By: Amanda Ross

Staff Writer

WASHINGTON D.C. — On January 18 the Department of Justice (DOJ) released a 575 page report on the reaction of law enforcement during the May 2022 Uvalde mass shooting. The report analyzed a variety of documents, interviews, and recordings from the day of to assess whether law enforcement present during the shooting had taken proper action. Key points within the document included a failure to recognize the situation as an active shooter event, a lack of action, a lack of standard procedure, and several other wide scale issues. 

The DOJ report first addresses both the lack of courageous action and the lack of recognition of the attacker as an active shooter. Law enforcement instead treated the shooter as a barricaded subject whom they could retreat from and wait for proper reinforcements. The report contends that they should’ve pushed into the room the shooter was in as they had sufficient resources to do so. As well, a lack of leadership, (described in the report as a lack of courageous action), kept officers from assisting victims in classrooms 111 and 112 and developing a command structure with which to tackle the larger incident. 

Another large issue identified by the DOJ is the failure to establish standard operating procedures. Law enforcement was not informed, nor were they in possession of accurate information about the school’s procedures around lockdowns or active shooter events. This was due to infrequent meetings by district safety teams, as well as annual safety plans being based on templated information. The DOJ also found that the district was very lax with locked door policies, with both interior and exterior doors often left unlocked without any system of accountability for these infractions. On the day the shooting took place, all exterior school doors were unlocked according to the investigation.

These three factors would then compound on the day of, leading to two other failures. Law enforcement did not take care to establish and control the crime scene, with the deceased being moved both in and out of classrooms during triage. This affected how the scene could later be studied and photographed. Law enforcement also did not initially identify the trigger system used by the shooter, the device later recovered from a garbage can despite being originally photographed on the floor of the scene. As well, local law enforcement rejected the FBI’s offer to process the shooter’s vehicle and the evidence inside. A rainstorm would later compromise the evidence within the vehicle. 

One of the last issues brought up by the report was the lack of communication and transparency by law enforcement to the families of affected students and victims. Families were not informed on the status of their children or their location, with one family later learning that their child had died in hospital while they were attempting to locate them. The process by which families were sent death notifications was chaotic, with some even being told their loved ones had survived when they had not. Many of the personnel delivering this news were also untrained on how to properly do so, leading to unnecessary upset. 

Overall, the report details a response that is was not only lackluster, but deeply harmful to those most affected.