Haynes and Boone, LLP Partner and Chair of the Media Law Practice Group Laura Lee Prather was featured in a WFAA news story and the Y'all-itics podcast discussing the continued struggle to get more information from the Texas Department of Public Safety on the Uvalde school shooting.
Watch the full news story below:
Read an excerpt of the published article below:
“I haven’t seen so many tentacles of delay which is what we’ve seen in every aspect of these cases,” said Laura Lee Prather, an attorney from Haynes Boone, in this week’s episode of Y’all-itics.
She represents 18 local and national news outlets – from CNN to Sinclair – that have sued to get the public records in the case. TEGNA, the parent company of WFAA, is a party to that lawsuit.
“Let me give you a flavor of what hasn’t come out. No videos. No dashcams. No 911 calls. No autopsy reports. No ballistic reports. No toxicology reports. No witness interviews. No use of force reports, and the list goes on, and on, and on,” Prather explained. ...
"Oh, I think what we’re going to end up seeing is a number of different ways in which we can get better,” Prather explained. “We already know that the majority of these officers had active shooter training but not enough of it. We’ve already been able to establish that the students in that classroom had more training for shooters coming on campus than the officers who responded which is staggering – just staggering.” ...
“The video shows [police] on their cell phones and yet no text messages are being produced. If they’re sitting there on their cell phones and you can see that they’re texting – who knew what when,” Prather asked. ...
“We all know when we make a mistake, we need to do the right thing and fess up. And I just cannot fathom why [with] this clear, large mistake, that has been made – people cannot fess up and decide to do better,” Prather said. “There’s nobody in this state that wants DPS to fail. We all benefit from DPS learning and getting better from this but that doesn’t happen with an internal review. That happens with a full, transparent disclosure of information so external voices can say – hey did you consider this?”
