In recent weeks, lawyers have come up with a variety of creative explanations for why police in Uvalde, Texas don’t have to release records that would shed light on why they stood around and did nothing as 19 children and two adults were murdered in an elementary school and what they did in the aftermath. Most infamously, a firm representing the City of Uvalde argued it shouldn’t have to release records because they might contain “highly embarrassing information” or “regard … emotional/mental distress.”
Now a firm representing the Uvalde Consolidated School District has come up with an entirely new argument: It doesn’t understand written English or Texas law.
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Last month, Motherboard filed a request with the district under the Texas Public Information Act requesting “Copies of all emails, text messages, and direct messages on messaging platforms including but not limited to WhatsApp, Signal, Wire, Telegram, Instagram, and Facebook between Pete Arredondo and either Daniel Rodriguez or Don McLaughlin dated between May 24, 2022 and June 1, 2022, with attachments provided as pdf files.”
Last week, Walsh Gallegos, a firm representing the school district, puzzlingly responded asking for clarification on two issues: “Please clarify whether you seeking information regarding a specific topic, and whether you are seeking information from District or personal devices.”
The answer to the first question was self-evident from the request; we were seeking copies of all emails, text messages, and direct messages between Arredondo, chief of the district’s police, and either Rodriguez, Uvlade’s police chief, or McLaughlin, Uvalde’s mayor, within the defined time frame. The answer to the second question was even more obvious; under Texas law, all official communications, even those carried out on personal devices, are public records.
The firm has not responded to Motherboard’s clarification (“I seek all responsive messages irrespective of subject or device. As you know, under the Public Information Act, public information held on a private device or in a private account must be released.”) or to a question about whether the clarifications were being asked in good faith or as a delaying tactic.
Not all agencies have been quite so cagey. The Texas Department of Public Safety, for its part, released hundreds of pages of three top officials’ correspondence to Motherboard that, if they didn’t reveal much new about the aftermath of the mass shooting or public agencies’ responses to it, did reveal that many police are proud of the work their peers have done in Uvalde and felt moved to write to Steve McCraw, head of DPS, to express this.
“I know you are going thru a very rough time,” wrote a man on May 27, for example. “I’m a retired Deputy Sheriff of 28 years. I was involved in 3 shootouts in my career and was shot myself in 2008. I just wanted to say me and my entire family and a lot of other people throughout the country and world support you and all of your men. Just like you said in your press conference, when bullets start flying the rules change. I’ll venture to guess not many of those reporters giving you a tough time have been in much more than a spitball fight.”
“Director McCraw,” a man identifying himself as a Texas trooper wrote on May 28, “I would just like to take a few seconds to commend you on the unenviable press conference you had to give relative to the tragedy in Uvalde Texas. It took nothing short of courage to stand up there and deal with the so called ‘Press’.”
Motherboard is not publishing these records because they are largely boring and irrelevant but contain lots of random people’s personal cell phone numbers.
