‘Hard Not to See How Someone Doesn’t Get Fired’: Rep. Crenshaw Calls for Police Accountability in Uvalde School Shooting

Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) (L) speaks during a press conference in Washington on August 31, 2021. Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images

Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) said “protocols were not followed” in the police response to last week’s mass school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, calling for accountability.

“It’s hard not to see how someone doesn’t get fired for these very, very bad calls,” he told CNN’s “State of the Union” on May 29, referencing the Uvalde police response.

Nearly 20 officers took no action for about 45 minutes in the hallway outside the Robb Elementary School classrooms 111 and 112, where an 18-year-old shooter, Salvador Ramos, killed 19 students and two teachers during the mid-day on May 24. Authorities said on Friday that the group of law enforcers was waiting for room keys and tactical equipment, despite trapped students inside calling 911 several times pleading for help.

It was not until more than an hour later did Border Patrol agents unlock the door using a master key from the janitor to confront and kill the gunman. It remains unclear if or how many lives could have been saved if police entered earlier.

Crenshaw mentioned he didn’t want to “judge” law enforcement officers who were called to step into the breach. “But it does seem clear that protocols were not followed. This isn’t a training problem,” he said in the Sunday interview.

“The training clearly states you might get shot, but the guy behind you might be able to get in and save innocent people. You have to put them before you. It doesn’t appear that that happened here,” he said, adding that he hopes to see the investigation into the response “play out.”

A police officer carries flowers at a makeshift memorial outside the Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas on May 26, 2022. Chandan Khanna/AFP via Getty Images

The decision by local police in response to the massacre appears to contravene federal and state guidelines that prioritize a rescue. According to the active shooter response guidelines in the state’s commission on law enforcement 2020 training manual, a first responder “must recognize that innocent life must be defended.”

“A first responder unwilling to place the lives of the innocent above their own safety should consider another career field,” it reads.

Steven McCraw, the head of the Texas Department of Public Safety, also admitted that “it was the wrong decision” to delay entering the room where Ramos and the children were contained. He said the on-site commander who made the call to not let officers in—although some followed the suspect into the building within two minutes following the attack—believed the attacker had barricaded himself and the children were no longer at risk.

“You have to put away your sense of self-preservation and go through that door,” Crenshaw said.

The massacre is the country’s second-deadliest K-12 school shooting on record, following the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut.

In response to the Newtown shooting, the FBI then started to train law enforcement and other first responders to ensure that protocols for responding to active shooter situations are consistent across the country. Programs include one called the Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training, which was developed in Texas and has trained so far more than 114,000 law enforcement first responders.