Sometimes A Cigar Is Just A Cigar

Freud is often misquoted as say "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar." In other words, not every simple statement has deep and hidden meaning.

Well, sometimes a failed assassin is just a failed assassin - and not the object of a grand conspiracy.

Just a day after the shooting at the White House Correspondents Dinner, I viewed post after post on my Facebook page claiming the shooting was part of a conspiracy, orchestrated by Trump to either distract from the war and unreleased files, or to get his big ballroom built.

I found this very disappointing. While the right-wingers love to engage in their many conspiracy theories, most Democrats and left-wingers tend to stick with the facts.

Many jumped on Karoline Leavitt's pre-dinner statement, "It will be funny. It will be entertaining. There will be some shots fired tonight in the room." Come on people! She was obviously just referring to the "shots" Trump would take in his speech at the media and his political enemies.

Others found it mysterious that the shooting happened at the only WHCD that Trump has attended. But the others had comedians hosting that would take jabs at Trump - and Trump is notoriously thin-skinned. This time he was able to make sure no comedian would host (instead it was a mentalist), and he would be the one giving the verbal jabs.

It may make some feel good to engage in the conspiracy theory of a staged shooting, but there are no real facts to support it. 

As Democrats and left-wingers, let's stick to the facts. Leave the conspiracy theories to the right-wingers.

Far More Say The Pretti Shooting Was Unjustified Than Say It's Justified

The chart above is from the YouGov Poll -- done on January 25th of a nationwide sample of 3,834 adults, with a 2 point margin of error.

A Visual Timeline Of The ICE Murder Of Alex Pretti In Minnesota

 

From The New York Times.

53% Of Americans Say Ice Agent That Shot Ms. Good Should Be Charged With A Crime

 

The charts above are from the YouGov Poll -- done between January 9th and 11th of a nationwide sample of 1,129 adults, with a 3.9 point margin of error.

Most Say ICE Is Not Making Cities Safer & Minnesota Shooting Was Inappropriate

The chart above is from the CNN / SSRS Poll -- done between January 9th and 12th of a nationwide sample of 1,209 adults, with a 3.1 point margin of error.

 

Another Poll Shows Most Think The Killing Of Renee Good Was NOT Justified

 

The charts above reflect the results of the Quinnipiac University Poll -- done between January 8th and 12th of a nationwide sample of 1,133 registered voters, with a 3.7 point margin of error.

Most Say The ICE Shooting Of Renee Good Was NOT Justified

The chart above reflects the results of the Economist / YouGov Poll -- done between January 9th and 12th of a nationwide sample of 1,602 adults (including 1.437 registered voters). The margin of error is 3.3 points for adults and 3.1 points for registered voters. 

Trump & Sycophants Think You're Too Stupid To Watch A Video And Make Up Your Own Mind

The following is part of a post by Heather Cox Richardson at Letters From An American:

In an apparent attempt to regain control of the national narrative surrounding the deadly shooting of Renee Good in Minneapolis, Vice President J.D. Vance led the administration in pushing a video of the shooting captured by the shooter himself, Jonathan Ross, on his cell phone.

The video shows Ross getting out of a vehicle and walking toward a red SUV where Good sits in the driver’s seat. Sirens blare as he walks toward her. She smiles at him and says: “That’s fine, dude. I’m not mad at you.” As Ross walks alongside the car, she repeats: “I’m not mad at you.” As he reaches the back of the vehicle, another person, presumably Good’s wife, Becca, says: “Show your face.” As he begins to record the vehicle’s license plate, the same person says: “That’s okay, we don’t change our plates every morning,” referring to stories that agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) switch out plates to make their vehicles hard to track. “Just so you know, it’ll be the same plate when you come talk to us later.” Ross’s camera pans up to show the person recording him on her cell phone.

She continues: “That’s fine. U.S. citizen. Former f*cking veteran.” As she walks to the passenger-side door, she looks at him and says: “You wanna come at us? You wanna come at us? I say go get yourself some lunch, big boy. Go ahead.”

