Former Sacramento police chief named to team reviewing Texas mass shooting response
Former Sacramento police chief and county inspector general Rick Braziel was among nine experts tapped Wednesday by the U.S. Department of Justice to probe the law enforcement response to the mass shooting last month that killed 21 people including 19 students at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas.
Braziel served as Sacramento’s police chief from 2008 to 2012 and as the watchdog overseeing the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office from December 2015 to November 2018. He now runs a locally based public safety consulting firm, Braziel Consulting Inc., according to the firm’s website and Braziel’s LinkedIn page.
The Justice Department and U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland on Wednesday named Braziel and eight others to a team of experts that will conduct a “critical incident review” of the response.
Officers with the Uvalde Police Department and Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District Police Department responded to Robb Elementary School, where 18-year-old Salvador Ramos allegedly shot dead 19 students and two teachers in a pair of adjoined classrooms on May 24.
The two local law enforcement agencies in the city west of San Antonio have faced immense criticism in the days following the shooting, as the official narrative of the shooting and police response relayed by authorities has repeatedly changed.
Texas Department of Public Safety authorities now say local police waited nearly 80 minutes before confronting the gunman, and that students inside the school repeatedly called 911 to plead for help while officers waited.
“The review team will carry out a number of critical steps, including developing a complete incident reconstruction, reviewing relevant documents (e.g., manuals, policies, videos, photos), conducting site visits, and interviewing a wide variety of stakeholders, including law enforcement, government officials, school officials, witnesses, families of the victims, and community members,” the Justice Department said in a Wednesday news release.
The team will then issue a final report on its findings.
Braziel also served on a Justice Department panel that conducted a critical incident review of the December 2015 terrorist attack in San Bernardino, a mass shooting in which a married couple killed 14 people at the Inland Regional Center before fleeing and being killed in a shootout with police. That report, 162 pages, was released in September 2016.
The team of experts named by Garland to review the response includes active and retired local law enforcement leaders.
Braziel during his time as inspector general became involved in a feud with Sacramento County Sheriff Scott Jones, who locked Braziel out of Sheriff’s Office buildings and the jail. Braziel’s contract ended in November 2018, and the county did not renew it.
Mark Evenson, who filled Sacramento County’s inspector general position in December 2019 after a more than yearlong vacancy, resigned this February. The position remains vacant.
This story was originally published June 8, 2022 at 1:07 PM.
