Written by Will Moravits
"43 cops, 43 cowards."
On May 24, 2022, nineteen students and two teachers were murdered at Robb Elementary school in Uvalde, Texas by a gunman. Officers arrived within three minutes, were fired on, retreated, and did not continue the advance on rooms 111 and 112. The Border Patrol’s elite tactical unit, BORTAC, was called and, 37 minutes after arriving, killed the gunman. For 74 minutes, a total of 43 police officers from multiple agencies were in that hallway – waiting.
How did the media describe it? Cowards. All of them. Those cowards included a Texas Ranger (in the building for 42 minutes) and the Commander of the elite tactical unit (in the building for 37 minutes, including when the gunman started firing again at 12:21 pm).
Did we really have 43 cowards present that day? Forty-three out of 43?
Almost all the children and one teacher were killed before officers had an opportunity to intervene. After they retreated, for the next 72 minutes, the gunman fired six more, allegedly at the door [this is what DPS Director McCraw said].
The Texas Department of Public Safety stepped in and started controlling the narrative. The school police chief didn’t speak at press conferences. But the DPS Director certainly did. Often.
The DPS Director’s first narrative was that the cops were heroes and acted quickly, saving lives. Then that narrative changed. The cops made “the wrong decision, period.”
Four weeks later, in his 2½-hour Senate Testimony, the director placed all blame on one bad cop, the school's police chief, who was “stopping a hallway of dedicated officers from entering” the classrooms and rescuing children.
Nonsense. The Director created a scapegoat narrative. It was nonsense, but it stuck.
The media spiced up the story. CNN’s expert told viewers the gunman was “mowing down little kids” while the cops waited. Anderson Cooper led his viewers to believe that officers were listening to children screaming for those 74 minutes. (“What we’re not seeing in this [surveillance] video, and what we’re not hearing, are the screams of children, that go on and on.”)
It wasn’t true. No officers heard any screams – as evidenced by the hallway and bodycam videos. But it’s what the public largely believes to this day.
Even Al Gore repeated it when he said, “…all of those almost 400 law-enforcement officers in Uvalde, Texas who were waiting outside an unlocked door while the children were being massacred. They heard the screams, they heard the gunshots, and nobody stepped forward.”
In fact, none of the first-arriving officers knew how to enter that dark classroom (they claimed) with an AR15-armed gunman lying in wait, perhaps surrounded by children. So, they didn’t. They called in SWAT.
The video showed passive officers, seemingly frozen, just not knowing exactly what to do. The gunfire had stopped. The officers didn’t hear any screams. They didn’t know what was inside the classroom. They thought there was a good chance it was a “bailout” – where a Mexican human/drug smuggler is being chased by police. That had become a very common occurrence over the previous two years in Uvalde. And so, they sat there, frozen.
Later, when information began to disseminate throughout the hall that there were kids inside and some had been shot, officers from multiple agencies continued to wait.
In his testimony, the DPS Director placed no blame on his own officers. Then, four months later, under media scrutiny about his scapegoat narrative, he changed that.
Now the third narrative. It turns out, some of his offers (who received no blame in his Senate testimony) were now to blame. So badly that they needed to be fired.
All the while, the “coward cops” narrative had stuck. Political pundits and media personalities from all stripes, including those who normally are very supportive of the men and women in blue, were quick to call the Uvalde cops cowards for their actions, or lack thereof. Over the next few months, information and video from the police response came out piecemeal, increasing the beliefs that led to the coward cop claim.
Did we really have 43 cowards present that day? Forty-three out of 43?
In addition to criticism of school police Chief Pete Arredondo, the media heavily criticized two other officers in the video. One was seen checking his cell phone while taking cover around the corner of the hallway. The media had a field day with “Cell Phone Cop,” who was checking his cell phone – presumably while children a few feet away were being massacred, screaming for help.
Who was he? We later hearned he was the husband of a teacher who had been shot. She was texting him. She later died.
Then there was “Hand Sanitizer Cop." The media went crazy over him too. Who was he? A cop with medical training who arrived later. He was waiting for SWAT/BORTAC to enter the room and, presumably, use those medical skills to attempt to save lives. He used the hand-sanitizer while he waited.
