| |

Feds Say Law Enforcement’s “Cascading Failures” During and After Robb Elementary Mass Shooting Cost Lives

Front cover of full U.S. Justice Report on Uvalde school shooting
Click the image above to read/download the full report (pdf)

The U.S. Justice Department this morning issued a scathing 575-page report detailing the numerous failures made by law enforcement during and after the mass shooting tragedy at Uvalde ISD’s Robb Elementary that resulted in the deaths of 19 students and two teachers.

screen shot of press conference with Merit Garland and another Justice official. Click to view press conference.
Click the image above to watch the news conference by U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland and other Justice officials in Uvalde. (Click for the transcript of Garland’s remarks and here for a transcript of remarks by Associate U.S. Attorney General Vanita Gupta)

The report was released shortly before U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland and other U.S. Justice Department officials held a news conference in Uvalde.

“As I told families and survivors last night, the Department’s review concluded that a series of major 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.”

“The law enforcement response at Robb Elementary School on May 24, 2022 — and in the hours and days after — was a failure that should not have happened,” Garland said.

“Lives Would Have Been Saved”
“Had law enforcement agencies followed generally accepted practices in an active-shooter situation, and gone right after the shooter to stop him, lives would have been saved and people would have survived,” Garland said of the 75 minutes it took for law enforcement to enter the classroom and end the shooter’s rampage by killing him in an exchange of gunfire.

“The Most Significant Failure”
Garland said the “most significant failure” in the Uvalde response was the decision by law enforcement leaders at the scene to quickly transition the response from considering the situation to be that of an active shooter to that of a barricaded shooter.

Garland said that lessons learned from prior school shootings is that it is widely understood by law enforcement agencies across the country that in active shooter incidents: “Time is not on the side of law enforcement. Every second counts.”

Instead of quickly entering the classroom where the active shooter was and confronting him, law enforcement instead concentrated their efforts on attempting to negotiate with the shooter, evacuating students and teachers from other parts of the campus and waiting for keys to arrive for the (likely) unlocked classroom door, Garland said.

One student had called 911, and remained on the line for 16 minutes, waiting for help to arrive, Garland added. In all it took 75 minutes for law enforcement to enter the classroom, and another two minutes for the shooter to be killed in an exchange of gunfire.

The failures by law enforcement and other officials continued even after the shooter was killed.

Assistant U.S. Attorney General Vanita Gupta, for instance, noted that students who were wounded were put on school buses without receiving medical attention while deceased victims were put in ambulances — and that some parents were told that their child had survived, when they had not.

Cascading Failures
The report labels the missteps by law enforcement — and by state and local officials (who frequently gave misinformation and conflicting accounts of what had happened) — as “cascading failures.”

The report makes 273 recommendations for law enforcement agencies and other officials in every community in preparing for and responding to mass shooting incidents and active shooter incidents as they occur.

  • Note: This web page provides more details about the Justice Department’s investigation into the Robb Elementary tragedy.