Fox News host Tucker Carlson, normally a supporter of law enforcement, harshly criticized the police response to Tuesday’s mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas.
SO WHAT
Even Americans who “back the blue” are questioning how police have handled the tragedy.
THE QUESTIONS
“No matter how pro-law enforcement you are — and we are — there is only so much B.S. you can take in the face of a tragedy like this,” Carlson said Thursday on his show.
Carlson noted that Texas police appear to have given the public inaccurate information about the shooting at Robb Elementary School, which left 19 students and two adults dead.
- Carlson also raised some of the explosive questions about the behavior of law enforcement officials at the scene.
WAS THE SHOOTER CONFRONTED BEFORE ENTERING THE SCHOOL?: Initially, the Texas Department of Public Safety said a school resource officer had confronted Salvador Ramos, the 18-year-old gunman, before he entered the building.
- But after eyewitness accounts and videos contradicted that account, officials provided a different one.
- “He walked in unobstructed initially,” Texas Department of Public Safety Regional Director Victor Escalon told CNN. “So from the grandmother’s house, to the [ditch], to the school, into the school, he was not confronted by anybody.”
HOW LONG DID IT TAKE COPS TO RESPOND?: Angeli Rose Gomez told The Wall Street Journal she drove 40 miles to Robb Elementary to rescue her two sons after hearing about the shooting at their school.
- According to Gomez, when she arrived, police were “doing nothing. They were just standing outside the fence. They weren’t going in there or running anywhere.”
- She said federal marshals handcuffed her after she complained, but later freed her, at which point she, jumped the school fence and ran inside to retrieve her boys.
- Multiple other Robb Elementary parents have claimed police not only refused to enter the building but also prevented them from getting their children out.
- “Now, if that’s true, it’s a scandal,” Carlson said of Gomez’s story. “In the meantime, we know that police were forcibly keeping parents away from the building,”
DID SOME OFFICERS SAVE THEIR OWN KIDS? Hours after the shooting, a KENS 5 reporter asked Lt. Christopher Olivarez, a spokesperson for the Texas Department of Public Safety, about a rumor “that some law enforcement officers actually went into [the] school to get their kids out.”
“So what we do know right now is that there was some police officers [and] families trying to get their children out of the school because it was an active shooter situation,” Olivarez said.
- Carlson commented on the rumor, “if it is true, it’s a moral crime, at the very least.”
THE POLITICS
Although Carlson’s concerns about the police echoed those of many liberal journalists, his commentary did not spare the media or Democratic politicians.
- “Within hours of Tuesday’s massacre, Democrats in Congress announced they plan to clamp down on your ability to defend yourself with a firearm,” he said, referring to promised gun control legislation.
- “Why is that? Well, apparently the Uvalde shooting was your fault, so you’re going to pay the price. The media applauded this, so Democrats went even further.”