UVALDE, Texas (AP) – Two months after the Uvalde school massacre, Texas state police on Monday announced an internal review of the actions of dozens of soldiers who were at Robb Elementary for 73 minutes of inaction baffling by law enforcement when a gunman killed 19 people. children and two teachers.
The announcement appeared to amplify the aftermath of an 80-page report released over the weekend by the Texas House that revealed failures at all levels of law enforcement and identified 91 state soldiers at the scene. , more than all the UValde officers put together. It also meant a public change from the Texas Department of Public Safety, which has so far largely criticized local authorities for not having confronted the gunman before.
The report made public on Sunday revealed for the first time the massive presence of state police and the U.S. Border Patrol on the scene during one of the worst school shootings in U.S. history.
“You have 91 soldiers at the scene. Do you have all the equipment you could want and are you listening to the local school police?” Said State Senator Roland Gutierrez, a Democrat whose district includes Uvalde and who has accused the DPS. of trying to minimize their role in the response.
The findings that Border Patrol officers and state soldiers made up more than half of the 376 police officers who rushed to the South Texas school on May 24 shared responsibility for a slow response and disorderly much broader than previous accounts emphasizing the mistakes of Uvalde’s agents. .
The report made it clear that the “terribly poor decision-making” by the authorities went beyond the application of local law in Uvalde, which was eventually overtaken by more than 5 to 1 by state and federal agents. at the scene. Other local police in the vicinity of Uvalde also responded to the shooting.
The report puts a new perspective on the role of state and federal agencies, whose leaders, unlike local authorities, have not had to move on to meetings where they confronted the angry parents of the dead children.
Of the nearly 400 officers who gathered at the school, only two are currently known to be on leave pending the investigation of their actions: Pete Arredondo, the police chief of the consolidated school district of Uvalde, and Lieutenant Mariano Pargas, an officer in the Uvalde police department who was the city’s acting police chief during the massacre.
State police had previously said that no police had been suspended at the scene. On Monday, Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott said the report’s findings “are more than disturbing,” but did not highlight any agency.
Texas DPS did not set a timeline on when the review would be completed. He said the actions of all police officers, state police officers and Texas Rangers at the scene would be examined “to determine if any violation of policy, law or doctrine occurred.”
Colonel Steve McCraw, the director of Texas DPS, has previously blamed much of the response on Arredondo, identifying him as the commander of the incident and criticizing him for treating the gunman in the classroom as a barricaded subject. and not as an active shooter.
The new report, the most complete account to date of the tragedy, also says Arredondo wasted critical time during the shooting looking for a classroom key and not treating the gunman more urgently. But he also stressed that all law enforcement at the scene collapsed the response.
“There is no one to whom we can attribute malice or evil motives. Instead, we found systemic failures and very poor decision-making, ”the report said.
Abbott said “critical changes” are needed, but in a statement did not address whether any agent or agency should be held accountable.
In Uvalde, city council and school board meetings in the eight weeks since the shooting have become recurring scenarios for residents calling leaders elected for police responsibility, which continued after the report was made public. .
“It’s disgusting. It’s disgusting,” said Michael Brown, whose 9-year-old son was in the school cafeteria on the day of the shooting and survived. “They’re cowards.”
“What a shame! What a shame!” the families of the murdered children and teachers and their supporters chanted to school board members at a special meeting Monday night.
Brett Cross, an uncle of 10-year-old Uziyah Garcia, who was among the killings, long reprimanded board members for not taking responsibility for the massacre. He especially challenged the members for not knowing that the school’s exit doors were locked outside and for not firing Arredondo.
“If we don’t fire him tomorrow at noon, I want your resignation and all the board members because you don’t care about us or our kids,” Cross said, addressing Superintendent Hal Harrell.
Harrell said the report released over the weekend will help the board decide Arredondo’s future. However, he has also pointed out that Arredondo is hired and cannot be fired at will.
Uvalde High School student Angela Villescaz, the founder of the Fierce Madres group, told board members that her organization has been polling school officials who have suffered similar mass shootings. He offered the board his conclusions as advice for district officials not to try to “reinvent the wheel.”
However, he took note of the DPS soldiers who were in the room and said, “… I can’t help but wonder if they just didn’t find our children worthy of being saved.”
Historically, the DPS has maintained relations with the Mexican-American community in Texas since the 19th century. In the early twentieth century, the Texas Rangers, of which the DPS evolved and is a part, participated in numerous bloody attacks on Mexican nationals.
According to the report, the gunman fired approximately 142 shots inside the school, and it is “almost certain” that at least 100 shots were fired before any officer entered, according to the committee, which stated numerous errors.
Among them: No one took command despite numerous agents at the scene, and no officer attempted to enter the classroom immediately despite a dispatcher transmitting a 911 call that there were victims in the room.
The report also criticized a Border Patrol tactical team, saying that before entering it was waiting for a bulletproof shield and a master key that would work for a classroom door, which probably never closed. In all, the report put about 150 Border Patrol officers at the scene.
Cecilia Barreda, a spokeswoman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, said Monday that the review of the agency’s response is still ongoing and has not reached any final conclusions.
Hours after the report was released, UValde officials made public for the first time separate hours of camera footage of city police officers who responded to the attack.
A video of Sergeant Uvalde. Eduardo Canales, head of the city’s SWAT team, showed the officer approaching the classroom when shots were fired at 11:37 p.m.
A minute later, Canales said, “Dude, we have to get in. We have to get in there, he keeps shooting. We have to get in there. ”Another agent could be heard saying“ DPS is sending its people ”.
It was 72 minutes later, at 12:50 p.m., when officers finally entered the classroom and killed the shooter.
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Weber reported from Austin, Texas. Associated Press writer Terry Wallace in Dallas also contributed to this report.
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This story has been corrected to show that Brett Cross’s relationship with the murdered child is the uncle, not the father.