By Jerald Jimenez
Aug 11, 2024, 12:49 PM EDT
Police records related to the devastating shooting at Robb Elementary School in May 2022 were released Saturday, marking the end of a protracted legal battle waged by several U.S. media outlets seeking to reveal details of the law enforcement response during the shooting that killed 19 students and two teachers.
Body camera footage from Uvalde officers, hundreds of radio transmissions, documents, calls to emergency services and text communications between authorities were all evidenced.
The files are expected to provide a clearer picture of the disastrous police response on May 24, 2022, when officers waited more than an hour before confronting the shooter, 18-year-old Salvador Ramos.
Several news organizations, including The Texas Tribune and ProPublica, filed a lawsuit in 2022 seeking access to these documents. By turning over the records, the city of Uvalde is complying with a court order that ruled in favor of the news organizations.
However, the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) has yet to release its officers’ records, and the legal battle with the media continues. At least 376 officers from different law enforcement agencies responded to the scene, including nearly 100 from DPS. It took officers more than 77 minutes to storm the classroom where the shooter was located and neutralize him.
The U.S. Justice Department released a report last January that concluded that a “lack of urgency” by law enforcement officers responding to the shooting led to “cascading failures” that resulted in the massacre.
Officers wrongly treated the situation as if a suspect was holed up, even as children and teachers called police for help, the investigation said.
The Texas House of Representatives concluded in 2022 that it found “systemic failures” between law enforcement agencies and school safety protocols.
With information from EFE