Justice Department to release report on police response to Uvalde school massacre

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UVALDE, Texas (AP) — A U.S. government report on the faltering and chaotic police response to the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, will be released Thursday, reviving scrutiny of the hundreds of agents who responded to the 2022 massacre but who waited more than an hour to confront and kill the attacker.

Uvalde, a community of more than 15,000, is still reeling from the trauma of the murder of 19 elementary school students and two teachers, and remains divided over accountability for officers’ actions and inaction.

However, it is unclear what new light the Justice Department’s review will shed on the case. The shooting has already been examined in legislative hearings, news reports and in a damning report filed by Texas lawmakers, who blamed law enforcement agencies at all levels for failing to “prioritize saving innocent lives over their own safety.”

In the 20 months since the Justice Department announced its analysis, video footage of police waiting in a hallway outside the fourth-grade classrooms where the gunman opened fire has been nationally ridiculed.

Attorney General Merrick Garland was in Uvalde on Wednesday before the report was released, and visited murals honoring the victims that have been painted downtown.

The analysis by the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services began a few days after the shooting. Local prosecutors are still evaluating a separate criminal investigation by the Texas Department of Public Safety’s Ranger Division. Several of the agents who participated in the operation lost their jobs.

The Justice Department has said that this investigation would “provide an independent accounting of the actions and response of law enforcement that day,” and identify lessons learned and best practices to help first responders prepare for events in which there is an active armed man.

Uvalde County District Attorney Christina Mitchell, whose office is still conducting a criminal investigation into the police response, said in a statement that she has not received a copy of the Justice Department’s report but has been told it does not exist. addresses any possible criminal charges.

How police respond to mass shootings across the country has been scrutinized since the tragedy in Uvalde, a town about 85 miles (140 kilometers) southwest of San Antonio.

In Texas, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott initially praised the bravery of the officers’ response, and local authorities in Uvalde were later largely blamed for police inaction. However, an 80-page report by a panel of state legislators—and investigations by journalists—exposes how, for more than 70 minutes, large numbers of officers entered and left the school with weapons drawn, but they did not enter the classroom where the shooting was taking place. Among the 376 officers on the scene were state police and Uvalde police officers, school agents and Border Patrol agents.

The delayed response ran contrary to active gunman training, which emphasizes confronting the attacker, a standard established more than two decades ago after the mass shooting at Columbine High School showed that Waiting can cost lives. As what happened during the shooting has become clear, families of some victims have called the police officers cowards and demanded they resign.

At least five officers have lost their jobs, including two Department of Public Safety officers and Uvalde Police Chief Pete Arredondo, who was the commander on the scene during the attack.

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Bleiberg reported from Dallas. Associated Press writer Lindsay Whitehurst in Washington, DC, contributed to this report.