Welcome to Texas Talk.

I'm Gilbert Garcia, metro columnist with the San Antonio Express-News.

On this show, we bring you in-depth one on one conversations with some of the most fascinating figures in Texas politics, culture, sports and business.

Tonight's guest is State Senator Roland Gutierrez, a San Antonio Democrat whose district includes the town of Uvalde.

In recent weeks, Gutierrez has received national attention as he has given voice to the grief of even Uvalde residents coping with a school shooting that took the lives of 19 children and two teachers.

Even before the Uvalde shooting, Gutierrez was one of the state's most ardent advocates for gun reform.

He'll talk about his hopes and concerns for the state and what led him into a political career.

Let's get started Senator, good to have this.

Thank you so much for being part of the show.

Thank you.

I know that your time and energy has been consumed with you.

The Uvalde School shooting on May 24th at Robi Elementary.

And I wanted to talk to you a little bit about the fact that there's been so much confusion over what happened that day and the WHO bears responsibility for the fact that for roughly an hour you had law enforcement officers in the hallway of the building and while you had people in the classrooms calling 911 for help you.

There's an express news story this week written by Brian Schatz, not in which you talk about the fact that Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steve McCraw told you that there were up to 13 DPS troopers in and out of the building that morning and that he said that DPS would never stand down again.

Now, at the same time there, the school district police chief put out a thunder, has said he wanted to go into the classrooms it was impossible to breach the door and that they had a hard time finding keys.

And that was the delay.

So from what I gathered from the story where you talked to to Brian about the DPS director, it sounded as if he was indicating that that DPS had the manpower and the equipment to be able to breach the door and get into the classrooms.

Was that your understanding so?

Absolutely.

Gilbert.

That was my understanding.

Know.

And there is something to be said for that conversation between a legislator and a state agency director and that and that at times that those moments are certainly private.

But what we have seen from DPS and what we've seen from the governor's office and what we've seen from the district attorney's office, to obfuscate, to hide what's going on here has brought me to the point where those conversations need to be told and those conversations were once that there were two DPS troopers in the hallway, and then on June 2nd that there were as many as 13 troopers in that hallway.

Develops DPS wants to dispute any of that.

I can assure you that those things are true.

My particular position as a legislator is that I need to be the guys that are accountable to me.

Are those troopers and I need to see where they were, why they acted or didn't act, why they were taking orders from someone else.

Or if indeed those orders were even given by anybody else.

We have heard a lot of finger pointing.

We've heard a lot of falsehoods coming out of DPS.

This is probably the most infamous criminal response in Texas recent history.

And unfortunately, it's shrouded and it shrouded because the leadership of the governor wants it.

So DPS is covering up whatever happened there.

And now you have a district attorney that is hiding it behind a criminal investigation and the perpetrator is dead.

Who are we going to indict here?

This community in Uvalde deserves to know what happened.

And the people of Texas deserve to know.

And we as legislators need to know so that this never happens again.

Along those lines, the deepest director on the week of the school shooting said that Pete, other than the school district police chief, was the incident commander, meaning that he was the person in charge on the scene.

Pete Out of Town has given an interview to Texas Tribune where he said he did not consider himself to be the incident commander.

Is is it clear to you who was in charge and who really was able had the authority in that situation?

It's completely not clear to me or anyone.

There's we got these two competing narratives now.

DPS is narrative and acted on those narrative.

But DPS also let us know some other information that they directly leaked.

One of their officers leaked to The New York Times.

It was also told to me by McCraw, and I believe gave that to some media news source shortly after the New York Times article came out with one of the DPS folks leaking this information.

The information was that Arredondo didn't have communications, didn't have his radio.

Yeah.

Consciously decided not to take his read it.

Consciously decided not to take his radio.

Well, they said that they didn't know why they had it why he didn't have them.

He later tells us that he made a conscientious decision to leave his radios outside for whatever reason.

But that right there that piece of information to me as a lawyer says, Well, how in the world is Peter Redondo, whom I've never met before, by the way?

How is he then the incident commander?

How does he communicate to the other police that are arriving on scene that he's in charge?

Is he wearing a red shirt that says incident commander?

I'd argue that he wasn't.

Did he yell as the shots were being fired in that hallway?

I'm in charge.

He says he didn't And so all of this to me requires a thorough answer from DPS.

Notice I didn't say investigation.

They have it all right there in front of them.

They have body cam footage.

They have cameras from the school.

They have ballistics reports.

They have everything we need in those body cams, by the way, have GPS.

