Uvalde After Action Report

[doofus47]

Uvalde brings me back to the first question I have for people who think that gun limits are a good thing:
"What if the gov't doesn't WANT to help you?"

[HiBC]

When I watched the footage of SWAT activity after Columbine ,from my civilian point of view, it looked like a bad parody. A bunch of black clad keystone cops running up and down in formation making "Hooo-Ah Hoo-ahh" noises while inside the building people are bleeding out and being executed by two coward punks.
SUPPOSEDLY what makes up for institutional failure is: Fund A Study ! Make up a committee! Observe the obvious. Lay the responsibility on something inanimate. (Policy,training, SUV's ,Guns,etc) and then have a press conference.

Whatever the conclusion, generally no one is held responsible, everybody keeps their job, but if you give us enough money, we'll try to make sure it does not happen again. Now,go back to sleep.

I've worked as a school custodian. You can write any policy you want, Students and teachers will prop doors open. Secure access ,metal detectors,etc,sound great. Its illusion.

Post Columbine, the "New Doctrine" supposedly is when there is an active shooter, apply the resources you have and take immediate action to stop the killing.
That MIGHT be as risky as jumping off a Huey at LZ X-ray , or taking a Huey back into LZ X-Ray. Or wading into Omaha Beach or heading back into the World Trade Center. Or backing up an "Officer Down" who needs help.

2007, New Life Church, Colorado Springs, congregation 7000... a homicidal nut with an AR-15, two handguns,and approx 1000 rounds in a backpack started killing on his way into the church and was shooting as he entered the building.

Former LEO Jeanne was armed volunteer security in the congregation. With her sidearm,she headed for the sound of the guns and put the killer down.

Thats the call. When Fate deals the cards, sometimes its YOU. Jeanne said it was Her and God. There is nobody else. The concept of "Call SWAT" is a way to avoid taking action.

It might be an excellent idea to call SWAT. EMS,too! You might get shot! But at least the killer will spend ammo on you instead of a kid.

Now,straight up, talk is cheap. I make no claim to being a courageous hero.

We never know till it happens, Any of us can be that one guy that stands up. Any of us can be that guy that waits for SWAT. Like 300+ others did.

Believe me,as a Custodian for an elementary school "What would I do" is a point I pondered.

What do you do? Bam. Dead kid. Seconds later,Bam,dead kid. Bam. Bam.

For the rest of my life I will have to look in the mirror. Bam. Bam..

For the rest of my life I will have to try to sleep. Bam Bam. I hear screaming.

I can wait for SWAT. No Command is telling me to go. Bam


I may have my history and details wrong,but maybe you will get the point.

When Crazy Horse confronted Custer, he said something like "Hoka Hey"

Or roughly,"Its a Good Day to Die"

If you search on youtube,"Little Big Man" there is a scene where Chief Dan George gives his Death Statement. "Its a good day to die"

On 9-11, on one plane,the passengers said "Lets Roll"

Of course, the plan is the bad guy goes down.

You can't make the ride if you don't get in the saddle. Bam. Bam.

Hoka Hey.

Ask the 300 plus Officers how they feel about doing nothing.

[Wag]

Well said, HiBC. All of that.

--Wag--

[mehavey]

Every decision is now questioned,
which leads to indecision.

Indecision gets people killed.
Every time.....

[thallub]

"Whatever the conclusion, generally no one is held responsible, everybody keeps their job, but if you give us enough money, we'll try to make sure it does not happen again. Now,go back to sleep."

Your post is the best i've ever read on the web.

i was working in the area when Columbine went down. Listened to the debacle on a police scanner.

91 Texas state troopers and Texas Rangers responded to Uvalde. Some had rank, none had the cajones to take charge and stop the massacre. None will lose their jobs:

https://www.khou.com/article/news/lo...3-ffcd2b78e73b

[ChimpMunk20]

Originally Posted by Gas Bag

That was a cluster of cowards, IMO.

I guess cops are only tough on movies.

[mehavey]

Again...

....Every decision is now questioned,
....which leads to indecision.

....Indecision gets people killed.
....Every time.....

