A sweeping Justice Department report exposes the “cascading failures” of the police response to the 2022 Uvalde elementary school mass shooting when 19 children and two teachers were killed by an 18-year-old gunman. Despite the presence of close to 400 officers at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas, it took 77 minutes for police to confront and kill the shooter. The scathing 600-page report lays out the “haphazard” initial response in which hundreds of law enforcement officers stood by as the massacre unfolded. Democratic Texas state Senator Roland Gutierrez, whose district includes Uvalde, says the report proves “what happened on May 24th was the worst law enforcement response to a school shooting in our nation’s history.” Gutierrez describes the events of the school shooting, where “everything that could have gone wrong happened,” and why the shooter’s AR-15-style rifle did so much damage and scared police. “We need an assault weapons ban in this country, once and for all,” says Gutierrez, who is running for U.S. Senate against Republican Senator Ted Cruz. “These politicians are cowards on this issue.”
This post was originally published on Democracy Now!.
