The design of the door is intended to prevent an attacker from being forcibly entered from outside. But with 18-year-old sniper Salvador Ramos already inside the Uvalde school on May 24, the design reacted and police were unable to immediately intervene to prevent further slaughter, the Washington Post reported on Saturday. “A door that opens outwards is the worst case scenario when you try to break in,” Sgt said. Scott Baines of the Fort Worth Police Department, who spent 12 years on a special response team trained for active snipers and similar calls, told the newspaper. Exterior school doors are believed to be the worst for school shootings. Elsa G Ruiz / Facebook Breaking such doors can be especially dangerous when a sniper is on the other side, especially since authorities reportedly were not initially armed with regular shields. Without the shields, anyone who opened the door would be vulnerable to gunfire, the newspaper reported. Another issue was that the tactical teams were equipped with heavy, cylindrical knocking devices that were suitable for breaking the locks on the doors of the houses – but they were creating a problem with the classroom doors, according to a current and former Customs and Protection official. US Border Patrol informed of the shooting. Marcus “Sandy” Wall, a retired member of the Houston SWAT team, told the outlet that breaking down steel-framed doors is not effective because first responders have to open them instead of passing them through. Steel-framed doors are changing the way law enforcement can penetrate them. AFP via Getty Images The work can vary in difficulty, depending on the material and whether the frame is attached to nails, Wall said. But Curtis S. Lavarello, executive director of the School Safety Advocacy Council, told the Washington Post that authorities have a way of quickly opening safe doors – which have been added to the ranks across the country. He insisted law enforcement should enforce these violations during security drills – but it is unclear if this happened in Uvalde. “It is shocking for someone with more than 25 years of law enforcement not to enter this room for more than an hour,” Lavarello told the newspaper. “Opening the door to the outside is not a valid excuse for not penetrating this classroom. “To say ‘we can not get a key’ is nonsense.” Uvalde Independent School District Police Chief Pete Arredondo told The Texas Tribune in an interview that the steel barrier at the classroom door where Ramos opened fire was impossible to kick inside. Arredondo – who spent more than an hour in the school hallway – told the Tribune that he asked for regular equipment, a sniper and keys to enter the classroom. He also said he tried dozens of keys that failed. “Every time I tried a key, I just prayed,” Arredondo told the newspaper. One hour and 17 minutes after the start of the mass shootings, the police finally managed to unlock the door and shoot Ramos, killing him. Arredondo also told the newspaper that he did not have a radio on him when he responded to the shooting – because he believed that transporting the communications equipment would slow him down. He also said he knew the radios were not working in some school buildings. But the ruling meant Arredondo was not in wireless contact with hundreds of other law enforcement personnel who responded to the mass shootings. Arredondo insisted he did not discourage officers from entering the building. He also said that he did not consider himself the commander of the incident and thought that another officer had taken control of the organization of the various police services that responded. Arredondo’s account of the police response is not supported by the Texas Department of Public Safety, which is investigating the shooting and how it was handled by law enforcement. According to the DPS, Arredondo mistakenly treated the shooting as a suspicious incident with a barrier, in which law enforcement authorities are negotiating with the gunman. Instead, the case should have been treated as an active sniper situation, where the number one priority for officers is to stop shooting by killing the gunman or taking him into custody, according to the DPS. Texas Sen. Roland Gutierrez on Saturday questioned state officials who are clearly blaming Arredondo – saying the police official’s statements “are in direct contradiction to what the DPS said.” “Well now you have these two competing narratives, neither of which makes sense. “The DPS directly suggested that they leaked that this man did not have a radio,” Gutierrez told CNN in an interview with The Hill. “[Arredondo] recognizes that it has no radio. “Then how is the incident commander if he can not communicate orders to other people?”
