More information emerges on the Uvalde school mass murder and the police response or lack thereof [scroll down for UPDATES]
This is something I previously had suspected as a possibility – that by the time police got to the scene at Uvalde and entered the school building, and then got to the barricaded classroom, they thought the shooting of children and teachers was finished and that the perp was simply barricaded in the room. Was this the truth, or was it a tragic and horrific – and probably even stupid – miscalculation? We don’t yet know, just as we don’t know a ton of other important things about the timeline, the actions, and the decisions made:
Texas official: The decision to not breach the classroom was made by the Chief of Police for the school district.
"He was convinced at that time that there was no more threat to the children…and that they had time to organize…" pic.twitter.com/TKRmatNfWO
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) May 27, 2022
So two police officers had been “hit” by the perp’s gunfire although not injured seriously, and one was “grazed.” What was the reason police decided there was no danger anymore to children – and was this correct? I have so many questions that are unanswered:
Was that just cowardice and abysmal judgment, or did it make sense at the time? Had all the shooting from the perp stopped by this time, and was he only firing at police? I have suspected for a while now that the children were killed very early on, perhaps even before police arrived on the scene, but is that true? And what did the police know? What evidence were they relying on when they made the decision? How many children might have died from bleeding out in the meantime, while the police waited? Was there any sort of camera in the room that told police what was going on? And an unanswerable one – how many police might have died storming the room without proper equipment? Does that possibility not go with the territory of being a police officer? At what point would such action have been suicidal, without the proper equipment?
This is very disturbing information. But here’s more that indicates the same scenario:
Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steven McCraw said Friday that when officers were responding to Robb Elementary School , “there was a barrage – hundreds of rounds were pumped in, in four minutes,” into two classrooms inside the school.
“Any firing afterwards was sporadic and it was at the door,” McCraw continued. “So the belief is that there may not be anybody living anymore and that the subject is now trying to keep law enforcement at bay or enticing them to come in and suicide [by cop].”…
“Texas embraces and teaches the active shooter doctrine,” McCraw later said. “As long as there’s kids, as long as there’s somebody firing, you go to the gun, you find them, you neutralize them, period.
“There are some nuances with transitioning to a barricaded subject and also transitioning to a hostage situation,” McCraw also said. “And, of course, that the decision at the scene was that this is still a barricaded subject, it did not go back to an active shooter.”
I haven’t watched the whole press conference – only read the excerpts and summaries – but it seems to me that it’s possible that it never did “go back to being an active shooter” situation after that. It takes time to generate a timeline that fits all the facts, and I wonder if any of this was recorded. Neither teacher in the room survived, but perhaps some children were aware of the exact time the shooting of the victims occurred, either through watches or cell phones? It may be an exceptionally difficult thing to reconstruct. Was there surveillance video at least of the halls, and if so does it have sound? A sound recording would be very helpful in figuring this out.
McGraw says that the holding back was the “wrong decision, period.” I agree. But it’s possible the decision could be understood by knowing the answers to these questions. It’s also possible it would seem like an even worse decision than it already appears to be.
It’s hard to withhold final judgment until we get further information in a situation of such high emotion and horror, and with so much room for justified anger. But I think it’s necessary.
UPDATE 4:50 PM:
At that news conference by McCraw, it was explained that several 911 calls came in during the standoff. This site summarizes the talk today from McCraw. Some relevant quotes:
The first call was from an unidentified person inside the classroom [at 12:03]. The person made another call at 12:10 pm and advised that multiple people were dead. She called again at 12:13 pm and 12:16 pm and said there were eight to nine students alive inside the classroom she was in.
Another call was placed from inside a classroom at 12:19 pm from another unidentified person, “who hung up when another student told her to hang up,” McCraw said.
The initial caller, identified as a “student/child” made two more calls at 12:43 p.m. and 12:47 p.m. and asked the 911 operator to “please send the police now,” McCraw said.
It was initially reported that a 911 call was placed by a teacher, but that has since been retracted.
