Feb 2024. Blues Vol 40 No. 2

GUEST COMENTARY
Rex Evans
DOJ Report on Uvalde:
Over 300 cops on the scene and not a damn one of them
did anything to stop the killing for over an hour.
Have your read and seriously
reviewed the DOJ Report on
the Robb Elementary School
Tragedy? I have. Three times,
to be exact. I have watched
every video and reviewed
hundreds of still photos from
that awful day. Which unfortunately,
happens to be my
Birthday, May 24th.
In the DOJ Report, it’s just
the facts. There are no opinions.
There’s no subjective
insight of “If I was there, I
would’ve done…” It is paragraph
after paragraph, page
after page, of excruciatingly
painful miscommunication
and lack of decisive action,
at all levels of the Command
Structure.
No one “wants” to be the
Incident Commander of a
tragedy. No one “wants” to be
“in charge” and responsible
(directly and vicariously) for
everything that happens. But
you promoted. You wanted
the Bars or Stars…This is what
comes with them. R-E-S-P-
O-N-S-I-B-L-I-T-Y.
Someone on the scene, no
matter who they were or
what agency they were with,
should have had the mental
intellect to say: “This whole
thing is FUBAR!” And we need
to act NOW! The reality is, no
one did that and as a result,
there was a terrible loss of
life. Not one law enforcement
supervisor or administrator
stood up and said “On me.
This is what we’re doing.”
Before you go chastising my
critical analysis, I am not saying
I know everything or have
all the answers. I am saying,
I’ve been a cop for over 34
years. I have been an ISD Chief
and a Chief for a total of over
10 years. I have been an Incident
Commander of multiple
multi-victims, traumatic incidents.
I have a clue about how
things should have gone. And
I am here to tell you, the DOJ
got this report right. Law Enforcement
absolutely dropped
the ball, period.
Law Enforcement MUST do
better. For God’s sake the Fire
Department does a much better
job of Incident Command
than we do. What does that
tell you? We have got to train,
train, and train some more.
Not in some damn classroom
either. I’ve established and
orchestrated several full-scale
incident command scenarios.
Active-Shooter. Special Needs
Student Bus Crash. Haz-Mat
incident in a High School Lab.
Each time, I had my supervisors
take Command and run
those scenes. As did the Chiefs
of the various other responding
agencies. Not to be a hard
ass. But, to make sure the entire
Chain of Command knew
what was expected, they had
to recognize when things
were going south, and be flexible
and resourceful enough to
arrive at a positive outcome.
ALERRT is simply NOT
enough. There must be real
time training that’s realistic
for Supervisors to know what
to do in the heat of an absolute
crisis. Every moment you
waste with indecision is a life
lost. How many minutes and
lives are acceptable before we
as professionals understand
and acknowledge this fact?
To simply say “We have
learned from this tragedy,
12 The Blues - February ‘24