Texas police want to block officers’ body cam footage of the Uvalde elementary school massacre response from being made public.
The Texas Department of Public Safety has asked the state’s Office of the Attorney General to prevent the public release of police body camera footage from Robb Elementary.
TDPS officials have argued that the video could be used by other shooters to establish police “weakness” in responding to crimes, according to Vice.
A law firm representing the City of Uvalde has also asked the AG’s office to rule on records requests, according to the Associated Press, citing 52 legal areas they claim exempts the release of the records.
An 18-year-old gunman murdered 19 students and two teachers with an AR-15 rifle as law enforcement officers waited in a corridor outside the classroom.
Following the mass shooting in May, the TDPS director, Colonel Steven McCraw acknowledged that police did not follow protocol and that their failure to immediately storm the classroom was the “wrong decision.”
School district police chief Pete Arredondo, who says he did not have his police radio with him, told the Texas Tribune that he did not think he was in charge of the law enforcement response and believed someone else was.
A Border Patrol tactical unit eventually breached the classroom and shot and killed Salvador Ramos.
The Office of the Attorney General will now review the bodycam footage and audio of the incident to see what, if anything, can be released.
The state has an “exemption” law that protects information being released when no one has been convicted of a crime, and the Texas Attorney General’s office has ruled that it applies to a suspect being dead.
“Revealing the marked records would provide criminals with invaluable information concerning Department techniques used to investigate and detect activities of suspected criminal elements; how information is assessed and analyzed; how information is shared among partner law enforcement agencies and the lessons learned from the analysis of prior criminal activities,” the department wrote in a letter to the Office of the Attorney General.
“Knowing the intelligence and response capabilities of Department personnel and where those employees focus their attention will compromise law enforcement purposes by enabling criminals to anticipate weakness in law enforcement procedures and alter their methods of operation in order to avoid detection and apprehension.”