My question is: were the police at the scene informed of the content of the calls? I’m going to assume that they were – which makes their behavior even worse – but do we know they were informed? They certainly should have been, but I’d like to know for sure before I assume that they were privy to that information.
It really does look more and more as though terrible judgment was used by the police, especially if the police at the scene were informed of the content of those calls. And if they weren’t, they certainly should have been.
UPDATE 5:10 PM:
It seems to me that, as more and more information comes out – some of it information the police and other authorities are just now putting together from multiple sources – it looks more and more as though the Uvalde massacre was a chain of events that featured some things that could not have been prevented, but also a great many errors and also a lot of bad luck as well.
–A perp with some warning signs that he planned carnage, signs that apparently were not reported by the other young people who heard them.
–A police officer early on the scene who passed the perp by (he was crouching behind a car) and mistakenly stopped a teacher whom he thought might be the perp.
–A door that had been propped open by a teacher just minutes before the perp came on the scene and entered the school through it. That’s both an error and then remarkably bad luck.
–A police force that seems to have been in over its head and making bad decisions, perhaps based in part on incomplete information but seemingly based on fear and error.
UPDATE 7:55 PM:
Apparently the school did have an assigned officer who was armed, but he was not there at the time of the shooting. I don’t know whether he was supposed to be there every day all day, because that’s not always the case with these officers:
As for the armed school officer, he was driving nearby but was not on campus when Ramos crashed his truck, according to a law enforcement official who was not authorized to discuss the case and spoke of condition of anonymity.
Investigators have concluded that school officer was not positioned between the school and Ramos, leaving him unable to confront the shooter before he entered the building, the law enforcement official said.
It seems like another screw-up. Or perhaps it’s just another case of bad luck because the officer wasn’t supposed to be on duty that day.
I just posted this timeline on that other thread. Here it is again.
Those surviving children. Heartbreaking.
https://twitter.com/ByMikeBaker/status/1530246590954213377
“How many children might have died from bleeding out in the meantime, while the police waited?” That’s the thought that haunts me, and I am sure it will haunt the police and the city for a long time.
This is Texas, most of us here in Texas expect to have law officers who will respond as fast as possible and if neccessary put their lives on the line when innocent children are being killed. The information we are receiving now is still confusing and all of those in charge last Tuesday who did not get in fast when there were 19 officers in the hall outside of a door that it now seems might have been locked by the police and then later unlocked by the men willing to get the job done, three Border Patrol Guards and one of them off duty in civilian clothes. If the cops are going to pull out their ARs and deck out in tactical gear they should also be trained and led to get the job done immediately, no excuses and if an officer or two gives his life and saves a bunch of kids then that is a good trade off, acceptable losses as they say in the military.
If (and it’s a big “IF”) the police were assuming that since the shooter was barricaded into a classroom that therefore all the children were either safe or dead, that’s just completely idiotic. Could they say for certain that there weren’t children still alive in the classroom with him, either clinging to life or playing possum?
The use of the word ‘barricaded’ makes it the weasel word of the event, talking about procedures of barricaded vs. active shooter seems to me as if they are trying to slip away from the blame, all the law enforcement guys and that is sickening.
Nonapod:
I think it was based on the fact that there was no shooting coming from the classroom, and the only shooting was towards the police.
They certainly would not know for sure, however, and that’s what is so disturbing about the behavior of the police.
I also wonder whether they had any video from the classroom, but if so we’ve not heard anything about it so my guess is that there was nothing of the sort.
On that timeline I posted at 12:19 a 911 call came in and three shots were heard on that call.
Were those directed at the police? The standoff continued for awhile after that so maybe they were, or the police in hall thought they were, but it didn’t lead to them taking any action immediately.
Also apparently there was an SRO assigned to the school but he wasn’t there that day but came as soon as he heard 911 call and drove right by the perp (maybe understandable).
Not sure if he had other duties in addition to the school or if it was something less defensible.
That press conference earlier really put out a ton of information lots of which was very unflattering to the police so I’ve got to give them that.
” I have suspected for a while now that the children were killed very early on, perhaps even before police arrived on the scene, but is that true?”
