No Heroes Among These Uvalde Officers of the Law

"I don't care if you have on flip-flops and Bermuda shorts, you go in!"

"The officers had weapons, the children had none. The officers had body armour, the children had none. The officers had training, the subject had none."

"One hour, 14 minutes and eight seconds -- that is how long the children waited, and the teachers waited, in room 111 to be rescued."

"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."

" Obviously, not enough training was done in this situation, plain and simple. Because terrible decisions were made by the on-site commander."

"You don't wait for a SWAT team. You have one officer, that's enough."

Col. Steve McCraw, director, Texas Department of Public Safety

Police blocked off the road leading to the scene of the shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde on May 24   Sergio Flores for The Texas Tribune

Exploding with undisguised scorn in testifying before a state Senate hearing over the Robb Elementary School mass murders, the director of its public safety department excoriated the Uvalde school district police chief, Pete Arredondo who had been in charge on that fateful May 24 day when the attack that took the lives of 19 young children and two of their teachers in a massacre of stunning proportions shocked the country and turned its attention on the easy accessibility of gun ownership for a mentally unstable 18-year-old.

Members of the Texas state senate sat silently as hours of testimony passed before them with the inexplicable evidence of police dispatched to the scene having enough officers responding in those critical first moments of the school invasion by a well-armed and obviously dangerous shooter to stop the massacre before it unfolded. Three minutes after the gunman entered the school the first responders could have entered the door leading to the classroom where children and their teachers were held hostage to murderous intent.

What did in actual fact occur was the stationing of police officers holding rifles in a hallway as time passed critically. For over an hour they waited for others to arrive as backup with more fire power and protective shields. Waiting as fear and suspense grew in the sinister situation, with desperate parents begging the police to move in, to disable the shooter, to save their vulnerable children from certain death. The parents were ignored, some even taken briefly into custody.

As a police action in a situation of grave and imminent danger to small children held captive by a man intent on committing the most reprehensible crimes imaginable, the response was criminally abysmal, an "abject failure" in the opinion of the director of public safety. Eventually the gunman was confronted and permanently disabled, sent to his death, but his monstrous work was already done in the deaths of 21 living souls.

Desperate, frightened children hid as best they could, they disguised themselves to appear dead, they hid themselves under furniture, in closets, they called 911 begging for police to arrive. And all the while police were there, just outside the door where death stalked the children. The courageous officers of the law stood waiting, waiting, waiting, and so did the children. Those who survived the horror will never again be children, they will be haunted for the rest of their natural lives.

the classroom door would easily have opened had any of the officers turned the door handle. The lock had earlier been reported broken so it could not be locked from the interior. None of the officers attempted to move the door open, waiting instead for someone to produce a key. "I have great reasons to believe it was never secured. How about trying the door and seeing if it's locked?", said Col. McRae scathingly.

State legislators wanted to know why it was that state troopers who arrived on the scene failed to take charge. The explanation? They did not have legal authority to do that. Three officers with two rifles entered the building under three minutes following the gunman's entry to the school hefting his AR-15-style semi-automatic rifle. Soon afterward several more officers entered. The two who were early entering the hallway had been grazed by gunfire. And that was enough to put them out of the business of saving children's lives.

Visitors paid their respects at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde on June 2. Twenty-one people, including 19 children, were killed by a gunman at the school on May 24    Lucas Boland/Corpus Christi Caller-Times via REUTERS

A Child's Profile in Courage

"We were just watching a movie and then she [my teacher] got an email ... she went to lock the door and he [the gunman] was in the hallway, and they made eye contact ... she went back in the room and told us go hide." 

"He shot my teacher, and told my teacher 'good night' and shot her in the head. Then, he shot some of my classmates and the whiteboard."

"When I went to the backpacks, he shot my friend that was next to me. I thought he was going to come back to the room so I grabbed her blood and put it all over me, and just stayed quiet. Then I got my teacher's phone and called 911."

"I told her [the dispatcher]  that we needed help and to send the police in our classroom."

Miah Cerrillo, 11, child survivor of the Uvalde school mass shooting

Miah Cerrillo, 11-year-old Uvalde shooting survivor tells Committee what she experienced: AP

"[She's not the same little girl that I used to play with, hang around with, and do everything."

"She was Daddy's little girl ... I wish something would change, not only for our kids but every little kid ... because schools are not safe anymore."

Miguel Cerrillo, Miah's father

The U.S. Justice Department, obviously under pressure from a disturbed, outraged public has announced a team they have appointed comprised of nine people to assist in a review of the response to the Uvalde school shooting by law enforcement. The team will include an official from the FBI and former police chiefs. The Justice Department's Office of Community Oriented Policing Services is leading the critical incident review. 

 

A review that will grapple with the fact that members of the community judged to qualify as professional police in upholding safety and security and the social order within the community spectacularly failed. Messages that frightened, desperate children dialled 911 to bring to their attention were evidently never received. And the question is: had they been received might the outcome have been any different? In a gross failure of courage and judgement the police opted to wait an hour before intervening.

"I am asking every member of this committee [House Oversight Committee] to listen with an open heart to the brave witnesses who have come forward to tell their stories about how gun violence has impacted their lives."

"Our witnesses today have endured pain and loss. Yet they are displaying incredible courage by coming here to ask us to do our jobs."

Representative Carolyn Maloney, chairwoman, House panel

Hearing the witness testimony of a child, her father, bereaved parents of children who were deliberately shot to death by a young warped-mind American terrorist, some of the lawmakers present wept, just as those who were bearing witness, recalling their dreadful experience and even more dread losses, themselves wept with the agony of loss and frustration.

The politicians present were shown a chart registering the indisputable fact that firearm deaths that take place in the United States have no similar counterparts in any other country of the developed world. The underlying purpose of the Committee was to lay the groundwork for lawmakers to strike a bipartison agreement on measures addressing gun safety in an atmosphere of horror at the country's back-to-back mass shootings.

Those present listened intently and no doubt winced with pain as pediatrician Dr.Roy Guerrero who had tended several of the child victims, described what he saw: "Two children whose bodies had been pulverized by bullets fired at them, decapitated, whose flesh had been ripped apart." The very vivid visualization in the description difficult to comprehend. "I'll never forget what I saw that day, (children whose bodies had been so brutalized by gun violence) that the only clue to their identities was blood-spattered cartoon clothes still clinging to them."

They listened as Kimberly Rubio, mother of Lexi Rubio, a classmate of Miah's who died in the assault alongside 18 of her classmates and two of her teachers, said she would be "haunted" for the remainder of her life and went on to ask why it is that some people feel "guns are more important than children". "Today, we stand for Lexi, and, as her voice, we demand action", she said, concluding her testimony.

Even as the legislators listened respectfully and quietly to the impassioned pleas of the witnesses, one after another, there can be little doubt that in turn the witnesses quietly and with huge frustration, listened to the legislators in their turn, who spoke of individuals who abuse guns and that "hardening schools" could help protect students.

"My son Zaire has a hole in the right side of his neck, two on his back and another on his left leg, caused by an exploding bullet from an AR-15."

"As I clean his wounds, I can feel pieces of that bullet in his back. Shrapnel will be left inside of his body for the rest of his life."

Zeneta Everhart, mother of Zaire Goodman