So it will tell us exactly where those officers are in the building.

I don't blame them.

I just want to find out for myself what went wrong so that we can institute policies so this doesn't happen in almost park or River Oaks or on the west side of San Antonio or anywhere.

One of the questions I've had about this and maybe you have some clarity on this is if Pete did not have his radio, there were other officers there.

I would imagine that that some others had were aware of the 911 calls or should have had the ability to to sit there.

It should have been some communication getting through to them.

What is what have you been told on it?

So where is my role as a legislator?

And in this process, in all the time that has been out, it has been about getting families the resources that they need.

And no point should I be made to play investigator, but I have been.

So I called SAC, which is the Commission on Emergency Communications, State Emergency Communications.

And that's why I had to give a press conference, because DPS wasn't telling us it was all down to our down to our window.

But the communications are being dispatched by you, Valley P.D., to as many as 17 first responders, which would have been aired on this team.

But Arredondo didn't have a radio Mm hmm.

It would have been to Uvalde, DPD, to the sheriff's office, to DPS.

Maybe the more tech who knows the dispatchers were coming out during those 48 minutes, you know, dispatch that says, hey, I'm only assuming here a child just called in and they're still alive.

And yet nobody was breaching that building.

And by the way, Steve McCraw did tell me that we had adequate resources to breach that building.

And so, again, we get down into those private communications between a legislator and a director of DPS, but their behavior and their actions now require me to go off into that space where I was told nothing off the record, by the way, I was simply given admonitions by Steve McCraw as to what happened.

Senator, I wonder where you were on May 24th when you heard the news.

Where were you?

What were you doing when you first found out?

I was slated to have a fundraiser in Austin, Texas, and I canceled that fundraiser at 1 p.m.

I got a call that there was a shooting I was already in Austin I got a call that it's not an official call, just a friend of mine whose husband works for TDCJ and he had heard the call and she called me and said, Hey, listen, there's a shooting in your valley and one child is dead.

And then by 2:00, you know, I'm hearing that this is escalating It was already over by then, quite frankly.

But we're starting to get numbers trickle in.

By 3:00, my amount was at four, 430 by 3:00 I decided that I'm out of here.

I leave Austin to San Antonio and from San Antonio I head out to evaluate my first communication with DPS was at 513.

By that time the number was 18 dead and I was midway between San Antonio in the Valley.

I spent that night frozen and really frozen and I use that word because I was in their civic center that night called a reunification center where families were giving DNA and I felt powerless and helpless because these families were were very stoic and very quiet.

And I use this word before the juxtaposition of it all.

They were huddled in prayer I didn't I didn't want to interrupt that.

They were waiting on news.

They didn't want to say, Hey, I'm your senator.

I'm here to help.

It just was it didn't seem appropriate at the time.

So I was there talking to elected officials and the community and first responders and trying to see how I can help.

But I felt really powerless to be able to do anything.

There was no amount of consolation as families got the news.

One at a time, you would hear cries that not normal crying guttural, guttural screams and yells that no one should hear and no elected official in this state should ever have to do again.

But that's what that night was like.

I felt completely powerless.

Three days after the shooting, Governor Greg Abbott had a press conference and you body and you got up and spoke and urged the governor vehemently urged him to call a special session.

He has not done that.

But he did call on the lieutenant governor and the speaker of the House to create a special committees that would look into mass violence, school safety.

Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick did not include you on the Senate committee, even though you've already is part of your district.

Did you see that as this is some kind of payback because you spoke out because you were so outspoken on this issue?

Listen, someone has to speak for my constituents and we can't have this snow job that's happening right now.

The first thing I did the very next day is I sent a letter to the governor to send $2 million to a trauma center that was existing called RTI Community Health Development.

They serve 11,000 Chaldeans uninsured, and they have behavioral health.

By the time that press conference that the governor had the second one on Friday, I believe he wasn't invited to.

He committed $5 million to create a trauma center.

Why are we dropping money and recreating the wheel?

Right now, families are not even able to access the kind of care that they need to access where they can go to a clinic down the road that has a psychiatrist that can staff up with therapists.

And yet we're just throwing money at a problem so that the D.A., who's not a psychiatrist, who's a lawyer, can go manage a trauma center.

That, to me doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

And so far as the governor's the lieutenant governor's decisions you know, I don't blame him.

I mean, if he's going to, you know, answer to Greg Abbott, if Greg Abbott told him not to put me on the committee, I mean, that's between him and Greg Abbott.

I don't know.

