A memorial is seen surrounding the Robb Elementary School signal following the mass taking pictures at Robb Elementary School on May 26, 2022 in Uvalde, Texas.

Brandon Bell/Getty Images

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Brandon Bell/Getty Images

A memorial is seen surrounding the Robb Elementary School signal following the mass taking pictures at Robb Elementary School on May 26, 2022 in Uvalde, Texas.

Brandon Bell/Getty Images

A U.S. Justice Department report launched Thursday on the 2022 college taking pictures in Uvalde, Texas, discovered “critical failures” by regulation enforcement earlier than, throughout, and after the assault that killed 19 kids and two academics.

The essential incident evaluation offers essentially the most thorough accounting but of the occasions of May 24, 2022, when the gunman opened hearth at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde. The regulation enforcement response to the taking pictures has come underneath fierce criticism for the reason that day of the taking pictures, when police waited greater than 70 minutes within the college hallways earlier than confronting and killing the gunman.

“The victims and survivors of the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School deserved better,” Attorney General Merrick Garland stated in a press release accompanying the report. The regulation enforcement response at Robb Elementary on May 24, 2022 — and the response by officers within the hours and days after — was a failure.”

Garland is predicted to carry a information convention in Uvalde later Thursday to stipulate the report’s findings.

The new report from the Justice Department, which runs some 500 pages, offers a damning look the regulation enforcement response to the taking pictures and a cascade of errors and missteps with tragic penalties.

“The most significant failure was that responding officers should have immediately recognized the incident as an active shooter situation, using the resources and equipment that were sufficient to push forward immediately and continuously toward the threat until entry was made into classrooms 111/112 and the threat was eliminated,” the report says.

The objective of the evaluation, the division says, is to offer an impartial account of the regulation enforcement response to the taking pictures; to determine classes discovered to assist put together for future such incidents; and to offer a roadmap for group security and engagement earlier than, throughout and after such occasions.

Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta, in a press release, stated she reiterated to the households of the victims of the assault “that our report would honor the victims and survivors” as a way to “prevent something like this from happening again.”

The report discovered that police arrived on the college and entered the constructing three minutes after the gunman, who was nonetheless actively taking pictures inside school rooms 111 and 112 on the time.

Those officers rapidly recognized the placement of the gunfire and ran towards these rooms—constant, the report says, with the observe of rapidly partaking an energetic shooter. The police approached the rooms the place the shooter was, however retreated after a few of the officers have been hit with shrapnel from the shooter’s gunfire.

From that time on, the report says, the police, together with Uvalde Consolidated School District Police Department chief Pete Arredondo, started treating the incident as a “barricaded subject scenario and not as an active shooter situation.”

That was a essential mistake that contributed to the tragedy.

“Despite their training and despite multiple events that indicated the subject continued to pose an active threat to students and staff in the building, including the likelihood and then confirmation of victims inside the room, officers on scene did not attempt to enter the room and stop the shooter for over an hour after they entered the building,” the report says.

Instead, Chief Arredondo turned his consideration to evacuating kids and academics within the constructing “to preserve and protect the lives of kids and teachers in the hot zone,” the report says.

“This was a major contributing factor in the delay to making entry into rooms 111/112,” in line with the report. “The time it took to evacuate the entire building was 43 minutes.”

Arredondo is singled out within the report at a number of factors. It concludes that he was the de facto incident commander on the day, however “he did not provide appropriate leadership, command, and control, including to establishing an incident command structure nor directing entry into classrooms 111 and 112.”

That contributed to what the report says was an absence of management within the police response.

“Leadership in law enforcement is absolutely critical, especially in moments of a dire challenge, such as the active shooter incident at Robb Elementary School,” the report says. “This leadership was absent for too long in the Robb Elementary School law enforcement response.”

The report can also be sharply essential of how the authorities dealt with the aftermath of the taking pictures, notably in how they communicated with the general public.

In this occasion, the report discovered that dangerous data and inconsistent messaging created confusion that compounded the struggling of these affected by the taking pictures, each on the day itself and later.

“The extent of misinformation, misguided and misleading narratives, leaks , and lack of communication about what happened on May 24 is unprecedented and has had an extensive, negative impact on the mental health and recovery of the family members and other victims, as well as the entire community of Uvalde,” the report says.