XPost: alt.education, alt.law-enforcement, talk.politics.guns   
   XPost: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, alt.politics.usa.republican   
   From: zinn@reno.us   
      
   Uvalde, Texas   
   CNN   
    —   
   New audio obtained by CNN shows Texas’s top law enforcement agency knew   
   children were trapped in Robb Elementary more than 30 minutes before   
   anyone shot the gunman and rescued them.   
      
   Less than two minutes after the acting Uvalde police chief Lt. Mariano   
   Pargas got details that children were alive amid classmates massacred in   
   their classroom, essentially the same information was shared with someone   
   at the state’s Department of Public Safety (DPS).   
      
   Pargas, 65, resigned Thursday, two days before a “special meeting” called   
   by the City of Uvalde to decide his fate. The rare Saturday evening   
   meeting was scheduled after CNN revealed he knew a girl was calling from   
   the classroom saying eight or nine children were still alive and he failed   
   to organize help.   
      
   It’s not clear how DPS’s internal investigation is looking at   
   communication failures. The department announced it was reviewing the   
   actions of the 91 DPS officers who made it to Robb Elementary on May 24,   
   the day 19 children and two teachers died while a shooter holed up in   
   classrooms for 77 minutes.   
      
   Those failures would include what happened at the headquarters in Austin,   
   as well as how information was shared by phone, text messages and radio.   
      
   ‘Robb Elementary? Oh my god’   
   The new audio obtained by CNN reveals a woman from “DPS in Austin” calling   
   the Uvalde police dispatchers to get more information apparently to give   
   to the specialist DPS teams being sent to help, including SWAT.   
      
   The caller is clearly shocked as she gets the details that the killings   
   have happened in an elementary school.   
      
   “Robb Elementary? Oh my god,” she says.   
      
   When the dispatcher tells her, “We have several DOAs (deaths)” she   
   interrupts: “Are you kidding me?”   
      
   “I am not,” replies the dispatcher.   
      
   “Oh my god,” the DPS employee sighs. “OK.”   
      
   She gets details of the shooter and that he is still in the school with   
   students before ending the call at about 12:20 p.m.   
      
   CNN does not know the caller’s rank inside DPS, or where else she may have   
   communicated the information within her agency.   
      
   DPS has not responded to CNN’s questions about the call and what happened   
   after it was made.   
      
   But it is clear that the information given in the phone call between   
   Uvalde and Austin – that children were in the school with the shooter and   
   that people had already been killed – was not shared sufficiently.   
      
   The statewide DPS helps local law enforcement agencies with major   
   incidents and has specialized equipment and teams that smaller city and   
   county forces may not have.   
      
   Many teams were sent to Uvalde, but the critical information that should   
   have supercharged the response and focused on stopping the killer and   
   rescuing the victims instead of waiting him out, was not given to them.   
      
   While Pargas could have changed the dynamic of the operation that had   
   stalled, as could other leaders on scene, so could DPS chiefs.   
      
   But the urgency of children and teachers needing help appears to have   
   abated in a communication morass.   
      
   Hunt for information   
   Capt. John Miller, the DPS SWAT commander, deployed his entire team when   
   they were notified of the active shooter at about noon on May 24, even   
   though almost all were at least 175 miles away, he told an investigator,   
   according to interview records obtained by CNN.   
      
   But once they were on the road, they didn’t get new information, he said.   
   “Initially the word was there’s a barricaded shooter, but he’s shooting at   
   law enforcement in a school,” he said. “There was no information after   
   that regarding if there was hostages.”   
      
   He said he then spent many minutes trying to find out what was going on so   
   he could make an appropriate plan, critically to account for any innocent   
   people with the shooter.   
      
   “For the next 40 minutes, the series of phone calls and messaging on my   
   end was all trying to find that out,” he told the investigator.   
      
   Only one member of Miller’s team made it to Robb Elementary before law   
   enforcement breached the classroom and killed the shooter at 12:50 p.m.   
      
   And his first task was also trying to find out whether children were   
   trapped.   
      
   “I talked with the highway patrol sergeant and asked her if there were   
   still kids inside the building that the shooter was in,” Staff Sgt. Lucas   
   Patterson told a Texas Ranger investigating the response, according to the   
   records CNN has obtained. “She wasn’t positive on that from information,   
   she was trying to verify.”   
      
   The failed information flow didn’t just affect the DPS SWAT team that was   
   mentioned in the 12:18 p.m. call to Uvalde dispatch.   
      
   DPS Capt. Joel Betancourt told investigators: “The only thing that was   
   being reported was that it was a barricaded subject. There were no shots   
   that had been fired anymore. We didn’t know that there was any children or   
   anybody that was injured in the building like we do now. At that time, it   
   was just a person in a room.”   
      
   Even so, Betancourt issued a radio order to the breach team to stop their   
   advance to the classroom, believing a better team was on the way, as   
   previously reported by CNN. No one responded to his call.   
      
   That breach that stopped the gunman came more than 30 minutes after   
   details of children trapped were given to Pargas and DPS.   
      
   The actions of DPS that day, and soon after when senior leaders gave   
   conflicting accounts of what had happened, as well as how they have been   
   tasked with investigating the response, continue to trouble Uvalde Mayor   
   Don McLaughlin who told CNN again this week he believed there was a cover-   
   up. DPS Director Steven McCraw has rejected that suggestion.   
      
   A total of 376 law enforcement officers from 23 agencies – including 91   
   men and women from DPS – responded to the Robb massacre.   
      
   Along with personnel, an arsenal of specialist equipment was deployed,   
   much of it by DPS, apparently without a clear plan as to whether it was   
   needed.   
      
   “Two DPS helicopters, one with an AUF package – an aerial shooter – and   
   that’s going to be about 25-30 minutes,” an officer tells Uvalde dispatch   
   a little after 12:30 p.m. After requesting a “real-time update” and having   
   confirmed the location was Robb Elementary, he added: “I’m trying not to   
   be a pest, but we’re trying to coordinate.”   
      
   https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/17/us/uvalde-robb-elementary-dps-   
   call/index.html   
      
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