UVALDE, Texas — The response to the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School was “a series of major failures,” U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said Thursday after the Justice Department released a critical incident review.
The scathing report criticizes law enforcement’s “lack of urgency” and “cascading failures” during its response to the May 2022 mass shooting in Uvalde that left 21 dead, including 19 students and two teachers.
Before the report was released, Merrick said he met with some of the survivors and victim's families.
"As I told families and survivors last night, the department’s review concluded that a series of major failures — failures in leadership, in tactics, in communication, and in training and preparedness — were made by law enforcement leaders and other officials responding to the mass shooting at Robb Elementary," he said.
Merrick said the priority for the Justice Department in preparing the report was to honor the memories of the victims, survivors and their families.
"I told the families gathered last night what I hope is clear among the hundreds of pages and thousands of details in this report: their loved ones deserved better," Merrick said.
Shortly after the leaders spoke, Attorney Josh Koskoff, who is representing survivors and the victim's families, made comments on the Justice Department's report. He said gun companies need to be held accountable for their roles.
One family member was emotional as she said she hoped the state would do right by the victims. Another family member stressed how hard it is to go to the grocery and see an officer he knows was at the school that day.
Report analyzes ‘cascading failures’
The nearly 600-page report comes 19 months after the Justice Department launched the investigation in June 2022. No criminal or civil charges or additional investigations were announced in the report.
It examines the multiple failures in the response to the shooting – lack of urgency, lack of communication and lack of leadership. The report uses the word “failure” 43 times.
“The (Critical Incident Review) team identified several critical failures and other breakdowns prior to, during, and after the Robb Elementary School response and analyzed the cascading failures of leadership, decision-making, tactics, policy, and training that contributed to those failures and breakdowns,” the report reads.
The biggest failure, it said, was that officers did not see the situation as an active shooter situation and instead responded as a barricaded situation, causing officers to wait 77 minutes before they entered the classroom to confront the shooter.
“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 111/112 and the threat was eliminated,” the report read.
“Since the tragic shooting at Columbine High School in 1999, a fundamental precept in active shooter response and the generally accepted practice is that the first priority must be to immediately neutralize the subject; everything else, including officer safety, is subordinate to that objective.”
Similar to the Uvalde response, officers responding to Columbine arrived five minutes after the shooting happened but took 47 minutes to make entry. At Robb Elementary, officers arrived three minutes after the shooter entered the building, and within the first five minutes, police retreated several times before switching from calling the situation active shooter to barricaded.
“Many more officers from a multitude of agencies arrive on scene (and) there is a great deal of confusion, miscommunication, a lack of urgency and a lack of incident command,” the report said.
At the same time, the de-facto incident command leader, the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District Police Chief Pete Arredondo tossed out his radio, saying he wanted his hands to be free, which hindered communication. Instead of confronting the shooter, officers evacuated children from other classrooms that were not at risk and tried to negotiate with the shooter.
“These failures may have been influenced by policy and training deficiencies. For example, recent training that UCISD PD provided seemed to suggest, inappropriately, that an active shooter situation can transition into a hostage or barricaded subject situation,” the report reads.
The report examines the timeline, law enforcement and post-incident response and makes recommendations to improve communications, tactical and strategic responses, and support survivors in the aftermath.
Law enforcement’s ‘lack of urgency’
Officers' training, lack of communication, lack of leadership and most importantly lack of urgency were highlighted as one of the main law enforcement failures in the report.
While UCISD police had undergone active shooter training just months before the Robb Elementary School shooting, the guidebook they followed did not prioritize neutralizing the shooter, according to the report, and that was seen throughout the day.
“This mindset permeated throughout much of the incident response, even impacting many of the later responding officers. Despite their training and despite multiple events indicating the subject continued to pose an active threat to students and staff in the building, including the likelihood and then confirmation of victims inside the room, officers on scene did not attempt to enter the room and stop the shooter until for over an hour after they entered the building. The shooter was not killed until approximately 77 minutes after law enforcement first arrived.”
That, combined with a lack of leadership that “was absent for too long at Robb Elementary” were the main complaints against law enforcement. The report criticizes officers for not doing basic steps like setting up a command post.
The report included 270 recommendations, many of them aimed at law enforcement. Most of the law enforcement recommendations emphasized officers acting with a sense of urgency.
“Officers responding to an active shooter incident must first and foremost drive toward the threat to eliminate it,” the report reads.
Some 380 officers from 24 agencies were on scene, but leadership was lacking, the report found. The first officers arrived at the school 3 minutes after the shooter, but were disorganized, according to the report.
“Without structure, agency leadership was unaware of the facts surrounding the incident and therefore unable to challenge the repeated decisions not to make entry into the classrooms,” the report reads. “Post-incident interviews of FOS confirmed that the resources within the hallway were perceived to have been disorganized and without purpose.”
Instead, officers delayed entering the doorway several times because of excuses like looking for a sniper, finding keys or finding specialized equipment.
“Active shooter response protocol does not require any equipment that is not standard to a patrol officer. Officers on scene … had sufficient equipment to formulate a plan and attempt to make entry into classrooms 111/112,” the report reads.
When the shooter was killed 77 minutes later, the EMS response was uncoordinated, chaotic and ineffective, with no stretchers inside the hallway to move injured victims, according to the report. That chaos continued after the shooter died, said Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta this morning.