Cowards? More likely rats in a maze who have been previously and repeatedly shocked into shivering inaction.

[stinkeypete]

My eyes see a bunch of armchair quarterbacks here that have never burst through a door KNOWING a man with an assault rifle is holed up. Especially in the case where chain of command was garbled.

It’s not a cop’s job to commit suicide. One that acts like Rambo will certainly be the scape goat if it all goes horribly wrong.

You want simple solutions for a vastly complex social issue. Those solutions are wrong. It’s a difficult issue requiring complex solutions.

Just off the cuff.. the teachers all have had state wide security checks, had their finger prints taken and run against the national database, and international if they have been overseas. Well, that’s in Wisconsin. The young man? He filled out a 1 page checklist.

[TunnelRat]

Originally Posted by stinkeypete

My eyes see a bunch of armchair quarterbacks here that have never burst through a door KNOWING a man with an assault rifle is holed up. Especially in the case where chain of command was garbled.

It’s not a cop’s job to commit suicide. One that acts like Rambo will certainly be the scape goat if it all goes horribly wrong.

I don’t see anyone here asking a police officer to commit suicide. Meanwhile you continue to sidestep the facts of this particular case, including the number of officers on scene, the length of time the assailant was allowed to remain in the classroom without contestation, etc. Those details matter and they go to the reactions you see here.

As for the argument that we personally haven’t rushed an assailant with a semiautomatic rifle and therefore our opinions are invalid, you are ignoring that this incident was reviewed by other members of law enforcement and those law enforcement members are the ones who leveraged much of the criticism you see repeated here and in the report from the OP.

Over the years I have seen the “armchair quarterback” comment come up here periodically. Frankly, from my point of view to make that comment on the Tactics and Training sub forum misses in many if not most cases the point of this sub forum. There’s a time where you need to put emotion aside, be objective, and attempt to learn from a situation to hopefully improve the result later. Doing this has many names, one of which is an after action report, but it is done in many occupations and in my experience the people to which it is done are generally used to it happening as a function of their jobs. It seems to me that other people are bothered more than the people directly involved in the process, which I think is somewhat odd. There is a political sub forum to this overall forum, but this is not it. Here is for Tactics and Training and the responses are in that vein.


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[Wag]

Originally Posted by stinkeypete

My eyes see a bunch of armchair quarterbacks here that have never burst through a door KNOWING a man with an assault rifle is holed up. Especially in the case where chain of command was garbled.

It’s not a cop’s job to commit suicide. One that acts like Rambo will certainly be the scape goat if it all goes horribly wrong.

You want simple solutions for a vastly complex social issue. Those solutions are wrong. It’s a difficult issue requiring complex solutions.

Just off the cuff.. the teachers all have had state wide security checks, had their finger prints taken and run against the national database, and international if they have been overseas. Well, that’s in Wisconsin. The young man? He filled out a 1 page checklist.

And yet, this post you just made is an armchair quarterback post itself. As if your sweeping judgement applies to everyone else on the forum.

It doesn't.

Our academy trained us to move in immediately. Solo, if we had to. How to move through the building toward the shooting.

Officers jump in on dangerous situations all the time. A DV call is dangerous. A shooter holed up in a house is dangerous. A drunk in a convenience store. ALL traffic stops are potentially deadly.

And yet, cops jump in on all of those all the time. I suppose people armchair QB those guys, too, saying that they should stay back.

Law enforcement at the level of the LEO is black and white. They don't get to walk away and let a bad guy walk. They are required to bring that person in.

If cops are standing around while a BG is shooting little kids in a school, damn right I'm going to judge them.

--Wag--

[jar]

It appears that cops are human.

[wild cat mccane]

So training did nothing.

That was the bastion of the small group of people who want absolutely no control on firearms.

There are and should be consequences that this didn't work.

It also predicates itself on the fact that the police have to respond to murder at a school already occurring.

