Why Were 400 Officers Not Enough to Stop the Uvalde Mass Shooter?

The chilling video released last week of the police response inside Robb Elementary in Uvalde, TX on May 24 exposes the police. Dressed in tactical gear, officers waited over an hour to confront the gunman who killed 21 people in a senseless act of violence.

Rather than being a local problem, this is a national issue: Over and over again, videos - many of them shot by bystanders - show police killing unarmed Black people. At the same time the police are hailed as heroes required to keep the peace and bring criminals to justice. The Uvalde response and video are the latest example of how this couldn’t be further from the truth.

We are joined by Natalia Marques, writer at Peoples Dispatch, to discuss the Uvalde response and the real role of the police: to defend property, not protect people.