Thread: 77-Page Report Details ‘Systemic’ Law Enforcement Failures in Uvalde School Mass Shoo

‘SYSTEMIC’ LAW ENFORCEMENT FAILURES

A man lowers the U.S. and Texas flags to half-staff outside the Uvalde Civic Center following a mass shooting at an elementary school, in Uvalde, Texas, on May 24, 2022. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)

TEXAS
77-Page Report Details ‘Systemic’ Law Enforcement Failures in Uvalde School Mass Shooting

By Jack Phillips
July 17, 2022 Updated: July 17, 2022

A report released by the Texas state House of Representatives said there were systemic failures on behalf of the some 400 enforcement officers who responded to the May 24 mass shooting at a school in Uvalde.
“There is no one to whom we can attribute malice or ill motives. Instead, we found systemic failures and egregious poor decision making,” the report said, noting “shortcomings and failures of the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District [CISD] and of various agencies and officers of law enforcement” and “an overall lackadaisical approach.”

Those claims appear to coincide with statements made by top Texas officials days after the shootings. Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steve McCraw said May 27 that it was the “wrong decision” not to engage with the shooter, Salvador Ramos.
Meanwhile, surveillance footage from Robb Elementary School released on July 12 shows officers waiting around more than 45 minutes before several officers approached the classroom where Ramos had entered. The officers didn’t enter. It took more than 75 minutes for law enforcement to kill Ramos, 18, after he entered the building.
The report said that law enforcement failed to quickly confront the suspect and instead retreated to safety.

“In this crisis, no responder seized the initiative to establish an incident command post,” it states. “Despite an obvious atmosphere of chaos, the ranking officers of other responding agencies did not approach the Uvalde CISD chief of police or anyone else perceived to be in command to point out the lack of and need for a command post, or to offer that specific assistance.”
Some individual officers acted without instruction to try to reach the shooter and might have been able to do so if they had more backup, according to the paper.
“Given the information known about victims who survived through the time of the breach and who later died on the way to the hospital, it is plausible that some victims could have survived if they had not had to wait 73 additional minutes for rescue,” the report reads.
A force of 376 law enforcement officers responded to the mass shooting, according to the House panel, which said that there wasn’t clear leadership as they responded.
Texas lawmakers on July 17 noted that Ramos was born in Fargo, North Dakota, before he was moved to Texas when he was a child. Ramos also may have been sexually abused as a child, the report states.
Friends of the suspect, including a girlfriend, told investigators that Ramos became increasingly depressed during the COVID-19 pandemic. At one point, Ramos told the girlfriend that he wouldn’t live past age 18.
Ramos in late 2021 also allegedly posted a video of himself holding a dead cat inside a bag. Footage also showed the future school shooter dry firing BB guns at people from a car, according to the report.

In the wake of the shooting, which left 19 students and two teachers dead, congressional lawmakers used the tragedy to pass a gun control bill that included funding to bolster red flag laws and other measures, which was signed into law on June 25 by President Joe Biden.

77-Page Report Details ‘Systemic’ Law Enforcement Failures in Uvalde School Mass Shooting (theepochtimes.com)

REPORT FINDS 376 LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICERS RESPONDED TO UVALDE SCHOOL SHOOTING

• WATCH

Sky News Australia

Uvalde school district Chief of Police Pete Arredondo hugs a school student at a community prayer evening held the day after a mass shooting at Robb Elementary School that killed 19 children and 2 teachers, in Uvalde, Texas, on May 25, 2022. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)

TEXAS
Uvalde School Board Votes Unanimously to Fire School Police Chief Pete Arredondo

By Katabella Roberts
August 25, 2022 Updated: August 25, 2022
Audio at the page link 0:003:53

The Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District school board voted unanimously on Wednesday to terminate the employment of the district’s Police Chief Pete Arredondo, three months after the deadly shooting at Robb Elementary school in Texas.
The vote came as Arredondo, who was one of the first responders on the scene, faced mounting criticism over his response to the mass shooting on May 24 that claimed the lives of 19 children and two teachers.

He has been on administrative leave since June 22.
Arredondo was not present during the vote, which took place in a closed session as required by Texas law.
Prior to the vote, Arredondo’s attorney George Hyde released a 17-page statement (pdf) accusing Uvalde school officials of putting his client’s life at risk by not letting him carry a weapon to the school board meeting, despite “knowledge of legitimate risks of harm to the public and to Chief Arredondo and all others intending to be present.”

Hyde also claimed that the school district violated Arredondo’s constitutional due process rights by failing to provide him notice of the complaints against him and conduct an internal investigation establishing evidence supporting a decision to terminate his employment leading up to the hearing.
“Chief Arredondo will not participate in his own illegal and unconstitutional public lynching and respectfully requests the Board immediately reinstate him, with all backpay and benefits and close the complaint as unfounded,” the statement reads.
‘A Courageous Officer’

The attorney also defended his client’s actions on the day of the mass shooting, stating that a “perfect storm” of circumstances had culminated in the tragedy.
“Chief Arredondo is a leader and a courageous officer who with all of the other law enforcement officers who responded to the scene, should be celebrated for the lives saved, instead of vilified for those they couldn’t reach in time, and not for lack of effort,” Hyde wrote.
“There was only one person that caused this – the shooter. Recognizing that it was the Chief, Pete Arredondo, who warned the district over a year before this event of the vulnerability of the district to such an incident, should not be waiting with his head on the chopping block because what he feared happened,” the statement added.
However, hundreds of people who attended Wednesday’s vote, including relatives of the shooting victims, disagreed and emotions were clearly running high. Many of those in attendance chanted “coward” and “no justice, no peace.”

Arredondo is the first officer to be dismissed over the police response to the mass shooting incident; one of the worst school shootings in U.S. history.
One other officer, Uvalde Police Department Lt. Mariano Pargas, who was the city’s acting police chief on the day of the massacre, was placed on administrative leave in July amid an evaluation into his response to the shooting.
In an interview with the Texas Tribune in June Arredondo defended his actions during the shooting, in which law enforcement took 77 minutes to take down gunman Salvador Ramos.
‘Shortcomings and Failures’

“Not a single responding officer ever hesitated, even for a moment, to put themselves at risk to save the children,” Arredondo said. “We responded to the information that we had and had to adjust to whatever we faced. Our objective was to save as many lives as we could, and the extraction of the students from the classrooms by all that were involved saved over 500 of our Uvalde students and teachers before we gained access to the shooter and eliminated the threat.”
The Texas state House of Representatives on July 17 published a 77-page report noting that there were “shortcomings and failures” across the board by both law enforcement and the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District in its handling of the mass shooting.

In its report, the state committee determined that Arredondo had “failed to perform or to transfer to another person the role of the incident commander” on the day of the shooting.
Arredondo also testified to the House committee investigating the shooting that he thought the shooter was a “barricaded subject” as opposed to an “active shooter,” and that his priority was to protect people in the other classrooms from being hurt by the attacker.
“With the benefit of hindsight, we now know this was a terrible, tragic mistake,” Arredondo said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Uvalde School Board Votes Unanimously to Fire School Police Chief Pete Arredondo (theepochtimes.com)