Some critics have pointed out that he later touches the wall of the hallway. I agree that this action may seem odd, but I also know a thing or two about psychology (my BA was in Psych), and people do many subconscious things in high stress situations, especially while you are waiting for something to do. It is likely that he wasn’t even aware of what he was doing. For keyboard warriors to pick apart this action is quite petty in my opinion.
I never bought into the claims from the media, political pundits, and even some in law enforcement that the Uvalde cops were cowards.
Did we really have 43 cowards present that day? Forty-three out of 43? Unlikely. There had to be more to the story.
I was born and raised in Uvalde, Texas. Five generations of my family have lived there. My mother and stepfather spent decades as public school teachers. They taught many of the people involved, including teachers, parents and police. Irma Garcia, the teacher who died, grew up three doors down from me. The teacher across the hall was my classmate. Pete Arredondo grew up with my older brother. Dr. Roy Guerrero, who received the injured children, was a classmate. Another friend’s mother worked in one of the funeral homes.
I knew that Uvalde was a close-knit community. The cops knew the teachers and students in that school. One of the girls murdered was the daughter of a Uvalde deputy who arrived on scene prior to the gunman being killed. They knew the parents, were probably friends with some of them. I couldn’t accept that they were cowards. Maybe there were some among their numbers, but all 43? No way.
Another factor in my thinking is that I’m a former cop who worked for the City of San Marcos, TX, the very department that helped create the Active Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training (ALERRT) program in conjunction with Texas State University (where I now teach political science) and the federal government.
ALERRT is the premier training center for active shooter response for law enforcement. I took training with ALERRT several times in my short career at SMPD in addition to the week-long training in active shooter response I had in the police academy at the University of Texas, the site of the first major mass school shooting in American history.
I knew that there must be something else going on as there was no way that many cops would ignore their training. As it turns out, when all the information became more readily available, I was proven correct.
Unfortunately, the lies and myths about that day are still held by most. What’s the saying? A lie can make it halfway around the world before the truth can put on its shoes. While there is much to criticize about that day and the police response, which I will touch on later, the claim of cowardice doesn’t hold up to scrutiny.
On January 18, 2024, the DOJ released their report on the Uvalde shooting. A part of the investigative team for that report was John Mina, the Incident Commander at the Pulse Nightclub shooting in Orlando, FL. On the night of June 12, 2016, 49 people were murdered and 53 people were injured at a gay nightclub.
In the DOJ report of the Pulse shooting, the police were noted for their “bravery, strength, and professionalism.” The DOJ called the police response “appropriate and consistent with national guidelines and best practices.” The DOJ stated that the police response “saved lives” and that the officers “performed with great heroism.” That the officers “who responded to the Pulse that night are some of the bravest and most dedicated of public servants.” All responding agencies “performed valiantly.” Additionally, the DOJ stated that the police decision to treat the situation as a “hostage/barricaded” subject was the correct decision.
However, the DOJ’s report on Uvalde called the police response a “failure” that did not follow best practices and stated that treating the situation as a “hostage/barricade” was the wrong decision.
When comparing the police responses to these two shootings, we see striking similarities. In Uvalde, officers immediately entered the building and moved towards gunfire. According the ALERRT textbook, page 69 states that making the gunman aware of officers’ presence can save lives.
Note that the Robb hallway video shows that shooting inside the classroom stops once the gunman realizes officers are present. The only shots fired thereafter were fired towards the door at 12:21 pm. At that point, several agencies, including the highly trained BORTAC unit of Customs and Border Protection (CBP), were also in the hallway. At Pulse, officers waited three minutes to enter the nightclub.
After initially taking fire from the gunman, officers at Robb retreated, some with minor wounds from shrapnel. Once officers returned inside the hall, the Uvalde response treated the gunman as a barricaded subject, despite many later learning during the standoff that kids were inside and some had been shot.
Seventy-four minutes passed from the first officer entering the hallway before the gunman was confronted and killed. At Pulse, the gunman was barricaded in the restroom with victims and was not confronted and killed for another 188 minutes after police made entry into the club.
In the aftermath of the Pulse shooting, Mina stated that waiting to confront and kill the gunman was the “right decision.”
My point here is not to place blame on any one person, agency, etc. It is simply to point out the glaring discrepancies between the DOJ reports on two incidents that are quite similar. Why the disparity in the DOJ’s conclusions?
