“Human factors” played a large role in the failure to carry out emergency policies at Robb Elementary School, according to experts in criminal justice and school safety who analyzed a report on the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas.
What to know about the report: A Texas House committee on Sunday released the preliminary report of almost 80 pages based on interviews with more than 30 witnesses, as well as audio and video recordings from the scene. It is the most robust analysis published about the elementary school shooting May 24.
Takeaways: Experts told USA TODAY that although the school and the district’s school police department had policies and training on how to respond to an active-shooter situation, the fail-safes did not hold up in practice because of human error.
The reaction: Some loved ones of victims and community members in Uvalde reacted with anger and disappointment, especially to the details of how officers waited to enter the school’s classroom.
“It’s disgusting. Disgusting,” said Michael Brown, whose 9-year-old son was in the school’s cafeteria on the day of the shooting and survived. “They’re cowards.”
Safety issue in locking classroom doors
What the report found: Robb Elementary School had a “regrettable culture of noncompliance” among school personnel in propping open doors and circumventing locks. No one had locked any of the three exterior doors to the west building of the school, a direct violation of school policy, the report says.
What the school did right: Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District is one of few in Texas to have submitted a viable policy for responding to an active-shooter emergency, according to the report. State legislation enacted in 2019 directs schools to create a plan for responding to an active-shooter scenario.
What experts say: Though schools prepare for active shooters with drills and equipment, “human factors” such as a propped door can upend those protections, said Kenneth Trump, president of National School Safety and Security Services, a consulting firm. Those errors aren’t unique to this school, he added.
“Would you find that culture only in Uvalde? No,” Trump said. “It’s also what we call the perfect storm: a series of cascading events or actions or inactions that all contribute to a disaster.”
No clear leader of law enforcement response
Who was on scene? The report said 376 law enforcement officers responded to the shooting, including 150 agents from the U.S. Border Patrol, 91 from state police and 25 from the Uvalde Police Department.
What went wrong: The report discusses an “unacceptably long period of time” before law enforcement breached the classroom where the gunman was, and it ties that wait to a lack of leadership among officers from the Uvalde school district and other responding agencies.
The document said Uvalde CISD Police Chief Pete Arredondo did not perform or transfer his designated “incident commander” role during the shooting, despite having received active-shooter training from a nationally recognized training program.
What experts say: Though Uvalde CISD officers have procedures to address an active-shooter situation, the failure to follow that training contributed to the outcome, said Mike Lawlor, associate criminal justice professor at the University of New Haven, who reviewed the report.
“Uvalde seems to have checked all the boxes on paper ahead of time,” Lawlor told USA TODAY. “In practice, however, none of those things turned out to be the steps that the police took or the measures that the school system claimed to have.”
The fallout: The Texas Department of Public Safety announced Monday it is launching an internal review into the actions of state police at the scene. After the report’s release, the city’s acting police chief during the massacre, Lt. Mariano Pargas, was placed on administrative leave.
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Most gunshots were fired before police arrived
How the shooting played out: The report found it is “almost certain” the gunman fired more than 100 of the approximately 142 rounds fired inside the building before any officer entered the building.
The report said it was likely most of the victims died immediately after being shot, but it is “plausible” that some victims could have survived if rescue had come sooner than the 73 minutes police waited, according to the report. Medical examiners have not issued reports about their findings.
What experts say: Jaclyn Schildkraut, an associate professor of criminal justice at the State University of New York, Oswego, said perpetrators typically know that they have a very limited amount of time to carry out their attacks before police arrive.
Trump said mass shooting incidents in schools usually unfold “in a matter of minutes.” Nearly 70 active-shooter incidents on K-12 school grounds since 1970 have lasted a minute or less, according to data from the K-12 School Shooting Database.