Blunder after blunder at school drama in Uvalde: classroom door may not have been locked, but police were waiting for key | Abroad

Since the shooting, the police department in Uvalde has been heavily criticized for possibly stopping the gunman earlier and saving lives. Police arrived three minutes after the shooter entered the school.

The officers were out of men and only carried handguns. The gunman, who had locked himself in a classroom, had an automatic rifle. The police present asked for reinforcements, who appeared fifteen minutes later. The officers also had rifles and a ballistic shield, which offers protection against bullets.

Texas chief of public safety Steve McCraw calls the police intervention “a major failure that goes against decades of training.” He testified at a Senate hearing that the classroom door could not be locked from the inside, but there is no evidence that officers attempted to open the door while the gunman was inside. Instead, the police waited for a key. So the officers wasted valuable time looking for a key to a classroom that turned out to be unnecessary.

In such a situation, when in doubt, a police officer with a gun is enough to go in and stop the shooter – even if it poses a risk to the officer. “Once you get there, it’s your duty to intervene immediately and stop the shooter,” McCraw said.

“The police officers outside the classroom had weapons, protective equipment and training, the children had nothing,” it said. In the end they had to wait one hour, 14 minutes and 8 seconds for help. McCraw spoke of “a miserable failure”.

“It is simply clear that there has not been enough training. Terrible decisions were made by the commander on the ground,” McCraw said. He refers to Pete Arredondo, the police chief who led the intervention at the school. Arredondo has previously stated that he did not consider himself the chief on the spot. “When you give orders and you take action, you are the chief on the spot,” McCraw says.

McCraw testifies at the hearing that the police chief chose the lives of the officers over the lives of the children. The man gives an impressive statement in the Senate that illustrates the missed opportunities, communication errors and other blunders of the police. The blunder book is getting bigger and bigger.

– Arredondo didn’t have a radio with him. He also focused on the totally unnecessary search for the key to the classroom, as ‘The Times’ previously revealed.

– The police radios did not work in the school. Only the radios of the Border Patrol agents on site worked, but even that didn’t work flawlessly.

– The police used wrong schedules from the school to coordinate the intervention.

– A police officer would also have had the chance to take out the shooter outside the school. But he didn’t dare shoot for fear of hitting children playing in the background. It is not clear where those children were.

The head of public security believes that officers should be better trained. In addition, according to him, there should be a in every patrol car go bag – including a shield and equipment to break open a door – lie.