Texas State Sen. Roland Gutierrez (D) said a video showing the police response to a gunman who shot and killed 19 children and two adults at a Uvalde elementary school in May “doesn’t really show the entire picture.”
The Texas lawmaker told CNN’s John Berman that the video is a “made-for-TV” moment and he has seen about three minutes of the initial video of the shooting.
The Austin-American Statesman released an abridged four-minute video depicting police slowly gathering in the hallway at Robb Elementary School before confronting the gunman as well as the full 77-minute recording, which shows the time from when the shooter arrived at the school to when he was killed.
Gutierrez said he has seen a version of the video showing “construction material” flying near the heads of seven officers who kneel down to avoid being hit. He said that, when talking about the shooting, people are not focused enough on the gunman’s AR-15 rifle and the lack of response toward the weapon from the officers.
“That is what caused these police to fortify themselves,” he said, referring to the weapon that the gunman used. “It’s unfortunately what those little babies had to endure for 77 minutes, and yet we’re not talking about that because Republicans don’t want us to talk about guns. They want us to talk about other things.”
Gutierrez said the police response to the shooting was “horrible” and not in line with active shooter protocol.
Controversy arose over whether the security camera footage should be released to the public. State Rep. Dustin Burrows (R), who chaired the Texas House panel investigating the shooting, said on Monday that an agreement had been reached to release the tapes to the public, but the state’s Department of Public Safety (DPS) denied this.
Burrows pledged to release the video himself after the initial public release, but DPS Deputy Director Freeman Martin told ABC News that the department would not allow Burrows to receive the tapes.
Gutierrez said he is concerned for families who were promised the ability to receive a preview of the security footage before it was released to the public. He said someone would have had to leak the photo to him.
He said he wants Burrows to show the video displaying the materials flying near the officers as a result of the shooter’s active firearm.
“We deserve to see all of the footage,” he said. “We deserve to have it dismantled, presented by independent groups like the FBI. We need to be able to see what truly happened.”