- Police training experts told Insider that if officers in Uvalde, Texas didn't engage the gunman, they were violating standard training.
- Witnesses said parents begged officers to go into Robb Elementary School while a gunman shot and killed 19 students and two teachers.
- "If you have someone armed and shooting at victims, there is no 'let's pause and get backup,' " one expert told Insider.
Experts on police training told Insider that officers in Uvalde, Texas — whom onlookers accused of delaying storming Robb Elementary School after a gunman entered the building — would not have been following the industry standard of training.
Alex del Carmen, the associate dean of the School of Criminology at Tarleton State University in Stephenville, Texas, told Insider that the "universally accepted standard is that when an active shooter shows up, what will happen is law enforcement will engage the suspect until he is neutralized."
Del Carmen said police are often taught to follow and engage a suspect until there is no longer a threat.
Kalfani Turè, policing expert and assistant professor of criminology at Mount Saint Mary's University in Maryland, agreed, telling Insider: "You've got to pursue."
"That is the simple policy, no question," he continued. "You have to enter the school and pursue the individual with high-power firearms to finality. This is a situation where you have to be a superhero."
Turè said that while police officers are trained to preserve their own lives so they can continue to be helpful in an active situation, their "job is not only to preserve your life but to also preserve the life of others."
The Uvalde Police Department did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Del Carmen added that when a shooter barricades himself inside a building, law enforcement officers are taught to evacuate and call SWAT in hopes of negotiating with a suspect and reaching a peaceful conclusion where the suspect is taken into custody and no one is hurt.
When the suspect is barricaded with hostages, "a tactical unit should respond, circle around the area, negotiate with the person, and hope a peaceful resolution will come about," del Carmen told Insider.
Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steve McCraw said that the gunman in Uvalde was barricaded inside a classroom with students and teachers for 40 minutes before police were able to breach the room and shoot and kill him.
McCraw said that a Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District officer approached the gunman outside the school, and the New York Times reported that Texas law enforcement officials told reporters at a Thursday press conference that two other officers exchanged fire with the suspect but were shot and had to fall back.
Parents and bystanders at the scene, however, have said police delayed entering the building despite pleas to do so.
"They said they rushed in and all that, we didn't see that," Javier Cazares, whose 9-year-old daughter was killed in the shooting, told the Times.
Ultimately, the gunman fatally shot 19 children and two teachers inside a classroom of the elementary school.
Police haven't explained why it took 40 minutes to breach the classroom.
"If you have someone armed and shooting at victims, there is no 'let's pause and get backup,' " del Carmen told Insider.
Del Carmen said that if a suspect presents a weapon, police officers are trained to shoot at the gunman's torso to neutralize their central nervous system, disarm them, and put them on the ground to mitigate the threat.
"You have every legal and industry-standard backing to stop the threat," del Carmen said.
If there is a "presence of a gun with the intent to kill and potential victims, you have reasonable backing to neutralize the threat" he added
Del Carmen said he does not know why the police officers in Uvalde were reportedly not following industry-standard protocol on Tuesday but said that "unless there was something on the scene they perceived that would cause more harm to engage the suspect than to wait for backup, you should engage."
"Our hope is that the training we render and give police officers becomes the norm and that in these situations, this becomes 'muscle memory,' " del Carmen said.
