Re: The Uvalde shooting shows that gun laws do matter, says official who worked on report

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In article <t1uu0d$39g2h$1...@news.freedyn.de>
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A new report on the mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas, is shining a
light on law enforcement's delayed and disorganized response to
the attack that killed 19 children and two teachers in May.

The Texas House committee investigating the shooting at Robb
Elementary School released a 77-page preliminary report on
Sunday, outlining what it calls the "systemic failures and
egregious poor decision making" among local, state and federal
officers during the incident. Here are four key takeaways from
its findings, which the committee says are incomplete as
multiple investigations remain ongoing.

The report didn't place the blame squarely on any one
individual, but pointed to a variety of shortcomings on the part
of entities including the school, social media platforms and the
attacker's family. Still, there appears to have been at least
some immediate fallout: Uvalde's mayor said Lt. Mariano Pargas,
the acting chief of the Uvalde Police Department on the day of
the shooting, had been put on administrative leave after the
report's release (another official, school district police chief
Pete Arredondo, is on admininstrative leave).

The report offers the clearest picture yet of, among other
details, the gunman's motivations and preparations for the
attack as well as the response — and lack thereof — by the
hundreds of law enforcement officers who arrived on the scene
only to wait more than an hour before confronting the shooter.

Notably, its release came days after the Austin American-
Statesman, in partnership with KVUE TV, published hallway
surveillance video putting the hesitant and haphazard tactical
response on public display for the first time.

Democratic state Rep. Joe Moody of El Paso, one of the lawmakers
on the committee, sees their job as laying out the facts, and
hopes the report will be a "solidifying piece" of evidence that
lawmakers can use to improve policy going forward — particularly
when it comes to gun control measures.

He hears from critics that if someone really wants to do
something dangerous, they will figure out how to do so
regardless of gun control laws. But he says the story of the
Uvalde shooter shows that these laws really do matter.

The suspect had tried to buy weapons before turning 18 but was
unsuccessful, for example.

"I think one of the biggest takeaways here is our laws do work,"
Moody adds. "If we want to make them more stringent and have
that conversation in this situation — I think the attacker
doesn't end up with those guns. If we had a 21-year purchase age
and not 18, I don't think he ends up with those guns."

Moody spoke with Morning Edition's Steve Inskeep about the
report's findings and what he hopes will happen next. Below are
highlights from their conversation.

On warning signs regarding the attacker:
The report doesn't mention the gunman by name, which Moody says
was an intentional choice because "this was someone who was
after fame and notoriety." And he adds that the systems around
him failed, too.

For example, he noted that while the perpetrator's behavior
before Uvalde earned him the nickname "school shooter" on
multiple social media platforms, no one on those platforms
reported it. And he suggested that wasn't the only missed
opportunity to contact authorities.

"There's [an] instance of the attacker making suicidal remarks
... contemporaneous with purchasing weapons," Moody says. "Those
are things that should have and could have been reported as
well."

On law enforcement's inaction at the scene:
The report says 376 federal, state and local law enforcement
officials arrived at the scene but lacked the clear leadership,
basic communication and a sense of urgency to engage the shooter.

It faults Arredondo with multiple missteps, including abandoning
his radio outside and proceeding to handle the situation as one
of a "barricaded subject" rather than an active shooter. But it
also says the officers at the school — most of whom were either
from U.S. Border Patrol or the state police department — should
have done more to try to fill that leadership void.

Moody notes that while nearly 400 officers were present, the
number of people who understood what was actually happening in
the hallway was much smaller.

"Some people arrive and have no information, bad information or
actually outright misinformation given to them," he says.

Some officers were told that the district police chief was in
the classroom negotiating with the attacker, for example, which
Moody says paints a very different picture from reality.

"It was a failure of the systems that should have been in place
to be able to produce a better result in that scenario," he adds.

On the hallway surveillance footage
The release of the leaked surveillance footage has sparked
backlash and debate, as NPR has reported.

Moody says the version of the video that the committee sought to
release to families did not include the image of the shooter,
unlike the one that was made publicly available.

And he says it's especially troubling to see the video of
officers standing in the hallway, checking their phones and
sanitizing their hands, because he's reviewed so much police
body camera footage and other evidence from the day.

"I think it's hard because I have a complete picture of what I
know happened in that classroom," he says. "And when you see
that reaction, there's something you want to have happen that's
different. And I've watched a number of videos where I want
something, every time I watch it, to happen differently. But I
know that it doesn't. And it's something that I probably will
never be able to understand fully or maybe even process fully."

The audio for this interview was produced by Shelby Hawkins and
edited by Raquel Maria Dillon and Vince Pearson.

https://www.npr.org/2022/07/18/1111985660/uvalde-shooting-texas-
house-report-systemic-failures