No, it is not true.
“And what did the police know?”
They knew that multiple children were shot, some of them were dead, but many of them were still alive.
“What evidence were they relying on when they made the decision?”
“They certainly would not know for sure, however, and that’s what is so disturbing about the behavior of the police.”
They did know for sure. They knew with certainty that there was a teacher and at least eight or nine children still alive while they were standing outside waiting for them to die, as there were multiple 911 calls from within the classroom.
““They must have known that some kids in the room were alive, as a few were on the phone with 911 sporadically: ‘From 12:03 to 12:46, 911 dispatchers received numerous calls from within the classroom, including repeated calls from a child whispering that people were dead and begging: ‘Please send the police now,’ Mr. McCraw said.’”
“A female teacher called at 12:03 pm and told police where the shooter was. Of course based on the earlier timeline, they already knew that. The same teacher called back at 12:10 to advise police there were multiple people dead. At 12:13 and 12:16 she called once again to say there were 8-9 students still alive.”
“Officers did go in and engage the shooter immediately, but after that initial push they stood outside in the hallway from 11:35 am until the door was finally breached at 12:50 pm.”
So the police knew there were still survivors in the classroom and yet stood around for another 45 minutes while the teacher and the rest of the children died.
I don’t know how you can defend this. I have never read of such a brazen act of cowardice in all my life. It buggers all belief. Those cops are despicable human beings. They certainly aren’t men.
“Texas embraces and teaches the active shooter doctrine,” McCraw later said. “As long as there’s kids, as long as there’s somebody firing, you go to the gun, you find them, you neutralize them, period.”
But that didn’t happen did it? He was still firing, I.e. was an “active shooter” yet these cowards didn’t go in. After Columbine, every cop in the country knew what to do, and these cowards also knew what to do but they rationalized it by weasel-wording it into a “barricade situation”.
Grandpagrumble:
I don’t believe he was an active shooter anymore by their definition – which is someone who is shooting at victims, not shooting at police trying to capture him. They say the shooting in the room had stopped by the time they got there.
some of the kids were calling into “911” so law enforcement was on notice that they were alive in the room with the shooter. Begging for the police to come in and get them.
mkent:
You make a lot of categorical statements with no links whatsoever. Please provide links.
Of course some children were still alive. There were 17 people wounded and hospitalized (that count may not be exactly right, but it’s what I read earlier and it indicates a lot of survivors). The point is whether there were survivors at the time the police came who died in the amount of time before the killer was killed and who might have been saved had the room been successfully breached at the outset.
The information about the multiple 911 calls that you offer seems to have been gotten from this site, which summarizes the talk today from McCraw. My question is: were the police at the scene informed of the content of the calls? I’m going to assume that they were – which makes their behavior even worse – but do we know they were informed? They certainly should have been, but I’d like to know for sure before I assume that they were privy to that information. Did you listen to the entire press conference? I haven’t found a transcript, which would help to get the picture.
I have no trouble criticizing and even condemning their decisions as I learn more, if such condemnation is warranted.
By the way, the assertion that a teacher called 911 has been corrected. No such call occurred, apparently.
How many children might have died from bleeding out in the meantime, while the police waited?
The wounded and bleeding who were not rescued in a timely manner during the Pulse nightclub shooting was a big issue. In that case the shooter claimed to have suicide bomb vest, which was false.
I also recall the medical people treating victims in the DC beltway shootings, Muhammad & Malvo, stating that there is a golden hour. They want to get the victim into surgery within one hour of the shooting.
AMartel:
See my comment above this one.
Neo, I was going by McGraw’s description itself to define active shooter. “As long as there’s somebody firing you go to the gun, you neutralize them. Period”. So apparently they can now change the definition of active shooter depending upon how brave they feel at any given moment?