[Double Naught Spy]

stinkypete, it seems like you are okay with the cop's performance in Uvalde, which is really interesting because I have yet to find a cop who agrees with you. It is a cliche, but today's cops are taught to deal with this sort of situation and standing around cuffing parents and taking guns away from cops who do want to make entry does seem to be the realm of cowards. These people not only didn't do their jobs, but actively worked to keep other people from doing their jobs as cops and as parents.
https://www.ksat.com/news/local/2022...-to-save-wife/

The attitude of "We aren't going to do anything so we don't want anyone else making us look bad" is not how you build confidence with the community despite the really sexy and menacing FB pics of the Uvalde SWAT team bragging about how they are inspecting schools in case something like this happened. https://www.vice.com/en/article/wxdw...ls-on-facebook

You have the Uvalde ISD Police chief on scene without a radio, issuing orders, telling people that it is a barricade situation (despite there still being shots inside) and telling officers not to make entry, then claiming he wasn't in charge. This guy used his authority (as so many cowards did that day) to keep people for helping children and teachers who were dying of survivable wounds if they got medical attention.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/03/u...-response.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/22/u...ive-leave.html

An NO, this is not Monday morning QBing. This is actual and documented history.

You really have to wonder why it took a federal Border Patrol SWAT team to make entry and why it was that district, local, and county cops could not handle the situation. The BORDER PATROL made entry. Not the SROs, not the local high speed low drag killer outfits Uvalde PD SWAT team, not the county deputies, not the Texas DPS, but a federal Border Patrol Team...and it wasn't their job, not a border issue.

[wild cat mccane]

Also in the most "gun" culture state or area, probably in the world.

So...

[TunnelRat]

Originally Posted by wild cat mccane

Also in the most "gun" culture state or area, probably in the world.

So...

So what? I’m trying to figure out between this comment and your previous comment what your point is here.


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[cjwils]

Looking at a video of the cops in the hallway, I see that some of them had ballistic shields. I know nothing about those. I assume there is a range of strength and thickness, and a range of what bullets can be resisted. Can anyone tell by looking if those shields could have resisted bullets from an AR15? That would have given the cops much greater protection if they had advanced.

[fastbolt]

We're talking about protecting the most valuable resource to guarantee the future of our society ... meaning our children.

Yes, entering into a contained structure environment to look for an armed/active shooter is dangerous. Very. No surprise there.

So, it was approx 1hr20min from the time the suspect made his entry to the school building, to the time the police 'neutralized' him?

Administrative/tactical review aside, that's too long. People can die every few seconds during an active shooter incident. Especially with a lot of potential victims unable to escape the area.

I've spoken and listened to a number of retired and still-active cops about this debacle. Lots of years of experience and assorted training among them. Nobody with whom I've spoken has admired the actions exhibited on-scene in Uvalde. Even a cop who is currently familiar and tasked with training an agency for these sort of situations isn't buying excuses for anything less than an immediate aggressive entry, no matter the lack of additional personnel or the level of safety equipment and weapons available.

Yes, cops responding to such scenes are going to be putting themselves at great risk of seriously bodily injury or death. Comes with the job. Don't like it? Well, you can always work harder to promote upward and ride (behind) a desk back at headquarters.

If it was easy or safe, anybody could do it.

Yes, ARR's are MMQB exercises. Considering the decades and opportunities during which we've been able to acquire experience regarding what can go right/wrong when threats enter our schools, why haven't we already war-gamed such things?

Just my thoughts.

[44 AMP]

Anybody else here remember when officer safety was NOT job #1 in the police depts??


I'm not expecting or demanding the cops do stupidly suicidal things, only that they not stand around, doing nothing useful, while people are being killed.

The system, and rigid adherence to it is what failed in this case. As I see it,,anyway...

[Limnophile]

You are, by circumstance and law, your own first responder:

https://youtu.be/yyDcjUuYUgs

[Limnophile]

Originally Posted by 44 AMP

Anybody else here remember when officer safety was NOT job #1 in the police depts??

