A Texas House committee has slammed the “lackadaisical approach” of law enforcement to the Uvalde mass shooting after almost 400 officers stood by for 77 minutes while the gunman murdered 19 innocent students and two teachers.
In a damning 77-page report, released on Sunday, the law enforcement response was described as “chaos” where there was no clear leadership and officers on the scene “failed to prioritise saving the lives of innocent victims over their own safety”.
“There was an overall lackadaisical approach by law enforcement at the scene. For many, that was because they were given and relied upon inaccurate information. For others, they had enough information to know better,” the report states.
The committee, which was tasked with investigating what happened that day, said that “systemic failures and egregious poor decision making” had hampered the response to the 24 May mass shooting.
It cited multiple failures from almost all authorities involved including – as well as the overall law enforcement response – the Uvalde school system, the shooter’s family and social media platforms.
The report also said that gunman Salvador Ramos is believed to have never fired a gun before the massacre on 24 May when he unleashed around 142 rounds in a deadly rampage that left 21 dead.
Victims’ families, survivors and state lawmakers have demanded answers for the last six weeks about what went wrong at Robb Elementary School that day.
Questions have focused particularly on the law enforcement response after it was revealed that officers waited 77 minutes from the time that Ramos entered the school and began shooting to when an elite Border Patrol unit shot him dead.
In its scathing conclusion, the committee report said that it is “plausible” that this delay cost the lives of some of the victims who were bleeding out and trapped inside the room with the gunman.
“Given the information known about victims who survived through the time of the breach and who later died on the way to the hospital it is plausible that some victims could have survived if they had not had to wait 73 additional minutes for rescue,” the report stated.
The Texas House committee was tasked with investigating both the mass shooting and the response from multiple entities. The panel interviewed more than 40 witnesses and law enforcement officers who were at the scene.
The long-awaited report of their findings was first shared with family members of the victims on Sunday morning before being released to the public.
After giving them time to review the report, the House committee met with families on Sunday afternoon to discuss its findings. In the meeting, they were also shown the 77-minute surveillance footage from the hallway inside the school.
The footage was obtained by the Austin American-Statesman this week and released ahead of being shown to the families. In it, officers were seen retreating from the gunfire and huddling in the hallway outside the classroom while the massacre continued inside.
Vincent Salazar, the grandfather of one of the victims killed in the massacre, branded the police response “a joke” as he picked up a copy of the report on Sunday.
“It’s a joke. They’re a joke. They’ve got no business wearing a badge. None of them do,” he said. His 11-year-old granddaughter Layla Salazer was murdered by the gunman.
The three Texas House committee members — Rep Dustin Burrows, Rep Joe Moody and former state Supreme Court Justice Eva Guzman — said that “the victims, their families, and the entire Uvalde community have already waited too long for answers and transparency”.
While much of the blame for the police response has been levelled at local police – in particular Uvalde School Police Chief Pete Arredondo – the committee report found that state and federal law enforcement also shared the blame for the botched response.
Chief Arredondo’s six-member police team was vastly outnumbered by personnel from other agencies and other officers could – and should – have stepped up and taken over as incident commander when it was clear he was not up to the task, the report found.
A staggering 376 law enforcement officers descended on Robb Elementary School to respond to what became the worst mass shooting in Texas history.
Among them was 149 US Border Patrol, 91 state police, 25 Uvalde police officers, 16 sheriff’s deputies and five Uvalde school police officers.
The remaining were federal Drug Enforcement Agency officers, US Marshals and police officers who responded from neighbouring counties.
“These local officials were not the only ones expected to supply the leadership needed during this tragedy,” the report states.
“Hundreds of responders from numerous law enforcement agencies — many of whom were better trained and better equipped than the school district police — quickly arrived on the scene.”
These other officers “could have helped to address the unfolding chaos” but “no responder seized the initiative to establish an incident command post”, the report states.
Despite the condemnation of almost 400 officers on the scene, Chief Arredondo is the only law enforcement officer known to be on leave over the shooting.
Based on interviews, the committee concluded that active shooting protocol which requires officers to confront shooters was ignored and that many officers didn’t know who was in charge.
However, the report disputed Chief Arredondo’s claims that he didn’t know he was the incident commander.
The chief had co-authored the school district’s active shooter response plan which states he would be in control in such a situation.
As well as the law enforcement response, the report also criticised the school safety protocol, with doors repeatedly left open and unlocked, and emergency alerts not taken seriously.
On the day, unlocked doors enabled the gunman to enter the school building with ease.
“Had school personnel locked the doors as the school’s policy required, that could have slowed [Ramos’] progress for a few precious minutes — long enough to receive alerts, hide children, and lock doors,” the report found.
The report also found that some staff didn’t take the intruder alert seriously because there had been 47 lockdown events since February – 90 per cent of them involving nearby immigration-related police chases and not being related to school violence.
The alert system itself was also criticised with no lockdown communicated over the school intercom system.
Instead, alerts were sent through a smartphone app which the report said some teachers likely didn’t receive due to not having their phones on them at the time.
The committee also said that there were multiple warning signs that Ramos would go on to carry out mass violence but his behaviour was never reported to authorities.
In the months leading up to the attack, Ramos had earned the nickname “school shooter” on social media, became interested in violent sex and was fired from two jobs including one for harassing a female coworker, the report found.
When he was still 17, Ramos bought a trove of ammunition after family members refused to buy him a gun.
As soon as he turned 18 on 16 May, he began buying firearms with his uncle driving him to the gun store twice to pick them up.
It was just eight days after his birthday that he carried out the attack.
The committee also detailed the gunman’s “unstable home life”, including “relative poverty”, his mother’s struggles with addiction isssues and a claim that he may have been abused by his mother’s girlfriend at a young age.
In the week between his 18th birthday and the massacre, the report stated that Ramos told family members he was feeling suicidal.
That same week, other family members became aware that he had bought guns. His family told him to get rid of the guns but did not report him to authorities.
Following the massacre, officials then undermined the public trust in the investigations by giving a “false narrative” about what happened, the report found.
Multiple statements made in the days after 24 May were later proven to be incorrect.
On 25 May, Texas Governor Greg Abbott said at a press conference that Ramos was confronted by a school resource officer before entering the school and that the shooting was over in 40 minutes thanks to “officers who rapidly devised a plan, stacked up and neutralized the attacker”.
The next day, a DPS official said that a teacher had propped open a door to the school, enabling Ramos to enter the building.
Both of their statements were later found to be false and misled the public about what really happened, the report said.
The committee also disputed a claim made last week that an armed Uvalde police officer missed an opportunity to shoot the gunman before he entered the building. Instead, the investigation found that it was a coach that the officer had seen – not Ramos.
The committee criticized state officials for misleading the public.
”One would expect law enforcement during a briefing would be very careful to state what facts are verifiable, and which ones are not,” the report said.
The damning report is just one of several investigations into the mass shooting, including by the Justice Department.
