On that report that police in Uvalde were just standing around
Here’s the story as it now stands. I caution everyone to ask questions, though, before jumping to conclusions.
For example:
Video emerging online from Tuesday’s schoolchildren massacre in Uvalde, Texas shows local police more concerned with stopping parents than stopping the killer…
Here are my questions in response to that sentence:
–Were these all the police that were at the school at the time, or were there other police in the building trying to get in and who were communicating with those outside? Were these police we see in the video stationed outside in case the killer ran out and tried to escape, or in case he had an accomplice?
–Were the killings of children and students still going on, or were they over by this time? Were there cameras in the classroom or halls? Were police inside the building aware of what was going on at that point?
–What would have happened if the parents were let in and they ended up being killed as well? Was that not very much a concern of the police – sort of like the way firefighters restrain parents from running back into a badly burning building?
More:
Javier Cazares, whose nine-year-old daughter was murdered, says cops were ‘just standing there’ and waiting for protective shields to arrive at the scene before they went in.
‘They said they rushed in and all that, we didn’t see that,’ he told The New York Times, adding that many were ‘just standing there.’
‘There were plenty of men out there armed to the teeth that could have gone in faster. This could have been over in a couple minutes,’ he said.
Same questions – and also “they said they rushed in and all that” indicates that there may have been police inside already.
From commenter “Kate”, who offers a link to this WSJ article and a summary of some information in it:
On the Border Patrol team, and why police didn’t charge in sooner: Once the shooter got into the classroom and locked the door, police couldn’t get in because of concrete block construction and a steel door. The Bortac team got a key from the principal, unlocked the door and stormed in, three of them. The first carried a shield, which took fire, the second was wounded by shrapnel, and the third killed the shooter.
If that is accurate, then the police outside may have known the Border Patrol team was already on the way or perhaps even at that moment engaged in getting into the classroom, and that the Border Patrol team officers not only had a shield or shields, but may have been more highly trained in dealing with this sort of situation. Unless we know an exact timeline, we really don’t know what was going on with the police in this video or inside the building at the time it was taken.
This article is from a British paper that is usually pretty accurate on this type of event [emphasis mine]:
It was unclear at what time the footage [of the encounter between parents and police] was shot. It also emerged Wednesday that Customs and Border Patrol agents who rushed to the scene had to grab a key from school staff to open the door of the classroom where the bloodbath took place.
That is because they were unable to break the door down themselves…
Department of Public Safety Director Steve McCraw told reporters that 40 minutes to an hour elapsed from when Salvador Ramos, 18, opened fire on the school security officer to when the tactical team shot him, though a department spokesman said later that they could not give a solid estimate of how long the gunman was in the school or when he was killed.
‘The bottom line is law enforcement was there,’ McCraw said.
‘They did engage immediately. They did contain (Ramos) in the classroom.’
It seems possible that the doors were reinforced for protective purposes, against intruders or perhaps fire. But this made it very hard to enter, even for police with weapons. Also, did they not want to fire at the door because children inside who were alive might have been hit? I’m not knowledgeable about whether gunfire can breach a steel door or not.
More [emphasis mine]:
Steve McCraw, director of the Texas department of public safety (DPS), said on Wednesday that a ‘brave’ school resource officer ‘approached him’ and ‘engaged him’ – but added that ‘gunfire was not exchanged.’ He did not explain why.
The New York Times reported that their sources said at least one armed law enforcement officer from the Uvalde school district was at the school, and that officer exchanged gunfire with the gunman, but the gunman was able to get past…
All of the 19 children who died were inside the one [fourth-grade] classroom.
Officers were unable to enter it, The New York Times said.
[DPS spokesman] Olivarez said some of the officers were shot by the gunman, so others began breaking windows around the school trying to evacuate children and teachers.
It sounds to me as though, when the parents were arguing with the police officers outside the building, there was an active shooter situation and also other police were trying to get into the building in various ways and to allow the children to escape.
More [emphasis mine]:
Multiple teams of Border Patrol agents raced to the school, according to Jason Owens, a top regional official with the Border Patrol…
McCraw praised the officers and denied there had been a failure – emphasizing that the arriving officers ‘engaged him’ and were able to ‘keep him pinned down in that location.’
I don’t think we have anywhere near enough information to judge what actually happened and what the police did right or wrong. Inflammatory videos tell only a tiny part of the story, and I don’t rely on them for an understanding of what actually happened except in regard to the tiny part they are telling. In this case, we know that desperate parents were angry at what they perceived as police inaction, and the police restrained some of them. The rest will emerge as time goes on – but for many people, the takeaway will be “the police are awful and they didn’t care.” That is by no means clear right now.
As with the initial reports on Tuesday, it’s wise to wait until facts become clear.
My own impulse is to think that officers could have used a chair as a shield, put some people outside near the windows to draw the killer’s attention, unlock the door, and go in to try to save the children. But I wasn’t there, and I am not a police officer.
If there was a significant delay before law enforcement entered, as it appears, I wonder whether the lives of any of the victims might have been saved had they received EMT attention during that delay. I can’t help but think so.
America has a serious cowardice problem. Testosterone levels are done the MSM degrades masculinity and rewards effeminacy .
Just look at all the mask wearing covid cowards.
this is not our parents/grandparents WWII generation
“The fatal funnel is a term widely used in close quarters battle (CQB) to describe choke points. Such spaces include doorways, stairwells, entryways, or any type of narrow area. The definition of the term is self-evident, but for sake of education, it means that if you enter into or fight from one of these spaces, it will often lead to your demise. Although we don’t agree with the term “fatal funnel”, which implies failure is inevitable, the dangers of entering these transitional areas can’t be overstated.”
It seems that there are no shortages of instant analysts who know what happened and why.
“Assailants who are within the immediate vicinity of the doorway are known as immediate threats. In a team environment, the objective is to get as many muzzles in the room and as fast as possible. An entire team can’t make entry into a room if the number one man making entry can’t get through the threshold, because of an altercation in the doorway.”
I would discount claims that the police should have breached the door without the key. A lot of nonresidential buildings like offices and schools are constructed with metal door frames and heavy duty doors for fire and severe weather safety, and were probably designed and constructed before active shooter situations were considered common enough consider in planning. Most breaching equipment is intended to break residential entry doors which are strong but not as robust.
