Uvalde School Shooting at Robb Elementary School
Previous Post
Next Post

The U.S. Department of Justice released its findings yesterday on the May 2022 school shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, which left nineteen children and two teachers dead and another 17 wounded. The report, “Critical Incident Review Active Shooter at Robb Elementary School,” found what it called “cascading failures of leadership, decision-making, tactics, policy and training” also using terms such as “critical failure,” “breakdown,” demonstrations upon leadership “of no urgency,” policy “training deficiencies” and more on the part of mostly local law enforcement officials. The word “failure” appeared dozens of times throughout the report.

The report noted that law enforcement officers were on the scene within 3 minutes of the first 911 call, yet the threat was not eliminated until more than an hour later.

According to 1440 Daily Digest:

The central issue was found to be a failure by law enforcement to treat the scene as an active shooter situation upon arrival. Specifically, first-on-the-scene responders, including the commanding officer reportedly shifted the response to that of a barricaded shooter…despite 911 dispatchers relaying they had received calls from children inside the classroom four minutes after officers arrived. Leadership also failed to establish a clear command structure, leaving many arriving support officers confused and without clear orders. 

Officials received intense criticism in the aftermath of the attack, with more than 75 minutes passing after the initial police response and before action was taken against the shooter, during which multiple calls by students were made to 911.

Former Uvalde Acting Police Chief Mariano Pargas and Uvalde school district Police Chief Pete Arredondo, neither who are still on their jobs, is where much of the initial blame has been placed as they were both ultimately in charge. Indeed, many families of the victims and within the community of Uvalde want officials who were responsible for the botched response to face criminal charges, according to the Texas Tribune. According to the Associated Press, local officials are still “weighing whether to bring charges.”

What added more pain and disgust to the situation for many Americans at the time of the massacre was the scene of police officers, who we now know went from “active shooter” mode to dealing with what they simply were communicating as a “barricade situation,” keeping understandably panicked parents—some getting text messages and calls from their children inside the school—from entering to save their children.

To review the complete 610-page Justice Dept. report, click here.

See a timeline of events that day here.

Previous Post
Next Post

33 COMMENTS

  1. the words “cowards” and “incompetence” comes to mind to sum up the police Uvalde response, and a lot more words that would probably send this post into ‘moderation’ but you get the idea.

    At least one of them was a coward with freshly sanitized hands though.

    • Cowardice comes in different forms. Not being willing to arrest a fellow incompetent, scared commanding officer and take over after parents say their children are calling and texting describing an active shooter is cowardice also.

      I wonder how many times the words “officer safety” ran through the heads of the leos during and since?

    • What confuses me is how these same LEOs surely must have shaken their heads in collective horror after learned of the previous Broward County, FL incident and said, “What a coward that cop is!…never on my watch.” And then they did the same thing – but en masse as a group – when finding themselves in the same situation.

      The sniper calling his supervisor for permission to take the shot because the 300-yd distance was outside his dept 100-yd training? I blame our overly-litigous society, as now everyone has an imaginary attorney at their side, waiting to press charges for any and all mistakes.

      • The Sniper had the weapon
        He had the position
        He had the skill
        He had the confidence.
        He had the will.

        Then TAKE THE SHOT

        Lives were at stake.

        He wasn’t there to play Mother May I. Or was he?

        And what kind if department limits real live fire training to ONLY 100 yards? Why not let those who desire to do so rain and hine their skills out to a thousand yards? I know folks who play at those sort s of distances just because they can. WHo knows but what one o THEM might not happen to be in a position t save lives by taking and making just such a shot?

        We have devolved into a rules based no thinking or decisions allowed society. And are the poorer because of it. It has to do with this insanity known as “equity”. No ine can excell, everyone rises to the mediocre mean, then gets lcked down right there.
        they said ir couldn;t be dine s I didnt do it”. Folly. And dead people.
        What if that school “security” officer sitting in his top floor corner office looking at the parking lot as the dirtbag shooter at the Parkland School in Broward County , carrying his Cabela’s AR pattern rifle case, obviously heavy, onto the school property where that officer KNEW he’d been banned by a court order, had his rifle up there in his office, opened the window and ordered the punk to stop, drop the rifle case, both empty hands in the air, and turn away from the building, lay face down on the grass, and wait, if you do not I WILL shoot you now. Master Cruz would have gne Code Brown, and done exactly as instructed.. or been shot right there.
        And Parklend School Shooting would have gone down in history as one skilled school cop stopping a massacre before it started. On’t sell many newspapers that way, though. Nor get any new laws passed to disarm the rest of us who would never shoot up a public place, but WOULD shoot down an obvious killer in progress.

