The Uvalde DA is now on the hot seat

AP Photo/Jae C. Hong

If you’ve noticed that we haven’t been hearing much of anything from the Uvalde Schools Police Department lately, you’re not alone. The residents of the town have grown to be more than frustrated by the lack of updates in the investigation. That is particularly true of the families and friends of those that were killed or injured. But after an initial flurry of constantly changing stories, almost all of which turned out to be blatant untruths, officials from law enforcement and the municipal government have gone silent. There was a very minor exception to that trend over the weekend, however, when the Uvalde District Attorney who is investigating the massacre and the police response answered a question from a reporter. But she didn’t reveal much beyond saying that she has been “in touch with” the affected families. (ABC News)

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The district attorney investigating the May 24 massacre that killed two teachers and 19 students in Uvalde, Texas, revealed Friday that she has been meeting with the families of victims to update them on the ongoing investigation.

“We’re trying to make sure that they’re getting the resources that they need,” District Attorney Christina Mitchell Busbee, the top prosecutor in Uvalde, said in an interview at her downtown office. “And then I am telling them where I am in the investigation, and so those conversations have been ongoing.”

Busbee declined to tell ABC News which families she has spoken with and did not provide an update on the investigation of the shooting.

Busbee was pointedly silent about the status of the investigation to an almost insulting degree. She insisted that the Texas Rangers and the FBI must “have time to do their jobs.” She described the investigation as “complicated” and told a reporter that when the Rangers and the feds have completed their work, they will submit the results to her.

When pressed for additional information by ABC News, Busbee said that she would be putting out a written statement “at some point.” She briefly started to say something else about how she “would hope that everybody in this community knows…” before trailing off and saying she wouldn’t go any further.

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Those people in the community she’s talking about seem to have had enough of her act, however. At a City Council meeting on Thursday evening, residents were up in arms. Some were calling for Busbee to “show your face” and demanded “answers to our questions.” But Busbee isn’t showing her face and she’s not offering any answers. This has led some members of the community to accuse her of covering up for the police. She still hasn’t released any of the photos or surveillance videos from the day of the shooting.

I’m not sure if Busbee is even aware of how bad this makes her look. Even if she’s not engaging in a coverup, her avoidance of the public certainly makes her look as if she is and she’s raising suspicions.

On top of that, it’s reasonable for the public to ask precisely how “complicated” this investigation could be. There is no question as to the identity of the perpetrator and he’s dead anyway. We’ve heard no suggestions indicating that he might have been working with an accomplice or had engaged in any other attacks. The facts of the mass shooting itself seem to be fairly clear. The only cloudy area involves how the police got it all so wrong. And if there are any updates on that front, the public would obviously be interested in hearing about them.

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In short, the police screwed up the response to the shooting and now it appears that the town is messing up the handling of the aftermath. We already saw the police chief step down from his newly minted seat on the City Council. From the sound of the current investigation, he may not be the last person to be out of a job.

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