Report: Uvalde PD and School District No Longer Cooperating With Texas DPS Investigation Into Elementary School Massacre

ABC News reported today that multiple law enforcement sources have told them that the Uvalde Police Department and the Uvalde Independent School District police force are no longer cooperating with the Texas Department of Public Safety’s investigation into last week’s massacre at Robb Elementary School and the state’s review of the law enforcement response.

The decision to stop cooperating occurred soon after the director of DPS, Col. Steven McCraw, held a news conference Friday, according to multiple sources.

McGraw said at Friday’s news conference, “From the benefit of hindsight where I’m sitting now, of course, it was not the right decision. It was a wrong decision. Period. There was no excuse for that. There were plenty of officers to do what needed to be done, with one exception, is that the incident commander inside believed he needed more equipment and more officers to do a tactical breach at that time.”

KVUE Reporter Tony Plohetski tweeted following the report, “The chief of the Uvalde school district police department, Pete Arredondo, has not responded to the Texas Rangers in two days for a followup interview from his initial statement immediately after the mass shooting, a spokesman for Texas DPS confirms.”

Plohetski added in a reply that spokesman Travis Considine said, “Uvalde and Uvalde CISD departments have been cooperating with investigators. The chief of the CISD did an initial interview but has not responded to a request for a followup interview that was made two days ago.”

Spokesman Travis Considine said, "Uvalde and Uvalde CISD departments have been cooperating with investigators. The chief of the CISD did an initial interview but has not responded to a request for a followup interview that was made two days ago."

— Tony Plohetski (@tplohetski) May 31, 2022

One of the officers who was standing outside the school says that he and his colleagues discussed whether to go into the school anyway and told PEOPLE Magazine previously, “There was almost a mutiny. We were like, ‘There’s a f—ing gunman in the school, we hear gunshots, and we’re just going to stand here with our thumbs up our asses?’ We wanted to go in and save lives. It was the most frustrating situation of my entire career.”

“We felt like cowards. It felt cowardly to stand off and let this punk, this kid, this 18-year-old asshole just go in and do whatever he wanted to do. There was a lot of arguing, a lot of cussing, a lot of people who were saying that we should just say f— it and go in, but then what? We needed to have a plan, and the commander didn’t have a plan,” the officer lamented.