Without surprise.
The US Department of Justice concludes in a report released Thursday that there was a "series of critical failures" in law enforcement's response to the Uvalde, Texas, school shooting that left 19 children and two teachers on May 24, 2022.
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The department's team that led the investigation launched in the days following the shooting "identified several critical failures before, during and after the shooting," according to the report of more than 550 pages, citing in particular the fact that the police officers on site did not “immediately consider that it was a case of a shooter in action”.
“Please send the police now”
She points to a “cascade of failures in command, decision-making, tactics, policy and training that contributed to these failures and failings.”
Following the killing which shook this small quiet town in Texas, the delay in police intervention to stop the massacre had caused anger and incomprehension, the 19 officers on site awaiting the attack of a specialized unit.
VIDEO.
Uvalde killing: previously unpublished images show police inaction for more than an hour
This was despite law enforcement receiving numerous calls from people in the affected classrooms, including one from a child pleading: “Please send the police now.”
» “The shooter was only killed approximately 77 minutes after the arrival of the first police officers,” underline the authors of the report, produced from 260 interviews and nine visits, or 54 days on site, according to the document.