INTERNACIONAL

Uvalde mayor accuses Texas law enforcement director of lying, leaking or misleading to avoid blame in shooting investigation

Published

7 días ago

22/06/2022

«Col. McCraw has continued to, whether you want to call it lie, leak, mislead or misstate, information in order to distance his own troopers and Rangers from the response. Every briefing he leaves out the number of his own officers and Rangers that were on-scene that day,» McLaughlin told residents at a city council meeting Tuesday.

The mayor’s criticisms came just hours after McCraw testified before a Texas Senate committee that the response from law enforcement was an «abject failure» and violated commonly taught protocol to stop the shooter as quickly as possible.

«Col. McCraw has an agenda and it is not to present a full report on what happened and give factual answers on what happened to this community,» said McLaughlin.

The DPS director accused Uvalde school district police chief Pedro «Pete» Arredondo, who McCraw and others have identified as the on-scene commander, of ordering police to wait in a nearby hallway for unnecessary equipment and keys to a door that was not even locked.

«Three minutes after the subject entered the West building, there was a sufficient number of armed officers wearing body armor to isolate, distract and neutralize the subject,» McCraw said. «The only thing stopping the hallway of dedicated officers from entering rooms 111 and 112 was the on-scene commander, who decided to place the lives of officers before the lives of children.»

A top Texas official shared new details on how police responded to the Uvalde massacre. This is the latest minute-by-minute timeline

The finger-pointing adds further tension to a tragedy that has become a case study in bad policing and worse communication. Nearly a month has passed since an 18-year-old gunman killed 19 children and two teachers at the school. He remained inside the classrooms from 11:33 a.m. until 12:50 p.m. — when police finally breached the door and killed him, according to a DPS timeline.

Yet authorities have repeatedly changed their account of key facts about what happened inside the rooms and what police did in response during those 77 minutes.

McLaughlin said that the repeated misstatements and blame-shifting from Texas authorities was dividing the community and frustrating grieving families

«What matters to Uvalde is that these brokenhearted families and this grieving community get a full investigation and an accurate report of what happened that day,» he said. «The petty infighting, the clickbait headlines and the politically motivated scapegoating is not helping anyone.»

CNN has reached out to the Texas Department of Public Safety, the district attorney’s office, the chair of the Texas House investigating committee and the San Antonio office of the FBI for further comment.

Mayor says he’s frustrated by lack of transparency

At the city council meeting, McLaughlin noted that officers from at least eight law enforcement agencies were in the hallway outside the classrooms on the day of the shooting. McLaughlin said he has no desire to pursue elected office again and is «not covering up for anybody,» saying all responding agencies should be held accountable.

He said the leaking of certain bits of information over the past few weeks «continues to create chaos in our community and keeps the whole truth from coming out.»

He particularly took aim at what he said was a false report that local police weren’t cooperating with investigators, and he expressed his frustration with being left in the dark.

«I’m just as frustrated — maybe not as frustrated as the families that have lost their loved ones — but it pisses me off that I can’t give you answers or can’t get you answers,» McLaughlin said.

McLaughlin said he was meant to receive a daily briefing from authorities since its onset but none has been provided.

«The gloves are off. As we know it, we will share it. We are not going to hold back anymore,» he said.

McLaughlin has criticized the lack of transparency from investigators before, saying at a city council meeting on June 7, «We had some missteps with the DPS releasing some facts or different things, but that wasn’t the Rangers who were leading the investigation. I’m not blaming anybody,» he said.

«We were told one thing one day, and the next day the narrative changed. You were told for a week that a teacher propped the door open with a rock, and at the end of the week that story was gone too. That’s the missteps I’m talking about,» he added.

The city council meeting also took issue with Arredondo’s absence from the public eye.

Arredondo, the school police chief who was elected to the city council this year, testified behind closed doors to a Texas House committee Tuesday but has not spoken publicly about his decision-making on the day of the shooting.

The council members unanimously voted to deny him a leave of absence from future meetings on Tuesday, earning applause from attendees.

DPS director plans to release bodycam video

Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin, Jr., seen here at a city council meeting on June 7, said law enforcement agencies have not kept him and city officials in the loop.

Tuesday’s developments came after reporting from CNN, the Texas Tribune and the Austin American-Statesman previewed some of the DPS timeline and revealed further flaws in the police response.

Details from the first moments of the massacre include that 11 officers were inside the building within three minutes of the gunman opening fire. Rifles and ballistic shields were available shortly after, reports revealed.

But 77 minutes passed from the time the gunman started shooting to when a tactical response team entered the classroom and killed him, according to a timeline of events from DPS. Authorities said they believed the classroom doors were locked and worked to locate a key, but security footage of officers testing the doors has yet to be found, according to the reports.

Parents and residents call for Uvalde school board to fire district police chief during emotional open forum

Arredondo previously told The Texas Tribune he didn’t consider himself the incident commander and left his police radio and campus radio outside the school because he thought carrying them would slow him down.

