The senator is accusing DPS of failing to respond to his filing or request a decision from the Texas attorney general by the 10-day deadline.
Agencies can either respond to a request for public information or defer to the Office of the Attorney General for guidance.
“In the wake of this massacre, the State of Texas has completely failed to provide the community of Uvalde with truthful answers,” Gutierrez said in a news release.
“Weeks have come and gone, and yet families who lost their children have not been told by their government the basic information about who was on site as their children bled, what tools were at their disposal to stop the gunman, and exactly why they decided to wait instead of act.”
The news release did not detail exactly what Gutierrez requested other than “several categories of information.”
He repeated criticisms of the law enforcement response to the shooting and again called for gun control.
“By not taking common sense gun safety measures to prevent such atrocities as this, the state of Texas failed 21 Texans, their families, and countless others touched by the tragedy. We must not fail these families again with cover ups and misinformation,” Gutierrez said.
DPS Director Steven McCraw called police actions on the day of the shooting an “abject failure” in testimony to Texas state senators on Tuesday. He ascribed many of the failures to the “on-scene commander,” whom he considers Chief Pete Arredondo of the Uvalde Independent School District Police Department.
Arredondo has said he did not believe himself to be the incident commander and was in fact seeking to take down the gunman himself.
Gutierrez was among a number of Democratic senators who called for gun control in a news conference at the state Capitol on Monday.
A copy of Gutierrez’s lawsuit can be found below.
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Hayden Sparks
Hayden Sparks is a senior reporter for The Texan and a lifelong resident of the Lone Star State. He has coached competitive speech and debate and has been involved in politics since a young age. One of Hayden's favorite quotes is by Sam Houston: "Texas has yet to learn submission to any oppression, come from what source it may."
