I admit to having mixed feelings about this.
A special grand jury first convened [January 19] in Uvalde will investigate law enforcement’s delayed response to Texas’ deadliest school shooting to determine whether criminal charges can be filed against officers, the Uvalde Leader-News first reported.
Twelve people were selected to serve on the jury in Texas’ 38th Judicial District Court. Jurors will meet around twice a month to hear testimony from witnesses of the May 24, 2022 shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde. The attack killed 19 students and two teachers and injured 17 others.
Uvalde County District Attorney Christina Mitchell will also present her case to the jury, which will make a recommendation to her at the end of their investigation. The DA will then decide whether to pursue criminal charges against some of the nearly 400 law enforcement officers who responded to the scene.
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On Thursday, the Justice Department released a long-awaited report detailing law enforcement’s bungled response to the shooting. The report criticized the “lack of urgency” demonstrated by former Uvalde school district Police Chief Pete Arredondo and Uvalde Police Department Acting Chief Mariano Pargas, who both arrived at the school within minutes of the first round of shots fired.
The report also named Uvalde County Sheriff Ruben Nolasco, Uvalde County Constables Emmanuel Zamora and Johnny Field, and an unidentified Texas Ranger as officers who did not question Arredondo and Pargas’ response.
“We’ve been calling for accountability, so hearing news of a grand jury convening, especially following the release of the DOJ’s report, feels like a step in the right direction,” said Kimberly Mata-Rubio on Friday evening. Mata-Rubio’s 10-year-old daughter Lexi was killed in the shooting and she’s since been a fierce advocate for gun reform. “I am glad people are finally seeing the truth — our children, those two teachers, were failed.”
Federal officials did not directly answer whether any officers responding to the shooting should face criminal charges. U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said he would leave that to the local district attorney because the Justice Department only has jurisdiction over federal crimes.
Kirk Burkhalter, Professor of Law at New York Law School, said he suspects that law enforcement officers could face three possible criminal charges: manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide, and abandoning or endangering a child. Burkhalter believes that Chief Pete Arredondo will be the “primary target” of the grand jury’s investigation.
“You can’t have this report that points the finger so harshly at the Chief of Police and all the multiple failures of law enforcement where deaths occurred, and not impanel a grand jury to further investigate this and see if criminal charges are warranted,” Burkhalter said.
On the one hand, I’m glad to see this step being taken, and would only ask what took so long for it to happen. If there is sufficient evidence to support criminal charges against these or other individuals who responded but failed to act on that day, then by all means arrest them and put them on trial. If nothing else, I hope we finally get some more answers about what happened; even after the release of the Justice Department report, there are still many questions to pursue. And if this helps bring some peace to the affected families, so much the better.
On the other hand, I feel like we’re still only partially addressing the real problems here. The gun issue is of course the biggest, but the nature of the training that law enforcement agencies and officers get on active shooter incidents is still a question. Why after all this time and so many previous shootings were the cops so unprepared and disorganized? Maybe that was a matter of individual failures of leadership, and if so then this process may get to the heart of that. But DPS officers were on site as well, they screwed up in the same way, they’ve been covering their asses since the day of the shooting, and I don’t see Steve McCraw being held accountable. Whatever this grand jury can do, it can only do so much.
And speaking of the DOJ report:
The report’s recommendations include having active shooter plans for every school, regular meetings between local law enforcement and local government officials to conduct security exercises, replacing or upgrading all faulty school doors and locks, mental health screenings for victims and better communication between law enforcement, school officials and the community.
“Had law enforcement agencies followed generally accepted practices in an active shooter situation and gone right after the shooter to stop him, lives would have been saved and people would have survived,” said U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland during a news conference on Thursday.
Gov. Greg Abbott, who praised the police response immediately after the shooting and later said he was misled about how it transpired, released a statement Thursday thanking the Justice Department for its report. He said the state has already adopted some of the measures it recommended and would review others.
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When officers arrived, they retreated after coming under fire and waited for backup. The decision was counter to the active shooter doctrine developed after the 1999 Columbine High School mass shooting in Colorado, which dictates that officers must immediately confront the shooters.
Leadership was also amiss among the plethora of law enforcement officers who responded to the shooting, with no one acting as the “incident commander.” Pete Arredondo, the Uvalde school district’s former police chief, has said he didn’t believe he was in charge, even though the district’s active-shooter plan states he was.
The report authors also expressed concern with an active-shooter training course that Uvalde school district police officers received from the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement just months before the massacre, which states that an “active shooter event can easily morph into a hostage crisis and vice versa.” The Justice Department said that an active shooter event very rarely ceases to be a hostage situation and officers should always seek to eliminate the threat as soon as possible.
Texas is already trying to implement many of the Justice Department’s recommendations. Under HB 3, the state created a safety and security department within the Texas Education Agency and gave it the authority to compel school districts to establish and follow robust safety protocols. Those that fail to meet the agency’s standards could be put under the state’s supervision.
Since the 2018 Santa Fe High School shooting, the state has required school districts to submit those plans — which must include active-shooter strategies — for the review of the Texas School Safety Center, a think tank at Texas State University created by lawmakers in 2001.
A three-year audit in 2020 found that out of the 1,022 school districts in the state, just 200 districts had active-shooter policies as part of their safety plans. The audit revealed 626 districts did not have active-shooter policies; 196 had active-shooter policies but were deemed insufficient. Only 67 school districts had viable emergency operations plans overall, the report found.
HB3 also tasks the state with setting up teams to conduct security audits at every school district at least once a year. Districts are also required to have an armed person on campus.
Again putting aside the enormous problem of how fucking easy it is for any asshole to get their hands on weapons of mass murder, I am far from convinced that the state’s response to this tragedy is adequate. The fact that the kids knew what to do but the cops didn’t calls it all into question for me. I fear that we will be asking the same questions the next time this horrible event happens somewhere else.