Police officers who failed to stop the attacker in the Uvalde, Texas school shooting appear to have violated their own guidelines by not immediately confronting the shooter. Their decision to wait is now being almost universally described as a mistake, and potentially a mistake that cost lives. Texas protocols developed after the 1999 Columbine shooting are specifically meant to eliminate the kind of costly delay that occurred in Uvalde.
Police hesitated outside
Only months after completing an active shooter training course, local law enforcement waited for an hour in a confused state around Robb Elementary School in Uvalde with an active shooter inside.
No one was willing to take the initiative, and the one immediate decision that was made only confirmed that officers should effectively wait for someone else to arrive and deal with the situation.
Peter Arredondo, the police chief who made that decision, believed that the situation had become a barricade crisis rather than an active shooter event.
Arredondo decided that the best course of action would be to wait for backup before storming the school. Officers from other departments and federal agents who arrived on the scene were also told that they needed to wait.
Confusion regarding the chain of command and the status of the shooter continued to delay any response, even though children were calling for help throughout the ordeal.
The general inability to act was never truly resolved; the shooter was reportedly only killed after an off-duty Border Patrol agent arrived and took the initiative.
Guidelines demand immediate action
Arredondo’s brother feels that he is being unfairly used as a scapegoat for the failure. As the man in charge of the situation the failure was his responsibility, but Arredondo was not the only one who failed.
The first officers on the scene had been trained in accordance with Texas guidelines that stressed the importance of intervening immediately without waiting for backup or orders.
Those protocols say that an officer’s first priority is to confront and neutralize the shooter, this priority should override all other concerns until the shooting is stopped.
Police officers responding to an active shooter situation are expected to put themselves in harm’s way immediately and risk sacrificing their own lives to save others.
This would be asking quite a lot of anyone else, but as the guidelines say “A first responder unwilling to place the lives of the innocent above their own safety should consider another career field.”
Law enforcement officers who waited outside while the shooter remained active should have all been familiar with what was expected of them, and there may be serious consequences for those who failed to act.
