Vice: “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 the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde in part because, it argues, the footage could be used by other shooters to determine “weaknesses” in police response to crimes.
The office of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton will now review audio and body camera footage recorded by the department to determine if any of it can be released, according to a letter the department sent Motherboard in response to a public records request we filed asking for “photographs and audio as well as video records” recorded by Department of Public Safety officers.
…Soon after the shooting, in which a gunman killed 19 children and two teachers, Motherboard filed a public records request with Uvalde police, the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District, the Department of Homeland Security and DHS’s Customs and Border Patrol, and the Texas Department of Public Safety. In those requests, we sought body camera footage, CCTV footage, audio recordings, and photos from the scene in an attempt to gain more clarity about what law enforcement did at the scene of the shooting. Uvalde police, in particular, have been criticized for not following protocol and allowing the shooter to stay in a classroom without trying to stop him, and for preventing parents from trying to stop the shooter themselves. Authorities said that this was the “wrong decision.””