Comments

Report: the school police chief was not informed about the 911 calls from the children — 39 Comments

1. I think we’ll find that 911 dispatchers notified the city police, who never thought to pass anything on to the school district police chief who was actually on the scene and in charge.

2. I find this report odd.

   I’m not trying to be contentious, but I don’t find much of it confusing.

   Ogburn’s classroom was the only one where he shot through windows from the outside and nobody was hit.

   Mireles was shot and then she called her husband is what they are reporting. The small problem I have with that is, why would the shooter allow that phone call, which I suppose means she was in the room where the shooter wasn’t and was whispering. Possibly the dead teacher was right next to her at the time and maybe the shooter presumed them both dead or well on her way, which was correct.

   Mireles’ husband might have been one the cops who entered a couple minutes after the shooter, or he might not have. Or even that he entered and left (unlikely).

   Mireles begged her husband for help and they wouldn’t let him in. If he is indeed outside the school then almost certainly they are not allowing him to enter the school. How sad and horrible. But is Mireles and her husband dying better than what happened? The husband maybe understood why they were blocking entrance to school or he was just following orders (and not getting handcuffed?).
   _____

   I believe I read that they had trouble with the police radios. Some cop (possibly in panic) had held the transmit key down and didn’t release it thereby disabling the radio for all on that frequency. I think it was only 3 minutes or so, and doesn’t really explain anything other than being something that sows communication confusion.

3. Why is an elected state senator giving a press conference about this? A felt-need to up his status with an election looming? In general, politicians are not very good sources when it comes to factual information; there is always a personal agenda in there someplace.

   Did the school police use the same radio network as the city police. Generally 911 calls go to a city department, if there is a city department.

   Why would it be certain that the “husband officer” was at the scene, especially if the call was early in the scenario. Individual assignments could have placed him at a school or location far from the school when he received the call.

   We do not know (at least I have not heard) if the School COP was inside the school or at a command post outside. Was the husband-officer in the proximity of the COP?

4. he’s already provided one dubious statement, that the shooter had been arrested before, I don’t see the use of the statement, except to make the police response even more feeble then expected, why did they have all this training if the main department was going to handled any contingencies,

5. “Each point of knowledge that we gain in turn seems to generate its own host of as-yet-unanswered questions.”

   Something like the fog of war? I think not.

   “We seem to have second-hand or third-hand or fourth-hand information, and that has a good chance of being unreliable.”

   “We are not hearing it from the people involved, and we don’t actually know from whom we’re hearing it except it seems they are several times removed from the source.

   …I just know that many stories conflict and very few are being told by the people actually involved, except for some of the surviving children who’ve been traumatized and whose stories are sometimes contradictory and changing” neo

   “Uvalde Mom Says She Was Handcuffed While Trying to Save Kids — and that Authorities Threatened Her to Not Speak Out”
   https://people.com/crime/uvalde-mom-says-she-was-handcuffed-threatened/

6. TommyJay:

   I said what was odd about it, but I’ll repeat the main points.

   (1) It is a third- or fourth-hand report from someone who is not identified. It’s the sort of thing that shouldn’t even be reported on until the reporter gets a more valid source. It is inherently iffy because of the problem with knowing the source. We have Ruiz (the husband) supposedly talking to his wife and then telling the story to some family member who then tells it to a friend or acquaintance who then tells it to the reporter who then tells it to us. I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t rely on something like that.

   (2) I haven’t heard any other report that indicates that any of the six members of the school district police were not allowed into the school building. On the contrary, it is my impression they were all in the building, although that could be wrong. But this was the main team handling the whole thing and to bar one member from the building makes zero sense, and not one other person has indicated that was the case. And yet this report about the phone call says that Ruiz, a member of that force, was not allowed into the building. The reporter doesn’t see fit to explain why not, or apparently even to ask.

   (3) The reports I’ve read indicate that the teachers were in two different rooms. If that is so, Eva Mireles would not know the condition of the other teacher.

