceless members of the public, they went AWOL.

Or rather, they stood there outside the classroom where the kids were trapped, doing absolutely nothing.

 This was despite several of the desperate children frantically calling 911 on cell phones pleading for help.

 Eight calls in total were made from the classroom between 12.03pm and 12.50pm when the police finally went in.

We’re told they were waiting for keys to access the classroom, tactical equipment, and an order to go in.

 But it sounds to me like what they were really waiting for was a collective infusion of bravery and duty like the kind Rob O’Neill and his fellow SEALs displayed in Abbottobad, Pakistan, 11 years ago.

 And it never came.

Instead, these shameful excuses for ‘law enforcement’ did nothing as 19 children and two teachers were blown to pieces at close range by a maniac with an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle.

Only THEN, when it was all too horribly late, did they summon enough resolve to go into the classroom and shoot him.

 What makes this even more pathetic and shameful is that at first, these same Uvalde cops tried to tell the world what brave heroes they’d been.

Their initial claim to the media was that they’d had a shoot-out with Ramos and taken him out, saving countless lives.

But that was an obscene lie.

In fact, they froze in terror after the first bullets began flying, and by doing so, they cost countless lives.

 They even admit to their disgusting cowardice now, with no apparent shred of self-awareness at how awful it sounds.

 Texas Department of Public Safety spokesman Chris Olivarez defended the officers by saying ‘they could have been shot, they could have been killed.’

Well, yes, they could.

 But THAT’S THEIR BLOODY JOB!

They’re literally paid and trained with public money to defend people and tackle criminals.

 As Fox News presenter Janice Dean tweeted: ‘It’s like a fireman not going into a building because they might get burned.’

 And just when I thought this diabolical story couldn’t possibly get any worse, cell phone videos emerged on social media showing hysterical parents outside the school trying to run through the inactive heavily armed police to get their kids out – and being physically restrained from doing so.

‘You’re scared of getting shot?’ one mother shouts in one of the videos. ‘I’ll go in without a vest — I will!’

 Another woman claimed she was handcuffed in the melee.

 ‘The police were doing nothing,’ Angeli Rose Gomez told the Wall Street Journal. ‘They were just standing outside the fence. They weren’t going in there or running anywhere.’

Ms Gomez has two children at Robb Elementary and drove 40 miles to the school after hearing of the attack.

But despite begging officers to be allowed to go and save her children, she says she was arrested for ‘intervening in an active investigation.’

Ms Gomez eventually jumped the school fence and rescued her children herself.

 Isn’t this the most damnable thing you’ve ever heard?

A bunch of pathetically gutless armed police officers doing more to stop a mother from saving her kids than they were doing to stop a mass shooter murdering kids.

 We saw all this before in 1999 at Columbine High School, where Colorado police waited an hour after gunfire first erupted in the school for SWAT teams to arrive, during which time 13 people were shot dead by two young men.

 After that horrendous massacre, police were instructed to prioritise the safety of people under threat, not themselves.

 They’re supposed to now act as fast as possible to neutralize a shooter in these situations, and shockingly, it’s transpired Uvalde cops were given specific guidance about this only two months ago.

 CNN reported that in March, the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District hosted active shooter training for Uvalde-area law enforcement officers, and gave them a manual which stated:

 ‘Officer’s first priority is to move in and confront the attacker. This may include bypassing the injured and not responding to cries for help from children.’

 But these officers didn’t do that.

 They let those children die.

 In an embarrassingly shambolic presser, tearful Texas Department of Public Safety director, Col. Steven McCraw said the police didn’t go in earlier because they ‘believed that it had transitioned from an active shooter to a barricaded subject.’

He added: ‘It was the wrong decision. Period. There’s no excuse for that.’

You think???

 It was one of the worst decisions in the history of law enforcement.

 And the imbecile who made that decision? Ulvade School District Police Chief Pete Arredondo.

 There’s even a suggestion, revealed by the Post, that he didn’t have his police radio on him when he made the call for his officers not to go in, so may not have known the crucial fact that children were phoning 911 from the classroom.

If that’s true, it just adds to the picture of terrible incompetence that enveloped this police operation and Arredondo should resign.

 If it’s not true, and he did know about the classroom calls, then Arrendondo should be fired immediately for appalling negligence.

 Of course, he could tell us himself, but like his officers, he’s nowhere to see seen as the flak flies, and won’t answer questions.

 Either way, Arredondo’s decision not to engage much earlier with this shooter cost many of those poor young children their lives, betrayed their parents, and indelibly shamed Texas police.

 As did the decision by all his officers not to have the courage or sense of duty to ignore it and charge in to try to save those kids. 

 Salvador Ramos wasn’t the only sniveling little coward in this atrocity.