By: IFPO's Tom Conley
A memorial at the El Paso Walmart following the mass shooting that occurred there. Mario Tama/Getty Images
IFPO Past Chairman Tom M. Conley, CPP, CPO, President & CEO of The Conley Group, Inc. has penned an excellent breakdown of why the mass shooting at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas was a security failure for securitymagazine.com:
My first thought on August 3, 2019, when learning about the mass shooting at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, was if a good friend of mine who lives there was safe. Whenever one has a friend or family member who may have been hurt or killed in an incident, it changes how one perceives and reacts to the news of that incident. In addition to cognitively interpreting the facts of the incident, there is also a state of emotional angst that occurs. I soon found out my friend and his family were safe. While I felt sorrow for the victims and anger toward the shooter, I felt a tremendous sense of relief.
I watched media reports as the story unfolded. It became clear fairly soon that the number of individuals who had been killed and wounded were far beyond that of a domestic, robbery or other type of crime where individuals are killed and wounded. I also learned that there was one male shooter and that suspect had been taken in to custody by law enforcement after he left the store.
Since the Coward Killer (as I call him) was taken in to custody and the direct threat was over, my attention turned to the scores of victims of this shooting rampage. At the time, all news media sources reported that 20 people died and “dozens” of people were reported as having been injured. A few days later, two of the originally injured people died at a hospital. The toll to date is 22 people dead and 26 people injured.
According to the El Paso Times, the Coward Killer got lost ate a meal inside the Walmart store before returning to his vehicle, retrieving his rifle, and then opening fire outside the store, where he attacked a soccer team group conducting a fundraiser. An eyewitness reportedly saw him also firing on customers in the parking lot before he entered the building. The Walmart store manager observed the shooter attacking the soccer team group and then ran into the store to begin evacuating customers. The store manager reportedly issued a "Code Brown" after he witnessed the shooter firing a rifle in the parking lot. A "Code Brown" at Walmart reportedly signals to the employees that an active shooter event is in progress at the store. Were customers notified that there was an active shooter event taking place?
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