I think you said the lieutenant governor told you he felt you were politicizing an issue, which I think, you know, politics leads to policy and to create policy.

There's an element of politics in that at all times.

I, I found that kind of curious because I think there's you can't really talk about the issue and what needs to change without some element of politics.

You know, people elect me to solve problems.

People would like Greg Abbott to solve problems.

This is now the fifth or sixth massacre after each one.

No special sessions roundtables, committee hearings, and nothing with recommendations that led to nothing more than an expansion of gun access and school hardening in 2019 $100 million.

He spent 40 times that 4 billion on border security border security that failed these children $4 billion last year on the border putting 1600 DPS troopers in those communities a for 100 or 150 in this region.

What what gun reform measures would you most like to see the state.

Enact what every Republican.

Listen I'm a gun owner I own guns I don't I don't own any I r fifteens I don't need one but every Republican constituent tells me raise the age limit on rifles to 21 because that makes sense and you have to be 21 to have a handgun but you could go buy a long gun or an AR 15 at age 18.

These companies are marketing to teenagers.

Daniel's defense took down their teenager ads.

They're marketing to these young men and they're not the only ones.

And the pattern recently has been the mass shootings have been committed by really young men.

70% of all school violence shootings, whether they're mass shootings or otherwise, are committed by people less than 21 years old.

We have a real problem in this country and stakeholders, governors don't want us politicians don't want to solve this problem.

The solution is the simplest of solutions have an age limit.

Red flags are a problem for them.

But they also know that the NHRA can go off and fight against red flags.

This 18 for 21 issue is a money issue.

When you look at the five to 6 million air fifteens that are manufactured per year, ask yourself what percentage of that and we're trying to find this data are being consumed by 18 to 21 year olds.

We're talking about billions of dollars not millions billions of dollars to these manufacturing companies.

You've talked about mental health services, the need for that body.

What are you hearing from the people in the community when they when they talk to you like what do they say this is?

What do they say that they need the most?

And what are you advocating for when it comes to a park for mental health services, which I know is really important.

We have a clinic down there that can handle this, if you would have funded them properly.

Right now, we have a lot of I welcome them all, by the way.

We have a lot of people bringing in therapists.

And the problem is continuity.

And two parents have brought this up, survivor parents have brought this up.

They were traumatized children is the you want me to see this therapist this week and then someone else the next week and someone else the next week.

And that's that piece listen, you know, at one point in my life, I've you know, I've seen a therapist.

I think we all have just to talk about things just because it's a good, healthy thing.

Sure.

That continuity, having a sane person there is important.

And so I asked Greg Abbott to fund this clinic so that kids can have that continuity to talk about whatever is ailing them.

And the kind of trauma that these little children have seen is like no other.

I had a little boy, the third grader and another classroom.

I heard all the shots.

I saw him with his dad.

His dad texted me, oh, boy, can't even speak a little girl that testified in Congress by video.

I talked to her mother yesterday, going to see her mom tomorrow.

I said, what can we do for her?

Can we send her to yes, to Texas, SeaWorld, Disney World, just something she says.

We thought about that.

She doesn't want to go to any place allowed.

She doesn't want to go where there's a bunch of people she wants to go to the beach, but they're trying to find a quiet place.

So I think I got a friend or two that can give them a nice beach house for a week or so.

I think that that's the least we can do.

Kind of trauma that these kids are experiencing, these parents and everybody in reality is significant.

I spent 14 days straight there and every night I'd leave in the morning, I'd come back at night around midnight, one to one the morning, and you get traumatized by it all, by all the grief, all the sorrow.

I'll be fine.

I'll be fine, too.

The mothers that lost their children and the fathers and all those children that saw this, all they have to look forward to ten, 20 years from now.

Is a dollar sense of pain.

Who never going to get their little kids back.

I know that you spoke with President Biden when he visited you body.

It was five days after the shooting that Sunday.

What did you talk about?

I said this community needs help.

They need resources.

We need mental health resources.

We need to raise the school.

His staff had called me early on about project serve and suggesting that there was a grant to raise the school.

What does it say about our country?

We have a federal grant that lives up to $45 million to raise a school that has been the subject of gun violence.

With that sort.

Of built into the system.

Now, that's part of.

It's unbelievable.

It's unbelievable.

I wanted to talk to you a little bit about your political career and how you got started.

You ran for political office in 2001 as the four city council on the South Side you were a 30 year old attorney.

What made you politically conscious?

What made you decide you want to take that step?

I was a on not newly lawyer, but almost newly minted lawyer.

