Families of the children and teachers killed in the Uvalde, Texas, school massacre are renewing demands for criminal charges after a scathing Justice Department report again laid bare numerous failures by police during one of the deadliest classroom shootings in U.S. history.
Quick Read
- Renewed Demands for Criminal Charges: Families of the Uvalde school shooting victims are calling for criminal charges following a Justice Department report that highlighted multiple police failures during the incident.
- Details of the Justice Department Report: The nearly 600-page report, released 20 months after the shooting, details a series of law enforcement missteps during the attack at Robb Elementary School, where 19 students and two teachers were killed.
- Lack of Accountability: Despite the identification of failures, no criminal charges have been filed. U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland described the police response as a failure, but the report does not address potential criminal liability.
- Response from President Biden: President Biden commented on the report, expressing uncertainty about criminal liability in the case.
- Job Losses but No Criminal Charges: While at least five officers, including the on-site commander, have lost their jobs since the shooting, none have faced criminal charges in the investigation led by the Texas Rangers.
- Uvalde County DA’s Investigation: Uvalde County District Attorney Christina Mitchell is reviewing the Justice Department report for the ongoing criminal investigation, with no clear timeline for completion.
- Frustration over Investigation Pace: The slow progress of the criminal investigation has frustrated victims’ families and local and state officials, including Uvalde’s former mayor and a state senator.
- Federal Report Findings: The federal report identified “cascading failures” by police, including delays in confronting the gunman and misinformation given to families.
- Community Impact: The Uvalde community, closely connected to the officers involved, feels abandoned by leaders and is seeking accountability and justice.
- Hope for Action: Some in Uvalde hope the Justice Department report will lead to a unified understanding of the facts and prompt criminal charges, but skepticism remains about the likelihood of accountability.
The Associated Press has the story:
Uvalde families renew demands for police to face charges after DOJ report
Newslooks- UVALDE, Texas (AP) —
Families of the children and teachers killed in the Uvalde, Texas, school massacre are renewing demands for criminal charges after a scathing Justice Department report again laid bare numerous failures by police during one of the deadliest classroom shootings in U.S. history.
“I’m very surprised that no one has ended up in prison,” said Velma Lisa Duran, whose sister Irma Garcia was one of the two teachers killed in the May 24, 2022, shooting. “It’s sort of a slap in the face that all we get is a review … we deserve justice.”
The release of the nearly 600-page report Thursday — roughly 20 months after the shooting — leaves a criminal investigation by Uvalde County prosecutors as one the last unfinished reviews by authorities into the attack at Robb Elementary School. Nineteen students and two teachers were killed inside two fourth-grade classrooms, while highly armed police officers waited in the hallways for more than hour before going inside to confront the gunman.
U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland called the police response “a failure that should not have happened.”
But the report is deliberately silent on the question that still burns in the minds of many victims’ families: Will anyone responsible for the failures be charged with a crime?
President Joe Biden said Thursday that he had not yet read the full findings. “But I don’t know that there’s any criminal liability,” he said.
Since the shooting, at least five officers have lost their jobs, including two from the Texas Department of Public Safety and the on-site commander, then-school district police chief, Pete Arredondo. But no one has been charged in the criminal investigation that was led by the Texas Rangers. The Justice Department report says the FBI has assisted the Rangers but is not doing its own investigation.
The Rangers — part of the Texas DPS, which had more than 90 officers on the scene of the shooting — submitted their initial findings at the start of 2023. Uvalde County District Attorney Christina Mitchell initially said she hoped to bring the case to a grand jury by the end of last year. But she pushed back that timeline in December and said Thursday that she will need time to review the voluminous Justice Department report.
“I am a working DA with a small office,” Mitchell said in an email. “It is going to take me awhile to go through this report. I am hopeful that it was informative for the community.”
The pace of the criminal investigation has long frustrated families of the victims, Uvalde’s former Republican mayor and a Democratic state senator who represents the small South Texas town and has called for the head of the Texas state police to be fired.
“Twenty months later, there’s no end in sight for this local district attorney to be able to do anything,” state Sen. Roland Gutierrez said. “We don’t know if she’s going to indict anybody at all. It’s really a shame where we are now.”
In the report, federal officials detailed “cascading failures” by police, from waiting for more than an hour to confront and kill the gunman to repeatedly giving false information to grieving families about what had happened.
Produced by a Justice Department office that supports local police, the document is among the most comprehensive accountings to date of what went wrong. It says training, communication, leadership and technology problems extended the crisis, even as agonized parents begged officers to go in and terrified students called 911 from inside a classroom where the gunman had holed up.
