Days have disappeared and questions still are left unanswered around the Uvalde, Texas school massacre on Tuesday. What was the motivation behind the shooting? Could more have been done to prevent it? Did law enforcement have an opportunity to stop or reduce the violence that took place at that elementary school?
WCCO’s Chad Hartman spoke to retired FBI agent and law enforcement analyst James Gagliano about the shooting and what took place. Gagliano served 25 years in the FBI and was appointed to a variety of investigative, tactical resolution, crisis management, undercover, mid-level and senior management positions, including assignment to FBI’s elite counterterror unit.
Gagliano says the difficulty of this for parents in the community is unimaginable.
“To wrap our arms around what this must have been like for the parents that had to respond to the reunification center, which was outside of the perimeter there in Uvalde, and wait for that final word,” explains Gagliano. “Was my child okay? Or was my child one of the ones that didn't make it? And, you know, imagine when you are reunited, if you're blessed and lucky enough for that to happen, and then having to mute your enthusiasm. Because you're sitting next to somebody who wasn't so lucky.”
The question of why these incidents happen do not have easy answers according to Gagliano. He says there are a multitude of reasons.
I don't want to sound detached when I say this is a multifaceted problem,” Gagliano tells WCCO. “There are so many issues here. It is partly the fact that we have to understand that evil, bad guys, terrorists, criminals, they always take the path of least resistance. If after Columbine, if after Parkland, if after Santa Fe, if after Newtown, we haven't figured out a better way to keep our kids safe in school, what are we doing?”
To start, Gagliano is a supporter of toughening access to schools like has been done at sporting events.
“We've got to harden these places,” says Gagliano. “You can't go to a Minnesota Timberwolves game and not be wanded, not be patted down, not be checked by security. There's a visible presence, a deterrence of security in every NBA, NFL arena or stadium and Major League Baseball as well.
Why would an elementary school like this be so easily accessible to a deranged man with a high powered rifle? It boggles the mind.”
Gagliano also added that there has not been enough done in the U.S. to keep guns out of the hands of people at risk.
“There's the gun piece and the proliferation of weapons in this country,” Gagliano says. We have 327 million people. There are more than 327 million guns in the country. It's not an easy situation. It's not an easy solution. There's nothing you can do to automatically make things safe because to do that will require Marshall Law, and in a free and open society that we cherish in the United States, that's not going to happen. But my gosh, it seems like we've got to make some progress. And we just haven't made enough progress of late on this problem.”
Gagliano says he does not believe there will be any legislative act passed in this moment to help prevent school shootings.
Another solution offered up by many is the single point of entry at schools. Gagliano says that would certainly make a school safer, but it also creates an atmosphere more like a prison than a school.
“The process that is used is like the man trap,” explains Gagliano. “The man trap is something that basically has cipher locks, doors that you would come into one door, it closes behind you. You are looked at, you're scrutinized by a camera. You're either interviewed or whatever before the next one opens up. Now you're going to push back and you're going to go, you're describing a federal correctional Institute. You're describing a jail.”
Gagliano aslo said the likelihood of putting officers at every school in the country for protection is not realistic, especially with a shortage of officers to begin with in almost every major city in the U.S. He adds that even if you do that, stopping what he describes as a “madman” isn’t going to happen.
“Is it going to stop someone who is evil, who is mentally deranged, and who is full of hate? Who has designs on hurting people and killing people and is willing to die in the process? The answer is no, it's not. Going back to my original point, bad guys take the path of least resistance.”
Gun laws are obviously being debated. Polling numbers show a very high majority of Americans want universal background checks and at least some changes to existing laws at the Federal level. Gagliano says the time has come for change, but he understands the resistance to it as well.
“I'm a second amendment proponent, but I'm also someone that believes that we have to adjust our laws and we have to adjust our thinking as time goes on,” Gagliano told Chad Hartman. “The Second Amendment was ratified in 1791. It's 2022. We got to relook at that. That's one of them. I think the fear on the right and from some of my friends who are more conservative than I am, the fear is it leads to a slippery slope.”
As for prevention, Gagliano shares the unfortunate truth. The country doesn’t have anywhere near enough resources to meaningfully investigate threats.
“There are 12,000 FBI agents in the country of 327 million people,” he explains. “You can't see everything. And when you do see something that might rise to the point that somebody needs to be on the radar or investigated, we have protections of the First Amendment. You've got someone that, you know, might have been speaking in satire, someone who spoke in the heat of the moment. It's so difficult to balance that. And that's what law enforcement is saddled with doing now.”
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