The police need to help stop the next mass shooting
Let’s hold them accountable if they don’t
By Adrianna LoBasso
Guest Writer
The police response to the Uvalde school shooting wasn’t just deplorable. It was grounds for termination. The police response cost unnecessary lives, went against their training, and ignored the pleas of lower-ranked officers to save children from the shooter.
On May 24, 2022 at 11:30 am, a gunman was reported outside of Robbs Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. The shooter wasn’t stopped until 12:50 — almost an hour and a half later.
The Texas House of Representatives appointed a special committee to investigate the shooting. The committee issued a report. The report found, “376 law enforcement officers…descended upon the school in a chaotic, uncoordinated scene that lasted for more than an hour… Devoid of clear leadership, basic communications and sufficient urgency to take down the gunman.”
The response was late because officers didn’t enter the building until after over a hundred shots had been fired. After this, two separate groups of officers entered the building from the north and the south ends. Once inside the building, officers testified they did not hear any screaming or crying and saw no evidence of injuries. They claimed to see bullet holes in the walls, and claimed to smell gunpowder.
However, witnesses testified they knew children had made 911 calls from inside the classroom with the shooter. The officers ignored the visual evidence of gunfire and the accounts of scared children calling for help. This is beyond irresponsible.
The officers treated this as a “barricaded subject,” rather than an active shooter situation. Because of this egregious mistake, the police didn’t try to stop the shooting. Instead, they began to evacuate other areas of the school before breaching the classroom with the slaughtered teachers and children. These lives could have been saved if the officers treated the event for what it was: an active shooter situation.
There wasn’t clear leadership either. Some officers testified they believed Chief Arredondo was in charge. Others stated they didn’t know who was in charge. Or said no one was in charge at all. Chief Arredondo himself states he was not in charge, despite making numerous life altering calls throughout the operation.
Before checking if the doors to the classrooms were locked, the Chief insisted the police force needed a master key or breaching equipment. It is possible the doors to the classroom, where the shooter and injured children were, was not locked at all.
Despite never trying to open the doors, the Chief tried to find a key. He also didn’t check with the principal, who had the master key. This took forty minutes.
Furthermore, there was no communication between the south and north operations. They couldn’t communicate over radio and didn’t try to communicate in other ways.
Due to the lack of communication, some officers testified they thought the Chief was negotiating with the shooter. Therefore they did not engage. The security footage and the report itself proves the Chief never entered the classroom to negotiate.
Some tried to command the situation. Officer Ruben Ruiz, whose wife was a teacher and had been shot, was escorted from the school for trying to save his wife and the lives of children.
The report mentions Special Agent Luke Williams, who was astonished that the officers didn’t know if children were in the room with the shooter. Williams said, “if there’s kids in there we need to go in there.” The police force finally entered the classroom only after they got a master key and protective shields.
They put their own lives before the children. They could have come up with another tactic, bum-rushing of sheer numbers. Hundreds of officers were on the scene. They could have come up with another tactic. They could have used their sheer numbers. They could have neutralized the subject. But they did not want to jeopardize their own lives while children were losing theirs’.
The officers finally entered the classroom at 12:50. They killed the shooter, over an hour after entering the school and nearly one and a half hours after the first shots had been fired.
The Uvalde police department’s website states their oath: to “serve the community by protecting citizens and property, preventing crime, enforcing laws, and maintaining[ing] order.”
They broke their oath during the Robbs Elementary shooting. The officers put their own wellbeing before the lives of children and other victims of the massacre. They made mistakes which resulted in the death of twenty-one people, including nineteen children and two teachers.
These officers, especially the Chief, need to be held accountable for their horrible response to this tragedy. It’s a problem that we lack police accountability on a national scale. Whether it’s in a wrongful death situation, like the muder of George Floyd, or in a tragedy, like the Uvalde shooting.
We will never know how many lives could have been saved had the response been different. But the report concludes, “some victims could have survived if they had not had to wait.”
If these officers have any respect for the victims, the families, and the people of Uvalde, those with decision-making power should resign. Officers in Uvalde, and many other areas of the country, need to be more prepared for school shootings in order to save as many lives as possible.
The federal government has a responsibility to solve this problem. Children should not be afraid to go to school. Banning the AR-15 — a gun which is used disproportionately in school shootings — is a step in the right direction.
This summer, the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act was passed. This increased federal funding to mental health services in schools and communities. The Act also strengthens federal regulations on licensing requirements and background checks.
However, this doesn’t do enough to prevent tragedies like Uvalde. When people are mentally ill enough to kill children, a three-day background check is not up to par.
The parents of juveniles should hold some degree of responsibility when it comes to accessing firearms. And assault rifles are still accessible. Those issues remain unresolved. Therefore, despite steps in the right direction, we are still a long way off from true gun reform in the US.
Adrianna LoBasso is a sophomore majoring in Political Science and minoring in History.
