Mass-shooting report aims to help police elsewhere; Uvalde still divided; editor has advice for community journalists

Uvalde County (Wikipedia map)

The Justice Department's Thursday report on the massacre at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, is designed to help avoid the mistakes police made, but seems unlikely to heal the divisions that remain in the town of 15,000 and same-named county of 25,000.

“They’re recomending stuff that we already knew,” but “In a lot of smaller towns like Uvalde, police chiefs have to be questioning, ‘What’s in this report?’ . . . Let’s make sure I don’t become that person,” said John Miller, CNN's law-enforcement analyst and former spokesman for the FBI and the New York Police Department.

Miller said a gunman's killing of 19 students and two teachers, and the physical injury of 17 others, was “an incident that was just too big in a place that was just too small.” He said the incdent commander, the school police chief, should have ceded authority to better-equipped agencies. The investigation was requested by then-Mayor Don McLaughlin, a Republican.

Attorney General Merrick Garland, in Uvalde, said “The report concludes that 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,” rather than letting 77 minutes elapse between their first arrival and their killing of the shooter.

The report was the fullest account yet of the tragedy, but some victims' families said it should have named more names. Andrew McCabe, former FBI deputy director, said on CNN that the purpose of such a "critical indicdent review is not to hold people accountable, but to make a complete statement of facts and say how law enforcement can learn from mistakes."

Victims' families continued to demand action from local District Attorney Christina Miller Busbee, who has said she would wait for the report before taking any action. But they said many of their neighbors want to move on and not "be known as the place with a mass shooting," said Brett Cross, who was a guardian of a child killed in the shooting. "Maybe these people will start taking us seriously." UPDATE, Jan. 19: Sources tell the Austin American-Statesman that a judge has empaneled a grand jury "to consider possible criminal charges against law-enforcement officers. . . . It is unclear what charges the grand jury seated in Uvalde County state district court might consider against the officers, but they possibly include child endangerment or injury to a child, the Statesman confirmed." As for civil suits, in Texas they must be filed within two years of the injury.

Cross told CNN that the Uvalde community remains “very divided,” noting that several officers remain in their positions, some of them elected. “They don’t want to believe that the people grew up with failed our children.” Adam Martinez, father of an injured survivor, told CNN, “If we don’t put pressure, nothing is going to happen. . . . It’s uncomfortable when you have to say people didn’t do their job. . . . You have to go against the grain, and more people have to do that.”

Pedro "Pete" Arredondo, the school police chief, lost his job. In November, "Lt. Mariano Pargas of Uvalde police, who was the acting police chief on the day of the shooting, resigned days before the City Council was set to discuss his termination. He had been placed on leave in July; he stepped down following a CNN report that showed he was told that “eight to nine” children were alive in the classrooms but he failed to coordinate action," the Texas Tribune reported. He was re-elected to the county commission. The Washington Post reported one year after the May 24, 2022, shooting, "The first state police officer disciplined after the massacre was given the option to resign and now works for a local sheriff’s office."

Jan. 21 front page; for a larger version, click on it, or right-click to download.

UPDATE, Jan. 20: The Uvalde Leader-News reports, "On Friday, Jan. 19, a dozen people were selected to serve on a special grand jury that is expected to spend at least six months studying the May 24, 2022, Robb school shooting investigation. About 300 people were summoned to appear at 9 a.m. in the 38th Judicial District Court, and 67 people appeared. Juror turnout has been an ongoing issue for the court. Judge Camile DuBose said in some cases, a mailed summons may fail to reach the intended juror, but some people simply choose not to show up. She said for those who fail to appear, she can summon them to a hearing, where a $100 fine may be imposed on those who have no valid excuse for their failure to appear. For those who don’t show for the hearing, the sheriff’s office may be asked to locate the person and summon them to court."

Julye Keeble of The Leader-News explores possible outcomes: "Police officers are largely difficult to prosecute for inaction, and the law does not require police to risk their lives to protect the public. Per a 2005 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, police officers do not have a constitutional duty to protect others from harm. Few cases against law enforcement for failure to act are presented, and those that are typically fail." Keeble notes the acquittal last year of a school resource officer on charges for failing to protect students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., on Feb. 14, 2018.

"An ongoing debate, particularly seen in the wake of the Robb shooting, is whether police have a moral imperative to take action sooner in mass casualty situations, which often see a delay before an attacker is confronted," Keeble writes. "Though medical findings have not been made public, families allege some of those who died after the attack might have lived if bleeding had been staunched and they received medical treatment. Several Uvalde Police officers who were on the scene within minutes charged forward toward the adjoined classrooms where the attacker was, but were repelled after he fired at them. Two officers were wounded by shrapnel, and though one tried again to move forward, no others would follow. Officers told others the attacker had an AR rifle, and the destructive power of the weapon was likely a factor in guiding police decisions."

Leader-News Publisher Craig Garnett asked Garland at the press conference about the quality of the police response, especially in light of the police response to the mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Fla., in 2016. That comparison “is not entirely true, and the response was a failure,” said Hugh Clements Jr., director of the Justice Department's Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, which prepared the report.

Garnett's advice to community journalists

For his work on the tragedy and its aftermath, and his first 22 years at the paper, Garnett won the 2023 Tom and Pat Gish Award for courage, integrity and tenacity in rural journalism from the Institute for Rural Journalism at the University of Kentucky, publisher of The Rural Blog. He will receive the award Feb. 29 at the University of Texas-Austin, at a symposium, "Courage, Tenacity, Integrity and Innovation in Rural Journalism." For the audience at the Institute's Al Smith Awards Dinner in October, he had a video message for community journalists, published this week by The Daily Yonder. He said in part:

Craig Garnett

"One of the things we’ve taken away from May 24 is that we didn’t do enough before. We have a wall full of plaques from the South Texas Press Association, the Texas Press Association, but we didn’t do enough. We didn’t ask enough questions. We didn’t hold people running for elected office to account like we should have. We didn’t question people who wanted to run our institutions closely enough. What motivated them? What experience do they have? What would they do in a crisis?

"And we certainly didn’t hold our law enforcement to a high enough standard, the people who swore to protect us. So, we will work harder in the future to do that, to make sure that we know as much as we can about people who intend to lead our community, especially in the aftermath of a tragedy. We want to know how they’ll react. It’s not entirely possible. There are all kinds of things that pop up that you can’t plan for, but you can get a sense of where people’s souls lie and what their commitment is to your community.

"And that’s what I would advise to my fellow publishers in small towns. Pay attention. Pay attention to everything, to those people who run institutions, to the kid who’s slipping between the cracks, who might one day become the same school shooter we had. Be invested beyond what you are now, if that’s possible. I know most of you work your hearts out. But if there’s one thing we would like to do better, it would’ve been that."