Garland’s DoJ Report on Uvalde Elementary School Killings Done by Big Pharma?

U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland’s public relations campaign of the deadly school shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, TX, adds little to what already is known but sheds a huge light on Big Pharma’s involvement in the investigative process regarding these mass shootings.

It’s hard to stomach Garland’s January 18th press release and the Justice Department’s Uvalde, TX Critical Incident Review and Recommendations on the shooting at Robb Elementary given its cozy relationship with third party mental health advocates. This sickening aftertaste is not only based on the 21 dead and 17 injured at the school, but an entangled and extraordinarily imbedded relationship the U.S. Justice Department apparently has, and has had for years, with The National Alliance on Mental Illness, (NAMI).

In addition, the public should be fully informed that the US Dept. of Justice did not actually conduct an investigation but, rather, merely is providing a review and assessment of the shooting event.  The Texas Department of Public Service (DPS) conducted an investigation and provided it to the District Attorney in Uvalde, Christina Mitchell. 

AbleChild did reach out to Mitchell’s office about the status of report and its release date to the public.  AbleChild was told to drop Mitchell an email, as she responds if she feels like it.  There appears to be no communication office or press office dealing with public inquiries into the whereabouts of the Uvalde DPS final report on the Robb Elementary School Shooting.

According to Tony Plohestski, a reporter from the Texas Statesman, “out of 1 trillion bytes of information, the equivalent of about 2 billion double-spaced pages of text – collected by the agency, the DPS has only released about 1,100 pages said Prather (Prather is the lead counsel for a consortium of more than a dozen news organizations who have sued to obtain a trove of records to report on the law enforcement failing in Uvalde), adding that nearly half of them were duplicates.”  Prather argued that “DPS can’t pick and choose who gets access to records about the shooting, and that the department hasn’t proven that the release of information would interfere with its investigation into the Robb Elementary response, as the agency contends.”

The Battle for records in these investigations isn’t new.  AbleChild battled with the State of Connecticut for the release of the mental health records of the Sandy Hook mass shooter, Adam Lanza in AbleChild Versus the Connecticut Chief Medical Examiner freedom of information inquiry.  Could the reluctance to release records be a nationwide trend by government officials to cover up the involvement of the behavioral health vendors and Big Pharma?

Before reading the more than 600 pages of the Department of Justice’s Overview and Recommendations, one needs only review the list of resources used to compile this Overview and Recommendations.  AG Garland credits the “COPS” office for the Department of Justice release of this report.  The COPS office is the federal component of the Department of Justice for advancing community policy nationwide.  This is troubling due to the fact it funds third parties with grants with potential conflicted interests.  According to COPS, the organization reached out to NAMI for its input.

This is very disturbing considering that NAMI is 75% funded by the pharmaceutical companies.  As we know the root element that is missing from these investigations is the pharmaceutical products prescribed to the killer prior to the mass shootings.  

This substantial funding from the pharmaceutical industry has been a subject of scrutiny and has raised concerns about the potential influence on NAMI‘s activities and advocacy efforts. While the organization also receives funding from individual contributions, major foundation and corporate sponsorships, dues, grants, events, and other partnerships, the significant reliance on pharmaceutical donations has been a point of discussion and debate.

NAMI has issued a statement expressing deep sadness over the shootings and emphasizes the importance of understanding the causes and effects of gun violence.  They advocate for money for research to blame the mass killings on gun violence.  NAMI emphasizes the need to avoid linking its recommended treatment of psychiatric drugs to mass killings. Of course, it does not announce that it is funded by big Pharma.  Sounds like NAMI is motivated to direct the course of the investigation toward anything but big pharma and would appear to have a major conflict of interest.  It is shocking that AG Garland would endorse these findings without allowing the Texas DPS to issue its full report directly to the public. 

The public deserves to know all the truth and cannot possibly depend on a review of the shooting at Robb Elementary without knowing what the Texas DPS concluded in its investigation. Seems as though the US DoJ got the cart before the horse. Until Texas DPS makes its investigation public, Garland has no business coming to any conclusions, especially one that involves third parties paid to deflect interest from what part Big Pharma may have played.