Another officer approaches the driver’s side of the vehicle and says to Renee Good: “Out of the car. Get out of the f*cking car.”

As the passenger calmly reaches for the passenger-side door handle, the police officer on the driver’s side again says: “Get out of the car!” Other videos indicate that he had then put his hand into the car and was trying to open the door. Good quite clearly turns the wheel hard away from the police officers to head down the street as the passenger yells: “Drive, baby! Drive! Drive!”

Someone says “Whoa!” as the car moves down the street. Ross’s camera shows his face and then sways—remember, he has been filming all this on his phone. There are three shots and the houses on the side of the street swing back into view on Ross’s camera, indicating he did not drop it. As the car rolls up the street, Ross says, “F*cking bitch!” just before there is the sound of a smash.

What is truly astonishing is that the administration thought this video would exonerate Ross and support the administration’s insistence that he was under attack from a domestic terrorist trying to ram him with her car. The Department of Homeland Security reposted Vance’s post.

As senior editor of Lawfare Media Eric Columbus commented: “Do Vance and DHS think we can’t actually watch the video?” 

In the case of the murder of Renee Good, the shooter and his protectors are clearly so isolated in their own authoritarian bubble they cannot see how regular Americans would react to the video of a woman smiling at a masked agent and saying: “That’s fine, dude. I’m not mad at you,” only to have him shoot her in the face and then spit out “F*cking bitch” after he killed her.

This is the larger meaning of federal agents from Immigrations and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Patrol in U.S. cities. While they are attacking primarily people of color, the message they carry is directed at all Americans: you must do what the Trump administration and its loyalists demand.

The Unnecessary And Illegal Murder Of An American Citizen

As someone who worked nearly 30 years in various aspects of law enforcement, I am sickened by the killing of Renee Good by federal agents. It was unnecessary and illegal. The agent who fired the shots should be arrested and tried in a Minnesota court (to avoid a pardon by Donald Trump).

The following description of the incident is by Heather Cox Richardson (at Letters From An American):

A federal agent from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) shot and killed 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good as she was driving away from ICE agents on a residential street in Minneapolis, Minnesota. According to Minneapolis leaders, Good was a legal observer: a volunteer trained to observe police conduct in case of future legal action.

Three videos taken at the scene show a maroon SUV perpendicular on a snowy street. A silver SUV driving up the street stops. Two officers wearing badges that say “police” and body armor get out of the vehicle and walk toward the maroon car.

One of them says, “Get out of the f*cking car,” and the other reaches through the open driver’s side window while trying to open the door. The driver backs up the vehicle, and straightens the wheel as if making a three-point turn. Then she starts slowly to accelerate along the street.

A third officer who has been standing on the side of the road pulls out a gun as the car is turning away. He shoots three times. The maroon car does not hit anyone as it rolls up the street, hitting another vehicle and then a utility pole. The shooter walks briskly away, apparently uninjured.

Seen in slow motion, a video shows the wheels of the maroon vehicle were fully turned away from the shooting officer, who made no effort to jump away, clearly suggesting he did not feel as if he were in danger. His first shot went through the windshield; the next two went through the driver’s side window as the car moved past him. An onlooker shouted “What the f*ck?!”

Video taken by another eyewitness shows ICE agents refusing to allow a self-identified physician to tend to the victim and telling him to back up. Although there is no one tending the clearly visible woman in the car, an agent says: “We have medics on scene. We have our own medics.” When another bystander screams: “Where are they? WHERE ARE THEY?!” an agent tells her, “Relax.” “How can I relax?” she shouts. “You just killed my f*cking neighbor.”

The GOP's Own Policies Come Back To Bite Them

There was an attempt on Donald Trump's life at his rally on Saturday. And unsurprisingly, Republican officials are busy trying to blame Democrats for it. One even went so far as to say it was a hit directed by President Biden.

