Uvalde Police Timid, Bungling During School Shooting, New Records Reveal

If you want something done right, do it yourself. That includes protecting family, friends, and neighbors.

Perhaps the greatest rebuttal to calls for confidence in police is the conduct of law enforcement officers at Robb Elementary School shooting in Uvalde, Texas. There, on May 24, 2022, almost 400 cops not only stood around while a lunatic murdered children and teachers, but they prevented parents from stepping in to do what those in uniform wouldn't. Now, new reporting gives greater insight into the depths of the officers' inaction that day, and just how unwise it is to rely on them for protection.

Documented Police Failures

The failures of police officers in Uvalde aren't open to dispute.

"At Robb Elementary, law enforcement responders failed to adhere to their active shooter training, and they failed to prioritize saving the lives of innocent victims over their own safety," concluded a report by the Texas House of Representatives Investigative Committee on the Robb Elementary Shooting.

A U.S. Justice Department review similarly found "failures in leadership, command, and coordination."

The police chief, who was supposed to assume control of the situation under written plans for such events, did not do so, nor did he transfer his responsibilities to anybody else. No real command post was established. For over an hour, 376 law enforcement officers stood around trying to decide what to do as the one shooter in the school rampaged. Finally, a tactical team operating on its own amidst what the Texas report described as "chaos" breached the classroom in which the shooter hid and killed him.

Since then, a media consortium has pressed a lawsuit to gain access to records of that day. Finally released, they offer heartbreaking details about the events in and around Robb Elementary School.

"The records offer the deepest look yet at the previously documented response failures, the lack of cohesion between law-enforcement officers and the trauma inflicted on a community," write Elizabeth Findell and Ginger Adams Otis of The Wall Street Journal. "In one 911 call, between a dispatcher and a child inside the actual classroom, the little girl can be heard counting bodies, shushing other crying children and begging for police—who were just outside the door—to help."

Even as they milled around, police prevented parents from assisting their children. Videos taken that day "show officers stopping parents from rushing into the elementary school where a gunman killed 19 children and two teachers," the San Antonio Express-News reported days after the incident. "The officers at the scene were ready to use tasers on parents and onlookers."

No Duty To Protect Individuals

In May, the city of Uvalde agreed to pay $2 million to the families of victims for its officers' failures.

This summer, former Uvalde school police Chief Pete Arredondo and former officer Adrian Gonzales were indicted on multiple counts of child abandonment and endangerment charges for the roles they played—or refused to play—at Robb Elementary School. That's remarkable: Police officers are almost never held accountable for failing to act. As Richard Dahl noted for FindLaw after the Uvalde fiasco, "criminal charges against police officers who fail to protect the public are extremely rare" because of court decisions holding law enforcement officers to vague, general responsibilities.

"The duty to provide public services is owed to the public at large, and, absent a special relationship between the police and an individual, no specific legal duty exists," the District of Columbia Court of Appeals held in the 1981 case of Warren v. District of Columbia.

The U.S. Supreme Court reinforced the point at the national level, ruling that "serving of public rather than private ends is the normal course of the criminal law" in Castle Rock v. Gonzales.

Standing around letting kids get slaughtered is, perhaps, a step too far even for a criminal justice system generally prepared to absolve law enforcement of any duty beyond cruising in patrol cars. But those indictments don't bring back the dead—and their rarity may not deter future inaction.

Misplaced Confidence

What's remarkable, though, is that despite the massive, well-documented failure of law-enforcement officers at the Robb Elementary School (and elsewhere), confidence in police is actually rising after a dip in recent years, and even as faith in other institutions continues to erode.

"Americans' confidence in the police increased eight percentage points over the past year to 51%, the largest year-over-year change in public perceptions of 17 major U.S. institutions measured in Gallup's annual update," Gallup revealed last month. "The slim majority of U.S. adults who express confidence in the police includes 25% who say they have 'a great deal' and 26% 'quite a lot.'"

Admittedly, 51 percent isn't a lot, but the only other institutions in which majorities reports confidence are small businesses, science, and the military. It represents an increase in confidence in police over the 43 percent recorded last year or 45 percent in 2022—low numbers following the tensions of pandemic restrictions and riots after the killing of George Floyd and others by police.

It's difficult to imagine just what police officers have done to earn such renewed confidence. And the records released by the media consortium reveal that rising trust to be badly misplaced.

"We're having trouble doing a command post because we need the bodies to keep the parents out—they're trying to push in," The Wall Street Journal's Findell and Otis quote from one exchange recorded among officers that day a half-hour into the attack. "We have a large number of parents heading to the northwest corner. A couple of them are armed parents."

