I watched the full press conference with the local Sheriff. The impression he left was that the shooter went into one classroom, shot it up, barricaded himself inside, and then shot at the first officers responding, who then waited for tactical teams with body armor and specialized weapons and negotiators to arrive.
Yet there were also gaping holes in his timeline. Other reports said that shots were fired before the shooter entered. No confirmation was ever given to the assertion that no more shots at students occurred after the initial burst. No accounts of the final confrontation were given.
Nothing that I’ve seen on the news gives a proper minute-by-minute sequence of who did what when. I don’t believe any account on the internet has that info either. Dozens of police from at least a half dozen agencies were on the scene and they all need to be talked to and their reports combined and reconciled. There’s video of some kind as well that nobody has talked about. We really don’t know anything yet.
Everybody’s angry and frustrated. Telling grieving parents and relatives to wait is the last thing they want to hear. But police still considered the Tops in Buffalo a crime scene more than a week after that shooting happened and those facts seemed as cut and dried as possible and the shooter was alive and in custody. This one is dead. Do we even know whether any adults in the room made it out? It’s all mysterious.
And if a parent at one end of the hallway and a parent at the other end of the hallway mistake each other for the shooter and shoot at each other, and one of them misses and hits you instead, then I don’t think you’d be comforted by the fact that as many police as possible were in the building.
The perspective of one of the victims is not the right perspective to look at this from. They’re untrained, terrified, and have very little time to make decisions. Untrained, terrified, time-limited people make poor decisions. People setting policies are trained, calm, and have plenty of time to make their decisions. That’s why we have policies, so as many of the decisions as possible can be made by people in a good position to make decisions.
None of which, incidentally, is meant as a defense of the response in this incident. Doing it right takes more than just blindly charging in, but it still takes a lot less than 40 minutes to do it.
We rely on the police to do something that they haven’t been properly trained for, starting with their initial police training and then following up with half-assed solutions dreamed up to take the heat off of the real problems. Why doesn’t this work?
In my original response I was referring to the police entering the school not the parents. This was based off of my misunderstanding of the OP, believing they were referring to the police entering causing more chaos. I’m of a general agreement that just allowing parents to go in isn’t a good idea. Although I’m reconsidering that position. Not because I think it’s a great idea, but because I think it’s preferrable to allowing an active shooter to remain unchallenged for a long period of time.
I’m going to have to wait until I hear more information about why it took 40 minutes for authorities to enter the school before I condemn them. It’s entirely possible they had a valid reason for their actions that I’m currently unaware of. But it’s not looking good right now.
Is it cowardly to not want to go into a situation where the gunman has the clear upper-hand? Shooter knows where the door is. He knows what will be coming in. He knows the door is locked and they will have to give notice they are coming in. The police know very little. What weapons does he have? Does he have body armor? Where is he located in the room? Will he have a child sized human shield?
Again, this is assuming sheriff’s report is accurate.
Here’s a Twitter thread about Texas’ school security law from 2019, which, among other things, specifically states that first responders are to prioritize the lives of innocent civilians above their own, and that neutralizing the attacker is the first priority even if it means engaging them one-on-one;
By failing to follow this law, the Uvalde police have been negligent in their duty and, if they were in the military, would be guilty of cowardice under the UCMJ and subject to a sentence of death.
They are cowards who have utterly failed their fellow citizens and the department needs to be rebuilt from the bottom up.
Very interesting. Thanks for finding this. I still don’t know what to think about the unknowns I posted above. Could you imagine busting in the door, not knowing where the shooter is located, trying to determine if he has a 7-year old child held in front of him, and opening fire trying not to hit the hopeful survivors? I know I couldn’t do that. Glad I didn’t go into law enforcement.
In a state where there are so many armed people, and so many shooter situations, how long before parents start heading to the schools armed, with no intention of waiting 40 mins for vests, briefings etc?
If you aren’t willing to rush toward danger to save twenty plus children, are you really cop material? I’m guessing small town cops are cops NOT looking to face active shooters etc.
There were multiple LE agencies responding, school county, state, Border Patrol, FBI, possibly more. Can they talk to each other over radios or do they have separate frequencies? How quickly can they get onto a common radio frequency? How similar is their training? Do their entry teams form up the same way? Do they use the same hand signals? Do they know for certain they’re only going after a single shooter? Imagine if they ran down the hall only to discover there was a second shooter waiting in ambush to pop out of an empty classroom & shoot them all in the back.
I literally was at the Fire Academy for a class tonight, the instructor specifically stated he was teaching to the state curriculum but that many of our depts have advanced equipment that makes some of the specifics of what we learned kind of pointless as we do it a different way. IF you’re working with multiple agencies you’re going to need to coordinate who is in charge & which method is going to be used.
Did the shooter shoot everyone up front or say, one a minute? IOW, would m/any less be shot if they went in quicker?
I don’t know the answers to any of these questions, I’m sure they’ll be looked at in the AAR; for now they are just points to ponder.
Correct. That’s why I said “if they wete in the military”.
I refer you to the Twitter thread in my post, which contains a link to an article about the law as well as a copy of training materials intended to teach officers how to comply with it.
Of course it’s not cowardly to desire safety over danger, but when you sign aboard to be a police officer you know you may be placed in harm’s way, so you have to be willing to place yourself in harm’s way. I don’t expect police officers to be suicidally brave, but to hold the perimeter for 40 minutes while someone is inside murdering children? I really need a good explanation here, and waiting for backup from a SWAT team isn’t going to be good enough. These are the same people who expect our forgiveness when they shoot someone during a traffic stop or an unarmed kid who throws their hands up in the air.
There’s always going to be uncertainty, and maybe all of those things could be true. But what we can reasonably surmise, is that in an active shooter situation the shooter will continue to murder people until he is stopped or runs out of ammunition.
I was going to mention that it’s easy for me to sit here and second guess from the safety and comfort of my own home. And it’s true, which is why I’m typically loathed to play armchair general. Like I said earlier, maybe they have a valid reason for waiting 40 minutes before doing anything meaningful. Right now, it does look a bit cowardly.
But they are not. Why would you make the comparison. Are we supposed to hold the police to standard that does not apply to them?
I want to see a copy of the law. I haven’t spent enough time searching yet but I don’t like that neither your article nor training manual considers the actual law to be important. It is not even listed as reference material for the training manual.
At this point I see no evidence that the police believe any standard applies to them. They certainly need to be held to a much higher one than they are currently.
From what little I know of this situation and others. It seems the police in this particular instance, should have carefully closed the distance. Definitely keep civilians out. But close in tactically, carefully. As quickly as possible identify the exact location of the suspect. Surround that room. Communicate that location to any sniper unit, so they can take up position.
The police seem to have not even entered a large building. Kept too far a distance to effect the situation in any way but to prevent others outside from danger.
I am definitely not saying they should have rushed the place blindly with intent of a shootout. They seem to have defaulted to a hostage situation. Sadly this is too often now, not the case. They need to get in close as fast as possible. This is at the least, better control and knowledge of the situation.
It may be that military urban warfare training and tactics up to the point of closest contact with the suspect is the way to go. SWAT teams are trained this way. Maybe it is time to give some specific training in this to all officers. Up to the point of close contact and containment at least.
That is a total failure to use your forces properly. A good SWAT response should have had the suspect located to a room and a plan to engage and destroy. Just waiting for go command. Having located the room. Snipers should have been able to have him targeted. Operating solely from a perimeter is not what you do in this case.
