77 minutes of "good guys with guns" aiming down an empty hallway

I watched the Uvalde surveillance video so you don't have to

The images are from a surveillance camera mounted high on the wall at the end of the hallway where the killings took place.  At 11:33 a.m., a long-haired figure dressed all in black, carrying an AR-15 style semi-automatic rifle, walks through a door from the outside into the school hallway, makes a right and proceeds down a second hall to the door of one of the classrooms, opens fire at the door, enters the classroom and continues firing. 

The gunshots continue with only brief interruptions for the next two and half minutes.  At 11:36, as the firing can still be heard, two police officers appear from the entrance hallway.  Both officers are clad in bulletproof vests.  One is carrying a semi-automatic handgun.  The other is carrying an AR-15 style rifle similar to the gunman’s.  A third officer appears carrying an AR-15 style rifle, and then a fourth.  Then a fifth and a sixth officer appear, both carrying semi-automatic handguns.

Three of the officers move down the hallway to positions near the classroom where the shooting could be heard. 

Less than 15 seconds after the first police officer entered the building, there were six officers in the school hallway wearing bulletproof vests with pockets on the chest and back that contain extra “plates” – thick Kevlar shields that can be slipped into the pockets to provide extra protection.  The vests were first designed to be used by the U.S. military and were specified to stop a round fired by an AK-47 rifle, a larger bullet than the ones fired by AR-15 style rifles.

Three of the officers were carrying guns that were the equivalent of the killer’s.  Three were carrying handguns that fired either 9 mm or 40 caliber bullets designed specifically to kill human beings.  All of the officers, I think we can assume, had firearms training and had probably participated in so-called active-shooter training where they entered simulated hallways and rooms and fired at human silhouette targets to prepare them for exactly the situation they found themselves in at the Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas on that day.

They had no way of knowing this, but the officers were confronting a suspect who purchased his guns only days before the shooting right after he turned 18 years old.  He had no firearms training of any kind. 

At 11:37, shots are fired down the hallway, and the three officers nearest to the classroom retreat, running.  One of them appears to have been wounded in the ear and shouts something to that effect to the other officers.  He disappears in the direction of the door to the outside.  Two officers take cover around the corners of the walls on opposite sides of the hallway, aiming their weapons down the hall.  One is aiming an AR-15 style rifle, the other a handgun.  The officer with the handgun retreats out of sight.  A third officer takes his position of cover, aiming his handgun down the hall as more shots ring out from the direction of the classroom.  He soon moves down the hall to a kind of divider in the wall where he can take cover, and aims his handgun down the hall. 

Two minutes had passed since the officers arrived.  It’s not possible to see exactly what the three officers did who moved close to the classroom and then retreated, but all that the others have done so far is aim their weapons down the hall in the direction of the classroom where they all know shots have been fired and children are likely dead and dying.

By 11:50, there are six officers visible in the hallway, all of them wearing bulletproof vests, at least three armed with AR-15 style rifles.  Two take cover around the edge of the walls, aiming their weapons down the hall.  The others are further away, down the halls to the left and right.  At 11:52, an officer clad in a camouflage military-style uniform wearing a Kevlar helmet and bulletproof vest arrives carrying a ballistic shield.  He leans the shield against the wall in front of one of the officers taking cover at the corner.  The officer continues to aim his AR-15 style rifle down the hall, now using the ballistic shield as cover.  The officer in the military-style uniform and helmet moves out of sight.

At 11:55, another officer armed with an AR-15 style rifle appears and takes a position behind the officer using the ballistic shield as cover.  At 11:57, another officer takes a position of cover behind the wall on the opposite side of the hallway.  There are now three officers with their AR-15 style rifles aimed down the empty hallway in the direction of the classroom where the shooting could be heard only moments before.  At 12:04, a second ballistic shield is placed next to the first, and a total of four officers armed with AR-15 style rifles are aiming them down the empty hallway.  Just before 12:05, a third ballistic shield is placed on the ground across the hall from the other two, leaning against the wall. 

That ballistic shield just sits there, unused even as passive protection, for the next 15 minutes.

At 12:21, four shots ring out from the direction of the classroom.  During all this time, not one of the ballistic shields has been picked up and used for the purpose for which it was designed – to be carried in front of an officer as he moves forward against an armed gunman.  All the ballistic shields have been sitting on the ground and used for passive protection by officers aiming their weapons – AR-15 style rifles – down an empty hallway.

At 12:21 plus 30 seconds, seven or eight officers, all of them in bulletproof vests, several wearing helmets, two of them at last carrying the ballistic shields, move down the hallway.  By 12:24, more officers in military-style camo uniforms wearing bulletproof vests and helmets have moved down the hallway, several carrying backpacks and some sort of specialized equipment.  I can’t see clearly, but I can count at least 19 officers in the hallway now.  Most are clustered down near the classroom, but some are at the end of the hall.  There is a lot of talk and pointing and planning going on.  All of this talking and planning and pointing goes on for the next 20 or so minutes. 

At 12:47, there is a jam of officers, some standing, some kneeling, down the hall near the classroom.  At 12:48, a sledgehammer is passed down the hall in the direction of the classroom.  At 12:50, there is a flurry of movement of officers and a series of quick shots can be heard. 

Exactly 77 minutes after the first officer could be seen entering the hallway of the school, the classroom was breached a group of Border Patrol officers and the 18-year-old gunman, armed with a single AR-15 style rifle, was killed. 

Until that moment, all that the officers who could be seen on the surveillance video did was take cover around the corners of walls and behind ballistic shields, aim their rifles and handguns down an empty hallway, and talk with each other.

A total of 21 human beings died during that time – 19 elementary school children and two of their teachers.  Other children and a teacher were wounded, some severely. 

Two police officers suffered minor wounds.  None were killed.

The state of Texas is conducting several investigations of what happened at the Robb Elementary School on that day.  I hope the investigations focus on training the police officers in Texas to do more with their high-powered weapons than aim them down empty hallways of schools where children have been killed.