Police Inaction Moves to Center of Uvalde Shooting Probe

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they had not been authorized to talk publicly about the investigation.

One of the officials said audio recordings from the scene capture officers from other agencies telling the school police chief that the shooter was still active and that the priority was to stop him. But it wasn’t clear why the school chief ignored their warnings.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who at a news conference earlier in the week lauded the police for saving lives, said he had been misled about the initial response and promised there would be investigations into “exactly who knew what, when, who was in charge” and what they did.

“The bottom line would be: Why did they not choose the strategy that would have been best to get in there and to eliminate the killer and to rescue the children?” Abbott said.

Criminal charges are rarely pursued against law enforcement in school shootings. A notable exception was the former school resource officer accused of hiding during the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, that that left 17 people dead.

Potential administrative punishments — meted out by the department itself — could range from a suspension or docked pay to forced resignation or retirement or outright termination.

In terms of civil liability, the legal doctrine called “qualified immunity,” which shields police officers from lawsuits unless their actions violate clearly established laws, could also be at play in future litigation.

The Uvalde School District police chief, Pete Arredondo, decided that the group of officers should wait to confront the assailant, on the belief that the active attack was over, according to Steven McCraw, the head of the Texas Department of Public Safety.

The crisis ended shortly after officers used keys from a janitor to open the classroom door, entered the room and shot and killed Ramos.

Arredondo could not be reached for comment Friday, and Uvalde officers were stationed outside his home, but they would not say why.

Prosecutors will have to decide whether Arredondo’s decision and the officers’ inaction constituted a tragic mistake or criminal negligence, said Laurie Levenson, a former federal prosecutor who is a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles.

Levenson said prosecutors could bring state felony charges of criminally negligent homicide, though she said federal civil rights charges would be unlikely because they require intent.

“I don’t know that we expect every officer to make a perfect decision on the spot,” she said. “But waiting this long — given what we know about how shooters act — predictably leads to tragedy.”

In the Parkland case, former Broward County Deputy Scot Peterson is scheduled to go to trial in September on charges of child neglect resulting in great bodily harm, culpable negligence and perjury. He has said he did the best he could at the time.

The “unprecedented and irresponsible” decision by Florida prosecutors to bring a criminal case against Peterson might lead to other police elsewhere being “stripped of their liberty” and facing decades in prison “solely because a finding is made after the fact that things could have been handled differently,” Mark Eiglarsh, the former deputy’s attorney, said in an email.

Maria Haberfeld, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, said the police department’s policies, procedures and training will be scrutinized to see whether the officers on the ground in Uvalde followed them.

If they did, and criminal charges are still brought, she said it would send a chilling message to police nationwide. “If you follow your procedures, you’re still brought up on charges. So what’s the point of having procedures?” she said.

But Jorge Colina, a former Miami police chief, wants to know more about what was going through the minds of the officers inside the school as the chief told them to wait in the hall.

“Did someone challenge the decision there?” he said. “Did someone raise an objection at least?”