[Part I can be found here. You can find my discussion of the ALERTT report on Uvalde here.]
If you’ve been following my posts on Uvalde, you know I’ve been working on a long post (or several posts) about the testimony by McCraw and others before the Texas Senate. Now, in the middle of that, another report has been issued, this one by the Texas House itself and this time a lengthy one, almost 80 pages. I read it last night in its entirety and plan to incorporate it into my posts, which obviously takes even more time.
But this post will serve as a summary introduction, plus a focus on one specific. It’s a cliche to say “this could be a book,” but there really is so much to say that it could be a book. I’m not planning to write that book, although someone probably will, and I hope that person does the subject justice. There also will be more detailed reports forthcoming from various agencies, because I don’t think the investigation has been completed.
Nevertheless, I’m far more impressed with the newest report than with anything else that’s come out so far. It manages to clarify a few things (at least somewhat) that were murky before, and adds some new information. In addition – and in my experience this is quite unusual – it’s written in manner that’s relatively easy to understand and I see in it a real attempt to get the story of a complex situation right.
I’ve written two previous posts on McCraw’s presentation to the Texas Senate (see this as well as this). McCraw is the Texas Department of Public Safety head, and although his talk only dealt with evidence from videos and audios of that day, it led to a hypothesis on my part about what was happening that day that caused the police to consider the situation that of a barricaded shooter rather than an active shooter – something that was key to even beginning to figure out why they acted as they did (or rather, failed to act). And now this newly-released legislative report offers even more evidence that would tend to confirm my hypothesis.
You might wonder why I’m still writing so much about Uvalde. After all, the dogs bark and the caravan has moved on, and is there really much more to say? The reason I’m doing this is that I find it not only an intensely tragic event, but also a fascinating (although horrifying) and instructive demonstration of how things can go horribly wrong, especially in the way that information is conveyed, received, and interpreted, and is then acted on or not acted on. That is sometimes the case both during a crisis and then later on when people read about it and analyze and describe it.
When we read about an event such as Uvalde, we become – at least in our own minds, at least many of us – the omniscient observer. We get a whole bunch of information from different sources – some of it incorrect – and most of us come to quick and sometimes implacable and immovable conclusions about what went on. And yet we are far from omniscient, although more reliable information becomes available over time. But as we know, people have trouble changing their minds, and when intense emotions are involved such as with Uvalde, it’s even more difficult to be objective. This is only human.
One paradoxical thing is that, although first responders are present at the scene, and one would think that means they know more than we ever do, in fact that often know less if the scene is large and chaotic with a lot going on and many people involved, as well as things unknown and unseen that are only revealed later.
As people responding to a crisis get word of an event or a sequence of events and rush to deal with it, they must create a preliminary story in their minds of what’s happening there. We all need such perceptions in order to properly evaluate what’s happening and to plan our responses. But we can’t get locked into these early notions; we have to take in new information – from what we observe at the scene, from what others are telling us (on phone or radio or in person) – and in real time, under pressure, revise our story of what’s happening and what’s an appropriate and effective response.
Whatever else was going on to cause the failures in Uvalde, poor communication and coordination was at least one of the things that hampered the response of the Uvalde police that day. there is virtually no question about that. Also, poor communication later – in the press and by spokespeople – has sometimes made it difficult for the rest of us to get a clear picture of the situation.
With Uvalde there’s a great temptation to give a simple explanation such as “the police were gutless cowards.” Not only would that explain a lot, but it would mean there is a relatively easy solution: get braver people in there. I just don’t think it happens to fit the facts as presented, although it’s certainly possible it was true for some of the people there. From our standpoint, the initial conclusion by Arredondo and other officers that it was not an active shooter situation requiring extremely aggressive action seems seems absurd. How could they be in a school, with a shooter holed up in a classroom and shooting a few times over the course of an hour – even if they perceived during that period that those shots were only being fired towards the hallway where police were – how on earth could this ever not be an active shooter situation? It boggles the mind and leads to the almost inescapable charge of cowardice, because that seems the only coherent explanation. But I see other possible explanations to which some of the evidence points.
So that’s my introduction to this long-promised series of posts. One specific which I plan to elaborate on in some detail in a later post is my current conviction that the root cause of the officers’ initial conviction that this was a barricaded shooter situation was a combination of the receipt of very incomplete and in some cases incorrect information (compared to what we’ve learned since), the timing of their arrival, the aforementioned terrible coordination and communication, and probably a stressed mindset that had trouble believing the worst. That last is my speculation, but I think it’s valid psychologically, although extremely unfortunate.
As I’ve read and thought about Uvalde in the nearly two months since it happened, one image that keeps coming to mind, strangely enough, is a scene from the novel Catch-22. If you’ve ever read it you probably remember it, because it’s the climax of a theme that builds throughout the book: the death of Snowden. Without revealing too much (in case some haven’t read it and intend to do so some day), I’ll say that the reason I make the analogy is that in that scene the main character Yossarian is engaged in solving what he thinks is the problem (a problem that’s already bad enough), while he neglects to do a full examination of what’s actually going on with Snowden and therefore entirely misses the far more horrific reality.
Now for one detail in the new report that I think will give you an idea of how the first stories we hear, and the ones on which we base conclusions, can be very wrong. You may recall that in the ALERTT reported, as well as newspapers, it was said that one Uvalde police officer had a chance to take the shooter out even before he entered the building, when he was in the schoolyard. It would involve a literal longshot by the officer, and the story is that he asked permission but by the time it was given it was too late and the shooter had entered the school itself. This is a heartbreaking and infuriating prospect.
Please ponder what the new report says about that incident:
On arrival at the school [early on], SSgt. Canales saw cars stopped and a man shooting a gun. He grabbed his rifle, put a magazine into it, and grabbed an extra magazine. He saw people at the funeral home pointing in the direction of the school, and he heard somebody say the attacker was in or near the building. SSgt. Canales entered an open gate where he met Lt. Javier Martinez, also of the Uvalde Police. Lt. Martinez also heard the report of a vehicle accident with shots fired. He drove toward the intersection of Geraldine and South Grove, and as he arrived, he saw a man on the side of the road pointing. He jumped out of his car, popped the trunk to get his vest…
One of those officers testified to the Committee that, based on the sound of echoes, he believed the shooter had fired in their direction. That officer saw children dressed in bright colors in the playground, all running away. Then, at a distance exceeding 100 yards, he saw a person dressed in black, also running away. Thinking that the person dressed in black was the attacker, he raised his rifle and asked Sgt. Coronado for permission to shoot…
So far that conforms with what we’ve read previously, right? Except that this was the case:
Sgt. Coronado testified he heard the request, and he hesitated. He knew there were children present. He considered the risk of shooting a child, and he quickly recalled his training that officers are responsible for every round that goes downrange. According to the officer who made the request, there was no opportunity for Sgt. Coronado to respond before they heard on the radio that the attacker was running toward the school. The officers testified to the Committee that it turned out that the person they had seen dressed in black was not the attacker, but instead it was Robb Elementary Coach Abraham Gonzales.
There is quite a bit more detail in the report about the coach in the schoolyard. But it turns out to have almost certainly been a good thing that the officer never fired. It’s a cautionary tale about initial reports as well as how the media shapes our views, and I think it also highlights the multiple dilemmas first responders face. Those who felt that it was clear this officer should have fired from far away into a group of children and teachers/coaches turn out to have been wrong – in this case. Sometimes they will have been right. But it’s the responders who have to make the split-second decisions with the stakes being lives. Often they make the right decisions, and sometimes they make very wrong ones. At Uvalde, there were some right ones and some very very wrong ones.
