Status: 07/17/2022 10:41 p.m
In May, an 18-year-old shot dead 19 children and two teachers in Uvalde, Texas. An investigation report accuses the police of systemic failure. The perpetrator shot for over an hour, although hundreds of emergency services were on site.
About two months following the massacre in an elementary school in the US state of Texas that left 21 dead, an investigative report blamed “systemic errors and egregious wrong decisions” for the hesitant police action. Nearly 400 officers from various law enforcement agencies rushed to the elementary school in the town of Uvalde, the Texas Tribune reported, citing the report.
Many of the responders were better trained and equipped than the school district police. They might have helped deal with the spreading chaos, the newspaper quoted from the report. The report on the police operation on May 24 was written by a committee of inquiry from the Texas House of Representatives and distributed to relatives on Sunday, but was also available for viewing by several US media outlets.
19 children and two teachers died
An 18-year-old gunman killed 19 children and two teachers in the small town. The attacker shot the children and teachers with an assault rifle. The police were heavily criticized for their hesitant intervention. After the fact, she repeatedly changed her statements regarding the course of events. It finally turned out that the police only overpowered the perpetrator around 75 minutes following their arrival.
“They failed to put the rescue of innocent victims above their own safety,” the newspaper continued, quoting from the 77-page report. The mistakes made are not due to a lack of emergency personnel, but to a lack of leadership skills and effective communication.
Several police officers described the scenes at the crime scene as chaotic and did not know who was in charge. Nobody took the initiative and took command, it said.