Col. Steve McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, said that Pete Arredondo, the Uvalde school district police chief, decided to put the lives of officers ahead of the lives of children.
AUSTIN, Texas — Law enforcement authorities had enough officers on the scene of the Uvalde school massacre to have stopped the gunman three minutes after he entered the building, the Texas public safety chief testified Tuesday, pronouncing the police response an “abject failure.”
Col. Steve McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, testified at a state Senate hearing on the police handling of the tragedy. Delays in the law enforcement response have become the focus of federal, state and local investigations. McCraw told the Senate committee that Pete Arredondo, the Uvalde school district police chief, decided to put the lives of officers ahead of the lives of children.
“It has been reported that he didn’t have a radio with him. That’s true. He did not,” McCraw said of Arredondo.In addition, McCraw said police and sheriff’s radios did not work within the school; only the radios of Border Patrol agents on the scene worked inside the school, and even they did not work perfectly.
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