The New York Times reports that a federal team of officers in tactical gear arrived on the scene and were kept out of the school by local police.
When specially equipped federal immigration agents arrived at the elementary school in Uvalde, Texas on Tuesday, the local police at the scene would not allow them to go after the gunman who had opened fire on students inside the school, according to two officials briefed on the situation.
The agents from Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, arrived at some point between 12 p.m. and 12:10 p.m., according to the officials — far earlier than previously known. But they did not breach the adjoining classrooms of the school where the gunman had locked himself in until a little before 1 p.m. Members of the federal tactical team killed the gunman.
The officials said that members of the Uvalde Police Department kept the federal agents from going in sooner.
The new details deepened questions about the tactics used to respond to the shooting and the length of time it took officers on the scene to end the carnage…
The federal agents reported that they arrived to a scene of chaos — people pulling children out of windows while the local police, carrying only handguns and a few rifles, were trying to secure a perimeter, according to one official, who like the other spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation.
The Border Patrol and ICE agents did not understand why they were left to wait, according to the official. Eventually, the specialized Border Patrol team went into the building.
Texas law enforcement officials have said that the gunman was locked in a pair of adjoining classrooms and had already shot a number of students there in the first few minutes; with him pinned down there, they said, the local police initially focused on evacuating students and teachers from elsewhere in the school.
Law enforcement officers had initially tried to enter the classroom but fell back after the gunman fired on them, injuring two officers, state law enforcement officials said.
Most if not all of the 21 victims in the attack, including 19 students and two teachers, died in the area where the gunman, identified as Salvador Ramos, had locked himself in. The gunman was fatally shot by the federal team that entered the rooms more than an hour after the initial 911 call of a man with a gun outside the school, which came around 11:30 a.m.
The federal officers had driven up from the Mexican border, one official said. The official said it was not clear to the federal agents why their team was needed, and why the local SWAT team did not respond.
Also from the same source:
The authorities now say that local officers first entered the school at 11:35, two minutes after the gunman, and that there were 19 officers in the hallway by 12:03 p.m., but that they did not breach the door and kill the gunman until 12:50, even as they continued to hear him firing.
It remains unclear when the scene changed from an active shooter to a potential hostage barricade situation, a transition that could have altered the police response, San Antonio Police Chief William McManus said.
“The response to someone who is actually actively shooting, that response has to be immediate, and it’s through the door,” McManus said. “If it turns into a barricade situation, we are not going to make an entry while nothing is happening. We’re going to go in if something happens — shooting starts, screaming starts.”
That thinking reflects changes law enforcement agencies made after the Columbine High School shootings in Colorado, said Fulshear Police Chief Kenny Seymour, who described that 1999 massacre as “the pendulum swing” that prompted law enforcement’s current response to active-shooter situations.
“We can’t wait,” he said. “These shootings don’t allow us to call those specialized units in. We have the training, the tools, to make a difference in these shootings.”
From the Texas Tribune:
Law enforcement response: It took police an hour to stop a gunman once he entered a South Texas elementary school and killed 19 children and two teachers, according to recent details from state law enforcement officials.
Officials with the Texas Department of Public Safety walked back their original claims that the shooter encountered a police officer employed by the school district before entering Robb Elementary School in Uvalde through a back door. In a press conference Thursday, Victor Escalon, an official with Texas DPS, did not explain why it took officers between 40 minutes and an hour to kill the gunman once he entered the school. Here are two key timestamps we do know:
- Uvalde police received the first call about the gunman around 11:20 a.m., when his grandmother called 911 from her home, about two minutes from Robb Elementary, after he shot her in the face. The gunman then fled in her pickup truck, crashing it in a ditch near the school and prompting a 911 call from a neighbor.
- At 1:06 p.m. the Uvalde Police Department posted on its Facebook page that the shooter was in police custody.
The law enforcement response has sparked growing concern, and state law enforcement officials have given vague and conflicting answers on what exactly happened after the gunman arrived at the school.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Feds have the authority to take over any local operation. Why didn’t they? You see civilians pulling children out of windows and you, in full tactical gear, stand there and do nothing because the local boys in blue say no? And that’s the story they’re sticking with?
Once again, Defund the Police. ALL of them.
Right…. After an obviously botched police operation, let’s make sure their incompetence in this situation is enshrined by refusing to train them better. In the meantime, let’s have lots of counselors stand at the windows of these classrooms and let the gunman know that he is understood. You want to volunteer, dienne?
How about we abandon the simplistic slogans and recognize that solutions lie in a multi-pronged approach.
The internet identifies two different people as the Chiefs of Police for the Uvalde community. There is one chief at Uvalde CISD Education Foundation (a non-profit organization management company) and, a different man is the Uvalde Chief of Police.