   Also, to respond to something you wrote: I have not read any report that Ogburn’s room was the only one the perp fired into through the windows without wounding anyone. I don’t know what relevance that would have to the phone call story, anyway, because I was positing that it’s possible that, if Mireles had called her husband during the event, it might have been to tell him that “the shooter was outside the building shooting in through the windows and that they were going into lockdown, and that they needed help.” All of those things were true from about 11:31 to 11:33: the shooter was outside shooting at the school windows, the school had been ordered into lockdown, and they needed police help.

7. Dwaz:

   My guess is that you are probably correct.

8. I THINK we know which teacher was in which room. I believe Garcia was in 112, because it’s been reported that that’s the classroom he first entered, and the first person he shot was a teacher at point-blank range to the head. I’d imagine the odds of not dying instantly in that scenario are slim to none. So if Mireles was actually alive after being shot and was able to make a phone call, that would make it more likely that she was in 111.

   At the same time, it does make the phone call theory more dubious. How COULD she make a phone call with the killer in the same room? I know he played the loud “sad” music at some point. Maybe she was able to make a phone call then because he didn’t hear her over the music? But then how did her husband hear her over the loud music too?

   Regardless, after his initial killing spree, I’m curious as to what on earth the killer did for the rest of the time. It doesn’t sound like he went around searching for hiding kids or checking to see who was faking (Thank the good Lord). So did he just sit there an twiddle his thumbs until the cops busted in and killed him? I suppose if he just sat somewhere and wasn’t watching, someone could deftly make a phone call.

9. NS:

   Could you give a link to something that says the first teacher shot was shot at point-blank range to the head? I’ve read a lot about the attack and have never come across anything like that detail.

   Also, note this from my post: “many stories conflict and very few are being told by the people actually involved, except for some of the surviving children who’ve been traumatized and whose stories are sometimes contradictory and changing (I plan to write a post on that in a while).” I do indeed plan to write a post on that topic, and it’s relevant in terms of trying to wade through all the reports on exactly what happened in Robb Elementary that day.

10. NS:

    For example, here is one account from a boy who was in Irma Garcia’s room:

    “It was a normal day until my teacher said we’re on severe lockdown,” he told ABC News, “and then there was shooting in the windows.”

    Salinas said the gunman came into his classroom, closed the door and told them, “You’re all going to die,” before opening fire.

    “He shot the teacher and then he shot the kids,” Salinas said, recalling the cries and yells of students around him.

    He then says he played dead, and then the story segues to the rescue. Missing is what room he was in and whether this was the first room targeted or the second. But apropos of our discussion about whether the teachers were in the same room or not, this child’s report leads one to believe there was only one teacher in his room. He only mentions one.

11. Ah, you know what, I never actually read the words “point-blank range,” so I myself might also be guilty of spreading false info. It’s just what I pictured happened based on this girl’s description here:
    https://www.fox29.com/news/texas-school-shooting-suspect-said-goodnight-played-sad-music-before-firing-11-year-old-says.amp

    Essentially, the teacher was AT the door trying to lock it, the shooter beat her to it, “backed her into the room,” then shot and killed her. Based on that description, I picture her mere inches away from the gun at most. But as I think about it, I suppose my imagination could possibly simply be filling in where specific details are lacking. I suppose the teacher could have actually ran from him (rather than slowly backing up as I picture in my head) and was on the other side of the classroom when she was shot.

12. Neo,
    I did misconstrue some of the part about shooting through windows, although the reporter is quite clear about Mireles calling after she had been shot. Why dispute that?

    I guess it is a little strange that not all of the school police were allowed free rein inside the school, but not especially so. Command and control; for a reason. We just don’t know the reason. Could be a bad reason. It’s even possible that he was blocked specifically because his wife was at risk.

    While the two teachers were in different adjoining rooms while they are teaching that all changes about 5 seconds after the shooter enters and forces open the adjoining room door.

    Finally, I would not be surprised if some of the principals involved who acquitted themselves badly are either lying or omitting information.

