According to experts, the decision of the police to wait before confronting the gunman at Robb d’Uvalde Primary School was a failure with catastrophic consequences. When it was all over more than 19 students and two teachers were killed.
While 18-year-old Salvador Ramos was in the adjoining classrooms, a group of 19 law enforcement officers stayed outside the school classroom for about 50 minutes while waiting for the room keys and the keys. tactical equipment, CNN reported. Meanwhile, children inside the classroom repeatedly called 911 and called for help, Texas officials said.
Colonel Steven McCraw of the Texas Department of Homeland Security acknowledged errors in police response to Tuesday’s mass shooting. The commander at the scene, who is also the police chief of the Uvalde school district, “believed he had gone from an active shooter to a barricaded subject,” McCraw said.
“It was a wrong decision. Point. There’s no excuse for that,” McCraw said of the supervisor’s call not to face the shooter.
“EVERY SECOND COUNT”
Thor Eells, executive director of the National Tactical Officers Association (NTAO), said the commander’s determination was “100% flawed.” A barricade asks officers to slow down their response, analyze whether the subject is alone and negotiate, he said.
“If you’re in a classroom with innocent victims and I know shots were fired, I have to commit. Even if you stop firing, I’ll go into the room so we can start managing life … saving help for anyone potential victim, “Eells said.
The late police response to Uvalde is contrary to the well-established and well-established active shooter protocol usually established after the 1999 Columbine school shooting, Eells said.
“Even under fire, officers are trained to go to this threat because every second counts,” said Jonathan Wackrow, a CNN police analyst. “What we saw here was that the delay cost the children their lives, period.”
When the Columbine shooting took place, Colorado police waited about an hour after a shot was fired at the school for SWAT teams to arrive, during which two youths killed 13 people.
Prior to Columbine, law enforcement was usually trained in tactical principles called ICE, which meant isolating (the suspect), containing (the suspect), and evacuating (the scene). According to Eells, after participating in the ICE protocol, police would request a specialized unit of SWAT tactical teams to respond and commit to the suspect or suspects.
The Columbine shooting forced law enforcement to refocus its focus on responding to active shooter situations. After Columbine, police began acting on behalf of those in danger rather than protecting themselves, Eells said. Leaders also began receiving tactical training to prepare for active firing, removing some of the responsibility from the hands of SWAT teams, he added.
There are no national guidelines for standardizing law enforcement training and response to active shooter situations. NTAO was the first to develop a curriculum for active shooters and training courses, which have since been adopted or modified by other training organizations across the country, Eells said.
The curriculum includes safety priorities to guide decision-making as agents respond to active traits, depending on a person’s proximity to injury or death. They have received instructions in all 50 states, according to Eells.
All training prioritizes the involvement of the subject first. The list of security priorities considers hostages and innocent civilians the top priority, followed by law enforcement and then suspects, Eells said.
As their tactics evolved, law enforcement acknowledged that waiting even a few seconds to respond during an active shooter scenario is potentially catastrophic, Eells said. This prompted police training organizations to develop a faster response strategy. Officers are now being taught to do everything possible to stop the shooter as soon as possible and even avoid helping the injured, Eells added.
“Unfortunately, this is a continuous, ongoing learning process,” he said. “There’s a very good chance there are some critical lessons learned from Uvalde, which can then find their way into our recommendations on how you can change your answer.”
THE CASE SHOWS HOW THE QUICK RESPONSE SAVES LIVES
Eells pointed to a shooting in 2013 at a Colorado high school that shows how a quick response from police can lead to very different results. The shooting lasted two minutes, during which a high school student lit a Molotov cocktail and fired his bomb shotgun at the school, killing a 17-year-old girl.
But the attack could have caused many more casualties had it not been for the quick response of a deputy sheriff who worked as a school resources officer at the school, CNN reported earlier. Upon learning of the threat, the deputy ran to the shooter, identified himself as a county subordinate, and told the people to come down. While holding the scene, the shooter took his own life.
Ramos did not confront police before entering the school, DPS regional director Victor Escalon said Thursday.
While active shooter protocols are widely recognized among the country’s 18,000 law enforcement agencies, the key issue is the decentralized nature of police standards at the local, state, and federal levels, according to Maria Haberfeld, a police science professor. at John Jay College. .
“The way in which the UValde officers responded was in line with the fact that they probably did not have the proper training,” Haberfeld said. Local police agencies tend to rely more on specialized tactical units, he said.
All Texas law enforcement officers are trained to follow the guidelines for handling active shooters. In March, the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District hosted active shooter training for law enforcement officers in the Uvalde area, according to its Facebook page.
The manual says, “The officer’s first priority is to get in and face the attacker. This may include evading the injured and not responding to the children’s cries for help.”
The list of security priorities, Eells said, would have served to guide officers at the time. The decision to wait in the hallway instead of breaking down the classroom door kept innocent civilians in danger while benefiting the shooter, he said.
“The whole time they were standing in the hallway,” Eells added, “even while they were evacuating children, at the same time they should have been related to the suspect.”