Of course, the GOP assertions are ridiculous. Democrats are not supportive of political violence. They have been the leading voices in opposition to it. 

But the same cannot be said of the Republican Party. Trump himself has encouraged his supporters to be politically violent. And he was proud of their violent assault on the U.S. Capitol on January 6th of 2021. He still calls the violent attackers "victims", and the ones convicted and sent to prison as "hostages". And party leaders have followed in Trump's footsteps by trying to excuse political violence from right-wingers  (who commit most of the political violence in the U.S.).

And much of the GOP base has eagerly jumped aboard. Polls have shown that a significant portion of the party now believe that violence is not only OK, but necessary. They just never expected that a shooter (a registered Republican) would turn that violence against them.

That's not the only GOP policy that fed into Trump's shooting. The 20 year-old shooter had an assault-style weapon. Democrats have been trying to pass reasonable gun laws (banning assault weapons, raising the minimum age for buying semi-automatic weapons, plugging the holes in the background check law, etc.). Republicans have opposed any new gun laws - even those supported by an overwhelming majority of Americans. Their position makes it easier for violent people to get a weapon.

Republicans may want to blame Democrats for the Trump shooting, but the truth is that their own policies have come back to bite them! 

DOJ Report On Uvalde Shooting - AG Garland's Remarks

Yesterday, the U.S. Department of Justice released a report on the police failures in the tragedy at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas. You can go here to read the entire 260 page report if you desire. Below is the transcript of Attorney General Garland's speech in Uvalde upon releasing the report: 

Last night, I met with some of the survivors and the loved ones of the victims of the horrific mass shooting at Robb Elementary School. I came here to tell them that the United States Department of Justice has finished its Critical Incident Review.

In undertaking this review at the request of the then-mayor, the Justice Department committed to using our expertise and independence to assess the law enforcement response to the shooting, and to provide guidance moving forward.

As I told families and survivors last night, the Department’s review concluded that a series of major failures — failures in leadership, in tactics, in communication, and in training and preparedness — were made by law enforcement leaders and other officials responding to the mass shooting at Robb Elementary.

As a result, 33 students and three of their teachers — many of whom had been shot — were trapped in a room with an active shooter for over an hour as law enforcement officials remained outside.

I also told the families and survivors how deeply sorry I am for the losses they suffered that day. And for the losses they have endured every day since.

I told them that the priority for the Justice Department in preparing this report has been to honor the memories of those who were taken from them.

And I told the families gathered last night what I hope is clear among the hundreds of pages and thousands of details in this report: their loved ones deserved better.

The law enforcement response at Robb Elementary School on May 24, 2022 — and in the hours and days after — was a failure that should not have happened.

We hope to honor the victims and the survivors by working together to try to prevent anything like it from happening again, here or anywhere.

I am now going to turn to the key observations and recommendations of the report.

On May 24, 2022, at 11:33 a.m., an active shooter, wearing body armor and equipped with a high-powered AR-15 rifle, entered Robb Elementary School and began shooting into classrooms 111 and 112, which shared a connecting door. 

Within minutes, 11 law enforcement officers, from the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District and Uvalde Police Department, arrived inside the school. Hearing continued gunfire, five officers immediately advanced toward classrooms 111 and 112. Within seconds, shots were fired from inside the classrooms, shrapnel hit two officers, and all responders retreated to cover.

A single officer then made additional attempts to approach the classrooms, but after 11:40 a.m., no more attempts to enter the rooms were made until 12:48 p.m., more than an hour later.  

As a consequence of failed leadership, training, and policies — injured and scared students and teachers remained trapped with the subject in the classrooms, waiting to be rescued. Survivors later shared that they heard officers gathered outside the classroom while they waited.

The victims trapped in classrooms 111 and 112 were waiting to be rescued at 11:44 a.m. — approximately 10 minutes after officers first arrived — when the subject fired another shot inside the classrooms.