Only You Can Be Relied on To Protect You

Read that again. Rather than act to stop a murderer, police officers blocked parents upset and ready to intervene because law enforcement seemed unprepared to stop the ongoing crime. There's a lesson there about the different priorities of government employees collecting paychecks, no matter how well trained and equipped they are, and people who have personal stakes in the circumstances around them.

Shortly after Uvalde, pollsters for Trafalgar Group/Convention of States asked, "what do you believe would best protect you and your family in the event of a mass shooting?" Maybe the shock of events made Americans more realistic than in the recent Gallup survey. Only 25.1 percent of respondents answered, "local police"; 41.8 percent chose "armed citizens."

If you want something done right, do it yourself. That includes protecting family, friends, neighbors, and you.

Comments

[Fist of Etiquette]

It's difficult to imagine just what police officers have done to earn such renewed confidence.

After seeing what the criminals without badges can do to the country, people are choosing to trust the seeming security of the criminals with badges.

[Quicktown Brix]

Considering SWAT teams specialize in busting through the doors of sleeping drug dealers instead of dealing with active shooter and hostage situations, this outcome shouldn't be too surprising.

It's fine if you're afraid to rush in to an active shooter situation (even to save children) or take charge in such case. Just don't take a job that requires that responsibility. There are others that would do that job if you weren't ineptly occupying that position.

[Eric Owens]

Public union communists protected by asset forfeiture funded qualified immunity are anti-human race Adolph Eichmanns.

[DenverJ]

Happy Friday, everybody!

[jimc5499]

"Only You Can Be Relied on To Protect You"
Nice statement. It's a shame that Democrats are actively working to remove your ability to protect you and yours. So tell me again why Reason is carrying water for the Democrats?
The majority of places mentioned in these articles, have a Government run by Democrats, Police Unions who support Democrats and Democrat politicians who are willing to kowtow to the Unions to keep their support. Seems to me that the problem here is Democrats. Prove me wrong.

[MWAocdoc]

No problem! We'll just have to actively prevent the Democrats from removing our ability to protect ourselves. Although there's no guarantee that I would "do it right" there's no possible doubt that I would be more highly motivated in a situation like this. All the recent "uptick" in public confidence in police in public opinion polls means is that public opinion polls are still meaningless and worthless for making public policy.

[Rev Arthur L kuckland (5-30-24 banana republic day)]

I believe the statement "when seconds matter the cops are only minutes away" comes to mind

[ME2R]

The Ferguson effect. You beat an animal/person long enough that it eventually reflects and returns the same level of care. Liberals have increasingly defunded, berated, demonized, executed, and prosecuted law enforcement. And the sheeple cheered!

Liberals demand 100 percent error free conduct in a profession that manages fluid and indiscernible challenges. And with any imperfect result, liberals immediately and automatically fling baseless accusations of “racism,” calls for prosecution, and terrorization of police officer’s families. Law enforcement is damned when they act and now damned when they don’t.

And value other lives more than concern for their own safety? The sheeple demanded no “toxic masculinity” and flooded the force with DEI hires - how’s that working out for em?

[MWAocdoc]

No, law enforcement officers are damned when they act criminally and damned when they fail to act but should have. You "Back the Blue" extremists are getting tiresome.

[Liberty_Belle]

Nobody is demanding 100 error free service, what they are demanding is accountability for malfeasance and/or incompetence. SWAT raiding the wrong house at 2am, no knocks when a regular contact hasn’t even been tried yet, trying to cover your city’s lack of funding with civil forfeiture, rubber stamping raid request on the claims of a “jail house informant”, etc. And as for racism, you only need to take a stroll through “The Innocence Project” website to find glaring examples of LE racist policies at work; people still incarcerated on bs planted evidence or worse … no evidence at all.

You’ve got it backwards, the wokies and their nonsense isn’t the cause of police indifference … police indifference caused the wokies to have something to gripe about.

[Michael Ejercito]

And these same cops are supposed to enforce an assault weapons ban against the likes of the Crips, the Mafia, and MS-13?

[markm23]

Gun bans aren't meant to take guns from criminals, they're meant to take guns from honest citizens.

[Z Crazy]

Maybe the Army should handle this sort of thing, like they did in 1957 in Littlerock!

[James K. Polk]

Confidence in police is bound to increase because police bodycams show them behaving correctly in an enormous number of high-profile encounters. And one of the big reasons they're behaving correctly is the bodycams.

