I'm not a huge conspiracy theorist, but Uvalde sure has some interesting bits to feed the theories..
I wouldn't say that, and not only because that kind of conspiracy theory is insane and despicable.
Myself, I totally buy the official account the police response was sabotaged by red tape, disputes and inadequate leadership. Here's why.
Remember the 2015 Paris terrorist attacks? The only terrorist taken out by police that day was killed by a plainclothes officer first to arrive at the Bataclan. He'd rushed in on his own initiative. Special operations forces poured into the area only half an hour later, when the massacre was all but over. Several blocks were cordoned off, preventing rescue services from linking up with victims who'd fled into nearby buildings.
There's an account of one Daniel Psenny, a journalist who lives across the road from the Bataclan theatre. He was shot in the arm dragging a gravely wounded American away from an emergency exit. He and the American had to wait in Psenny's house for hours before someone was allowed to show up and help, and there were many others like them. Mind you, the threat had long since ceased at that point, which the police knew, but some official just forgot to give the all-clear for the neighbourhood or something. There's reports people died due to this delay.
And that's Paris, not a town of what? 15,000 people? Their police was very experienced in the art of dealing with an active shooter (after a string of attacks). It was much better funded and almost certainly better trained. Yet still people probably died because of an unnecessary delay.
Just to be clear, I don't mean to rap the French police here. They did a stellar job. What I'm saying is, I can't imagine a universe where a school police department with six employees and a local agency a few dozen strong (including the cleaning lady) is prepared to adequately deal with that kind of scenario, no matter how sweet their tactical gear may look on security camera footage watched after the fact.
I always try to avoid becoming one of those smug Europeans telling Americans how to run their country, but as far as unsolicited advice goes – I'm convinced much of you guys' troubles with law enforcement would end if you made it a state-level task to ensure adequate funding, training and standardisation across the board. 20,000 individual agencies with less than 50 employees on average (if Wikipedia is to be believed), that's nuts.
It doesn't surprise me the average time of training American cops undergo is 15 weeks; talk about getting plunged into the deep end. The discrepancy in quality between a well-funded force like the NYPD and the sherrif's office of bumfuck nowhere must be astronomical, but even New York only demands 6 months of training. For reference's sake, French Police Nationale recruits undergo like 22 months of training.