The unfamiliar organization structure for law enforcement may or may not be unique to Texas. How well it served Uvalde will be reviewed in the weeks to come.
You know the old saying : two many chiefs spoil the broth
And two chiefs is one too many
Throughout the world there are crumbled ruins of a variety of fortifications that never worked (Great Wall of China anyone?). In the time I served as a principal I witnessed a series of hardening efforts from bullet proof foyer bubbles in schools, to cameras, to self locking bump doors. I would frequently inspect my building discovering that any miscreant who wanted to do harm in my building could find a way in because we have to have doors all around the campus to escape a potential fire or chemical accident. Contrary to the evil lie perpetuated by the NRA about the effectiveness of a good person with a gun, this cannot stop someone with evil intent. There has to be limits to gun access to end this slaughter. Law abiding gun owners can still have their guns while those like the assailants in Buffalo and Uvalde can be kept from these weapons of war. We have brain research that tells us that the decision making frontal lobe matures at the average age of 25. There is a reason why we put age restrictions on smoking, drinking, and driving. We, for the most part, think it is ok to not allow anyone to rent a car until the age of 25. We can issue massive buy-backs, make large magazines illegal, and end the availability of home made guns. Universal background checks turn thousands away in states that have this. We can have all of the police surrounding schools and bullet proof classrooms we want, but none of those steps have proven effective. The bullet from a “good gun” cannot stop the bullet that has already entered a child’s skull. We have to get guns off of the streets and stand up to the NRA and crooked politicians. Oh yeah, and don’t vote Republican until we have sent the likes of Ted Cruz home for good.
These are all great suggestions if we could only get enough representatives to vote to curb the easy access to guns. Currently, all the usual suspects, Trump, Abbott and Cruz, will be speaking at the NRA convention in Houston because it’s all about $$$, even if the funds come from Russia. https://www.houstonchronicle.com/politics/texas/article/trump-cruz-abbott-nra-meeting-17196580.php
My son and I went to Washington, DC to participate in March for our lives after Parkland. There were over 500,000 of us there (Take that January 6!). I cannot get to Houston, but I will be pulling for those who will be there this weekend to protest against the NRA. It would be wonderful if 1 million simply surrounded the convention hall and performed a weekend long sit in.
So we want to raise. the age to 25 . Before a shooter can take his mothers weapons(Sandy Hook ) . And of course we want to have better school security . And we need background checks to determine when someone is going to go off the deep end . How old was the Las Vegas shooter(60) . Mrs Smith needs an AR15 on her desk. . And those cowardly cops who thought they signed up to hand out parking tickets.
Gone from the discussion is banning assault weapons and most hand guns. It took New Zealand , Australia, the UK , Germany , one mass shooting ! That should be the only discussion. That it is not is the failure. Guess what Democrats you are not getting the votes of the gun nuts . Only 44% of American Households have a fire arm. A permitted hunting riffle is not an AR15 nor a hand gun.
I agree, Joel. Peter Green wrote in an article I posted here a few days ago that politicians are focused on “hardening” the target, instead of going to the root cause of gun violence: easy access to guns of all kinds, especially assault weapons whose sole purpose is to kill.
I was making the point that the impulsiveness of youth, particularly males, should be taken into account when making gun regulations. You are correct that the shooter in Vegas was 60, but all of these horrific shootings in schools since Columbine have been perpetrated by young men. Also, there is a meaningful tradition among moderate hunters to teach their children responsible lawful gun use, but allowing 18 year olds to simply walk into a sporting goods store to buy military hardware is not the same thing and can be distinguished through law. Yes, it would be great if we could ban assault weapons, expansive magazines, and ghost guns, but that is not going to happen unless citizens in Republican states start to throw their representatives out of office. My state once elected Howard Baker and Al Gore. Now we’ve chosen Marsha “Define a Woman” Blackburn. The conservative electorate has been poisoned by fear mongers. Our only hope is that we get a Democratic majority in the Senate that can end the filibuster without depending on Manchin and Sinema and that Dems keep the House. Then we can wring the timidity out of the Democratic Party and start passing these bills.
In addition to the study that discusses the development of the frontal lobes around 25, we have a study from England some years ago that suggests that the parts of the brain that process algebra begin to light up about that same time.
Could it be that early introduction of certain concepts might have a deleterious effect on cognitive development? Could it increase mental illness? We have two decades of school reform to study these matters.
