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Uwalde, Texas – On the eve of the president’s visit, clouded by ever-changing images of law enforcement response to a gunman who killed teachers and children, and just before burying the dead, Uwalde people took some time Saturday.
Most of the shops in the center were closed, and the windows were painted with messages such as “Pray for Uwalde” and “Uwalde Strong.” In Rexall, an old-school soda fountain with yellow ribbons and a bouquet tied to the door, a paper sign said the restaurant was giving its employees a break to heal.
The nation may need the same.
President Biden called for national unity in a welcome address at his alma mater, the University of Delaware; he and First Lady Jill Biden are due to visit Texas on Sunday. Vice President Harris was in Buffalo to attend the funeral of one of the 10 people killed in the May 14 mass shooting at a grocery store.
Demands for responsibility in Uwalde rose on Saturday after officers admitted that law enforcement officers had waited an excruciatingly long time before rushing to the classroom, where a gunman killed 19 children and two teachers.
Rogelio M. Munoz, a former city council member who left the commission due to term constraints, said in an interview Saturday that what the community has learned so far about the police response is “very worrying”.
Authorities in Texas made it clear on Friday that many things went wrong earlier in the week. Munoz criticized the Texas Department of Public Safety for changing accounts of what happened at the school on Tuesday, but he warned against drawing too many conclusions.
“The facts are still evolving and it’s hard to assess someone’s guilt or conviction when we don’t know all the facts,” he said.
U.S. Senator Roland Gutierrez, a Democrat who represents Uwalde, said: “We are all angry. Law enforcement is angry, “in an interview with CNN on Saturday morning. He said he spoke with Texas Public Security Director Steve McCrow on Saturday and that the two men were crying together.
The latest official – and disturbing – accounts of how this day unfolded come from McCrow. He confirmed that officers had been waiting for nearly an hour in the corridor in front of the locked classroom, where Salvador authorities said Rolando Ramos had shot at children and killed their teachers.
McCrow said local authorities had wrongly concluded that the shooter was no longer an active shooter and that more children were not at risk. But the children in the room repeatedly called 911, asking for help, McCrow said.
“It was the wrong decision,” McCrow said at a briefing. “Period.”
The small school police in Uwalde took over, after which they failed to enter
Macro said the person in charge of the scene was Pedro Pete Aredondo, the school’s police chief. Aredondo did not respond to requests for comment on Friday or Saturday, and his home was guarded by police cars.
Gutierrez said he expects McCrow to publish a detailed report next week.
“I want to know when every agency was here,” Gutierrez said.
Looking back, some law enforcement officials and experts are questioning whether Aredondo should have remained commander of the scene during an active shooting situation after other agencies arrived at Rob Elementary School.
Kenneth S. Trump, President of the National School Safety and Security Service, noted that the appointment of a strong commander at the scene could be crucial in responding to tragedies. Responsibilities at the scene can also be transferred to an employee of another agency with more tactical experience, he said.
“The point is, someone has to be the commander of the incident,” Trump said.
“These school policing programs can save lives, but it doesn’t matter to these parents and people in this community in Uwalde when incidents like these occur.”
The Texas School Resources Association, which trains police on how to respond to school shootings and other threats, emphasizes in its training that police officers must be prepared to face active shooters without waiting for reinforcements.
“Before the cavalry comes, you have to really get involved with this man,” TASRO Vice President Michael Boyd said in an interview Saturday.
The Texas 2020 Law Enforcement Website Training Guide, which is the training TASRO uses in its courses, notes that “the first responder who does not want to put the lives of the innocent above their own safety should consider for another career field. ”
Texas House Bill 2195, passed in 2019, requires school staff to complete an active shooter training program approved by the committee.
Michael Dorn, executive director of Safe Havens International, a non-profit campus security organization, was not worried that Aredondo remained in charge on Tuesday. But Dorn was
Concerned that the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District, which includes Robb Primary School, relies on the “Standard Response Protocol”, a process for how students react during an emergency. This is a nationally recognized method developed by the I Love U Guys Foundation, which focuses on school safety, according to the foundation’s website.
Dorn argues that the protocol, which is popular for its emotional marketing and ease of implementation, is an “extremely unhealthy approach” because he says he regularly fails to teach school staff how to properly lock the classroom.
“These mistakes were made long before this event,” Dorn said. “We’ve been telling clients not to use SRP for years,” Dorn said.
John-Michael Keys, executive director of the I Love U Guys Foundation, defended the program as “a guideline based on sound factual conclusions.”
“It is really important that we have a lot of votes in this conversation, and I think that an absolute assessment is necessary,” he said.
Kim Vickers, executive director of the Texas Enforcement Commission, said she was reluctant to criticize Tuesday’s actions, based on the limited information available immediately afterwards.
“I will say outright that it seems that the normal protocols for an active shooter may not have been followed,” Vickers said in an interview. “I have gone through many active shooting courses. The emphasis is on moving fast and getting involved. ”
Another aspect of the police response that was questioned was why officers had to wait for keys from a doorman to unlock the classroom door and kill the shooter. Vickers said there is no regulation or protocol from Texas on whether the master keys to all classrooms in the building should be accessible and to whom.
“It seems to make sense to have access to such public buildings for the department, but this is a matter of local control,” he said.
Jeff Foley, president and training coordinator at TASRO, said all employees working in the school district where he was hired had a set of master keys that would open every door across the district.
“If an active shooter enters one of my campuses, the officers in charge have the opportunity to have keys and enter,” Foley said.
The huge number of mass shootings this year has led to numerous calls for a tougher response from the federal government.
Harris went to Buffalo on Saturday to meet with relatives of those killed and attend the funeral of 86-year-old Ruth Whitfield. Biden visited the city on May 17.
During Saturday’s inaugural speech, Biden nodded at the tragedies that engulfed the nation.
“As I speak, these parents are literally preparing to bury their children. In the United States – to bury their children. There is too much violence, too much fear, too much grief, “Biden said.
Biden alternates between grief and optimism about the future, which is a hallmark of initial conversions.
“I know we can’t outlaw the tragedy, but we can make Americans safer,” Biden said. “We can finally do what we need to do to protect the lives of people and our children. That is why I call on all Americans at this hour to join hands and make your voices heard and work together to make this nation what it can and should be. ”
The White House called for tighter gun control measures, but Biden was not specific in his speech as to what those proposals would be. Speaking to reporters, Harris said: “We are not sitting there waiting to find out what the solution is. Let’s ban weapons of attack.
Here in Uwalde, a seemingly endless schedule of funerals was published, beginning on Tuesday and lasting nearly two weeks. One of the first will be for Ameri Joe Garza, one of the 19 children killed.
Community members expressed shock and grief in Uwalde, Texas, in front of a memorial to 19 students and two adults killed in a mass shooting. (Video: Alice Lee, John Gerberg, Zoan Murphy / Washington Post)
If the community was grieved by grief, Uwalde’s town square was her broken heart.
By Saturday, white crosses around the fountain in its center — one for each victim — had been partially obscured behind piles of heart-shaped balloons, teddy bears and flowers, some of which were beginning to dry in the strong sun.
“Everyone is still trying to process and wrap it,” said Emma Clark, 34, who came to hand out multicolored chalk in her maroon Uvalde hat. “What is clear now is the strength in our community and how we managed to come together and grieve together.”
The site had become a place of worship for many others from far beyond.
On the gray paths around the square, people wrote in chalk messages quoting verses from the Bible and saying, “God is still the light!”
Alaina Borego, 11, arrived with a different message.
She had attended Robb Elementary School only a few years ago and had befriended one of the victims, Jacqueline Casares, in an after-school …
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