UVALDE, Texas — A Department of Justice review of the police response to the mass shooting at a Uvalde elementary school found “cascading failures of leadership, decision-making, tactics, policy and training.”
The review, which was based on hundreds of interviews with police and others, said the biggest mistake officers made that day was considering the shooter a barricaded person and not an active shooter even though children were still trapped in the classrooms with him.
The report says officers made a critical mistake when they retreated after being fired upon initially, even though they knew, or should have known, that the gunman was still a threat because the shooter fired at least one shot during the standoff and a student called 911 from inside the classroom.
Still, the report says, officers on scene concentrated on evacuating people from elsewhere in the building and spent considerable time hunting keys to the classroom containing the shooter instead of confronting him.
“An active shooter with access to victims should never be considered and treated as a barricaded subject,” the report states. “Evacuations in such circumstances must be conducted in the most expeditious manner, limited to those immediately in harm’s way, and not at the expense of the priority to eliminate the threat.”
Attorney General Merrick Garland and Justice Department officials held an 11 a.m. press conference Thursday to address the report findings.
"77 minutes after the first officers arrived on the scene, and after 45 rounds had been fired by the active shooter, the shooter was killed," Garland said. "The law enforcement response to the mass shooting at Robb Elementary was a failure."
Garland called the officers' approach to the situation as a barricaded person, as opposed to an active shooter, "the most significant failure" in the response to the shooting.
The report concluded that officers on scene – who waited more than an hour to enter the classroom – had everything they needed to breach the classroom and kill the gunman when they first arrived and didn’t need to wait on SWAT gear.
“Officers responding to an active shooter incident must be prepared to approach the threat and breach or enter a room using just the tools they have with them, which is often a standard-issue firearm/service weapon," the report said.
The nearly 600-page report, which was not a criminal investigation, revealed little new information about what happened, and notably didn’t recommend any officers be charged with crimes for not quickly killing the shooter.
The DOJ team conducting the review looked at 14,000 pieces of data, including body camera, surveillance video and training materials and conducted 260 interviews. The team was in Uvalde for 54 days over nine trips.
The report notes that, since Columbine, officers are trained to stop a shooter first and foremost. “Everything else, including officer safety, is subordinate to that objective.”
Uvalde schools police may not have trained that way, the DOJ report finds. “Recent training that UCISD PD provided seemed to suggest, inappropriately, that an active shooter situation can transition into a hostage or barricaded subject situation.”
After the gunman was dead—more than an hour after he started shooting -- body-worn camera video reviewed by the DOJ showed officers “walking into the crime scene without an investigative purpose or responsibility in the immediate aftermath of the incident.”
In the days that followed, the DOJ found, “crime scene preservation was compromised and the crime scene team had to continually stop and start their important work when non-investigatory personnel entered the hallway and classrooms 111/112 for the purpose of viewing the scene.”
The DOJ said that authorities also mishandled the reunification of families with loved ones, calling the effort “chaotic” with one result being “children and school personnel were not adequately evaluated medically prior to being transported to the Reunification Center. As such, injured victims had delayed medical care and were at risk of further injury.”
Vanita Gupta, associate attorney general, said in the news conference that some children who had suffered bullet wounds were placed on school buses without medical attention.
"When it became clear there was no leader, there was no plan to triage the 35 victims in Classrooms 111 and 112, many of whom had been shot," Gupta said.
All the chaos and ineptitude contributed to the trauma of the whole Uvalde community, the report found.
“The extent of misinformation, misguided and misleading narratives, leaks, and lack of communication about what happened on May 24 is unprecedented and has had an extensive, negative impact on the mental health and recovery of the family members and other victims, as well as the entire community of Uvalde.”
The report includes a call for accountability beyond Uvalde.
“When an organization recognizes that an error has occurred, it should admit the mistake and share what actions it is taking to rectify the problem and prevent it from happening again. Even when the mistake is egregious, an agency can maintain or seek to regain public trust by being open and holding itself accountable to the community. In these moments, a law enforcement agency can build community trust by holding itself to the highest possible standard.”
On Wednesday evening, the victims family members attended a 6 p.m. briefing with Garland at the Herby Ham Community Center in Uvalde.
Following the meeting, several family members left saying they felt it was a step in the right direction.
Brett Cross, who lost his son Uziyah Garcia, told WFAA families were informed it was a very thorough investigation outlining the failures from law enforcement. Cross said the families weren’t given too many specifics Wednesday night, and he was anxiously awaiting the findings of the full report on Thursday.
“We still have to process it emotionally, and hopefully, this will bring some changes and accountability that we have been asking for and fighting for from the very beginning,” Cross said.
Berlinda Arreola, the grandmother of Uvalde shooting victim Amerie Jo Garza, spoke to members of the press after the DOJ’s briefing.
“I have a lot of emotion going right now. I don’t have a lot of words to say, I have to process everything,” Arreola said. “It was a lot of information and the next step is to find out what will be done with this information.”
Alfred Garza, Amerie Jo Garza’s father, said the DOJ’s finding seemed to reiterate what many of the families have already expressed: Law enforcement failed in their response to the mass shooting.
“I hope that people open their eyes and do what they should’ve done a long time ago,” Garza said. “We want people to be held accountable for what they didn’t do that day. I mean, that’s all that’s left."
Garland toured murals of the 21 victims Wednesday afternoon.
“Part of the reason we did the report is to make sure people all over the country know what the right thing to do is,” Garland said on Wednesday.
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