The Daily - Why the Police Took 78 Minutes to Stop the Uvalde Gunman

Episode Date: May 31, 2022

After the shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, the explanation for how the police acted kept shifting.Now, a clearer picture has emerged.Guest: J. David Goodman, the Houston bureau chief for The New York Times.Want more from The Daily? For one big idea on the news each week from our team, subscribe to our newsletter. Background reading: A timeline from the state police raised the painful possibility that had officers done more, and faster, not all of those who died — 19 children and two teachers — would have lost their lives.The degree to which some law enforcement officers on the scene disagreed with the decision to hold back has become more apparent.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. 

From The New York Times, I'm Sabrina Tavernisi. This is The Daily. For days after the shooting in Uvalde, Texas, the explanation for how the police responded kept shifting. Now, a clearer picture has emerged. Today, my colleague, David Goodman, on why officers waited so long before storming the classrooms where the gunman was, and the questions that raises about what happened to the people inside. It's Tuesday, May 31st. It's Tuesday, May 31st.

David, there have been a lot of questions about the way that the police responded to the shooting in Uvalde, Texas. Tell us what we know at this point. Well, getting to what we know now has been really quite a journey. When the shooting happened on Tuesday, one of the first things that we wanted to try and answer after confirming that this horrific event had taken place and the number of killed and wounded was, when did they finally end it? When did they finally kill the gunman? And that fact was not something that they brought out immediately. They weren't revealing that. And so that raised a lot of questions for me, that there was something sort of so basic that they weren't either willing or able to share. And so on Friday, we finally got a chance to hear directly from the state police. They've been conducting the inquiry into the law

enforcement response to the shooting, and they laid out their timeline in a press conference. Good morning. Thank you for being here today. My name is Stephen McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety. Tell me about this press conference. So Stephen McCraw, who's the head of the Texas Department of Public Safety, and this is the agency that runs the state police and also the Texas Rangers, he calls reporters to a press conference right by the elementary school. Our goal today is to provide the parents, the community of Uvalde,

the public, as much information as we can on where we are on the investigation. I'll begin first and foremost with the timeline as we know it. So here's what he lays out. 1128, the suspect vehicle crashes into the ditch, as previously described. On Tuesday, at about 1128 in the morning, the gunman crashes a pickup truck in a ditch that's by the school. And he emerges pretty much immediately and starts shooting at the school and moving towards it. Now, this time a teacher calls 911 and says there's been a crash at the school and a man with a gun. Now, I should say initially we thought or we were told that an armed school district police officer had been at the school at this time, and that that armed officer had confronted the gunman.

But that turned out actually not to be true. But the bottom line is that officer was not on scene, not on campus. And instead, the gunman walks into the school through a door that's been propped open by a teacher just a short time before. And he's able to go in unchallenged and uncontrunted by anyone. 11.33 is when the suspect entered the school at the door that I'm pointing to now. 11.33, the suspect begins shooting into room 111 or 112. It's not possible to determine from the video. He then goes into a pair of connected classrooms that are joined in the middle via a bathroom,

and he starts shooting. He shot more than 100 rounds based on the audio evidence at that time, at least 100 rounds. Okay, so he's shooting. When did the police get inside? In 1135, three police officers entered the same door as the suspect entered. All three of those police officers worked for the Uvalde Police Department. Well, McCross says that three police officers entered the school just two minutes after

the gunman had entered. Those officers approached the classroom where the gunman was shooting. And two received grazing wounds at that time from the suspect. And two of them were grazed by bullets that came through the locked classroom door. They were later followed by another four

a team of Uvalde police officers, three, and also a county sheriff, county deputy sheriff. Now, in the meantime, more officers were arriving on the scene. And by 12.03, which is 30 minutes after the shooter had entered the classroom, there are 19 officers from different agencies gathered in the school hallway near that classroom door. Wow, 19 officers.

And what are they doing at this point? Well, by the time those 19 officers are in the hallway, the commanding officer on the scene had made a critical decision. He determined that this was a situation at that point of a barricaded subject and not an active shooter. And so the officers were told not to try to go into that classroom. David, hold on. What's the difference between barricaded subject and active shooter? I don't understand that terminology. I mean, how is law enforcement supposed to respond in each type of case? immediately. You don't wait as soon as you have enough officers to safely do so, or even one officer can make that determination to go in. But the important thing is that there's no hesitation. There's no waiting for special equipment or any of that. You go in to stop the shooting, which means to try and incapacitate or kill the shooter, and then to stop people from dying. So you treat the

wounded, and you do that in that order. But the paramount important thing is to stop the shooting from happening. So what about a barricaded subject? What is that? And how should the police respond in that kind of situation? So a barricaded subject is very different. It's someone who's armed inside a space that's hard to get into and isn't posing any kind of immediate risk to civilians at that moment, but is instead focused on keeping law enforcement away. And so the response to a barricaded subject is a lot more strategic. Rather than rushing in, the police are trained to go in more slowly with specialized equipment and more tactically so that they can avoid any kind of injury or any of law enforcement officers being killed.

