Texas law enforcement officials are not interested in allowing the public to learn much of anything about what exactly happened at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, on May 24. This is likely in no small part due to the fact that virtually everything Texas officials first reported about the mass shooting event that killed 19 children and two adults has turned out to be wrong. Not only wrong, but in most cases the opposite of true.
Texas officials are hoping they can hide behind the corrupt GOP leadership in Texas and “an exception in the Texas Public Information law that blocks information from being released in cases where no conviction has been made.” That exception has been used by Texas officials to hide their failed investigations and prosecutions against innocent citizens, but Texas attorney general and indicted-on-multiple-counts scumbag Ken Paxton has applied it to cases where the accused is already deceased.
Now, VICE reports that the “City of Uvalde and its police department” have decided to put some of its citizens’ tax resources towards hiring a private law firm to help them in the fight to keep the public from getting any details about what happened.
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Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin has already put himself on the record as saying guns are not the problem, mental health issues and immigrants are the problem. That’s his stance. Obviously, roving bands of immigrants did not kill the children in his community. His overinflated law enforcement budget did not protect them. In fact, the only time he has seemed to do anything was to yell at Beto O’Rourke when confronted with his own and Gov. Greg Abbott’s culpability in the tragedy. And even that was weak-sauce. Since the tragic killing of innocent children, Texas officials like McLaughlin have continued forward being racist and negligent to the communities they are sworn to represent.
VICE reports that it had obtained a letter to Paxton in response to the media outlet’s requests for public records in the case.
The letter makes clear that the city and its police department want to be exempted from releasing a wide variety of records in part because it is being sued, in part because some of the records could include “highly embarrassing information,” in part because some of the information is “not of legitimate concern to the public,” in part because the information could reveal “methods, techniques, and strategies for preventing and predicting crime,” in part because some of the information may cause or may "regard … emotional/mental distress," and in part because its response to the shooting is being investigated by the Texas Rangers, the FBI, and the Uvalde County District Attorney.
Also in the letter is that while Uvalde is using one in-house attorney, they are also trying to prevent the public from getting access to that city attorney’s “communications.” As a result, they are adding outside private counsel to help prevent the public from learning about the potential “weaknesses” in the police department’s response. They are also claiming that the “embarrassing” information that could come out to the public concerns the individual who murdered Uvalde children and teachers. This concern on the city and police department’s parts seems … suspect.
“They claim that the compilation of individuals’ criminal history is highly embarrassing information, which is a strange cover. The embarrassing information is the inept police response,” Christopher Schneider, a professor of sociology at Brandon University who studies police body cameras and the disclosure of footage from them, told Motherboard, noting that suspects' criminal histories are released by the police all the time without anyone having requested them. “They have no problem using information like that against individuals of the public. The information disclosure needs to go both ways, if that’s the case.” Disciplinary or criminal records for members of the police, for example, would be obviously relevant public information in a case in which the police response has been highly criticized. "It’s rather ripe to say any of this is not of legitimate public concern," he added. "The whole country is trying to figure out how to not allow this to happen again."
Considering that the evidence that has been disseminated so far seems to show that Texas law enforcement seems to be mostly thwarted by “bad guys with guns,” this excuse comes off as disingenuous.
In the end, what they lack is the courage to face Alexandria Aniyah "Lexi" Rubio—one of the 10-year-olds murdered at Robb Elementary School. They cannot face their own failures as (mostly) men. They cannot face their failures as (mostly) Christians. They cannot face children.
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