UVALDE, Texas — During a state Senate hearing Tuesday, the Texas public safety chief testified that law enforcement authorities had enough officers on the scene of the Uvalde school shooting to stop the gunman minutes after he entered the building while also calling the police response an “abject failure.”
Police officers with rifles stood and waited in a hallway for over an hour before going into the classroom, killing the gunman and putting an end to the May 24 attack that left 19 children and two teachers dead, according to Col. Steve McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety.
The public safety chief presented a timeline that provided new and more specific details as to what happened while the shooter and officers were inside the school.
Officers were ready within 3 minutes
The public safety chief presented a timeline that said three officers with two rifles entered the building less than three minutes after the gunman, an 18-year-old with a semi-automatic rifle. Several more officers entered minutes after that.
McCraw said in the three minutes from when the shooter went inside the people to officers first arriving, the shooter fired 100 rounds. The first was 32 seconds after he stepped inside.
The decision by police to hold back went against much of what law enforcement has learned in the past two decades since the Columbine High School shooting in Colorado that left 13 dead in 1999, McCraw said.
As long as one officer was on the scene, officers are trained to "immediately" engage the shooter to stop the violent act, according to McCraw.
“You don’t wait for a SWAT team. You have one officer, that’s enough,” he said. "That's preached, practiced and required in the state of Texas. It just wasn't implemented."
As for the amount of time that elapsed before officers entered the classroom, McCraw said: “In an active shooter environment, that’s intolerable.”
“This set our profession back a decade. That’s what it did,” he said of the police response in Uvalde.
“Obviously, not enough training was done in this situation, plain and simple. Because terrible decisions were made by the on-site commander,” McCraw said. He said investigators have been unable to “re-interview” School District Police Chief Pete Arredondo.
Even though McCraw said law enforcement had the tools to kill the shooter as soon as they arrived, he said he would push for ballistic shields and a 'go bag' in every DPS patrol unit.
Officers never needed a key
McCraw said officers never needed a key and the classroom door was likely unlocked.
Robb Elementary School's classroom doors can't be locked from the inside, according to McCraw. So once the shooter was inside the classroom, there's no way he could have locked the door. From the outside, you can use a key to put the door into the "locked" or "unlocked" position.
McCraw said the officers never checked the door to see if it was locked.
A locksmith did inspect the lock and the strike plate from the classroom door. The lock was functional, but the strike plate was not. In this situation, whether the door was in the locked or unlocked position, it would have still been insecure and could have been opened.
"The lock was working as it was designed, but if the screw doesn't get into the strike plate, it may be locked, but it's not secure," McCraw said. "You can just open it."
McCraw also said the door to the school was unlocked and the gunman "walked straight through it."
At one point, McCraw showed a picture of the classroom door and also had a physical door in the room to show how it can and can't be locked.
Also, eight minutes after the shooter entered, an officer reported that police had a “Halligan” crowbar that they could use to break down the classroom door.
McCraw said if the doors had locked and officers had the extra three minutes it took them to arrive, they would've been able to engage the shooter before he entered classrooms.
"It’s not just one lifetime, it’s many lifetimes," he said.
Officers equipped to enter classroom
Officers had the equipment they needed to enter the classroom, according to McCraw. Even in the beginning of the situation when the officers with body armor only had pistols, he said they are trained to engage the shooter.
So according to McCraw, waiting for rifles, shields, or support from a SWAT team is not how officers are trained to act in these types of active shooter situations.
"As a commissioned officer, you don't need a rifle," McCraw said. "You have a gun. There's a reason you have one. you have body armor. It's going to be risky. Officers are likely to get hurt and some may die. But it's less likely that they would than children without the armor, without the weapons and without the training."
The first shield arrived less than 20 minutes after the shooter entered.
McCraw said the only thing keeping the officers from entering the classroom with the shooter was the "on-scene commander" who wasn't allowing officers to go in.
"There was always something that delayed it," McCraw said.
McCraw said the shooter began purchasing firearm accessories long before he turned 18, making six online purchases before the two rifles he bought on his birthday. It was unclear how the gunman could afford the weapons and McCraw said Tuesday he had a bank account he shared with his grandmother. While some people interviewed expressed concern about the shooter before the attack, McCraw said there were never any school district reports.
Lawmaker Reaction
The first day of the hearing was scheduled to focus on police training, social media and school safety, and many of the speeches from the 11 senators on the panel focused on those topics.
“We have to be sure that over five million kids in our public schools are safe," Sen. Brandon Creighton (R - Beaumont) said.
"I hope that with the witnesses that we have today we can get close to the bottom of the facts," Sen. Paul Bettencourt (R - Houston) said. "Texans deserve the facts."
Sen. Royce West (D - Dallas) was one of only a couple to bring up a need for gun reform.
“Without having a discussion of those rights and limits associated therewith, this will be an incomplete discussion," he said.
When West asked McCraw if there should be limits on gun ownership, McCraw said that was a decision for policy makers.
"Certain people shouldn’t have one, and certainly this is not someone who should have one," McCraw said.
“We have to take action," Sen. Judith Zaffirini (D - Laredo) said. "Thoughts and prayers are wonderful but they’re not enough. Actions speak louder than words.”