Police failed in their response to the 2022 elementary school shooting in Uvalde, Texas that killed 19 children and two teachers, the US Justice Department concluded on Thursday, saying that the victims “deserved better.”
The report faulted law enforcement officers for waiting more than an hour to breach the classroom where the 18-year-old gunman was holed up with 33 students and three teachers, despite calls for help from the children.
“The victims and survivors of the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School deserved better,” attorney general Merrick Garland said during a press conference in Uvalde, adding that the law enforcement response “was a failure that should not have happened.”
The report faulted responding officers for not immediately confronting the gunman, who was holed up in a set of adjoining classrooms with students and staff for 77 minutes until he was killed by a police tactical team.
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“Lives would have been saved” had police followed accepted practices and immediately advanced toward the gunman, Mr Garland said.
The review found that the first officers on scene moved to breach the classroom, but after being met with gunfire, law enforcement began approaching the situation as a “barricaded subject scenario” and not an active shooting.
Law enforcement, including the chief of the school district police force, focused on evacuating other classrooms and requesting more police resources, leaving children trapped with the gunman, the report found.
Officers waited outside in a hallway even as a child called 911 from inside the classroom and the gunman continued to shoot, according to the report.
The report details the results of the department’s Critical Incident Review, of the law enforcement response, a review which began days after the shooting at the request of Uvalde’s then-mayor.
The justice department report also identified failures in leadership, concluding that none of the law enforcement officials took charge at the scene.
The review also found missteps in officials’ communication with families and the public, including inaccurate social media posts stating that students were safe inside the school and a gunman was in custody. State and local officials later presented a misleading narrative of the shooting at press briefings, the report found.
The review follows several state and local investigations that have also examined shortcomings in the response.
The shooting in a rural part of southwest Texas, carried out by a former student, was one of the deadliest school shootings in US history. Nineteen students, ranging from ages 9 to 11, were killed along with two teachers.
The department’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services led the assessment with the help of outside experts in emergency management, active gun-attack response and school safety. – Reuters
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