    Sure the part about reporters getting stories from people close to the family is weak. The reputation of reporters precedes them, and probably not many people will talk to them.

13. Unless the 911 calls from within the school had tactically useful intel, the chief doesn’t need to hear about them.
    Maybe someone made the decision to hold them back…?

14. Not in censure of anyone, but the term “point blank range” is being misused. Please see

    https://www.nrafamily.org/content/what-is-point-blank-range-2/

    for a discussion. When hunting elk, I try to set point blank range for my rifle somewhere in the 250 – 300 yard range.

15. TommyJay:

    As I wrote before, the provenance of the story is basically unknown and it is like a game of telephone and has gone though too many people before it comes to us. That doesn’t make it wrong – it could be correct – but it makes it untrustworthy at this point until we know more.

    Couple that with certain parts of it that don’t jibe with the story told by actual witnesses – such as where the teachers were – and you have a story that doesn’t have the ring of truth at the moment. You write that the teachers could have gotten into the same room “5 seconds after the shooter enters.” Well, of course they could have. But the stories of child witnesses so far that I’ve seen have indicated this didn’t happen.

    In other incidents of violence we continually hear stories early on that end up being untrue, from people who are anonymous who supposedly know someone who knows someone who told someone who told someone. I’ve learned to distrust such stories until I know more.

16. Neo, your caution about drawing conclusions based on early information seems wiser than my early words.

    But I am also suspicious of information from a state legislator’s press conference. It might be correct. It might be otherwise. The last I heard, Chief Arredondo was not cooperating with the state-led investigation. That makes this press conference look like narrative control.

    We already know that the governor–a politician–was reportedly livid that Uvalde LE people gave him bad information. His response was very strong and definite. He thinks they lied to him, consciously.

    I guess I don’t trust anything right now.

17. The information expressed across many reports is the on-scene commander decided there was little urgency in breaching the space occupied by the shooter. There may have been multiple reasons for this but to me the two most likely are that he decided there was either no significant threat to the children, i.e. the shooter was holding them hostage for negotiation, or they were all dead or mortally wounded anyway. I’m not sure knowing about the 911 calls would have made that much difference. People have a well-described tendency to interpret information according their existing opinions, i.e. confirmation bias. The 911 calls very likely could have been seen as providing confirmation that the children were ok and the shooter was setting himself up for some sort of negotiation.

    I think we’re also making a strong assumptions about the level of knowledge the various police officers had about the layout of the two school rooms. While we all know now the two rooms were connected by jack-and-jill bathrooms, this may not have been clear to the officers. Even if it was, if the shooter was roaming between the two rooms it could present the need to breach both simultaneously unless his location could be determined with some accuracy. I believe that only one room was breached during the assault but I haven’t seen any information provided on whether that was because the police felt they had accurate information about his location or because they decided they had to take the chance.

18. I would consider the supposed source State Sen. Roland Gutierrez who district is Austin and San Antonio super liberal parts of Texas, he is an immigration lawyer and I would take all of this information with a grain of salt.

19. Looks like no matter how one slices and dices this situation, it’s clear that the school and city police dept’s were totally unprepared to deal with this sort of situation.
    Hard to believe given the several similar tragedies experienced in the USA since the Columbine school shooting in 1999.

    This sensible measure, armed guards – surprise surprise- is not even on the radar screen of any demokrat politician (and many republicans as well) .
    Of course, for the demokrats, their motto and MO is “never let a tragedy go to waste,” so they welcome this opportunity to render illegal guns of any type.
    This can be achieved of course by placing a tax, say, of $100,000 on any gun sold in the USA and on every bullet sold in the USA.

20. John Tyler: “Looks like no matter how one slices and dices this situation, it’s clear that the school and city police dept’s were totally unprepared to deal with this sort of situation.”

    A small town police department, in a part of the world where connections trump competence, well, I can see that they might not be up on the tactical training.

    But the school district had a 6-member force, yes? What else should they be doing but training and planning for such a situation?