Perhaps it’s partially because people have a more visceral reaction to kids murdered in their school than for adults being killed at a nightclub, despite both being tragic events. At Pulse, 49 adults were killed at night with little to no video of the shooting or police response having been released. At Uvalde, nineteen children and two teachers were murdered. Hallway/bodycam video was released to the masses in piecemeal form. Details being released little by little, often without proper context, lent to the outrage people felt towards the cops who responded to Robb Elementary.
Regarding the police response, the most notable difference is that at Pulse, a clear incident command was organized and took charge. At Uvalde, no such incident command was established by any of the agencies that were on scene, which included Uvalde CISD Police, Uvalde PD, Uvalde County Sheriff’s Dept, Texas DPS, and the United States CBP.
That difference is perhaps the most crucial mistake made during the Uvalde response.
Training was another area of failure for the profession. After the Pulse shooting, the ALERRT manual was updated to include the training point that injured hostages means active shooter. Conversely, training in active shooter response was spotty at best for most of the officers in the hallway.
At the time of the Uvalde shooting, the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement (TCOLE) did not require basic peace officers to take active shooter training (the 2023 legislative session has made this a requirement going forward). Only members of school police departments and School Resource Officers (SROs) were mandated to take the training.
Obviously, that means that there were several officers in the hallway, even from the beginning, who had the training. However, some of these officers had not taken the training in several years (many before the Pulse update was added), some took active shooter training from organizations that utilized a power point presentation as opposed to the intense, live action, simmunitions training ALERRT provides.
Finally, some officers in the hallway had never taken the training. This failure was a critical aspect of the police response at Robb.
Sadly, there will be more school shootings. There will probably be more mistakes made. We need to be honest about what really happened at Uvalde and make the law enforcement response better.
We need better training, and to train more often. We need to make schools safer. We need to be able to better identify and help students who are going down a dark path.
What we don’t need to do is tell false stories about coward cops who knew what they were supposed to do and just failed because they were scared. That doesn’t help protect kids in the future. We must evaluate these shootings without an ulterior motive or to push a political narrative so that we can keep improving and do better when evil comes knocking on the door once again.
"43 cops, 43 cowards."
On May 24, 2022, nineteen students and two teachers were murdered at Robb Elementary school in Uvalde, Texas by a gunman. Officers arrived within three minutes, were fired on, retreated, and did not continue the advance on rooms 111 and 112. The Border Patrol’s elite tactical unit, BORTAC, was called and, 37 minutes after arriving, killed the gunman. For 74 minutes, a total of 43 police officers from multiple agencies were in that hallway – waiting.
How did the media describe it? Cowards. All of them. Those cowards included a Texas Ranger (in the building for 42 minutes) and the Commander of the elite tactical unit (in the building for 37 minutes, including when the gunman started firing again at 12:21 pm).
Did we really have 43 cowards present that day? Forty-three out of 43?
Almost all the children and one teacher were killed before officers had an opportunity to intervene. After they retreated, for the next 72 minutes, the gunman fired six more, allegedly at the door [this is what DPS Director McCraw said].
The Texas Department of Public Safety stepped in and started controlling the narrative. The school police chief didn’t speak at press conferences. But the DPS Director certainly did. Often.
The DPS Director’s first narrative was that the cops were heroes and acted quickly, saving lives. Then that narrative changed. The cops made “the wrong decision, period.”
Four weeks later, in his 2½-hour Senate Testimony, the director placed all blame on one bad cop, the school's police chief, who was “stopping a hallway of dedicated officers from entering” the classrooms and rescuing children.
Nonsense. The Director created a scapegoat narrative. It was nonsense, but it stuck.
The media spiced up the story. CNN’s expert told viewers the gunman was “mowing down little kids” while the cops waited. Anderson Cooper led his viewers to believe that officers were listening to children screaming for those 74 minutes. (“What we’re not seeing in this [surveillance] video, and what we’re not hearing, are the screams of children, that go on and on.”)
It wasn’t true. No officers heard any screams – as evidenced by the hallway and bodycam videos. But it’s what the public largely believes to this day.
Even Al Gore repeated it when he said, “…all of those almost 400 law-enforcement officers in Uvalde, Texas who were waiting outside an unlocked door while the children were being massacred. They heard the screams, they heard the gunshots, and nobody stepped forward.”