        • “We have devolved into a rules based no thinking or decisions allowed society. And are the poorer because of it. It has to do with this insanity known as “equity”. No ine can excell, everyone rises to the mediocre mean, then gets lcked down right there.”

          I see that all the time in younger people in my job. People under about 40 don’t want to take a chance on getting in trouble. They come to me when we can’t quickly get orders for something that needs to be done because my attitude when something really needs doing is “I’ve been chewed out before.”

          I worry that they will never get over that and people who are afraid to make a decision and put their ass on the line will be taking care of all of us.

  2. SCOTUS has ruled, in the past, that police officers are not responsible for our safety. So the local cops are not liable. it is a sad situation

    • “SCOTUS has ruled, in the past, that police officers are not responsible for our safety.”

      That’s what I was thinking. Police carry weapons to protect themselves, not mount assaults on criminals.

      Firefighters run to the flames. Police shouldn’t be expected to run toward the gunfire (that’s for military).

      Last month, a neighbor had an air compressor stolen from his work truck. Two weeks after, the neighbor found the air compressor being advertised for sale. The neighbor filed a police report, with details about the location of the property. Police offered to accompany my neighbor to the location, and “assist” with the recovery. However…..

      The police wanted two weeks notice of the planned recovery, a three-hour block of time when my neighbor would confront the thief. Also, the police noted that the “assist” would be aborted if a higher priority incident happened before, or during, the planned timeframe. Essentially, my neighbor was “on his own” recovering private property.

    • We need to define what it means when we say they’re not responsible. If they don’t want to be, fine. Then they need to resign, turn in their stuff, and leave.

      The reason they have liability here is that they actually arrested people who *weren’t* cowards and tried to go in to do something. It’s bad enough to be a coward – stopping heroes is next level cowardice and they need to face liability for that.

  3. Zhou BaiDeng: “Taking guns away from legal owners will put a stop to all these mass shootings. Where’s my pudding?”

  4. Law enforcement officials have become highly “risk adverse”. Police won’t go in after a single suspect without armored shields, machine guns and MASSIVE numbers. And any little mistake results in MASSIVE lawsuits. So who is really to blame for the police being afraid of risk?

  5. They might not have liability from the law, but as for liability from Justice, it’s a different story. Honestly I’m amazed every cop that was there hasn’t been given final justice.

  6. Why is it that in some of these incidents the police attempt an intervention as soon as they arrive, and other times stand back and wait for the cavalry?

  7. Uvalde incompetence goes further back than the police and begins with haphazard parents who blindly placed their children in the hands of an incompetent school board and defenseless teachers, etc. In oter words more people than the police have their hands dirty.

    Furthermore…If one man hadn’t thrown a wrench in the spokes of Gun Control following Uvalde there is no telling what insane knee jerk laws would have been passed…

    • Either his aim was really bad, or he shoulda thrown a bigger wrench.

      Roy made this speech on June 8, 2022 — the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act was signed into law two weeks later on June 21.

  8. Dept of Justice says – Once upon a time on the island of …………

    Nothing that bunch of criminals and twits says can be taken as true or useful. Particularly from the Attorney General. That Obumer nominated the SOB for SCOTUS.

  9. I’m glad I carried my beretta 21A while I was in college. And at the elementary schools I had to teach in. I know TTAG writer Elaine D is against teachers carrying guns.

    Because she says the students will hug the teachers and learn who has a gun. Well, I didn’t hug anyone at school. And no one knows when I pocket carry a keltec P32.

    On some days I would bring my Henry AR7 with me. In my book bag.

    Firearms trainer Claude Werner. Known as the “tactical professor,” says you should be about to conceal carry a gun. While wearing the Target retail store employee uniform.

    And that is basically the same uniform that a lot of school teachers were today.

    • If you decide to carry in a non permissive environment? Then I suggest you REALLY look at yourself in a mirror. To see if you are printing through the clothes you’re wearing.

      • Had the principle in Perry, Iowa been carrying and used the firearm. He and a little boy, would still be alive. As well as 5 others would not have been shot. Better to be judged by 12, than carried by 6.

    • Thank you Chris T in Ky.
      I am glad you never had to use your gunm but you were there with it.
      Much respect to you on this end.👍

  10. Und vie were the cops called to Rob Elementary?—-
    Because, “I ain’t gonna kill nobody today.
    But I’m a Nut and I get bored. I gotta lot of problems that I keep stored.”

  11. I don’t care that SCOTUS said, basically, “Hey, you cops don’t have any obligation to protect others.”

    If police are going to put on a badge and exert authority of the ‘state’ to claim to be ‘hero first responders’, prevent crime, get paid by tax dollars, and then their departments are going to claim they ‘protect’ the public by their very existence and actions and training as their justification for existence – they better damn well be ready to give their lives if necessary to protect the ‘public’.

