The Department of Justice (DOJ) published a damning report on Thursday exposing the institutional failures that led to the deadly shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas in May 2022. According to the Department’s findings, poor training, breakdowns in police leadership, and lack of courageous action contributed to the deaths of 19 children and two teachers, leaving the local community demanding justice.
The primary failure the DOJ uncovered was the Uvalde Police Department’s massively delayed response to the shooting. Officers who arrived on the scene infamously waited for 77 minutes before taking action, as if reacting to a barricade situation rather than a mass shooting.
“The most significant failure was that responding officers should have immediately recognized the incident as an active shooter situation, using the resources and equipment that were sufficient to push forward immediately and continuously toward the threat until entry was made into classrooms,” the DOJ report said, adding that there was “no urgency” in the response.
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“Leadership in law enforcement is absolutely critical, especially in moments of dire challenge,” the report added. “It requires courageous action and steadiness in a chaotic environment … This leadership was absent for too long in the Robb Elementary School law enforcement response.”
Security cameras inside the school show hundreds of officers standing idly by, with some checking their phones or applying hand sanitizer while waiting for further instruction.
NEW: A nearly 600 page DOJ report claims Uvalde police officers did nothing for *77 minutes* while 19 children were shot dead (Warning: Disturbing audio)
These officers should be in prison.
Instead of hunting down the gunman, one officer was seen checking his cell phone while… pic.twitter.com/qEa5MQbhoj
Outside the school, other officers physically restrained parents and faculty who were attempting to enter the building themselves to rescue children. All the while, 18-year-old gunman Salvador Ramos remained inside classrooms 111/112, giving him ample time to gun down additional victims.
Related: Teen Cousin of Uvalde School Shooter Arrested for Threatening to ‘Do the Same Thing’
Police claimed that locked doors had prevented them from entering until a master key was found…but the DOJ report validates previous claims that the doors had never been locked to begin with.
“The entry team assumed the doors to rooms 111/112 were locked, based on information they received from officers who were on scene for a longer period of time. However, throughout the entirety of the incident, this assumption was never tested and the doorknob was never checked,” the report said. “Our analysis indicates that eight interior doors in the West Building were unlocked and discovered to be unlocked by responding officers during evacuations.”
The report also highlighted a number of other failures during and after the shooting, including a breakdown in communication after School District Police Chief Pete Arredondo discarded his radio, poor on-site medical treatment that led to one teacher bleeding out on the sidewalk, and untrained hospital staff misreporting the deaths of multiple children.
“The department’s review concluded that a series of major failures—failures in leadership, in tactics and communications, in training and then preparedness were made by law enforcement leaders and others responding to the mass shooting at Robb Elementary,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said on Thursday. “As a result, 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.”
Of the roughly 370 officers who responded to Robb Elementary during the shooting, at least five have been fired, including Chief Arredondo. The criminal liability of those involved has not yet been established, but a $27 billion class action lawsuit has been filed against both the school district and Uvalde Police Department.
The full Department of Justice report on the shooting at Robb Elementary School can be read below:
Connor Walcott is a staff writer covering politics, culture, and business for Valuetainment.com. Follow Connor on X (Twitter).
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