Former Uvalde mayor and freshman state Rep. Don McLaughlin has filed a bill to beef up law enforcement response to school shootings. McLaughlin was mayor during the Robb Elementary School shooting in 2022 and has been a critic of the law enforcement response to the attack that killed 19 students and two teachers.
“He was the mayor, and he called for transparency on some of the law enforcement failures of that tragic day,” said James Barragán, politics reporter for The Texas Tribune. “This bill is meant to address a lot of those shortcomings, where we know hundreds of police officers waited for more than an hour to enter the building where the shooter was barricaded.”
McLaughlin on Monday filed House Bill 33, which is among House Speaker Dustin Burrow’s priority bills this session.
“This bill would require law enforcement agencies to have an active shooter plan,” Barragán said. “It would require them to do exercise drills at least once a year, and to have coordinated plans for multi-agency responses. Those are some of the big failures that we saw during the Uvalde shooting.”
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