Uvalde parents lash out after new report clears city police of missteps during Texas school attack
By Acacia Coronado, The Associated Press on March 7, 2024.
UVALDE, Texas (AP) – An investigation Uvalde city leaders ordered into the Robb Elementary School shooting cleared local police officers of missteps Thursday, despite acknowledging a series of rippling failures during the fumbled response to the 2022 classroom attack that left 19 children and two teachers dead. Several family members of victims walked out in anger midway though a presentation that portrayed Uvalde Police Department officers of acting swiftly and appropriately, in contrast to scathing and sweeping past reports that faulted police at every level. “You said they did it in good faith. You call that good faith? They stood there 77 minutes,” said Kimberly Mata-Rubio, whose daughter was among those killed in the attack, after the presentation ended. Another person in the crowd screamed, “Cowards!” Jesse Prado, an Austin-based investigator and former police detective who made the report for the Uvalde City Council on Thursday, described several failures by responding local, state and federal officers at the scene that day: communication problems, poor training for live shooter situations, lack of available equipment and delays on breaching the classroom. “There were problems all day long with communication and lack of it. The officers had no way of knowing what was being planned, what was being said,” Prado said. “If they would have had a ballistic shield, it would have been enough to get them to the door.” The report is just one of several probes into the massacre. Texas lawmakers found in 2022 that nearly 400 local, state and federal officers rushed to the scene but waited more than an hour before confronting the gunman. A Department of Justice report in January criticized the “cascading failures” of responding law enforcement. But Prado said his review showed that officers showed “immeasurable strength” and “level-headed thinking” as they faced fire from the shooter and refrained from shooting into a darkened classroom. “They were being shot at from eight feet away from the door,” Prado said. Family members erupted when Prado left after his presentation. “Bring him back!’ several of them shouted. A criminal investigation by Uvalde District Attorney Christina Mitchell’s office into the law enforcement response in the May 2022 shooting remains open. A grand jury was summoned earlier this year and some law enforcement officials have already been asked to testify. Tensions remain high between Uvalde city officials and the local prosecutor, while the community of more than 15,000, about 85 miles (140 kilometers) southwest of San Antonio, is plagued with trauma and divided over accountability. Those tensions peaked in December 2022, when the city of Uvalde sued the local prosecutor’s office seeking access to records and other investigative materials regarding the shooting at Robb Elementary School. That lawsuit is among the topics that the city council could revisit Thursday. The city’s independent investigation comes after a nearly 600-page January report by the Department of Justice found massive failures by law enforcement, including acting with “no urgency” to establish a command post, assuming the subject was barricaded despite ongoing gunfire, and communicating inaccurate information to grieving families. Attorney General Merrick Garland said the victims “deserved better,” as he presented the Justice Department’s findings to the affected families in Uvalde. “Had law enforcement agencies followed generally accepted practices in active shooter situations and gone right after the shooter and stopped him, lives would have been saved and people would have survived,” Garland said at the news conference in January. The report also found failings in the aftermath, with untrained hospital staff improperly delivering painful news and officials giving families mixed messages and misinformation about victims and survivors. One official told waiting families that another bus of survivors was coming, but that was untrue. Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott initially praised the law enforcement response, saying the reason the shooting was “not worse is because law enforcement officials did what they do.” He claimed that officers had run toward gunfire to save lives. But in the weeks following the shooting, that story changed as information released through media reports and lawmakers’ findings illustrated the botched law enforcement response. At least five officers who were on the scene have lost their jobs, including two Department of Public Safety officers and the on-site commander, Pete Arredondo, the former school police chief. No officers have faced criminal charges. 22-21
