Mayor Calls Paper 'Chicken' for Releasing Uvalde Footage

Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin slammed the Austin American-Statesman and KVUE Tuesday for releasing surveillance video taken inside Robb Elementary School during the May 24 mass shooting. The mayor, speaking during a town council meeting Tuesday night, called the move "one of the most chicken things I've ever seen," the Hill reports. McLaughlin said the city had been planning to release the footage on Sunday, but without the sound of gunshots or images of the gunman entering the school. Families of victims "don’t need to relive that—they’ve been through enough," the mayor said. The 82-minute video shows officers waiting for 77 minutes before they confronted the gunman.

Council member Ernest King also criticized the news organizations. "That part of that video was not supposed to be in what they’re doing on Sunday," he said. "They did that for ratings and they did that for money." State Rep. Dustin Burrows said earlier Tuesday that a panel investigating the shooting planned to show a version of the video to families Sunday before it was publicly released. The American-Statesman, which has defended its release of the video as a way to shed light on police inaction, says some residents at the council meeting approved of the release and criticized a lack of transparency from the mayor.