New DOJ report finds 'cascading failures' during Uvalde shooting

UVALDE, Texas (AP) — Police officials who responded to the deadly Uvalde, Texas, elementary school shooting waited far too long to confront the gunman, acted with “no urgency” in establishing a command post and repeatedly communicated inaccurate information to grieving families, according to a Justice Department report released Thursday that identifies “cascading failures” in law enforcement’s handling of the massacre.

The Justice Department report, the most comprehensive federal accounting of the maligned police response to the May 24, 2022, shooting at Robb Elementary School, catalogs a sweeping array of training, communication, leadership and technology problems that federal officials say contributed to the crisis lasting far longer than necessary. All the while, the report says, terrified students inside the classrooms called 911 and agonized parents begged officers to go in.

“I told the families gathered last night what I hope is clear among the hundreds of pages and thousands of details in this report: Their loved ones deserved better,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said at a news conference in Uvalde on Thursday after briefing family members on the Justice Department’s findings.

Even for a mass shooting that has already been the subject of intense scrutiny and in-depth examinations — an earlier report by Texas lawmakers, for instance, faulted law enforcement at every level with failing “to prioritize saving innocent lives over their own safety” — the nearly 600-page Justice Department report adds to the public understanding of how police failed to stop an attack that killed 19 children and two staff members.

The report underscores how police made a costly error in assuming that the shooter was barricaded, or otherwise contained or dead, even as he continued to fire shots. That mistaken “mindset permeated throughout much of the incident response” as police, rather than rushing inside the classrooms to end the carnage, waited nearly an hour to confront the gunman in what the report called a costly “lack of urgency.”

The gunman, Salvador Ramos, was killed roughly 77 minutes after police arrived on the scene, when a tactical team led by the Border Patrol