I now know enough to make my rush to judgement. Police should have gone after the shooter at least an hour before he was finally taken down.
regretably this is the same pattern, we’ve seen in other locations, so exactly what are law enforcement for, it’s not a rhetorical question, they were awol in kenosha, and other places, it seems they are good at holding parents at school boards for crime think, not so much at stopping terrorists, and this is what the shooter was,
Grandpagrumble:
McCraw said he thought they made a mistake in not going in. I agree. But I’m not sure that was based on what an “active shooter” is. In the past, I’ve been under the impression it means someone shooting at people other than the police. When McCraw said that, it’s not clear whether he meant shooting defensively at only the police or whether he meant the more conventional “shooting at the public.”
TommyJay:
That was also a big big issue at Columbine. A heroic teacher and coach, who had rescued hundreds of students by warning them in the cafeteria and helping them flee, was wounded and bled out during the many hours (I think it was three) waiting to be rescued.
And the exterior school door was propped open by a teacher approx. 5 minutes before the shooter entered the school.
Just an extraordinary amount of poor decisions by people that made it easier for this guy to carry out his attacks.
Griffin:
That is horribly heartbreaking. Is there more about that? Was the teacher out for a smoke or a breath of fresh air, or what? Do we know? That person must feel horrendous at having made that decision.
neo,
I just heard that McCraw guy mention it in his rundown but I don’t think he went into detail about why unless it happened after I had to stop listening.
I’ve issued several updates at the end of the post.
The thought of injured or children feigning injury in that classroom, making surreptitious calls begging for help, while the cops stood around with their thumb up their *sses in the corridor … that breaks my heart. I have a small grandson, and my daughter wants to move herself and him to a small town in South Texas (rather like Uvalde) and send him to public school there – a school district which is very well thought of, academically.
How many of the dead could have been saved, if the police stormed the classroom, regardless. I wonder also, how many people in authority in Uvalde thought that such a thing couldn’t possibly happen there … and this after the massacre at the church in Sutherland Springs, a couple of years ago. Sutherland Springs is hardly a blip on a country road – and yet an angry maniac with a gun stormed in and slaughtered dozens. Because a teacher at the school carelessly left a back door open, and everyone studiously ignored the threat from a kid with serious issues. The place is a small town – I’m certain that everyone close to him knew he was a human hand grenade with a loose pin. And the cops sat around, keeping anyone else from intervening because …
I’m sick about this.
Somewhere the last couple of days I saw that the Uvalde school district has had something like 45 lockdowns ordered this school year. After awhile it would be easy to get a little lax in the response to these things and that can also apply to basic security measures.
thats a possibility, it along with eagle pass has been in eye of the maelstrom of la reconquista, or al hijra, all terms for invasion through immigration,
Gov. Abbott says he is “livid” that he was given incorrect information early.
What I would expect from police in a case like this would be what happened in a small town in NC in 2009. Someone went into a nursing home, and shot one nurse and seven patients. The only police officer on duty in town came, followed the sound of the shots, confronted the shooter, and stopped the event. Both he and the shooter were injured; the police officer recovered fully.
I cannot understand how 19 officers could stand in the hall for nearly an hour, waiting. Surely some of them would want to make a plan and go in, SWAT team or no. In Texas!!!
“Officers did go in and engage the shooter immediately, but after that initial push they stood outside in the hallway from 11:35 am until the door was finally breached at 12:50 pm.”
“So the police knew there were still survivors in the classroom and yet stood around for another 45 minutes while the teacher and the rest of the children died.”
This is indefensible. It is criminal behavior by those charged with defending the lives of the innocent and young children are the most innocent of all.
The police chief and every officer standing outside that classroom (who were just following the orders of the police chief) should be charged with voluntary manslaughter.
“The use of the word ‘barricaded’ makes it the weasel word of the event, talking about procedures of barricaded vs. active shooter seems to me as if they are trying to slip away from the blame, all the law enforcement guys and that is sickening.” OldTexan
It is weasel word salad. Plenty of indications that they’re trying to cover their asses.
I am going to repeat that I don’t understand Neo’s deference toward the police in this situation, given not only the news coverage of this shooting but past police behavior of recent years. It’s one thing not to jump to conclusions. It’s another thing to pretty clearly NOT want to believe something.
