Drip by drip, we are learning the facts about what happened in the Robb Elementary School in Uvalde when a killer barged in. He could have been stopped. Lives could have been saved. But the incompetence of the police leadership caused an unconscionable delay in stopping the killer. Well-established protocols were ignored (stop the shooter asap, even if you don’t have enough men or equipment, stop the killer). As it happened, the police in Uvalde had more men than they needed and all the equipment they needed to stop the killer. But they didn’t.
The head of the state police called the response an abject failure. The pokice had shields and weapons. They did not need a key. They stood around and waited for 77 minutes.
AUSTIN, Texas — The head of the Texas State Police offered a pointed and emphatic rebuke of the police response to a shooting last month at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, calling it “an abject failure” that ran counter to decades of training.
In his comments before a special State Senate committee in Austin, Steven McCraw, the director of the Department of Public Safety, said that just minutes after a gunman began shooting children inside a pair of connected classrooms on May 24, the police at the scene had enough firepower and protective equipment to storm the classroom.
But, he said, the on-scene commander “decided to put the lives of officers ahead of the lives of children.” Mr. McCraw, speaking forcefully, said the same commander had delayed confronting the gunman because he “waited for a key that was never needed.”
Mr. McCraw said that the doors to the classrooms could be locked only from the outside. “There’s no way to lock the door from the inside. And there’s no way for the subject to lock the door from the inside,” he said, adding that a teacher had made a request for the locks to be fixed, believing they were broken, before the shooting.
“I don’t believe, based on the information that we have right now, that that door was ever secured,” Mr. McCraw said. “The door was unsecured.”
There were so many police officers present that no one knew who was in charge. It turns out that no one was in charge.
This is an instance where the planning was wholly inadequate.
100+ men with guns were unable to stop one bad guy with a gun.
They had the guns, the shields, and overwhelming force. And for 77 minutes, they stood by.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I think we need to name the horror of this terrible police failure AND USE IT to dispel the idea that “good guys with guns” is somehow better than what we really need, which is highly controlled and restricted personal weapons and NO automatic or military-grade weapons. This country needs to stop indulging in child sacrifice.
The Uvalde public school district had its own campus police officers separate from the Uvalde town police department.
Since news reports have reported that the CPO’s police chief for the public school district’s few campus police officers claimed he was in charge and he was giving the orders, the only thing the local town police chief are guilty of is letting him be in charge. Even the sheriffs and border patrol teams allegedly let this idiot boss them around until one group from the border patrol couldn’t stand it anymore and went in an hour later against his orders.
Apparently this CPO police chief (not the same as Uvalde’s town police chief) is a total idiot and shouldn’t be in any job that required decision making.
“…the only thing the local town police chief are guilty of is letting him be in charge.”
That seems like a pretty huge things to be guilty of, considering everyone on this blog things that everyone who allowed Trump to be in charge should be jailed or hanged. Seems to me that pretty much every LEO on the scene had grounds and authority to override the local school cop but didn’t.
“….considering everyone on this blog things that everyone who allowed Trump to be in charge should be jailed or hanged…”
What?
I’m trying to understand the way policing is organized in that part of Texas.
Or maybe I should say policing in general….since I’m a teacher.
John, I try to ignore ranting most of the time. If it gets too nutty, I take it down.
Lloyd, I remember thinking on the day of the horrific shooting, the police response just doesn’t make sense -in many ways.
And now, weeks later, it still takes someone like you, a commentator from afar, to help put this horrible puzzle together.
All the law enforcement firepower plus a tidal wave of information on the internet, and what are we left with?
Once again, thanks to Diane’s blog and its writers.
Let’s say there’s a medical emergency and the first doctor to arrive on the scene is some backwoods guy who gets out some leeches and goes to work. Starting within minutes and continuing for the next hour plus, dozens of other more competent and qualified doctors arrive, but they all stand by while Dr. Bumpkin proceeds with his leeches. Is Dr. Bumpkin the only one who should be held responsible? If anything, he’s the least responsible because maybe he didn’t know better, whereas the others all definitely knew better, but they let him go ahead anyway.
I’ve followed along each time we receive updates on this tragedy and each time the news gets worse. There will be consequences, who am I to say what they should be. It won’t be enough, 19 child and 2 adults were torn apart by a weapon that should never be in the hands of civilians. If the training had been effective, then some would have been spared, but we as a society we don’t seem to care enough to put effective solutions in place. Only solutions that that maybe absolves us of responsibility. More than half of the people who attended the Texas Republican State Convention want to see all gun laws done away with and they booed Senator Cronyn for seeking at least some solutions. We’ve given the crazy uncles too much voice and it is showing up every way we turn. Time for sensible adults to take control, the inmates are running the asylum
Radio lab replayed an old episode this week called No Special Duty about what police officers are required to do for citizens. It is very interesting. https://www.radiolab.org/episodes/no-special-duty-2206
Of course, the NYT article linked, here, is behind a paywall. However, if you have on demand or some other service, you can watch “The Last Word w/Lawrence O’Donnell” from last night, 6/20,22: Lawrence doggedly follows the story for at least 20 minutes (every night, even putting it before the 1/6 hearings, because, YES, the murder of children & innocents {w/a multitude of trained law enforcement simply “standing by}), & you can see the video of the EMPTY hallway, w/OFFICERS equipped w/SEMIAUTOMATICS, bulletproof vests & some sort of SHIELD…STANDING AROUND in the EMPTY hallway…surely, they could hear shots being fired). He interviewed a sharp reporter for “The Texas Tribune” & one from the Austin paper. O’Donnell emphasizes that this new information has only come to light BECAUSE of the reporters.
Again–& thank G-d–murder was prevented at a summer camp last week: police arrived on the scene w/in 2 min. but, more importantly, IMMEDIATELY took the shooter down. (I believe he died @ the hospital.) Don’t know what kind of weapon he had, but he’s dead…& no others are. Infuriating Rule 1 wasn’t followed in Uvalde: TAKE THE SHOOTER DOWN.
Breaking News the Texas State police chief is full of it. As is the good guy with a gun nonsense. The reason we give medals for valor is that these are the exceptional actions not the rule. And usually the hero had little choice.
How many times do we have to see these failures to confront mass shooters before we call the myth out for what it is. Few people will stare death in the face and say come get me.