There also seem to be a fair number of people confusing Ramos’s possible entry through an unlocked rear door in the school with the fact that he locked the classroom door behind him before he started shooting
A cousin, former law enforcement and now elementary school security officer in TN had heard that the gunman got in via a door someone, read staff, had propped open. Apparently, this is a common problem for him as staff don’t want to have to use their access cards going in and out.
He had heard the gunman killed his grandmother, wrecked his car near the school and they weren’t sure the school was the target or the opportunity.
He got into and barricaded the classroom where he was “contained”
Now the horrific question is, when did he shoot the victims. If they were shot within a few minutes, then, contain, evacuate, assault. Yes, some victims may have bled out over the wait. Reality is a bitch.
There were the kids in the 4th grade class, but also how many other kids that had to be evacuated while police stood guard to prevent the gunman advancing on them.
There are a whole lot of questions, and a whole lot of information that may or may not be true. It does appear that other people, possibly including some police, went into the school between the time the killer entered, and the conclusion.
One of the lessons from Columbine, the first mass school shooting, was that police need to get in to the building right away, and not wait for a more perfect entry situation. Get in, engage, take down. Do not allow the killer free reign inside the building while planning. The Parkland “school resource officer” hid outside when he should have been inside, engaging. Yeah, there’s a risk. That’s why we arm police, and why they get early retirements and sweet pensions.
It’s also a very, very good idea to train, and think about how to deal with such a situation. One cannot anticipate every scenario, but one can have a binder with such things as who has keys, who has backup keys, what do we do if someone chains the doors from the inside, can we access the security camera system? Even small town police departments can accumulate that information, and save minutes.
Oh, yes, and important:
News media people are ignorant, biased and motivated by fame. If CBS reports that it was a sunny day in Uvalde, check the records before you believe it. They get so, so, much wrong, and never suffer consequences for doing so.
An editor for the Washington Post asserted that the AR-15 was based on a Nazi weapon. Anyone with more than a little knowledge would immediately recognize that as utterly false. No one on WaPo’s staff noticed.
Yes, I know Columbine wasn’t the first mass school shooting. It was the first of this nature in the modern era.
Gordon Scott:
Apparently in Uvalde, when they could not gain entry to the classroom the killer had locked, they barricaded him into the room so he could not get “free reign” inside the building.
It’s also possible that the children were already dead in the first minute or two. I don’t know and haven’t seen any indication of that particular timeline.
And as far as Columbine being the first mass school shooting “of its nature in the modern era,” I’m not sure what you mean by “of its nature.” I suppose if you limit it to shootings, this one doesn’t count, but it’s the deadliest school mass murder in US history:
It retains that distinction.
I would also call this a previous mass school shooting “of its nature in the modern era”:
And then we have these:
Then comes Columbine.
“The rest will emerge as time goes on – but for many people, the takeaway will be “the police are awful and they didn’t care.””
If your default position is still to give the police the benefit of the doubt, I have to wonder what you’ve been paying attention to the past few years.
Mike
“Apparently in Uvalde, when they could not gain entry to the classroom the killer had locked, they barricaded him into the room so he could not get “free reign” inside the building.”
You might want to be a little more consistent as to what early reporting on an incident is and is not okay to believe and repeat.
Mike
MBunge:
You sound like a leftist. The bad bad police!! Actually, most of the time the police do a good job under extremely difficult circumstances – so yes, giving them the benefit of the doubt is my default position unless I see reliable evidence to the contrary. I’m not a rush-to-judgment type person, and I evaluate each case on its own merits.
You apparently like to generalize from a few sensational cases, and to believe the worst of the conflicting and preliminary reports.
I’m not the least bit embarrassed to say that I don’t do that. I wait, evaluate the evidence on a case-by-case basis, and then make my judgment.
That he had shitty parents contributes nothing to understanding causality. There are many such parents in today’s America.
Where did he get the money to buy his weapon(s) and ammo?
I submit that portrayal of gratuitous violence is everywhere, condoned and welcomed by our secular culture and our movie/tv industry. But that remains a thin explanation of the Uvalde massacre. He was of the age when schizophrenia blossoms and pushes its victims into alternate realities and bizarre conduct.
We surrendered to the idea that psychotics have rights, including voting, shifted to ambulatory mental health clinics from locked-down mental hospitals, and gave them the right to refuse to take their tone-down meds.
Bunge:
I am strongly pro-cop, though one once held a gun on me.
Who are you going to call? Ghostbusters??
Cicero:
There is no evidence so far of any history of schizophrenia or of any schizophrenic break in Ramos. He was socially isolated to a certain extent, but not all that much – his co-workers at Wendy’s certainly interacted with him and though he sometimes was hostile there is no report of any delusional thinking. And also, 18 is quite young for schizophrenia onset, although not unheard-of:
Ramos had just turned 18.
As far as “shitty parents” goes, of course it’s not THE reason for him becoming a killer. There are killers who are from good families and wonderful kids from bad families. But just playing the numbers indicate that criminals and killers are far more likely to come from families such as this one, and that the parents (probably both heredity and environment) are probably a significant contributing factor in such cases.
The emerging stories are of police not engaging the shooter before he entered the school, and of waiting for a tactical team to arrive. The best I can do for them is to say that small-town police departments are probably not trained for this sort of incident. But they heard gunshots from inside that room, and they knew children and teachers were in there.
MBunge:
Also, regarding this comment of yours, are you familiar with the term “apparently”?
Kate:
Right now the “emerging stories” are that the first police on the scene did “engage” the shooter but didn’t exchange fire with him. I have no idea what that could mean and it has not been explained. Until I hear a fuller explanation I withhold judgment and I think others should as well.
Also, I’ve read plenty that indicates that some police were inside the building while another contingent were outside engaging with parents, and the inside group were doing quite a bit. In addition, the report is that there were others outside breaking windows and trying to evacuate students.
I got much of that information from the British press, which I have found to be more reliable in the past than the US press on these sorts of stories.
If you’re reacting to some more reliable story about what actually happened, post a link.
This looks bad at best. Not just the top tweet but the next few also.
https://twitter.com/efindell/status/1529914787034976263
I’m all for waiting for the actual facts to emerge. But will they? Police departments frequently cover their ass. The media exaggerates distorts and lies. Witnesses are notoriously unreliable.
Re: short term engineering solutions to which liberals can’t object.
