The Texas Tribune, an independent journal, has been first to report on the news about the Uvalde massacre. In this story, there are new revelations based on video footage from inside the school.
Some of our takeaways include:
- The records show a well-equipped group of officers entered the school almost immediately. They pulled back once the shooter began firing inside the classroom. They waited for more than an hour to reengage.
- There is no security footage that shows police officers attempted to open the classroom doors that the shooter hid behind. Law enforcement officials are skeptical, the Tribune has confirmed, that the doors were locked or that anyone physically tried to open them.
- At least some officers on the scene seemed to believe that Arredondo was in charge inside the school, and at times Arredondo seemed to be issuing orders. That contradicts Arredondo’s assertion that he did not believe he was running the law enforcement response…
The officers in the hallway of Robb Elementary wanted to get inside classrooms 111 and 112 — immediately. One officer’s daughter was inside. Another officer had gotten a call from his wife, a teacher, who told him she was bleeding to death.
Two closed doors and a wall stood between them and an 18-year-old with an AR-15 who had opened fire on children and teachers inside the connected classrooms. A Halligan bar — an ax-like forcible-entry tool used by firefighters to get through locked doors — was available. Ballistic shields were arriving on the scene. So was plenty of firepower, including at least two rifles. Some officers were itching to move.
One such officer, a special agent at the Texas Department of Public Safety, had arrived around 20 minutes after the shooting started. He immediately asked: Are there still kids in the classrooms?
“If there is, then they just need to go in,” the agent said.
Another officer answered, “It is unknown at this time.”
The agent shot back, “Y’all don’t know if there’s kids in there?” He added, “If there’s kids in there we need to go in there.”
“Whoever is in charge will determine that,” came the reply.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Uvalde spends 40% of its city budget on the police? Worth it?
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Ah, there’s a difference between campus police officers and the Uvalde police department.
“As chief of the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District Police Department”
https://www.texastribune.org/2022/06/03/pete-arredondo-uvalde-school-police-chief/
https://www.uvaldetx.gov/government/city_departments/uvalde_police_department.php
Compare the police shirt sleeve patch to see the difference. Campus police are not the same as the town’s police.
While it may be correct that the town of Uvalde pays 40% of its budget for it’s police department, that money probably does not support the public school CPOs, That money should come out of the budget for those schools.
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As I read about the sheer incompetence of the police response in the Uvalde shooting, it occurs to me that the lesson here is much bigger than the unimaginable tragedy of this event. It is another reflection of what happens when governments (federal, state, local) neglect their primary responsibilities of ensuring public safety and discourse. Preparation for events like this must be a core duty of police forces everywhere, all the time. At a time when seconds matter, dawdling about tactics costs lives.
It is an example of what happens when the responsibilities of governing are seen as not needing committed professionals or adequate resources to address public policy priorities. The line between this shooting, the attack on all public institutions–most especially education, and events like the electrical blackouts, for example, is clear. The inability to prepare for natural disasters, while denying the existence of climate change when they are bound to increase in intensity, number, and scope. It boggles the mind. But hey, they give so much back in charity!! (Sarcasm alert.) The Brits learned this lesson with Margaret Thatcher: invest less resources, anticipate and prepare less, and then blame it on the incompetence of government. And, of course, claiming outsourcing it to the private sector would be so much better. [edited version of comment on another post, but fits better here]
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So true. Republicans are jumping all over Biden for our inflation while they ignore that the inflation is a worldwide event and fallout from the pandemic. Somebody should ask Republicans what they would do to stop inflation. They would likely try to reduce more taxes on the 1%. They are always such great problem solvers! Their solution would be as good as their “best healthcare ever” plan. We’re still waiting to see it.
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The GOP has the same answer to every policy: cut taxes on the richest.
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Your comment on inflation needs to be close to story #1 in the news today. It is nuts to think it can be solved in isolation.
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The response of the police in Uvalde was a complete debacle. If Arredondo keeps his job, something is rotten in Texas.
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He needs to lose his job, lose his pension, and be forced to face a trial for gross malfeasance of duty so that at least every detail of it comes to light.
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If Arredondo keeps or doesn’t keep his job, something is rotten in Texas.”
Fixed.
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Heartbreak upon Heartbreak and endless tears for parents, families, a community for decades. FOREVER!
The entire Nation should be OUTRAGED.
This is absolutely unbelievable & acceptable, ever!
What makes human beings like the police act without URGENCY?
This will be one of those unbelievable psychology research questions for the ages.
Why……while children and teachers were dying for 70+ minutes?
…..and, now SILENCE?
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Unfortunately, Texas like some other states, has a history of trying to suppress information to the public. They operate behind the scenes to keep the public in the dark about any misdeeds or incompetence.
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One writer’s description of law enforcement inaction at this scene fits perfectly: armed bureaucrats. They put their own welfare ahead of the people – mostly little kids! – they were sworn to protect. Some of the cops present probably aren’t morally culpable because they weren’t aware of what was really going on. But most of them were – how else did Border Patrol agents go outside their assigned duties to do the job the local cops wouldn’t? How can such cowardly men show their faces ever again in that town? Alas, public employment being what it is, they will likely retire on nice pensions, further lowering the regard that the general public has for government employees.
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The only competence required in Uvalde was the ability to slide up next to Gov Abbott’s right-wing wallet and purchase as much Military Industrial Complex Tough Guy paraphernalia as the public budget would allow. This Dramatic Play costuming helps him & his cronies remain in power. The children and their brave teachers are sacrificed on this altar.