My office was on the south side and the south side of town.

I lived in the back of that offi We didn't have any sidewalks I wanted to put sidewalks in in the community.

I lost that race by 150 votes.

I then ran for county commissioner, lost that and I thought I was done.

Ironically, the police officers union said you need to run again.

Well, I was going to ask you about this because one of the things that I thought about when it came to your career, I mean, obviously that you got elected to the state Senate in your second try.

But also, as you mentioned, you had that close runoff loss for city council being run for county commissioner in 2004.

And I think a lot of people might have thought, OK, maybe this just isn't for me.

And you came back the next year, took on an incumbent and got elected to city council.

Well, what was that process?

Well, yeah, and it was a police officer that was the incumbent, former retired police officer.

But the police officers union said, we need you to run.

And I said, you realize these, you know, police officers, you know, we want you we think you have a bright future.

I want everybody to know this.

I mean, from whoever's listening, I respect law enforcement 100%.

I respect police.

What's happened in you, Rowdy?

Was, admittedly by them, failure.

They've admitted that.

But what has subsequently happened in hiding much of the details of what happened is unacceptable.

In a democracy.

It is unacceptable in our state.

You have to be truthful with people.

I understand fear that those officers had.

I don't blame them.

I understand the trepidation.

I understand that those 45 minutes to them probably went by in four and a half minutes.

And to those families outside that room and probably 45 hours.

How angry are people in the community over the lack of transparency the fact that they feel that?

I think most of us feel that we're not getting.

They're angry because they're not getting the answers because it's hidden behind a criminal investigation.

For what?

Who are we going to indict here?

We just want the answers.

Pull the Band-Aid off, tell the truth, quit pointing fingers at everybody.

Sometimes when you mess up, you just got to just say it.

And so you're sorry and it'll never happen again.

And most people would understand.

Going back to, you know, your political career, you ended up leaving city council to run for the state house.

But I remember there was talk at the time your name is mentioned as a possible mayoral candidate at some point.

I think Phil Hardberger was mayor at the time.

There was a lot of talk about who might run to succeed him.

Was that ever something that you gave any thought to?

I mean, Gilbert, I think that every time I try to run for something, you know, it didn't end up so well in politics.

Usually for me, the opportunities usually found me.

As you can see, the last one moving up to the Senate seat, even moving up to the statehouse seat.

I like the space where I am in the Texas legislature because I like to talk about those 60,000 foot policy issues.

Not that I love talking about picking up trash and making sure that people speed bumps were in place and making sure we had curbs and sidewalks.

That was important.

We built that library in my tenure, you know, we got Johnson, Texas, to agree to sell us to driving.

And after I left, they were able to build that library.

I loved all of those things.

But I think I'm where I'm at I think that this cultural fight we're having in this state needs to stop and we need to talk about education and health care and transportation and doing progressive things and getting guns off of the streets.

Right.

So that we can live productive lives.

This state is one of the few that is so culturally just we're just got these political cultural wars and they need to stop and I'm just going to be the person up there that tries to get them to stop in.

When you ran in 2020 for state senate in 2018 after the El Paso shooting you called for a special session on guns at the time and that was a big issue for you in your 2020 Senate campaign that thing you talked about at the time was cannabis legalization.

But your argument for it was an economic one which is that this could create jobs, this could bring in revenue for the state which would not allow the state to do some other things.

Has it have the political leaders in the state softened at all on that issue or is that just an issue that it's going to be it's going to be a long term struggle.

I think we have to get rid of those political leaders and that's just the reality on that issue.

We could generate $3.6 billion in taxation from cannabis.

That money can go that could be a real school pardoning Bill.

Right.

If they want to say it's school hardening, we can spend $3.6 billion on that not 100 billion.

A hundred billion doesn't get us very far.

How tough is it being in the Senate as the member of a party who that's been out of power for your entire political career?

It's tough, but I got I got things done and I got them done by pushing back.

They killed a bill that was important to a constituent line of Texas Farmers Suicide Prevention Act.

We got it on as an amendment and they had no choice but to vote for it when farmers came up and said, that's a great idea and it's about getting more mental health in rural communities, who knew?

Right.

It was the last thing I said on open carry in the last 10 seconds.

I said, Because of this bill, kids are going to die never did I think that that bit of hyperbole was going to realize in my community.

So we fight and we're going to continue to fight.

Senator thank you so much for being part of the show.

We really appreciate it.

Thank you.

Thank you.

That's all for this edition of Texas Tech.

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