The first trauma-informed critical incident review: The active shooter mass violence incident at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas.

Abstract

This report was originally a presentation at the 2024 International Society of Traumatic Stress Studies Annual Meeting (Boston, MA, United States) that describes the integration of a trauma-informed approach into a law enforcement-based critical incident review process conducted by the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Community Oriented Policing Services in response to a 2022 school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. The report focuses on how the review team of nine law enforcement subject matter experts and six Department of Justice staff members used a trauma-informed approach to ensure they would do no harm to the victims, family members, responders, and others as a result of their review process. The team conducted 260 interviews over 54 days and reviewed 14,000 pieces of data. The team followed trauma-informed principles to protect victims and families and to avoid overexposing themselves and risking secondary traumatic stress. The use of a trauma-informed lens had not been part of prior critical incident reviews, which focused almost exclusively on the facts of the actions of law enforcement and lessons learned. Data were obtained from victim and responder agency interviews, law enforcement reports, and audio and video materials of the incident. The resulting findings indicate that although the law enforcement response to the shooting is considered a failure, the trauma-informed approach used in the review helped support victims, responders, community members, and the team conducting the review.