Police officials who responded to the deadly school shooting in Uvalde “demonstrated no urgency” in setting up a command post and failed to treat the killings as an active shooter situation, according to a Justice Department report released Thursday that identifies “cascading failures” in law enforcement’s handling of one of the deadliest massacres at a school in American history.
Elected and civic leaders have been sharing their thoughts on the 600-page report, some of which can be read below.
The full report is embedded at the bottom of this article.
PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN ON DOJ UVALDE REPORT
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Statement from President Joe Biden on the Department of Justice's report on the response by law enforcement to a mass shooting at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas.
"In May 2022, Jill and I traveled to Uvalde to grieve 21 students and educators senselessly and tragically gunned down at Robb Elementary School. Twenty-one souls stolen from us in a place where they are supposed to feel safe—their classroom. Following this tragedy, my administration conducted a review to determine lessons learned from the response that day and best practices to ensure a swifter and more effective response to future active shooter incidents. Today’s report makes clear several things: that there was a failure to establish a clear command and control structure, that law enforcement should have quickly deemed this incident an active shooter situation and responded accordingly, and that clearer and more detailed plans in the school district were required to prepare for the possibility that this could occur. There were multiple points of failure that hold lessons for the future, and my team will work with the Justice Department and Department of Education to implement policy changes necessary to help communities respond more effectively in the future. No community should ever have to go through what the Uvalde community suffered. After the Uvalde shooting, the families of the victims turned their pain into purpose and pushed for the passage of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, the most significant gun safety legislation in nearly 30 years, which I signed into law. And I continue to take historic executive action, including the establishment of the first-ever White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention. Congress must now pass commonsense gun safety laws to ensure that mass shootings like this one don’t happen in the first place. We need universal background checks, we need a national red flag law, and we must ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. The families of Uvalde – and all American communities -- deserve nothing less. The longer we wait to take action, the more communities like Uvalde will continue to suffer due to this epidemic of gun violence.
TEXAS GOV. GREG ABBOTT ON DOJ UVALDE REPORT
Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, who has been criticized for statements he made in the first hours following the massacre where he heaped praise on the police officers for their response and then for later pushing back on calls by Uvalde families for new gun control measures, issued the following response to the DOJ report.
Following the horrific tragedy at Robb Elementary School, Texas took swift action to bolster security in our schools and in our communities, and I thank the U.S. Department of Justice for their critical incident review of the tragic shooting at Robb Elementary School. The State of Texas has already adopted and implemented some of the recommendations proposed by the DOJ in this review. We will continue to evaluate all possible means of making our schools safer, and we will carefully review all other recommendations the Department has offered to prevent future tragedies across our state.
TEXAS DPS ON DOJ UVALDE REPORT
We thank the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) for the tremendous amount of time and attention it has put into compiling the critical incident review of the shooting at Robb Elementary School. As DPS Director Steven McCraw first stated in the weeks after the shooting, the law enforcement response that day was an abject failure, and this report’s observations underscore those failures. The State of Texas has already implemented some of the recommendations proposed by the DOJ review in order to prevent tragedies in the future.
DOMINGO GARCIA, LULAC NATIONAL PRESIDENT, ON DOJ UVALDE REPORT
The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), the nation's oldest and largest Latino civil rights organization, expressed "deep concern and disappointment" in the findings of the DOJ report. The organization shared this statement on behalf of LULAC National President Domingo Garcia.
LULAC is disappointed that federal investigators have failed to address the criminal accountability for the tragedy at Robb Elementary. Nineteen children and two teachers died, mostly Latino, and not one person is facing criminal charges yet. How can that be when this report affirms much of what we have known for the past 20 months? Law enforcement failed to act quickly and decisively and to do its job of protecting the community. Instead, we are left with more questions about when or whether even one person will ever face the consequences for criminal negligence or dereliction of their sworn duty. Ultimately, only the families of Uvalde can say if they believe justice has been served.
JAVIER CAZARES, LULAC COUNCIL PRSIDENT, UVALDE, ON DOJ REPORT
In addition to being LULAC council president in Uvalde, Javier Cazares is also a grieving father whose 9-year-old daughter, Jacklyn Cazares, was among the victims in the Uvalde massacre. Cazares emphasized the significance of the report as a step in a longer process.
What this report does is confirm many of the most important failures that happened before, during, and after this tragedy. I am focused on still sharing my daughter's story and look forward to what the District Attorney investigation and others will bring out. This report is by no means the end. We must still make sure that everyone connected to the events of that day, including city leaders and others, are held accountable.