Citing a DPS assessment, McCraw told the state Senate committee Tuesday that Uvalde school police officers’ radios would not have worked inside the school building due to a weaker signal. Border Patrol agents had the only portable radios that could have worked, he said, but when Border Patrol tried to patch their signals together with local law enforcements’ devices, their radios didn’t work either.

McCraw said that DPS planned to release bodycam footage at some point.

«Whenever the district attorney approves it, we are going to release all the body camera coverage, we’re going to release all the school video and the funeral video,» he said.

CNN’s Andy Rose, Rosa Flores, Christina Maxouris, Amanda Musa, Rosalina Nieves, Rebekah Riess and Steve Almasy contributed to this report.

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INTERNACIONAL

En medio de turbulencias internas, España maniobra para mostrar que es un socio confiable para la OTAN

Published

18 mins ago

29/06/2022

noticiasdelmomento.com

Antes de su inauguración formal de este miércoles, la cumbre de la OTAN en Madrid ya había dado lo que los aliados que la integran consideran un inicio de buen augurio: el inminente ingreso de Suecia y Finlandia a la Alianza, luego de que Turquía accediera a levantar su veto.

Sin embargo España, el país anfitrión de la cumbre que se celebra este miércoles y jueves, recibe a los jefes de Estado y de Gobierno de los 30 países de la OTAN y de las naciones invitadas en medio de las turbulencias, casi crónicas, que sacuden a la coalición de gobierno formada por el Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE) y Unidas Podemos.

A 40 años del ingreso de España en la OTAN, la organización político-militar defensiva que se fundó en 1949 contra la amenaza de la por entonces URSS, el presidente del gobierno Pedro Sánchez maniobra, una vez más, entre la imagen de socio confiable que quiere lucir ante los aliados de la Alianza y los palos en la rueda que interponen algunos ministros de su gabinete que pertenecen a Podemos.

Pedro Sánchez interviene con la bandera de España al revés durante el inicio de la cumbre. Foto: EFE

Horas antes de la inauguración formal de la cumbre, Pedro Sánchez señaló este miércoles en referencia a los líderes políticos de Podemos: “A la izquierda del Partido Socialista también se tiene que hacer esta reflexión sobre la necesidad de aumentar nuestra capacidad de disuasión”, dijo Sánchez sobre su idea de incrementar el presupuesto destinado a defensa.

Gasto militar o protección social

“Debemos garantizar nuestra seguridad, nuestra defensa, hoy amenazada, y para eso necesitamos aumentar nuestras capacidades de disuasión. No de ataque, pero sí de disuasión”, insistió.

“No es el momento de aumentar el gasto militar sino de aumentar la protección social”, dijo la ministra de Derechos Sociales, Ione Belarra, de Podemos.

“Con balas no se come, con bombas no se cura y con tanques no se apagan incendios”, agregó.

La ministra de Defensa española, Margarita Robles, reforzó la posición de la parte socialistas del gobierno: “La política exterior y de seguridad de defensa de España es clara, rotunda y contundente. Comprometida con los aliados -dijo Robles-. Luego, las declaraciones personales que pueda hacer cualquiera son muy respetables pero no comprometen en absoluto este compromiso que tiene España”.

«La política exterior de España la marca el presidente del gobierno», Pedro Sánchez. Foto: EFE

“¿Cómo afecta en la OTAN la actual situación de España, gobernada por una coalición cuya parte minoritaria se opone a la Alianza Atlántica y a enviar ayuda a Ucrania para luchar contra Rusia?”, preguntó Clarín a un alto diplomático de la delegación española en la OTAN.

“De ningún modo. La política exterior de España la marca el presidente del gobierno y no afecta en absoluto”, fue la respuesta.

“Esta cumbre representa un reconocimiento a España como aliado fiable de la OTAN, como socio sólido para la seguridad europea y atlántica”, aseguró el ministro de Asuntos Exteriores, Unión Europea y Cooperación, José Manuel Albares, sobre la posición de España, el único país de la OTAN que en 1986 votó en un referéndum su permanencia en la Alianza Atlántica a la que había ingresado en el ‘82.

Marchas anti-OTAN

Alberto Núñez Feijóo, el líder del Partido Popular, la principal fuerza de la oposición, criticó que los socios del gobierno “organizaran manifestaciones en contra de la OTAN” coincidiendo con la cumbre en Madrid.

El domingo hubo una marcha anti-OTAN en la que participaron algunos funcionarios de Podemos como el secretario de Estado de Agenda 2030, Enrique Santiago.

Alejado momentáneamente de las disputas domésticas, Pedro Sánchez celebró este miércoles la futura incorporación de Suecia y Finlandia a la OTAN, que llevará meses por la burocracia pero se concretará, y el tan ansiado encuentro que tuvo con el presidente de Estados Unidos, Joe Biden, el martes.

Sánchez buscaba, dese hace más de un año, esa cita con Biden que finalmente consiguió en la previa a la cumbre de la OTAN en Madrid.

Aquí se declararon “socios imprescindibles” y confirmaron el aumento de la presencia militar norteamericana en la base española de Rota, en Cádiz: los cuatro barcos destructores de la defensa anti-misil de la OTAN pasarán a ser seis.

Madrid. Corresponsal

ap