Perhaps the fact that the US is the only country that shoots up schools on a regular basis is evidence to this effect…
A Formula for Violence
Blame it on algebra
Blame it on science
Causing a Dracula
Oozing with violence
The Manson Calculus
Algebra corrupts the mind
But Calculus is worse
Engendering the Manson kind
The latter is a curse
Derivatives are integral
To forming the deranged
And Charlie Manson’s mind was full
Of deadly rates of change
A Senate report from 2019 alleges that the NRA was acting as front for Russia in order to send donations to the Trump campaign. The report got lost in the pandemic. https://www.forbes.com/sites/sergeiklebnikov/2019/09/27/new-senate-report-alleges-nra-acted-as-foreign-asset-for-russia-before-2016-election/?sh=3562f54a6852
You support the same age restrictions on joining the military, right?
Where are you coming from? Must there always be a “yeh, but” to every post? 19 children died. Period.
This is such a well-informed and informative post. Thank you.
Add to the list of deterrents “Intruder Pull-Down Boxes” – Just like Fire Alarms – the pull down boxes immediately sends out a blaring “intruder – take cover” message – and have cameras on them (so if a kid pulls one as a prank they are known) and provides more hall information in real time for police.
The point sadly is that anyone who wants to get into a school building or any building will.
The purpose of barricades, single-door entry, man-traps (in one door but i.d. checked before getting in the second – helps with angry people, not armed ones), cameras, and others is not to STOP an intruder but rather to SLOW THEM DOWN to provide time to take cover and help on the way. An intruder can shoot or break their way in to a building anywhere – but slowing them down offers precious seconds of saving a life
I’m curious.
Did the local police chief vote for Trump in 2016 and 2020?
Did the local police chief think this shooting might be a staged hoax?
Does this police chief get his news from QAnon and/or only fake Fox News?
The assailant crashed his truck outside of the school, shot at passersby at a funeral home, and then took 12 minutes to find a way into the building. When the police did arrive, they stopped the better armed border patrol from going inside. The carnage simply cannot be stopped after it has begun. We need gun safety laws that prevent guns from being sold to 18 years olds, require universal back ground checks, make high capacity magazines illegal, have personalized trigger mechanisms that prevent illegal use of these weapons et al.
From everything I’ve read so far, this has all the makings of becoming a Hispanic Ferguson. The local government and police rule with an iron hand in a small community. They have incredibly low voter turnout (39% in last national election that saw records nationwide). This will not be a pretty picture, especially if the mayor is representative of the actual power structure in the community.
Sovereign immunity protects Texas schools from lawsuits. Does the organizational structure of the Uvalde CISD police organization qualify for sovereign immunity? To whom does its chief of police report?
Not that this isn’t a story, but Republican lawmakers who don’t want to be talking about guns must absolutely love this story. “It wasn’t freely available guns that led to this massacre, it was a bureaucratic incompetence and paralysis.”
You are correct. Anti-government people are always ready to create incompetent government and then curse it for being incompetent.
Yeah, it had nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that a troubled high-school kid with a history of starting fights at school was able to buy military-style assault weapons on his 18th birthday.
“It wasn’t freely available guns that led to this massacre, it was a bureaucratic incompetence and paralysis.”
I agree with this, which is why I was outraged when right wing propaganda got so many good people – even here – to repeat this kind of propaganda last November, except that time it was to scapegoat the school officials. Compared to the actions of the police in Uvalde, the school officials in Michigan were very proactive, calling in the parents IMMEDIATELY the first time they found a drawing that seemed threatening and removing the kid immediately from the classroom. In the Michigan case, the parents lied to school officials, never mentioning the kid had access to a weapon, and blatantly refused to take their kid home, and making up entirely an innocuous reason for the drawing. The truly reprehensible gun-loving law officials in that town – looking for any scapegoat instead of the easy access teens have to assault weapons – invented a cockamamie story about how school officials should have called in law enforcement implying that law enforcement would have searched the kid for weapons rather than scream at school officials for wasting his time when “good people” like his parents (nice white gun-loving conservatives)* were right there explaining that school officials had wildly overreacted.
*The sheriff later proved my theory is true by the fact that even after he knew that those same white gun-loving parents had lied to school officials, he had absolute trust in them not to try to run and therefore didn’t bother to even keep an eye on them. But sure, let’s believe his cockamamie story about how BEFORE he knew those parents were liars he would have arrested their kid because he didn’t believe a word they said to vouch for their kid.
FLERP!, you are absolutely right that the shooting this week and the deaths of another 19 children is directly linked to the outrageous way that we allowed the scapegoating of the school in Michigan when in fact, that Michigan school was NOT incompetent and their system would have worked very well if not for a school shooter having parents who not only gave him an assault weapon, but lied to school officials and refused to take him home because they were so determined to make sure their kid could shoot up the school if he wanted. Guess what? The Michigan school didn’t account for lying parents who would rather have their kid kill a lot of fellow students than simply tell the truth. The fact that parents as co-conspirators wasn’t part of the previous school response is understandable, and presumably now a drawing of a gun gets a kid thrown in jail immediately, regardless of what explanation their parents give.
