Uvalde school shooting documentary focuses on police response

UVALDE, Texas - A new documentary has been released, focusing on the botched police response to the Uvalde school shooting that killed 21 people in May 2022.

"Inside the Uvalde Response" is a new documentary from PBS, ProPublica, and the Texas Tribune chronicling the widely-criticized law enforcement response to Robb Elementary School in May 2022. 

It includes body cam video, 911 calls, as well as investigators’ interviews of the officers involved.

Stephanie Sherman is an attorney representing some of the families of victims and survivors, in a federal lawsuit claiming law enforcement, the Uvalde school district, gun makers and others dropped the ball, leading to the high number of casualties that day, 19 students and two teachers.

"They lacked a chief in charge. That was the most obvious point, is that there were several of those officers ready to go into action, waiting, standing by, waiting for direction, which they didn't get," said Sherman. "The documentary shows that no one knew who was in charge, but that's contrary to the training. And the training says the first person to arrive on the scene is the incident commander. Period."

Uvalde CISD Police Chief Pete Arredondo, who has since been fired, was supposedly the incident commander. Audio in the documentary shows he was aware of a chilling 911 call from a student indicating people had been shot and killed in her classroom.

But that information did not make it to the officers inside, whom Arredondo had told to treat the situation as a barricaded subject in a classroom, not an active shooter.

"She's providing information. She's saying there's a shooter in here. She's saying there are victims. And Arredondo never passed that on to his team," said Sherman.

Another major problem highlighted in the film is the lack of preparedness by officers to handle a gunman with an AR-15.

Photo courtesy: PBS / Frontline

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"You have officers going down the hallway and headed towards the classrooms. And as soon as they got shot at, they retreated and never to return again," said Sherman. "And then 70 minutes go by and nobody is trying again."

After more than an hour and 15 minutes, police finally breached the classroom and killed the gunman.

"It’s terrifying. And many of these families have other children going through the school system, and they're terrified," said Sherman.

Sherman says the families’ lawsuit is currently on pause because Texas DPS has declined to release evidence surrounding the police response.