The Texas Department of Public Safety has announced an internal review of the state police’s slow and chaotic response to the Uvalde school shooting.
Key points:
- The review will determine if any policy or law was violated during the police response
- Uvalde officials have posted images of the camera showing the chaotic and slow response
- Uvalde residents are angry that the police are responsible
The news came when a new 80-page report released over the weekend by the Texas House revealed major failures at all levels of law enforcement.
The findings put more than 90 state soldiers at Robb Elementary School during the May 24 tragedy.
This is the first time the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) says it will examine the actions of its own agents during the two months since the deadliest school shooting in Texas history.
The Texas DPS said in a statement that the review “would determine whether there was any violation of policy, law or doctrine” during the response to the attack that killed 19 children and two teachers in a fourth grade class. .
He said the review was launched last week.
Texas DPS director Steve McCraw has previously described law enforcement’s response to the shooting as an “abject failure.”
He has attributed much of the blame to the school district police chief for not entering the classroom earlier.
The report’s findings were the first to criticize state and federal law enforcement, and not just local authorities in the South Texas city for the baffling inaction of heavily armed officers when a gunman fired inside. two adjoining fourth classrooms.
The report followed weeks of closed-door interviews with more than 40 people, including witnesses and law enforcement who were at the scene of the shooting.
Nearly 400 law enforcement officers rushed to the school, but the “terribly poor decision-making” caused more than an hour of chaos before the gunman was finally confronted and killed, according to the ‘report.
A report has criticized state and federal law enforcement for the response. (AP: William Luther / The San Antonio Express-News)
Taken together, the report and more than three hours of recently released body camera footage of the incident amounted to the most complete account to date of one of the worst school shootings in U.S. history.
The findings had at least an immediate effect: Lieutenant Mariano Pargas, an officer in the Uvalde police department who was the city’s acting police chief during the massacre, was put on administrative leave.
Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin said an investigation would be launched to determine whether Lieutenant Pargas should have taken command of the scene.
He also revealed for the first time that some officers had abandoned the force since the shooting, but did not provide an exact number, saying they were up to three.
Hours after the report was released, UValde officials made public for the first time separately hours of body camera footage of city police officers who responded to the attack.
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It included a video of several officers reacting to the news of an dispatcher, about 30 minutes after the shooting began, that a child in the room had called 911.
“The room is full of casualties. Call 911 Children’s,” an agent said.
Another video from the body camera of Uvalde staff sergeant Eduardo Canales, the head of the city’s SWAT team, showed the officer approaching the classrooms when shots were fired at 11:37 in the morning.
A minute later, Sergeant Canales said, “Dude, we have to get in. We have to get in. He keeps firing. We have to get in.”
Another agent could be heard saying, “The DPS is sending its people.”
It was 72 minutes later, at 12:50 p.m., when officers finally entered the classrooms and killed the shooter.
Police liability claims have grown in Uvalde since the shooting.
The Uvalde community demands that the police be held accountable. (Photo AP / Eric Gay)
“It’s a joke. They’re a joke. They have no object to wear a badge. None of them have one,” Vincent Salazar, grandfather of 11-year-old Layla Salazar, who was among the killings, said Sunday.
Anger appeared in Uvalde even over how the report was published: Tina Quintanilla-Taylor, whose daughter survived the shooting, called the three-member Texas House committee when they came out of a press conference after the conclusions were published.
Committee members had invited the families of the victims to discuss the report in private, but Quintanilla-Taylor said the committee should have received questions from the community, not just the media.
“I’m angry. They have to come back and give us all their attention,” he said.
“These leaders are not leaders.”
Investigators said it was not their job to determine whether officers should be held accountable, and said the decisions rested with each law enforcement agency.
Prior to Sunday, only one of the hundreds of officers at the scene, Pete Arredondo, the police chief of the Uvalde school district, was known to be on duty.
“Everyone who came to the scene talked that this was chaotic,” said Texas State Representative Dustin Burrows, a Republican who led the investigation.
Texas DPS and U.S. Border Patrol officials did not immediately return requests for comment Sunday.
AP