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DOJ’s Uvalde report finds “unimaginable failure” in school shooting response. Here are the key takeaways
A federal report investigating the police response to the May 2022 shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, found multiple failures by officers that allowed the attack to continue even as police were at the school.
The report, conducted by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Community Oriented Policing, known as the COPS Office, looked at thousands of pieces of data and documentation and relied on more than 260 interviews, including with law enforcement and school personnel, family members of victims, and witnesses and survivors from the massacre. The team investigating visited Uvalde nine times, spending 54 days on the ground in the small community.
In a press conference after the release of the report, Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta said the law enforcement response was an “unimaginable failure,” and “a lack of action by adults failed to protect children and their teachers.”
In the report, much of the blame was placed on former police chief of the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District, , who was terminated in the wake of the shooting, although the report also said that some officers’ actions “may have been influenced by policy and training deficiencies.”
Here are some other takeaways from the 600-page report:
Uvalde police were on scene in minutes, but waited to enter classroom
The report found that police were on the scene within minutes of the attack being reported, and 11 officers went into the school three minutes after arriving on the scene. Five went toward the classroom, but all of the officers retreated for cover after initial shots.
After three attempts to approach the classrooms where 19 students and two teachers were killed, the focus shifted from stopping the shooter to evacuating other rooms, the report said.
The report found “there is a great deal of confusion, miscommunication, a lack of urgency and a lack of incident command,” at this time.
The report referred to this response as a critical failure, stating that several officers acted consistently with accepted practices before retreating after hearing gunfire. Police also focused more on additional SWAT tactical officers arriving, a strategy that the report said should not delay a response. Since the Columbine school shooting, a “fundamental precept” of active shooter response “must be to immediately neutralize the subject,” according to the report.
“Everything else, including officer safety, is subordinate to that objective,” the report said.
Forty-eight minutes after officers first entered the school, there were four more shots fired. No one entered the classrooms, presuming that the doors were locked. These gunshots should have spurred greater urgency to confront the suspect, the report said, rather than marked a retreat. Another 15 minutes passed with officers waiting for a sniper, who could not see into the building.
Former police chief blamed for disorganized response
The report stated that Uvalde Police Department acting chief Mariano Pargas, who has since resigned from his position, was in the “best position to start taking command and control and start coordinating with approaching personnel,” but Arredondo wound up in charge of the scene. Arredondo has previously said he did not know he was in charge of the scene.
Arredondo discarded radios, causing communication difficulties, the report said, and leadership at the scene did not establish command posts, so arriving personnel did not receive accurate updates.
Due to a lack of urgency outside and inaccurate information being shared, arriving officers thought that the shooter was dead or that Arredondo was inside the room with the suspect, the report said. The shooter was repeatedly described as “barricaded” and “contained” by officers.
“The most significant failure was that responding officers should have immediately recognized the incident as an active shooter situation,” the report said.
At no point did Paragas provide direction to personnel, the report said, despite being in the best position to start taking command and control and coordinate with arriving personnel. Paragas was told at one point that the “room is full of victims,” according to the report, and called dispatch to see if there were enough emergency medical responders on standby. Street closures blocked the arrival of ambulances, the report found.
The vast majority of those on the scene had never trained together, according to the report, and there were “policy and training deficiencies” in play. Some first responders had never received any active shooter training, the report said.
The report also found that Arredondo directed officers to delay making entry into the classrooms where the shooter was, in favor of getting keys and evacuating other classrooms in the building. There were 587 other students in the school that day, police said.
“Unfortunately, on multiple occasions, (Arredondo) directed officers intending to gain entry to classrooms to stop because he appeared to determine that other victims should first be removed from nearby classrooms,” the report said.
The report also criticized other agency leads for not effectively questioning the judgement displayed by Paragas and Arredondo.
Uvalde school district did not have an active shooter policy
The report found that the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District did not have an active shooter policy, but did have a policy specifically related to incident command roles and responsibilities.
This outlined that the district police department chief should be the person in control of the scene, should secure the administration office as a command post if possible and designate an alternate post if not, and work to communicate with other responding officers. According to this policy, Arredondo was the defacto incident commander.
It wasn’t until 12:17 p.m., about 45 minutes after officers arrived on the scene, that Paragas assigned an officer to establish a command post, the report found.
Leadership from various responding agencies “demonstrated no urgency for establishing a command and control structure, which led to challenges related to information sharing, lack of situational statuses, and limited-to-no direction for personnel in the hallway or on the perimeter,” the report said.
