(UVALDE, Texas) — U.S. Customs and Border Protection personnel who responded to the shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, did not violate policy or the law, according to an internal CBP report released on Thursday.
However, the report found responding agents weren’t properly trained for a school shooting event and there were no clear instructions from local agencies on the ground.
CBP personnel including a tactical team from the agency responded to the shooting at the school in 2022, and they ultimately killed the shooter, but not until after a lengthy delay in the response, according to the report.
The fault of the slow response was ultimately placed on local officials who were at the school but didn’t take command of the scene, according to the report.
Nineteen students and two teachers were killed in the Robb Elementary School mass shooting.
“None of the first responders or CBP personnel who were in a position to take action against the assailant had access to an accurate school layout or understanding of where to locate the necessary keys for entry to critical areas of the school, which may have been mitigated by a functioning command and control system,” CBP said in a statement about the report.
Ahead of the report, CBP has taken more than half a dozen steps to address issues with its response to mass casualty events — and the lack of training before the shooting hindered the CBP response, it said.
“The training did not prepare CBP personnel for incidents in which they would be responding to a situation at a school, where an active shooter would be engaged behind a locked door, and where local authorities had not established a command and control framework. It also insufficiently covered using a ballistic shield, legal authorities, leadership responsibilities, and agency interoperability,” according to a press release from the agency.
As a result of the shooting, CBP said it has also corrected several policies. Use-of-force training materials have been distributed to agency personnel across the country, the agency is looking at acquiring more tools to respond to active shooters, and it’s also working on a plan for Congress to clarify federal authorities for responding to mass-casualty situations, according to CBP.
The inability of law enforcement to establish an “identifiable incident management or command and control protocols led to a disorganized response to the Robb Elementary School shooting,” the report found.
“No law enforcement official ever clearly established command at the school during the incident, leading to delays, inaction, and potentially further loss of life,” according to the report.
One Border Patrol agent told internal investigators they “never knew who was in command” of the scene.
At least 188 members of CBP responded to the incident, with 19% being members of the BORTAC team — the equivalent of a CBP SWAT team.
There was also no diagram of the school that was useful for the BORTAC agents to use, according to the report..
The report points to a 40-year-old Border Patrol training manual that had not been updated to accurately reflect the post-9/11 federal law enforcement apparatus under the Department of Homeland Security.
“… CBP training on active shooter response procedures did not adequately prepare responding personnel to deal with this situation,” the report states.
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