All entrances should have a card access system like hotel/motels use. More precise metal detectors are needed that detect mass rather than just metal itself. With such, automatic lockdown of the entrance should be triggered.
An armed schoolguard should be at the front entrance with bulletproof glass covering his station. Every schoolroom door should be reinforced steel with a WiFi controlled door lock system. Several people, such as administration staff and the front entrance schoolguard should have the ability to trigger an instant lockdown of those doors. Activation of the lockdown should automatically alert the police as well.
But locks are for honest people. Evil can be obstructed but not stopped entirely.
“Thirty years ago, kids who brought their rifles to the high school shooting range didn’t wonder about evil and cultural decay. They simply lived in a time in America when right and wrong were more starkly defined, where expectations about behavior were clear, and wickedness hadn’t been normalized.” Christian Adams
There lies the source of America’s problem with school shootings.
Griffin:
I believe there was initial confusion in whether it was a SRO or a regular police officer. Initial repeats said the former, later it was amended to the latter. I heard earlier than today that there was no SRO at the school.
I’m not sure why that confusion would be so very bad. It takes time even for police and authorities to go through everything and understand more of the details of what happened. It’s something like the “fog of war” phenomenon.
It’s certainly possible the police were negligent – and I will definitely say that when I see more evidence. But right now I think the people condemning them are rushing to judgment based on emotion – understandable anger, sorrow, frustration, and outrage – and MSM sensationalism, combined with a video that only tells a small part of the story.
I’ve already dealt with the substance of the other tweets in the body of this post.
neo at 5:07 pm,
Though it misses the 1927 atrocity, it adds perspective to the frequency of these school shootings. Clearly an accelerating trend. https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1529487203612631043.html
neo,
The post event confusion isn’t what I’m talking about not even school resource officer.
The entire thing was messed up as the school seems to have not had even the most basic precautionary measures that my grade school had in the 1970s and the police waiting outside for that period of time is inexcusable to me.
This sums it up for me.
https://twitter.com/ClayTravis/status/1529926010694778883
Geoffrey Britain:
You write:
All true.
However, at this point it’s really early and impossible to sort it out yet. We may never get “the actual facts” – but if previous examples are any guide we will get more of them as time goes on. Right now there’s way too much confusion, even in the stories we’re getting, to draw any conclusions. It is easy, way too easy, to blame the first responders when we really don’t know what they were doing and how the timeline is explained. If there really was a one-hour delay, it may be that they were inside trying desperately to get into that room. It may be that others were outside breaking windows. If those reports are true, then I’m not at all sure there was anything else that could have been done.
Allowing the parents to go inside could very easily have led to the death of the parents.
Who are you going to call Ghostbusters??
The reason to call 911 rather then take your own defense into your own hands is because our judicial system has made it clear that defending yourself might come with you being jailed.
Griffin:
Read my comment right above this one, at 5:56 PM to Geoffrey Britain.
neo,
Well it seems like the school had very lax lockdown procedures.
It is not uncommon to hear of ‘Whatever Elementary School’ going into lockdown over something nearby the school and I know at least here that means all doors are locked both exterior and interior and if there were shots fired very near (if yes) then the school should have been in lockdown pronto.
This may just be a case where a small town police and school were not equiped in any way to react to something like this.
Griffin:
As far as school resource officers are concerned, they are by no means employed in all schools. In 2018, 58% of schools in the US had them at least one day a week, but the title of SRO was not limited to armed guards stationed at schools at all times when school is in session.
Did the Uvalde school have such an officer but not employed as an armed guard? Was the armed guard only there once a week, and this wasn’t his day?
More:
So I’m not sure why you find it so shocking that there was no SRO security guard at this school, and certainly not one there that day. It’s also a poor community, as far as I know, and money might have been part of the problem. It’s not an especially high-crime area either.
By the way, “security guards” are often unarmed and are different from “armed security guards.” There are far fewer of the latter – the most recent statistic I got is from 2010, where 27% of schools had armed security guards (my guess is that most of them were high schools in urban areas).
Read this for more on the security in Uvalde schools. Doesn’t sound at all bad. But part of what seems to have happened on the day of the killings is that some doors that usually are locked were unlocked because parents had come earlier that day for an awards ceremony.
Apparently the classroom doors were supposed to be locked anyway, even without a lockdown. No one seems to be aware of how the shooter got into that particular classroom. Was it possible to shoot the lock off? Or was it left unlocked by error? I have no idea. If the police didn’t shoot the lock off, it either was impossible or they were afraid of killing children in the process.
@Eva Marie:our judicial system has made it clear that defending yourself might come with you being jailed.
Better to be tried by 12 than carried by 6…
Other than that, I strongly recommend not trying to learn anything about this shooting in the first seven days.
The SRO at my kid’s high school was a regular King County Deputy Sheriff.
neo,
I never said anything about the school not having an armed SRO so I have nothing to say about that. My comments about the school were about how apparently (yes I know) many doors were unlocked which is really strange to me. In my experience that is not how any school is in today’s society.
Griffin:
You wrote: “The post event confusion isn’t what I’m talking about not even school resource officer.” I took that to mean that it wasn’t the confusion that bothered you, it was the fact that the school didn’t even have one resource officer.
At the school that day, it appears that the back door was unlocked and that fourth-grade classroom may have been unlocked. I’m not aware of any other unlocked doors there that day.
“Better to be tried by 12 than carried by 6”
No.
Tried by 12 may very well mean having to sell your home, your business, all to pay subpar lawyers, being found guilty anyway or accepting a plea bargain after your money is gone, after a lot of worry and tears. The effect on close family members can be devastating.
neo,
That was poorly worded on my part. I was dismissing the issue of not having an SRO.
At 11:28 he crashed his vehicle in a ditch.
He then shot at two people across the street from school.
At 11:40 he entered the school through an unlocked door.
That is from the Texas Public Safety official.
The unlocked door is my issue. And that was an exterior door. All interior doors should have been locked immediately which would have at least limited his victim pool.
I’m sure those were innocent mistakes but they were costly in this case.
Griffin:
He entered the school at 11:40, according to what you wrote above this.
This article says the school went into lockdown at 11:43.
We still don’t know how he got into that one classroom. But all the others might have been locked. One of the officials says Ramos “forced his way” into the 4th-grade classroom where he committed the murders. What does “force his way” indicate?