Shooter fired dozens of rounds at police
Twenty-seven minutes after the second round of gunshots and 75 minutes after officers first entered the building, the classroom doors were opened, the report said, and two minutes later, police entered the classroom. Responding officers included members of the Border Patrol Tactical Unit, the Border Patrol Search, Trauma, and Rescue Unit, and deputies from Uvalde and Zavala counties.
The shooter fired 45 rounds “in the presence of officers” before being killed, the report said. One of the members of the Border Patrol Tactical Unit was injured.
Police gave families incorrect updates about victims’ conditions
There were multiple issues in giving information about victims, the report found.
The report found that children who were evacuated from their classrooms were given limited instruction on where to proceed, and did not receive adequate medical attention before being transported to the reunification center that had been set up. At least 91 children were evacuated from the school to the back of a chapel of a funeral home. One child was bleeding and required medical attention, but did not receive it as law enforcement moved in and out of the chapel. Parents remained outside the funeral home.
The establishment of an actual reunification site was delayed and chaotic, with next of kin receiving conflicting instructions on the location of the center. Families also had what the report called unreasonable challenges accessing the hospital where victims were transported.
Community members, school personnel and other responders who didn’t have a formal role had access to deceased bodies, and the report said that the “traumatic” crime scene should have been better protected.
Meanwhile, an FBI death and injury notification team trained in communicating with next of kin was prevented from doing so by the Texas Department of Public Safety, the report found.
U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a news conference after the report was released Thursday that some families had been told that loved ones had survived when they did not.
Families say a lack of answers, support has exacerbated trauma
The families of victims have requested details from investigative reports, from officials and law enforcement, from autopsy reports and more to learn more about their childrens’ final moments, the report said. These family members do not relate to the term “closure” and remain waiting for answers nearly two years after the shooting.
“Several family members indicate they cannot move forward with their lives until they know what happened to their children. Some have asked if their child was alone or near friends. Others want to know if their child would have lived, had law enforcement entered the classroom earlier,” the report said. Many victims and family members have reported that no one has taken accountability for what happened, apologized, or even acknowledged that the families deserve this information. This void of information about the circumstances of their loved ones’ deaths is unacceptable and has exacerbated their trauma.”
The report found that it is still unknown how many victims and survivors require emotional support.
An operative working for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps told federal investigators that he was tasked in September with “surveilling, and, ultimately, assassinating” President-elect Donald Trump, according to court records unsealed Friday.
Prosecutors say Farhad Shakeri, who is believed to be residing in Iran, told investigators in a phone interview that unnamed IRGC officials pushed him to plan an attack against Mr. Trump last month. If the plan could not come together in time, the Iranian officials directed Shakeri to delay the plot until after the presidential election because the official “assessed that [Mr. Trump] would lose the election,” charging documents revealed.
Shakeri and two individuals living in the U.S. — Carlisle Rivera of Brooklyn, New York; and Jonathon Loadholt of Staten Island — were charged as part of a broad Iran-backed scheme to allegedly surveille and ultimately assassinate individuals inside the U.S. who opposed the Iranian regime.
FBI investigators wrote that Shakeri immigrated to the U.S. as a child from Iran, but was deported in 2008 after serving more than a decade in prison on robbery charges. They alleged the IRGC ultimately used Shakeri to recruit criminal contacts inside the U.S. to carry out specific operations like targeting an unnamed Iranian American journalist and activist living in New York.
In February, prosecutors alleged Shakeri paid Rivera and Loadholt about $1,000 to monitor the activist — who has spoken out against Iran’s regime — at an event at Fairfield University in Connecticut. The surveillance operations continued into March, according to court documents, when the pair allegedly traveled multiple times to the activist’s Brooklyn home. Text messages, security camera footage and cell site location data revealed their numerous trips.
“On or about April 1, 2024, 9 SHAKERI and RIVERA exchanged voice notes discussing RIVERA and LOADHOLT’ s efforts to locate and murder” the Iranian American, court records said.
“This b**** is hard to catch, bro,” Rivera allegedly said to Shakeri. “There ain’t gonna be no simple pull up, unless there[‘s] the luck of the draw.”
According to court records, Shakeri allegedly responded later, “you just gotta have patience and don’t, kicking, kick in the door is not an option because that’s a fail, that’s a fail maneuver. You gotta wait and have patience to catch her either going in the house or coming out, or following her out somewhere and taking care of it. Don’t think about going in. In is a suicide move.”
Investigators searched online accounts belonging to Rivera and Loadholt in the course of the federal probe and uncovered numerous images of firearms and other weapons.
