City officials in Uvalde, Texas, on Tuesday released another collection of video footage of officers responding to the 2022 shooting at Robb Elementary School, footage they had previously been unable to release as part of a legal settlement with news organizations that sued for access. .
The new material included at least 10 videos from police body cameras and nearly 40 dashboard videos, largely corroborating previous reports by ProPublica, The Texas Tribune and FRONTLINE detailing the failure of law enforcement to deal with the teenage shooter who killed 19 children and two teachers. Officers did not meet the gunman until 77 minutes after he started shooting. Merrick Garland said it cost lives.
In one 30-minute video released Tuesday, officers lined up in a school hallway as they prepared to break down a classroom door about an hour after the shooter first entered the building. The footage, while not new, showed a slightly different angle than what was previously released. On it, the victims are completely blurred, but their cries and screams can be heard, and blood is visible in the corridor. The video also shows officers performing chest compressions on the victim on the sidewalk.
In another video, an officer wearing a body camera cries profusely and tells someone on the phone, “They’re just kids. That’s bullshit.” He adds, “I just never thought that shit like this could happen here.” Another officer asks if he should take his weapon and tells him to sit down and “relax.” This seven-minute video after the breach shows paramedics working with someone in an ambulance.
This was previously reported by news organizations an investigation by The Washington Post said officers initially treated teacher Eva Mireles, who was shot in room 112, on the sidewalk because they didn’t see emergency vehicles, even though two cars were parked just around the corner from the building. Mireles, one of three victims who still had a pulse when she was rescued, died in an ambulance that never left the school.
Much of the other body camera footage shows officers waiting after the break-in or vacating empty classrooms, offering little incriminating details. Staff are also seen near the school, answering questions from passers-by.
Dashcam footage also offered some new details, showing cops idling in patrol cars outside Rob’s school. Some officers walked around the parking lot and talked quietly on radios and cellphones. One video showed a television crew arriving at the scene, while others showed ambulances and parents waiting as helicopters circled overhead.
In August, as part of the settlement, the city released hundreds of similar recordings and videos to the media largely confirmed previous reports. But a few days after these records were published, recognized by the city authorities that an officer with the Uvalde Police Department told the agency that some of the records on his body were missing.
Police Chief Homer Delgado ordered an audit of the department’s servers, which found that even more video had not been transmitted. He shared them with District Attorney Christina Mitchell, who is overseeing the criminal investigation into the botched response, and ordered his own internal investigation into how the mistake occurred.
In an emailed statement late Tuesday, city officials said an internal investigation found not only “technological issues” but also “an inadvertent lack of due diligence on the part of the officer acting as the custodian” of the police department’s records. City officials said the officer, whom they did not name, was disciplined and fired from the department. They said the investigation found “no evidence of deliberate attempts to withhold information.” They added that the department is working to improve internal record-keeping procedures and overcome technological hurdles so “this type of oversight does not happen again.”
The The Uvalde Leader-News reported last month that former city police Sgt. Donald Page faced disciplinary action related to personnel retention and subsequently resigned. Page’s attorney declined to answer most questions, but wrote in an email to the Tribune and ProPublica that the veteran officer had in fact retired. According to his interview with investigators and city report of a shootingand was in civilian clothes that day. It is not yet clear whether he had his own camera. This does not appear to be part of the published footage.
Former Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin on Tuesday praised city police for releasing the story. He urged other law enforcement agencies to follow suit.
“It should have been done from day one,” said McLaughlin, who is currently running for the Texas House. “I was disappointed when I found out that we had something that we didn’t notice, but everyone has to release their own material. … This is the only way to bring closure to these families.”
It’s unclear whether the new footage will affect the Mitchell investigation. She did not respond to requests for comment Tuesday.
Grand jury in June accused former Uvalde School District Police Chief Pete Arredondo and school resource officer Adrian Gonzalez on charges of child endangerment. The footage released in August and Tuesday came from city police officers, not school district officers, so they don’t have video footage of Arredondo and Gonzalez. None of the school district’s officers were wearing body cameras that day because the department did not own them, Arredondo later told investigators. He also dropped his school radio as he rushed to school.
According to the school district’s active shooter plan, Arredondo was required to take responsibility. His indictment alleges, in part, that he failed to follow training and gave instructions that impeded the response, endangering the children. Gonzalez, who along with Arredondo was one of the first officers on the scene, “did not act to prevent the shooting until the shooter entered rooms 111 and 112,” according to his indictment.
Experts said their affairs face an uphill battle as no officer has been found guilty of inaction in a mass shooting in recent history. Both men pleaded not guilty, and the next meeting is scheduled for December. No charges have been filed against any Uvalde Police Department officers.
News organizations, including the Tribune and ProPublica, sued several local and state agencies more than two years ago over records related to the shooting. The city settled with news organizations, agreeing to provide records requested under the state’s Public Information Act. But three other state agencies — the Texas Department of Public Safety, the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District and the Uvalde County Sheriff’s Office — continue to fight against any release of their records.
More than two years after the shooting, relatives of the victims they said that they still feel there has been little accountability or transparency. They said they felt betrayed and that government authorities were allegedly trying to “cover it up.”
across the country, news organizations foundmore states require active shooter training from teachers and students than from the officers who are supposed to protect them. At least 37 states have laws requiring active shooter drills in schools, most of them annually. Texas was only state require retraining for officers starting this year, 16 hours every two years, under a mandate that emerged only after the Uvalde massacre.
Experts said that these high-pressure reactions require repeated training, and a Review of the Ministry of Justice in response, Uvalde this year recommended at least eight hours of annual active shooter training for every officer in the nation.
In total, almost 400 employees of about two dozen agencies responded to the shooting. However, despite at least seven investigations launched after the massacre, only about a dozen officers were fired, suspended or retired.
One of them was Texas Ranger Christopher Ryan Kindel resumed in August after struggling to stop it.