[mad.casual]

[tilts hand]

IDK. It still seems that we don’t have this editing and selective narration thing figured out. Especially in the context of ‘public attention’. Still fairly easy for (e.g.) your average Englishman to behave relatively normally and morally on a wide array of cameras and still be portrayed as a violent psychopath looking to vent his rage on some poor immigrants for no particular reason at all… and then get a visit from his local PD for actually doing nothing but refuting the false narrative.

[Corey]

Body cams have certainly done a lot for police accountability. Do elected officials next. I wouldn't mind seeing what those assholes get up to all day.

[mad.casual]

The failures of police officers in Uvalde aren't open to dispute.

Who died and made you the police of the police failure dispute?

[Set Us Up The Chipper]

Don't be a cop if you're a pussy.

[JFree]

If you want something done right, do it yourself. That includes protecting family, friends, neighbors, and you.

That is not an option. It is an emotional fart. Perfect for libertarians who don’t understand either ‘militia’ or ‘society’ or ‘division of labor’ or anything beyond the splendid isolation of relying on yourself alone for everything.

Only 25.1 percent of respondents answered, “local police”; 41.8 percent chose “armed citizens.”

Now this is an option even if it expressed in a way that is completely meaningless. We used to know what ‘armed citizens’ meant. We used to know what the ENTIRETY of A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” means as almost the perfect prescription for the specific situation here.

It is NOT just ‘the police’ – meaning the particular way we outsource militia responsibility to others so we don’t have to worry our pretty little heads about governance – that failed that day. It is the militia that failed and it is our comprehension of the 2nd amendment that failed that day.

Well-regulated means disciplined, organized, drilled, trained, etc. All the stuff that flows from – and only from – mustering a militia. Uvalde was, like everywhere else in the US, completely unused to what a militia mustering might look like. What makes it ‘well-regulated’? Is it a random group of parents or other armed people who just show up to a school shooting?

[JFree]

In this particular case, the failure to understand ‘well-regulated’ extends to the professionalized police to whom Uvalde outsourced militia responsibilities. They didn’t ‘well-regulate’. Those who hold them accountable didn’t ‘well-regulate’. I doubt the “Texas House of Representatives Investigative Committee on the Robb Elementary Shooting” understands ‘well-regulated’. Nor the whatever of the US Justice Dept. Nor the Texas Ranger Division. Nor the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District. Nor the city nor the county of Uvalde TX.

It is perplexing how NO ONE to whom we have outsourced citizenship (meaning the true Aristotelian definition of citizen as those who participate in their own governance) understands ‘well-regulated’. Even though the universe of people who are supposed to understand it and have experienced it has the right to keep and bear arms. Is the core group of people who are included in any and all random selection or sortition as a way of governing ourselves or holding justice/govt to account in say juries.

Who could have benefited from prior mustering experience two years earlier during covid (like every country who chose that option early on instead of the US approach) – or every school shooting everywhere – or Flight 93 on 9/11 – or shoe bomber flight – or simply a ton of times when the SHTF and people find that rapid self-organizing response has the possibility of turning out far better than simply abdicating our own governance to others on election day.

The most well armed state in the most well armed country failed. And three years later, we still don’t understand why the 2A was written the way it was written

[MWAocdoc]

Yes, most of this after-action reporting (AKA Monday-morning Quarterbacking) is finger pointing, blame-shifting and deflecting by government officials who want to accumulate power but don't want to accept responsibility for actually using that power effectively or beneficially. It's sort of like the socialists who want the power to run entire nation states and their economies, but don't ever do it very well and excuse their failures with lame protests like, "That wasn't real socialism."

[JFree]

government officials who want to accumulate power but don’t want to accept responsibility for actually using that power effectively or beneficially.

No reason they should audit the work we supposedly hold them responsible - as agents of us - for doing. This responsibility is OURS. Not someone else's. It's not socialism that's the problem. It's US. OUR laziness. OUR responsibility to define what our 'agents' do. OUR responsibility to manage that work and to hold them accountable if/when they fail to achieve our intended goals of beneficial and effective.

Our responsibility as citizens is NOT some once every few years 'vote in an election'. Defining that as the primary responsibility of citizens is doing nothing but eliminating us as citizens. To turn us instead into consenting subjects. Which is precisely the goal of those who want us to be consenting subjects instead of citizens who might instead want to take over governance themselves.

Uvalde really is a perfect example of our willingness to abdicate responsibility for our own citizenship.

[Don't look at me!]

WTF are you trying to say?

[JFree]

Keep reading it until you have either a question or a point to make. Or fuck off. Doesn't matter to me

[Sevo, 5-30-24, embarrassment]

FOAD, shitstain.

