The Department of Justice on Thursday released a scathing report about law enforcement’s response to the May 2022 mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas.

Nineteen students and two teachers were killed in the shooting.

“The response to the May 24, 2022, mass casualty incident at Robb Elementary School was a failure,” the DOJ concluded in its report.

Hundreds of officers responded to the massacre, but they waited more than an hour before making entry into the classroom in which the shooter was barricaded to confront and kill him.

All told, it took more than 77 minutes from when the shooter entered the school to when he was subdued.

“Officers on scene should have recognized the incident as an active shooter scenario and moved and pushed forward immediately and continuously toward the threat until the room was entered, and the threat was eliminated,” the report reads.

The 376 officers at the scene included state police, Uvalde police, school officers and U.S. Border Patrol agents. A tactical team led by the Border Patrol eventually went into the classroom to take down the gunman.

The DOJ reviewed more than 14,100 pieces of data in preparation for the report and conducted more than 200 interviews.

Among the finding in the report’s executive summary:

• The report found the most significant failure was police officers should have immediately recognized the incident as an active shooter situation.
• The report concluded Uvalde CISD Police Chief Pete Arrendondo was the de-facto incident commander.
• Police leaders and first responders did not coordinate immediate entry into the classroom, which is generally accepted practice for active shooter situations.
• Instead, law enforcement focused on calls for additional SWAT equipment.
• Law enforcement failed to act promptly, even after hearing gunshots.
• An incident command structure was not established.
• Arredondo lacked a radio because he discarded it, thinking it wasn’t necessary.
• Failures may have occurred due to policy and training deficiencies.
• Many responding officers lacked active shooter or incident command training.

From selected observations of tactics and equipment:

• After officers suffered graze wounds, officers on scene did not penetrate classroom door.
• The effort to clear and evacuate the entire west building was intentional and directed by Arredondo to protect and preserve the lives of students and teachers still in the hot zone. This was a major contributing factor to the delay in making entry to rooms 111 and 112. It took 43 minutes to evacuate the entire building.

From selected recommendations:

• An active shooter with access to victims should never be considered and treated like a barricaded subject.
• Arredondo had the necessary training, authority and tools but did not provide leadership command and control, including the failure to establish an incident command structure and failure to direct entry into the classroom.
• No leader effectively questioned Arredondo’s lack of urgency.

From post incident response and investigation:

• Body cameras showed officers walking through the crime scene without purpose or responsibility in the immediate aftermath. In the days that followed, the crime scene was compromised, and the CSI team had to continually start and stop work as non-investigative personnel entered the crime scene just for the purpose of viewing the scene.

From public communications during and following the crisis:

• Inaccurate information combined with inconsistent messaging created confusion and added to the victims’ suffering, both on the day of the incident and in the days after it.
• Social media updates were only available in English. The only exception were messages from the FBI San Antonio field office that started on May 25.
• The extent of misinformation, misguided, misleading narratives and lack of communication about what happened is unprecedented. It had a negative impact on the mental health and recovering of family members of the victims and the Uvalde community.

From the chapter on trauma and support services:

• Due to the chaotic nature of the evacuation, children and school personnel were not adequately evaluated medically before being transferred to the reunification centers.
• The establishment of the reunification center was chaotic and delayed.
• The death notification process was disorganized, chaotic and at times not conducted in a trauma-informed manner.
• The Uvalde community continues to need support and guidance as it struggles with the negative impacts of the failed response, a lack of accountability from those implicated in the failure and the remaining gaps in information about what happened to their loved ones.

From the chapter on school safety and security:

• UCISD campus safety plans were based largely on templated information that was, at times, inaccurate.
• UCISD had a culture of complacency regarding locked-door policies.
• Four years into its existence, the UCISD Police Department was functioning without any standard operating procedures.

Even for a mass shooting that has already been the subject of intense scrutiny and in-depth examinations, the nearly 600-page Justice Department report adds to the public understanding of how police in Uvalde failed to stop the attack. 

The shooting has already been picked over in legislative hearings, news reports and a damning report by Texas lawmakers who faulted law enforcement at every level with failing “to prioritize saving innocent lives over their own safety.”

