The Justice Department has said it will review law enforcement response to the Texas shooting as U.S. President Joe Biden visits grieving families after the country’s worst school attack in a decade.
President and First Lady Jill Biden visited a monument at the school in Uvalde, Texas, before attending a church service and also meeting with survivors and first responders after landing at the church. been tonight.
Mr Biden was photographed reaching out to touch large photographs of the murdered young children, while Mrs Biden placed a bouquet of 21 white flowers, one for each of the murders, as they paid their respects.
After leaving the church, they passed in front of a crowd of about 100 people chanting “do something”
He replied, “We will.”
The president and his wife also spoke with Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District (CISD) Superintendent Hal Harrell and Mandy Gutierrez, principal of Robb Elementary School.
Image: Biden and First Lady Jill Biden pay tribute to Robb Elementary School Memorial
It comes as investigators seek to determine how critical mistakes were made in the response to the shooting that killed 19 children and two teachers at Robb Elementary School.
Justice Department spokesman Anthony Coley said he would conduct a “critical incident review” of law enforcement’s response to the shooting at the request of the mayor of Uvalde.
He said: “The aim of the review is to provide an independent account of law enforcement actions and responses that day, and to identify lessons learned and best practices to help first responders prepare and respond to active shooter events.
“The Department of Justice will publish a report with its findings at the end of its review.”
He added that the review will be done fairly, impartially and independently and that the findings will be made public.
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1:13 President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden visit Robb Elementary School to pay their respects to the victims of the mass shooting Image: President Joe Biden arrives at Robb Elementary School to honor the victims killed in the robbery school shooting this week, Sunday, May 29, 2022, in Uvalde, Texas. (Aaron M. Sprecher via AP)
Some have called on the FBI to investigate police action following the decision to allow the shooter, Salvador Ramos, to remain in the classroom for nearly an hour while officers waited in the hallway and children in the room shouted. 911 help in panic.
Karen Finney, a Democratic strategist and spokeswoman for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, said Biden “needs to stay focused on the pain and grief of families and the community and understand that all of this has worsened. because I still don’t know exactly what happened. “
He added: “The more we learn, the more the children seem to have been badly served.”
Police say the gunman, 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, entered the school last week with an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle after killing his grandmother earlier in the house they shared.
Official accounts of how police responded to the shooting have gone wild, with calls for an independent investigation.
Biden, a Democrat, has repeatedly called for major changes to U.S. gun laws, but has been powerless to stop mass shootings or convince Republicans that tighter controls could curb carnage.
Image: The couple put on a bouquet of 21 white flowers to pay their respects Image: Community members met with the president and first lady during their visit to Texas
Read more: The instructor who teaches the police how to deal with gunmen says that UValde officers showed deficiencies in leadership and mentality. Is America too divided to deal with the gun problem?
Julian Moreno, who attended Sunday services at the First Baptist Church, where he previously served as pastor, said police had made a “big mistake,” but did not reprimand them.
Her great-granddaughter was among those killed in Tuesday’s shooting.
He said: “I’m sorry for them because they have to live with the mistake of staying.”
The visit to Texas is Mr. Biden’s third trip as president to a mass shooting site.
Earlier this month, he visited Buffalo, New York, after a shooting that left 10 black people dead in a supermarket.
Vice President Kamala Harris called for a ban on assault-style weapons during a trip to Buffalo this weekend, saying that as a result of the two consecutive mass shootings, these weapons are “a weapon of war” with “no place in a civil society “.