This all really is ridiculous.
The Texas Tribune, along with a group of other news organizations, filed a lawsuit Monday against the city of Uvalde, the Uvalde County Sheriff’s Office and the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District asking a judge to order the release of records related to the May 24 shooting at Robb Elementary School.
The lawsuit states that the local entities have unlawfully withheld information detailing the actions of their dozens of law enforcement officers who responded to the massacre, which the news organizations requested under the Texas Public Information Act. These records include 911 calls, radio traffic, officer body camera footage, police reports, training materials and school surveillance footage.
“For more than three months, the City of Uvalde, Uvalde CISD and Uvalde Sheriff’s Office have resisted the community’s calls for transparency and accountability,” said Laura Lee Prather, a First Amendment lawyer at Haynes Boone who represents the plaintiffs. “Their obfuscation has only prolonged the pain and grief of this tragedy. Today we are asking the Uvalde District Court to heed the call of the community and recognize that the public is entitled to these records under Texas law. We ask that the court grant our petition so that the people of Uvalde can understand the truth about what happened that fateful day.”
[…]
The Tribune and other news organizations also previously filed suit against the Department of Public Safety over its refusal to release records related to the shooting. The agency’s director publicly pinned much of the blame for the flawed police response on the Uvalde school district police chief, though DPS has repeatedly declined to detail the actions of most of its 91 officers who were on the scene.
The city, county and school district have sought permission from the state’s attorney general to withhold information requested by the news organizations. Under the state’s public records law, documents can be exempted from public disclosure in certain circumstances. The lawsuit states that even after the attorney general informed the city of Uvalde that it could not withhold some documents sought by journalists, the city has yet to release them.
Other news outlets that joined Monday’s lawsuit include ProPublica, The New York Times Co., The Washington Post, Gannett, NBC News, ABC News, CBS News and Dow Jones & Co.
See here for some background on the previous lawsuit against DPS. That one was filed in Travis County, this one in Uvalde County. DPS had also been sued by State Sen. Roland Gutierrez, but it was dismissed for not having been filed correctly. I’m about as unsympathetic to the claims of whatever secrecy these entities have made, and even more so for their lack of action where they don’t even have that excuse. The public deserves to know, and these entities are just covering their asses. It’s long past time for us all to find out more about what happened.