190: The Patterns of Bad Planning in a Crisis: The Uvalde School District Police Response

In any Crisis, the first 48 hours are make or break. If you don't have a solid plan in place, things can quickly spiral out of control. If you are responsible for responding to an incident based crisis, this is what out of control sounds like.

The police chief now says that he is cooperating. He is in touch with regard to the investigation with the Department of Public Safety, but they have said that he's no longer responding to requests for a follow up interview. He can both of these things be true?

No. I mean this is. This is. I've never seen anything like this. Welcome to the Indestructible PR Podcast where we use current events and tested media and PR strategies to help prevent or manage a crisis and build an indestructible reputation. A reputation Hanging in the balance is Pedro Peetz Aaron Dondo, the embattled Uvalde School police chief who's reported to to have led a flawed law enforcement response to the recent school shooting and has remained out of the public eye since until he showed up on cnn. This is how bad planning looks in an incident based crisis. So on the podcast how not to Become the Next Pete Arradondo, Dodging media questions on camera is a bad look for anyone, crisis expert or not. Everyone is not at risk of being chased down by a reporter or producer looking for a response to a story that has the country and the world captivated. But stories that capture the attention of the press drive eyeballs to news sites. And those stories are in hot demand. And those types of stories can happen anywhere. They can be national, they can be local. But if eyeballs are going to a website, going to a news site, it's going to be hot. And CNN is now that hot news outlet because they had their Mike Wallace ambush moment. Here's a Gen X boomer check Mike Wallace, one of the original correspondents for the CBS 60 Minutes, father to Chris Wallace, formerly of Fox News CNN and now works for cnn. Full Circle no one wants to be connected to a news headline that reads Narratives and blame shift Again as Dysfunction Engulfs Shooting probe. That was according to the Texas Tribune. They reported that the Texas Department of Public Safety said a local police chief had stopped cooperating and also walked back a statement that a teacher had propped open a door used by the shooter to enter the school. If you look on social media or if you look on Twitter, you can see the commentary and the opinions about the atrocious response and what is happening. The fallout of the shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. If you Want to feel confident in your crisis response? For any crisis, you need a plan. I know from working crisis situations, from the inside, from my work at FEMA and also as a consultant, they are stressful. Even the day that I record this, I was on a call for an hour and a half with clients who were dealing with a crisis. They were dealing and preparing for that ambush moment. Like, what happens if. So the majority of public organizations, they can respond to emergencies using an incident command system or ic. But private organizations, you know, by contrast, you know, yes, they can shield themselves from certain information, proprietary information, legal information, but it's difficult when you try to mitigate that public scrutiny. The scrutiny comes with bad planning. And we saw that last week following the shooting in Uvalde. Even following a command structure isn't foolproof. So on this episode, I'm going to share with you some of the patterns of bad planning in a crisis and the right questions to ask to get you back on track to restore the public's trust. So Pierdando, the embattled Uvalde school police chief, he's the one who is now known for leading a flawed law enforcement response to the Robb elementary school shooting. He popped up on CNN when the reporter and producer tracked him down. When he was tracked down, he declined to answer questions about the shooting, really about this massacre. So I want to take a look at the patterns of bad planning in a crisis. Now, I write these plans for a living. And in fact, I'm writing one right now. I take the basic structure of the incident command system. That's ICS and that's from my work with fema. And I integrated into a crisis communication plan using a strategy, knowing that news happens in a moment's notice. We don't have these news cycles, these 24 hour news cycles where it resets itself around the nightly news. News is happening constantly. It's happening online, it's happening on social media. So there needs to be personal accountability. There needs to be chain of commands. There needs to be a communication plan within your crisis plan. So to go back to Texas, let's take a listen to how we got here. And focusing on a local school police.

Chief, Texas officials say Uvalde School District Police Chief Pedro Arredondo is not responding to requests for another interview in their investigation into the school shooting. He was, of course, the incident commander who made the call to hold off breaching the classroom where all 21 victims were killed.

It's a few minutes ago. CNN's Aaron Cooper said that he reached Arredondo, who Said he had been in touch with the Texas Department of Public Safety. Shimon Procupez also involved. Shimon, I understand you gotten to contact him as well. With him as well. What did he say? Any news?

Well, Jim, just to give everyone the play by play here, this just happened moments ago. You had Aaron Cooper, our producer out here, who was at his home, seen him, saw him leaving his home. So we went to the office where we assumed he was going. And sure enough, we were sitting in our car when he drove in. So we quickly ran out and confronted him.

All right, now listen to Arredondo's response. So, yes, it's an ambush. It is your classic reporter ambush. But Arredondo is clearly unprepared to speak. Even in an ambush. There should be a plan in place for a response. Take a listen. Nice to meet you.

I want to talk to you about.

Your decision and what department we're doing, but just to let y' all know. And I just spoke about it.

I know you did, but I'm gonna block this way.

No, just so you all know, because you all know, obviously we're not going to release anything. We have. We have people in our community being buried. So we're going to be respectful. We're going to. We're going to be the director that.

You were responsible for the decision. Right.

We're going to that room.

How do you.

We're going to be respectful to the family.

I understand that you have an opportunity.

Oh, and sure, parents. And just so you know, we're gonna, we're gonna do that eventually, obviously. And whenever this is done and let the families quit grieving, then we'll do that, obviously. And just so, just so everybody. And just so everybody. Just so everybody knows, we've been in contact with EPS every day. Just so you all know, every day.

They said that you're not cooperating.