I try not to criticize law enforcement because I know they’re doing an incredibly difficult job I couldn’t do but it appears that a Hippocratic Oath-like mindset has crept into the profession. I don’t know if it is in response to the vicious spotlight that gets turned onto police mistakes or misconduct but “First, do no harm” simply isn’t appropriate for many situations that call for law enforcement.
Mike
If 19 police officers were waiting outside that door rather than going in, you can bet it was at the orders of the commander. A few might have been cowards, but never so many.
MBunge:
Apparently you have failed to read the updates. It appears to me that police here made one huge and terrible error and additional smaller ones.
I have no problem criticizing police – or anyone else, for that matter. But I always wait for plenty of information if important information is missing. Over time, I make my judgment. And it’s always subject to revision on learning new and valid relevant information.
I don’t make judgments based on emotion of the moment – at least I try not to.
Dwaz:
Yes, I believe they were ordered to stand down. Terrible.
Shots were heard on the later 911 calls. It’s not credible the police outside that door didn’t hear them.
it’s a much more complex matrix as spelled out above, but the end result is the same, so is the inevitable solution that mcconnell and schumer have settled on,
and the white house has decided on this course of action,
https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2022/05/26/wh-and-nyts-troubling-exchange-targeting-gun-company-that-made-uvalde-shooters-gun-n570557
Upper management in government positions are often reluctant to make the wrong decision, usual procedure is to kick it up to the next level and wait and I suppose there were all sorts of phone calls going on weighing the outcome of the incorrect decision therefore procrastination was taking place, the usual fall back and desire to avoid bad publicity. I had a little visit here in Boerne Texas with a retired law officer this afternoon, he was livid about the cowards who were avoiding going in at once which was the only correct thing to do. What he had to say was short with strong words because he was appalled about the news today and the delays when children were being killed and dying because they were not getting medical treatment.
At 11:27 the teacher props open the fateful door.
At 11:28 Ramos crashes the truck and, … the teacher calls 911 and there is shooting. Or is it vice versa, shooting then 911, or both together?
A few minutes later the resource officer goes after the teacher thinking he is the perp. Did he scare off or chase off the teacher? What kind of interaction was that? If they made verbal contact and sorted out the misunderstanding, then certainly the resource officer would have shut the door.
How could the resource officer have failed to shut the door under any circumstance, unless the perp drove him and the teacher away with gunfire? Didn’t the teacher understand the gravity of the door situation while he was watching and hearing gunshots near the funeral home?
I presume the teacher was male.
Alan Colbo:
The shots heard on the calls could easily have been the perp shooting at police, and of course the police heard them. The police have said they heard no shooting coming from inside the room.
Of course, the police have now changed their story several times. But to me it makes sense that the shooting inside the room had ceased by the time the police got there, and the shots heard on the 911 calls are the perp shooting at police.
Old Texan:
I completely agree with you about management being afraid of acting and making the wrong decision. In this case – and in many others – that leads to them making the wrong decision.
TommyJay:
You are assuming that the teacher that the first cop on the scene spoke to was the same teacher who had propped open the door. He (I also assume it was a he, although possibly not) may have been – that was my first thought. But it’s possible it was some other teacher who went outside for some reason or other, through a different door, and had no idea about the open door. The officer wouldn’t have known about it either. It was discovered later through investigators watching surveillance video.
Do any of the timelines list when the level IV shield arrived on scene? Even with the shield, the #3 man through the fatal funnel was nearly shot in the head.
Chases Eagles:
I don’t see an exact time, but there’s this:
I believe Cazares is one of the parents whose child was killed. It sounds as though the crowd yelling at the police to do something was there pretty late in the game, 15 to 20 minutes before a firefight was about to break out between the border officers and the perp. Were the border people already there? Did the cops speaking to the parents know exactly what stage the inside proceedings to engage the perp had reached? They certainly couldn’t have let the parents inside under those conditions.
