Patrick Muddies Uvalde Truth Quest
By Ignoring DPS Inaction Revelations

Capitol Inside
June 22, 2022

Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick seemed to miss the most critical piece of news that a special Texas Senate committee made on Tuesday when he parroted the Department of Public Safety chief's insulting appraisal of the local police at a mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde last month.

Patrick said in an interview with Fox News host Laura Ingraham that he'd decided to have the special Senate Committee To Protect All Texans conduct the first truly public hearing on the massacre to clear up misinformation and confusion on the failed law enforcement response at the scene of the massacre.

"The public has a need and right to know what happened," Patrick said - portraying the response as a "total failure of police work" based on DPS Director Steve McCraw's testimony to the panel in the first of back-to-back hearings on the rampage that killed 19 students and two teachers on May 24.

"It's now clear, had they gone right in right away, they probably would have taken down the shooter," Patrick speculated. "There may have been law enforcement hurt. That is their job, sadly."

Patrick ran the risk of contributing to the grief and suffering in the small South Texas city when he suggested that the prevailing conclusion was that death count would have not been as high if police hadn't waited for backup for more than an hour before the U.S. Border Patrol arrived on the scene and killed the teenage gunman.

Patrick focussed almost exclusively in the television appearance on revelations that a door to connecting classrooms where the shooter was barricaded hadn't been locked as local school police Chief Pete Arredondo appeared to think while waiting for a key. The misunderstanding on the door lock is one in a series of red herrings that the DPS has trotted out with leaks to mainstream media publications that have bought into the original McCraw that blamed the entire fiasco on the local school chief without assigning any blame to the DPS for failing to take command at the scene and end the siege.

After depicting the special panel that he appointed as a search for the truth, Patrick gave the impression in the conversation with the Fox News personality that he'd made up his own mind before the committee convened on Tuesday.

The Republican lieutenant governor declined to mention that McCraw had fumbled for answers when Democratic State Senator Juan "Chuy" Hinojosa of McAllen and Roland Gutierrez of San Antonio pressed him on the DPS inaction at the scene where more than a dozen state police stood down to Arredondo.

The Senate hearing made it clear that the DPS could have stepped up, seized command and taken the killer out in a move that might have saved lives. But Patrick said nothing about that fact in discussion with Ingraham.

more to come ...