I've been on the phone with them every day.

They say you're not cooperating. So just two seconds.

Just so you know, we've been talking.

To him every day. What is your reaction?

Y' all have a good day.

What is your reaction, Sir?

Okay. Crisis reality 1. A crisis can always cause someone attached to the response to be in crisis themselves. Getting on camera and dodging questions is one of the fastest way to develop a self perpetuated crisis. There's plenty of blame to go around. But right now, at this point in the recording, a lot of the blame, a lot of the scrutiny is on one person. Denials, resistance, victim confusion, that bewilderment all happening on camera. It creates a sequence of events that quickly erode the public's trust when there's no planning involved in appearing on camera, Plan to look bad, plan to further escalate the crisis. Crisis Reality 2 Clumping can lead to a crisis. So if you've been following the events happening in Uvalde, think of all of the photo ops, think of all of the pressers. The video you've been watching, they all involve just a group of men on stage. They're either yelling at Beto o' Rourke to get the hell out of the press conference, or they're answering questions that lead to more questions. In the days after the massacre at Robb Elementary School, officials with the Texas Department of Public Safety gave a press conference, and they said a shooter encountered a police officer employed by the school district before charging through a back door. But then there were conflicting accounts about whether the officer fired at that gunman. And then the DPS director, Steve McCraw, he did a press conference. And I distinctly remember watching it when he walked up to the mic and it looked at first like he was chewing gum. And I thought, oh, please, please do not tell me that he is going to speak about this event with gum in his mouth. So it turned out not to be, but it was a distraction. Maybe it was just me, but I took that for nerves. But he also indicated in his presser that the school police officer engaged with the gunman before he entered the school, but did not exchange gunfire. But then another DPS official was quoted saying there was an exchange. So when there's clumps of people contradicting other clumps of people, it makes for clumsy crisis response. Too many people are in the room where the decision should be made, where it appears that no one can make a decision. The plan is you need to involve management or a team early on, and you must define roles. Who is the. Who is in command? Where does the buck stop? Think of most crises within a crisis. The event isn't the crisis. Management of the crisis is the crisis. The definition of a PR crisis is not external. External events are external incidents. That's not a crisis. The crisis is usually a result of something happening internally. That's why you need an effective management response. So no planning around the chain of command is bad planning in a crisis. Put someone in charge immediately. Now, I will say as an aside, we're dealing with public officials here, a municipality, I would assume they must be following an incident command system. They have to be, but they're just doing it poorly. There are so many weaknesses in their plan. There's a lack of accountability, there's a lack of order. It looks like there's a lack of planning. There's no common flexible management structure that's happening there. And we can all see that. And that leads to crisis reality number three, which is heads will roll in crisis situations. People need to go down when things are going down. People who are charged with leading and speaking are inherently in a stressful situation. We give you that it's stressful to be the face of a crisis. It is stressful to be the person responding to a crisis standing behind a podium. There is so much risk. People understand that pressure causes mistakes, and people tend to try to minimize the mistake. And when those attempts happen, they can lead to bigger problems when you're not prepared. So for people in a position to manage a crisis or help them communicate during a crisis, they're usually that, you know, deer, and there's that deer in the headlight moment when they're not prepared. But even for the people in a stressful situation when they're under attack, if you're prepared and you know what to say, you can get through it. So those are three crisis realities. But now, what are the right questions to ask? How do you prevent bad planning? How do you disrupt the patterns of bad planning in a crisis to get you back on track? So as I mentioned, the crisis comes from the management of the crisis. It's something internal. Usually the scrutiny has created a group or created a faction of people, of stakeholders. Could be the press, could be local, could be activist groups. It could be the public at large. If you're under attack, there are questions that you need to ask. In this moment of crisis, think about the stakeholders that matter to you. What would reasonable people appropriately expect in your response? What do they need from you? In Uvalde, Texas, what people want are answers. They want to know specifically what happened in that police response, what didn't happen? Where did they fall short? Where is the accountability? So if you are ever in that situation, you're the leader, you're planning with the leader, you're a part of that team. Trust becomes the consequence if you do not properly plan. So the questions to ask, did we fulfill a promise? Did we do what we were expected to do? Were expectations met? And did we do both of those things while showing our values? Because our values help you with those promise, those promises, those plans, and help you with those expectations. You need to map out these expectations, these promises. If you're lacking, your trust will plummet with your stakeholders. And when stakeholders feel betrayed, they strike. And they do that by asking questions. They ask them loudly and they ask them very publicly. So if you're in that situation or you know, you're headed into that situation, the questions that often, that leaders often ask themselves in the middle of a crisis, it's the ones they lose sleep over is wondering, like, why are they under attack? You know, why don't, why don't people like us? Why are they acting this way? Why do they do this to me? And how did we get them to do this to me? Aaron Dondo was asking that question, why does everybody hate me right now? If you can't ask that question, if you can't answer it, you can't lead. You can't lead. So in every podcast and I add an indestructible tip, this is the leave behind tip that helps you strengthen your reputation, especially now in a crisis. Beware of the 48 hour window. That is the time between the event and that crisis trigger. You have two full days of a news cycle. Again, not just a nightly news hit. We're talking about every moment, every hour of the day. If you have two full days, that means the press is in place, people are paying attention. You need a crisis plan because everything happens at 48 hours. Either your train is running on the train tracks on time or you have gone off the rails for the people who plan, their train arrives right on time. That's all for this week on the podcast. See you again next week. Bye for now.