This is a major, lengthy, in-depth report by the senior reporter for CNN who covers the border and the region and this school shooting. It's well written and THOROUGH. If you have interest in the issues and people surrounding the massacre in Uvalde and the systemic failure of 20 or more law enforcement agencies involved, and the seeming resulting coverup and political and inter-agency maneuvering, please read every word of this report.
Then read it again and read between the lines. This story is trying to say, "this is what we know, this is what is happening, and this is where all this is going. " Good reporting, decent news outlet. This is what we get in the USA, for better or worse and it's a good deal worse in some other nations. And from a mainstream corporate trusted journalistic source, it covers the bases.
But now allow me to unpack that sports metaphor. As a baseball game would go, CNN has sent a player to cover all the positions and to pitch the ball to the batters as they line up. And Rosa Flores, the veteran reporter does all that well. But now it's time for her at-bat.
She can hit the ball as hard as anyone can and wants to run around the infield to score at home plate. And her opponents are throwing spitballs, tripping her, blocking the umpire's view and generally not playing fair ball. Half of them are doing a rain dance in the bull pen, hoping the game can be postponed or cancelled. The other half are NOT throwing balls or strikes at all. They just stand on the mound and look at the other runners stranded on bases. It's not so much that they are playing unfair, they just aren't even playing the game at all. Were she to somehow get a swing at a pitch and run past second, there is no second baseman or a bag where second base needs to be.
And you can drive a herd of buffalo through the holes in the original “reports” on Uvalde. There is no credible outside investigation into this mass shooting event, at all, nor is there one coming. The truth is we know LESS than we could know without the two basic investigations we are supposed to be relying on, were the authorities simply to release the public records they hold, in an open records state. Most of what we have seen is deliberate misinformation, obfuscation, scapegoating, stalling, misdirections, more stalling, stonewalling and outright lies of omission and commission. And every bit of it comes with a wicked does of spin, through a non-transparent, or previously proven, non-trustable source. But without the real data to report, we’re left with outlets reporting whatever they are given as scraps or spin. “Limited hangout,” is how I would describe all the evidence so far. Clearly the pattern is each admission is hiding a larger scandal or tragic blunder yet to be revealed. It’s the ONLY consistent thing anyone can say about Uvalde.
“It’s truly truly awful, and it’s also worse than they are telling us. “
The unnamed mystery man DPS supervisor arrived as soon as anyone from any agency did, and DPS immediately lied about it. When asked to explain any of this, they simply won't address the question and claim they are too busy investigating themselves to respond. That's slight hyperbole, but not by much. This is a POLITICAL body, the DPS, they are the private propaganda arm of Greg Abbott and they are behaving as such first and last here. And they have amply demonstrated that the should not be trusted.
Yet, the DPS controls the bulk of the evidence - which they spent 7.5 weeks mischaracterizing, spinning and stalling the release of. In real terms we are still mostly there where the DPS wants is to be - IN THE DARK. Mostly, i say but not quite all the way.
Against their wishes, the House committee announced their plans to release SOME hallway video. Then a leak occurred that seemingly released a bit more than the House was set to. As a result, the cantankerous and hot-headed, defensive and beleaguered mayor of Uvalde took the opportunity to release SOME body cam from some of his officers, in a truncated and abridged form in a not-very official way. ( I tend to think mayor McLaughlin mistakenly felt that the hallway cam made his beloved UPD look bad and that somehow the bodycam might somehow mitigate the basic story all the videos show - which is 77 minutes of not doing the right thing, not once, not ever, as children bleed to death unseen but not completely unheard. But to him, the bodycam does show some officers with some concern, who faced some risk, and who did pull some kids from some classrooms out some windows, whereas the general impression a casual observer gets from seeing the hall cam is 77 minutes of too many cops standing around one hallway using the hand sanitizer and not much else. ) So what we have, as the public, is a partial deck of cards we are told to play solitaire with when we came to play poker, and settle the scores.
Plenty of people on the internet have done the deep dive of what you can really see and hear on these recordings and the picture isn't pretty. But it's so very very far from the complete picture that the public and the parents deserve. And so the demand continues for transparency as the interest of the pubic continues to wane as more events draw attention from the anger and interest on these events.
So this CNN article is "everything that can be done" by "the top reporter" at a top news org. And it's not even a losing game of "go fish," to use poker terms. There is no poker game here. DPS isn't going to deal the cards, they don't care to take the risk. They have all the chips they want to have already and we don't have many for them to win.