The shifting narrative about the law enforcement response to the Uvalde school massacre leaves one dizzy and frustrated. Every day seems to bring a troubling revelation. Police records can help the public piece together what happened at the school, but we are worried that a state law might block efforts to get at the whole truth.
Initial public pronouncements about the quick action of police crumbled fast. Yet even as new information has emerged, there’s still a lot that Uvalde families don’t know for sure. Why did Pete Arredondo, the chief of the Uvalde school district police force, arrive on the scene without a radio? Why did he call for officers to fall back even as gunshots had just been fired? Could a more aggressive response have saved lives?
Residents of Uvalde have good reason to question the credibility of law enforcement officials whose story has changed over and over. Police reports, bodycam footage and call recordings or transcripts can fill in some of their knowledge gaps.
But if police officials in Uvalde wish to delay giving answers, Texas law gives them an easy out. That’s because there’s a loophole in the state’s open records law dictating the release of records related to police investigations.
This provision of the Texas Public Information Act prohibits the disclosure of records related to an investigation that did not result in a conviction or deferred adjudication. This is known as the “dead suspect loophole.”
There were good intentions behind this language. The idea was to protect people who had been wrongly accused of crimes.
But what happens in practice is that police departments often block the release of records related to cases in which a person dies while in police custody or in an encounter with officers. Even the families of those who have died run into a wall trying to get records about their loved ones’ last moments, according to the reporting of KXAN-TV in Austin.
It’s too early to tell whether Uvalde police and other law enforcement agencies will be responsive to records requests or whether they will obfuscate. At any rate, the Texas Legislature should act to ensure transparency.
State Rep. Joe Moody, D-El Paso, has repeatedly proposed legislation that would have closed the dead suspect loophole by allowing the release of records when the person involved is dead. Moody’s latest attempt also failed, to the frustration of House Speaker Dade Phelan, a Republican.
“Unfortunately this much-needed, commonsense measure joined the ranks of many other [criminal] justice reform bills by meeting its death in the Texas Senate, where they stripped the language out,” Phelan tweeted. “I think it’s time we pass legislation to end the dead suspect loophole for good in 2023.”
Phelan is right, though the Legislature should go even further. It should tackle other roadblocks to government transparency, including “skeleton crew” provisions that public agencies latched on at the beginning of the pandemic and that some unfairly continue to cite to delay the release of records.
The families of Uvalde deserve honesty. Texas should not deny them the answers they seek.
George is Digismak’s reported cum editor with 13 years of experience in Journalism