The Wall Street Journal has a story on this topic this afternoon:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/uvalde-residents-voice-frustration-over-shooting-response-11653588161
neo,
Well for those children that was the door that counted.
Again maybe this was just a smallish town school that sadly got caught unprepared. I know here any school I have been familiar with all the doors are locked including the front main door which you often have to be buzzed into and I’m not talking about in a rough inner city setting.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/uvalde-residents-voice-frustration-over-shooting-response-11653588161
Griffin:
Here’s an interesting report from a fourth-grader in the class who survived. He said that he “heard the shooting through the door” . He also said this:
From that I conclude (also based on something else I read) that Ramos shot the lock on the door of an adjacent classroom that might have been unoccupied and then simply opened an internal and unlocked door of the 4th-grade classroom, entering from the other classroom. The external doors were perhaps locked to both classrooms. That’s what it sounds like from this kid’s description. I hope to hear more definitive word on it.
Kate:
Yes, that conforms with what I’ve read. There was no armed officer always on guard, so it took time for police to arrive. The back door was apparently unlocked, perhaps due to an awards ceremony earlier in the day when a lot of parents came to the school. The first police on the scene exchanged gunfire with him.
See my comments above this one for a possible account of how he got into the classroom.
The fence seems to have been locked; he had to scale the fence that was 8-feet high to get onto the school grounds.
So 911 call at 11:30 after shooting at funeral home across the street and he entered school through unlocked door at 11:40 and school was locked down at 11:43.
Of course he could have started shooting through classroom windows but he didn’t because there was an unlocked door.
It’s all very sad and was obviously not done with malice (I assume) but that was the key lapse at the school.
I used to hunt near Uvalde – it’s a fairly small town, mostly in support of area agriculture and ranching. Not a wealthy place, and it’s close enough to the border where there is a steady traffic of dusty, border-related people (illegals, narco-trafficantes, DEA, La Migra, etc). I was surprised to see that expensive tactical vehicle on the scene after the shootings, but I suppose that might have come from the Border Patrol.
I find the reports of police officers standing around outside waiting for orders disturbing, especially in the presence of the distraught parents – but I prefer to wait to hear the timeline itself before casting judgment. And I am reminded that even after judgment was cast in the Parkland shooting’s disgraceful LE conduct, that cowardly son-of-a-bitch still had his pension, and it was just as fat as he was.
The source of funds for a Wendy’s-employed, minimum-wage shooter (known to be poor) for premium assault weapons with fancy optics, and body armor, are questions that need answering. I’ll wait for those too. I have read elsewhere that the initial interaction with the shooter resulted in the latter walking around to an unlocked door after being denied entry at the front. Hoo boy.
There are, what -?- tens of thousands of public schools across the country, most of them in smallish towns like Uvalde that don’t have terribly high crime risk, at least in the schools. They can’t all be outfitted like Ft. Knox. But there are basic security hardenings and Incident Procedures that should be in all of them, and training with drills to match. Our children are worth protecting even when these things don’t often happen.
And, more here:
https://hotair.com/allahpundit/2022/05/26/wapo-video-shows-uvalde-parents-were-begging-cops-to-intervene-within-15-minutes-of-start-of-shooting-n472321
Plus they could have had a fully armed SRO at the front door but if the armed gunman enters through an unlocked back door the SRO’s effectiveness would be diminished.
Griffin:
The only unlocked door we know of so far was the back door. I’m not sure it mattered all that much, either. For example, in Sandy Hook, Lanza shot through a window near a locked security door and that’s how he got in.
Mike Smith:
Then it is entirely possible that by the time those parents were begging for intervention, the killings had all occurred, and there were other police inside trying to get into the room, and still others breaking windows to let kids out.
neo,
After a bit of reflection that is my current POV as well.
Though I am withholding judgement, I’m a bit less sanguine about the reaction of the police.
I don’t care how little training or few cops there might be, as soon as a cop heard shooting happening within the school they had to realize what was happening. Their duty at that point was to do all they could to stop the killer. They carry the means to do so with which we entrust them, including shotguns.
Standing around waiting for the experts to get there is effectively condoning the deaths of innocents who they could hear being murdered during that waiting period.
Nor will the experts immediately enter to confront the shooter. They’ll ascertain the situation and settle upon the best strategy to employ. That’s fine for a military tactical plan to seize the objective with civilian deaths… unfortunate “collateral damage”. But IMO entirely inappropriate when the goal is to save civilian lives.
And, if bystanders see the police entering the school to confront the killer, they’re likely to wait for the police to deal with and neutralize the shooter.
Nor with what the cops knew at the time, could they know that an attempt might be too late given the locked schoolroom door.
Part of the territory that comes with being a cop is to place their lives on the line when innocent lives are clearly at stake. Never more clearly than when children’s lives are involved.
Honest police are rightfully due the respect and honor that comes with the job. The corollary is that if confronting a killer is too much of a risk, then they have no business being a cop for they prove themselves unworthy of the honor that naturally accrues to those who are willing to lay down their lives in defense of the innocent.
Aggie:
The school had a locked 8-foot tall chainlink fence that the shooter scaled. It had locked outside doors (except possibly for the back door, which was apparently usually locked but might have been unlocked that day for an awards ceremony and the arrival of parents). It seems that the internal doors were locked as well, and the shooter might have shot into an unoccupied classroom to get in (shot the lock out?) or it wasn’t locked because no one was in it to lock it, and then he supposedly opened an internal adjoining door into the occupied classroom where he murdered the children and teachers. The rest of the school was already in lockdown, about three minutes after he entered.
It doesn’t sound as though the school lacked basic security. It was just a cascade of terrible terrible events.
Geoffrey Britain:
You write “Standing around waiting for the experts to get there is effectively condoning the deaths of innocents who they could hear being murdered during that waiting period.”
Not a single part of that statement is known to be true.
First of all, there is no evidence people were still being murdered – they might already have all been murdered – and no evidence that they “could hear them being murdered.”
Secondly, there is no report as to why they might have been “just standing around” or whether that’s what was happening. Reports I’ve read are that while they were “standing around,” other officers were inside trying to get into the classroom and still others were breaking windows trying to get other children out. Hundreds of officers can’t enter a classroom through a single door. The adjacent classroom might have had an open door (it had been unoccupied) and there was an internal door to the 4th grade classroom, but I don’t see why the officers inside would have known that.