I think the LE mission shifted to cop safety über alles with the 1980's show, Hill Street Blues. After each opening roll call the presiding sergeant would conclude with, "Let's be careful out there." Society morphed this into officer safety above else, despite the fact that law enforcement is not even one of the ten most hazardous jobs in the country:

https://advisorsmith.com/data/most-dangerous-jobs/

Being a cop is the 25th most dangerous job category. Being a logger is #1, nearly six-times more dangerous than being a cop. If you want to honor a patriot, thank a logger, a pilot, a roofer, a construction worker, a crossing guard, a garbage collector, a farm supervisor, a delivery driver, an iron worker, or a farmer. Yes, the people who grow or raise your food die on the job at more than twice the rate cops do. And, they are not covered by a SCOTUS ruling saying they have no duty to protect (i.e., no duty to do the job they were hired to do; see above), nor do they have virtual unqualified immunity that preserves their job when they either err or flagrantly violate the law.

[Double Naught Spy]

Being a cop is the 25th most dangerous job category.

And there is a very decent chance that if a cop is injured or killed in the line of duty, it is a non-pursuit traffic accident rather than some sort of battle.

With that said, I think Uvalde could have been summed up with this Washington Post headline...
"Police slow to engage with gunman because 'they could've been shot,' official says" that quoted a TxDPS Lt. spokeman.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/natio...shot-olivarez/

You are, by circumstance and law, your own first responder:

Thank God we had highly trained small children in that school, right?

[shafter]

Something very strange is going on when these same poorly trained cops consistently run into danger for domestics, mental health, and other gun calls, and take charge and solve the problem, yet, whenever its a school they show up in dozens or even hundreds but no one does anything even though the doctrine on how to resolve school shootings is crystal clear these days.

I don't really have a point here, but I find it extremely odd that this happens. It's one of those things that makes you stop and think.

[Double Naught Spy]

shafter, you are making an interesting point, even if you don't know it. I think we will see more and more of this. Things were supposed to have changed since Columbine and a LOT of officers have been VERY proactive in seeking and stopping/destroying active shooters. Then we have the 'fraidy cops. I don't have a nicer way to say that.

In the case of Uvalde and King Soopers in Colorado, you had cops make entry fairly quickly, got their noses bloodied (at King Soopers, one was killed) and apparently that was the one and only trick they knew and after that, it was surround and contain the premises, wait for backup, and to hell with anyone inside. It was like they tried one thing and then were just all out of ideas of what to do to help anybody inside.

At Parkland, there was a highly trained and decorated SRO on premises at the time the shooting started. He responded across campus, but made zero attempt to engage and remained outside of the involved building. He, like the officers at Uvalde, actively worked to keep other officers from attempting to make entry or otherwise engage the shooter.

For crying out loud, if you won't do your job, then please don't stop other people from doing theirs.

[JohnKSa]

I think that one thing to keep in mind is that we can't make excuses for the cops just because we feel that it's understandable for people to be scared in that situation.

The key thing to remember is that they signed up to do that job.

No one made them be cops--they chose to do the job knowing that it would entail danger.

No one was standing over them making them continue to be cops. At any time, if they stopped being willing to deal with the inherent risks they can pick another job.

There are jobs out there I would never take. Jobs I would not do, even for a lot of money. But the fact that I refuse to do them doesn't give the people who DO choose to do those jobs, the right to do them badly or incorrectly.

If you CHOOSE to do a particular job, then it's up to you to do it right, and you should bear the responsibility if you do it wrong or fail to do it when required. NOT because it's easy. NOT because I would be willing to do it, but because you CHOSE to do it, you have been trained to do it and because people are relying on you to do it.

[44 AMP]

Society morphed this into officer safety above else, despite the fact that law enforcement is not even one of the ten most hazardous jobs in the country

I think it might be more accurate to say that it was police culture, not general society's attitudes that changed the most.

Cops rarely get in personal trouble if they follow established procedures, even when doing that fails to save lives. The cops don't get the blame their procedures and training do.

IF that even happens...

So, this is where I have a problem, yes its a dangerous job, but none of the cops are draftees. Everyone one is a volunteer, who not only sought out the job, but managed to complete the training required, and so knows full well the risks the job entails. AND, they get PAID to do it.

I believe that creates a certain moral and ethical responsibility. I also believe that lockstep adherence to established protocol, (including doing nothing without specific direction) when it is obvious that is putting innocent people at risk is a breach of that responsibility.