Department of Justice notes 'significant failure' in Uvalde Police response

A Justice Department investigation released Thursday found that a near-total failure of police protocols hampered the response to the 2022 Uvalde, Texas, school shooting that left 21 people dead — but the most serious failure was the reluctance of officials to confront the killer during the shooting. the first few minutes of the attack.

The department blamed “the cascading failures of leadership, decision-making, tactics, policy and training” for the delayed and passive law enforcement response that allowed an 18-year-old gunman with a semiautomatic rifle into a pair of interconnected fourth-grade classrooms could stay. at Robb Elementary School for 77 minutes before he was confronted and killed.

The “key failure,” the investigators concluded, was the fateful decision by local law enforcement officials to classify the incident as a barricaded standoff rather than an “active-shooter” scenario, which would have required immediate and aggressive action regardless the danger to those involved. response or the lack of appropriate weapons to confront the shooter.

The nearly 600-page report largely reflects the conclusions of a state investigation released last July. The federal report, compiled from 260 interviews and nearly 15,000 documents and videos, represents the most comprehensive assessment of a killing spree that helped enact new federal gun control legislation and continues to haunt a community traumatized by the carnage and inadequacy of the police. answer.

Some families of the dead and injured, who were informed of the findings hours before the report's release, expressed mixed feelings about the report. Some had hoped the department would file federal criminal charges against local officials responsible for the confused and ineffective response.

The department offered a list of detailed recommendations. They required, among other things, adherence to guidelines, established in the wake of the 1999 Columbine school shooting, that call for immediately neutralizing the shooter in any situation where an active shooter might be present.

Officers responding to such a situation “must be prepared” to risk their lives to protect their communities, the report said, even if they lack sufficient firepower and are armed only with a standard handgun to confront a gunman with much more. strong weapon.

“The victims and survivors of the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School deserved better,” Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said in a statement released before a scheduled news conference in Uvalde. “The response of officials in the hours and days after” the killings, he added, “was a failure.”

The report, known as a critical incident review and launched 20 months ago at the request of the city's former mayor, Don McLaughlin, also found criticism of local and state officials for providing incomplete and sometimes inaccurate information to students' families and the news. media.

Local District Attorney Christina Mitchell conducted an investigation to determine whether criminal charges should be filed.

Mr Garland and Attorney General Vanita Gupta met on Wednesday with the families of some of the students who were killed or injured, as well as survivors, before releasing the report.

The report includes a lengthy to-do list for systematic improvements, such as establishing a clear chain of command at the scene of mass shootings and stricter enforcement of school safety protocols.

For some Uvalde families, like the parents of one of the survivors, Noah Orona, the findings supported what they had been saying since the shooting. “It's not just us saying, 'Somebody failed,' but now the federal government has come along and said, 'Hey, this was a colossal failure,'” said Oscar Orona, the boy's father.

Some of the report's recommendations have already been implemented, and several Uvalde police officials — including school district police chief Pedro “Pete” Arredondo and acting Uvalde police chief Mariano Pargas — have already been fired or have resigned.

The department's conclusions reflected the findings of a July 2022 study by a special committee of the Texas House of Representatives. Their report details a perfect storm of dysfunction and circumstances that led to the delayed response, despite the presence of more than 370 local, state and federal law enforcement officers, including federal border agents who ultimately burst into a classroom and killed the shooter.

That state report cited a series of factors unrelated to law enforcement that contributed to the slow response, including the remoteness of Uvalde, a small city of 14,000, and its proximity to a border crossing with Mexico, which is a popular entry point has been for illegal immigration. .

Low-quality internet service and poor cell phone coverage “led to inconsistent reception of the lockdown notice by teachers,” the Texas House report said. In addition, the frequency of so-called “bailout” alerts — pursuits involving migrants trying to escape Border Patrol agents — “has contributed to a reduced sense of vigilance in responding to security alerts,” state researchers said.

The state commission found no “villains” other than the shooter, but “found systemic failures and blatant poor decision-making.”

The failures extended far beyond the response on the day of the killings and reflected an all-too-familiar pattern of missed opportunities in many previous mass shootings, including a racially motivated mass killing at a Buffalo supermarket by another 18-year-old 10-year-old . days before the shooting in Texas.

There were clear signs that the Uvalde killer, a troubled and bullied loner nicknamed the “school shooter” by some acquaintances, posed a deadly threat.

He had recently dropped out of high school and used the money he saved from fast food jobs to purchase an arsenal that included two semi-automatic weapons, conversion equipment used to increase the rate of fire, and thousands of rounds of ammunition. In the days leading up to the shooting, he made threatening comments to colleagues and spoke openly about his suicidal depressive behavior, investigators found.

At 11:10 a.m. on May 24, 2022, he shot his grandmother in the face and then texted a 15-year-old girl in Germany he met online that he was planning to shoot up an elementary school.

His grandmother survived. The gunman then drove her pickup truck to the nearby school, crashed into a ditch, jumped a fence, went through an unlocked door and began shooting indiscriminately at young students gathered in the two connecting classrooms collected.

Law enforcement officers arrived almost immediately and approached the classrooms. The gunman shot at them and they walked backwards down a hallway. For more than an hour, local, state and federal officials, including U.S. Border Patrol agents, debated how to handle the situation — and made the fateful decision to classify the incident as a barricaded standoff, requiring negotiation, instead of an active struggle. shooter scenario, which would require an immediate and aggressive response.

Justice Department officials initially said their investigation, led by the department's Community Based Policing Office, would take about six months. The investigation turned out to be more complex and information harder to obtain than they initially thought, according to an official familiar with the situation.