They were still waiting at 11:56 a.m., when an officer on the scene told law enforcement leaders that his wife, a teacher, was inside classrooms 111 and 112, and had been shot. 

They were still waiting as broadcasts went out on officer radios that a student trapped inside classroom [112] had called 911 at 12:10 p.m., to say the student was in a room full of victims. That student stayed on the phone with 911 for 16 minutes.

The victims were still waiting to be rescued when the subject fired four more shots inside the classrooms at 12:21 p.m., 49 minutes after officers first arrived on scene. 

And they were still waiting for another 27 minutes after that until officers finally entered the classrooms and killed the subject.

As the victims were trapped and waiting for help, many of their families were waiting outside the school, growing increasingly concerned about why law enforcement had not taken action to rescue their loved ones.

Law enforcement officers from different agencies, who had self-deployed to the scene in overwhelming numbers, were themselves waiting for leadership decisions about how to proceed.

Many officers reported that they did not know: who, if anyone, was in charge; what they should do; or the status of the incident.  

Some officers were confused about why there was no attempt to confront the active shooter and rescue the children.  

Some officers believed the subject had already been killed, or that law enforcement was in the room with the shooter.

Seventy-five minutes after the first officers arrived on scene, officers finally entered room 111. The subject engaged the entry team with gunfire, and the officers responded with fire.

Seventy-seven minutes after the first officers arrived on scene, and after 45 rounds had been fired by the active shooter, the shooter was killed.

The massacre at Robb Elementary school shattered families throughout this community and devastated our country. Nineteen children and two of their teachers. An untold number of students, teachers, and law enforcement officers were injured.

The law enforcement response to the mass shooting at Robb Elementary was a failure.

As the threat posed to our country by mass shootings has grown and evolved over the past several decades, law enforcement’s response tactics have also changed.

The massacre at Columbine High School 25 years ago, and the 47 minutes it took for law enforcement to enter that high school, marked a major shift in how law enforcement leaders think about responding to mass shootings.

It is now widely understood by law enforcement agencies across the country that, in active shooter incidents, time is not on the side of law enforcement. Every second counts. And the priority of law enforcement must be to immediately enter the room and stop the shooter with whatever weapons and tools officers have with them.

That is the approach responding officers first employed when they arrived at Robb Elementary School.

But within minutes of arriving inside the school, officials on scene transitioned from treating the scene as an active shooter situation to treating the shooter as a barricaded subject.

This was the most significant failure.

That failure meant that law enforcement officials prioritized a protracted evacuation of students and teachers in other classrooms, instead of immediately rescuing the victims trapped with the active shooter.

It meant that officials spent time attempting to negotiate with the subject, instead of trying to enter the rooms and confront him. 

It meant that officials asked for and waited for additional responders and equipment, instead of following generally accepted active shooter practice and moving toward the shooter with the resources they had.

It meant waiting for a set of keys to open the classroom door, which the report concludes was likely unlocked anyway.

And, it meant that the victims remained trapped with the shooter for more than an hour after the first officers arrived on scene.

There were also failures in leadership, command, and coordination. 

None of the law enforcement leaders at the scene established an incident command structure to provide timely direction, control, and coordination of the enormous number of responders who arrived on scene. This lack of a command structure, exacerbated by communications difficulties, contributed to confusion among responders about who was in charge and how they could help.

These failures may also have been influenced by policy and training deficiencies at responding law enforcement agencies. Some lacked any active shooter training at all; some had inappropriate training; some lacked critical incident response training; and the vast majority had never trained together with different agencies.

As Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta will discuss in further detail, the chaos and confusion that defined the law enforcement response while the shooter remained a threat also defined the aftermath.

For example, surviving victims, some with bullet wounds and other injuries, were put on buses without being brought to the attention of medics. Some families were told that their family members had survived when they had not.  

And victims, families, and community members struggled to receive timely and accurate information about what had occurred at Robb Elementary.

