In a series of sheds on the edge of a Texas airfield sits the training centre that has set the national standard for how American police deal with active gunmen.19 students and two teachers were shot dead at their schoolThe admission by police that they got it wrong as the shooting was unfolding, that they should have confronted the gunman earlier, has raised the spectre that lives could have been saved.
Police in Uvalde say they were properly trained but it is clear something went catastrophically wrong as the minutes ticked by with gunman Salvador Ramos inside the school. The Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training centre near San Marcos in Texas has trained 130,000 law enforcement and fire officials nationwide in"dynamic force-on-force scenario-based" courses. It is the FBI's training of choice.They watched the events in Uvalde with horror and believe failings in the police response were exposed.
Assistant director John Curnutt said:"I understand why it was difficult that they were put into the situation they were put into, but I understand that we know enough about these incidents that we should be training for stuff like this."