Posted on 06/02/2022 2:24:18 PM PDT by TigerClaws
A Texas lawmaker said Thursday that the school district police chief in charge of the scene at the Uvalde school shooting last week was not informed of the multiple 911 calls made inside the building while the shooter was still inside.
State Sen. Roland Gutierrez, D-San Antonio, said during a press conference the Uvalde school district’s police chief, Pete Arredondo, wasn’t made aware of 911 calls that students inside Robb Elementary School made around 30 minutes after the gunman entered, including a student begging for police to take action. The shooter killed 19 students and two teachers during his siege on the school.
Instead, Gutierrez said 911 calls were relayed to the Uvalde Police Department, which operates separately from the school district's police, and Arredondo — who was leading law enforcement’s response on the scene — was left in the dark.
Gutierrez described the lack of coordination as a “system failure.”
Arredondo has been widely criticized by state leaders and safety experts in the days after the shooting for his handling of the situation. It took more than an hour to breach the classroom where the gunman was holed up. The delay was contrary to the way law enforcement is trained based on best practices that were widely adopted after the 1999 school shooting in Columbine, Colorado, which recommend engaging with active shooters as soon as possible.
Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steven McCraw condemned Arredondo’s response, saying he treated the situation as a “barricaded suspect” rather than an active shooter situation. McCraw said Arredondo believed no children were in danger, presumably because he did not know any survived inside the classroom.
In modern active shooter tactics, police are trained to immediately take down gunmen instead of waiting for backup or additional resources in order to save as many lives as possible. Instead, law enforcement at the scene of the Uvalde shooting requested “specialty equipment” and body armor and organized a tactical team to reenter the school, taking over an hour to take out the gunman despite having arrived at the scene within minutes after the shooter entered the school.
A key question in the days after the shooting has been whether Arredondo was informed of the multiple calls made by students inside the classrooms. Gutierrez on Thursday claimed he was not.
“There is blame enough to go around,” Gutierrez said during the news conference. “There was human error and there was system error.”
Other recent revelations have raised the question of what law enforcement knew about the situation inside the school while officers were stationed outside. The New York Times reported that Ruben Ruiz, a school district police officer serving under Arredondo, had a heartbreaking conversation with his wife, Eva Mireles, a teacher who was inside Robb Elementary, just a few minutes before she was killed.
And Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin said while these events were unfolding, a would-be negotiator sat across the street in a nearby funeral home frantically trying to reach the gunman via cellphone, but they were never able to talk to him, according to The Washington Post.
Ping.
“It really stretches the imagination to believe that the incident commander would not be told of those 911 calls.”
I have experienced several times when dispatchers filtered out really important information. It’s a wonder we haven’t had anything bad come of it, yet...
The problem with your top down management system is that everyone waits until the top guy decides what to do. In a confused situation it can take an ice age for all the relevant info to make it to the decision point. This is what top down militaries get their @$$es handed to them by ones that enable competent juniors to make decisions. There should be a team dedicated to these situations that acts on its own without having to wait forever for some cowardly bureaucrat who spends forever worrying whether his decision will impact his career.
He was too busy shoving his thumb up his rectum?
““There was human error and there was system error.””
I realize that 20/20 hindsight is easy, but had the school resource officers been city police/county sheriff deputies, wouldn’t the professionals who actually deal with crime and violent crime be better equipped to deal the situation?
Did the people who were informed attempt to contact Arredondo?
Keystone cops!
Every officer involved in this should be stood in front of a firing squad. See how THEY feel about the plight of those children. Cowardice is a criminal offense in this case.
why are other person now telling Arredono’s story? He needs to be the one to answer for his failure. I have never seen a case with so many inconsistencies and lies. First there was a resource officer and a shootout, then there wasn’t. The door was propped opened, that’s how he got in, then it was the door wasn’t propped open. There are so many stories here that just don’t make any sense. And meantime the guy who is the commander when confronted is dodging and weaving and wouldn’t answer any questions. And the Texas DPS says he is not answering any questions to their investigators either. It’s disgusting.
Another story change. We still don’t know what meds he was on for mental illness or for any trans surgery. Don’t know how he got several thousand dollars worth of vehicle and gear while working at McDonalds. Don’t know if he was arrested or held by government officials. We don’t know about a door being left open or unlocked. Why didn’t police move in? Why were adults there disarmed?
As long as he keeps the drug money flowing to the political class, the elected officials will make sure he keeps his job.
“Absolute, total, utter BS. You go in and get hands-on with the bad guy(s) until it’s ended. Those fools are trying to act like there were options. There’s not - only one course of action. One. “
There is only one course of inAction for a true Coward.
It seems like the only real man in the area was getting a haircut, but unlike Sampson his barber was not female and was also not a Gun Pussy
But but but, you heard them explain their comms are defective. Gonna take somewhere around 13 Mill$ so’s the 911’er can talk to the boss. It’s two blocks away. There was time to send a burrito-fed runner.
Who besides the police chief bore ultimate responsibility for communications?
One would think the chief would be at the scene of the biggest and worst thing that’s ever happened in town. He would have heard the shots and kids screaming.
Each and every one of them need to be run out of town at the very least.
Parents were there in person trying to get in the building to save their children. He didn’t see them?
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