Feb 2024. Blues Vol 40 No. 2

UVALDE SCHO
“Cascading failures”
Justice Department blasts law enforcement’s botched
response to Uvalde school shooting.
By Lomi Kriel
UVALDE, TX. — Law enforcement agencies
across the country should immediately
prioritize active shooter training, U.S. Attorney
General Merrick Garland said Thursday
as he released a scathing report about the
handling of the 2022 massacre in Uvalde in
which lives could have been saved if training
protocols had been followed.
The Justice Department’s long-anticipated
report about the shooting found that
“cascading failures of leadership, decision-making,
tactics, policy and training”
led to the bungled response, which Garland
said should never have happened. Nineteen
children and two teachers were killed on
May 24, 2022.
“Had law enforcement agencies followed
generally accepted practices in an active
shooter situation and gone right after the
shooter to stop him, lives would have been
saved and people would have survived,”
Garland said during a news conference on
Thursday.
The report’s findings about the failure
to follow protocol and the lack of sufficient
training to prepare officers for a
mass shooting largely mirrored the flaws
revealed in a Texas Tribune, ProPublica
and FRONTLINE investigation published
last month that found that states require
students and teachers to receive far more
training to prepare them for a mass shooting
than they require for the police. At least
37 states require schools to conduct active-shooter-related
drills, nearly all on an
annual basis. But Texas is the only state that
mandates that all its police officers complete
repeated training, at least 16 hours
every two years. That requirement was
implemented after the Uvalde shooting.
Garland said the report was produced
in an effort to offer lessons that would
hopefully better prepare law enforcement
across the country to respond to future
mass shootings. It offered recommendations
that included requiring all agencies in
a region to train together and providing officers
across the country with at least eight
hours of active shooter training annually.
The vast majority of at least 380 officers
from about two dozen local, state and federal
agencies who responded to the school
had never trained together, “contributing to
difficulties in coordination and communication,”
the report stated.
“Our children deserve better than to grow
84 The Blues - February ‘24