The director of the Texas Department of Public Safety is apologizing on behalf of law enforcement for the botched response to the Robb Elementary School shooting in Uvalde that claimed 21 lives just over three months ago.
Moments after his apology came an unexpected promise. He said Uvalde would become “the safest city in Texas in two months” after the agency sends DPS troopers to aid Uvalde police with area crimes.
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Col. Steve McCraw, of Texas DPS, interviewed with Austin TV station KVUE on Thursday, just days after he spoke with USA Today and said he hoped state troopers had taken control of the Robb shooting response.
McCraw has previously blamed Uvalde police and Uvalde CISD police for the “abject failure” of the law enforcement response, which led to a large delay in stopping the gunman.
According to a report from the Texas Tribune, McCraw said he wished his agency had led the police response on May 24.
He apologized to the families impacted by the Robb Elementary shooting during his interview with KVUE and said the response “violated all the principles” learned by law enforcement.
McCraw also said there was a lack of information on what was happening inside the school.
“I’ll be glad to apologize to the families on behalf of law enforcement, because I’ve testified before it was an abject failure. It violated all the principles that we’ve learned so much over the years... You must locate, isolate, and neutralize. And that’s an important part, not just locate and contain but locate, isolate and neutralize,” McCraw told KVUE. “Because, it’s not just in terms of stopping the killing -- you got to stop the killing -- you also have to stop the dying. And the only way to do that is neutralize the subject -- plain and simple, especially if there’s, if there’s children.”
A total of 376 law enforcement officers were called to Robb Elementary during the shooting, but they treated the incident as a barricaded subject instead of an active shooter.
According to the Texas Tribune, of those officers, 91 were state police.
On Sept. 6, DPS announced five of its officers are facing an investigation for their actions during the shooting response. Two of those officers were suspended with pay, and the other three are still on duty, the Texas Tribune reports.
“I’m not in a position right now to try to defend what DPS did or not. It really didn’t matter what I say. In the end, what’s gonna matter is the evidence. And the only good news from an evidentiary standpoint, throughout this thing has been video and audio evidence. It can’t be disputed, it’s there. It’s not going anywhere. And the sooner we get all of it out to the families, to the public, to the media, the better off the department is...” McCraw said to KVUE.
Concerns of safety in Uvalde continue to rise after another shooting happened just last week at a park that was deemed gang-related.
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McCraw said after a recent conversation with Mayor Don McLaughlin, the city has “an issue with gangs,” and DPS has assigned more troopers to aid local police.
He added that Uvalde would be “the safest city” in the state with the additional officers in the area,.
“In a recent conversation with the mayor, they got an issue with gangs. And when he had a conversation with the governor, the governor understood that they had two shootings in two weeks. And, of course, the violence. They’ve gone through enough. And we need to be more proactive, so we’ve assigned troopers to be able to assist our partners -- Uvalde Police Department -- in terms of addressing the gang part, not just in terms of patrol roles and bring in teams of special agents. So we’re going to -- we’re going to take care... Uvalde is going to be the safest city in the state of Texas within two months.”