During testimony in front of a special Texas Senate committee in Austin on Tuesday (June 21), Steven McCraw, the director of the state’s Department of Public Safety, called the response of the police officers on the scene of the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, last month an “abject failure.”
On March 24, an 18-year-old gunman charged into the school with an AR-15-style rifle and killed 19 children and two teachers. It was the deadliest school shooting in Texas history.
McCraw’s comments included strong criticism of the Uvalde Police Department and school district law enforcement who, he said, should have confronted the gunman within minutes of him entering the school. Instead, it took police one hour and 17 minutes to breach the classroom door and kill the gunman. McCraw placed much of the blame on the Uvalde school district’s police chief Pete Arredondo.
Earlier this month, Arredondo defended his officers’ delayed response during an interview with the Texas Tribune. “The only thing that was important to me at this time was to save as many teachers and children as possible,” Arredondo said.
McCraw’s testimony painted an entirely different picture, including statements that contradicted Arredondo’s claim that one of the reasons it took so long to kill the gunman is because officers could not find a key to the classroom. It turns out, the classroom door was not even locked.
“There’s no way to lock the door from the inside,” McCraw said, adding that Arredondo “decided to put the lives of officers ahead of the lives of children,” and “waited for a key that was never needed.”
Uvalde’s mayor, Don McLaughlin, called McCraw’s hearing a “Bozo the Clown show” and criticized him for not focusing any attention on the other law enforcement agencies on the scene like the Texas Rangers or state troopers. “I actually wonder who the hell’s in charge of this investigation because you can’t get a straight answer,” McLaughlin said.