Two years before the Robb elementary school massacre that left 19 fourth-graders and their two teachers dead, the UValde police department boasted online of having its own SWAT team.
The department posted a picture on Facebook of nine heavily armed officers with the headline “Meet Our SWAT Team.”
The unit was conducting community-wide visits that day “to familiarize itself with the designs of our local schools and businesses,” according to the February 2020 publication.
But when the terror hit the small town of Texas, it is unclear whether the tactical unit that appeared to be training for the moment turned out to respond, a police source said.
“There were so many officers, so many agencies involved,” the source said.
The state Department of Public Safety, which is investigating the response to the shooting, is still trying to determine which agencies were at the scene and the role each played. In Texas, it is not uncommon for several law enforcement officials from different agencies to respond to an incident together.
Uvalde CISD Police Department hosted “Law Enforcement Shooter in School” training in 2020. Facebook / Uvalde CISD Police Department Uvalde CISD Police Department released the 2020 school shooter training on their Facebook. Facebook / Uvalde CISD Police Department
“When you have so many agencies in an active situation, you have agents inside, those agents are responsible for containing the threat,” the source said. “And you have agents outside that contain the perimeter.”
The latest in a Texas school shooting
Parents of students at the school complained that police outside during the incident prevented them from entering the building. A frantic mother was even handcuffed as she asked police to enter the building to remove 18-year-old Salvator Ramos.
The UValde police department hosted the training two years before the mass shooting. Facebook / Uvalde CISD Police Department
The first to mistakenly believe that the situation had shifted from an “active shooter” scenario to a “barricade” scenario and waited more than an hour for the shooting to begin before entering the classroom and firing at the door handle.
The source said Uvalde police officers were part of the impromptu group that stormed the classroom with a heroic U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent. Some members of Uvalde’s SWAT team may have been with them, but investigators are still assembling the pieces.
Uvalde’s neighbors also ask questions.
“Maybe I’m wrong, but I haven’t seen or heard anything from our Uvalde PD?” Resident Norma Hidalgo posted on Facebook in the early hours of Saturday, noting that it has been discussed but no one in the department has addressed the public. “I really hope our Uvalde police department shows up and just talks to us. Everyone. Help our community heal.”
On Friday afternoon, Hidalgo shared the department’s February 2020 post, asking, “Do we have a SWAT team?”
Uvalde, a city of about 16,000 people, is spending $ 4.4 million, or 38%, of its $ 11.5 million budget for 2021-2022 on its 40-member police force.