In April, Shakeri agreed to pay Rivera and Loadholt $100,000 to “finish the work” and said he was tasked by the IRGC to hire individuals to assassinate the journalist. And by July, according to charging documents, the Iranians were growing impatient, instructing their U.S. assets to “take care of it already.”
The alleged plot to kill the activist did not succeed.
Rivera and Loadholt are not accused of being part of the plot to target Mr. Trump. They made their initial appearance in federal court on Thursday and were ordered detained, according to the Justice Department. Shakeri remains at large.
“We will not stand for the Iranian regime’s attempts to endanger the American people and America’s national security,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement.
The charges announced Friday are not the first brought against alleged operatives of the IRGC for plotting to kill Mr. Trump. Earlier this year, the FBI arrested Asif Merchant for planning to assassinate U.S. government officials, including potentially the president-elect. Merchant remains in custody and pleaded not guilty.
On at least five occasions between September and November, Shakeri participated in “voluntary telephonic interviews with FBI agents” in exchange for a sentence reduction for another individual serving time in the U.S, court records said.
During the interviews, he allegedly told the FBI of the IRGC’s desire to kill the Iranian American activist and target Israeli tourists in Sri Lanka with a mass shooting event. Shakeri also told investigators that the IRGC tasked him with surveilling two Jewish American citizens living in New York, but he did not provide the Iranian officials with information about the unnamed targets.
During the interview, Shakeri also allegedly told the FBI about the effort to target Mr. Trump.
In a statement, FBI Director Christopher Wray said, “The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps — a designated foreign terrorist organization — has been conspiring with criminals and hitmen to target and gun down Americans on U.S. soil and that simply won’t be tolerated.”
The charges and allegations announced Friday are part of broader posture by U.S. intelligence and law enforcement to publicly bring attention to Iran’s alleged efforts to quiet dissidents on U.S. soil and target U.S. government figures after the killing of IRGC General Qasem Soleimani by American forces in 2020. Mr. Trump and former members of his administration have been forced in recent years to increase his security due to the threats.
The Justice Department has charged numerous other defendants in recent years with acting on behalf of Iran by targeting outspoken dissidents living in the U.S.
Attorneys for Rivera and Loadholt were not immediately identified.
The Northeastern U.S. is experiencing ongoing drought conditions, which is helping to fuel an uptick in fire danger. For Friday, an elevated fire weather outlook was issued by the National Weather Service’s Storm Prediction Center for the area stretching from Massachusetts to the northern edge of Virginia and West Virginia.
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The threat with this elevated fire risk is due to winds picking up to 10-15 mph, with wind gusts upwards of 25-35 mph. Relative humidity levels are as low as 20% in some spots, as well. Red flag warnings have been issued into the evening hours of Friday across parts of the Northeast and New England.
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The weekly drought monitor came in on Thursday, and 57% of the Tri-State area of metro New York, New Jersey and Connecticut is under a moderate drought. Brushfires flared up along the New Jersey Palisades overnight while firefighters fought other blazes in southern New Jersey, and multiple wildfires have been burning in Massachusetts, where drought conditions range from moderate to severe.
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Here’s more on the conditions states in the region are facing:
For Massachusetts, 84% of the state is in MODERATE drought while 32% is in SEVERE drought. Boston received its last measurable rainfall on Oct. 30 of 0.18 inches. Boston’s average annual rainfall accumulation is 36.46 inches and the city has received 36.38 so far this year.
For Connecticut, 100% of the state is now in MODERATE drought, up from only 14% of the state at that level just last week. New Haven saw its last measurable rainfall back on Oct. 7 of 0.27 inches. (Technically it received 0.01 inches on Nov. 1 but that was not very significant.) Hartford, which receives an average of 40.25 inches of rainfall annually, has gotten 39.29 so far this year.
For New York, 85% of the state is ABNORMALLY DRY while 26% of the state is now in a MODERATE drought. New York City’s Central Park received its last measurable rainfall back on Sept. 29, with 0.78 inches. (Technically it got 0.01 inches on Oct. 29 but that was not significant either.) Central Park normally averages 42.38 inches of annual rainfall and has received 38.49 inches so far this year.
For New Jersey, 76% of the state is now under a SEVERE drought and it has worsened into an EXTREME drought in almost 20% of the southeastern section of the state. Newark Liberty International Airport had its last measurable rainfall on Sept. 29 of 0.39 inches. Newark receives on average 39.88 inches of rain annually and has received 34.82 so far this year.
For Pennsylvania, 22% of the state is now under a SEVERE drought with 4% in EXTREME drought. Philadelphia had its last measurable rainfall back on Sept. 29 of 0.11 inches. Philadelphia receives on average annual rainfall of 37.89 inches and has received 33.43 so far this year.
