7:42 PM PT -- Travis' legal rep, Ed McPherson, is pointing out the inconsistencies from HPD and the city, telling TMZ, "There has been multiple finger-pointing, much of which has been by city officials, who have sent inconsistent messages and have backtracked from original statements."
He continues, "Houston Police Chief Troy Finner was quoted in the New York Times as saying, “You cannot just close when you got 50,000 and over 50,000 individuals. We have to worry about rioting, riots, when you have a group that’s that young.” Yet, just a short time later, Chief Finner states the responsibility to stop the show falls on Travis."
7:42 PM PT -- McPherson says, "It was reported that the Operations Plan designated that only the festival director and executive producers have authority to stop the show, neither of which is part of Travis’s crew. This also runs afoul of HPD’s own previous actions when it shut down the power and sound at this very festival when the performance ran over 5 minutes back in 2019."
He finishes, "Investigations should start proceeding over fingerpointing so that together, we can identify exactly what transpired and how we can prevent anything like this from happening again.”
Members of the Houston Police Department calmly pulled out their cellphones and recorded Travis Scott's performance at the Astroworld festival ... nearly a half hour after it was declared a mass casualty event.
It's significant footage because it looks like cops were unaware of the dire situation behind them, and if they didn't know ... how would Travis?
The Fire Chief called the calamity a "mass casualty event" at 9:38 PM. Now check out the photo (above) of cops shooting cellphone video -- the time stamp shows it was snapped at 9:57 PM ... 19 minutes later.
As for the video -- obtained by TMZ -- it was shot at 10:02 PM, a full 25 minutes after the mass casualty declaration. Again, cops are strolling past the stage, completely oblivious to the carnage behind them.
It's hard to imagine the officers knew what was going on in the crowd. It seems they're in the dark, perhaps because of the noise and general commotion associated with Travis Scott concerts. This seems to buttress Travis' contention he too had no idea this was a mass casualty event.
As we reported, there were people in the crowd begging for someone to stop the show ... some even flat out telling camera operators there were dead people in the crowd. That message seemed to have escaped the officers in the front, and possibly Travis as well.
At one point, Travis did see a fan in distress and stopped performing to get them assistance. However, in another instance, he spotted an ambulance weaving through fans, pointed it out, and then got back on with the show.