The report includes a series of comments by terrified children taken from a 911 call, including: “Help!” “Help!” “Help!” “I don’t want to die. My teacher is dead.”

Attorney General Merrick Garland was in Uvalde on Wednesday ahead of the release of the report, visiting murals of the victims that have been painted around the center of the town. Later that night, Justice Department officials privately briefed family members at a community center in Uvalde before the findings were made public.

Velma Lisa Duran, whose sister Irma Garcia was one of the teachers killed, said she spoke by phone with a Justice Department official Tuesday and is grateful for the agency’s work but has not yet read the report.

Duran, 52, said she had read the state lawmakers’ report and watched body camera video from the shooting. She’s daunted by the prospect of reliving the circumstances of her sister’s death, once again, over hundreds of pages, and what she really wants is criminal charges.

“A report doesn’t matter when there are no consequences for actions that are so vile and murderous and evil,” said Duran. “What do you want us to do with another report? ... Bring it to court,” she said.

The federal review was launched just days after the shooting, and local prosecutors are still evaluating a separate criminal investigation by the Texas Rangers. Several of the officers involved have lost their jobs.

How police respond to mass shootings around the country has been scrutinized since the tragedy.

The delayed response countered active-shooter training that emphasizes confronting the gunman, a standard established more than two decades ago after the mass shooting at Columbine High School showed that waiting cost lives. As what happened during the shooting has become clear, the families of some victims have blasted police as cowards and demanded resignations.

At least five officers lost their jobs, including two Department of Public Safety officers and Arredondo.

Following the report's release, Rep. Colin Allred, D-Texas, who is also a candidate for U.S. Senate, said in a statement: “As a dad, I cannot imagine the deep grief, heartbreak, and frustration these families are feeling."

"On that dark day, law enforcement failed to protect the vulnerable children at Robb Elementary," Allred continued. "I join my fellow Texans today in mourning and demanding justice and accountability.

"As a father of three kids – two in elementary school – I’m furious and saddened by the ways that Uvalde’s grieving families have been victimized, first by a preventable shooting, and then by Governor Abbott, Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steve McCraw, and other public officials in Texas who hid the truth about Uvalde and lied to cover up their failures," said Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas, in a statement of his own, adding: "Uvalde was every parent’s worst nightmare, and it’s hard to believe that national and state policy changed so little in response. I hope the Department of Justice’s Critical Incident Review will provide transparency and accountability in Uvalde and a roadmap to protect America’s children. Uvalde families deserve nothing less than the truth.”

Texas Rep. Rep. Greg Casar, a Democrat, demanded action and accountability.

“Nothing will bring back the Uvalde children, teachers, and family members whose lives were stolen on May 24, 2022. Families deserve the truth, accountability, and justice, and my heart is with them today," Casar said. "We must take action to prevent future mass shootings — ban assault weapons, expand background checks, and learn from these failures. We must hold Greg Abbott and other public officials to account. Our children deserve to feel safe and protected, always.”

"Today’s report makes clear several things: that there was a failure to establish a clear command and control structure, that law enforcement should have quickly deemed this incident an active shooter situation and responded accordingly, and that clearer and more detailed plans in the school district were required to prepare for the possibility that this could occur," President Joe Biden said in a statement. "There were multiple points of failure that hold lessons for the future, and my team will work with the Justice Department and Department of Education to implement policy changes necessary to help communities respond more effectively in the future."

"No community should ever have to go through what the Uvalde community suffered," he continued. "After the Uvalde shooting, the families of the victims turned their pain into purpose and pushed for the passage of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, the most significant gun safety legislation in nearly 30 years, which I signed into law. And I continue to take historic executive action, including the establishment of the first-ever White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention."

The president also renewed his call for universal background checks and other strict gun safety measures, like a ban on military style weapons and high-capacity magazines.

"The families of Uvalde – and all American communities -- deserve nothing less," Biden said, adding: "The longer we wait to take action, the more communities like Uvalde will continue to suffer due to this epidemic of gun violence."