and you can beat him from killing the children. so the on scene commander was not planning to hesitate, or using the vernacular of a hostage barricade or. it did flip to that. but it was barricaded against their. they needed to breach. it was amazing to me, jonathan, chief of the independent school district plus doesn t have a key to the classroom. there s only six officers on his fourth, and he doesn t have a key to the classroom. that s crazy. and they should ve went in there, approximately, 12:15, they should ve went in there within ten minutes of that. jim, just on, that i was just about to ask you what did you, why didn t still take a cue from the janitor to open the door? yeah, it s not insightful at all. first of all, patrol officers across the country need that shotgun breaching rounds. we re gonna have some of these halogen jewels hydraulic tools carried in the back back. they need to be able to get indoors. they don t have those that need to have the first ladder, three m
of the window. get them on the radio, and i have one of those lone rifleman shoot in to the attacker, at the attacker. one shot only, and we would initiate the assault on that shot, called a sniper initiated emergency assault. the reason that has to happen that way is a can kill 30 people in the room in 30 seconds with the gun he has. he can kill 30 people in 30 seconds. so you can t just say, you know, they should ve won in. they can bang on the door. they can you know, he s gonna kill everyone in there. you just can result in the death of those people. they have to take a few minutes, hesitate, set up an emergency assault, like i described. and the sniper maintenance, may wound him, make kill him. but even on that shot, the action happens. and you can beat him from killing the children. so the on scene commander was
who killed lives. took lives and killed people. that s the person at fault. much like when i was in afghanistan and i could have done things better, maybe kept daniel grier alive. i m not at faulted for his death. maybe i could have done things to keep him alive. the taliban was responsible for me losing my legs. this is a similar situation. i don t believe there was one police officer on that scene that wouldn t given his or her life for those kids but something, and i don t know what, in their protocol, in their leadership, in their instinct, visually, audibly, i don t know, something made them believe that sitting in that hallway was safer for the kids in that room than going into the room. that s what i believe. we may learn that maybe it was just cowardice. if i m going to give anybody the benefit of the doubt it s going to be the people that put a uniform on every day and try to go protect us. i will wait and listen and see what the facts are. if there is an onscene commander, yo
saying hey, we are going to treat this as a hostage situation. until you see and hear something that completely negates that. is he probably the one that has access to 911 calls. he is probably the one that understands the layout of the building even more so than you. you are believing in him or her so it seemed like that press conference yesterday even texas dps was putting onus on on scene commander probably why he didn t show up at press conference. i m not pointing at him. you have to have a central place of command. rachel: governor abbott, you are talking about what happened in the fog of this situation, i totally get that i can t even imagine myself. i can t imagine myself as the parents wanting to storm that building. joey: if i were a parent right now i would be yelling coward. that would be the emotional response. rachel: i m a parent first so that s how i think. that said, let s talk about the aftermath, because what governor abbott said yesterday was i was misled. he didn t
was holed up frantically called 911. top police officials now admit it was a mistake to not engage the shooter earlier. have a listen. why was this decision made not to go in and rescue these children? you know the on scene commander considered a barricaded subject and that there was time and there were no children at risk. of course it was not the right decision. it was the wrong decision. parents of the victims obviously outraged at these missteps with one father telling cnn he wonders if his daughter and others might have survived if authorities had actually acted more quickly. and we now know the names and the faces of all 21 lives cut short with funerals set to begin next week. the texas governor says police have a lot to answer for. cnn s ed lavandera picks up the story from here.