Police response to Uvalde school shooting was ‘abject failure,’ Texas public safety director testifies
The police response to the school shooting in Texas that killed 19 students and two teachers was an “abject failure,” the state’s public safety director testified Tuesday, saying cops waited for a key to a classroom he believes wasn’t even locked.
Col. Steve McCraw said during a state Senate hearing in Austin that enough officers responded to Robb Elementary School in Uvalde on May 24 to stop the gunman in three minutes.
His testimony came a day after reports said that cops with rifles and at least one ballistic shield waited 58 minutes to enter the classroom where 18-year-old shooter Salvador Ramos had opened fire.
“Obviously, not enough training was done in this situation, plain and simple,” McCraw said Tuesday during testimony that lasted nearly five hours. “Because terrible decisions were made by the on-site commander.”
McCraw said the classroom door couldn’t be locked from the inside, asking, “How about trying the door and seeing if it’s locked?”
“I have great reasons to believe [the door] was never secured,” he said.
Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steve McCraw uses maps and graphics to present a timeline of the school shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, during a hearing Tuesday in Austin. (Sara Diggins/)
The testimony was the latest criticism of Uvalde school district police chief Pete Arredondo, whom McCraw said prioritized his officers’ safety over that of the kids.
“The only thing stopping a hallway of dedicated officers from entering Room 111 and 112 was the on-scene commander who decided to place the lives of officers before the lives of children,” he said.
“There is compelling evidence the law enforcement response to the attack at Robb Elementary was an abject failure and antithetical to everything we’ve learned over the last two decades since the Columbine massacre,” McCraw said, referring to the 1999 school shooting in Colorado.
McCraw said issues that day included police referring to inaccurate diagrams of the school, and that police and sheriff’s radios didn’t work inside the building. He said radios used by Border Patrol worked, but had some issues as well.
Arredondo told the Texas Tribune earlier this month that he entered the school without police or campus radios, believing they would slow him and prevent him from having his hands free.
“It has been reported that he didn’t have a radio with him,” McCraw said Tuesday. “That’s true. He did not.”
Uvalde classroom door wasn’t locked, Texas chief of public safety says
Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steve McCraw shows how an interior door in Robb Elementary School during the hearing at the Texas State Capito on Tuesday. (Sara Diggins/)
McCraw also contended that an exterior door where the gunman is believed to have entered was closed by a teacher and couldn’t be locked from the inside. The comment came in response to a claim by state police that the teacher propped the door open.
“There’s no way for her to know the door is locked,” McCraw said. “He walked straight through.”
An officer informed others about eight minutes after the gunman arrived of a crowbar that could break down a door, McCraw said during his testimony, adding that a ballistic shield was brought into the building 19 minutes after the shooter entered.
McCraw said the officers didn’t need to wait for the ballistic shield to arrive for them to enter the classroom.
“You don’t wait for a SWAT team,” McCraw testified. “You have one officer, that’s enough.”
The first images showing armed police waiting in a corridor during last month's school shooting in Uvalde, Texas have emerged.
The public safety director asserted that the responding officers’ failures “set our profession back a decade,” and called for authorities to receive more training.
“I want every trooper to know how to breach and have the tools to do it,” McCraw said.
According to McCraw, investigators so far haven’t been able to conduct another interview with Arredondo, who claims he didn’t believe he was in charge during the police response that day. McCraw previously described Arredondo waiting 70 minutes to charge the classroom as “the wrong decision.”
Texas Education Agency commissioner Mike Morath also testified Tuesday, saying that Ramos had been “chronically absent” from school since sixth grade and that he only passed a single class last year.
Also testifying was Texas Commission on Law Enforcement deputy chief Cullen Grissom, who noted that the shooting investigation is ongoing.
“We don’t yet know fully whether the failures in Uvalde were from [law enforcement] training or from the application of the training, so we’re certainly prepared to look into that,” Grissom said.
The first images showing armed police waiting in a corridor during last month's school shooting in Uvalde, Texas have emerged.
Grissom was later asked if he believed all officers should undergo active shooter training.
“All officers, if they have gone through their basic peace-officer-licensure course in the last 10 years, have active shooter training,” Grissom replied. “It is part of the basic training that officers go through. There is no recurring requirement for it.”
Tuesday’s testimonies followed a monthly school board meeting Monday night in which Uvalde residents, including parents of victims, called for Arredondo’s resignation.
“We all know that [the police] messed up, we all know that this wasn’t handled right,” Ryan Ramirez, whose daughter Alithia was killed in the shooting, said at the meeting, according to CNN. “Y’all can do whatever you want to try and make us happy, it’s not going to work. Y’all know what we want, accountability.”
A campaign sign for Pete Arredondo, the chief of police for the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District, in Uvalde, Texas May 30, 2022. (Jae C. Hong/)
Images published by Austin news station KVUE and the Austin American-Statesman on Monday gave the first look at the officers with rifles and a shield inside a hallway in the elementary school on the morning of the shooting.
The incident was the deadliest school shooting in Texas history, and one of the deadliest ever in the United States.
With News Wire Services