“When the cops came, the cop said: ‘Yell if you need help!’ And one of the persons in my class said ‘help.’ The guy overheard and he came in and shot her,” the boy told KENS 5. “The cops barged into that classroom. The guy shot at the cops. And the cops started shooting.”
So many stupid and irresponsible actions (or inactions in this case) taken by police, but this one, too? What idiot cop thinks it a good idea to ask surviving children STILL LOCKED IN WITH THE SHOOTER to cry out for help? What the hell did he think would happen? I’m so gobsmacked that anyone with two brain cells (let alone police training) thought it would be a good idea to ask the possum-playing/hiding kids to reveal themselves still alive to the shooter.
Also, I kind of hope that the teacher who propped open the door was one of the ones killed, ONLY because the amount of guilt that one would live with for the rest of one’s life after this tragedy would be nearly impossible to live with. Death would almost be a mercy in that situation.
I listen to McCraw’s segment near the beginning several times. I believe it is clear that the teacher who propped open the door retrieves a cell phone from inside and comes back outside, makes the 911 call at 11:30 stating “A crash. Man with a gun.”
Now even if the resource officer is coming after a different teacher than the first one, the first teacher has an obvious obligation to close the stinking door. Just unbelievable.
NS,
I agree with you, but allow me to play Neo on this one. The only charitable explanation I can come up with is that the officer was shouting “Yell if you need help” in a location some distance away from the perp. Maybe he didn’t realize how far his voice would carry.
It is barely conceivable that he/they assumed that everyone in the room with the perp was already dead. Of course, that would be profoundly stupid, so I’d go with the first explanation.
Please pardon me, but-
I’m writing under unhappy emotions, so I may say some things that can emotionally upset some people-
The BBC news site is reporting the idea that- the police at the scence didn’t enter or raid the school room…where the police thought the shooter was occupying, because the police “didn’t believe that”,[my words- the situation], “was still an active shooter situation”.
This is the article- ”
“Uvalde shooting: Texas shooting response was ‘wrong’, says official”
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-61613177
Says the article
meanwhile, a student, [in the room with the dangerous shooter], is calling the police / 911, and saying that she is in the room with him.
I’m sorry, [if, ehis is true, then I will be very furious about this.
We’rent police in the area, trained to storm the building, if an active, criminal shooter is reported in it?
If this event is true- if I could make myself sick, over this disasterous handling of this lethal attack on people, I would do so.
Thus endeth my rant.
TR:
Half true. I was just listening to a few interviews, including one with the girl who did most of the calls. The girl who called 911 seems to have done it after the shooting of the kids and the teacher in her room. She was asking for police and help for the injured, but the shooter was in the adjoining room at the time. I believe by the time she called 911 the shooting of the victims was over. However, it is correct that the police were outside waiting for backup and not entering all that time.
Horrendous.
It is still not clear whether the police were there when the kids were shot, but I’m beginning to think that 7 of them were already there in the hall. Two or three of them already had been grazed by bullets. I’ll be doing another post on this either tonight or tomorrow.
TommyJay:
This isn’t an excuse, but perhaps the teacher who propped the door and made the 911 call was so nervous that he or she simply wasn’t thinking straight and forgot to close it again after going back inside. Such things happen when people get very very rattled.
In the McCraw speech, he said that teacher was in a panic when he or she came out again to make the 911 call.
It also seems fairly clear to me from watching the McCraw speech that the teacher who propped the door doesn’t seem to have been the same teacher stopped and questioned by the first officer on the scene.
Neo:
Of course.
I really hope that the situation went better than I thought it went. [I’m not sure that was corrrect grammar].
But I agree- this is horrendous.
I remember from a song,…that there is a word from Africa,
The word sounds like, “Bwway”.
The word basically means- “this is something that is so terrible, it is almost unbearable to think about”.
Regardless, This is my wish:
may goodness help everyone with this past event.
neo,
This was obviously the kind of door that automatically locks on the outside when closed. I’m sure most of us have had that situation somewhere when it is very inconvenient to go all the way around the building to another entrance so this may have been a thing (propping door open) that the teachers did at that school.
