Nearly 400 police officers representing local, state, and federal agencies failed to take urgent action as the Uvalde massacre that left 19 children and two teachers dead unfolded at Robb Elementary School, a report released Sunday by the Texas legislature concluded.
Published by a special Texas House committee, the 77-page report found the law enforcement response at the scene was riddled with “systemic failures.” The eventual police engagement with the gunman happened after stalling, crisis and confusion as to who was in charge — all of which were the result of “egregiously poor decision-making” on the part of state police officers, U.S. Border Patrol, and the Department of Public Safety.
A small group of officers, including some specially trained Border Patrol agents and a deputy sheriff from a neighboring county, ultimately decided to storm the school to apprehend the gunman more than an hour after he first entered the school, the report found.
While most of the victims perished quickly at the hands of the gunman’s AR-15-style rifle, others survived but succumbed to injuries on the way to the hospital. In those moments, time was the patients’ most valuable resource, with the report noting that “it is plausible that some victims could have survived if they had not had to wait” for the police’s delayed confrontation with the killer.
The gunman, Salvador Ramos, had waited to turn 18 to legally purchase the gun. While relatives and acquaintances later said Ramos had exhibited disturbing behavior ahead of the shooting, he had no record that would have prompted federal authorities to confiscate his weapon under a “red flag” law of the kind proposed by a bipartisan group of state senators after the tragedy.
The committee’s report hewed closely to the public’s existing understanding of the tragedy: the gunman entered the school through an unlocked door without being stopped by personnel or police and started shooting in a fourth-grade classroom.
While the report was not full of new bombshell revelations, it illuminated in greater detail the specific actions and perceptions of those called to address the incident. For instance, an early responder, a Uvalde police officer armed with an AR-style rifle, heard gunfire and took cover after spotting a black-clad person running from the school. The individual, who the officer believes was the gunman, was later identified as a school coach escorting children to safety, the report said.
The report found that failures were more widespread than initially reported by the director the Texas Department of Public Safety, Steven McCraw. In a press conference after the shooting, McCraw laid blame exclusively at the feet of school district police chief Pete Arredondo.
Arriving on-scene minutes after the shooting began, Arredondo reportedly ordered officers to fall back instead of having them immediately breach the adjoining classrooms where the shooter was located. McCraw said that was “wrong decision.” The committee confirmed that Arredondo was supposed to be in-charge under the school district’s active-shooting response plan, which says the school police chief will “become the person in control of the efforts of all law enforcement and first responders that arrive at the scene.”
Surveillance video released with the report showed Arredondo and other officers withdrawing down a hallway after gunfire erupted at the doorway to one of the classrooms. They waited for over an hour even as reinforcements of officers with ballistic shields arrived for support.
Many of the officers told the committee that they believed Arredondo was the incident commander on-scene, but others said they did not know who was overseeing the situation, the report said. While negligence was shared by many groups, the report suggested that federal and state agencies should have intervened and taken control of the scene.
“Despite an obvious atmosphere of chaos, the ranking officers of other responding agencies did not approach the Uvalde C.I.S.D. chief of police or anyone else perceived to be in command to point out the lack of and need for a command post, or to offer that specific assistance,” the report said.
Arredondo’s time management was also impeded, for instance, by his lack of a radio, which likely hindered his ability to communicate with police dispatchers while the shooting occurred, an official with the Texas Department of Public Safety told the New York Times.