Less than two years since a lone gunman killed 19 children and two staff members at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, the U.S. Department of Justice has released a 600-page report that describes an array of “cascading failures” leveled at law enforcement on the day of the mass shooting.
Some of these failures include police officers on the scene waiting too long to act although they knew an active shooter was inside a classroom with students, some of whom were calling 911 for help.
“Had law enforcement agencies followed generally accepted practices in active shooter situations and gone right after the shooter and stopped him, lives would have been saved and people would have survived,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said at a news conference in Uvalde on Thursday (January 18).
The report also stated that police officers acted with a “lack of urgency” even as parents outside the school pleaded that they rush in and save their children. Law enforcement waited more than an hour before they entered the classroom and killed the gunman.
“An active shooter with access to victims should never be considered and treated as a barricaded subject,” the report reads.
The report also says that Pete Arredondo, the district police chief on the day of the massacre, “on multiple occasions…directed officers intending to gain entry into the classrooms to stop, because he appeared to determine that other victims should first be removed from nearby classrooms to prevent further injury.”
Kimberly Rubio, the mother of Lexi Rubio, a fourth grader killed in the shooting, wanted the report to go further. “My child, our children are named in this report because they are dead,” she said. “[The officers who failed] should be named.”
Velma Duran, the sister of Irma Garcia, one of the teachers killed, added: “A report doesn’t matter when there are no consequences for actions that are so vile and murderous and evil.”
Watch Attorney General Merrick Garland’s full news conference below.