Texas Senator Wants Public Safety to Teach Mass Shootings Better

Austin, Texas – “After a failed response to the Uvalde Massacre, Texas Senator Wants to Improve Mass Shooting Training for Public Safety Agencies,” first published by The Texas Tribune, a non-profit, non-partisan media organization that informs—and engages with—Texans—about public policy, politics, government. and public issues.

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State Senator Roland Gutierrez wants the Texas Department of Public Safety to provide robust mass shooting response training for all public safety agencies after the chaotic response to the Uvalde school massacre delayed medical care for the victims.

“Everyone in Texas should learn from the complete and utter failure that happened on this day,” Gutierrez said at a press conference in Austin, joined by the families of the victims of last year’s Uvalda shooting and the 2018 Santa Fe High School shooting. “This should never happen again.”

The new list of bills introduced by Gutierrez on Tuesday comes less than two months after an investigation by The Texas Tribune, ProPublica and The Washington Post found that the uncertain medical response has undermined the chances of some of Uvalde’s victims surviving the shooting. .

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On May 24, a shooting at Robb’s elementary school killed 19 children and two adults. Almost 400 law enforcement officers responded to the shooting, but the shooter did not meet for more than an hour. Three victims left the school with a pulse but later died.

Experts told news outlets last year that police’s inability to confront the shooter was the biggest problem in helping the victims. An investigation by media outlets examined previously unreleased records that showed how lack of communication and unclear lines of authority between responding medical facilities further hampered treatment.

On Tuesday, Gutiérrez said that victims who had a pulse before they died “could have survived” if the reactions were more in line with the average duration of a mass shooting, which he said was 12 to 14 minutes, up from 77 minutes. the children waited in Uvalda until the shooter was killed.

“We don’t know how many other children had no pulse, what time did they die?” He said. “We don’t know that.”

Gutierrez is a Democrat from San Antonio whose Senate district includes Uvalde. His Senate Bill 738 calls for all public safety agencies in certain districts to have a radio infrastructure for communication between all public safety agencies, including between different agencies.

In addition, the bill will create a process for training public security agencies to respond to mass shootings. Teaching should include protecting students at school; emergency medical response training to minimize losses; tactics to keep the intruder out of the school or class; and chain of command during such an event.

Another legislative proposal, outlined Tuesday, would create a law enforcement unit tasked with having at least one officer in every public school and institution of higher education in the state. A unit of the Texas School Patrol is expected to coordinate with local police on emergency response in the event of mass shootings.

The third proposal, which Gutiérrez called “a little more ambitious,” is to replace the Confederate monument at the Capitol with a memorial honoring the victims and survivors of mass gun violence.

“Every parent should be able to send their kids to school knowing they can pick them up at the end of the day,” Gutiérrez said. “We can afford it and we have to do it and we will have the appropriate training to make sure they can handle this kind of situation.”

Senate Bill 737 to create a new police division would require 10,000 additional officers on the Texas Highway Patrol staff; According to Gutierrez, it will cost about $750 million.

The memorial resolution will move the Confederate Soldiers’ Monument, currently located on the southern grounds of the Capitol, to the Austin State Cemetery. According to the copy of the resolution shared by the senator, the new monument will be “funded entirely by private donations.”

“When you walk out of this building and see this memorial from the outside, it says, ‘We will never forget this date. The date Texas seceded from the Union,” Gutierrez said. “You know what? I hope people never forget May 24, the days of the Santa Fe incidents and all the other mass shootings in that state. We must never forget because we must never let this happen again to another child in this state.”

A state senator last month proposed another series of bills in response to the shooting, including legislation to make it easier for the families of the victims of the Uvalde shooting to file lawsuits against state and police officers due to inept law enforcement responses, and to improve gun safety and law enforcement. accountability.

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune on https://www.texastribune.org/2023/02/07/texas-legislature-uvalde-training/.

The Texas Tribune is an unbiased, member-supported newsroom that informs and engages Texans about state politics and politics. Find out more at texastribune.org.