The officers just “standing around” might have been assigned to be there on the lookout for the shooter trying to escape, or for a confederate. We know he wasn’t trying to escape and that there was no confederate, but they didn’t know that. I don’t think it’s at all clear that they were just “standing around” waiting for backup before doing anything. It certainly possible, but that’s just a conclusion that people come to based on incomplete facts. I will wait for more clarification before concluding what was happening.
And allowing parents to rush in could have been a huge huge disaster.
There are so many assumptions people are making prematurely, in my opinion.
I think we can wait for granular details to be established before passing judgment.
How about we pray for the grieving and bury the dead before we burn down the Uvalde cop shop?
Yes…the mountain of $$$ spent on public education should include top notch security for students and staff. But we should also do more to keep the clearly mentally unhinged away from vulnerable people or places.
Neo, I’m aware of the other incidents you listed, including Whitman at UT. But Columbine was a defining moment.
Thanks for gathering so many details and putting them together so coherently. It’s easy to just cast around for someone to blame; it’s hard to admit that it’s a complicated story and there isn’t just one person or group of people who can be singled out for blame.
It sounds like the one big mistake was the door that was left open or unlocked. The shooter was probably determined enough to get into the building if he scaled the fence, that he would have shot through the windows. But if he’d had to try to get through the windows, it could have bought more time for the police to stop him.
I don’t want to assume that if the teacher had been armed she could have saved her own life and all the students’ lives, that would have really been miraculous, but I don’t see what’s wrong with letting teachers be armed so that there’s at least a fighting chance of distracting the shooter and buying a bit more time. I don’t know why teachers themselves would be against the idea. Of course I don’t propose it as the be-all-end-all solution to school shootings, but you’d think they’d at least want to be armed as a last resort.
Gordon Scott:
I understand that it was a defining moment for a lot of people. That’s partly because by then the 24-hour news cycle was in place. For me and for some other older people, Charles Whitman was a defining moment. It was a big big deal.
Again I am not passing judgement upon the cops but I’m not granting them absolution before the facts are known. Here’s another report that’s troubling;
“BREAKING: Mother trying to save children at Uvalde was handcuffed by federal marshals”
“”The police were doing nothing. They were just standing outside the fence. They weren’t going in there or running anywhere,” the mother of two said.”
https://thepostmillennial.com/breaking-mother-trying-to-save-children-at-uvalde-was-handcuffed-by-federal-marshals
From another article:
“Why Federal Agents Were the First on the Scene to Kill the School Shooter in Texas”
“Under federal regulations, Customs and Border Protection, Border Patrol’s parent agency, can operate within 100 miles of the border without special permission.”
“CBP maintains a station in Uvalde, responsible for 3,000 square miles in the area. It has a permanent checkpoint in the town for automotive traffic, and also assists with train and freight operations. A tactical team known as BORTAC was the first to arrive on the scene…”
“They have the authority under federal law to protect those communities, and that’s exactly what happened,” said Larry Cosme, a former long-time officer at Immigration and Customs Enforcement and current president of the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association.
Cosme said the Border Patrol agents have access to the same radio frequencies and any officer who hears the type of distress call that occurred on Tuesday would have the instinct to respond to it.”
https://www.govexec.com/workforce/2022/05/why-federal-agents-were-first-scene-kill-school-shooter-texas/367453/
OK, so here’s where a troubling aspect arises for me; The Border Patrol hears of the shooting within minutes, presumably even before Ramos enters the school since he did so after 12 minutes. They’re the first on the scene.
When a mother who has just driven 40 miles to get there arrives, she finds cops apparently just standing around…
She states that Federal Marshalls are arresting and even pepper spraying a man (who is likely and understandably resisting arrest).
Now maybe they weren’t actually Federal Marshalls but are instead Border Patrol agents, though Border Patrol agents wear clearly marked uniforms and its likely she’s seen those uniforms before given that Uvalde is less than 100 miles from the border and has a Border Patrol facility within it.
But IF they were Federal Marshalls, then that opens up another whole angle… San Antonio is the nearest large city with any likelihood of having a Federal Marshall presence and its 83 miles away from Uvalde. She drives 40 miles and gets there before they take out Ramos, so how the hell did Federal Marshalls get there before her?
None of this proves incompetence much less worse but so far things aren’t adding up here for me. IMO its enough to ask some hard questions and dig deep for some credible answers.
More:
“REPORTER: “What were the officers doing between 11:44 and 12:44…?”
“We’ve been given a lot of bad information, so why don’t you clear all of this up and explain to us how it is that your officers were in there for an hour…but yet no one was able to get inside…?”
Spokesperson refuses to directly answer states we’ll have to circle back to you on that…
@Eva Marie:No. Tried by 12 may very well mean having to sell your home, your business, all to pay subpar lawyers, being found guilty anyway or accepting a plea bargain after your money is gone, after a lot of worry and tears. The effect on close family members can be devastating.
I’m sure they wouldn’t literally rather see you dead; granted I don’t know them.
I know for me and mine, no I wouldn’t prefer myself or my family to be dead rather than broke or in prison… so we’ve all resolved to do what is needful to not be dead.
Every last centiliter of testosterone had been drained from American law enforcement:
https://www.mediaite.com/tv/texas-police-lieutenant-says-cops-were-reluctant-to-engage-gunman-because-they-couldve-been-shot/
I’m wondering what was happening in the school administrator’s office during the 10 minutes or so after the police had received the 911 call about a gunman near the school. Did the school office get a call from the police quickly? If so, what were they doing in response to the call?
That back door should have gotten locked. Yes, even the full 10 min. isn’t much time. I suspect that the perp knew it was unlocked because it’s usually unlocked.
I’m not a gun guy but from what I’ve read shooting locks to open doors is not real, except maybe for specialized breaching ammunition like SWAT teams have (which I think they use to just break the door, not the lock).
Even a padlock attached to a staple, there are inexpensive padlocks that won’t open when shot. But it is very difficult to hit a padlock, and more so the staple. You might possibly damage the padlock or the staple enough that you can open the door.
However, the big beefy metal locks inside school doors… seems far more likely you’d just damage the lock in a way that prevented the door being opened, as well as causing shrapnel or ricochet that could very well injure you.
Certainly you can use a gun to damage some kinds of doors enough that you can get through them without hurting yourself too badly, but I don’t think you can really shoot locks and it sounds like a really dumb thing to even try if you’re not experienced.
