Title: Director of the Texas Department of Public Safety (appointed by Governor Greg Abbott)
His connection to the massacre: McCraw leads the state agency investigating law enforcement’s response to the Uvalde mass shooting. His agency includes the Texas Rangers, an investigative arm of the Texas DPS.
McCraw called the police response “an abject failure and antithetical to everything we’ve learned over the past two decades since the Columbine massacre.”
He identified the incident commander as the school district’s police chief and slammed the chief’s decision not to immediately break down the classroom door. Officers waited in or around the hallway for more than an hour after the shooting began.
“It was the wrong decision, period,” McCraw said. “There’s no excuse for that.”
Why he’s under scrutiny: Uvalde’s mayor criticized McCraw for blaming the Uvalde schools police chief when officers from McCraw’s own agency were also on the scene.
DPS did not directly address McLaughlin’s criticism of McCraw. In a July 5 statement, DPS said it is “committed to working with multiple law enforcement agencies to get the answers we all seek” and said “this is still a very active and ongoing investigation.” .
According to a report by the Texas House investigative committee, the 376 responsible came from a number of agencies. Among them, 149 were from the US Border Patrol, 91 were from the Texas Department of Public Safety and 14 were from the Department of Homeland Security.
“Every agency in this corridor is going to have to share the blame,” McLaughlin, the mayor, told CNN on July 5.
A shifting timeline of when DPS personnel arrived on the scene raises serious questions about the department’s reliability, the head of Texas’ largest police union told CNN. It has asked an “independent external source” to investigate the initial response.
“I don’t know that we can trust (DPS) to do an internal investigation,” said Charley Wilkison, executive director of the Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Texas, which represents some law enforcement officers in Uvalde. “I would say DPS was quick to wash their hands, point fingers, and make sure the general public, especially elected officials, knew they were blameless and blameless and that this was a local problem.” .
The latest: While the DPS director in June called the response an “abject failure,” a DPS officer was on the scene outside Robb Elementary just 2 minutes and 28 seconds after the gunman entered, the CNN was the first to report on August 2. The soldier was seen. in police body camera video provided to CNN by McLaughlin.
McCraw previously said a trooper entered the hallway at 11:42 a.m., or nine minutes after the shooter entered the school. Uvalde police body camera video first reported by CNN showed a DPS officer at the school’s west entrance at 11:37:51 a.m., about five minutes before the had previously acknowledged.
The DPS investigation into the shooting will include an internal review of the actions taken by all DPS officers at the scene to determine whether it should be referred to an inspector general for investigation, McCraw said Aug. 4 . The DPS director said he hadn’t checked yet. video of the 34 body cameras, noting that he may have to correct that number in the future, but he had seen bits of it.
McCraw did not publicly release any details of the investigation, in accordance with a request from a Uvalde County district attorney, he said, noting the case could take years.
Photo: Robert Daemmrich Photography Inc/Corbis/Getty Images