Justice Department to investigate police response to Texas school shooting

DOJ spokesman says ‘goal of the review is to provide an independent account of law enforcement actions and responses that day’

The US Department of Justice will investigate the police response to the Uvalde school shooting.

Spokesman Anthony Coley said in a statement on Sunday that “at the request of Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin, the US Department of Justice will conduct a Critical Incident Review of the law enforcement response to the mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas, on May 24”.

“The goal of the review is to provide an independent account of law enforcement actions and responses that day, and to identify lessons learned and best practices to help first responders prepare for and respond to active shooter events,” Mr Coley added. “The review will be conducted with the Department’s Office of Community Oriented Policing.”

“As with prior Justice Department after-action reviews of mass shootings and other critical incidents, this assessment will be fair, transparent, and independent. The Justice Department will publish a report with its findings at the conclusion of its review,” he said.

Democratic Texas state senator Roland Gutierrez said “we’re all angry” over the police response to the Robb Elementary School shooting in which 19 children and two teachers were killed.

Follow the latest updates on the Uvalde mass shooting

He spoke with Steve McCraw, the director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, on Saturday. Mr Gutierrez said Mr McCraw told him that there would be a “detailed report including ballistics by next week”, CNN reported.

“We’re all angry. Law enforcement’s angry. I had a long conversation this morning on the way in with Steve McCraw, and he was crying to me and I’m crying to him,” Mr Gutierrez told CNN.

“And everybody is frustrated about the failures of what happened. He’s assured me I’ll have a detailed report including ballistics by next week. I want to know when each agency was here. Moving forward, he assured me never again will DPS stand down for any law enforcement agency. I hope that that’s true,” he added.

Mr McCraw said on Friday that the school district’s chief of police decided that “there was time to retrieve the keys, and wait for a tactical team with the equipment to go ahead and breach the door and take on the subject”.

It was “the wrong decision”, Mr McCraw said.

Texas Republican Governor Greg Abbott said he was misled by law enforcement on Tuesday, the day of the shooting, adding that he was “livid”.