Col. Stephen McCraw, the director of Texas Department of Public Safety admitted in Friday's press briefing that law enforcement wrongly chose not to breach the classroom door immediately.
"In the benefit of hindsight, where I'm sitting now, of course it was not the right decision. it was the wrong decision, period," said McCraw. "There's no excuse for that, again, -- I'm just telling you from what we know, we believe there should have been an entry, as soon as you can. When there's an active shooter, the rules change. It's no longer, okay, it's no longer a barricade, we don't have time."
"And by the way, Texas embraces active shooter training, active shooter certification, and that doctrine requires officers, we don't care what agency you're from, you don't have to have a leader on the scene. Every officer lines up, stacks up, goes and finds where those rounds are being fired and keep shooting until the subject is dead, period," he added.
Republican senators and congressmen like Ted Cruz and Andrew McCarthy continually claim that having more resources for law enforcement to be involved in all schools is one of their big solutions to these mass murders.
America saw firsthand that it is a fairy tale.
What transpired at Robb Elementary School disproves that notion entirely.
Schools cannot be set up at as war zones in every county, city, and state throughout the country.
There is always a human element that comes into play and humans failed the children of Uvalde. Indecision and mistakes can happen which leaves children and adults dead in the wake of the use of a weapon of war.
If the shooter had used a handgun instead of a AR-15, he most likely could have been stopped much easier by law enforcement, (maybe without entering the school) with far less loss of life.
But Republicans cling to their semiautomatic weapons with high-powered magazines as if they are life-saving pacemakers attached to their shriveled and cold hearts.
It's a total disgrace.
CNBC covered more of the remarkably depressing conference:
- The back door of the school the gunman entered had been propped open by a teacher earlier in the day.
- A school resource officer was not already stationed at the school. When he arrived at the scene, he inadvertently passed the shooter, who was crouched down next to a car.
- One desperate 911 call came from a little girl in a classroom the gunman stormed. “Please send the police now,” she said.
- One student in room 112 called 911 at 12:03 p.m. She called back several times. At 12:16, she said there were “eight to nine students alive,” McCraw said.
- At least two children called 911 pleading for help. They survived the shooting, McCraw said.
- McCraw said the on-scene commander believed “this was a barricaded subject situation” and did not think there were “more children at risk.”
- Fifty-eight magazines were recovered. Three were on the shooter’s body, two were found in classroom 112 and six in classroom 111. Five others were found on the ground, and one was in the rifle the gunman wielded.
- The shooter asked his sister to buy him a gun in September 2021 and she refused.
- The gunman made several alarming posts on Instagram. In a group chat of four people in March, he made comments about buying a gun.
- On March 14, he posted on Instagram “10 more days.” When a user asked if he was going to shoot up a school, he said: “No. Stop asking dumb questions and you’ll see.”