“We also know the pain and the failures and missteps did not end when law enforcement finally entered the classrooms and rescued the survivors,” Gupta said. “It continued at minute 78 when it became clear that because there was no leader, there was no plan to triage the 35 victims in classrooms, 111 and 112, many of whom had been shot.”
For an “unknown reason,” responders placed an injured teacher on the ground outside the school, who later died on the walkway. Another victim was brought out on a stretcher but the EMS crew's ambulance was missing. Another agency commandeered it, according to the report.
“Victims were moved away without precautions, without appropriate precautions. Victims who had already passed away were taken to the hospital in ambulances,” Gupta said. “While children with bullet wounds were put on school busses without any medical attention in the commotion.”
Post-shooting failures: Communication breakdown, lack of support
But that still wasn’t the end of the failures. There were many more in the weeks and months to come, according to the report. Communication during and after the shooting was also criticized, with families seeking answers retraumatized, subjected to misinformation and left relying on journalists for answers as officials held back answers.
The report began by praising the first social media post made about the shooting, which notified the community of a “large police presence” at Robb Elementary. This came 10 minutes after the shooter entered the school.
“The post was a strong start for public messaging, but that momentum almost immediately fell flat. Based on the Facebook post, it appeared that UPD would be the lead agency; however, neither UPD nor any other agency messaged that it would serve as the official source of information,” the report reads.
The rest of the section criticized the rest of the response, saying the region had, “become immune to the urgency of the emergency alerts.” The UCISD PD falsely posted that students and staff were safe, which was never corrected. Later, UPD said the shooter was in custody, which was also never corrected.
“It is impossible to measure the damage done by the inaccurate messaging during this incident, but the actions of the first responding officers along with the false messaging about the response prompted outcry against the local law enforcement agencies,” the report reads. “It appears to have a lingering impact on community trust, and relationships have remained strained more than a year after the incident.”
More misinformation followed, such as Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steve McCraw accusing a teacher of propping open the door through which the shooter entered. The teacher was among the first to alert staff about the shooting and did not prop open the door but “was vilified and suffered significant emotional distress as a result of this misinformation.”
Nearly two years later, the community has “yet to hear adequate information of the tragic events that transpired,” according to the report. Many parents “want to know if their child would have lived had law enforcement entered the classroom earlier.”
“The extent of misinformation, misguided and misleading narratives, leaks, and lack of communication about what happened on May 24 is unprecedented and has had an extensive, negative impact on the mental health and recovery of the family members and other victims, as well as the entire community of Uvalde,” the report reads.
The report also found there were more failures in victim support in the aftermath of the shooting. Mental health services were lacking before and after the shooting, and UCISD had a “culture of complacency” regarding locked-door policies. At least eight doors were confirmed to be unlocked the day of the shooting.
Nearly 2 years of investigations into the shooting
Law enforcement response was criticized immediately after the shooting, and a month after the federal investigation was announced, a Texas House Committee report “found systemic failures and egregious poor decision-making” by law enforcement, among others.
School video was released as part of that committee showed Uvalde CISD, city and sheriff officers, Texas DPS and US Border Patrol were among the first responders that arrived quickly and then waited in the hallway. Eventually, 400 officers from dozens of departments responded.
Several officers were fired following the shooting.
Thursday's report from the Justice Department comes after a request from then-Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin and is the result of working with subject matter experts and interviews with more than 260 people, the Justice Department said in April. The critical review team spent 45 days in Uvalde during nine visits, reviewed 14,000 pieces of evidence, including training materials, videos and photographs, and walked through Robb Elementary School on several occasions.
“The painful lessons detailed in this report are not meant to exacerbate an already tragic situation or further the pain to those directly impacted,” the report reads.
Below is the full report in English. You can also read the full report in Spanish here.
“Many more officers from a multitude of agencies arrive on scene (and) there is a great deal of confusion, miscommunication, a lack of urgency and a lack of incident command,” the report said.
At the same time, the de-facto incident command leader, the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District tossed out his radio, saying he wanted his hands to be free and hindering communication. Instead of confronting the shooter, officers evacuated children from other classrooms, and tried to negotiate w/the shooter.
“These failures may have been influenced by policy and training deficiencies. For example, recent training that UCISD PD provided seemed to suggest, inappropriately, that an active shooter situation can transition into a hostage or barricaded subject situation,” the report reads.
The report examines the timeline, law enforcement and post incident response and makes recommendations to improve communications, tactical and strategic responses, and support survivors in the aftermath.
Law enforcement response was criticized immediately after the shooting, and a month after the federal investigation was announced, a Texas House Committee report “found systemic failures and egregious poor decision-making” by law enforcement, among others.
School video released as part of that committee showed Uvalde CISD, city and sheriff officers, Texas DPS and US Border Patrol were among the first responders that arrived quickly and then waited in the hallway. Eventually, 400 officers from dozens of departments responded.
Several officers were fired following the shooting.
Today’s report from the Justice Department comes after a request from then-Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin and is the result of a working with subject matter experts and interviews with more than 260 people, the Justice Department said in April. The critical review team spent 45 days in Uvalde during nine visits, reviewed 14,000 pieces of evidence, including training materials, videos and photographs, and walked through Robb Elementary School on several occasions.
“The painful lessons detailed in this report are not meant to exacerbate an already tragic situation or further the pain to those directly impacted,” the report reads.
U.S. Attorney Merrick Garland will hold a press conference at 11 a.m. today to further discuss the results of the investigation, which was led by members of the Office of Community Oriented Police. Survivors and several families of children killed in the mass shooting are expected to speak about the report shortly after.