Forrest Wilder writes in The Texas Monthly about the coverup of the massacre at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde. Governor Greg Abbot first praised the response of the state’s Department of Public Safety for their courage. Then he backed off. Since then, the director of the Department of Public Safety Steve McCraw has kept a tight lid on public information. The state has blamed one man–the school’s head of police–who was fired. Wilder suspects that there is much more to be revealed, but no one is talking.
Wilder writes:
Almost five months after the Uvalde massacre, as the horror and confusion recedes for the general public, it’s easy to lose grasp of certain slippery truths, such as this one: Steve McCraw, the longtime director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, has the authority under Texas law right now to release information that could shed light on what happened on May 24, 2022, at Robb Elementary School, when a lone gunman murdered nineteen children and two teachers. Instead, the state’s top lawman has wrapped a cloak of secrecy around the actions of his agency, even as he continues to pin the blame on former school district police chief Pete Arredondo, one of nearly 400 law enforcement agents, including 91 DPS officers, who responded that day.
McCraw often says he wants you to know the truth about Uvalde. He says he yearns for citizens to have the answers to questions such as:
Why did those nearly 400 law enforcement officers—more Texans than died at the Alamo—dither for 77 minutes while a gunman stalked the classrooms amid his dead and dying victims? Was Arredondo actually in charge that day? And who was responsible for the misinformation early on about the “amazing courage” of the police on the scene?
The DPS chief acknowledges that he has the authority to release mountains of information—documents, unedited body-camera footage, audio recordings—that dozens of media organizations and at least 92 individuals have sought through lawsuits and open-records requests. He agrees that he has broad discretion under Texas law to illuminate a police response he has repeatedly called an “abject failure.” And he readily admits that full transparency would be a salve to widespread mistrust of law enforcement by Uvalde residents. “I look forward to releasing all the information, all the evidence . . . because the public is in the best position to look at [it] and determine for themselves,” McCraw said in September.
But, sorry, he won’t do it anytime soon. Don’t blame him, though. He’s just following orders. Well, not orders, but a stern request. As McCraw keeps explaining, the district attorney for Uvalde County, Christina Mitchell Busbee, has asked government officials to keep everything secret until a criminal investigation of the police response is wrapped up, a process that could take years and may result in no prosecutions.
Please open the link and read more of this horrifying story.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
From the first time you posted on this, your instincts have proven to be correct. They are just taking their cue from other “Americans.” Knowing what actually happened about anything that doesn’t jibe with the preconceived narrative no longer matters.
Even though officials won’t admit it, the truth is already known to anyone who is not brain dead and was paying any attention at all:
Officials screwed up very badly.
To say “the truth may never be known” actually plays into the hands who won’t admit they screwed up because it implies that there is some reason for doubt.
But there is not any reason for doubt.
The official line in Texas right now: Blame the local school police chief. The state police chief says the state police are innocent.
Officials includes every official as far as I can see.
Not simply the local police chief.
Maybe that just obvious to me but I don’t think so.
Simply saying “the truth may never be known” implies that the truth involves something other than the “official story” and if one says that ,it implies that one already knows the truth (or at least a general version of it): that ALL officials screwed up (not just the local police chief)
A far more accurate way of putting it would be to say that “officials at all levels screwed up but most of them will never be held to account and the policies and people that led to the failure will remain”
The idea that we don’t know this with the information we already have is just not plausible.
No doubt, Uvalde was a horrifying
tradegy.
It’s easy to lose grasp of certain
slippery truths, such as scotus
rulings.
“Neither the Constitution, nor state law,
impose a general duty upon police officers
or other governmental officials to protect
individual persons from harm —
even when they know the harm will occur.”
The Supreme Court has repeatedly held
that the government has only a duty to
protect persons who are “in custody”.
“Custody is narrowly confined to
situations where a person loses
his or her freedom to move freely
and seek assistance on their own —
such as prisons, jails, or mental
institutions.”
“Courts have rejected the argument
that students are in custody of
school officials while they are on
campus.”