TommyJay,
That is where having an actual SRO on site would be of most benefit if they had a police radio they could immediately notify the staff to go into lockdown.
The schools I have been familiar with in recent years have protocols for when lockdowns are ordered and everybody knows what to do and closing all exterior doors would be at the top of the list I would think.
Others may have mentioned it, but I will not be surprised to find out that the shooter barricaded himself inside the classroom behind a door that had been hardened to keep shooters out.
If the cops had him contained, and were not hearing shots currently being fired, they may have waited for the shields.
That does not negate that children may have bled out during that time.
As for as shooting out the lock, unless they had specialized breeching rounds, they would likely have feared hitting a child inside.
Breeching rounds
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breaching_round
There are shotgun breaching rounds which are specifically designed to blow off door latches. Probably you could shoot a door latch (not the lock) on an ordinary door with an AR-15 to open it. On a steel door the latch bolt is probably much stronger, so I wouldn’t know.
My guess is that Ramos was shooting at doors because he wished to shoot through the door threatening people on the other side.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYGht_wQFko
AR-15 rounds penetrate two steel doors with a total of four steel sheets.
TommyJay:
I don’t know whether the school was notified at 11:30. It would depend how close the truck crash was to the school. Seems like it was pretty close, though.
Also, we still don’t even know if that door outside was unlocked. The police said in today’s conference that they thought it probably was but they are still investigating and that it might have been locked. Also, no one has addressed whether he might have tried all the doors and just entered there because it was the only one that was unlocked.
I don’t think it was usually unlocked – I’ve seen nothing that indicates that.
We just don’t have enough information yet.
Griffin on May 26, 2022 at 9:23 pm
Yes, having an extra 10 or 12 minutes before the shooter enters the school is such a huge potential advantage. Couldn’t they have a police radio in the school office at all times? Or a dedicated landline or cell phone.
He was witnessed entering the school. Had he tried several doors I would expect that would have been reported already. I had seen a map of area including the grandmother’s house, the truck crash site, and the school. I think the walking distance between the last two was about 2 blocks IIRC.
I am guessing, but it would typical if some cigarette smoking teacher (insert other obvious excuses here) kept that door unlocked or propped open.
Without a shield or flash bangs, the cops storming that room would have been shot. As far as AR ammo goes, there are many different types. For the 1:7 rifle he had this was optimal choice:
Cartridge, Caliber 5.56 mm, Ball, M855 [Green tip]: 5.56×45mm 62-grain FN SS109-equivalent ball cartridge with a steel penetrator tip over a lead core in a full copper jacket.
“I’m sure they wouldn’t literally rather see you dead; granted I don’t know them.”
Thank you for the gratuitous slap on the relationship between my family and myself but I am referencing a particular circumstance I was peripherally involved in. The young man went to prison and his dad died of heart failure several years later. Yes, the dad was in ill health, but his final years driving to the prison to see his son every month were awful.
Chases Eagles:
Do only SWAT teams or riot control police ordinarily have access to shields?
@Eva Marie: Not sure what’s supposed to be a “gratuitous slap” as certainly no such thing was intended.
For the specific people you mention, I don’t know them, that’s simply factual and not a “slap”, and maybe they told you they’d rather have been dead than alive and meant it.
I just know that as a father, I would not prefer to see my son dead than in prison, even if I’m in ill health, it is awful to drive to see him, and my own life is shortened as a result.
I would be pretty unhappy about it sure, and if it was because he’d defended himself and went to prison unfairly as nearly happened to Kyle Rittenhouse that would be awful. But I would be glad he was at least alive, with some possibility, even faint, of things getting better, even if they can’t be like they were.
Frederick, you need to put yourself in the son’s shoes not the father’s.
My point (and I’m not advocating, I’m simply stating) is – having seen our judicial system up close and personal – I’ll call 911. Not because I have a lot of confidence in the police but because I have zero confidence in our legal system
Do only SWAT teams or riot control police ordinarily have access to shields?
Interesting question. SWAT breaching shield is much different than a basic riot shield. The former needs to be seriously bullet proof, including the window as well as protecting the feet; whereas the latter is mainly about protection from clubs etc.
SWAT style
https://www.opticsplanet.com/united-shield-grande-shield-level-iiia-w-viewport-24in-x-69in.html
Note restricted sales.
Riot style
https://www.galls.com/paulson-heavy-bs-9-riot-shield?PMWTNO=000000000002208&PMSRCH=
It’s kind of awful that the shooter could get inside the classroom and that, once in, the police couldn’t break in. That means the shooter couldn’t have gotten in if the teacher had closed the door first. That in turn means that the first resource officer who confronted the shooter somehow didn’t have a way to signal the school to go on full lockdown before it was too late.
@ Neo > “I understand that it was a defining moment for a lot of people. That’s partly because by then the 24-hour news cycle was in place. For me and for some other older people, Charles Whitman was a defining moment.”
Every generation has its own “moments” because what happens during your own lifetime (usually as a teen or young adult) makes a much greater impact than what happened in the past; and once you’ve had a “defining moment,” what happens later is always compared to that one.
The 24/7/365 news cycle is certainly a factor, but Columbine (1999) followed a long list of prior shootings, as Neo listed.
I wonder if the “defining” characteristic was the Democrats aka Leftists realizing they could use it to make gun-grabbing a much more plausible issue.
After the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, the Communists had to find something to do.
It’s looking even worse. Stories circulating that cops went in to save *their own* kids, but prevented parents from going in to save theirs. If true, these cops should spend time in prison. https://www.mediaite.com/news/watch-texas-police-spox-on-live-tv-confirmed-cops-went-in-for-their-own-kids-during-uvalde-shooting/
People are looking for a “reason” to cope with sadness and fear. Ones they can control
“if only the door was locked”
“the cops should have been able to bust the door”
“the shooter gave red flags and been put in a psychiatric hospital”
“if teachers had guns, things like this would never happen again”
In 2007, there was a conservative political website and the blogger talked about how some people treat guns as a talisman. This came after the Virginia Tech Massacre that year. He reminded the readers that there is no perfect, complete and everlasting way to guarantee your safety, guns included. You could leave the gun at the house or in the car. Even if you had the gun and tried to use it, the assailant could have a quicker draw. And I agree with Eva Marie – even if you were in the right, the jury may come up differently and the people who would call you a hero are no longer there because they’ve gone on to another problem.
