mass shooting

What Went Wrong With The Uvalde Police Response?

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Uvalde Police Response What Happened?

Uvalde police department, school police dept. under scrutiny – The Washington Post

The school district police chief made the decision not to breach the classroom where a gunman was shooting children and teachers, officials said.

As details emerge of the horrific attack it has become clear that as many as 19 officers were being held in the hallway of the school while the solo gunman continued to kill children even as 9-1-1 operators had repeated calls from one or more of the fourth graders pleading for the police to come in.

The incident commander decided that the shooter was a barricaded subject, but children inside the school called 9-1-1 and pleaded for help. The supervisor’s decision to not confront the shooter was the wrong decision. It ultimately was a border patrol tactical team that went in and neutralized the shooter. This occurred a full 90-minutes after the shooter’s grandmother called 9-1-1 to report that her grandson had shot her in the face.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said he wants the police chief of the Uvalde school district to be fired, but he has no say in the matter. In an interview on Friday, Governor Abbot made it clear he was not happy that the chain of command had lied to him about the sequence and timing of events.

The Uvalde School District police chief is Pedro “Pete” Arredondo. Arredondo was introduced at a news conferences, but provided little information about the shooting.

Arredondo has nearly three decades of experience in law enforcement, was elected to the city council, and headed the Uvalde district command since 2020.

Texas has active shooter training for officers that teaches a ‘go to the gun’ approach. There should have been no confusion about how to proceed. Especially when those at risk were largely defenseless children.

For more on this story, please consider these sources:

  1. Uvalde police department, school police dept. under scrutiny  The Washington Post
  2. Texas police: “Wrong decision” to delay confronting gunman  CBS Evening News
  3. Focus turns to Uvalde school police chief’s decision not to send officers inside. Here’s what we know about him  CNN
  4. Former 911 dispatcher: Mistakes likely in Uvalde  KXAN.com
  5. Opinion | Yes, we should ‘back the blue.’ But they must fulfill their oaths.  The Washington Post
  6. View Full Coverage on Google News

Satanic Gunman Kills At Least 19 Children and 2 Adults

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Gunman kills at least 19 children at Texas elementary school – The Associated Press

Officials said that an 18-year-old gunman opened fire at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, killing at least 19 children and three adults. It was the deadliest shooting at a U.S. grade school since Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut in 2012.

The school district superintendent said the attack broke him and that the community needed prayers to get through it. The attack came just 10 days after a deadly, rampage at a Buffalo, New York, supermarket.

The gunman killed his grandmother and then went inside the school with two rifles he had purchased on his birthday.

The governor identified the attacker as Salvador Ramos, a resident of the community about 85 miles (135 kilometers) west of San Antonio. A Border Patrol agent shot and killed the gunman, who was behind a barricade.

The shooting occurred at Robb Elementary School, and heavily armed law enforcement officers swarmed to the scene. Biden was briefed on the shooting on Air Force One during a flight back from Asia.

In 2018, a gunman shot and killed 10 people at Santa Fe High School in the Houston area and 23 people at a Walmart in El Paso.

After the Sandy Hook shooting, a bipartisan proposal to expand the nation’s background check system was negotiated by Sen. Joe Manchin and Sen. Patrick J. Toomey but failed to get enough votes to clear a 60-vote filibuster hurdle.

Two bills to expand background checks on firearms purchases were passed in the House but failed in the Senate.

In a country where schools are supposed to be safe there has to be answers to protect the kids.

For more on this story, please consider these sources:

  1. Gunman kills at least 18 children at Texas elementary school  The Associated Press
  2. Uvalde Texas: School shooting suspect shot and killed grandmother before entering campus: officials  ABC7
  3. How many children have to die before America changes its gun laws?  The Independent
  4. San Antonio campuses banning backpacks after deadly school shooting in Uvalde  mySA
  5. Editorial: School shootings like that in Uvalde are killing the nation’s soul slowly  Los Angeles Times
  6. View Full Coverage on Google News

Mass Shooting Alert Multiple Shooters at High School Prom Party

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Mass Shooting Iowa - Photo by Jacob Morch on Unsplasha

Three students were injured at a house party in the 400 block of Foster Drive in Des Moines, Iowa. The 17-year-old female and both 18-year-old males will survive their gunshot injuries, according to the Des Moines Police.

A resident shared his thoughts after seeing the news about the shooting on Sunday. He said he never expected an incident like this to happen along Foster Drive.

“The priority is figuring out who’s pulling the trigger,” said Sgt. Paul Parizek with the Des Moines Police Department.

In 2020, more Americans died of gun-related injuries than in any other year on record, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The rate of gun deaths remains below the levels of earlier years.  It is based on the CDC and the FBI data and covers three distinct periods: 1968 to 1978, 1979 to 1998, and 1999 to 2020.

The rate of gun fatalities varies widely by state. In 2020, Mississippi had the highest rate, followed by Louisiana, Wyoming, Missouri, Alabama, and Mississippi.  Iowa is way down the list.

There is no single, agreed-upon definition of the term “mass shooting,” and the number of victims in these incidents can vary. Regardless of the definition, mass shooting incidents account for a small fraction of all gun murders nationwide each year.  The unpredictability of mass shooting incidents makes it difficult to determine a trend in the frequency of these incidents.