    –We set up a command post. Here’s the binders, here are the radios, here are the school layouts, here are the people with the keys.

    –If this happens, we will do that. If X happens, we have supplies of Y. stored in room Z. Send someone to get the supplies.

    And so on. Lots of if-then, in the binders. The binders get reviewed, on a schedule, to be sure all the information is current. Bring in some outside experts to review the procedures. Probably Homeland Security will do it for free.

    –Practice. This is why, for example, the Air Force had two major exercises at the SAC bases where I was stationed. Oh, we have a complete set of tools ready to go to one of the alternate bases? Okay, let’s see you load them on a school bus, because the truck you planned to use won’t start. Ah, dang, too big, too heavy to manipulate them? Come up with better tool chests. As in: We can’t find the keys. How do we breach that door–the one designed to not be easily breached?

21. Gordon Scott
    The SAC exercises look to be pretty valuable, especially when a valuable piece is taken out and contingencies have to be addressed. Problem is when you say, “I’ll steal a car….” to cover a complete lack of transport, you don’t actually steal a car, unless one is designated–probably yours–with the keys left in it.
    There’s always something left to the imagination, unless you have courses in how to boost six different kinds of auto ignitions.

    I can’t imagine the six guys in the school team doing this kind of thing. Among other things, there’s no reason they’d all be at the school which happens to be the target. So team planning has to allow for a certain amount of time to assemble from around the district.
    That means one guy, maybe two. Now what? Ramos could have, from what we know, gotten into the school and forted up in the classroom faster than a guy at the other end of the school can figure out what was happening and get there.
    Or, prior to that happening, guys sitting around trying to plan, would see that as not impossible.
    It would be a matter of luck if they were where they could trade shots with the intruder. And if they’re dead, no protection for the students until other forces arrive. So how aggressively to I attack the intruder? If I’m willing to die, do I figure later is better because as long as I’m alive the intruder has to worry about me and restrict his actions accordingly? Or I take a fifty percent chance of leaving the kids completely unprotected?
    Breach? Us? The least-resourced department in the time zone? Maybe somebody knows where a sledge hammer is. Maybe the state cops have breaching charges, or maybe we could get a couple sent down from Ft. Hood (Killeen). So we blow the door into frags, killng the kids? Breaching charges are for bad guys on the other side.
    Maybe the DPW has something….a Bobcat with a blade might be able to get into the school. But is it too wide for the door entrance? And how long would those clowns down at city hall take to do the paper work and waiver of liability? More than a month. Or it’s on a job at the reservoir and the flatbed left it there.

    Face it. The school cops are up agains the laws of physics in several different ways. The only way for them to prevail is if the shooter is wandering the halls, distracted by triing to figure out how to reload his weapon.

22. But the school district had a 6-member force, yes? What else should they be doing but training and planning for such a situation?
    Precisely.
    I couldn’t pinpoint why I’ve been so reluctant to give the cops the benefit of the doubt here, but THIS is why.
    You had one f-in job, Pete Arredondo. This wasn’t detroit or chicago so it isn’t like they were so busy stopping gang bangers and other miscreants that they didnt have time to drill this for real. So what on earth were they doing during their 40 hour work week?

    And yes, shit happens. But how do you not drill for getting keys for entry into a classroom? Even assuming they couldnt have anticipated him barricading himself, surely they should have planned for how to get in any of the classrooms, if only to have another means to evacuate them.

23. Richard Aubrey:

    All those things that you and Gordon mention (chaos in the real world as the event is unfolding) don’t exist in “20 20 Hind
    Sight Land.”

    Keep trying anyway.

24. What were their training protocols these events are not unheard of just tragically familiar

25. Megan. Yes, they should have figured out how, in advance, to get a master key. But the doors open freely from inside so evac isn’t a consideration.
    And opening the door with a key, sans ballistic shields isn’t an attractive proposition. Yeah, you go in hard and maybe the fourth guy can take cover behind the bodies of the first three.

    om. I like it. One of my favorites is that no object can be in two separate spaces at the same time. In 20-20 land, the right guy is always at the right point at the right time, no matter what other actual considerations have him elsewhere. I’d guess there’d be a higher number of cops at the high school on account of the propensity of high school kids to cause trouble as compared to K-6 kids. Which leaves fewer elsewhere.

