Attorney General Merrick Garland named nine people who will be helping conduct the investigation into the police response to the May 24 mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas.
Garland gave more details on Wednesday into the review that the Department of Justice is conducting into the Uvalde police response. The review is expected to examine police policies, tactics, and training, as well as how strictly each was followed during the shooting.
“We will be assessing what happened that day,” Garland said, according to The Associated Press (AP). “We will be doing site visits to the school, we will be conducting interviews of an extremely wide variety of stakeholders, witnesses, families, law enforcement, government officials, school officials, and we will be reviewing the resources that were made available in the aftermath.”
An 18-year-old gunman attacked Robb Elementary School on May 24, killing 19 children and two teachers before a team of U.S. Border Patrol officers entered the classroom that the gunman was in and killed him. The attack lasted for over an hour as law enforcement held off engaging the gunman directly after drawing an initial burst of fire.
In the aftermath of the shooting, Uvalde police, especially Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District Police Chief Pete Arredondo, have taken heat from locals and the friends and families of the victims for their delayed response. Arredondo served as on-site commander during the attack.
At one point, a spokesman for the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) said that Arredondo had stopped cooperating with Texas authorities’ own investigation into the attack, according to The AP. Arredondo told CNN that he was cooperating and that he has been “in contact with DPS everyday,” however.
The Department of Justice launched the investigation into the Uvalde police in response to a request from Uvalde’s mayor, Don McLaughlin, according to The AP. Though such department investigations are rare, they do typically follow events such as mass shootings like the one at Robb Elementary.
This is an excerpt from The Daily Wire.
Scroll down to leave a comment and share your thoughts.