Uvalde is a close-knit city of 15,000 about 85 miles (140 kilometers) southwest of San Antonio. Parents of children killed in the shooting grew up and went to school with some of the officers they now blame, and they feel abandoned by local and state leaders who they see as intent on moving past the massacre.
“We need our community,” said Brett Cross, who was raising his 10-year-old nephew, Uziyah Garcia, when the boy was killed in the shooting. “It is hard enough waking up every day and continuing to walk out on these streets, walk to a (grocery store) and see a cop who you know was standing there when our babies were murdered and bleeding out.”
Cross is among those who hope the Justice Department report will unify Uvalde around a common set of facts and spur criminal charges. During a news conference in the city, Garland stopped short of saying if charges should be filed, leaving that to Mitchell.
The Department of Justice report faults state and local officials with undercutting the public’s trust in law enforcement by repeatedly releasing false and misleading information about the police response. That includes Gov. Greg Abbott, who initially praised the officers’ courage “running toward gunfire.”
As what happened has become clear, Jesse Rizo has been among those left looking for more accountability. Rizo, whose niece Jacklyn Cazares was among the shooting victims, still hopes Mitchell will bring charges, but he has little faith in those in power.
“You hope for the best,” he said, “but the past will tell you basically what your outcome is going to be.”
The police response to the Uvalde shooting was riddled with failures, a new DOJ report says
Police officials who responded to the deadly Uvalde, Texas, elementary school shooting waited far too long to confront the gunman, acted with “no urgency” in establishing a command post and communicated inaccurate information to grieving families, according to a Justice Department report released Thursday that identifies “cascading failures” in law enforcement’s handling of the massacre.
Quick Read
- Justice Department Report on Uvalde Shooting: The report identifies multiple failures in the law enforcement response to the Uvalde school shooting, including delayed action to confront the gunman, miscommunication, and inaccurate information provided to families.
- Extent of Law Enforcement Failures: The report details a wide range of issues, including training, communication, leadership, and technology problems that exacerbated the crisis.
- Criticism of Police Response: Attorney General Merrick Garland criticized the response for not following accepted practices in active shooter situations, stating that lives could have been saved.
- Impact on Families: Families endured further anguish due to miscommunication and mishandling of information post-incident, with some receiving incorrect information about their loved ones.
- Massive Law Enforcement Presence: The response involved at least 380 personnel from various agencies but was marred by confusion and a lack of urgency.
- Mistaken Assumptions and Delays: Officers incorrectly assumed the shooter was barricaded and delayed confronting him, leading to a prolonged crisis.
- Command and Communication Issues: There were significant issues with establishing a command post and clear leadership, with the on-site commander discarding his radios upon arrival.
- Community Impact and Accountability: The Uvalde community continues to struggle with the trauma and remains divided over the issue of accountability for the law enforcement response.
- Political Reactions: President Joe Biden and Texas Governor Greg Abbott commented on the report, with Abbott’s initial praise for officers’ bravery being contradicted by subsequent findings.
- Ongoing Investigation and Response: The city of Uvalde has implemented changes in response to the shooting, and the Uvalde County District Attorney is considering criminal charges. However, no criminal charges have been filed to date.
- National Scrutiny on Police Response to Mass Shootings: The Uvalde incident has led to increased scrutiny of police responses to mass shootings nationwide.
The Associated Press has the story:
The police response to the Uvalde shooting was riddled with failures, a new DOJ report says
Newslook- UVALDE, Texas (AP) —
Police officials who responded to the deadly Uvalde, Texas, elementary school shooting waited far too long to confront the gunman, acted with “no urgency” in establishing a command post and communicated inaccurate information to grieving families, according to a Justice Department report released Thursday that identifies “cascading failures” in law enforcement’s handling of the massacre.
The report, the most comprehensive federal accounting of the maligned police response to the May 24, 2022, shooting at Robb Elementary School, catalogs a sweeping array of training, communication, leadership and technology problems that federal officials say contributed to the crisis lasting far longer than necessary. All the while, the report says, terrified students inside the classrooms called 911 and agonized parents begged officers to go in.
“Had law enforcement agencies followed generally accepted practices in active shooter situations and gone right after the shooter and stopped him, lives would have been saved and people would have survived,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said Thursday at a news conference in Uvalde after Justice Department officials briefed family members on their findings. The Uvalde victims, he said, “deserved better.”
Even for a mass shooting that has already been the subject of intense scrutiny and in-depth examinations — an earlier report by Texas lawmakers, for instance, faulted law enforcement at every level with failing “to prioritize saving innocent lives over their own safety” — the nearly 600-page Justice Department study adds to the public understanding of how officers failed to stop an attack that killed 19 children and two staff members.
