DOJ’s Uvalde report finds systemic failures in school shooting response

by Saul Elbein - 01/18/24 10:46 AM ET

Editor’s note: This file has been updated to indicate that officers from a variety of agencies responded to the Uvalde shooting and waited outside the school.

A lack of preparation, communication and initiative led Texas law enforcement officers to bungle their response to a brutal 2022 school shooting, a new investigation from the Justice Department has found.

The investigation was launched in 2022 to answer a question that haunted the people of Uvalde, Texas — and the nation as a whole — long before the bodies had cooled or the blood had been cleaned from the walls and floors of Robb Elementary School.

That question, which the Justice Department has spent more than two years confronting, is easily expressed but viciously contentious: What took so long? Why did nearly 400 members of federal, state and local agencies spend 77 minutes standing around outside the school while a gunman stalked the halls, killing 19 children and two teachers?

The answer, the DOJ told reporters on Thursday: A lack of “urgency” in setting up a command post outside the school, and a comprehensive failure to identify the situation.

That led to a series of “cascading failures” and unnecessary deaths within the school while hundreds of police officers waited outside — acting decisively only to arrest anguished parents who tried to enter the school themselves.

Attorney General Merrick Garland was in Uvalde for the unveiling of the DOJ report.

In a statement, Garland called out the “failure” of the local police response at Robb Elementary, saying it was a matter of failed “leadership, training, and policies.”

Due to these errors, Garland added, “33 students and three of their teachers — many of whom had been shot — were trapped in a room with an active shooter for over an hour as law enforcement officials remained outside.”

Attorney General Merrick Garland speaks with reporters during a news conference at the Department of Justice, Wednesday, Dec. 6, 2023, in Washington, as Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, left, and FBI Director Christopher Wray, looks on. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)

Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin (R) called on the DOJ to help find answers in June 2022, and the department has spent nearly two years since in a comprehensive review of the evidence.

The investigative team has spent more than 30 days of site visits in Uvalde; interviewed more than 200 people from more than 30 organizations and looked over more than 13,000 pieces of evidence.

The team has repeatedly walked the halls of Robb Elementary School and watched active shooter training sessions of the sort intended to prepare police officers for such situations.

The DOJ report follows — and in its topline findings echoes — a July 2022 report by the Texas House of Representatives.

In an investigation just months after the siege, the state legislators found the Uvalde police failed to recognize the gravity and nature of the situation they faced — and failed to act courageously to meet it.

“Since the 1999 Columbine tragedy, the law enforcement community has recognized the critical importance of implementing active shooter training for all officers, regardless of specialty,” the Texas legislators wrote.

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Part of this training required an acknowledgment that “stopping the killing of innocent lives is the highest priority in active shooter response, and all officers must be willing to risk their lives without hesitation,” they added.

In the first case, both the DOJ and Texas legislators concluded, the 400 officers who ultimately gathered outside while children died inside had failed to recognize that they were dealing with an active shooter — one who is “continuously inflict[ing] death” and who must be speedily confronted and killed.

Instead, both reports found, they acted as though they were faced with a barricaded shooter holed up with hostages, who must be approached more carefully.

“At Robb Elementary, law enforcement responders failed to adhere to their active shooter training, and they failed to prioritize saving the lives of innocent victims over their own safety,” the Texas legislators concluded.

Because officers arrived within three minutes of 18-year-old Salvador Ramos’ entry to the school with an AR-15, the Justice Department found, the fact they waited another 74 minutes to enter was an unforgivable error.

“An active shooter with access to victims should never be considered and treated as a barricaded subject,” the DOJ report says.

As The Associated Press noted, “the word ‘never’ [was] emphasized in italics.”

As the Texas House found, one of the first responders on the scene was the head of the Uvalde school district’s police department, who was supposed to “assume command and control of the response to an active shooter.”

Instead, the House found that Chief of Police Pete Arredondo failed to either perform that role — or to transfer it to somebody else.

“Nobody ensured that responders making key decisions inside the building received information that students and teachers had survived the initial burst of gunfire were trapped in Rooms 111 and 112 and had called out for help,” the House members wrote.

Arredondo was one of just five officers fired after the shootings. In November, he lost a suit attempting to recast his firing as an “honorable discharge,” rather than a general discharge.

–Updated on Jan. 19 at 10:00 a.m.

Tags Alejandro Mayorkas DOJ Justice Department Merrick Garland Texas Uvalde police Uvalde school shooting