The Justice Department’s objective in preparing this report was threefold: first, to honor the victims, the survivors, and their loved ones.

Second, to provide a clear and independent accounting of the law enforcement response to the horrific attack that devastated this community.

And third, to provide law enforcement agencies and communities across the country with analysis and recommendations about how what happened in Uvalde should inform efforts to prepare for and respond to mass shootings.  

Policing is a noble profession. It is also a hard one. It requires training and constant education about evolving threats.

The report includes widely accepted recommendations that have been adopted by law enforcement agencies across the country about how to prepare for, and respond to, active shooter situations.

Before an active shooter incident occurs, law enforcement agencies have a responsibility to ensure that their leaders and all their officers are trained to focus on rapid response — trained that the first officers on scene must focus on eliminating the threat and protecting the victims most in danger.

Law enforcement leaders responding to an active shooter must be prepared to take charge, to establish a unified command, and to facilitate communications, operational coordination, and allocation and delivery of resources. They must continually assess and adjust as the incident evolves.

And in the aftermath of a mass shooting, law enforcement and government agencies must provide the public with a sense of trust and confidence by communicating openly, clearly, and compassionately during a time in which many are learning the most devastating news that anyone can receive.

The victims and survivors of the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School on May 24, 2022, deserved better.

First and foremost, the 19 children and their two teachers who were stolen from their loved ones should be here today.

They should never have been targeted by a mass shooter.

We must never forget the shooter’s heinous acts that day.  

And the victims and survivors should never have been trapped with that shooter for more than an hour as they waited for their rescue.

The families of the victims and survivors deserved more than incomplete, inaccurate, and conflicting communications about the status of their loved ones.

This community deserved more than misinformation from officials during and after the attack.

Responding officers here in Uvalde — who also lost loved ones and who still bear the emotional scars of that day — deserved the kind of leadership and training that would have prepared them to do the work that was required.

Our children deserve better than to grow up in a country where an 18-year-old has easy access to a weapon that belongs on battlefield, not in a classroom.

And communities across the country, and the law enforcement officers who protect them, deserve better than to be forced to respond to one horrific mass shooting after another.  

But that is the terrible reality that we face.

And so, it is the reality that every law enforcement agency in every community across the country must be prepared for.

No community and no law enforcement agency should have to face that threat alone.

That is why we came to Uvalde. And that why we are releasing this report.

The Justice Department remains committed to working in partnership with communities across the country, and with the law enforcement agencies working to protect those communities every day. In particular, we stand ready to help communities and agencies prepare to respond to a terrible incident like the one that occurred here.

We have concluded the Department’s review. But we know that the work of healing here in Uvalde is only beginning.

We are humbled and grateful to stand with this community as you remember and honor your loved ones.

Another Right-Wing Hate Crime

From Axios.com
 

Kansas City Shooting Is Due To Combining Racism & Guns

The following is an article by Jarvis DeBerry at MSNBC.com: 

American racism in its most common expression dictates who gets the benefit of the doubt. Thursday night, in Kansas City, Missouri,Ralph Yarl, a 16-year-old Black boy, mistakenly rang a doorbell on Northeast 115th Street, rather than his intended destination of Northeast 115th Terrace. The resident, whom police have identified as 84-year-old Andrew Lester, a white man, apparently didn’t consider that Yarl may have made a wrong turn or even be a stranger in need of assistance. According to a statement that police say he gave them, Lester, a white man, assumed the teenager was attempting to break in and he fired twice through a glass storm door and struck Yarl in the head and the arm.

Ringing a doorbell and waiting for an answer is not a crime. But the police who interviewed Lester the night they say his .32 caliber bullets sent Yarl to the hospital didn’t arrest him. They had to first consider if Lester may have been standing his ground, they said. Only on Monday, four days after the man shot the teenager, Clay County Prosecuting Attorney Zachary Thompson announced Lester has been charged with assault in the first degree and armed criminal action. Lester turned himself in Tuesday.

