Analyzing newly released video of police response to Robb Elementary School shooting
It's been more than two years since Monday, May 24, 2022, the day a gunman entered Robb Elementary School in Uvalde and killed 19 young students and two teachers.
Several news outlets including CBS News sued the city of Uvalde to get them to release the files. The city just released that trove of documents Saturday.
The newly released body camera video shows the moment inside Robb Elementary School when officers finally breached the classroom where 18-year-old shooter Salvador Ramos had barricaded himself and killed several students and teachers.
We sat down with Dr. Johnny Nhan, a professor of criminology and criminal justice and associate dean of graduate studies at TCU. He's also a reserve Fort Worth Police Officer. We played him the 30-minute body camera video to get his analysis of the police response that day. Including the moment officers pleaded multiple times with the shooter to end his rampage.
"These guys are trying to reason with somebody who, in my opinion, has killed somebody. If that's already the case, then that person is not a reasonable person," said Nhan. "Me personally, it would be time to go. It would be time to go in."
For the families of the children who were killed that day, this release of new documents and video are both heartbreaking and shocking. Jesse Rizo's nine-year-old niece, Jackie Cazares was one of the 19 students killed that day.
"You're almost speechless. You know, it made a loss of words, to be honest with you," said Rizo told KSAT.
The families have been asking for this information to be made public for years. This latest release has renewed their frustration with the police response.
"They're not afraid of the shooter. They're afraid of the weapon," said Rizo.
At one point in the video, Uvalde's former school police chief Pete Arredondo is seen just outside the classroom door directing officers. He is only one of two responding officers who have been criminally charged related to the shooting.
"Yeah, I can see why he's in trouble for this, because it seems like he's kind of, calling the shots right here. I mean, he's telling people he's directing people where to go and kind of strategizing," said Nhan.
Officers are also seen debating how to access the classroom.
"There should be somebody to be able to breach it. I know that SWAT teams everywhere practice repeatedly, frequently. Entries like that. So I don't see, watching this is a little bit frustrating, quite honestly, because I don't see how not opening a door would keep an entire team out," said Nhan.
Officers finally moved in killing the shooter and rescuing children inside, more than 70 minutes after the shooter first started firing his weapon.
"I will say this about the time it took so long, and now that I've seen the video, I realized what was taking so long was that lack of communication, the multiple agencies," said Nhan. " I can't say that it's right. It's definitely too much time, in my opinion. But I could see where that breakdown of communication and leadership led to a prolonged delay, an unnecessarily long delay."