New York City Mayor Eric Adams asserted Tuesday that in a school shooting event in his city, NYPD officers and other first responders would not hesitate to intervene, in contrast to the reported police response to the deadly mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, last week.
“That is not going to happen in New York. We go in with an active shooter,” Adams said Tuesday morning on “Morning Joe.”
“Not only would the police go in with an active shooter, but the FDNY, EMS, they’re trained to go in with an active shooter,” he continued. “It appears as though this was treated more like a barricaded armed person or a hostage negotiation scenario instead of an active shooter.”
Adams also said that he intended to reach out to Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin to discuss what local leaders can do to address gun violence.
“I’m going to call him today, because this is a mayors’ battle,” Adams said. “Mayors are being impacted by that.’
Police in Uvalde, Texas, have faced mounting criticism over their response to last week’s shooting at Robb Elementary School, where 19 children and two teachers were murdered by a gunman.
At a press conference Friday, Texas Department of Public Safety Chief Steven McCraw told reporters that during the shooting, police had come to believe the gunman had barricaded himself in a classroom and was no longer an active shooter threat. Several officers had waited for backup in the school hallway as children were trapped in the classroom with the gunman.
Some of the children were speaking with police dispatchers over the phone and begging for police to rescue them. Instead, officers waited nearly an hour before the classroom was breached and the gunman incapacitated.
“Obviously, based on the information we have, there were children in that classroom that were still at risk,” McCraw said Friday. “From the benefit of hindsight where I’m sitting now, of course, it was not the right decision. It was the wrong decision. Period.”
ABC News reported Monday that the Uvalde Police Department and the Uvalde Independent School District police force have ceased to cooperate with the Texas Department of Public Safety’s investigation into the massacre. The decision to end cooperation with the investigation came shortly after McCraw said that police had made the “wrong decision,” ABC News reported.
The Biden administration announced Sunday that the Department of Justice will open an investigation into the police response in Uvalde, in response to a request from Mayor McLaughlin. The department said the review “will be fair, transparent, and independent.”
“The goal of the review is to provide an independent account of law enforcement actions and responses that day, and to identify lessons learned and best practices to help first responders prepare for and respond to active shooter events,” the Justice Department said.