You can turn schools into ADX Florence – some nutjob will find a way to get in and destroy lives if they wanted to.
And don’t forget 1995. In Oklahoma City, no guns were even needed. Fertilizer-created bombs gave Timothy McVeigh a reason to destroy lives. The same with the Tsarnaev brothers.
Incidents like this and smaller ones that we see in everyday life reminds us how someone else could simply take our lives – and the people we love -and it terrifies us. We come up with ways in order to cope
If there was negligence we’ll find out. But as most everyone here says, we need to wait until we have the details.
It seems possible that the doors were reinforced for protective purposes, against intruders or perhaps fire.
They were reinforced for exactly that purpose: to stop an armed person from entering the classroom during an active shooter incident. The killer used the defensive system against the good guys.
Were these all the police that were at the school at the time, or were there other police in the building trying to get in and who were communicating with those outside?
Glad someone else is also asking this question.
we didn’t see that
And this is why I have said to stop with the outrage and ask some questions, first.
These witnesses have neither the span of knowledge required nor the tactical expertise to properly evaluate what was going on. They were all reacting very emotionally to the situation (understandably so). The media quote these people because 1) they don’t have the tactical expertise either, and 2) their goal is to stoke an emotional, thoughtless reaction from you so you will get outraged.
Yo Mama on May 27, 2022 at 6:25 am said:
Stories circulating that cops went in to save *their own* kids
And this is where critical thinking comes in. Understand that kids are in groups in school (with the possible exception of that kid in the bathroom or the one sitting in the principal’s office). Do you really think the police went in, individually, and grabbed their kids from those groups, which are supervised by an adult, and just left the rest of them there? Perhaps they prioritized certain classrooms based on that personal connection, but there is no way they just went in to save their own kids.
BTW, the reaction of these parents is exactly the same as the anti-gunners after one of these incidents: DO something! Regardless of whether the something is a good idea or not.
Someone elsewhere drew the quote from Animal House that seems apropos in these situations: “I think that this situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody’s part.“
Kate on May 26, 2022 at 2:50 pm said:
As with the initial reports on Tuesday, it’s wise to wait until facts become clear.
This is absolutely correct.
My own impulse is to think that officers could have used a chair as a shield
And this is what I meant by ignorance and lack of tactical expertise. (No offense.) There is not a single chair in a school (especially elementary school) that would stop anything larger than a small pistol round. And none of them are very manageable being used in that fashion – it would limit you to likely just holding the chair and not being able to engage the bad guy.
Now, I don’t think you’re dumb or even a fool for suggesting that, Kate. Just not knowledgeable of the facts. But it shows why quoting emotional, personally involved people who do not know what all is going on, is not helpful to actual knowledge. If even Kate comes up with something that’s not helpful, and she’s not there at the moment, frantic about kids, unable to get the information she feels she needs, then think how unhelpful to the truth all of those witness statements might be.
3. One psychologist who studied 56 school shooters found that “82% of the sample either grew up in dysfunctional families or without their parents together (for at least part of their lives).”
And he defined ‘dysfunctional family’ just how?
Wendy. I’ve been in a few relatively new el ed schools. The doors to the hall from the classrooms were sturdy. Those between classrooms not so much.
I would be the damn shield. I would happily take some of his ammo if it meant a kid or two could be spared.
I was in education for 16 years, at no time could you enter the campus except through the front office, and get the key, now he could have broken the window and snuck in that way, but this was a clear breach of safety protocols,
“3. One psychologist who studied 56 school shooters found that “82% of the sample either grew up in dysfunctional families or without their parents together (for at least part of their lives).”
“And he defined ‘dysfunctional family’ just how? Art Deco
Quite possibly just the way you define ‘dysfunctional family’… you don’t have to be able to provide a textbook, double blind study to recognize dysfunctional behavior but you do have to be able to recognize healthy behavior in order to understand the difference.
PS: to the degree that individual’s and families measure on Abraham Maslow’s self-actualization scale might be a useful metric by which to measure dysfunctional patterns.
PPS: Jordan Peterson has quite a lot to say about dysfunctional vs functional behavior. It’s not that hard to get a handle upon it.
as potter stewart said ‘we know it when we see it’ where was the young man going to get positive values, if the parents were deficient, if the schools are either just useless, or actually corrupting if the media is much the same,
From my understanding from a variety of sources,
the shooter entered through a door from the teachers parking lot. Not sure if unlocked or it was already open
the shooter entered an empty, unlocked classroom, which had doors to the adjoining classroom. Shooter possibly locked those doors as he went through them.
Now, think of this…
The first three people in the stack that breached the classroom got hit.
1st person had the shield
2nd person received an injury
3rd person had his cap grazed by a bullet
And those were the counter-terrorism trained guys. I’ll leave it to others to do the coulda, woulda, shoulda, and wait for a more thorough official timeline. Or think they could have done better.
It will be the same ol’, same ol’ as far as politics goes, it’s an election year after all. Can’t let a crisis go to waste, gotta BLAME THE OTHER AND DO SOMETHING.
How about we wait for the innocents to be buried and the investigation to complete before we start ascribing blame?
‘the definition of insanity, is you do the same thing, and expect a different result, and every single time the police day, it has a catastrophic affect for all involved, this is policy that seems set in stone, regardless of the consequences,
its just one tent pole of a whole edifice, does normalization of aberrant behavior lead to these and many outcomes, that seems clear,
‘
addl…
Because the ultimate person responsible is dead, an alienated misfit with mental issues. Whatever ‘signal’ and intervention that would have prevented this, was missed long before the shooting occurred.
No solution is perfect, everything involves trade-offs and nobody is perfect. Someone will prop open the door to bring in supplies.
Wrong place, wrong time.
People are looking for a “reason” to cope with sadness and fear. — Rae
That’s definitely a factor. It’s especially true when people are grasping at flimsy straws. But complacency isn’t good either, and this wasn’t a black swan or out-of-the-blue event.
So there were measures and protocols already in place to prevent this and they didn’t work. Typically (but not always), there are multiple lapses or mistakes that precipitate a known potential disaster. The term “a chain of errors” has been coined for this. Eliminate just one of the errors and the chain is broken.
