roland gutierrez. well, okay. we re going to go to him in just a second. so we re trying to get him. we re having a little bit of a technical difficulty so we ll keep trying to get him, but while we wait for him to come in, i do want to play another sound bite from yasmin voussoughian who also interviewed a couple of people in uvalde about what she was talking about, about the police response, because the police response has been a big part of the question about what went wrong here. here is her interview with two people in uvalde about the slow police response and the fact that one of the police officers actually knew one of the girls who was killed. take a look. i haven t trusted the law enforcement here in a while. why is that? doesn t surprise me one bit. why? they are very slow moving, very slow moving. any time we ve had situations they are pretty slow. they could get better people. that s what i think. and the problem here being that in this community which we know
those of us who are people of color are familiar with this story. it s a sad one, about slow police response times when we call. it took ten minutes for police to actually arrive on the scene after the first 911 call of people nearby seeing a man with a long gun running towards the school. now i will introduce, he is here, state senator roland gutierrez. thanks for being here. i don t know if you were able to see that video and to hear yasmin voussoughian and her report, but it does feel like part of the story here, a big part of the story is number one a very, very slow response by local police and then local police being in charge of what happened even when federal authorities got there in a very, very, very slow response getting inside that school. you raised some concerns to the governor. have you had the concerns about that, about slow response and this police failure? i can only call it that. have you gotten any answers
that went pretty viral from a uvalde resident who lives near the school who says slow police response times and not having a great interactive relationship with police was actually not an uncommon thing in in community. how do you feel about, you know, this can t help, right, in a community that is low income and largely, you know, citizens of color when they feel unserved at the time when they needed police the most. well, certainly, you know, the folks that are accountable to me are the state troopers. at least they are accountable to the senators in the texas legislature. you know, these folks are going to have to go and talk to their mayor and council person. i have real concerns about the failure at every level. yeah. what i asked the governor today was a special session, a special session because we have to hold him accountable. we have asked for common sense gun laws for a very long time. we need a special session. we need a full investigation
about that? well, absolutely. i mean, first off, even the police you heard, steve mcgraw suggested that there was a failure. i know that he wants to put it on the local police. i would like to find out what we haven t heard from law enforcement, i ve asked them. i asked them to give us this account early. they wanted to wait a little longer, you know. the nokes in this community, transparency. what i would like to see is when the different agencies actually arrived. in my mind operational control would shift to an a agency with higher firepower, higher jurisdictional level, if you will. that didn t happen here. we allowed either the school police or the chief of police, i m a little bit confused as to who he s saying which chief was in operational command so that s a question that i need to have answered for myself. certainly then the federal government comes in and they execute. we really have a lot of issues and failures here. this community deserves to know and our country deserve
there s a reason the governor doesn t come out and day one and tell you that tiktok was happening with an active shooter situation. there is a reap in which officials wait until they have all the facts, all their ducks in a row before they brief the press because this is an incredibly sensitive situation and the parents and families deserve to know. yes, indeed. and that s where we are today. these families are reeling and they want answers. yasmin voussoughian, it is shocking the fail you re police in this instance. yasmin voussoughian, thank you very much. really appreciate you. texas state senator roland gutierrez, a democrat, confronted governor abbott at his press conference imploring him to reform gun laws. it s hard to hear him so we added subtitles. here s part of what he said. you have to do something, man. what he said. you have to do something, man. joining me now from uvalde is the very state texas senator