So less a focus on safety of civilians and more a focus on safety of law enforcement. Right. So, David, this decision seems huge. I mean, they're treating the gunman like a barricaded subject, not like an active shooter. And that means that they're not immediately going into the classroom. But do we know why they made that call? Well, it's not really clear why they made that call, especially because another thing that came out during the press conference was that there were kids in the classroom who were still alive, whose lives were still at risk. And the way we know that is because some of them were calling 911.

Wow. And now I'd like to go over the 911 timeline. McCraw, during the press briefing, he starts going through a timeline of these 911 calls. I shall warn you, it's not... It's better that I read it than you listen to it. The caller identified, I'll not say her name, but she was in room 112, called 911 at 12.03. The duration of the call was 1 minute and 23 seconds.

She identified herself and whispered that she's in the classroom with the gunman. Wow. And this is the exact moment that we know that 19 officers are gathered in the hallway outside the door. Wow, crazy. At 12.10. And she calls multiple times. She called back in room 12, advised there are multiple dead.

12.13, again she called on the phone. Again at 12.16, she called back and said there was eight to nine students alive. And from these calls, it's clear from what she says that there are still some children who are alive. And another person in room 111 calls. She hung up when another student told her to hang up. And then at 1219, another student from one of these linked classrooms calls.

And during this time... You can hear over the 911 call that three shots were fired. McCraw says the shots are still being fired, sporadically. And then... The initial caller called back. Student, child called back. That first 911 caller, she calls back at 1243 and again at 1247 and is asking to please send in the police.

Okay, so you're saying that over the course of more than 40 minutes, there are kids calling 911 from inside the classrooms, which is kind of incredible. And it makes me think I really don't understand why at this point the officers still aren't going in. Well, yeah, from the press conference, it was not clear whether the officers on the scene were hearing about these 911 calls. That would be a pretty serious communications breakdown in the middle of this incredibly serious event. And if the 911 operators were aware that children were alive in that classroom, why weren't officers notified of that? And if that's the case, why didn't they take action? That's the question. McCrow's actually asked directly about this.

Again, I'll go back to the answer right now, is that it was considered, okay, the decision was made on the scene. I wasn't there. And he didn't really answer. You know, a decision was made that this was a... And certainly the officers who were outside the classroom, you know, they could hear the gunshots that were happening sporadically. And by this time, there are multiple law enforcement agencies there at the elementary school. And many of these officers were bristling, were really getting upset at the order to stand by and wait. And what's remarkable is that it's not even clear at this point to us who made the ultimate decision to go in or how that decision was reached. What we do know is that 78 minutes after the shooter enters the school,

at about 12.50 on Tuesday, they breach the door using keys that they're able to get from the janitor because both doors were locked. Officers finally go in. At 1250, shots are fired. They can be heard. In 911 calls, you can actually hear the shots being fired, McCross said. 1251 is very loud and sounds like the officers are moving children out of the room. And we know from the police report,

the shooter is killed at that moment. Questions? Questions? We'll be right back. David, so much of the police response really hinges on that one decision, to wait to go into the classrooms. So what do we know about the commander in charge, the guy who made the call to hold off? So the guy who made the decision, his name is Pete Arradondo,

and he's someone who has a long law enforcement career. He had been at the Uvalde Police Department. He's actually from the city. And he'd gone on to a sheriff's office in a nearby county and actually run a school police department in a different county. He recently came back and started working again in Uvalde. But he wasn't the chief of the Uvalde Police Department. He came back as the chief of the Uvalde School District Police Department.

And what's that? That's a school police force of just six cops, including Arredondo. And it's a structure that you actually find quite commonly in Texas and in other parts of the country, although it's not universal. But what it means is that Arredondo and his officers had jurisdiction over the campuses of the schools in Uvalde. And there were eight different schools. the schools in Uvalde. And there were eight different schools. And so these six officers would either stay at the schools or go between them and provide security for those schools. So it's like a tiny police force literally for the school system. That's right.

But why did this chief have the ultimate say? I mean, why not, for example, the police chief of the city of Uvalde, who I assume has a bigger police force? Right. I mean, it's a good question. And it would seem from the city of Uvalde, who I assume has a bigger police force? Right. I mean, it's a good question. And it would seem from the outside that you would want, of course, the police department of the city to run a scene like this. But in fact, really the reason is that the shooting is happening on the campus of the schools, and that's the jurisdiction of this police chief. And other departments in these kinds of situations will come into the incident. There are officers arriving from all different kinds of agencies, and you need to have

some kind of hierarchy and organization. And it generally falls to the person who has the jurisdiction to maintain that control over the scene until they hand it off. Now, they don't have to hand it off. And in this case, the chief of the school district police didn't hand it off. And in this case, the chief of the school district police didn't hand it off. And it's not clear whether anyone tried to take it away from him or at least assert any kind of control when there were clearly disagreements among the officers about the tactics that were being used. And what are the consequences of that decision he made, David? I mean, do we know if anyone died who might not have had the police come in earlier? Well, that's really difficult for us to say.