The truth is well know! We have a mental health problem among those who believe that mass shootings are a mental health issue. That access to weapons of war in not the real issue. Then we are repeatedly shocked to find out that many if not most police did not sign up to receive a medal for valor in a war zone.
known
Oh boy known and is not .
It’s a leadership and taking responsibility everywhere and at all levels thing.
Sure – in this one it’s the police delay and abject lack of coordination and action – in another it’s not enough prevention training – in another it’s the weapons that would get through any layers of security – in another it’s easy access to weapons – mental health care -parents – those who knew but didn’t tell or another and another.
It’s systems and systemic – and still that won’t prevent the un-preventable.
However – if the only time everyone – (only the schools think about it all the time) – thinks about school shootings is after a school shooting – nothing changes.
After this one – no one is thinking or doing anything about the dozen puzzle pieces that have to be in place – they are only looking for this one’s cause (understandably).
But will they ALL come back in the heat of July and no one in schools and put all the issues on the table at once? No posturing. No finger pointing. No brand. No inflexible stance.
Probably not.
This happened today, the insanity and the bloodbaths never end: ST. LOUIS (AP) — A gunman broke into a St. Louis high school Monday morning, fatally shooting a woman and a teenage girl and injuring six others before police killed him in an exchange of gunfire.
More than 400 police officers were there doing nothing.
How many of those 400 were CPOs for the Uvalde Public School District?
“Uvalde school district suspends its entire police department, and superintendent announces retirement plans”
https://www.texastribune.org/2022/10/07/uvalde-school-police-suspended/
I was a public school teacher for thirty years. The two public schools where I spent 28 of those years had CPOs. There was one CPO assigned to the dangerous middle school and four or five to the dangerous high school.
When I say dangerous, that was because of the dangerous multigenerational street gangs that lived in the community where those two schools were located and most of the members of those street gangs attended those two schools. The middle school had about 1,000 students, the high school 3,000. The student population of that district was about 19,000 with 1,000 teachers.
How many campus CPOs (campus police officers) did Uvalde have? According to what I found on Wiki, that school district has 4,150 students and about 259 teachers.
Here’s the answer I found: In February 2020, the district’s Board of Trustees approved Pedro “Pete” Arredondo as new Chief of Police of the UCISD Police Department.[17][18] As of 2022, Arredondo commanded a team of six officers.
SIX officers out of more than FOUR HUNDRED and the CPO chief with only 6 officers was allowed to be in charge?????????
Oh, I don’t know about that. I think we know full well what happened here. Hundreds of useless cops puffed out their chest and fluffed their feathers while one dude with a gun killed 19 kids and two teachers. Let’s not lose the point with all the florid prose coming out of these spokeholes; the truth is in plain sight. Just as plain as seeing Trump for the conman he was and seeing Clinton for the lying philanderer he was. We do not need the talking heads and suits to tell us what is patently obvious.
I am reminded that in certain less civilized cultures, when a person has failed as completely as these cops have, they would fall on their own sword as an act of contrition. While I dare not expect or hope for such decency in our hyper-civilized society, one may hope for even a symbolic version, no?
I could see 400 useless cops being relieved of their livelihood. Perhaps their consciences, assuming they have one or know how to use it, might even dictate they lay prostrate before the community they so thoroughly failed and beg for the mercy they could not muster when the time was upon them.
But I’m old and grumpy, delusional in my hopes. Most that will happen is some silly hand-wringing, some empty rhetoric about guns, and some folks will pray. All the while, very quietly and painfully, a whole lot of people are going to have to learn how to carry the weight of loss and the indignity of living amongst those useless blowhards in uniforms and people who continue to apologize for them.
Tom,
The worst error was that all these law enforcement officers were trained to go immediately into the classroom and take down the guy with the gun. What the hell were. they doing?
Posing plain and simple. Cowards in a job that requires conviction. Fakers and tourists in a town that needed true believers.
Tom
You said it much better than I.