Police response to school gunman an ‘abject failure’

Top law enforcement official for Texas says chief put officers’ safety ahead of saving kids’ lives

The police response to last month’s school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, was an “abject failure” that prioritized the safety of officers over children, according to the state’s chief law enforcement officer.

Officers could have stopped the gunmen three minutes after he entered the building, but instead waited more than an hour to confront him, Steven McCraw, the director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, testified at a state Senate hearing Tuesday.

State officials have focused on actions by the school district’s police chief, who was in charge of the scene, as they scrutinize the police response to the shooting, which killed 19 children and two teachers.

Testimony showed that as the gunman was holed up inside a classroom with a powerful rifle, at least some officers knew children and an injured teacher were still alive during the time they waited to confront the killer.

Police on the scene held off on entering the classroom as they waited for keys to arrive, according to McCraw’s presentation. In fact, no one checked to see if the doors were locked, and they probably weren’t, McCraw said.

Even if they were locked, the police had equipment that would allow them to breach the door anyway, he said.

The police’s decision not to go after the gunman was “antithetical to everything we’ve learned over the last two decades since the Columbine massacre,” McCraw said.

He laid blame on the school district police chief, who told other officers on the scene to hold off on confronting the gunmen until more equipment could be brought in to protect officers.

“Three minutes after the suspect entered the west building, there was sufficient number of armed officers wearing body armor to isolate, distract and neutralize the subject,” McCraw said. “The only thing stopping the hallway of dedicated officers from entering room 111 and 112 was the onscene commander, who decided to place the lives of officers before the lives of children.”