A Uvalde mom was interviewed yesterday and she and others took it upon themselves recently to work with the town and school governance and find funding to upgrade security measures at the schools. Resource officers were supposed to be there. (100% of the time?)
One strange story is that the Uvalde school district had purportedly experienced 48 lockdowns this academic year. These were in response to police or border patrol chases of human and drug smugglers and migrants through the town. The drain on resources was also mentioned.
https://www.breitbart.com/border/2022/05/26/uvalde-schools-locked-down-at-least-48-times-this-academic-year/
Richard Aubrey: “I’ve been in a few relatively new el ed schools. The doors to the hall from the classrooms were sturdy. Those between classrooms not so much.”–And someone noted that the shooter apparently approached the classroom through the side rooms, perhaps locking them behind him. I don’t see how this changes things much. In the end, he was behind the locked doors and able to use them to protect himself from the police. However the locked doors are arranged, the teachers should have been in a position to lock them–side doors, regular doors, whatever–once they had word that there was an active shooter. And there appear to have been quite a few minutes after everyone had ample reason to be aware there was an active shooter, started with shots he popped off outside. Surely there’s a PA system.
That is to say, if the side doors weren’t that sturdy, the police ought to have been able to gain access that way. If they were sturdy, the teacher ought to have had an opportunity to lock them.
One of the basic problems with school security is that people are not by nature able to maintain a disciplined procedure over long periods. Another problem is that people have trouble dealing with dangerous situations that have a low probability of happening. As a pilot, I know that the preflight inspection of the aircraft is one of the most critical steps in flying. As is preflight planning when the weather is marginal. Too often people get away with cutting corners until one day the bill becomes due. The safe pilot refuses to ever roll the dice, and is prepared to remind his passengers that it will not be a tragedy if they don’t get home until tomorrow or the next day.
Quite a few years ago I was in charge of a small IT department that had just acquired a new computer system. For one reason or another the system disk, containing the operation system, became corrupted two months in a row. This required the system disk to be rebuilt, a procedure that the operations manager and computer operators viewed with a great deal of trepidation. So I sat down with them and told them that the rebuild was going to become a routine part of our month-end activity = and the operations manager and computer operators were all expected to be proficient in this procedure. After that, issues with the system disk were no big deal.
I believe had the security of the building been seen as a high priority Ramos would never have gained entry. School districts should sit down with local law enforcement to design and implement no-entry processes, and then local law enforcement should frequently make unannounced visits to the schools to ensure procedures are being followed. And raise holy hell if they’re not. The law enforcement heads and superintendents of schools should have no tolerance for bending the rules.
” he was behind the locked doors and able to use them to protect himself from the police.” Wendy Laubach
That’s reasoned behavior, evidence that the killer was not insane. He knew exactly what he was doing, he intended to kill as many children as possible. If that’s not evidence of evil, then nothing is…
This is from Fox News, at about 12:30 PM, Friday, May 27, 2022.
Here’s the link: https://tinyurl.com/mwakdj3z
It might explain reports that the police weren’t doing enough to get at the shooter.
Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steven McCraw said Friday, when asked why police at Robb Elementary School didn’t engage the shooter sooner, said “the on-scene commander at the time believed that it had transitioned from an active shooter to a barricaded subject.”
“A decision was made on the scene – I wasn’t there — that this was a barricaded subject situation, there was time to retrieve the keys and wait for a tactical team with the equipment to go ahead and breach the door and take on the subject,” he continued. “At that point, that was the decision, that was the thought process.”
McCraw later said “from the benefit of hindsight from where I am sitting now, that of course it was not the right decision, it was a wrong decision, very, there was no excuse for that.”
“I wasn’t there but I’m just telling you from what we know, that we believe there should have been an entry as soon as you can,” he added.
Posted by Greg Norman
Timeline.
https://twitter.com/ByMikeBaker/status/1530246590954213377
Geoffrey Britain:
I agree there’s no evidence that the killer was insane in this instance.
However, insane people can often think and act logically in order to accomplish their ends.
jackokie:
Please see my post today on how Israel protects its schools.
Wendy Laubach:
I wonder whether the police even knew that there were internal side doors between the classrooms in question. Were they in communication with the principal? I’d like an answer to that one, as well.
11-year-old Miah, the one who covered herself in her dead friend’s blood as camouflage, gave an interview. She was in the first room the shooter entered. She says the teacher in that room got an email warning of an intruder, but by the time she got to the door, the intruder was right there and shot through the window in the door. It wasn’t clear whether she had a chance to lock the door or whether that mattered in view of the window’s being shot out. The shooter came in, told her “Good night,” and shot and killed her in front of her students. Then he shot a number of other kids in the room, including Miah’s friend, then went into the adjoining room. That’s apparently where he stayed from then on. Miah could hear him playing what she described as “sad” or “I want people to die” music. During her seemingly endless wait Miah assumed the police hadn’t arrived yet. Now that she’s heard the police were outside waiting, she’s unable to process what happened to her. She gave an interview so people would understand more about what it was like, so it wouldn’t happen again.
There’s a “How could you let this happen to us” theme in her account that probably devastates every adult who hears it. It will be amazing if suicides don’t result from this. The shame is almost unbearable in people who were nowhere near, and I don’t see how people who were present can go on at all. They must all be second-guessing themselves even if there was nothing they could have done, and as for anyone who can’t acquit himself, well, how do you live with it.
Miah and a friend retrieved a cellphone from their teacher’s body and talked to 911 a couple of times. There’s something missing in the reports about whether those 911 calls were reported to officers on the scene. Massive confusion. God bless the three men who ultimately stormed through the door with ballistic shields taking fire. The reports now are that Border Patrol agents showed up and were told to stand down, but finally lost patience and went in. That’s still not clear, whether they defied the locals or wore them down or even whether it happened quite that way.
More heartbreak: An EMT gave an interview to Anderson Cooper. The EMT treated a girl who was covered in blood, so he initially thought she was more badly injured than she really was (she had some relatively superficial shrapnel wounds). The girl explained that she was covered in her friend’s blood, and gave her friend’s name. It was the EMT’s daughter, and that’s how he knew she was dead. The EMT interview was a surprisingly non-exploitative one in which Cooper simply asks the EMT what he wants us to know about his deceased daughter and doesn’t keep asking him how he feels or whom he blames. I believe the girl covered in blood was likely Miah.