Cornyn: Criticism of Police Response to Uvalde Shooting Is ‘Destructive, Distracting, and Unfair’

Senator John Cornyn (R., Texas) on Saturday defended the police who responded to the Uvalde, Texas, elementary-school shooting amid a firestorm of criticism in response to reports that police did not engage the shooter for over an hour.

“The second guessing and finger pointing among state and local law enforcement is destructive, distracting, and unfair,” Cornyn wrote in a tweet. 

“Complex scenarios require split-second decisions. Easy to criticize with 20-20 hindsight,” he added in a second tweet.

The senator said there will be “plenty of time to sort this out later.”

“Focus now should be on [thorough] investigation and lessons learned to prevent future tragedies, not finger pointing,” he added.

Cornyn’s comments come after officials revealed that the shooter, 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, barricaded himself in a fourth grade classroom — where he killed 19 students and two teachers — for more than an hour as as many as 19 police officers gathered outside the classroom but did not engage him.

Federal Border Patrol agents killed the shooter after entering the school on their own, defying local law enforcement that had asked them to hold back, two senior federal law enforcement sources told NBC News on Friday.

Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steven McCraw said local officers waited too long to enter the school and engage the shooter during a press conference on Friday. He said the on-scene commander, police chief Peter Arredondo, believed the situation was “no longer an active shooting” but a “barricaded subject” under the assumption that all the children inside the two connected classrooms were dead, despite students inside the room still calling 911 for help.

“From the benefit of hindsight, where I’m sitting now, of course it was not the right decision: it was the wrong decision, period.” McCraw said. “There’s no excuse for that.”

The school district’s police department had held an active shooter drill in March that said first responders should “stop the killing” and that the “officer’s first priority is to move in and confront the attacker.”

Texas Governor Greg Abbott said Friday that he is “absolutely livid” that he was “misled” about the initial details of the shooting

“It is imperative that the leaders of the investigation get down to the very second with 100 percent accuracy,” Abbott said. “Law enforcement is going to earn the trust of the public. Every action by those officials is under investigation by both the Texas Rangers and by the FBI.”

More from National Review

• Texas Governor Proposes Legislation That Would Bar Cities That Defund Police from Hiking Property Taxes

• Oregon Becomes First State to Decriminalize Possession of Drugs

• FBI Warns Police Chiefs Nationwide to Be on High Alert for Inauguration Day Threats