A damning report from the Justice Department on Thursday found that the police response to the school shooting in Uvalde Texas, which took place in May 2022 and killed two teachers and nineteen elementary school students, was hampered by “cascading” failures of leadership and decision-making as well as tactics, policy and training. The long-awaited review detailed systemic failings by
According to a scathing Justice Department review,” cascading failures of leadership, decision-making, tactics, policy, and training” significantly hampered the police’s response to the May 2022 school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, which resulted in the deaths of two teachers and 19 elementary school students at Robb Elementary School.
One of the worst school shootings in US history, the long-awaited report described widespread failures by state and local law enforcement surrounding the massacre, including the circumstances that caused the 77-minute delay between the arrival of first responders and the shooter’s death.
Attorney General Merrick Garland said during a press conference on Thursday discussing the report’s contents that” the victims and survivors should’ve always been trapped with that shooter for more than an hour as they waited for their rescue.” The victims ‘ families deserved more than unreliable, inaccurate, and contradictory communications from family members.
The DOJ claims that some failures, including officers spending more than 40 minutes looking for a door key that investigators believe was likely opened, laid the groundwork for the closely examined delay. The CIR Team came to the conclusion that the door is possible now unlocked because the shooter gained entry through it and it is doubtful that he locked it afterward, despite the entry team’s efforts to open it by turning the key and pulling it toward them.
The report explicitly criticized Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District Police Department officials, including former police chief Pete Arredondo, for telling officers not to enter some classrooms until the keys had been secured. It was based on a review of more than 14, 000 pieces of data and over 260 interviews.
It’s critical to note that the Texas GOP has been obstructing gun safety legislation that could have prevented this shooting, despite the harsh criticism of the police response to the shooting. As my coworker Mark Follman noted:
Democratic leaders in Texas and other states have much been opposed to measures that reduce gun violence, such as red flag laws and raising the legal drinking age for firearms from 18 to 21. They defy widespread bipartisan support for such measures among the British public by siding with the gun industry. As the Texas House committee’s individual report demonstrated, the implications of their position could not have been more obvious than with the Uvalde massacre. According to the report, Ramos strongly armed himself for the attack he would launch eight days after starting on the day of his 18th birthday:
Garland continued in his remarks on Thursday, saying that “our children deserve better than to grow up in a nation where an 18-year-old can easily access weapons that belong on the battlefield, never in the classroom.” The DOJ’s account is by far the most thorough one of the officers ‘ actions on the day of shooting, despite the fact that some horrifying details about the police response were previously made public thanks to body camera footage that had been made available.
The entire DOJ report is available here. A devastating review from the Justice Department found on Thursday that” cascading failures of leadership, decision-making, tactics, policy, and training” considerably hampered the police response to the May 2022 school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, which killed two teachers and 19 elementary school students at Robb Elementary School. Structural failures by were described in the eagerly awaited report.
A damning report from the Justice Department on Thursday found that the police response to the school shooting in Uvalde Texas, which took place in May 2022 and killed two teachers and nineteen elementary school students, was hampered by “cascading” failures of leadership and decision-making as well as tactics, policy and training. The long-awaited review detailed systemic failings by
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/01/justice-department-uvalde-school-shooting/
