EL DORADO -- The police response to the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, that left 19 children and two teachers dead has been criticized in recent weeks as more information has come out about the time elapsed between when the shooting began and when police entered a classroom where the shooter was.
According to reporting by The Associated Press, armed police officers stood outside an unlocked classroom where the gunman could be heard shooting an AR-15-style semi-automatic rifle for more than 70 minutes, waiting for gear.
"You don't wait for a SWAT team. You have one officer, that's enough," said Col. Steve McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, according to the AP.
Union County Sheriff Ricky Roberts echoed those sentiments last week in an interview with the El Dorado News-Times.
"I don't like to talk about another department or law enforcement agency on what they did wrong or right -- I don't like to do that. However, there were a lot of mistakes that I think were made that day," he said. "In law enforcement, we try to learn from mistakes or tactics ... We try to learn from it and better our officers or our department, and that dates back to even Columbine and the school shootings prior to the last one."
Roberts said when an officer takes the oath of their office, they're promising to protect their community -- at any cost.
"When we take an oath to get in this job, it is to protect our citizens, and that is including children ... Their police chief out there -- never met the man -- he said he was trying to save his officers' lives, and I understand that, but we knew the role when we stood there and raised our hand to take that oath. We know that role. We know what time we come to work, but we don't know what time we might get off," he said. "They let their community down waiting 77 minutes before they engaged the suspect. I'm still just shaking my head. I don't understand it."
Were a mass shooting to occur locally, Roberts said Union County sheriff's office deputies and school resource officers have been trained to engage with the threat to stop it.
"Your primary goal is to stop the threat. Engage the threat, stop it, whatever it takes. Don't wait. Don't wait on somebody to come. Don't wait on the cavalry. You know someone's coming," he said. "Their No. 1 duty is to stop the threat, engage the threat."
He said the sheriff's office has worked with several local school districts over the years to prepare for active shooting situations, if "god forbid, something like this happened in one of our schools." Since the shooting in Uvalde, he's also met with the superintendent of a local district, he said.
"We've had several schools that we have conducted active shooter drills with. The sheriff's office and El Dorado Police Department have teamed up on a couple training exercises where we sit down with them, tell them this is what you can expect out of us, this is what we need to expect out of you," he said.
Some schools from his neck of the woods -- Central Arkansas -- have reported that they plan to send some teachers to concealed carry courses in order to have some armed teachers on their campuses, Roberts said. He said that could complicate law enforcement's response to shooting situations at a school.
"I think that's going to be a school board decision. I think there's some things to work on -- I said one of the first things that, should a teacher be armed, they have to understand is that when law enforcement gets there, we don't know who you are, we don't know what teacher is what, so we have to be real careful. They will need to surrender their weapon, don't turn toward officers, don't make any movements toward them. We could mistake them for the active shooter," he said.
He said it's hard to know whether it would be better for an average civilian to engage a gunman or not.
"If you're just a citizen, if you've got ways of stopping the threat and that's what you want to do -- but don't put yourself in harm's way," he said. "That's a tough question. There is no right or wrong when you have a situation like that."
His feelings about the shooting in Uvalde, including the police response, are hard to find words for, Roberts said.
"When you talk about third-graders and fourth-graders and kids that come to school -- they're just there to learn and the next thing they're dealing with this. Even the kids that survived, we don't know if they'll ever get over it. I'm thinking of the little young girl who took the blood from her friend, put it on her face, played dead. That's got to be traumatic, even more so in the future as she gets older," he said. "I wish we knew why this young man snapped like that. I don't understand."
The best response to a school shooter is to stop them before they bring a gun to school, Roberts said. He recommended keeping an eye out for strange behaviors from friends and reporting concerning words or actions.
"I keep thinking that, you know, there's somebody else out there right now that's thinking about the same thing, and that's what's so sad," he said. "What we need to do is find the person that's thinking like this. People need to be vigilant when they see somebody do something that's out of character. If you see something, say something. Tell somebody... If something's changed in the last day or two or week or so and they're not acting right, they're showing you pictures of guns, pictures of violence, let's start saying something and work together to try not to have another school shooting, church shooting or anything like that."
He expressed condolences to the families who lost loved ones at Robb Elementary School on May 24.
"I feel for the parents, the grandparents of those children. Words just -- I can't describe it," he said. "It's sad we've gotten to this point -- sad we've got officers having to go to churches and protect people in a church setting where they're going to pray. I don't know why we're at where we're at in our world... It's just sad on so many levels."