Texas police chief denies cover-up in Uvalde investigation

Brownsville, Texas () — The highest-ranking police officer in Texas, Colonel Steven McCraw, promised Thursday to fire any member of his Department of Public Safety (DPS) who did not do their job the day a gunman massacred 19 children and two teachers in the Robb Elementary School in Uvalde in May of this year.

His promise came after tracked him down and confronted him with the minutes of an internal meeting in which he was recorded as telling highway patrol captains the opposite: that “no one would lose their job” for their inept response. of the forces of order to the Uvalde massacre.

McCraw told Thursday that “nobody gets a pass,” reiterating a public promise from Aug. 4 that there would be an internal review of the actions taken by the 91 DPS officers who responded to the shooting at Robb Elementary School.

But at the Texas Highway Patrol captains’ meeting less than two weeks later on August 15-16, minutes obtained by document him as saying, “And by the way, no one will lose their job. On the contrary, all the leaders in Region 3 did what they were supposed to do and worked hard to deliver at the time.”

Although he confirmed much of the information attributed to him in the memo, McCraw said he was misquoted about the possibility of the firings and that his comments only referred to Víctor Escalón, DPS regional director.

“I reviewed his actions and there is nothing he could have done other than what he did,” McCraw said. “I made a command decision, and Víctor Escalón is not going to be fired, period.”

Some action has already been taken this week. Two DPS officers who were on the scene at Robb Elementary School were suspended with salary and referred for a formal investigation by the inspector general, with three more also being investigated, DPS said.

It is not known what actions by the officers caused the escalation; none have been publicly identified.

McCraw repeated that he could not provide more information, despite outcry from grieving families, residents and their representatives, because the local district attorney I had asked him not to. He has acknowledged that the criminal investigation could take years.

A coalition of news organizations, including , is suing DPS to get the records related to the investigation that have been hidden from the media and the public.

“We will publish everything”

In the exclusive interview, McCraw said he himself would resign if his force was proven guilty of the botched response that enabled the armed attack that left victims dead and dying for 74 minutes as hundreds of officers from multiple forces arrived on the scene and they did not challenge him.

“First of all, there’s no cover-up. And the bottom line is that as soon as we can, we’ll put everything out there,” he told before a meeting in Brownsville.

“When we get a chance to come talk to you, I’ll talk line by line about which cop did what… which DPS officer. We’ll be completely transparent,” McCraw said. “The public will have it, they will have excruciating details in terms of what we did, when we did it and those gaps.”

He promised: “I will be the first to resign, I will gladly resign, I will submit my resignation to the governor if I think there is any fault in the Department of Public Safety. Spot”.

Asked if he would meet with families who still have many questions, more than three months after the murders, McCraw said he would. But he added: “What I want is answers, right? I don’t have answers until the inspector general’s investigation is complete.”

He continued: “We are not going to give anyone an opportunity to undermine the criminal investigation.”

Confidence destroyed across the board

McCraw has not given extensive interviews since the May 24 atrocity, though he did become a public face of the police response in the days since, first at a table with Texas Governor Greg Abbott as officers’ efforts were praised and then, in a subsequent news conference and testimony in the Texas Senate, he called the operation an “abject failure” and blamed school police chief Pedro “Pete” Arredondo.

Arredondo has since been fired by the school district. Arredondo has said he does not consider himself the incident commander at the school and a statement from his attorney has called for him to be reinstated.

McCraw’s comments placed him in the middle of a rapidly changing narrative that exposed him and his department to criticism. of the mayor of Uvaldetheir families and others across the country.

He told that in hindsight he could have done things differently, but said he felt the record needed to be corrected.

“I did a press conference that Friday because I felt it was important, because people have the impression… there was a brave and heroic response from law enforcement. [y fue] everything but that. It was an abject failure, plain and simple,” she said.

He also added that there should be no celebration that the agents evacuated the children, since that work could have been done by the teachers.

And he said trust had been broken between his DPS officers and local departments and agencies, whom they often assist in major incidents.

“The paradigm is over,” he said, referring to how agents were told that this was a man holed up talking to negotiators and not a gunman with victims.

“We can’t believe that until we’re absolutely sure,” he told .

New procedures implemented

McCraw said his own agents were horrified when they found out what had happened in Uvalde on May 24.

“We are doing perimeter tasks with the impression that [es un sospechoso atrincherado]: I can’t tell you how sick they are to see that they’re suddenly taking out children who are dead,” he said.

“That’s an impact these people are going to have to live with for the rest of their lives because they were there. And I guarantee you if they had known, they would have been there.”

New procedures outlined to DPS by McCraw in a July letter made public this week say officers must now “overcome any delay in neutralizing an attacker” at a school.

At the meeting with his captains in August, he said DPS must remain vigilant against mass attacks and asked them to share ideas for improving top-down communication.

Earlier in the session, he discussed personnel issues, saying DPS was requesting $466 million to start a “state-of-the-art shooting house…like a school.” The total cost of the facility to be used for training would be $1.4 billion, the minutes show.

While he hasn’t spent time in Uvalde since the immediate aftermath, McCraw said he was affected as well. “It was horrible, and anyone who was in that building or was involved in this in any way, shape or form will never be the same again.”

— ‘s Shimon Prokupecz and Matthew J. Friedman reported this story from Brownsville and Uvalde, Texas, and Rachel Clarke wrote in Atlanta.

— ‘s Rosa Flores, Eric Levenson and Andy Rose contributed to this story.