The U.S. Justice Department said on Sunday it would look into the much-criticized police response to a school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, that killed 19 children and two teachers on Tuesday.
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“The purpose of this review is to provide an independent account of the actions and reactions of law enforcement that day, and to identify lessons to be learned and courses of action to be taken” to better prepare for this type of events, the ministry said in a statement.
This investigation, requested by the mayor of Uvalde, will be “fair, transparent and independent” and will lead to the publication of a report, said the administration.
Since the massacre, which shook this quiet little town in Texas, misunderstanding and anger have risen around the time taken to intervene by the police.
It took about an hour on Tuesday for the police to put an end to the massacre. The 19 agents on site awaited the assault of a specialized unit.
This came as law enforcement had received numerous calls from people in the affected classrooms, including one from a child pleading, “Please send the police now.”
Faced with the controversy, the authorities made their mea culpa on Friday, admitting that the police should have entered the school more quickly.
The presentation of the course of the police intervention was also rectified over the week. Republican Governor of Texas Greg Abbott, who had initially welcomed the action of the police on Tuesday, was thus annoyed on Friday to have been “misled” by inaccurate initial information.
