By Acacia Coronado -
The Associated Press
The independent investigation that municipal leaders of Uvalde (Texas) ordered into the police response to the shooting that left 19 children and two teachers dead at Robb Elementary School on May 24, 2022 cleared local agents of responsibility this Thursday despite identifying "multiple failures" in the operation.
Previous reports and journalistic investigations did highlight serious errors in the police response.
Relatives of victims of the tragedy protested angrily upon learning of this municipal investigation.
This report, carried out by Jesse Prado, a former police officer and investigator based in Austin (Texas), and which is just one of several carried out after the massacre, denounces communication errors, lack of police training and equipment for shootings, and a delay in entering the classroom where the murderer was hiding.
A man kneels in front of the memorial to the victims of Robb Elementary School, in Uvalde, Texas, on January 9, 2022. Associated Press
"There were problems throughout the day with communication and lack thereof. The agents had no way of knowing what was being planned, what was being said," Prado said.
“If they had had a ballistic shield, [that] would have been enough to get to the door,” he explained during his presentation. The hundreds of agents who responded to the shooting alert waited more than an hour to confront and kill the murderer hiding in the classroom.
Several family members of the victims angrily left the Uvalde City Council in the middle of a presentation that showed Uvalde Police Department officers acting quickly and appropriately, in contrast to other critical and very different reports that blamed the police in all the levels.
Prado said his review of the events showed that the officers showed “immeasurable strength” and “common sense” when faced with the gunman's gunfire and refrained from shooting into a blind classroom.
“They were shooting at eight feet,” Prado said.
Strong reports against the police
Last January, the Department of Justice published its report, the most complete to date, which concluded that the agents "did not demonstrate urgency."
by establishing a command post to respond to the attack, and did not treat the shooting as an event involving an active shooter, "using sufficient resources and equipment to immediately and steadily advance toward the threat, all the way to entering the classrooms," According to the document.
The report also denounces “cascading failures” in law enforcement's handling of one of the deadliest school massacres in U.S. history.
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.”
Another 80-page report written by a panel of state legislators — in addition to investigations by journalists — also exposed how, for more than 70 minutes, a large number of agents entered and left the school with weapons drawn, but did not enter the classroom. of the shooting.
Among the 376 agents on the scene were some from state and local police, school officials and even the Border Patrol.