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.
I personally believe that this is a big pool of BullCrap
The Police chief was A 911 operator for the department before he was Chief.
This does not pass the smell test not even from 1000 miles away like I am
He certainly did know that people had been shot and could be bleeding out while his men stayed out of the rooms.
WTF?
You don't deploy a "negotiator" to an active shooter situation!
Hiding behind Democrat “lawmakers”?
Sounds like he should have been better prepared. Police, just like the military, need to preplan for various foreseeable eventualities. THIS WAS HIS FAILURE.
Those 🍩🍩🍩🍩🍩🍩 donuts aren’t going to get eaten if they actually had to go after the perp.
You do if you want gun control...
The only “gun control” needed is a sniper with a 50cal.
The only “point of negotiation” is “drop it or die.”
Those kids aren’t suppose to have phones in school.
I hope this goes on their permanent records.
Little rule-breakers.
The chief didn’t hear anything about the 911 calls because his head was way too far up his butt 🤪
Yet another change in this whole concocted story.
Chief Pete didn’t know about his officers going all Rambo on the distraught parents who were screaming that their kids were inside?
A new story totally unbelievable.
You know.
I’m an old fart.
My life be damned. If I had been there, knowing there were kids the age of my grand kids being slaughtered in there,I would have taken my meager carry piece and gone into that school.
These folks are just looking for excuses...
If he was standing on a bridge threatening to jump, then a negotiator is needed.
Not when he is killing people.
Great dark humor!
This Arredondo guy was not just some cop on the scene. He was supposedly the incident commander. It really stretches the imagination to believe that the incident commander would not be told of those 911 calls.
The Texas Rangers should have the recordings of all radio traffic of all agencies on location, their dispatchers and supervisors in contact. Included text messages of department and personal phones.
“There is blame enough to go around,” Gutierrez said during the news conference. “There was human error and there was system error.”
Much more negligent than the cops that knelt on George Floyde!
Would like to see them get as much media attention!
They are cowards.
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