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.
Start placing it!
Sure, and I’m the King of France.
This ‘Brandon’ dude has done far worse than a potato brain could ever do.
I want to know what is going to happen to the parents that were tackled, taxed, pepper sprayed and arrested.
Tazed...
Damn autocorrect
This brings up a good question. Where exactly was he and what was he doing? And even if we believe this latest BS, why wasn’t he on scene or if he wasn’t didn’t he get any real time updates from his officers?
If Cruz said that, he be crucified.
Gutierrez gets a liberal pass. He’s such a grandstander.
There’s video where the radio is coming through to the police of the 911 call.
It was VERY clear there were live kids inside
This excuse was made by a DemonRat, so, of course, it is a lie.
When you fail personally its a system failure. More excuses from the “I have children’s blood on my hands” scumbags, how do they sleep at night? no conscience.
I din no.
I guess my main question is "why does a town with a 2020 Census of 15,127 people have a SEPARATE School District Police Chief in the first place?"
The county where I live has less than 30,000 residents and there is only a city police force and a county police force, period. It would seem to me that the creation of a separate police hierarchy must have had justifications that would include things like more responsive control, better reaction times, on site monitoring and focused management that would offset any increased costs, etc.
If that was the case, then they failed.
My only other question I have is "was this Arredondo actually PHYSICALLY AT the scene during the shootings, if not, why not?"
I agree.
Well, this settles one thing for me - for sure. That Pete is a Democrat. Had to call some Dem State rep/sen buddy to help him divert some of the flak.
They want to blame it on an organizational problem that better communication and response was probably used as an excuse to create the separate LE entities in the first place.
There ya go!
And considering all the bizarre twists and turns surrounding this story, the parents of the kids with cell phones probably will be prosecuted.
But maybe TPTB will have the decency to wait until after the funerals to arrest the parental units.
“Every officer involved in this should be stood in front of a firing squad.”
Ideally, they should do the honorable thing, in which case there should be mass suicides.
The quarterback principle.
He was in charge, therefor it was his system. If the system failed to alert him, it was his failure.
He was too busy shoving his thumb up his rectum?
= = =
Let’s see, my right thumb? No, maybe my left thumb.
What did that training last month say?
Did we change thumb priority due to LGBT???
OK, one shove with right, then one with left and repeat.
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