PAULA BOLYARD: What Were Police Thinking? News About the Uvalde School Shooting Just Keeps Getting Worse and Worse.

Let me preface this by saying two things: First, we still don’t have all the details about the shooting in which an 18-year-old gunman killed 19 students and two teachers and wounded 17 other people at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. Second, police have incredibly difficult jobs, requiring them to make split-second decisions while under enormous pressure under extremely dangerous and stressful situations.

That said, the latest news from the investigation into the shooting looks very bad for the law-enforcement officials responding to the scene. Tony Plohetski, an investigative reporter for the Austin-American Statesman, tweeted a picture showing police stationed outside the classroom where more than a dozen children were murdered. The officers, armed with rifles and at least one ballistic shield, were in the hallway near the classroom at 11:52 a.m.—58 minutes before they breached the locked classroom, and 19 minutes after the gunman entered the school. At 12:03 p.m. a second officer with a ballistic shield arrived, followed by a third a few minutes later.

“Investigators believe this is significant because it indicates they had more than enough firepower and protection to enter the classroom before they did,” wrote Plohetski. “Officers were growing impatient far sooner: ‘If there’s kids in there we need to go in there,’ one said on body camera video.”

Read the whole thing.