The director of Texas ‘public safety department on Tuesday condemned law enforcement officials’ response to last month’s massacre in Uwalde as an “absolute failure” and sharply criticized the decisions of Uwalde’s school police chief, Pedro “Pete” Perede Aredondo.
“There is compelling evidence that law enforcement response to the Robbery attack was a terrible failure and contradicts everything we have learned in the last two decades since the Columbine massacre,” Col. Stephen McCrow told a Texas Senate committee. Protect all Texans.
“Three minutes after the subject entered the West Building, there were enough armed officers wearing bulletproof vests to isolate, disperse and neutralize the site,” he continued. “The only thing stopping the corridor of dedicated officers from entering rooms 111 and 112 was the commander of the scene, who decided to put the lives of the officers before the lives of the children.
The stunning comments came more than a month after an armed man with an AR-15-style assault rifle entered two adjacent classrooms at 11:33 a.m. and killed 19 children and two teachers. The gunman remained in the classrooms – even when the children inside called 911 and begged for help – until law enforcement finally broke into the rooms and killed him at 12:50 p.m., according to a Public Safety schedule.
What happened during those 77 minutes remained unclear as Texas officials offered conflicting accounts of the response.
McCrow’s comments on Tuesday marked the first time an official had provided substantial information about the shooting in weeks. He said the waiting decisions contradicted the active shooter protocol to stop the suspect as soon as possible.
“The officers had guns, the children didn’t. The officers had bulletproof vests, the children didn’t,” McCrow said. “The post-Colombian doctrine is clear, convincing and unambiguous. Stop the killings. Stop the dying.”
A schedule from the public safety department shows that 11 officers arrived at the school, several with rifles, within three minutes of the shooter entering the classrooms. The suspect then shot and wounded several officers who approached the classrooms, and they retreated into a corridor outside the rooms. The group of employees then remained in the corridor and did not approach the door for another 73 minutes.
“While they were waiting, the commander of the scene was waiting for a radio and rifles,” McCrow said, referring to Aredondo. “Then he waited for shields. Then he waited for SWAT. Finally he waited for a key that was never needed.”
Earlier, Aredondo told the Tribune that he did not consider himself the commander of the incident that day. However, at least one of the officers was marked at 11:50 a.m., believing that Aredondo led the law enforcement response inside the school by telling the others, “The boss is responsible,” according to the Public Safety Department schedule.
EMPLOYEES DIDN’T TRY TO BREAK DOORS FOR MORE HOURS
Late Monday, reports from CNN, the Texas Tribune and the Austin American-Statesman reviewed some of the DPS timeline and revealed additional shortcomings in police response.
Authorities initially said the suspect barricaded himself behind locked doors, which prevented police officers from stopping him 77 minutes later.
However, preliminary evidence shows that none of the officers tried to open any of the doors until they killed the shooter, according to a law enforcement source close to the Tribune and American-Statesman investigations and reports.
Aredondo, who was identified by other officials as the incident’s commander, told the Texas Tribune earlier that officers found the classroom doors locked and reinforced with a steel pin, preventing any potential reaction or rescue. Efforts have been made to find a key to unlock the door, he said.
The officers were not without weapons and equipment, according to McCrow. However, at 11:40 a.m., Aredondo called the Uwalde police station telegram shortly after the attacker shot at officers and asked for additional help and radio, according to a DPS transcript.
“Right now we don’t have enough firepower, it’s all a pistol, and it has an AR-15,” Aredondo said, according to a DPS transcript.
In the first minutes of their response, an officer also said that Haligan, a fire extinguisher used for forced entry, according to the timeline, was at the scene. However, the tool was not brought into the school until an hour after the arrival of the employees and was never used, the schedule says.
An Austin American-Statesman security image shows at least three officers in the corridor – two with rifles and one who appears to have a tactical shield – at 11:52 a.m., 19 minutes after the gunman entered the school.
In all, officers had access to four ballistic shields inside the school, the fourth of which arrived 30 minutes before officers stormed the classrooms, the Tribune reported, citing a transcript from law enforcement.
An officer, according to the American statesman, said they must act.
“If there are children there, we have to go in there,” the policeman said. Another officer replied, “Whoever is in charge will determine this.”
Towards the end of the confrontation, according to a law enforcement source, Aredondo wondered aloud whether officials would consider “letting him out the window.” A transcript from the body’s camera showed Aredondo showing other officers at 12:46 that if the SWAT response team was ready, they had to break through the door, an action that came four minutes later.
ACCOUNTABILITY COMES AFTER LACK OF TRANSPARENCY
The report – in three different news outlets and citing unnamed sources – highlights the lack of transparency of Texas officials to the public in such a critical incident. Texas Sen. Roland Gutierrez, a Democrat, told CNN on Monday that the report highlighted his questions about why police had not tried to break down earlier.
“We see that there are (there are) officers with the right ammunition, the right equipment to break into this room,” he said. “I just don’t understand why this didn’t happen, why they didn’t break into the room.
“These answers must be received. They should not be spread in the media in this way. We need to get law enforcement to tell us exactly what went wrong. And the fact that we are not receiving this information is just a parody in and of itself. “
CNN contacted both Aredondo’s lawyer, George Hyde, and the Uwalde Police Department about the reports.
Aredondo, who did not speak publicly after the incident, will testify behind closed doors in front of a Texas House commission that is investigating Tuesday’s shooting, according to the commission.
The new report further angered grieving families, whose questions have not yet been answered.
“I feel angry,” said Jose Flores Sr., whose 10-year-old son Jose Flores Jr. is among the children killed. “They left our children, they left them scared and, who knows, crying. They abandoned them,” Flores told CNN’s New Day when asked about the latest revelations.
“They have to be trained professionals,” Flores told police. “I don’t understand the reason why they stayed so long to come back … To stand back for an hour, leaving them inside with this shooter, is not right. It’s a cowardly, cowardly, cowardly thing. “
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