The Justice Department will conduct a review of the law enforcement response to the shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, a department spokesman announced Sunday.
The review of what happened, requested by the mayor of Uvalde, Don McLaughlin, will include a report on how the police acted on May 24, the day of the massacre.
The report will be made by the department's Office of Community Oriented Policing, NBC News reported.
The intervention of the federal government occurs after the local police have been questioned for their delay in arresting the attacker.
Texas authorities acknowledged Friday that children and teachers repeatedly asked 911 operators for help, while a local police chief told more than a dozen officers to wait in a school hallway.
They admitted it was a "serious mistake" and said the responding officer believed at the time the suspect was barricaded alone inside the classroom.
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“The goal of the review is to provide
an independent account of
law enforcement actions and responses that day, and to identify lessons learned and what may be best practices to help first responders prepare for and respond to situations in which there is an attacker,” Justice Department spokesman Anthony Coley said.
"As with previous reviews the Justice Department has done of mass shootings and other serious incidents, this review will be fair, transparent and independent," he said.
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The Uvalde Elementary School killer fired 142 shots inside classrooms as more and more police officers crowded into a hallway without intervening, Steven McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Safety, admitted Thursday at a news conference. after two days of false or erroneous information and constant rectifications from the authorities.
When the shooter was finally killed, an hour after the attack began, authorities found the bodies of 19 children and two teachers.
The commander in charge of the operation, who was not identified during the news conference, believed that the shooter had barricaded himself in a classroom where there were no children, McCraw said, and decided to delay the intervention until the arrival of reinforcements.
"It was a wrong decision, very wrong," McCraw admitted this Friday,
"we should have entered immediately."
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The commander of the operation was later identified by reports as Peter Arredondo, who is the police chief of the Uvalde school district.
Arredondo was elected as a municipal councilor two weeks ago and is due to be sworn in this Tuesday.
The decision by police chiefs, and the apparent willingness of officers to follow their directives contrary to shooting protocols, has raised questions about whether more lives were lost because officers did not act more quickly to apprehend the shooter. attacker and who should be responsible.
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On rare occasions, criminal or criminal charges have been filed against police officers for their actions during a mass shooting at a school.
Administrative charges, on the other hand, can range from a pay suspension or reduction to a forced resignation or retirement or an outright dismissal.
In terms of civil liability, the legal doctrine called “qualified immunity”, which protects police officers from lawsuits unless their actions violate clearly established laws, could also be at play in future litigation.
