Police in Uvalde Fumbled Massacre, Cops Capitalize on Atrocity

RIO GRANDE VALLEY, TX — It’s clear that Uvalde and ISD Police, as well as assisting law enforcement agencies, fumbled the response to the murder of 19 children and two educators at Robb Elementary May 24.

Police are now engaged in a cover up, deflecting inquiries that might expose wrongdoing, refusing to cooperate in a sham investigation by an agency which itself should be investigated.

Meanwhile, police across the state are capitalizing on the atrocity, ramping up police at public schools.

As parents prepare to hold police accountable — something we should vehemently support! — the need for us to organize community defense is also apparent.

May 24

Eyewitnesses and video evidence confirms police in Uvalde prevented parents (some of slaughtered children) from entering the school to save them. Some were detained, others physically assaulted, tased, arrested and pepper sprayed. Javier Cazares, whose daughter Jacklyn was killed, raced to the school, only to find police amassed outside. He was one among many parents who begged police to do something, as they refused to engage the shooter but roughed up panicking parents. “Let’s just rush in,” Cazares eventually said, “because the cops aren’t doing anything like they are supposed to!” 

The scene outside Robb elementary was nothing short of a standoff between police and parents. Police pushed parents, as they searched for an entry into the school. But police, who outnumbered and outgunned the families, blocked them and gave the shooter about an hour to kill almost everyone inside two adjoining classrooms. A popular social media post told of a mother who was detained, then released by police she knew, before climbing a fence to retrieve her children.

Cover Up

Police have changed their story over and over. They claimed to believe there were no children in the classroom, which can’t be true, as parents told police their children were trapped inside with the shooter, and kids dialed 911 from inside the classroom. It’s even been reported that a child survivor yelled for help from inside the class, on the orders of police, which only notified the shooter who subsequently shot her. Now, ignominiously, they’ve admitted they were afraid of taking fire. 

Officials confirmed a U.S. border patrol tactical team stormed the classroom after 40 minutes. Reports claim border agents wanted to go in much sooner but were denied entry by the school district officer in charge. They eventually went in on their own, as 19 heavily armed police officers waited in the hall doing nothing. 

In the predominantly Hispanic southwest-Texas town, 60 miles from the Mexican border, border agents are not uncommon. Speculation that non-tactical agents intimidated potentially undocumented parents who confronted police arose. Even if their presence in that sense was unintended, the effect might remain, as BP threatens communities like Uvalde with deportation, which often means family separation. 

The Texas Department of Public Safety, the key spokespeople, haven’t been forthright. They’re evasive, use jargon to “describe” events, leap over long periods of unaccounted time, deflecting inquiries about what really happened. One official, the day of the shooting, told a local reporter that police should be praised for their performance. Another said police entered the school to get their own kids. Friday’s presser featured Texas DPS head, Steve McCraw, who dodged questions regarding length of time it took police to enter, admitted to lying in initial reports, didn’t answer questions in Spanish, and suggested video games might be to blame for the shooter.

High ranking officials echoed police’s “misinformation.” Governor Greg Abbott, who repeated false initial reports, says he was misled by police. President Biden visited Sunday and announced his Justice Department would be looking into the incident at the request of the Uvalde mayor who also claimed he was misled. Nobody will be held accountable, unless there is an uprising. Shadiness by officials can best be explained by their apparent need to cover up the fact police present at Robb Elementary, on May 24, provided a safe space and ample time for the killer. They’re implicated. 

Police Capitalize on Atrocity

Unsurprisingly, police departments across the state, including the Rio Grande Valley, seized on the atrocity for publicity, as well as justification for an upcoming crackdown and further militarization of public schools. Local cops were seen inside elementary schools the day after, warning of potential “copycat” attacks. School districts closed, after receiving anonymous “credible threats.”

Many of the alleged threats have gone unspecified. My RGV relied on a “source,” who claimed a “hit list” was found. Donna police publicly denied the existence of a such a list the next day.  Nevertheless, these mass arrests appear to be a ramp-up of something police have done a lot of since 9/11, that is criminalize kids for acting out, crying for help, ie making threats. Rather than meaningfully intervene in a child’s life to constructively address psychological dysfunction, they throw them in jail. 

Donna police filed charges against four youth Thursday, two minors, for “conspiracy to commit physical assault with a deadly weapon.” Police didn’t specify the deadly weapon. At a photo op presser, as police’s image took a blow in Uvalde, Donna and other officials lined up wearing cowboy hats, refusing to offer detailed information about the arrests or nature of the “plot” they supposedly “foiled”. The two adults were arraigned, the juveniles await arraignment May 31. Details remain unknown. 

While police garner press, all these emergency police state measures only serve to frighten already-traumatized children, which is probably their intention. So, what should class-conscious working people do in response to all this? 

Working Class Response

Like the victims of police violence have shown in recent fights, families can prosecute the negligent and cowardly police who stood by, demand they all be fired, and continue piling on demands, until the department collapses. Given everything we are finding out, it’s impossible to imagine how parents don’t organize in response. We should offer all our support to their struggle when the time arises. 

We should also diagnose the problem accurately and think strategically: Capitalism breeds disastrous social consequences. Although personal responsibility falls to the shooter and his family, many factors, like dysfunctional family life, failure by school leaders and police to flag the shooter’s concerning history, a failure in school security, result from capitalism’s drive to keep teachers’ pay, number of school counselors and staff low, class sizes big, working parents struggling, inherent police corruption going, and so on. It’s systemic. We also know from history that as class-divided societies deteriorate, social fabrics erode.

The capitalist rulers offer no real answers. Democrats blame lax gun laws. Republicans blame mental health and poor parenting. Some centrists ludicrously blame recent, and well-deserved, demonization of police as an excuse for their inaction! None, however, address the root cause of antisocial violence — capitalist society’s need to exploit and profit off our backs. 

In socialist Cuba, where the government provides universal welfare to the population despite U.S. embargo, the majority of people are armed. This is to repel imperialist invasions like the actually “foiled” Bay of Pigs. Yet, mass murders don’t occur in Cuba. 

Those calling for stricter gun laws, like the disgraceful Beto O’Rourke and the petty totalitarian who rules Canada, seek only to undermine our right to self-defense under capitalism. Because a final clash between workers and employers is inevitable, as a result of irreconcilable differences, employers and their government will chip away at the Bill of Rights to weaken us as much as possible before the decisive battle, which they also know is coming. We can’t cede an inch to the capitalist state, which will inevitably turn into a police state. 

Until capitalism in the U.S. is overthrown and replaced with a government of workers and farmers, incidents like Uvalde will continue, no matter what slick reforms are offered. For now, and on the way to taking power, school safety falls to volunteer teachers, staff, parents and their unions. 

In recent years, solidarity between teachers and school staff —from Arizona to West Virginia— has increased, in a joint struggle for better work conditions. This solidarity can be built on by unions leading the way in organizing self-defense classes and disciplined gun training for willing teachers, staff and parents who could then democratically control safety at grade schools year-round, in the best traditions of the American and international workers movement. This goes for all workplaces.

While police may be momentarily necessary, in the temporary absence of a mass working class force, we should begin organizing to replace them, as campus police are functionally used by administrators to intimidate and criminalize working class youth who challenge capitalist rule. Yet, when actually needed, they’re worse than useless; they’re complicit. Community safety is on us.