The similarities between what happened in the Uvalde school shooting and in Parkland are chilling, as more information about the police response in Texas is being revealed.
Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steven McCraw said the commander on scene for Tuesday's shooting at Robb Elementary School treated the incident as a barricaded subject, not an active shooter, a fatal mistake.
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WATCH HEREUVALDE SCHOOL SHOOTING
"Of course it wasn’t the right decision, it was the wrong decision, there is no excuse for that," McCraw said at a news conference Friday.
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As children hid from a gunman and tried repeatedly calling 911, law enforcement stood in a nearby hallway, waiting to go in.
The shooter killed 19 children and two teachers.
The response brings back nightmares for Ryan Petty, who lost his daughter, Alaina, in the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018.
"It’s pretty clear the response was atrocious," Petty said. "There was a lot of law enforcement standing outside that school and it took an hour to stop this threat and there could’ve been kids in that class that were still alive."
In Uvalde it took police over an hour to take out the shooter, in Parkland it was 11 minutes before Coral Springs Police and Broward Sheriff's Office deputies went inside the school and by then the gunman had escaped.
Security experts like Michael D’Angelo, with Secure Direction Consulting, said the miscommunications and failures are unacceptable and horrific.
“We just keep going back to Parkland and we’re reliving the same failures, it just shouldn’t exist anymore," D'Angelo said. "You go in that door where he was shooting from, you go in the closest door you can, you go in any door you can but the objective is to get in there as fast as you can and engage him as quickly as possible."
D'Angelo, a former South Miami Police captain, said in Texas, law enforcement unfortunately followed the pre-Columbine training of standing by, securing the perimeter and waiting for SWAT to arrive, which is wrong.
“You took this job voluntarily and you knew that when everyone else is running out of harm’s way, it’s your responsibility to run into harm’s way," he said.
