Santa Barbara County News and Events

Teacher tells court she saw officer accused of failing to delay Uvalde school massacre: ‘He just stayed there’

Kraig Pakulski 0 23 Article rating: No rating

By Shimon Prokupecz, Matthew J. Friedman, Rachel Clarke, CNN

(CNN) — A school employee testified Wednesday she saw both a teenage gunman and a police officer responding to an emergency before the 2022 massacre at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas.

Melodye Flores, a teaching aide who helped children with special needs, said she ran outside after hearing on her school radio that a man with a gun had come over the fence onto school property.

“That’s when I saw the shooter right there,” she said, pausing for several moments to compose herself.

Flores said she fell and, as she got up, a police vehicle drove up to her. She told the officer two or three times where the shooter was headed.

“I just kept pointing. ‘He’s going in there. He’s going into the fourth-grade building,’” she said of what she shouted.

“He just stayed there,” she said of the officer. “He was pacing back and forth.”

Flores said she could hear shots being fired.

Former school district police officer Adrian Gonzales pleaded not guilty at trial to 29 counts of endangering or abandoning children. Nineteen children and two teachers were killed in the shooting. Another 10 children were left trapped with the gunman, who spent 77 minutes inside the school before he was killed by law enforcement officers who had stacked up in the hallway outside the classrooms.

The Uvalde massacre remains one of the deadliest US school shootings, a continuing scourge that has spurred security measures in classrooms across America.

Flores is a key witness for the state, providing the only firsthand testimony about what Gonzales did or didn’t do in the first few minutes as the shooting began.

Prosecutors have said Gonzales had time and information — including details from Flores, Read more

Half of Americans think ICE is making American cities less safe, CNN poll finds

Kraig Pakulski 0 25 Article rating: No rating

By Ariel Edwards-Levy, CNN

(CNN) — Most Americans see an immigration officer’s fatal shooting of Minneapolis resident Renee Good as an inappropriate use of force, a new CNN poll conducted by SSRS finds. Roughly half view it as a sign of broader issues with the way US Immigration and Customs Enforcement is operating, with less than one-third saying that ICE operations have made cities safer.

Just 26% of Americans say that they view the shooting as an appropriate use of force. The majority, 56%, call it an inappropriate use of force, with 51% saying that it also reflects bigger problems with the way that ICE is operating. A single-digit share called it an isolated incident while the rest say they haven’t heard enough about it to weigh in.

Americans say, 51% to 31%, that ICE enforcement actions are making cities less safe rather than safer; another 18% say there’s been little effect either way.

The videos of ICE agent Jonathan Ross shooting Good have elicited sharply different responses from elected Democrats and Republicans, a divide that is reflected in CNN’s polling of the public. But Democrats are more fully united in their concerns about ICE operations than Republicans are in their willingness to defend the agency.

More than 8 in 10 Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents call the shooting an inappropriate use of force that reflects larger problems, with a similar share saying that ICE enforcement actions have made cities less safe.

A smaller 67% majority of Republican-aligned adults say that ICE enforcement actions have overall made cities safer, and 56% call the shooting appropriate, with the remainder split between condemning it and declining to weigh in either way.

The subset of independents who don’t lean toward either party also express opposition to ICE’s actions, with more than half saying that ICE enforcement is making cities less safe, and that the shooting is a sign of bigger issues with the way it operates.

Overall, just over half of Americans view Trump’s deportation policies as overreaching. By a 10-point margin, 47% to 37%, Americans say they’re more concerned about crackdowns against those protesting deportations than they are about the protests themselves getting out of hand.

Only 37% of the public expresses a great deal or moderate trust in the federal government to carry out a fair and thorough investigation of the shooting, and just 38% approve of Kristi Noem’s work as secretary of homeland security.

Within the GOP, those who consider themselves members of the “Make America Great Again” movement are 32 points likelier than those who don’t to support the ICE agent’s actions. And while Republican-aligned adults who live in urban areas mostly see ICE enforcement as making cities safer, they’re less likely to say so than their partisan counterparts in suburban or rural areas.

Overall, 59% of Americans who live in cities, a Democratic-leaning group, feel that ICE enforcement is making cities less safe.

A lasting shift against Trump on immigration

Trump made immigration a focal point of his 2024 campaign, vowing to stage the largest deportation operation in American history and attacking former President Joe Biden’s handling of the US-Mexico border.

As Trump has implemented the crackdown he promised, there’s been a lasting shift in public opinion against his handling of immigration.

In February, just 45% of Americans said that Trump’s efforts t

RSS
First37293730373137323734373637373738Last