RUBEN NAVARRETTE JR.: Whitewashed Uvalde report is yet another affront to the victims

I can’t stop thinking about the poor people of Uvalde, Texas.

Haven’t they suffered enough? How much more pain and insult are the beleaguered residents of the 15,000-person town in southwest Texas supposed to take? Many of these people lost children, or other loved ones, in a gruesome massacre nearly two years ago. Can they at least hold onto some of their dignity?

That is tough to do when you’re told that something you know to be true — and what other government entities, including the U.S. Justice Department, confirm is true, i.e., that law enforcement botched its response to the tragedy — is not really true at all.

The shattered Uvalde community can’t put itself back together because it is being denied the one thing that will allow it to heal: closure.

And that’s the rub. There can’t be closure without truth and accountability. We won’t find either of those things in the 182-page report — or, as CNN’s Jake Tapper called it, “whitewash” — prepared by independent investigator Jesse Prado.

Hired by city officials to evaluate the response of local law enforcement to the tragedy, the retired Austin police detective was supposed to clear the fog. Instead, he created more.

The media have already done most of Prado’s job for him. Here’s what we know.

On May 24, 2022, a gunman named Salvador Ramos walked into Robb Elementary School, which he had once attended. The 18-year-old had a history of psychological and emotional problems. This being Texas, that means he might have had trouble voting but no problem obtaining a military-style AR-15 assault rifle capable of leveling a village.

In the end, 19 children — most of them fourth-graders who were 10 or 11 years old — were killed, as were fourth-grade teachers Irma Garcia and Eva Mireles. According to media reports, the teachers appear to have died heroically trying to shield students from gunfire.

Sadly, that was pretty much the extent of the heroism on display that day. Despite being armed to the teeth, the 376 law enforcement officers who descended on the scene from seven agencies acted like cowards. That includes dozens of the fabled Texas Rangers, who were revealed to be — as they say down in the Lone Star State — “all hat and no cattle.”

I bet that, if Garcia and Mireles had even 1 percent of the firepower that the cops had, they would have put it to better use. And this story might have had a different ending.

Law enforcement officers dawdled outside the school for 77 minutes before a special tactical unit of the U.S. Border Patrol finally stormed one of the classrooms and killed Ramos.

According to the report, which Prado presented to a packed City Council meeting, local law enforcement officials acted in “good faith.” So he cleared them of all wrongdoing.

Incensed, the victims’ families denounced the report and once again demanded accountability. Some of the officers involved in the debacle have already resigned or been fired. That includes Uvalde Police Chief Daniel Rodriguez, who was on vacation when the mass shooting occurred. Last week, Rodriguez announced that he is leaving.

But the families want — and deserve — much more. They want some of the cops arrested and prosecuted, perhaps for criminal negligence.

Because Ramos was Mexican American, and so were almost all the victims, I have assumed from the beginning that race and ethnicity were part of the reason that police on the scene were slow to act. Some will consider this accusation offensive. But I hear the same thing all the time from other Mexican Americans when the subject of the Uvalde massacre comes up.

Americans have seen other school shootings — including one at a Christian school in Nashville, Tennessee, in March 2023, in which three children and three adults died — where the victims were mostly white. In those instances, police have moved faster.

Still, now that an ex-cop has gone out of his way to exonerate other cops, I think this debacle is about a lot more than just race and ethnicity. It’s about how cozy the power structure is in small towns, and how simple working-class people without connections or leverage rarely get a fair shake. And it’s about how — in an alpha male state such as Texas — what garners respect is strength and power and wealth, and how folks in Uvalde are 0 for 3.

It’s true what they say. The cover-up can indeed be worse than the crime. And, in Uvalde, both are horrendous.

Ruben Navarrette’s email address is crimscribe@icloud.com. His podcast, “Ruben in the Center,” is available through every podcast app.