    I say again, displacement.

26. I heard the Mayor of Cincinnati on NPR this morning claim that the Ohio initiative to arm and train school teachers would add to the “gun problem”. The buffoon interviewing him failed to ask the obvious question: how? Instead he clucked sympathetically.

    Maybe we are trying to solve the wrong problem, NPR. The number of guns in non-criminal hands is not the problem. The deaths of innocents at the hands of criminals is the problem!

27. Ray
    You think that is a problem. Try disarming the criminal.

28. miguel cervantes:

    Not unheard of to have a school shooter, or a shooter barricaded somewhere. But I’m unaware of any case in the US that previously combined the two. Often the school shooters commit suicide, or are roaming around but are not behind locked steel doors. This was not a SWAT team and they didn’t have the equipment they needed until later.

    The real question – as I’ve indicated before – is why they didn’t get the news of the kids’ 911 calls, and if they had gotten the news would it have changed anything. If they were unable to get in without potentially killing other children, or being picked off one by one by the perp as they came in through the door, then I’m not sure it would have changed anything except a lot more dead cops. In addition, another big question is why the delay once they had shields and were looking for the key. Were the janitor and the key hard to find, for example? We’ve heard almost nothing so far about what actually occurred to cause that delay. But it’s very important to know. People are assuming there was a delay in even looking for the key, and once they looked it was located promptly. But there is no information at all about it that would tell us if that was the case or if it was not the case. Plus, we’d need to know if there was a protocol for getting the key and if so, whether they followed it or didn’t follow it, and if they didn’t then why not.

29. I guess there was a third teacher in the classroom. Didn’t realize that. He was also shot, but he survived

    https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/-bulletproof-vest-nothing-uvalde-teacher-whose-11-students-killed-slam-rcna32271?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=news_tab&fs=e&s=cl

30. The benefits for police and the increased safety for schools are certainly going to be immense:

    https://www.upi.com/Health_News/2022/06/06/weight-loss-drug/5311654532154/

    h/t InstaPundit.com

31. The only thing I know for sure is that three Border Patrol officers stormed into the school and shot the shooter while a large covey of cops stood around outside doing nothing for a long time.

    The rest of it is a cacophony of noise,

32. Why is it a virtue to know nothing else?

33. Cicero:

    If that’s the only thing you know for sure, you’re in big trouble.

    Because, as I’ve said many times to many other people, you only think that’s what you know. But you don’t know it at all.

    You write, “three Border Patrol officers stormed into the school and shot the shooter.” But they didn’t “storm into the school.” They arrived at 12:15 and the shooter wasn’t shot until 12:50, a moment after they opened the classroom door with a key that they had obtained from the janitor. We have no idea (a) why they waited that long (there are some unsourced reports that they were told to wait by the school police chief, and other reports supposedly from one of the Border Patrol cops involved that they were not told to wait, and we don’t know which it is). We also don’t know at what point they tried to get the key, how long that took, and why. In fact, we know very little.

    In addition, we know that the Border Patrol officers had ballistic shields, which they were trained to use and which police didn’t have until the Border Patrol arrived.

    You also write: “while a large covey of cops stood around outside doing nothing for a long time.” As I’m tired of writing, we know that at one point there were up to 19 cops there, but we don’t know at what point or how many were there most of the time of the wait, nor do we know what they were doing. We know that they weren’t “storming in” and killing the perp, but what were they doing and what were they trying, and what was their reasoning? So we don’t know that they were “doing nothing.” Maybe they were trying to find the key. Maybe they were evacuating other children – we DO know (although you don’t mention it) that there was an evacuation going on of the entire rest of the school, and reports are that it was complete within a half hour of the time the gunman entered and a bit less than a half hour after police got there.

