The nearly 80-page report was the first to criticize both state and federal law enforcement, not just local authorities in the Texas city, for the bewildered inaction by heavily armed officers as a gunman was shot inside a classroom. fourth grade. “At Robb Elementary, law enforcement responders failed to adhere to their active shooter training and failed to prioritize saving innocent lives over their own safety,” the report said. The gunman fired about 142 rounds into the building and it is “almost certain” that 100 shots came before an officer entered, according to the report. The report — the most complete account yet of the hesitant and haphazard response to the May 24 massacre at Robb Elementary School — was written by an investigative committee from the Texas House of Representatives and released to family members Sunday. Grace Valencia cries as she talks to reporters after picking up a copy of the Texas Investigative Committee report in Uvalde, Texas, on Sunday. Her great niece, Uziyah Valencia, was one of the 21 victims of the shooting at Robb Elementary School on May 24. (Eric Gay/The Associated Press) According to the report, 376 law enforcement officers converged on the school. The vast majority of respondents were federal and state law enforcement agencies. That included nearly 150 U.S. Border Patrol agents and 91 state police officials. “Apart from the perpetrator, the commission found no ‘bad guys’ during its investigation,” the report said. “There is no one to whom we can attribute malice or bad motives. Instead, we found systemic failures and extremely poor decision-making.” The report noted that many of the hundreds of law enforcement responders who rushed to the school were better trained and equipped than school district police — who the head of the Texas Department of Public Safety, the state’s police force, had previously accused of not entered. the room earlier. “In this crisis, no responder took the initiative to establish an incident command post,” the report said. A spokesman for the Texas Department of Public Safety did not immediately return a request for comment Sunday.
The police chief wasted no time looking for a key
No officer has come under as much scrutiny since the shooting as Pete Arredondo, the Uvalde school district police chief who resigned from his newly appointed seat on the city council after the shooting. Arredondo told the panel he treated the shooter as a “blocked subject,” according to the report, and defended never treating the scene as an active shooter situation because he did not have eye contact with the gunman. Uvalde School District Police Chief Pete Arredondo, pictured in Uvalde on May 24, was placed on administrative leave last month for his handling of the school shooting. (Mikala Compton//USA Today Network/Reuters) Arredondo also tried to find a key to the classrooms, but no one bothered to see if the doors were locked, according to the report. “Arredondo’s search for a key consumed his attention and lost valuable time, delaying the classroom breach,” the report states. The report criticized as “instant” the approach of the hundreds of officers who surrounded the school and said they should have recognized that Arredondo’s stay at the school without reliable communication was “inconsistent” with the scene commander. The report concluded that some officers waited because they relied on bad information, while others “had enough information to know better”.
Families respond to new report
Family members of the Uvalde victims received copies of the report Sunday before it was released. “It’s a joke. It’s a joke. They have no business wearing a badge. None of them do,” Vincent Salazar, grandfather of 11-year-old Layla Salazer, said Sunday. Vincent Salazar holds a copy of the report released by the Texas Investigative Committee in Uvalde on Sunday. His granddaughter Layla Salazar was killed in the Robb Elementary School shooting. (Eric Gay/The Associated Press) Some of the victims’ families were scheduled to hold a press conference at 5 p.m. ET on Sunday. The report followed weeks of closed-door interviews with more than 40 people, including witnesses and law enforcement at the scene of the shooting. The flowers that had been piled high in the city’s central square had been removed by Sunday, leaving some maps of stuffed animals scattered around the fountains along with photographs of some of the children who were killed.
School video draws fresh criticism
A nearly 80-minute runway surveillance video published by the Austin American-Statesman this week showed publicly for the first time a hesitant and haphazard tactical response, which the Texas police chief has condemned as a failure and some Uvalde residents have called timid. . In this still image, taken from surveillance video inside Robb Elementary School on May 24, officers are told to stand back as gunshots ring out in the hallway. The video was obtained by the Austin American-Statesman. (Austin American-Statesman/Reuters) Calls for police accountability have grown in Uvalde since the shooting. So far, only one officer from the scene of the deadliest school shooting in Texas history is known to be on leave. The report is the result of one of several investigations into the shooting, including another led by the Justice Department. A report earlier this month by tactics experts at the University of Texas claimed that a Uvalde police officer had the opportunity to stop the gunman before he entered the school armed with an AR-15. But in an example of the conflicting statements and disputed accounts after the shooting, Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin said that never happened. That report was made at the request of the Texas Department of Public Safety, which McLaughlin has increasingly criticized and accused of trying to minimize the role of its troopers during the massacre. Texas DPS Chief Steve McCraw called the police response an abject failure.
