U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said Wednesday that the Department of Justice’s investigation into the law enforcement response to the elementary school shooting in Uvalde won’t be criminal in nature.
Garland described the federal investigation as a “critical incident review,” which was done after other mass shootings such as in San Bernardino, California, and Orlando, Florida. The review will assess the law enforcement response and “give guidance for the future,” Garland said. The department will then produce a public report, which will include the investigation’s findings and recommendations.
“Nothing that these [investigators] can do can undo the terrible tragedy that occurred, and that we are just heartbroken about,” Garland said Wednesday. “But we can assess what happened and we can make recommendations for the future.”
Garland said the team reviewing the law enforcement response will conduct site visits to the school and interviews with witnesses, families, law enforcement officers and school officials.
He said that his department expects full cooperation from all law enforcement officers involved in the response to the shooting. Authorities have been criticized in the days after the massacre over their decision to wait over an hour before entering the school and confronting the shooter.
“We have been promised, assured and welcomed with respect to cooperation by every level of law enforcement: state, federal and local,” Garland said. “We will participate in that vein and we don’t expect any problems.”
See here for the background. Per Texas Public Radio, there’s no official timetable for this process, but they intend to move “as expeditiously as possible”. Uvalde law enforcement has stopped cooperating with DPS in the state’s investigation, so we’ll see if the feds have more luck. Maybe some subpoenas will be needed, but let’s hope not. As I said, I don’t expect much out of this, but if we learn more about what actually happened with how local law enforcement responded and why it went so very wrong, that’s enough of a reason to do this. The Chron has more.
The Chronicle account makes it sound like poor communication all around…too many police agencies, too many chiefs, all of them saying “I didn’t know I was in charge.” Perhaps police should have to have at least a 500 score on the SAT verbal section. Too often, their poor communication skills (and oversize ego) lead them to escalate minor incidents by badgering people, and, in this case, to be confused in their response to a serious incident.
Pingback: Uvalde’s police chief speaks – Off the Kuff
Pingback: What was DPS doing during the Uvalde massacre? – Off the Kuff