A report this week from the U.S. Department of Defense Office of Inspector General says the U.S. Army and Navy failed to consistently follow their policies to notify their military law enforcement agencies of violent threats made by service members.
According to the report, a review of violent threat investigations in 2023 found that the Army and Navy failed to follow established polices in more than half of the investigations.
The report issued Sept. 9 was initiated in response to the October 2023 mass shooting in Lewiston, during which Army reservist Robert Card killed 18 people and wounded 13 others. Card was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot two days later.
An independent commission concluded last year that the Army and local law enforcement had several opportunities to intervene, but failed to act. Last week, more than 100 family members of the victims sued the federal government, alleging its agencies, namely the Army, failed to prevent the shooting, despite Card’s troubling behavior and access to firearms.
The Department of Defense report also found that military policies do not specifically require commanders to report violent threats made by service members to senior officers, and that failing to consistently report the threats could increase the risk of additional violent incidents, “such as what occurred with (Card) on Oct. 25, 2023.”
On Thursday, attorneys representing the victims and their families called the report “earth-shattering,” adding that it corroborates the complaint filed in U.S. District Court last week, which argues that the Army didn’t follow its protocols despite having established policies on handling violent threats.
“This report outlines blatant warning signs that required the Army to report out threats of violence up the chain of command and to the Army’s own law enforcement wing, and that failing to follow this policy increases the risk that tragedies like this one will be repeated,” Travis Brennan, an attorney representing the victims, said Thursday.
Attorney Ben Gideon said the report is significant for the victims’ families because it demonstrates that the failure that led to the Lewiston shooting “was not an isolated and one-off event.”
“We alleged in our case that the Army violated its own procedures in how they address the risk to the community posed by (Card), and the report finds that this was a pattern that was common in all branches of the armed services,” he said.
According to the report, the review of violent threat investigations in 2023 found that the Army followed established polices in 32 of 67 total investigations, while the Navy followed its policies in 49 of 113 investigations.
As a result, the report forwarded several recommendations, including that the Army and Navy standardize how their law enforcement personnel document communications of violent threats, and that all armed services secretaries require commanders to report threats of violence to senior leaders.
Brennan said the families of the victims urged Maine’s congressional delegation to push for internal investigations into the shooting and that the report from the Department of Defense Office of Inspector General is the latest result of that effort.
Gideon said that when he read the report, it felt like the Department of Defense “read our complaint and copied it.”
The appendix of the report cites at least seven failures made by Card’s company commander that have been outlined in previous Army reports.
Brennan said the fact that the report connects the Army’s failure to follow its own policies with the October 2023 shooting is the first time a government report has “connected the dots.”
“It’s an extremely significant development in terms of their admissions of what went wrong here,” he said.
Mollie Halpern, spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Defense Office of Inspector General, said the objective of the report was to look at the “larger picture” of communication across the Department of Defense, and that the circumstances surrounding Card’s case were investigated separately.