    We also don’t know how police could have “stormed in” without that key that even the Border Patrol seems to have needed. I wrote an entire post on that problem.

    If you think the rest is “a cacophony of noise,” then I believe – since I think you are an intelligent person – that you are closing your mind to the problem and wish to make a premature judgment without any other questions clouding your view. I will make a judgment when I feel I know enough to make an informed one.

34. For many it seems that “we know” is sort of like “inconceivable.” Living with unknowns is a difficult thing.

35. Neo-
    As Will Rogers once said, “All I know is what I read in the papers…..”
    Lots of people put their lives on the line in many professions, like electricians. Six got electrocuted fixing downed lines in Lake Charles, LA, after a hideous 175 mph tornado that bent transmission towers built to take 150 mph wind, and a seventh received severe burns.

    Or me, who did many surgical procedures even though my Hep B vaccine x2 did not yield antibodies. And many other health care “providers”. One surgeon I knew died of cirrhosis induced by Hep B. He’d accidentally poked himself while sewing up an abdomen before the vaccine was available. At age 55.

    My daughter got “needled”4 times as a surgical intern by the attending surgeon whom she was assisting in the operating room, and had to do the whole HIV workup each time, give the lab blood, take anti-HIV meds for weeks.

    These cops in Uvalde had a duty to risk death. The saying that “when seconds matter, the police are just minutes away” seems to apply. Wait for shields when kids are being slaughtered? Damn it, it is your job! Do it.

    Wait for a door key? shoot the damn lock and get in there. They are all carrying 9mm Glocks, which Bonehead Biden thinks are too powerful for public ownership.

    And don’t look to me for excuses for failure to act.

36. Cicero. “risking” death is one thing. Suicide is another. Would shooting a lock do? The lock mechanism is one thing. The dead bolt or whatever the mechanism controls is another.

    And it appears that the kids were mostly dead by the time cops got to the doorway. Not likely many more lives were lost.

    There’s lots of room for blame but assigning sovereign wonderfulness to something you see in the movies is probably not the way to get there.

37. Cicero:

    You’re not thinking logically. For starters, try searching for “can you shoot a lock off a metal door?” and see what you get.

    And there is a difference between risking one’s life – which the police were doing by being there in the first place – and kamikaze actions.

    Why do you think the Border Patrol with the ballistic shields – the ones who went in there (and almost did get killed for their pains) and killed the perp – why do you think they didn’t shoot that old lock off and instead got a key? Do you think they were just cowards, too? A bunch of dead cops doesn’t help anyone or rescue anyone. And shooting wildly into a room you can’t see, that’s filled with teachers and kids, can hurt or kill more kids than it saves.

    And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

    I think just about everyone wants this to have had a happy ending instead of a horrifically tragic one. If only! If only this and if only that. And once we know a lot more we will come closer to knowing what was actually possible and yet not done, or not done correctly, and what is merely the product of our cinematic and uninformed imaginations.

38. There are many places where ‘security’ may be necessary, such as department stores, schools and hospitals, but none of these places need a separate police force. I find it bizarre that in this country universities, schools, hospitals and other organizations have their own special police force. Obviously in this case, true harm was the result of this Balkanization of law enforcement. Wherever a crime is committed there should be one single responsible agency.

39. I’m fine with a separate school police force–if they’re doing the things to make that separate force worthwhile. Like preparing, training, planning, evaluating, and training some more. They’re the on-scene experts. They should have the expertise.

    Unless, of course, it’s just a sinecure for old, tired cops and a pension enhancer. Then, hey, too bad about the kids.

    One of the great advantages of the Air Force ORI system was that everyone above the rank of Senior Airman had probably been through an ORI at a different base. There is a lot of opportunity for cross fertilization of knowledge and hey-this-worked-for-us.

    Of course, in the military, if you’re a commander and your unit fails an ORI, you’re not the commander any more.

HTML tags allowed in your comment: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>