Vox Sentences - New lessons from Uvalde

Good afternoon!

Here’s what’s on tap today: 

UP FIRST: A review of the Uvalde school shooting

CATCH UP: Crossfire in Pakistan and Iran

—Nicole Narea, senior reporter

What went wrong in Uvalde

Wu Xiaoling/Xinhua via Getty Images

The Justice Department released a report Thursday on the sequence of errors that allowed a shooter to kill 19 children and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, in May 2022. 

The 575-page report is based on over 14,000 pieces of evidence, including law enforcement policies, training logs, interviews, body camera and audio records, and photographs. It details how members of law enforcement failed to act as they should have when confronted with an active shooter: advancing immediately and without stopping until they could neutralize the threat. “That did not occur,” the report reads. 

Hundreds of officers — including members of Uvalde police, the Texas Department of Public Safety, and a special unit of the US Border Patrol — arrived at the school. They treated the situation as a “barricaded suspect” operation, in which protocol does not require confronting a suspect immediately, and didn’t breach the classroom where the shooter was for more than an hour.

“This was the most significant failure,” US Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a press conference Thursday. “It meant that officials spent time trying to negotiate with the subject instead of entering the room and confronting him.”

Here are the big takeaways from the report:

• No one took charge: There was confusion about who was the commanding officer directing the response, and that made it difficult for law enforcement to respond, Garland said. After deliberation during the shooting, the commanding officer was determined to be Pedro “Pete” Arredondo, at that time the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District police chief, who was later fired. 

• Gaps in training: Some responding officers were never trained to respond to active shooters. Others had “inappropriate training, some lacked Critical Incident Response Training and the vast majority had never trained together with different agencies,” Garland said.

• Victims were not properly treated: Some survivors with bullet wounds and other injuries were put on buses before receiving medical screening. One adult victim was placed on a walkway on the ground outside. She died there.

• Notification of families was botched: Family members waited at the school for hours waiting for news of their children. Some were first informed that their children had died when they were approached about autopsies.

• School safety missteps: The campus safety plan was not tailored to the layout of the school and included security measures that were not available. Interior and exterior doors were often left unlocked. And the school’s master key could not be immediately found, delaying law enforcement efforts to enter the classroom where the shooter was.

The report issues some recommendations, including that law enforcement agencies develop clear and concise policies to respond to active attackers, more widely require training to respond to such attackers, and build relationships with partner agencies to facilitate cooperation in future incidents. But it’s not clear whether it will lead to new repercussions for law enforcement involved. 

Though some responding law enforcement officers have since been dismissed, victims’ families want more accountability. Alfred Garza III, the father of 10-year-old Amerie Jo Garza, who died in the shooting, told reporters, “We want people to be held accountable for what they didn’t do that day. That’s all that’s left to do.”

Escalation in Pakistan and Iran

BANARAS KHAN/AFP via Getty Images

Tensions are flaring across the Middle East. While Israel’s war in Gaza rages on, the US continues to target Yemen’s Houthi rebels following their attacks on Red Sea ships, and now, Iran and Pakistan are trading fire in a dangerous escalation.

Iran and Pakistan are accusing each other of not doing enough to curb militant groups that threaten security. 

On Thursday, Pakistan announced that it had struck Baluch ethnic group hideouts inside Iran, killing at least nine people. The group has led a separatist movement for Pakistan's Balochistan and Iran’s Sistan provinces, targeting Pakistani gas and security infrastructure; it’s also operated across the border in Iran, where it has previously led insurgencies. On Wednesday, Iran had conducted air strikes on what it said were camps for similar Baluch militants in Pakistan, a claim that the Pakistani government rejected, citing civilian casualties. 

Pakistani officials have urged Iran to come to the negotiating table in an apparent effort to deescalate the situation. It’s not clear how Iran will respond, but throughout the Gaza war and the crossfire with Pakistan, Iran has sought to project strength to anyone who might oppose it. 

As Thanassis Cambanis, senior fellow and director of the policy think tank Century International, who focuses on Middle East issues, recently told me, the situation is delicate: “Perhaps the US and other regional players can pull back before we elsewhere in the region see the kind of total conflict we’re already seeing in Gaza. But we’re squarely in the danger zone.” 

• Congress appears set to avoid government shutdown: The Senate is set to pass a $1.66 trillion package Thursday that would fund the government through the fall, with the House expected to soon follow. [New York Times]

• US-Saudi negotiations to end the war in Gaza: US officials are hoping to trade an Israeli-Saudi peace deal for a Palestinian state. [NBC News]

• Mortgage rates are falling: Mortgage rates fell to 6.6 percent this week, the lowest they’ve been since May 2023. [CNN]

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