    Ordinary fire arm armed law abiding citizens have been willing to engage and stop mass-shooters, active shooters, armed violent criminals, collectively, thousands of times (collectively over the years, in 2023 over 800 ‘had planned to conduct a non-firearm mass killing killers’ did not become ‘mass killers’ in public places because they were stopped by an ordinary armed citizen before they could harm anyone) and they did and were 100% successful, and collectively, overall over the last 40 years, ~95% less victim injury/death than what happens while waiting for police to arrive and put a stop to it. These ordinary citizens had no such obligation to do so, they had no badge or claims of being ‘hero first responders’ and swore no oath’s to do so, but they did anyway and literally put their lives on the line to defend and save others. One lone defender did it, stepped up in that moment and responded… yet the cops need multiple patrols to respond and swat teams and getting organized and while they are doing all that more are injured/killed.

    So I don’t want to hear this excuse that that SCOTUS said, basically, “Hey, you cops don’t have any obligation to protect others.” as any sort of justification or reasoning or logic for why with literally hundreds of cops on scene at least a few did not go in and save those people, especially the ones that were actually inside in the hall way using hand sanitizer, playing with their phones, right there outside the room with the unlocked door with the killer right behind it.

    Cowards every one of them.

    Arm teachers/staff now. Allow armed ordinary citizens to patrol the schools and be ready to respond (and a few states do have this). Get rid of these stupid ‘gun free zone’ death traps that do nothing but specifically attracted these mass killers in 97% of cases. Get rid of gun carry prohibitions for law abiding citizens. Although there are cases where police have responded suitably – overall for police forces across the nation they are more interested in the ‘status’ and paycheck and are not there to protect and defend because SCOTUS said they have no such obligation…and in Uvaldes case, were there to use hand sanitizer, play with their phones, ask for permission, wait around in the hallway outside the unlocked door to the room the killer was in slaughtering victims, arrest parents outside, and fail the very people they swore an oath to protect that were accessible with just a simple twist of a door knob on the unlocked door.

    So one can say what they want about the Uvalde police response, give that SCOTUS excuse, any other excuse, but the fact is it was police cowardice and incompetence… but it was also a very clear indicator that the ‘first responders’ on scene that day should have been armed teachers/staff to have a chance because these victims had zero chance waiting for the idiots with badges to do something.

    • “Arm teachers/staff now.”

      I’d qualify that — ” … those who wish to be armed and are willing to accept the responsibility of training to respond to violence in the classroom.”

  12. Meanwhile, Tulsa Police responded to the first 911 calls (which were from people on a telehealth call and were not even at the shooting site) within four minutes and prompted the shooter to take his own life four minutes after that. TPD Chief Wendell Franklin said,

    “…they received the first 911 call about a shooting at 4:52 p.m., and officers were on the scene at 4:56 p.m. Officers entered the building and said a gunshot was heard at 4:58. Franklin said this shot is believed to have been the one that took the shooter’s life.”

    When police train for such events and are given the authority to work on their own initiative, they can be more effective. That was obviously not evident in Uvalde.

  13. As a decent human being. How can you stand by and let people be killed. Every one of the people that were there that day will answer to a higher power. There are worse things than getting killed in defense of innocent people. If you can’t face that. Turn in your badge! Every last one of the LEOs that were there need to be fired.

  14. The most egregious problem was police paranoia. Thanks to imbecilic politicians such as Senile Sock Puppet President Joe Biden spewing the gun control lobby’s propaganda about “assault weapons,” most cops are suffering from a Freudian phobia of being outgunned by the criminals. The truth is that most of the people who died at Uvalde bled to death because the paranoid police were to fearful to engage the assailant.

  15. If that was my child texting me inside the school, I would have gone in to save them, even if that meant shooting any numbnuts police officer that tried to stop me, come what may. Nothing would have stopped me from going in to save them, even if it cost me my life. The moment I realized that the police weren’t going to do anything, I would have gone for it. C’mon, did none of these parents care enough about their kids to take the risk? Pathetic.

  16. What is even sadder and more disturbing is that Chief Pete Arredondo was sworn in to the city council after the incident. While he was fired eventually, Chief Arredondo fought the termination and won in part. All after the incident. Now he is able to be a law enforcement officer because the for cause part of his termination was removed.

  17. Warren v. District of Columbia (1981)
    Deshaney v. Winnebago County (1989)
    Castle Rock v. Gonzalez (2005)

    Police have no “duty to protect.” And if somebody wants to quote “Protect and Serve,” that’s a slogan, not a policy. In fact, it was a slogan adopted by the LAPD Police Academy and not as a general policy of all police forces.

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here