As if they weren’t sufficient, Public School Top Cop is blamed and added to the top of the heap. Reporters are shut out of all investigative hearings and sent out into the 100F heat. Everyone is warned to zip their lip around the media.
This scenario is resting atop decades of bigotry to indigenous Hispanics. While all around them the well-armed Pattarollers are arresting Migration People and shoving them into the rapacious For Profit Detention Centers located nearby. The implicit agreement is that these lives are not worth dying for. Payola for politicians is bound up in the Borderland system of imprisonment. Very lucrative for all involved.
So, a construct is crumbling. It is a heart-breaking, bloody demolition. Robb Elementary families were fighting for equitable and emancipating public schools way back in the 1960’s. Instead they were handed Tin Soldiers who have no intention of protecting them.
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There are many who will use the fact of non-action by the police to demand that teachers be armed. “There is no time to wait for the police when children’s lives are at stake.”
But hey, it’s America where owning a gun is a god-given right, ya know because god told the founders what to write.
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Here’s an interesting interpretation of the Second Amendment. https://jacobin.com/2022/06/second-amendment-gun-control
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good article, thanks!
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The Uvalde school district had its own dedicated police force above and beyond the regular police force of the town. It’s debatable whether they could have prevented the incursion of the maniac assassin in the first place but they could have reduced the mass slaughter if they had not been so overly cautious. What shocks and shatters me is how any human could stand there and unload his rifle on innocent children and adults to the degree that the bodies were unrecognizable. Why? These semi-automatic rifles should be banned, it would not eliminate the massacres but it would reduce the frequency and the severity of the slaughters.
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There is no need to have a 6 member school police department to patrol 8 schools in a town of 16,000 residents. There is no need for such a town to have a SWAT team. With 40% of the town’s budget spent on policing, what did the citizens get?
Heartbreak.
Something is rotten here, and given the state Texas and much of our nation is in, seems likely to be racism. We saw this in Ferguson, where the power structure was White and those under the power of the town were Black. In Uvalde, the mother who got into the school and rescued her own two sons (and also helped a teacher lead her whole class to safety out of their school) was threatened that if she gave interviews to the media that her decade-long probation might be violated. No one ought to be on probation for so long.
Here’s an interview with that mother, if you haven’t seen it.
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I agree with your first paragraph, Christine. I immediately thought the same. The town has their own police force; what school district has its own, particularly w/the #s you cited.
An overbloated, extra expense for a school district which could better spend the $$$ on…education, perhaps?
So, instead, too many cooks spoiled the broth. The outside of Robb School looked like it was surrounded by the Keystone Kops, so many seemingly just standing around, chatting, or just standing, or moving around like chickens w/their heads cut off.
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Key Maintenance/ “Hardening” Failures:
1.The exterior door the gunman entered did not close all the way.
2.The lock [strike plate] on the classroom door the gunman entered was malfunctioning; there had been a teacher request to fix it sometime prior.
Arredondo obviously lied about police having “checked both doors.” (You have to wonder if police even knew the two classrooms were connected.) Had the responding cops tried both classroom doors, they would have gained entry immediately through the malfunctioning door, and could have stormed the connecting room– using the AR15-style rifles the NYT article confirms they already had—and ballistic shields still outdoors with others, due to communications/ command-control failures.
I don’t buy McCraw’s narrative when he doubles down saying police could have entered through windows, or breached door with Halligan. Was there view through windows? Lights are out during a lockdown. In early articles there were interviews with experienced people pointing out tactical flaws in that approach; it’s not generally recommended. As to the availability of a Halligan, this is useless without a few other tools plus at least two people trained in its use on metal-jamb outward-opening doors. Breach takes a few steps and more than a few seconds, during which time your shooter will probably be spraying the door with bullets.
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Ginny,
The latest information is that the classroom doors were not locked. They could not be locked from the inside. The police chief spent 40 minutes looking for a master key but the doors were not locked. The police had AR15s. They had ballistic shields within a few minutes. They did not have an order to walk into an unlocked door to stop the shooter. With so many police there from the school district force, the Uvalde police force, the state police, and the federal Border police, no one knew who was in charge. No one took charge. And only the Border police had functioning radios.
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Yes, I understand, Diane. I’m just walking through the various scenarios from before we knew the outrageous stuff [doors unlocked, cops never checked them]. The shooter might have been able to enter the 1st door regardless, since it hadn’t been locking properly– but the cops might not even have tried that door if they weren’t aware the classrooms were connected—i.e., things could have gone wrong even if teachers locked up & cops tried the door. Add that the first small group in the hall were outgunned by shooter & could easily have been mowed down as soon as they opened that door outward toward themselves, then entered. And McCraw’s disingenuous narrative claiming other things might have worked if, if. To me the common thread is: there will be holes in our every defense plan and errors in implementing it– kids’ chances are not good no matter what.
After Sandy Hook, CT legislators immediately began weeks of negotiations resulting in a bipartisan deal and passage 3 months later: new restrictions to the state’s existing assault weapons ban, ban on sale or purchase of magazines capable of holding more than ten rounds of ammunition, universal background checks for all firearm purchases. One month after Sandy Hook, NYS also passed a series of additional restrictions to their already strong gun control laws.
In TX? Senate Democrats have been pleading since May 28 for govr to call a special summer session to debate a bill they’ve drawn up…
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