A surprise announcement during a DPS graduation ceremony in Austin on Friday. Longtime DPS Director Steve McCraw announced he will retire at the end of the year. NBC 5’s Maria Guerrero has more.
Texas Department of Public Safety Director Col. Steve McCraw will retire at the end of the year after 15 years leading the department.
McCraw made the announcement Friday during a graduation ceremony for Texas State Troopers.
"The greatest honor of my life is to have served as the director of the Department of Public Safety for 15 years," McCraw said. "The governor has been very gracious [and] has authorized and approved my retirement at the end of the year."
McCraw, a native of El Paso, was named director of the Texas DPS in August 2009.
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"I know Gov. Greg Abbott will ensure my replacement is as good and likely better than I am at this particular job," McCraw said. "We're in great hands because the people we have, the leaders that we have in this department … always get the job done."
While addressing the graduating class of state troopers, the governor complimented McCraw on his career and commitment to law and order and reminisced about how they often collaborated on responses involving law enforcement.
"Col. McCraw has been a critical leader of our law enforcement community for more than 40 years. He is a leader, a visionary, and the quintessential lawman that Texas is so famous for, big white cowboy hat and all," said Abbott on Friday.
"His tactical response to the largest influx ever to illegal border crossings. He was able to organize DPS troopers and to be able to achieve DPS troopers arresting more than 45,000 criminals who crossed the border, apprehend more than 500,000 immigrants, and seize enough deadly fentanyl to kill every man, woman, and child in the United States and Mexico combined," Abbott said.
The governor said part of McCraw's legacy will be the creation of the Texas DPS memorial at the agency's headquarters in Austin.
"The one thing that Col. McCraw was maybe as dedicated to as much as anything else, he wanted to ensure that there would be a memorial recognizing the men and women who served in the Texas DPS," Abbott said. "He dreamt it, he envisioned it, he etched it out and ensured that it came to fruition. Earlier this year, I was proud to join him on the grounds as we opened and cut the ribbon on the Texas DPS memorial, a legacy to Col. Steve McCraw."
In recent years, McCraw had drawn scrutiny for the ineffective response by troopers to the Uvalde shooting and the agency's role in Abbott's Operation Lone Star crackdown along the Texas border.
The governor's operation to prevent illegal border crossings has been investigated for alleged civil rights violations, and in 2023, a state trooper claimed migrants were left bloodied from razor-wire barriers and that inhumane orders were given to deny people water in the sweltering heat and to "push the people back into the water to go to Mexico."
In Uvalde, McCraw said the decision by local officers not to breach the classroom where a gunman was holed up after shooting dozens of elementary school students and teachers was an "abject failure." State troopers were present, too, and McCraw acknowledged that members of the Texas DPS made mistakes but said that his agency, as an institution, didn't fail and resisted calls for his resignation.
McCraw had been quoted saying he'd resign if his troopers had culpability in the slow response that may have led to additional deaths.
“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 a meeting with families in 2022. “But I can tell you this right now: DPS as an institution, OK, right now, did not fail the community -- plain and simple.”
A trooper suspended after the Uvalde shooting was reinstated by McCraw earlier this month and restored to his job in Uvalde County.
McCraw began his career in law enforcement in 1977 as a state trooper with the Texas Highway Patrol. He would go on to work as a narcotics agent for the DPS and as a special agent with the FBI.
According to his bio with the Texas DPS, McCraw's FBI career included working as "Supervisory Special Agent, Unit Chief of the Colombian/Mexican Organized Crime Unit, Assistant Special Agent in Charge in Tucson, Inspector-In-Charge of the South East Bomb Task Force, Inspector – Deputy Assistant Director, Special Agent in Charge of the San Antonio office, Assistant Director of the Office of Intelligence for which he was tasked to establish after the attacks on 9/11. He was also responsible for establishing the Foreign Terrorism Tracking Task Force under the Office of the Attorney General."
In 2004, McCraw left the FBI to become the Texas Homeland Security Director in the Office of the Governor, where he served until he was appointed DPS Director five years later.
