Dive Brief:
- The city of Uvalde, Texas, will pay $2 million to 19 families of Uvalde victims in addition to taking steps to improve the city's police department. The settlement is one of the first to be reached following the May 24, 2022, mass shooting.
- The agreement requires the Uvalde Police Department to implement a new "fitness for duty" standard in coordination with the U.S. Department of Justice, provide enhanced training for current and future police officers, and coordinate with families about "the public safety risk and burden on police due to the prevalence of gun violence," according to Koskoff, Koskoff & Bieder, a law firm representing the families.
- The same day the families agreed to settle with the city, they announced a lawsuit against 92 individual Texas Department of Public Safety officers and also intend to sue the federal government, which lawyer Josh Koskoff said has lacked transparency and accountability following the attack two years ago.
Dive Insight:
The settlement with the city and announcement of pending lawsuits comes just before the two-year anniversary of the massacre on Friday.
Earlier this year, the Department of Justice released a report citing "cascading failures" in the Uvalde school massacre response, including a lack of coordination between local law enforcement and the school.
"There was a collective failure here," said Koskoff during a press conference streamed by local news outlet KENS 5 on Wednesday. "Let's face it, there's plenty of blame to go around."
There were a total of 376 law enforcement personnel on the scene, including from the city of Uvalde, Department of Homeland Security, Border Patrol, Texas Department of Public Safety, U.S. Marshals and the Drug Enforcement Administration, said Koskoff.
However, he said, there has been a lack of disciplinary action in the wake of the shooting and of accountability on all levels of the government, including federal.
But families opted to not pursue further legal action against the city, as it "could have plunged Uvalde into bankruptcy, something that none of the families were interested in as they look for the community to heal," said a press release from Koskoff's firm.
"The burden of protecting children in schools in this country for towns like Uvalde — it's overwhelming and it's an impossible burden to meet even in the best of circumstances," said Koskoff in the press conference.
However, the families' lawsuit announced on Wednesday against Texas DPS officers claims they were trained as part of active shooter response to prioritize victims or potential victims over their own safety — a protocol they failed to follow.
Meanwhile, Robb Elementary students and teachers "were diligently trained" under school shooter lockdown protocols to turn off the lights, lock the doors and remain silent.
"By design, these protocols trap teachers and students inside, leaving them fully reliant on law enforcement to respond quickly and effectively," according to the press release. "The complaint details how the longer law enforcement prolongs a lockdown, the higher the likelihood that students and teachers will be shot, die from their wounds and experience extreme terror and trauma.”
