The Department of Justice released a damning report on Thursday that ripped into the law enforcement response to the May 2022 mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, that left 19 children and two teachers dead.
The report said that the officers who responded to calls of a mass shooter did not treat the situation as a mass shooting but a barricade situation. Officers did not kill the 18-year-old gunman until 77 minutes after the initial call to police. Before they took action, footage of the school’s hallway showed officers standing outside the classroom, with the shooter still inside.
“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 report said, adding that officers “demonstrated no urgency” during their response.
“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.”
The report also added that the officers wasted time looking for a key to a door that may have not actually been locked.
“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.”
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The search for the key “was partly the cause of the significant delay in entering to eliminate the threat and stop the killing and dying inside classrooms 111 and 112,” the report said.
The report also said that it found issues with the school district, saying that it had “a culture of complacency regarding locked-door policies”
During his announcement of the release of the 575-page report, Attorney General Merrick Garland said that the actions by the officers left students inside a room with the gunman.
“As a consequence of failed leadership, training, and policies, 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,” Garland said.
At least five of the 376 officers who responded to the shooting have been fired, according to the Associated Press. Uvalde police, state police, Border Patrol, and school officers were all at the scene during the shooting.