We’re still a long way from seeing it for ourselves.
State police investigating the Uvalde school shooting have sent an initial report to prosecutors, according to a spokesperson for the Texas Department of Public Safety.
The Texas Rangers, a division of DPS, are conducting a criminal investigation into the shooting at Robb Elementary, where a gunman killed 19 children and two teachers in May. Hundreds of law enforcement officers who responded to the school, including those from DPS, did not confront the shooter for more than an hour after initial reports of shots fired.
The district attorney in Uvalde, Christina Mitchell, said the Rangers’ investigation remains open and that she did not anticipate a complete report for at least a few more months. Neither she nor DPS have publicly released the initial report yet. The investigation is expected to eventually include a review about whether any victims who died may have survived had police intervened sooner
DPS Director Steve McCraw said last fall that the Rangers’ investigation would be completed by the end of December.
“The initial report is what the Director was referring to and that was made available to the DA’s team last week,” agency spokesperson Travis Considine wrote in an email this week.
In previous statements, Mitchell said that she needs a completed investigation to make any decisions about potential charges, including against any of the nearly 400 officers whose actions and inactions have been under scrutiny since the massacre, which was the deadliest school shooting in Texas history.
“I don’t expect to receive the complete investigation report until the spring, at the earliest,” Mitchell said in an email last week. “It is not uncommon for an investigation of this magnitude to take over a year.”
[…]
At least one part of the investigation has not yet been completed.
A medical analysis of victims’ injuries — led by Dr. Mark Escott, medical director for the Texas Department of Public Safety and chief medical officer for the city of Austin — to “determine whether there may have been opportunities to save lives had emergency medical care been provided sooner” remained underway as of Tuesday, a city of Austin spokesperson said.
That review began in earnest around November. Autopsies of the victims, key for the examination, were completed a few weeks ago. The results of the autopsies have since been sealed, according to local news reports.
Considine, the DPS spokesperson, said the overall investigation is considered ongoing — and the report is initial rather than final — because “Rangers may receive assignments from special prosecutors for some time, which would lead to additional information.”
See here, here, and here for some background. So far two DPS officers have been forced out of their jobs as a result of DPS’ internal investigation. One chose to retire and the other was fired; the latter has filed an appeal. Yes, having the Rangers investigate DPS, for whom they work, is at best a weird idea and sure looks like a conflict of interest, but here we are anyway. We missed our chance for political accountability on this, so we’ll get what we get when we get it.