[Don't look at me!]

I did have a question. You can’t answer it?

[Gaear Grimsrud]

Have to point out that whenever private citizens attempt to organize a militia they are immediately labeled anti government, right wing white supremacists. Even if their leaders are POCs. These labels immediately trigger federal jurisdiction. For some reason. If no actual crime has been committed the federal gestapo will simply frame them. Most people realize that they can't protect their families from a federal penitentiary so they opt for arming themselves as individuals. You're correct that we have outsourced well regulated self defense to incompetent corrupt Keystone cops. But that will not change anytime soon. In the meantime, as the article points out, people feel safer with a well armed citizenry.

[JFree]

Militia organization and leadership IS a formal constitutional office. So yeah, the attempt to reinstate some functionality has the potential of stepping on toes of the way we’ve organized what remains (the TX Nat Guard). Which was completely uninvolved in this particular. part of the failure here.

A shooter with red flags who was of muster age but was never mustered (meaning vetted etc) because we don’t do that. A group of people who did respond but didn’t know what to do because we don’t ever muster and hence don't know how to self organize effectively

And apparently not even a citizen commission that would be part of the investigation to see if there might be a role for militia in future.

I agree that there would be resistance to any call for citizens to get more involved here. But without that call, things definitely can’t change.

[John Rohan]

Finally, a tactical team operating on its own amidst what the Texas report described as “chaos” breached the classroom in which the shooter hid and killed him.

That tactical team was from CBP, or specifically the Border Patrol Tactical Unit (BORTAC). Next to ICE, CBP is Reason.com’s #1 enemy, which is perhaps why they weren’t named in this article.

What’s really ridiculous is they found out about this only because one border patrol member’s wife worked in the school, who called him, who called in his unit when the Uvalde police wouldn’t do their job.

[Think It Through]

I thought the Uvalde police failures were Known, and have been known for a long time?

[MWAocdoc]

That doesn't count until the "Official Investigative Report (TM)" comes in from our Official Guardians of Truth. But as it says in the article, the official reports simply add more confirmatory details to what we already knew.

[mad.casual]

Well, there's nothing else that isn't open to dispute going on today so...

[Gaear Grimsrud]

Nothing actually happens until it's reported in the NYT.

[WC46]

That's why N.A.G.R., 2nd Amendment Foundation, etc. are fighting tooth and nail to preserve our 2nd Amendment right to keep and bear arms. We are our own first responders and I'm getting past sick and tired of the law and the courts treating those who clearly act in defense of self or others as criminals!!! If we have the right to carry, we should have the right to fire in anger when needed without some lefty hack trying to railroad us into a murder conviction. What good is a Constitutional right if you're going to be jailed and then bankrupted fighting the bogus charges when you legitimately have to avail yourself of the right to lethal force of arms??? The 2nd Amendment isn't there just to let us carry for looks. The right is there with the intent of us using it without being unjustly criminalized. These anti-gun prosecutors and judicial activists in robes know how to make the process of defending that right the punishment.

[AltheDago]

This is a bureaucratic failure at multiple levels, caused by the initial failure to follow the active shooter protocols to which the local police (at least) had been trained a short time before. (I don't know if the school district police participated in the active shooter training. But if they didn't, the question to be asked is, "Why the f*** not?")

The first and foremost rule of active shooter response is this: go to the sound of the gunfire and neutralize the shooter. Period. Experience has shown that active shooters who are immediately confronted with armed force are most often neutralized with a minimum of innocent life lost. The failure starts with the initial lack of response, continues through the utter dearth of leadership at any level, and was only ameliorated when the BORTAC team took action on their own initiative once they arrived on scene.

Why someone else didn't take action sooner is an open question.

[Richard Bees]

Another great argument for home schooling.

The only other approach I'd approve of is bands of armed parents, with "skin in the game". As a parent I can tell you, parents are 1000 times more motivated than a weekend warrior longing for retirement.

It's a travesty that 376 doughnut biters couldn't take out one kid. They all need to be released. Start over. Hire the tactical team that went in.

If you can't do your damn job, get out of the parents' way. Everyone would have been far better off if the 376 cops were at Dunkin.

[Ranter]

Amen to that. And in my opinion, the other thing that this will encourage is armed parents showing up and dispatching the Barney Fifes on scene who would rather arrest anguished, angry parents instead of stopping the murder of children. The lack of accountability and broad immunity for those responsible is going to cause parents to find a much more dangerous solution.
If this happens again, there’s going to be dead LEOs in addition to shooter.