In fact, none of the first-arriving officers knew how to enter that dark classroom (they claimed) with an AR15-armed gunman lying in wait, perhaps surrounded by children. So, they didn’t. They called in SWAT.
The video showed passive officers, seemingly frozen, just not knowing exactly what to do. The gunfire had stopped. The officers didn’t hear any screams. They didn’t know what was inside the classroom. They thought there was a good chance it was a “bailout” – where a Mexican human/drug smuggler is being chased by police. That had become a very common occurrence over the previous two years in Uvalde. And so, they sat there, frozen.
Later, when information began to disseminate throughout the hall that there were kids inside and some had been shot, officers from multiple agencies continued to wait.
In his testimony, the DPS Director placed no blame on his own officers. Then, four months later, under media scrutiny about his scapegoat narrative, he changed that.
Now the third narrative. It turns out, some of his offers (who received no blame in his Senate testimony) were now to blame. So badly that they needed to be fired.
All the while, the “coward cops” narrative had stuck. Political pundits and media personalities from all stripes, including those who normally are very supportive of the men and women in blue, were quick to call the Uvalde cops cowards for their actions, or lack thereof. Over the next few months, information and video from the police response came out piecemeal, increasing the beliefs that led to the coward cop claim.
Did we really have 43 cowards present that day? Forty-three out of 43?
In addition to criticism of school police Chief Pete Arredondo, the media heavily criticized two other officers in the video. One was seen checking his cell phone while taking cover around the corner of the hallway. The media had a field day with “Cell Phone Cop,” who was checking his cell phone – presumably while children a few feet away were being massacred, screaming for help.
Who was he? We later hearned he was the husband of a teacher who had been shot. She was texting him. She later died.
Then there was “Hand Sanitizer Cop." The media went crazy over him too. Who was he? A cop with medical training who arrived later. He was waiting for SWAT/BORTAC to enter the room and, presumably, use those medical skills to attempt to save lives. He used the hand-sanitizer while he waited.
Some critics have pointed out that he later touches the wall of the hallway. I agree that this action may seem odd, but I also know a thing or two about psychology (my BA was in Psych), and people do many subconscious things in high stress situations, especially while you are waiting for something to do. It is likely that he wasn’t even aware of what he was doing. For keyboard warriors to pick apart this action is quite petty in my opinion.
I never bought into the claims from the media, political pundits, and even some in law enforcement that the Uvalde cops were cowards.
Did we really have 43 cowards present that day? Forty-three out of 43? Unlikely. There had to be more to the story.
I was born and raised in Uvalde, Texas. Five generations of my family have lived there. My mother and stepfather spent decades as public school teachers. They taught many of the people involved, including teachers, parents and police. Irma Garcia, the teacher who died, grew up three doors down from me. The teacher across the hall was my classmate. Pete Arredondo grew up with my older brother. Dr. Roy Guerrero, who received the injured children, was a classmate. Another friend’s mother worked in one of the funeral homes.
I knew that Uvalde was a close-knit community. The cops knew the teachers and students in that school. One of the girls murdered was the daughter of a Uvalde deputy who arrived on scene prior to the gunman being killed. They knew the parents, were probably friends with some of them. I couldn’t accept that they were cowards. Maybe there were some among their numbers, but all 43? No way.
Another factor in my thinking is that I’m a former cop who worked for the City of San Marcos, TX, the very department that helped create the Active Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training (ALERRT) program in conjunction with Texas State University (where I now teach political science) and the federal government.
ALERRT is the premier training center for active shooter response for law enforcement. I took training with ALERRT several times in my short career at SMPD in addition to the week-long training in active shooter response I had in the police academy at the University of Texas, the site of the first major mass school shooting in American history.
I knew that there must be something else going on as there was no way that many cops would ignore their training. As it turns out, when all the information became more readily available, I was proven correct.
Unfortunately, the lies and myths about that day are still held by most. What’s the saying? A lie can make it halfway around the world before the truth can put on its shoes. While there is much to criticize about that day and the police response, which I will touch on later, the claim of cowardice doesn’t hold up to scrutiny.
