Feb 2024. Blues Vol 40 No. 2

about the shooting, echoes many findings
from a probe released by a state House
committee two months after the shooting.
In presenting the new report’s findings,
Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta
criticized initial misinformation and conflicting
accounts provided by officials, including
Abbott and DPS.
The report noted that the “misguided and
misleading narratives, leaks, and lack of
communication about what happened on
May 24 is unprecedented and has had an
extensive, negative impact on the mental
health and recovery of the family members
and other victims, as well as the entire
community of Uvalde.”
The previous mayor of Uvalde requested
the federal review days after the shooting
when it became clear that the response
was flawed. The review was led in part by
Sheriff John Mina of Orange County, Florida,
who was the incident commander
during the 2016 Pulse Nightclub massacre
in Orlando.
An outside review of that incident found
that Florida officers, who waited three
hours to take down the shooter, mostly followed
best practices, although it stated that
the law enforcement agencies in Orlando
should update their training and policies.
In multiple after-action reviews, including
the Pulse report, authors opted not to
criticize significant law enforcement delays
during mass shootings, according to an
analysis of more than three dozen of these
reports by ProPublica, the Tribune and
FRONTLINE.
The Uvalde report was far more critical,
finding failures in leadership, command and
coordination.
It stated that officers wrongly treated the
situation as a barricaded suspect incident
instead of one in which a shooter was an
active threat to children and teachers. Officers
should “never” treat an active shooter
with access to victims as a barricaded suspect
— especially in a school, where there
is a “high probability” of potential victims
and innocent civilians being present, the
report stated.
Officers had multiple indicators that
should have made it clear they were facing
an active shooter, including 911 calls from
children and teachers pleading for help, a
dispatcher’s announcement minutes after
officers arrived that students were likely
in the classroom with the shooter, and an
Uvalde school police officer announcing
that his wife had called to tell him she had
been shot, according to the report.
Gupta condemned the medical response,
saying that after police breached the classroom
and killed the gunman, dead victims
were placed in ambulances while children
with bullet wounds were put on school
buses. Many of those findings were revealed
in a 2022 investigation by the Tribune, Pro-
Publica and The Washington Post that determined
medical responders did not know
who was in charge and that two students
and a teacher who later died still had a
pulse when they were rescued from the
school.
In its blistering criticism of responding officers,
the report said that supervisors from
various law enforcement agencies “demonstrated
no urgency” in taking control of the
incident, which exacerbated communication
problems and added to overall confusion.
Uvalde school district Police Chief Pete
Arredondo, who was listed as the incident
88 The Blues - - February January ‘24