A report commissioned by Uvalde city leaders has cleared all the local police officers involved in the non-response to the deadly shooting at Robb Elementary School in May 2022.
However, the report disagrees with state and federal reports on the same incident and blames everyone except the local officers. The local officers stood in a hallway for 77 minutes while children inside the classroom called 911 and pleaded for help. In the end, 19 students and two teachers were killed.
“There were issues all day long with communication and lack of it. The officers had no way of knowing what was being planned, what was being said,” Jesse Prado, the Austin-based investigator and former police detective who made the report, told the city council in his presentation. “If they would have had a ballistic shield, it would have been enough to get them to the door.”
But Uvalde officers, he said, acted quickly and appropriately.
Prado said the officers showed “immeasurable strength” and “level-headed thinking” as they waited in the school’s hallway for a decision to storm the classroom where the shooter was holed up with students and teachers, a decision that finally came more than an hour later when a border patrol tactical unit opened the unlocked door and went in.
Prado also faulted parents.
”At times they were hard to control,” Prado said. ” They were wanting to break through police barriers.”
Parents exploded in anger at the presentation.
“You said they did it in good faith. You call that good faith? They stood there 77 minutes,” said Kimberly Mata-Rubio, whose daughter was killed in the attack, after the presentation ended.
Prado left the room after his presentation but came back when parents demanded his return.
“My daughter was left for dead,” Ruben Zamorra said when he returned. “These police officers signed up to do a job. They didn’t do it.”
At least one city council member rejected the report. Hector Luevano said he was “embarrassed” and “insulted.”
“These families deserve more. This community deserves more,” he said. “I don’t accept this report.”
A state report in 2022 and a federal report released earlier this year both noted multiple failures on every level, including the local police, as CrimeOnline reported. The DOJ reported noted that local police acted with “no urgency” to set up a command post and assumed the suspect was locked inside the classroom rather than checking to see if that was the case.
It’s unclear what effect the report will have on a criminal investigation underway by the Uvalda District Attorney’s Office. A grand jury was convened earlier this year, but so far no officers have faced criminal charges. At least five officers who were on the scene lost their jobs, including two state Department of Public Safety officers and Uvalde schools police chief Pete Arredondo, who failed to take command of the situation even though a protocol for school shootings he wrote called for him to do so.
Arredondo didn’t even take his police radio with him to scene because he thought it would slow him down.
[Featured image: Uvalde School District Police Chief Pete Arredondo, left, on the phone inside Robb Elementary/City of Uvalde via KHOU]