But as you said if the door propping teacher is different than the teacher stopped by the cop then why was the door propped open?
Maybe just one of these little shortcuts people take every day that 99.9% of time lead to nothing but this time may have made it much easier for this gunman.
For the police force: Kill the shooter or die trying.
Officers, either he dies or you do. If you can’t hack that, go sell term life.
“Upper management in government positions are often reluctant to make the wrong decision, usual procedure is to kick it up to the next level and wait and I suppose there were all sorts of phone calls going on weighing the outcome of the incorrect decision therefore procrastination was taking place, the usual fall back and desire to avoid bad publicity.” OldTexan
Sorry, in this case that doesn’t cut it. The buck stopped on the Uvalde police chief’s desk. He had jurisdiction and complete authority. Demonstrated by the local cops refusal to allow the Border Patrol agents who are federal officers to enter the school. If the agents had jurisdictional authority, they would have dismissed the police chief’s orders. Those agents at 12:45 reportedly disobeyed the police chief’s order to continue to stand down and took out the perp 5 minutes later.
If after a full and honest review of the facts, nothing has substantially changed from what we have so far gathered, then I repeat my call for the police chief and the cops standing outside the schoolroom door for 45 minutes or more… to be charged with voluntary manslaughter, dereliction of duty and depraved indifference to life.
Throw the book at them.
Geoffrey Britain:
I heard that the police stopped Border officers from going in, but I haven’t seen that in print. Do you have a link for that?
Geoffrey goes on a rant and tries the Wisdom of Solomon routine; mixing military and civilian codes of justice.
he or she simply wasn’t thinking straight and forgot to close it again after going back inside. Such things happen when people get very very rattled.
I also wonder if he/she went back inside, or if they ran away on the outside. I’ll wager that if he went back inside then he would have ensured that the door was latched and locked behind him. If not, then the “very very” really does apply.
I think it is likely that both the teacher and resource officer ran away outside when the perp began shooting the exterior of the classrooms. Imagine that the teacher is a several yards away from the propped door when the shooting starts and that moving towards the door means moving towards the shooter. Cut and run.
The former Assist. Director of the FBI, Swecker, was interviewed tonight. His first comment was on the failure to lock all the exterior doors. He made some comment about some of the faculty just not taking the security protocols seriously enough.
____
I agree with Griffin. I’ve personally seen that behavior hundreds of times.
*trigger warning*
@TommyJay
Yep.
Some people ignore possible danger signs,… and get hurt or killed by them.
I knew a pastor who lost his sister in high school- she ignored it that her friend’s car had no seatbelts- then that sister died in a lethal, car crash.
[It pays to be careful, in my opinion.]
Neo wrote
“Geoffrey Britain:
I heard that the police stopped Border officers from going in, but I haven’t seen that in print. Do you have a link for that?”
I am not GB, but here’s a link: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/federal-agents-entered-uvalde-school-kill-gunman-local-police-initiall-rcna30941
It’s been a long time since an interior door in a building other than a cheap apartment can be breached with a shoulder as in the old movies.
I could, with some effort, break through our bathroom door.
Things get stouter from there, and in office and school buildings, considerably so. And that’s before security needs are built into the specs.
Hence the need for the key to the room. So, “you just go in” has to be taken as a practical issue and not a matter of motivation until we find that the door in question was made of plywood who 1×2 slats for sturdiness.
There is the “breaching” charge, which is a substantial explosive item to be applied to the outside of the door and which blows the thing to pieces and into the room in question. You might see them used on SEAL TEAM once in a while.
And maybe an overpowered round for a shotgun, which more than likely qualifies the user for medical retirement due to a face full of metal splinters and hearing loss.
So a final question is whether the cops outside the door–we’ve been assured there were some, right?–actually had the mechanical/physical ability to get through the door.
Was there somebody frantically running around the school looking for the master key or the person who is supposed to have it.? Or did the person who was supposed to have it know where he left it?
Whatever we think of the cops’ efforts in this case, we need to recognize the power of displacement. Ramos is dead. We need to find someone or some other entity to be the object of our rage, grief, and despair.
