By 2023, it was widely understood that the law enforcement response to the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, was deeply flawed. Our prior work helped establish that understanding, including an investigation showing that the medical response further hampered the ability to save victims who later died.
But even as our work and a report by state lawmakers had found critical gaps, much remained uncovered.
We understood that Uvalde was not a failure because of one or two moments or officers, but rather because of a collection of errors in judgment and action. So, as most media moved on to other stories, we stayed.
Divisions deepened in the small community where families grieved and local officers, some of whom had lost relatives, faced relentless attacks for the response. Uvalde residents did not understand whom to hold accountable beyond a few officers they had read about. They had many questions about the extent of the failures and whether they pointed to larger systemic problems.
Using a trove of unreleased investigative files, the Tribune, in partnership with ProPublica and FRONTLINE, produced a startling and exhaustive investigation, including a documentary titled “Inside the Uvalde Response,” that ultimately revealed what no one else had: States across the country are providing devastatingly insufficient training for law enforcement to confront a mass shooter, leaving critical and long-overlooked gaps in preparedness between children and the officers expected to protect them.
In interviews with investigators, officer after officer gave reasons for not engaging the gunman that ran contrary to what training teaches, including the mistaken belief that children were not in the classroom because they were so quiet.
After our investigation was published, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland unveiled the findings of a federal probe into the response. Garland pointed to missteps that led to delays in confronting the shooter. Then he turned to what he said was the biggest failure, one that required the most urgent action to avoid another colossal breakdown such as the one that cost lives that day: the lack of sufficient active shooter training.
“Our children deserve better than to grow up in a country where an 18-year-old has easy access to a weapon that belongs on the battlefield, not in a classroom,” Garland said. “And communities across the country, and the law enforcement officers who protect them, deserve better than to be forced to respond to one horrific mass shooting after another. But that is the terrible reality that we face. And so it is the reality that every law enforcement agency in every community across the country must be prepared for.”
Garland’s comments and call to immediately prioritize active shooter training across the country were the first public acknowledgment by a government official that some children and teachers would have survived if law enforcement had acted quickly. They also validated our finding about the astounding dearth of such instruction across the country.