The flawed initial response was compounded in the following days by an ineptitude that added to family members’ anguish, according to the report.
One family member spent hours pulling glass out of an injured son’s body because some of the surviving children had not been screened for medical care. A county district attorney told families that they would need to wait for autopsy results before death notifications were made, prompting some to yell: “What, our kids are dead? No, no!”
Hospital staff “untrained in delivering painful news” told some family members that their loved ones had died, while in other cases, families received incorrect information suggesting that a child had survived when they had not. At one point, an official told waiting families that another bus of survivors was coming, but that was untrue.
“Mirroring the failures of the law enforcement response, state and local agencies failed to coordinate, leading to inaccurate and incomplete information being provided to anxious family and community members and the public,” said Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta.
The law enforcement response was massive, comprising at least 380 personnel from 24 local, county, state and federal agencies.
But the problems began almost immediately with a flawed assumption by officers that the shooter was barricaded, or otherwise contained, even as he continued to fire shots. That “mindset permeated throughout much of the incident response” as police, rather than rushing inside the classrooms to end the carnage, waited more than an hour to confront the gunman in what the report called a costly “lack of urgency.”
The gunman, Salvador Ramos, was killed roughly 77 minutes after police arrived on the scene, when a tactical team finally went into the classroom to take him down.
“An active shooter with access to victims should never be considered and treated as a barricaded subject,” the report says, with the word “never” emphasized in italics.
In other errors, the report says, police acted with “no urgency” in establishing a command center, creating confusion among police about who was in charge. The then-school district police chief, Pete Arredondo, discarded his radios on arrival, deeming them unnecessary.
Though he tried to communicate by phone with officers in the school hallway, “unfortunately, on multiple occasions, he directed officers intending to gain entry into the classrooms to stop, because he appeared to determine that other victims should first be removed from nearby classrooms to prevent further injury,” the report says.
Uvalde, a community of more than 15,000 about 85 miles (140 kilometers) southwest of San Antonio, continues to struggle with the trauma left by the killings and remains divided on the issue of accountability. Uvalde County District Attorney Christina Mitchell has said she’s still considering whether to bring criminal charges.
President Joe Biden said in a statement Thursday that the report identified “multiple points of failure that hold lessons for the future” and that “no community should have to go through” what Uvalde did.
In Texas, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott initially praised the officers’ courage, saying the reason the shooting was “not worse is because law enforcement officials did what they do” and that they had been brave in “running toward gunfire for the singular purpose of trying to save lives.”
But that narrative crumbled under scrutiny, as a report from a panel of state lawmakers and investigations by journalists laid bare how a mass of officers went in and out of the school with weapons drawn but didn’t enter the classroom where the shooting was taking place.
“The actions of the responding officers, combined with the ‘heroic’ storyline that started with (a spokesperson for the Texas Department of Public Safety) and continued the next day during the Governor’s and director’s news conference, dealt a serious blow to public confidence in local and state law enforcement,” the report states.
The city of Uvalde said in a statement that it had requested the federal investigation and fully cooperated with it and had “already implemented changes in leadership, new personnel, new training, and new equipment.”
The report intentionally omits the identity of the gunman or any explanation of a possible motive. But it does include page-long remembrances of each of the victims, including 10-year-old Jose Flores Jr., who loved cars and the Houston Astros, and Amerie Jo Garza, who on the morning of the shooting had celebrated her appointment to the honor roll.
And it highlights anguished and panicked quotes from a 911 call by students trapped in the classroom — “Help!” “Help!” “Help!” “I don’t want to die. My teacher is dead” — experiencing “unimaginable horror” while officers stood just outside in the hallway.
“I hope that the failures end today,” said Kimberly Rubio, whose daughter Lexi Rubio was killed in the shooting. “My child, our children are named in this report because they are dead.” Of the officers who failed, she said: “They should be named.”
Velma Lisa Duran, whose sister Irma Garcia was one of the teachers killed, said before the release of the report that she was daunted by the prospect of reliving the circumstances of her sister’s death and what she really wanted was criminal charges.
“A report doesn’t matter when there are no consequences for actions that are so vile and murderous and evil,” said Duran. “What do you want us to do with another report? … Bring it to court,” she said.
The federal review was launched just days after the shooting. Since then, how police respond to mass shootings around the country has come under closer scrutiny.
The families of some of the Uvalde victims have blasted police as cowards and demanded resignations. At least five officers have lost their jobs, including two Department of Public Safety officers and the on-site commander, Arredondo.
No one has been charged with a crime.
