About two months after the massacre in an elementary school in the US state of Texas with 21 dead, an investigative report blames "systemic errors and egregious wrong decisions" for the hesitant police action.
Nearly 400 officers from various law enforcement agencies rushed to the elementary school in the town of Uvalde, the Texas Tribune reported Sunday, citing the report.
Many of the responders were better trained and equipped than the school district police.
They could have helped deal with the spreading chaos, the newspaper quoted from the report.
The report on the police operation on May 24 was written by a committee of inquiry in the Texas House of Representatives and distributed to family members on Sunday.
An 18-year-old gunman killed 19 children and two teachers in the small town.
The attacker shot the children and teachers with an assault rifle.
The police were heavily criticized for their hesitant intervention.
After the fact, she repeatedly changed her statements about the course of events.
It finally turned out that the police only overpowered the perpetrator around 75 minutes after their arrival.
"They failed to put the rescue of innocent victims above their own safety," the newspaper continued, quoting from the 77-page report.
The mistakes made are not due to a lack of emergency personnel, but to a lack of leadership skills and effective communication.
Several police officers described the scenes at the crime scene as chaotic and did not know who was in charge.
Nobody took the initiative and took command, it said.