What happens when ‘good guys with guns’ don’t use them? In Uvalde, Texas, children died

Police know how to end a school shooting.

“Wait an hour and then send in the Border Patrol SWAT team” is not the right way.

One of the worst days in Texas history is now a law enforcement outrage that will last for years.

Uvalde police, school officers, county deputies and state troopers must explain why they guarded their own lives instead of 19 children’s, and then face the eternal scorn of parents face-to-face every day in that tight-knit ranching town west of San Antonio.

“Look, they are the first line of defense — their job is not to wait for the SWAT team,” said former Fort Worth police Chief Jeff Halstead, now a Las Vegas-based law enforcement consultant.

“If you’re in a bank and somebody rushes the door with a gun, they don’t run and hide and call the SWAT team,” he said. “You have to go in and take care of business.”

We now know it was Uvalde school district police Chief Pete Arredondo who commanded officers to wait in the hallway at Annie Robb Elementary while others encircled the campus and waited for reinforcements from miles away, all as parents gathered outside screaming.

State troopers — many of them young highway patrol officers who have spent their short careers working crashes and writing tickets — didn’t break in a barricaded door to confront the gunman.

They didn’t go in because “they could have been shot, they could’ve been killed,” and then the gunman might have killed more children, Department of Public Safety spokesman Lt. Chris Olivarez said on CNN.

But school district police officers are trained to go on and end the threat, said Jeff Foley, president and training chief for the Hewitt-based Texas Association of School Resource Officers.

They aren’t supposed to wait.

“The goal ... [is to] stop the killing as quickly as possible with the least amount of casualties,” he said.

But no Uvalde school district officer was standing guard, and school, city, county and state officers, deputies and troopers dithered when they arrived.

“I can tell you how I was trained,” Foley said. “I can’t tell you how those other agencies were trained.”

Halstead said law officers train for hostage situations.

In that case, they secure the location and negotiate with the gunman.

But when the first shot is heard — boom.

In the words of 9-11’s Flight 93 heroes, it’s “let’s roll.”

“You go in and end it,” Halstead said.

Nobody rolled.

Also of note: the sudden appearance followed by the vanishing act of Gov. Greg Abbott.

On Tuesday, Abbott said the shooting was a Uvalde school district matter.

On Wednesday, he took over as DPS spokesman and bragged glowingly about law officers’ work.

Then on Thursday, when that went sour, he gave the spotlight like a hot potato back to DPS officers.

Yes, El Paso Democrat Beto O’Rourke double-politicized Abbott’s news conference by confronting him in a hot-dog grandstand stunt.

But Abbott acting as DPS spokesman was also political.

Governors warn the public about winter storms, hurricanes or pandemics. But they don’t take over police officers’ role at crime scenes.

Think about it: Did Abbott conduct the press conferences after the El Paso shooting? Or the Sutherland Springs shooting? Or the Santa Fe shooting?

“One difference here is that we are in the midst of a gubernatorial election year,” said conservative scholar and SMU political science professor Matthew Wilson.

Abbott is trying to show leadership in a time of great tragedy, Wilson said: “It seems to demand a more active response.”

O’Rourke was disruptive and annoying. But it was the only way for a Democrat to enter the chat in a state where Republican incumbents dominate camera time.

“There is a downside,” University of Houston professor Brandon Rottinghaus said: “If Governor Abbott is the face of this tragedy, he’s also likely to shoulder more of the blame.”

There will be plenty to go around.