Just when it seemed like the horrific events at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, couldn’t get any worse, accounts available as of this writing paint an abominable portrait of the local police force, paralyzed with indecision and hesitation as elementary-school students bled to death.
Throughout the week, the official accounts of what happened on that fateful day kept changing — first the shooter was confronted outside the school, then he wasn’t. First the shooter quickly entered the school, then he lingered outside for about ten minutes. First the shooter was pinned down in one classroom by law enforcement, then he barricaded himself inside. There is always confusion in the aftermath of a horrific event like a mass shooting, but members of the public were correct to ask whether they were getting the whole story.
On Friday morning, Steven C. McCraw, the director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, attempted to clarify and lay out a more detailed timeline — and offered a version of events that will leave every parent in the country filled with disbelief and rage.
McCraw’s updated timeline stated that the gunman arrived at the school at 11:28 a.m. and began firing rounds into school windows. Around this time, the first of many errors on the part of local police occurred; a school district police officer who was responding to the call inadvertently “drove right by the suspect” and was pursuing another figure, a teacher, who the officer thought was the shooter.
McCraw said the shooter entered the school through a door that was left propped open by a teacher — a point worth keeping in mind as the nation debates whether schools should have only one entry door and more fire doors that can be opened only from the inside.
McCraw said that once the shooter was inside, he fired more than 100 rounds over the next hour and 15 minutes. While the shooter rampaged, those inside the school called 911 more than half a dozen times, begging for help.
Perhaps the most egregious detail from McCraw’s account is that as many as 19 police officers were gathered in the school’s hallway or nearby shortly after noon, but, McCraw said, they made “no effort” to breach the classroom door — leading to this mind-boggling exchange:
CNN correspondent Shimon Prokupecz: What efforts were the officers making to try and break through either that door, or another door to get inside that classroom?
McCraw: None at that time. The on-scene commander at the time believed that it had transitioned from an active shooter to a barricaded subject. . . . The on-scene commander considered a barricaded subject, and that there were no more children at risk. Obviously, based upon the information that we have, there were children in that classroom that were at risk, and it was in fact still an active-shooter situation, not a barricaded subject.
Keep in mind, the “barricade” was a locked door.
This could help explain why the death toll in this massacre was so high — not only was this a deranged gunman in a school with so many vulnerable targets, but the shooter had a stunningly long window of opportunity to kill more children while police waited outside. The police assumption that the shooter had no other potential victims is inexplicable. Anyone with a serious bleeding wound from being shot was likely to die without immediate medical attention.
These revelations undermine two arguments in the debate around gun control. Some gun-control advocates contend only the police should carry firearms — but a hesitant, risk-averse police force that moves at a glacial pace while children are bleeding to death provides little protection for anyone. Scot Peterson, the cop assigned to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., who did not engage the school shooter, no longer appears to be a one-off.
Second Amendment supporters often counter, “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” Except the hallway of Robb Elementary School had no shortage of good guys with guns, and yet they did not stop the massacre until it was far too late.
Perhaps that slogan should be revised, “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun and the willingness to act.” No Uvalde cops acted when it could have made a difference.