On January 18, 2024, the DOJ released their report on the Uvalde shooting. A part of the investigative team for that report was John Mina, the Incident Commander at the Pulse Nightclub shooting in Orlando, FL. On the night of June 12, 2016, 49 people were murdered and 53 people were injured at a gay nightclub.
In the DOJ report of the Pulse shooting, the police were noted for their “bravery, strength, and professionalism.” The DOJ called the police response “appropriate and consistent with national guidelines and best practices.” The DOJ stated that the police response “saved lives” and that the officers “performed with great heroism.” That the officers “who responded to the Pulse that night are some of the bravest and most dedicated of public servants.” All responding agencies “performed valiantly.” Additionally, the DOJ stated that the police decision to treat the situation as a “hostage/barricaded” subject was the correct decision.
However, the DOJ’s report on Uvalde called the police response a “failure” that did not follow best practices and stated that treating the situation as a “hostage/barricade” was the wrong decision.
When comparing the police responses to these two shootings, we see striking similarities. In Uvalde, officers immediately entered the building and moved towards gunfire. According the ALERRT textbook, page 69 states that making the gunman aware of officers’ presence can save lives.
Note that the Robb hallway video shows that shooting inside the classroom stops once the gunman realizes officers are present. The only shots fired thereafter were fired towards the door at 12:21 pm. At that point, several agencies, including the highly trained BORTAC unit of Customs and Border Protection (CBP), were also in the hallway. At Pulse, officers waited three minutes to enter the nightclub.
After initially taking fire from the gunman, officers at Robb retreated, some with minor wounds from shrapnel. Once officers returned inside the hall, the Uvalde response treated the gunman as a barricaded subject, despite many later learning during the standoff that kids were inside and some had been shot.
Seventy-four minutes passed from the first officer entering the hallway before the gunman was confronted and killed. At Pulse, the gunman was barricaded in the restroom with victims and was not confronted and killed for another 188 minutes after police made entry into the club.
In the aftermath of the Pulse shooting, Mina stated that waiting to confront and kill the gunman was the “right decision.”
My point here is not to place blame on any one person, agency, etc. It is simply to point out the glaring discrepancies between the DOJ reports on two incidents that are quite similar. Why the disparity in the DOJ’s conclusions?
Perhaps it’s partially because people have a more visceral reaction to kids murdered in their school than for adults being killed at a nightclub, despite both being tragic events. At Pulse, 49 adults were killed at night with little to no video of the shooting or police response having been released. At Uvalde, nineteen children and two teachers were murdered. Hallway/bodycam video was released to the masses in piecemeal form. Details being released little by little, often without proper context, lent to the outrage people felt towards the cops who responded to Robb Elementary.
Regarding the police response, the most notable difference is that at Pulse, a clear incident command was organized and took charge. At Uvalde, no such incident command was established by any of the agencies that were on scene, which included Uvalde CISD Police, Uvalde PD, Uvalde County Sheriff’s Dept, Texas DPS, and the United States CBP.
That difference is perhaps the most crucial mistake made during the Uvalde response.
Training was another area of failure for the profession. After the Pulse shooting, the ALERRT manual was updated to include the training point that injured hostages means active shooter. Conversely, training in active shooter response was spotty at best for most of the officers in the hallway.
At the time of the Uvalde shooting, the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement (TCOLE) did not require basic peace officers to take active shooter training (the 2023 legislative session has made this a requirement going forward). Only members of school police departments and School Resource Officers (SROs) were mandated to take the training.
Obviously, that means that there were several officers in the hallway, even from the beginning, who had the training. However, some of these officers had not taken the training in several years (many before the Pulse update was added), some took active shooter training from organizations that utilized a power point presentation as opposed to the intense, live action, simmunitions training ALERRT provides.
Finally, some officers in the hallway had never taken the training. This failure was a critical aspect of the police response at Robb.
Sadly, there will be more school shootings. There will probably be more mistakes made. We need to be honest about what really happened at Uvalde and make the law enforcement response better.
We need better training, and to train more often. We need to make schools safer. We need to be able to better identify and help students who are going down a dark path.
What we don’t need to do is tell false stories about coward cops who knew what they were supposed to do and just failed because they were scared. That doesn’t help protect kids in the future. We must evaluate these shootings without an ulterior motive or to push a political narrative so that we can keep improving and do better when evil comes knocking on the door once again.
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