New bodycam footage shows shockingly bad police reports and nearly 400 officers from law enforcement converged on Robb Elementary school in Texas. But they didn’t stop a single gunman for more then an hour. “egregiously poor decision making”This left 19 children homeless.
The findings of a Texas House investigative committee were released Sunday and are the first to criticize federal and state officers on the scene, and not just local authorities in the southern town of Uvalde, where heavily armed officers stood outside two classrooms while the shooter killed 19 kids and two teachers.
City officials released video from the body camera that shows officers shouting, looking at their phones, waiting for orders, and firing shots on May 24.
The most complete accounts of one of America’s worst school massacres are now available from the government report and bodycam footage.
Infuriated parents demanded that officers are charged with dereliction-of-duty and called them cowards.
“It’s disgusting. Disgusting,”Michael Brown, a 9-year-old boy who was in school’s cafeteria at the time of the shooting, survived. “They’re cowards,”After a news conference regarding the report, he stated that he had just said this.
“It’s a joke. They’re a joke. They’ve got no business wearing a badge. None of them do,” said Vincent Salazar, grandfather of 11-year-old Layla Salazar, who was among the dead.
“At Robb Elementary, law enforcement responders failed to adhere to their active shooter training, and they failed to prioritize saving innocent lives over their own safety,”According to the report.
The gunman shot about 142 rounds into the school. “almost certain”The report stated that at least 100 blasts had been unleased before any officer entered fourth-grade classrooms filled with dead, dying, or wounded.
In the 77-page report were numerous failures.
Despite 376 officers dropping on the school, no one was able to take command of the chaos.. The responders were 149 agents from the U.S. Border Patrol, 14 from Department of Homeland Security, and 91 Texas Rangers from Department of Public Safety. According to the report, there were also 25 Uvalde Police Department officers, 16 SWAT members from San Antonio Police Department and 16 Uvalde County Sheriff’s Office deputies on the scene.
Uvalde School Police Chief Pete Arredondo failed to take command. First responders “lost critical momentum”You can treat the situation like a “barricaded subject”rather than an “active shooter,”According to the report. Arredondo “did not assume his pre-assigned responsibility of incident command,”According to the report.
Since then, he has been on administrative leave and has resigned from his seat on the Uvalde City Council.
Poor Wi-Fi service probably delayed locking down Robb Elementary School.“Not all teachers received timely notice of the lockdown,”According to the report.” “Robb Elementary had poor Wi-Fi connectivity, which likely caused the delay in the lockdown alarm.” The school intercom was not used during the chaos, leaving teachers without immediate notice of what was happening, the report said.
“Other than the attacker, the Committee did not find any ‘villains’ in the course of its investigation,” the report said. “There is no one to whom we can attribute malice or ill motives. Instead, we found systemic failures and egregiously poor decision making.”
In the bodycam videos, officers can be seen rescuing children through open windows, milling about in the hallways outside the classrooms where the gunman is heard firing, and an officer is heard saying, “Dude, we’ve got to get in there. We’ve got to get in there, he just keeps shooting. We’ve got to get in there.”
The assassin wasn’t taken down until 70 minutes later. He died on the spot.