Texas Lieutenant Governor Blasts Police for ‘Not Telling the Truth’ on Uvalde Shooting

Police did not tell Texas officials and federal lawmakers the truth on their response to the Uvalde shooting, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick has said.

“This has been a long road. We’ve had, since I became lieutenant governor, when Governor [Greg] Abbott was elected back in 2014 we’ve had five shootings now – Walmart, Sutherland Springs, Odessa, Santa Fe and this shooting – 90 or so people killed, plus we’ve lost over 50 officers in the line of duty killed by violent criminals. So this takes a toll on you, and when we sit down with law enforcement, we expect to be told the truth in our briefing,” Patrick said, speaking to Fox News on Saturday.

Patrick said he was present at Wednesday’s police briefing for Abbott, other Texas officials, and senators before the governor’s press conference, but that they were “told a different set of facts than we now know.”

The lieutenant governor said he wasn’t sure whether the misinformation provided at the briefing was “purposeful” or not, but said “the bottom line is we have to have the facts and the truth because it only makes the situation worse for the families when they hear changing stories, and particularly when they heard about this 45 minute delay, or a security officer who wasn’t there even though we were told he was there.”

Patrick said families of the victims “have a right to be angry” over changes to the story made by officials in recent days, particularly amid revelations that police were ordered to wait for a tactical unit before engaging the shooter. “So imagine the parent who has to go through this for the rest of their life and they will be thinking ‘was my child still alive and could have been saved?’” Patrick said.

Patrick agreed with Texas Department of Public Safety director Steve McCraw’s assessment on law enforcement’s response. On Friday, McCraw said that there 19 officers on the scene, and that the decision to wait for a tactical team before breaching the door in the room the suspect and students were in and taking him down was “the wrong decision, period.”

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The lieutenant governor emphasized that the officers themselves remained inside the building, hunkering down in the hallway outside the classroom while being shot at, with two of them injured. “So these policemen did the right thing at the beginning, and many wanted to go in,” he said, suggesting the blame lies at the feet of the local police chief.

Uvalde School District Police Chief Peter Arredondo said he made the decision to hold off on sending officers into the room where the shooter was because he believed the gunman was barricaded and that children were not in immediate danger. However, multiple 911 call records revealed that children in the classroom were pleading with police for immediate help. At the same time, officers outside the school threatened to taser parents, and tackled, pepper-sprayed and handcuffed those who attempted to enter the building to retrieve their children.

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19 children ages 9-11 and two teachers were murdered by 18-year-old gunman Salvador Rolando Ramos, a former student of Uvalde High School with no criminal record, but who was known to have made threats to commit school shootings on social media. Ramos was shot and killed by an off-duty Border Patrol tactical team agent who arrived at the scene an hour after the first responders did.

The Uvalde massacre was the 27th US school shooting so far in 2022, and the deadliest since Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting of 2012, during which 27 people were killed.