Robb Elementary School Lessons Learned
Robb Elementary School
Three years ago today, one of the worst mass shootings occurred in Uvalde, Texas at Robb Elementary School. On this day a lone shooter killed 19 children and two staff members. In addition to those killed 17 others were wounded. What made this incident even more tragic were the failures that occurred in the response of law enforcement to the incident as well as security failures at the school. In 2024 the U. S. Department of Justice published a critical incident review of the shooting at Robb Elementary. This review uncovered several issues with the security of the school and response of first responders on this day. What follows is what was uncovered from this review.
The shooter in this incident started his day with the intention of carrying out an attack at an elementary school. He drove to the area of the school where he crashed his vehicle outside. The shooter exited his vehicle and began to fire his weapon at a group of workers nearby. The shooter then advanced towards the elementary school where he fired on the outside of the building. Staff at the school quickly responded and began their lock-down procedures as they were trained. However, one of the exterior doors to the school was unlocked at the time of the lock-down. It was this unlocked door that allowed the shooter to enter the school.
After the shooter entered the school, he made entry into two separate classrooms where he proceeded to fire upon innocent children and teachers. It was later reported that the door to these rooms had a malfunctioning locking mechanism that had been previously reported but not fixed. Had either of these doors been properly locked it may have thwarted the attack and saved the lives of those inside. It is important for schools and businesses to have procedures to ensure the security features they have in placed are maintained and functional. Small things like locks go unnoticed until a major incident happens that draw attention to these features.
After the shooter entered the building officers responding to the shooting arrived on scene and began entering the building. The initial officers entered the school and moved to the sounds of gunfire as they were trained. Once they arrived at the room where the shooter was located officers were met by a barrage of gunfire and fell back to cover. This response was counter to standard practices which are to move towards and neutralize the threat. Not immediately neutralizing the threat and lack of leadership during the incident led to the shooter going unaddressed for 77 minutes.
One of the main issues that led to the poor response to the Robb Elementary active shooter was the lack of a coordinated response by law enforcement. First, the initial officers on scene mistakenly began to treat the incident as a barricade situation. Officers incorrectly assumed the room the shooter was in was empty of students. The basic principles of active shooter response are that if individuals are dying from wounds or there are additional people that can be hurt, officers must close the distance and stop the shooter. This basic principle was not followed in this incident. Being that it was a school day it should have been assumed those classrooms contained students.
The other issue with the poor response was lack of leadership at the incident. No one from the multiple agencies that responded attempted to take command of the incident. The Incident Command System (ICS) is the standard management system for public safety in responding to critical incidents. Part of this system is someone must assume the role of incident commander and begin to coordinate the response of other responders to effectively address the incident. With the lack of command, officers lacked direction and were not focused on the overall objective, which in this incident was life safety. The two main priorities in active attacks are first to stop the killing and next to stop the dying. Officers on scene waited for equipment and wasted time evacuating other areas of the school versus addressing the two main priorities. One of the law enforcement leaders on scene became focused on finding keys to enter the room the gunman was in versus focusing on coordinating a response to stop the immediate threat.
The shooting at Robb Elementary was a tragic event that became even more so due to the inadequate response by law enforcement. The loss of any life is tragic but the loss of our youth to violence is even more so. To make sure those lives that were lost were not in vain those in leadership positions should make sure they take the lessons learned from this incident and apply it to prepare for future incidents. If you are a school or business leader, make sure you train on your response to active threats. Additionally, if you have security features in place make sure they are well maintained and functional.
For those in law enforcement make sure your officers and leaders have the training and equipment they need to be able to effectively respond to critical incidents. This can be accomplished through scenario-based training as well as tabletop exercises for leaders to walk through responses to critical incidents. The question is not whether these incidents will happen in the future because they certainly will. The question is will leadership in law enforcement and public and private institutions take the necessary steps to prepare their people for these critical incidents.