Racism is not just the assumption that a Black teenager is a threat; it’s the guiding spirit that prompted lawmakers in so many states toreplace the “duty to retreat” language in state laws with the right to stand one’s ground no matter where you are. In a country where Black people are rarely given the benefit of the doubt, Black people in and out of legislative chambers warned that encouraging the public to shoot and discouraging them from de-escalating would lead to shootings such as what happened in Kansas City. But those warnings were disregarded.

To be clear, while Black boys and men may be among the most at risk from America’s “shoot first” mentality, we’re not the only ones. It’s been almost 10 years since Theodore Wafer, a suburban Detroit homeowner, used a shotgun to kill Renisha McBride, a 19-year-old Black woman who knocked on his door after she’d had a car accident.

In an eerie facsimile of the Kansas City shooting, on Saturday night in rural New York, Kevin Monahan, a 65-year-old white man, allegedly shot and killed Kaylin Gillis, a 20-year-old white woman. A car Gillis was in pulled into the wrong driveway, Monahan’s driveway, as a group she was with searched for a friend’s house. Officials say Monahan walked out of his house and fired two shots. One bullet hit the car, a law enforcement official said. Monahan has been booked with second-degree murder.

It’s unclear if the person who shot at the car Gillis was in was able to detect anything in particular about the people in the car before shooting. But, according to the statement that he gave police, we do know that Lester got a good look at Yarl. He professed to have been “scared to death” at the sight of him.

Lester blamed his fright on the teenager’s size, he told police. I don’t know how big or small the teenager is, but being big doesn’t make an innocent person less so. And whatever size a Black boy, a Black teen or a Black man is, he often looms larger in the white imagination. Almost nine years ago on the opposite side of Missouri, then-28-year-old Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson — who at about 6 feet, 4 inches was around the same height as 18-year-old Michael Brown — told grand jurors that when he grabbed the heavier teenager, “I felt like a five-year-old holding onto Hulk Hogan.” In Wilson’s telling, Brown, whom Wilson had already shot at least once, “looked like he was almost bulking up to run through the shots.” There are times, you see, that we don’t even get the benefit of being seen as human.

People who know Yarl have been quick to tell the world what a great kid he is: that he’s a “gentle soul,” that he’s a talented musician who’s been excelling at college-level courses and that he plans to study chemical engineering. It’s a shame they feel a need to describe his personality, his accomplishments and his ambitions in that way; it would have been just as awful if a Black teen with bad grades, less talent and no real ambition had been shot for ringing Lester’s doorbell.

Yes, the teenager sounds close to perfect, but being perfect is no protection from racism. According to Kansas City authorities, Lester said shooting Yarl “was the last thing he wanted to do.” But, according to police, he also admitted that he exchanged no words with the teenager and that he opened fire soon after he opened his main door. Being perfect doesn’t mean a Black teen who rings the wrong doorbell is perceived as anything less than a threat.

Uvalde Shooter In School Over An Hour Before Confronted

The following post is by Hayes Brown at MSNBC.com: 

Every journalist knows how hard it can be to sort fact from fiction in a breaking news event. But the shifting story public safety officials have spun since Tuesday’s shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, is a brutal reminder that the police can’t always be trusted as reliable narrators.

“They said they rushed in and all that. We didn’t see that,” Javier Cazares, whose 9-year-old daughter was killed Tuesday, told The New York Times. In a video that shows parents outside the school frustrated with the police’s inaction, a man can be heard saying: “They’re all in there. The cops aren’t doing s--- except standing outside. You know they’re little kids, right? Little kids, they don’t know how to defend themselves.”

Three days after a gunman killed 19 students and two teachers, it seems every new detail contradicts Tuesday’s initial statements from the Texas Department of Public Safety, or DPS. That’s especially the case for the department’s praise of the bravery and heroism of the officers who the public was told challenged the gunman even before he infiltrated the school.