Cops in this case are handy.
But we don’t know.
Sorry, but the explanation for inaction is BS.
Nothing is known for certain until the shooter is either dead or captured, and any and all efforts (and waiting is not an effort) must be made to achieve this goal.
I understand that police officials do not want their personnel injured / killed, but for them to just wait outside because they “think” the situation is stabilized suggests their training and leadership is incompetent.
Police have to understand that at times they may have to place themselves at risk. If they cannot accept this, they should not be police officers.
The anti-gun folks (demokrats, socialists, communists; but I repeat myself) insist that guns are too easy to obtain.
Given the incompetence of the police officers in this case, as well as in the Broward County, Florida school shooting in 2018, where the police also “stood down” (plus all the ANTIFA / BLM rioting in which the rioters remained unchallenged) it suggests that the only way average citizens can protect themselves is by obtaining firearms.
Ironically, the lefties claim that an 18 year old should not be able to purchase firearms, but yet these same vermin are seeking the voting age to be lowered to 16 and that children – not teens, but children !! – have the maturity to decide for themselves whether or not they wish to undergo gender -switching treatment.
Got to hand it to lefties; they never give up. No disaster is off limits to them in pursuit of their agenda; the evisceration of the Bill of Rights in particular and the dismantling of what remains of our constitutional republic.
The ends justify the means.
Interesting thread about the training the Uvalde police have received in recent times.
https://twitter.com/ByMikeBaker/status/1530357140191186944
Hint: They apparently didn’t follow the training they received as recently as two months ago for scenarios very similar to this one.
Coulda, woulda, shoulda!
I wasn’t there and neither was anyone from the MSM – so, I don’t know what exactly happened and neither does the armchair quarterbacking MSM.
It is easy to say what could have been done, or should have been done, or what any one of us would have done – except we were NOT there. None of us can really know how we will react in such a situation until we are faced with it. And even afterwards we will second guess ourselves with a reflection back. And we might still be wrong!
Nor can we know with certainty how the first responders should have reacted. Again we were not there in their shoes and with the knowledge they had at that time.
What I do feel is that in cases like this some folks are looking for scapegoats and the first responders are often blamed. And we won’t really know if that is the case here or not. I’m just waiting for senile ol’ Joe to weigh in and blame the police anyway.
Charles;
One would think that first responders were adequately trained to deal with what occurred at that school.
I can’t imagine they were trained to “stand down” while a shooter is in the school with kids.
After all, there have been 3 prior horrible incidents at schools of this sort (Columbine, Broward County, Sandy Hook) in recent memory, and given the death toll in all of these events, you would think that police everywhere in the USA have developed plans / a strategy to deal with this sort of situation.
Waiting outside while a shooter is still inside cannot be what they were “trained’ to do.
And if they were trained to pursue the “stand down” strategy, then their police training is very substandard and incompetent.
They have been under siege for monthes
https://mobile.twitter.com/Anna_Giaritelli/status/1506709669615751168
I would like to understand more about the teacher that propped the outside door open. What for? It sounds like somebody was taking a smoke break.
you think he hadn’t been casing the joint, for weeks, seeing the routine, knowing the schedules, we clearly had planned this out, he had a goal, he knew the tools needed to achieve the objectives, did he drill at a range, that doesn’t appear to be, but everything else fell into place,
neo,
https://www.dailywire.com/news/police-stopped-border-patrol-from-entering-uvalde-school-officials-say
om,
https://definitions.uslegal.com/d/dereliction-of-duty/
Apparently you just can’t help playing the fool.
Geoffrey Britain:
Apparently neither you nor om can stop with the personal attacks. I don’t want to ban either of you unless I must. I’ve requested that you stop, but it continues.
Why not just give the definition of “dereliction of duty” and the link, and leave it at that? Is your justification for it “om insulted me first”? There is no “first” anymore – it’s gone on and on for a long time with the participation of both of you. But each person can take the higher road and still make your points. It is much more effective to make a point and leave out the insults which only make the person making them look smaller.