After the tumultuous response to the Uvalde school shooting delayed medical treatment for victims, state senator Roland Gutierrez is calling on the Texas Department of Public Safety to provide vital mass shooting response training for all public safety institutions.
Families of the victims of the 2018 Santa Fe High School shooting and the shootings in Uvalde last year joined Gutierrez at a news conference in Austin. Gutierrez stated, “Everybody in Texas needs to analyze the complete and utter failure that happened on this day.” “It must not occur again, ever.”
The new package of legislation Gutierrez introduced on Tuesday came less than two months after a report by The Texas Tribune, ProPublica, and The Washington Post revealed that certain Uvalde shooting victims were less likely to live because of a poor medical response.
The Robb Elementary shooting on May 24 resulted in the deaths of 19 children and two adults. Almost 400 law enforcement personnel reacted to the shooting, yet it took over an hour before the shooter was brought to justice. Three victims left the school with a pulse, but they eventually passed away.
Last year, experts warned the media that the biggest obstacle to providing victims with care was police inability to approach the gunman. An investigation by news organizations looked at previously secret documents that showed how communication breakdowns and murky authority structures among responding medical groups further complicated treatment.
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According to Gutierrez, the average response time for a mass shooting is between 12 and 14 minutes, as opposed to the 77 minutes that children had to wait in Uvalde before the shooter was put down. Gutierrez claimed on Tuesday that the victims who had a pulse before later dying “might have lived” if that response time had been used.
We don’t know how many other children with no pulse died or when they passed away, he said. “We are unaware of that.”
The Senate district of Gutierrez, a Democrat from San Antonio, includes Uvalde. His Senate Bill 738 mandates that all public safety organizations in specific counties have the radio infrastructure necessary for communication among all organizations, including various agencies.
The law would also establish a procedure for educating public safety organizations on how to react to mass shootings. Protection of pupils at a school, emergency medical response training to reduce casualties, strategies for preventing an intruder from entering a school or classroom, and the chain of command during such an event would all be part of the mandatory training.
Another bill put out on Tuesday would establish a law enforcement unit tasked with stationing at least one officer at every public school and institution of higher learning in the state. Texas School Patrol coordinates emergency responses to gunshot incidents with regional law enforcement.
The replacement of a Confederate monument at the Capitol with a memorial to memorialize victims and survivors of widespread gun violence is the subject of a third plan, which Gutierrez described as “a little bit more aspirational.”
According to Gutierrez, every parent should be able to drop off their children at school with confidence that they will be able to pick them up at the end of the day. It will have the necessary training to ensure that they can handle this type of event, and we can afford to do it, so we should.
The bills would require law enforcement mass shooting training to include how to work with local and state agencies, and create a Texas School Patrol. https://t.co/YbJdaDtk7f
— Austin Statesman (@statesman) February 8, 2023
According to Gutierrez, Senate Bill 737, which would create the new police force, would cost around $750 million and necessitate the hiring of 10,000 additional Texas Highway Patrol personnel.
The Confederate Soldiers Monument, which is located on the south grounds of the Capitol, would be moved under the memorial resolution to the Austin State Cemetery. The senator said the new memorial will be “wholly sponsored by private donations,” quoting a draught of the solution.
The plaque outside reads, “We will never forget this date,” and you can see it as soon as you leave the building. The day Texas broke away from the Union, according to Gutierrez. What do you know? I hope May 24 will always be remembered as the day of the Santa Fe and all previous horrific shootings in this state. We must never let this happen to another child in this state again, so we must always remember.
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