Oakland County approves $500K to review police response to Oxford attack

The Oakland County Board of Commissioners on Thursday approved $500,000 for an independent review of the response to the 2021 Oxford High School attack.

The board unanimously approved funding and a resolution calling for a review of the response to the mass shooting at the school that left four students dead and seven others injured, including a teacher, on Nov. 30, 2021.

Board Chairman David T. Woodward, D-Royal Oak, and Commissioner and House Minority Leader Michael Spis, R-Oxford, co-sponsored the resolution, which said it was “imperative” for a thorough and independent review to assess the response to the mass shooting “to assess the effectiveness of crisis management, law enforcement, and fire/EMS operations and identify lessons learned for future preparations.”

The review, to be conducted by a third party hired by the county through a competitive bidding process, “will provide an objective analysis of response and recovery efforts, including coordination among law enforcement, emergency services, and other stakeholders, and will make recommendations for improving safety measures and response and recovery protocols,” the resolution reads.

The independent firm will be required to collect data, interview key participants, analyze response and recovery efforts, and produce a detailed report with recommendations that will improve public safety and the crisis response strategy, the resolution reads.

The review’s findings and recommendations will be “key to informing policy changes, training programs and resource allocation aimed at preventing future tragedies and improving community safety,” the resolution stated.

There has been no independent review of the aftermath of Oxford’s emergency response. A review is typically conducted by an outside agency to learn from the actions taken by the coordinating police agency and its partners during a mass shooting incident.

The announcement comes after The Detroit News reported last month on questions about possible delays in serving documents related to the shooting.

Subscribers: Fire chiefs say rescue crews sent late to Oxford attack

The allocation was unanimously approved by 17 board members. Two were absent.

The one-time funding will come from the county fund and will be transferred to the Department of Emergency Management and Homeland Security to contract with an independent company experienced in conducting a review of actions taken after similar incidents.

Commissioners said the independent firm’s final report would be published.

Woodward said Thursday he is still developing a formal policy that would require after-action reviews for all mass shootings in Oakland County. He said he wants all mass shootings to be independently reviewed, including the June 15 shooting at a Rochester Hills playground that injured nine people.

An Oakland County spokesman said the county plans to submit a request for proposals by mid-September to identify firms that can conduct an independent assessment of the response to the attack.

Buck Myre, whose son Tate was murdered in the attack, said Thursday he welcomes the review of police and emergency services actions and has many questions about the attack that still remain unanswered almost three years later.

“One thing (Oakland County Sheriff Michael) Bouchard said is that they were still getting calls about gunshots on 911, so EMS didn’t come into the building. Usually, they say ‘all is well.’ I’ve never gotten that. I want to know when it happened,” Myre said. “Could EMS have gotten there sooner?”

Myre said the idea that victims would be upset about the review is not accurate. Questions raised by fire chiefs about the timing of the dispatch also remain unanswered, he said.

“I would rather know the whole story,” Myre said. “In the professional world, when things go wrong and something happens, we have the post-mortem analysis. What could we have done better. What did we do well. That’s what I want the system to do. That’s what we failed at. That’s what we did well. At the end of the day, we have to learn from these tragedies.”

The News reported that Sheriff Michael Bouchard’s office declined to participate in an independent post-action review requested in January by Oakland County Executive Dave Coulter’s office, according to a Coulter spokesman and an email from a county homeland security official at the time. Coulter requested the independent review.

The sheriff’s office denied that it refused to participate in the third-party review.

Maj. Christopher Wundrach, Bouchard’s executive officer, previously told The News that the office and staff fully participated in the independent investigation conducted by Guidepost Solutions. However, that review and its report were limited to examining the school district’s role and response to the attack, not first responders.

The News reported that two fire chiefs said Oakland County Sheriff’s Office dispatchers waited too long to call them to the shooting scene. Although the concerns became public last month, one chief privately called for a review of possible delays in the days immediately following the shooting, and the sheriff’s department called the concerns unfounded.

Anthony Asciutto, whose son John was shot at Oxford High School, said he wants a retrial.

“If (Bouchard) 911 is down because of poor maintenance or underfunding, he should want to know that information. And pay whatever tax dollars it takes to get a third-party report … kids were murdered, my boyfriend was shot. I would like to know if the fire department that wasn’t notified feels they could have saved a life,” Asciutto said.

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