On Thursday, the U.S. Department of Justice released its comprehensive review of the deadly mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, on May 24, 2022. Just as those elementary students were looking ahead to their summer break, 19 of them and two teachers were slaughtered. Thursday, more than 19 months later, the DOJ has concluded, in 600 pages of gut-wrenching detail, what many of us already knew. There was a “cascade of failures” before, during and after the tragedy.
I’ve never seen a DOJ shooting report with such emphatically scathing language.
For part of my FBI career, I led all internal shooting inquiries, compiled and presented the reports and provided training for such inquiries. I’ve never seen a DOJ shooting report with such emphatically scathing language nor so many clear, unambiguous conclusions about the incompetence of law enforcement leadership as the report released Thursday.
In fact, if I were to devise a tabletop exercise for law enforcement to identify gaps in their school shooting response plans and I included the kinds of multiple points of failure in Uvalde, the exercise would be rejected as implausible. “No one,” I would be told, “could possibly make that many mistakes.” But they would be wrong. The officers at Robb Elementary — and there were over 300 of them from various agencies — not only failed repeatedly, the report finds, but their inaction can be linked to the fatalities.
As summarized by NBC News, the DOJ report included disturbing findings that:
- Poor coordination, training and execution of active shooter protocol contributed to a failure in law enforcement response.
- Police officers were erroneously taught that “an active shooter event can easily morph into a hostage crisis.”
- A lack of leadership led to a failure to recognize an active shooter situation and waiting too long to engage the gunman.
- At least six separate instances of gunfire, as well as officer injuries and the presence of victims, should have prompted officers to take steps to “immediately stop the killing.”
- Some families received incorrect information about whether their loved ones had survived, and others were notified of deaths by personnel not trained to deliver such traumatic news.
Assistant Attorney General Vanita Gupta, who led the review, called the law enforcement response “an unimaginable failure.” At the news conference announcing the report's findings, Attorney General Merrick Garland notably concluded, “Lives would have been saved, and people would have survived,” if officers had confronted the gunman more quickly and directly.
Instead, police waited one hour and 17 minutes to assault the classroom where the shooter was positioned. During that time, officers heard more gunshots. One responder asked children to shout out if they needed help, which led to a child who responded being murdered by the gunman. According to the report, police assumed the gunman was behind a locked door and didn’t even try the classroom doorknob to learn that it was likely unlocked.
In this space in 2022, I asked a question for which I didn’t yet know the answer: “Was the shooter the only criminal inside Robb Elementary that day?”
One responder asked children to shout out if they needed help, which led to a child who responded being murdered by the gunman.
I don’t need any more information now. I can say with certainty that, if all the facts in the DOJ report are true, then, no, the shooter was not the only criminal there. Gupta said that “ … a lack of action by adults failed to protect children and their teachers.” Those who failed to protect those children and their teachers should be held accountable.
If only there were federal jurisdiction in this matter, but there isn’t. DOJ conducted the review, yet the job of deciding whether there should be criminal charges for certain officers reported as putting their own safety over the lives of children falls to the county of Uvalde and the state of Texas. Those county or state prosecutors should do the right thing and bring charges. Lord knows, many officers that day chose to do the wrong thing, and we don’t want to compound those failures with a failure of prosecutors to do the right thing.
As I’ve previously written, Texas has at least two criminal statutes that could apply. The police would not be exempt from these laws. First, there’s “Abandoning or Endangering a Child.” Here are three pertinent sections, of which any or all might apply:
(A) In this section, “abandon” means to leave a child in any place without providing reasonable and necessary care for the child, under circumstances under which no reasonable, similarly situated adult would leave a child of that age and ability.
(B) A person commits an offense if, having custody, care or control of a child younger than 15 years, he intentionally abandons the child in any place under circumstances that expose the child to an unreasonable risk of harm.
DOJ conducted the review, yet the job of deciding whether there should be criminal charges falls to the county of Uvalde and the state of Texas.
(C) A person commits an offense if he intentionally, knowingly, recklessly or with criminal negligence, by act or omission, engages in conduct that places a child younger than 15 years in imminent danger of death, bodily injury or physical or mental impairment.
Second, there’s “Injury to a Child” — Recklessly by Omission. The potentially applicable language there is:
(A) A person commits an offense if he intentionally, knowingly, recklessly or with criminal negligence, by act or intentionally, knowingly or recklessly by omission, causes to a child, elderly individual or disabled individual:
(1) serious bodily injury;
(2) serious mental deficiency, impairment or injury; or
(3) bodily injury.
The district attorney for Uvalde County, Christina Mitchell Busbee, has said she is “investigating” the school shooting, but she’s also said that she was waiting for the Justice Department to provide her with a complete review of the incident — and then she would “do my job.”
That time has come. Busbee needs to do the job she was elected to do — apply the facts and the law to bring justice to her community. She has the laws. Now she has the facts. The deaths of 21 innocent people must compel her to act.
