DOJ to release report on law enforcement response to Uvalde shooting
Written by ABC Audio. All rights reserved. on January 17, 2024
(WASHINGTON) — The Justice Department will issue a report on Thursday on its review of the law enforcement response to the Uvalde school shooting, a DOJ spokesperson confirmed.
The “Critical Incident Review” is not a criminal investigation into the May 2022 shooting at Robb Elementary School in which 19 children and two teachers were killed, the DOJ said. It is intended to provide the most independent and comprehensive account of how law enforcement responded to the shooting — examining things like officer training, command and control response, deployment of resources and the support provided to victims and their families.
The review was conducted by the DOJ’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS), a team made up of federal staff and subject matter experts including former local, state and federal law enforcement officials.
Uvalde families and state officials have spoken out against the law enforcement response during the massacre, the second deadliest school shooting in U.S. history. It took 77 minutes for any of the nearly 400 law enforcement officers assembled that day to confront the killer, ABC News previously reported.
The siege ended with a counterassault led by a SWAT team from the U.S. Border Patrol. In the process, lone gunman Salvador Ramos was shot and killed.
A criminal investigation by the Texas Department of Public Safety into whether the public safety failures led to the deaths of the victims has yet to be released. In the months after the shooting, school district police chief Pete Arredondo was fired, the entire district police force was disbanded and several state troopers were dismissed.
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