Some changes a year later
Police response, training have received scrutiny, but little different in Texas or federal gun law
UVALDE, Texas — The shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, in May 2022 in some ways changed the conversation yet again on gun violence in the United States: 19 fourth grade students and two teachers died in one of the deadliest school shootings in American history.
But what made the Uvalde attack extraordinary was not just the death toll. It was that more than 370 officers from local, state and federal agencies had responded to the scene — some standing in the school hallway — but allowed the gunman to remain holed up with students inside the school for 77 minutes before storming in to kill him.
In the aftermath, that left a host of questions, not only about the laws governing access to guns but also about police training, emergency responses, school security and preparedness and who ultimately would be held accountable for a failure that occurred on so many levels.
In the year since the attack, a number of people have resigned or lost their jobs. New laws have been debated, and some have been passed. Criminal investigations have been opened. Survivors have undergone months of physical therapy.
Those who did not survive have been buried.
Did any of it make another mass shooting less likely? In Uvalde, people have had their doubts.
“Almost a year now, and honestly nothing has changed,” Jesse Rizo, the uncle of one of the massacre victims, told the Uvalde school board in the weeks before Wednesday’s anniversary of the shooting.
Police response
The chief of the small school police force, Pete Arredondo was among the first to go, when the school board voted unanimously in August to fire him, to the sound of cheers and claps in the packed school auditorium. Arredondo made the decision to treat the situation not as an active shooting but as a barricaded subject incident, leading to the delay in entering the school.
The school district later dismantled its entire police force, which consisted of five officers, and is still in the process of revamping it with new hires.
The city police force did not emerge unchanged, either: The lieutenant who was in charge May 24 while the police chief was on vacation, Mariano Pargas Jr., stepped down in mid-November after 18 years in the force.
And amid pressure from the families of the 21 victims, Hal Harrell, the school superintendent, retired in the fall. He was replaced in the interim by Gary Patterson, a former superintendent from San Antonio.
No changes to training
The response by officers in Uvalde has been broadly condemned. But it has not resulted in immediate changes to how police officers are trained in Texas. In July, McCraw, the state public safety director, said his agency would “provide proper training and guidelines for recognizing and overcoming poor command decisions at an active shooter scene.”
But several policing experts said creating that kind of training presented a challenge because countermanding orders from an incident commander went against the very orientation of most police departments.
School demolition
The school where the attack occurred sits behind chainlink fencing with its windows boarded and is slated to be demolished as soon as lawsuits and the pending investigations are concluded. Local district attorney Christina Mitchell and many victims’ families are among those taking legal action to block the demolition of the school until there is no further need to collect evidence from the crime scene.
Same gun laws
Texas has moved to widen access to firearms in the year since the shooting.
Months before the attack, Texas lawmakers did away with permit requirements to carry handguns. After the attack, the state also effectively lowered the age required for carrying a handgun to 18 from 21.
Elsewhere in the country, there has been a mixed record on gun control laws proposed since Uvalde, with access restricted or expanded depending on which party is in control.
Last summer, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill that would have reinstated a federal ban on assault weapons, but it stalled in the Senate.