To be clear, there's no reason any civilian should have an AR-15-style rifle, as the gunman did, nor should that level of firepower be what the average police officer should have to face on the job. The chaos of dealing with a shooting at an elementary school shouldn't be something any human being has to face, be they parents or police officers. It was the gunman’s actions, not the hesitant response from law enforcement, that killed those children and their teachers. But the more the initial story from the police is scrutinized, the more out of step it seems with both the expectations of the parents outside the school and the long-standing argument that these are the moments when police are most necessary.

DPS’s news conference Thursday only highlighted how many elements of the original story had changed in 48 hours. Early reports indicated that law enforcement confronted the gunman almost immediately after he crashed a car before he got to Robb Elementary School. Sgt. Erick Estrada told CNN on Tuesday that the shooter “was engaged by law enforcement” but that “unfortunately was able to enter the premises.” But Victor Escalon, DPS’s South Texas regional director, said Thursday there was no confrontation — the shooter walked into the school unobstructed, a whole 12 minutes after the crash.

Did the shooter and an armed school safety officer exchange gunfire outside the school? A spokesperson for DPS told The Washington Post on Tuesday that they did and that the school officer was wounded; the department also confirmed to NBC’s “TODAY” show on Thursday that the school safety officer was armed. But DPS Director Steve McCraw walked back the gunbattle detail Wednesday, and Escalon went further Thursday, telling reporters that there “was not an officer readily available, armed,” which sounds a lot like a hedge.

DPS initially tried to justify law enforcement’s inability to bring down the shooter quickly by saying he wore “body armor.” The next morning, the agency acknowledged that it wasn’t body armor but a tactical vest that could be fitted with ballistic protection. That’s a major difference.

Officials initially said that once the shooter was inside, he immediately barricaded himself inside a classroom and began shooting. McCraw said Wednesday that police pinned the shooterinside the classroom. The Associated Press also reported that Border Patrol agents who responded “had trouble breaching the classroom door and had to get a staff member to open the room with a key.”

All 21 victims were reportedly killed in the same classroom; that detail also shifted Thursday, as NBC News reported that Texas investigators say victims were found in four classrooms. This prompts a number of questions: Did the shooter lock himself inside a classroom, preventing the police from entering? Or did the police trap him inside with his victims after he'd fired in other classrooms?

It’s an important point to clarify given what one student told KENS-TV: “When the cops came, the cop said: 'Yell if you need help!' And one of the persons in my class said 'help.' The guy overheard and he came in and shot her. The cop barged into that classroom. The guy shot at the cop. And the cops started shooting.”

Outside the school, officers reportedly had their stun guns drawn and were busying themselves keeping parents from running inside the school after their children. Reportedly, almost an hour elapsed as police restrained parents before an off-duty Border Patrol officer killed the gunman. One of those parents, according to The New York Times, was Angel Garza, whose stepdaughter Amerie Jo was killed. CNN anchor Anderson Cooper’s interview with Garza, a medical aide, went viral as Garza wondered how someone could shoot his baby. Meanwhile, there are reports that some officers went into the school during the attack to retrieve their own children, even as other desperate parents were being detained outside in handcuffs.

There are a lot of unanswered questions, none of which make DPS or the city of Uvalde look particularly good. The city of about 16,000 spends nearly 40 percent of its annual municipal budget on its police force, which includes a SWAT teamthat is supposed to mobilize in this sort of situation. The school district, which has its own police force, doubled its security budget in recent years. And yet the shooter still managed to kill almost two dozen people in an hour.

The official narrative framed the law enforcement officials who first showed up as heroes who prevented even more casualties. That’s unsurprising given the free rein police across the country generally have to present their version of events as irrefutable.

Police have a responsibility to provide the most accurate information possible to the public, but all too often they decide to promote themselves as heroes and put a positive spin on their actions.

Even after the horror this week is eventually pieced together in full, it will be well worth remembering how far the final version of history will have come from where it started — and how law enforcement spent time trying to portray its inaction as heroism.