The more Americans learn about the tragic mass murder of 19 youngsters and two adults at Robb Elementary School in Ulvade, Texas, last month, the angrier they become.
According to a new report released over the weekend, nearly 400 police officers assembled outside of the school before anyone ever bothered to attempt to breach the school and take down the killer who had erected a barricade inside a couple of classrooms.
Assembled by a Texas House committee, the report provided new details about a number of missteps, errors in judgment and outright incompetence in several areas, stemming from the shooter's family failing to understand and see several warning signs, to the school's habit of leaving doors unlocked and even propped open so staff and teachers did not have to be bothered to use keys or other devices to enter.
However, the panel saved its strongest criticism for the law enforcement officers who arrived on the scene and then neglected to do anything to try and save children for more than an hour -- even as more shots were fired 30-40 minutes following the initial attack, The Daily Wire reported.
“They failed to prioritize saving the lives of innocent victims over their own safety,” the report said, brazenly criticizing police for failing to move quickly in the face of a clear active shooter situation.
The report also made it plain that the single biggest failure was not a lack of manpower or even proper weapons and equipment, but rather a distinct lack of leadership and communication at critical moments.
"Other than the attacker, the Committee did not find any “villains” in the course of its investigation. There is no one to whom we can attribute malice or ill motives. Instead, we found systemic failures and egregious poor decision making. We recognize that the impact of this tragedy is felt most profoundly by the people of Uvalde in ways we cannot fully comprehend," says a summary of the report.
"With hindsight we can say that Robb Elementary did not adequately prepare for the risk of an armed intruder on campus. The school’s five-foot tall exterior fence was inadequate to meaningfully impede an intruder. While the school had adopted security policies to lock exterior doors and internal classroom doors, there was a regrettable culture of noncompliance by school personnel who frequently propped doors open and deliberately circumvented locks," it continues.
"At a minimum, school administrators and school district police tacitly condoned this behavior as they were aware of these unsafe practices and did not treat them as serious infractions requiring immediate correction. In fact, the school actually suggested circumventing the locks as a solution for the convenience of substitute teachers and others who lacked their own keys," the committee found.
There is also an illegal immigration aspect to what happened in Uvalde, and that can be blamed squarely on the left-wing Obama sycophants running Joe Biden's administration:
Another factor contributing to relaxed vigilance on campus was the frequency of security alerts and campus lockdowns resulting from a recent rise of “bailouts”—the term used in border communities for the increasingly frequent occurrence of human traffickers trying to outrun the police, usually ending with the smuggler crashing the vehicle and the passengers fleeing in all directions. The frequency of these “bailout”-related alarms—around 50 of them between February and May of 2022—contributed to a diminished sense of vigilance about responding to security alerts.
The report then turned to the law enforcement response, such as it was -- even noting that the attacker fired the majority of his 143 shots before any police arrived.
"At Robb Elementary, law enforcement responders failed to adhere to their active shooter training, and they failed to prioritize saving the lives of innocent victims over their own safety," it says.
"The first wave of responders to arrive included the chief of the school district police and the commander of the Uvalde Police Department SWAT team. Despite the immediate presence of local law enforcement leaders, there was an unacceptably long period of time before officers breached the classroom, neutralized the attacker, and began rescue efforts," the report said.
"We do not know at this time whether responders could have saved more lives by shortening that delay. Regardless, law enforcement committed numerous mistakes in violation of current active shooter training, and there are important lessons to be learned from each faulty assumption and poor decision made that day," it adds.
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