In the months after an 18-year-old armed with an AR-15 killed 19 youngsters and two teachers at a school in Uvalde, Texas, the state’s top cop pledged to resign if he or any of his officers were found to have “any culpability.”
“If DPS as an institution—as an institution—failed the families, failed the school or failed the community of Uvalde, then absolutely I need to go,” Steve McCraw said during a heated public safety meeting with families in Oct. 2022. “But I can tell you this right now: DPS as an institution, right now, did not fail the community—plain and simple.”’
Since that day, McCraw has quickly backed off his promise—even after the release of a 575-page report Thursday which reveals how the DPS and other authorities failed in their attempts at handling the massacre.
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The report, Critical Incident Review Active Shooter at Robb Elementary School, details massive “cascading failures” surrounding the May 24, 2022, shooting at Robb Elementary School and points the finger at law enforcement on every level, making it clear that the mistakes made not just by the town or school police, but all the police on scene—including the DPS—led to the tragic deaths of 19 children and two staff members.
Nearly 400 officers from four agencies did nothing for 77 minutes to confront the shooter, it adds. Of the 376 cops at the scene, 91 were from the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS.)
Because of these damning facts, McCraw needs to make good on his pledge and resign now.
Felicha Martinez, mother of Uvalde school shooting victim Xaver Lopez, cries while listening to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland speaking about the Department of Justice Incident Report on the police response to the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School, in Uvalde, Texas, U.S. January 18, 2024.
Jay Janner/USA Today Network via ReutersMcCraw did fire a DPS sergeant in October 2022 and suspend a DPS ranger months later, in January 2023, who had been at the scene. But he took no action against the 89 others who had been present, or those in the chain of command that culminated with himself. He remained determinedly in place. He even got a 15 percent raise, bringing his annual salary to $345,250.
More money, however, did not reduce McCraw’s actual culpability. Texas State Sen. Roland Gutierrez thinks that McCraw, along with his boss, Gov. Greg Abbott, share responsibility for “the worst law enforcement response to a school shooting in our nation's history.”
“Let’s be very clear, this governor, this government in Texas, the Department of Public Safety, Steve McCraw, the state absolutely abrogated their responsibility to these children,” he told The Daily Beast on Thursday. “They failed in every way imaginable.”
Of DPS’ role, he said: “They were the biggest presence of law enforcement. The most police officers on the scene was the state of Texas. They knew or should have known what to do in this incident, and they failed.”
Gutierrez took McCraw to task for allowing the town cops and former Uvalde CISD Police Chief Pete Arredondo take the blame.
“To put it on the local police [and] small town cafeteria school cop is just not good enough,” Gutierrez said. “The fact is, the Texas Rangers went in there, all supposedly good guys with the white hats, and they screwed up and they screwed up royally, and they left those kids to die.”
The kids included Lexi Rubio, a fourth grader who got straight As and hoped to become a lawyer because she wanted to make a difference in the world.
“We already knew that officers failed that day,” her mother said to The Daily Beast as she paused at page 40 of the DOJ report. “We just wanted the world to know what we knew… we were failed, our children were failed, those teachers were failed.”
She hopes that these pages will themselves make a difference and that McCraw will take some responsibility..
“I want our local officials to read this report and take action,” she said. “I’m hoping that there are terminations and that there’s criminal prosecution. Nobody can hide from this.”
She said she remembers McCraw’s promise to resign if he or his agency were shown to have any culpability.
“I think it would mean a lot to the citizens of Texas that he keep his word,” she said.
McCraw did not respond to a request for comment.