But what we do know is that the vast majority of the gunshots inside those two connected classrooms came in the very start of the attack. And we know that the two girls who called 911, those two girls survived. But what we don't know is whether any of those gunshots that were heard after the initial burst, if any of those hit any people inside the room. And we also don't know whether any of the children or the two teachers who were inside of these two classrooms, whether they would have survived if police had gotten in there and killed this gunman sooner and allowed them to get medical attention much more quickly. And during this press conference, you know, McCraw has pressed multiple times about the order, about the decision to treat this scene in a way that even those officers thought was not correct. OK, hey, for the benefit of hindsight, where I'm sitting now, of course, it was not the right decision. It was the wrong decision, period.

And McCraw acknowledged, he says this had been the wrong decision. There's no no excuse for that. He says this had been the wrong decision. There's no excuse for that. But again, I wasn't there, but I'm just telling you, from what we know, we believe there should have been an entry as soon as you can. Hey, when there's an active shooter, the rules change. You don't have to have a leader on the scene. Every officer lines up, stacks up, goes and finds where those rounds are being fired at,

and keeps shooting until the subject is dead, period. It seems like a pretty big deal for law enforcement to admit that they were wrong. That's right. It's not about trying to defend or it's not about trying to assess or even be hypercritical. It's about the facts and sharing whatever we learn on the facts as quick as we can. You know, McCross says several times that he's not there to place blame. But in the end, he does end up rendering a judgment on the police response. David, on the one hand, focusing on the police response makes sense, right?

Because if something faster would have prevented even one of those deaths, we'd want to know that. But I guess I'm wondering, is that the right focus? Because it sounds like even if the police had gone in earlier, it might not have made that much difference. I mean, as you said, most of the rounds were fired in the first few minutes. So I guess what I'm wondering is, are we missing the bigger picture? You know, that an 18-year-old who is determined to shoot up a school can legally buy two very powerful guns and do it. Well, I think that's right.

I mean, it's a lot easier, especially in Texas, to focus on something like the police response than it is to focus on the guns that were used. And you've seen this after several major shootings in the last few years here in Texas. You've had Sutherland Springs in 2017. That was at a church. You had a school shooting in 2018 in the town of Santa Fe where 10 people were killed. And you had a gunman shoot multiple people inside a Walmart in El Paso in 2019.

And throughout that time and afterwards, the state has actually moved in the direction of making it easier to own and carry weapons in the state, including last year when they passed a law to allow any Texan or pretty much any Texan over 21 to carry a handgun without a permit. And so the move here is really to look for other solutions. It's really anything other than preventing an 18-year-old from buying a weapon.

Right. Like, we talk about police response and these other things because that's one of the few things on the table we actually can talk about. Because in Texas, we're not going to talk about gun control. Right. I mean, what you see right now is that there's agreement among Democrats can talk about. Because in Texas, we're not going to talk about gun control. Right. I mean, what you see right now is that there's agreement among Democrats and some Republicans that these officers should have done more during that hour to try and stop the shooter. That's something that pretty much everybody can agree on. Something went wrong here in that response. And that's a conversation that people are willing to have. And I think the conversation that people in Texas and elsewhere find it much more difficult to have is the question of why that 18-year-old was able to buy that gun and walk into the school to begin with. David, thank you.

Thank you, Sabrina. Over the weekend, the U.S. Department of Justice said it would review the police response to the mass shooting in Uvalde. The DOJ said it was conducting the review at the request of Uvalde's mayor, and that the goal was to provide an independent account of the response that day, and to identify lessons learned and best practices. We'll be right back. The embargo had been blocked by Hungary, an EU member, so leaders limited it, exempting pipeline imports, in order to get Hungary to go along with it. The embargo is likely to hurt European economies

and is the latest sign that Europe is willing to take far-reaching steps to punish Russia. And... As a government, as a society, we have a responsibility to act to prevent more tragedies. Legislation introduced in Canada would require most owners of military-style assault weapons to turn over their guns to a government buyback program. The Canadian government also imposed new regulations

banning the sale, purchase, transfer, and importation of handguns. This is about freedom. People should be free to go to the supermarket, their school, or their place of worship without fear. without fear. These people should be free to go to the park or to a birthday party without worrying about what might happen from a stray bullet. The legislation is expected to pass, and the changes will apply to tens of thousands of firearms.

Today's episode was produced by Rob Zipko and Stella Tan. It was edited by MJ Davis-Lynn and Lisa Chow, with help from Paige Cowett. Contains original music by Marian Lozano and was engineered by Corey Schruppel. Our theme music is by Jim Bumberg and Ben Landsberg of Wonderly. That's it for The Daily. I'm Sabrina Tavernisi.

See you tomorrow.