A Texas Department of Public Safety captain tried to delay a law enforcement team entering classrooms in an attempt to stop the Robb Elementary School mass shooting, raising questions about DPS claims that its officers played no role in directing the failed police response that day.
Captain Joel Betancourt is one of seven officers whom DPS leaders have referred to the Department’s Office of Inspector General for their actions during the May 24 massacre at Uvalde.
Sources confirmed that internal DPS memos, some dated May 26, criticized Betancourt’s actions and his use of the FaceTime video communications app to show his superiors scenes of the carnage.
In a July 25 email, DPS Deputy Director Jeff Williams recommended that his boss, Director Steven McCraw, investigate Betancourt after other officers at the scene questioned his order.
Betancourt, 36, remains on duty at Del Rio, where he has worked since 2007.
Two of the seven officers under internal investigation have been suspended.
Betancourt was already in the news in police circles after a news report in April revealed he was paid $164,000 in overtime to work on Governor Greg Abbott’s immigration net, Operation Lone Star. The report says Betancourt, with his overtime and base salary, earned even more than McCraw.
Sources told the San Antonio Express-News that Betancourt’s orders to stand down came near the end of the massacre, as a team of off-duty Border Patrol officers and sheriff’s deputies walked through the gate. of a classroom and killed the shooter.
CNN has obtained an audio recording of Betancourt ordering a response team to wait, more than 70 minutes after the shooter was unleashed. Betancourt told investigators he believed a more qualified team was on the way.
At the time, DPS and San Antonio Police SWAT teams had been called to Robb Elementary but had not yet arrived.
The gunman entered the school around 11:30 a.m. and fired numerous shots inside classrooms 111 and 112, killing 19 students and two teachers and injuring several others. Uvalde City Police and school district officers entered the school three minutes later, but retreated after the gunman fired on them, hitting two city officers with shrapnel. shell.
Subsequently, confusion, lack of communication skills, and hesitation caused officers from multiple agencies to leave victims trapped in classrooms with the shooter for more than 70 minutes.
Betancourt told investigators he arrived at the school around 12:45 p.m., minutes before the shooter was killed, sources said. He was one of 91 DPS officers at the scene.
“Hey, this is DPS Captain Betancourt. The team that’s going to breach must stand ready. The team that’s going to break through must stand ready,” he ordered at 12:48, according to the recording.
A police source said officers traveling to the scene miles away heard the captain’s order on their radios.
“He said, ‘Rest, retire’ and that’s when the breach happened,” the source said. “You could hear the shots of the officers killing the shooter.”
Betancourt told investigators he had no first-hand knowledge of what was going on at the school – including that a Border Patrol tactical unit was confronting the shooter, according to sources familiar with the investigation.
Confusion, conflicting information
DPS officials said no state troopers ever controlled or issued any substantive orders that day.
McCraw blamed then-school district police chief Pedro “Pete” Arredondo, whom McCraw called the incident commander, for the disastrous response. For his part, Arredondo told members of the Uvalde school board through his lawyer in August – several hours before they fired him – that he did not see himself as the commander on square.
Two DPS officers told investigators they had been ordered not to enter the school, CNN first reported. Sources have confirmed some of these details to the Express-News.
“I heard someone yell, ‘Capt. Betancourt said all DPS personnel are to be on the perimeter, not entering the building,’ a DPS lieutenant wrote in a memo, adding that he had traveled 40 miles to school at speeds of up to 130 mph.
A DPS sergeant said in his memo, “As this was clearly against established training, we both decided to enter the building where the shooter was.”
Officers did not say when they received the order from Betancourt. He told investigators he remembered telling DPS officers to stay outside the school building and form a perimeter. He said Uvalde County Sheriff Ruben Nolasco told him that too many people were inside the building, CNN reported.
Betancourt told investigators he was at Eagle Pass when the first call about the school shooting came around 11:50 a.m. and he then rushed to Uvalde. It was not clear at the time how serious the situation was, he added.
However, a sergeant said he received a text message from Betancourt regarding an “active shooter” at 11:37 a.m., inconsistent with Betancourt’s timeline.
Victor Escalon, commander of the DPS’s South Texas region, which includes Uvalde, noted that Betancourt texted him at 12:09 p.m., sources said.
This text read: “Initial information, a person possibly a teacher shot in the head, an officer shot, a child has an AK 47, the CNU has been activated, the suspect is barricaded. Soldiers who are doctors have been deployed. The drone team is on its way,” sources said. CNU was shorthand for a team of negotiators.
Betancourt did not wear a body camera and did not have a dash cam in his vehicle, sources said. On the phone while driving, he was told that a gunman had barricaded himself in the school with “an AK-47”.
At the start of the massacre, some officers mistakenly believed the shooter was barricaded – that he was no longer an active shooter. Mass shooting training calls for officers to quickly confront the shooter to stop the killing.
Body camera footage released in June shows local officers saying they had “contained” the shooter in an office. It was later clarified that he was in a classroom.
Betancourt told investigators he arrived at Robb Elementary around 12:45 a.m. and initially assumed Nolasco was the on-scene commander.
Later, after the shooter was killed, Betancourt saw Arredondo inside and spoke to him. He told investigators he believed the school’s police chief was responsible.
He told investigators he gave the order to “stand by” based on information from Nolasco, believing a SWAT team would arrive soon, sources said.
After the shooter died, Betancourt said, he focused on cleaning up the crime scene and setting up a command post. He told investigators he used FaceTime to show his superiors the state of the school after the massacre, sources familiar with the talks said.
“Who do this ?” said a police source. “You don’t FaceTime a crime scene.”
guillermo.contreras@express-news.net| Twitter: @gmaninfedland
