Good Riddance: Texas' Top Cop Cashes Out!

When you're the head honcho of Texas law enforcement, you get to ride off into the sunset on your own terms. Not to the sound of crying families from Uvalde, but to the applause of freshly minted Texas state troopers in Austin.

Department of Public Safety Director Steve McCraw announced his retirement on Friday, surrounded by praises from Gov. Greg Abbott. This isn't the resignation Uvalde parents wanted two years ago, as the department's failures and fake stories around the deadliest school shooting in Texas history became clear. But hey, better late than never, right?

"About time!!" said Brett Cross, who lost his son, Uziyah "Uzi" Garcia, in the Uvalde shooting, posting on social media about McCraw's retirement. "Good riddance."

Still, it's a hollow ending to the Uvalde tragedy, wrapping up McCraw's career nicely while sweeping accountability under the rug. Accountability would have been a full, public review of the 91 DPS troopers who mostly stood still for over an hour on May 24, 2022, while a gunman killed 19 kids and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde.

Instead, the DPS has been a brick wall. They're still fighting a court order to release records about the shooting, and McCraw refused for 18 months to hear the appeal of Texas Ranger Christopher Ryan Kindell, one of only two officers who got termination papers for the Uvalde response (the other trooper retired).

With hundreds of law enforcement officers from various agencies at the shooting scene, it's hard to pin blame on any one officer. But, as reported in January, blocking Kindell's appeal stopped the matter from reaching a public hearing that would have scrutinized the entire DPS response. Any hope for that reckoning vanished earlier this month when McCraw quietly reinstated Kindell.

Accountability would have also been the Public Safety Commission holding McCraw to his 2022 pledge to resign if the DPS had “any culpability” for the botched response. Instead, incredibly, commissioners praised McCraw last year as they gave him a $45,437 raise, boosting his annual salary to $345,250.

Somehow, between a Texas House committee finding "systemic failures and egregious poor decision making” and the U.S. Justice Department documenting law enforcement’s “cascading failures” at Uvalde, McCraw got a 15% raise.

That pay hike, granted exactly a year ago, raised the average of McCraw’s three highest-earning years, which means a higher monthly pension when he retires.

“We are truly fortunate to have somebody of the caliber of Steve McCraw as director of the Department of Public Safety,” Public Safety Commission Chair Steven P. Mach said last year. And on Friday, Abbott praised McCraw as “a leader, visionary, and the quintessential lawman that Texas is so famous for — big, white cowboy hat and all.”

Wow. Good thing our DPS chief looked the part.

Sure, McCraw spent 15 years leading a huge agency with tough jobs, from running Abbott’s Operation Lone Star border security effort to handling highway patrols to operating the state’s driver’s license offices.

“There is no more important responsibility in government than ensuring the safety and security of our citizens,” McCraw wrote in his retirement announcement. Leading the DPS, he added, "has been the greatest honor of my life."

The tragedy in Uvalde wasn't McCraw's entire career, but the failed response and fake stories are forever part of his legacy, even if the official retirement announcements don't mention it.

Texans won’t forget, and the Uvalde parents who buried their children two years ago won’t give up. Nineteen families of the victims sued the DPS and 92 officers in May, turning to the courts for some much-needed accountability.

McCraw may be retiring on his own terms, but his story isn't over.

Grumet is the Statesman’s Metro columnist. Her column, ATX in Context, contains her opinions. Share yours via email at bgrumet@statesman.com or on X at @bgrumet. Find her previous work at statesman.com/opinion/columns.