For Maryland, 53% of the state is now under a SEVERE drought with 4% in EXTREME drought. Baltimore saw its last measurable rainfall back on Oct. 1, with 0.35 inches. Baltimore averages 38.94 inches of rainfall annually and has only received 31.71 inches so far this year.
The dry conditions are not expected to last much longer in the Northeast, as the next chance of rain can come as early as Sunday night.
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Credit cards can be a convenient way to manage expenses, but they also come with a serious responsibility to repay the borrowed funds on time. When a credit card account goes unpaid, it can result in late fees, penalty interest rates and damaged credit scores — and in certain cases, non-payment can lead to even more severe repercussions, like being sued for your unpaid debt. A lawsuit over unpaid credit card debt may sound extreme, but it’s a real possibility if your debts are left unaddressed.
The good news is that creditors don’t initiate lawsuits lightly — they typically attempt to work with the borrower first. But when these attempts fail and a credit card account remains delinquent, a lawsuit can be an option for creditors to pursue. Knowing when this step is likely to happen can help you take proactive measures to avoid such a scenario.
So when exactly can a credit card company sue you for non-payment? And what are the ways to resolve credit card debt without facing a lawsuit? Below, we’ll explain what you should know about when a credit card company can take legal action over unpaid debt and what strategies you can use to manage and reduce your debt load effectively.
Get rid of your delinquent credit card debt now.
When can a credit card company sue you for non-payment?
In general, a credit card company can sue you for non-payment once your account becomes severely delinquent, typically after 90 to 180 days of missed payments. When you initially miss a payment, the company will notify you and your account begins accruing late fees and possibly a higher penalty interest rate. As missed payments accumulate, the creditor’s collection efforts intensify. This can involve more frequent phone calls, letters and possibly offers to set up a payment plan.
If you’re unable to make a payment during this initial period, the account will likely be “charged off” or written off as a loss by the credit card company after 180 days of delinquency. At this stage, it’s common for the credit card company to sell the debt to a collection agency at a discounted rate — typically pennies on the dollar. At that point, the collection agency typically owns your debt.
Once a collection agency takes over your account, they have the right to pursue the debt on their own behalf. Collection agencies may contact you through calls, letters or other forms of communication to collect the balance. However, if the debt remains unpaid even after collection efforts, the collection agency may file a lawsuit. The decision to sue depends on several factors, including the amount owed, the collection agency’s policies and whether they believe legal action will yield repayment.
Receiving a lawsuit summons is typically the final warning that your debt has reached a critical stage. If the court rules in favor of the credit card company or collection agency, they may be granted a judgment that allows for methods like wage garnishment or property liens to recover the owed amount. Remember, though, that each state has a statute of limitations on debt, which is typically between three and 10 years. After that point, the creditor may no longer sue, although they can still attempt to collect it through non-legal means.
Find out how to lower your credit card debts today.
How to avoid a lawsuit over unpaid credit card debt
If you’re struggling with credit card debt, there are strategies available to avoid a lawsuit, including:
Contact your credit card company
When financial hardship makes it difficult to meet payments, one option is to contact your credit card company, as they may have hardship programs or alternative payment plans that can help. These programs can reduce interest rates, waive late fees or extend payment deadlines temporarily and addressing the issue early can prevent the account from escalating to collections or legal action.
Use debt relief to tackle what you owe
The following debt relief strategies could also be worth considering to avoid a lawsuit over unpaid credit card debt:
- Debt management: With a debt management plan, a credit counseling agency negotiates with your creditors to create a single, affordable monthly payment, often with reduced interest rates and fees.
- Debt settlement: With debt settlement (also known as debt forgiveness), the goal is to negotiate a lump-sum payment that’s less than the total owed, reducing your debt obligation.
- Debt consolidation loans: A debt consolidation loan through a bank or traditional lender may also be an option. This type of loan combines multiple credit card balances into a single loan, ideally with a lower interest rate, making monthly payments more manageable.
- Debt consolidation programs: When you enroll in a debt consolidation program, you work with a debt relief company to secure a debt consolidation loan through a third-party lender, allowing you to make one monthly payment at a lower rate.
The bottom line
Facing a lawsuit over unpaid credit card debt can be intimidating, but understanding when legal action is likely to happen can help you take control of your financial situation before it reaches that point. Early intervention, such as contacting your creditor or pursuing debt relief, can prevent your debt from escalating and help you manage repayment in a way that suits your financial needs. After all, taking the time to address unpaid credit card debt now can relieve stress and safeguard your financial future.
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