So no crocodile tears for the police in Uvalde whose actions were 1000x more incompetent than the good protocols put into place in Michigan that did not account for lying parents who not only bought the weapon for their child, but blatantly lied to school officials and insisted that their son be allowed to remain in the school when the school tried to send him home.
In Michigan, school officials acted proactively but did not account for lying parents who came into school to lie to officials right after buying their kid an assault weapon. In Uvalde, the police did nothing at all.
But of course, the real co-conspirators who should be blamed are those who oppose gun control and have made our country the place where too many children come to school to die. It isn’t our culture. It isn’t our wars. It is our Republican party and their complicity. And the fact that they believe that 19 dead children is a small price to pay for “freedom”.
So wise, NYCPSP.
Axios reports that BlackRock, the investment giant, is the largest shareholder in America’s largest gunmakers.
I change my stance. They screwed up. What a mess. I read the Texas patch for the area. The kids were calling 911. These bozos were just waiting.
Obscene, stupid, tragic. There is no excuse whatsoever for this. It’s not that difficult to knock open a freaking classroom door. And did this classroom not have windows? What on earth were these police thinking? Well, they weren’t or, worse yet, they were freaking cowards.
Yes, it’s dangerous. But that is the job, and the lives of little children were at stake. Shameful.
The classroom had a door with a window, which the shooter blew out. It also had windows. The police had a master key to the door.
& yet, today: “GOP Blocks Domestic Terrorism Bill: Senate Measure Fails in 1st Test After
Spate of Mass Shootings.” (Chicago Tribune, 5/27/22) “The final vote was 47-47, far short of the 60 needed to take up the bill. All Republicans voted against it.”
GET OUT & VOTE, WORK FOR GVP CANDIDATES (& not just local legislators & Congresspeople, but judges: KNOW your judges. Use your state League of Women Voters websites/Voter Services to find out everything you need to know about judges.
Vote as if your lives depend upon it. They DO.
Time to call it what it is. The Republican Party is not the party of terrorism. Storming the Capitol? Fine. Trying to overturn a democratic election? Fine. Assault rifles in the hands of children. Fine. Commander in Chief with a history of money laundering for Russian criminals? Fine. Women dead because of lack of access to safe abortion? Fine. Poor people dead because of lack of access to healthcare? Fine.
All just fine in the eyes of the current Repugnican Party.
cx: is now the party of terrorism
I still am of the opinion that race plaid a role in this sad happening. Looking up Uvalde via Wikileaks…it has 78% non-white Latino population. To me…that tells me something.
If the Uvalde police are also Hispanic, then race was not a factor.
It would to you. Latino kid shoots Latino kids. Smacks of racism. Yep
The simple solution is obviously to take away the guns. People with guns kill innocent people even when other people with guns are present. But people kill people regardless of guns being involved. So already, the problem is not simple. Guns are a part of this world now, like it or not. You will never get rid of every single gun. And you also don’t know the consequences of what happens if guns are banned. Unless you look at other countries with total bans and you can get an idea. Best case scenario- you have the same amount of violence present except the means are different and you no longer have any say or voice to the people with guns that tell you what to do. Worst case scenario is pretty much limitless in the extent of suffering involved. My suggestion is to take a systematic approach to the systematic problem. Break it down piece by piece. I’m guessing that in the.process of doing that, you’ll be left with a big pile of unknown factors. That’s because no matter how you look at it, there are realities to this problem that cannot be seen by us. A lot of missing pieces and the people who have answers to those missing pieces aren’t talking. So since it’s likely that it will be far too late to do anything effective by the time you get all the pieces filled, it’s probably a good idea to consider a replacement theory to the gun ban argument. Meaning, what is your solution to the litany of problems that will arise after taking away everybody’s guns? Every action in the natural world has a cause and effect. It’s beyond hubris to believe that you can take away all.of the guns and fix the problem just like that. Every consequence to that action must not be ignored. So before you promote the gun removal agenda, make sure you list every cause for needing or wanting a gun as well as a list of every effect after removal.
Cui Bono! Don’t be surprised when someday it is revealed that the FBI groomed the kid in Uvalde to commit this heinous act, Same for that recent shooting in NY state. The FBI/Democrats love this kind of crap. They never let a crisis go to waste. If they don’t have a crisis, they create one. Why didn’t the cops go in? They were told to hold back. The administration wanted a higher body count. They needed a big number to push their anti-firearms agenda. Biden would have been right at home during the darkest days of Stalin’s purges in the USSR, or in Paris during the Terror. Biden feeds off of the misery of others. He is a Democrat.
Porterv7,
You are insane. The entire political leadership of Texas and Uvalde is Republican.