Families of the victims of the Uvalde school shooting are in Austin calling for the head of the Texas Department Of Public Safety to resign, but he is standing behind his department.
Uvalde parents and Texas Sen. Roland Gutierrez (D-Dist. 19) challenged Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steve McCraw in Austin Thursday during a hearing of the Public Safety Commission, calling for his resignation.
Among the items on PSC's agenda Thursday was an update on the investigation into the Uvalde massacre where 19 children and two teachers were killed when a gunman entered Robb Elementary on May 24.
McCraw provided an update on the ongoing investigation into the shooting but did not shed any new light on what led to the failures in the Uvalde response.
In his statement, McCraw acknowledged members of the Texas DPS made mistakes but said that his agency, as an institution, didn't fail.
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“I can tell you this. If DPS as an institution failed the families, failed the school, or failed the community of Uvalde, then absolutely I need to go,” McCraw said during the meeting Thursday. “But I can tell you this right now, DPS as an institution, OK, right now, did not fail the community -- plain and simple.”
After McCraw made his statement, he asked the committee to allow parents and Gutierrez time to respond. Two parents spoke, calling for accountability from the DPS and asking McCraw to resign.
"If you are a man of your word, then you would retire. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem like you're going to do that because you keep talking in circles and doing all that mess," said Brett Cross, father of Uziyah Garcia, a 10-year-old boy who was killed in the shooting. "Listen you can get irritated all you want, I lost my damn son. Your anger is not going to outmatch mine man."
McCraw replied that he wasn't angry but was devastated and hurt by what happened in Uvalde.
The DPS director was quoted saying he'd resign if his troopers had culpability in the slow response that may have led to additional deaths. Dozens of troopers were at the school after the shooting including at least two McCraw said arrived within 10 minutes. No state troopers were involved when the classroom was breached more than an hour after the shooting began.
Last week the DPS fired an officer who was at the scene of the Uvalde school massacre. Sgt. Juan Maldonado was the first member of the state police to lose their job in the fallout of the slow response. Maldonado was served with termination papers last week, spokeswoman Ericka Miller said, though no further details were offered about his role at the scene of the May 24 shooting at Robb Elementary School or the specific reason Maldonado was fired.
Meanwhile, a DPS captain is under investigation after he allegedly delayed a law enforcement team from entering classrooms. According to a report from CNN, DPS Capt. Joel Betancourt told a strike team to wait over an hour into the attack, based on an audio recording the outlet obtained. The report also said that he thought a more highly skilled team was on its way.
Gutierrez also addressed the committee Thursday morning and spoke with NBC after the hearing and said he thinks the lack of information being shared publicly is tied to the upcoming midterm election and the reelection of Gov. Greg Abbott.
"It's astounding to me that we don't have the information available to us," Gutierrez said. "I promise you that this department … has the resources to have seen everything within the first 10 days and yet here we are, over five months later, with zero information in your hands or the hands of the public. That is absolutely, squarely because there is an election in a few days."
"We've got an election coming up on Nov. 8. This agency is obviously protecting the governor. We don't have a Hatch Act in Texas so this agency [DPS] has become a political arm of this governor and it's disturbing," Gutierrez said.
The state senator said the DPS failed at Uvalde and continues to fail the families in delivering timely information about the investigation. When the next legislative session begins in January, Gutierrez said he intends to make the Uvalde massacre his focus.
"Clearly a madman killed those kids but police inaction might have killed a few more. That's the reality. We might have saved four or five kids. All these people go home with this nightmare every day and the minute that the government continues to lie that just more trauma that they're having. That's what's happening in Texas," Gutierrez said.
The entire hearing can be watched on the DPS' YouTube page or embedded below.
