A Texas Ranger was fired a year ago over Uvalde. And we keep paying his $100K salary | Grumet

It’s almost as if they’re waiting for Texans to lose interest, hoping time will take the edge off the outrage, blunting the impact of any further revelations about the Uvalde school shooting.

How else to explain the fact that former Texas Ranger Christopher Ryan Kindell has been in limbo for a full year, technically terminated but still drawing a nearly $100,000 salary?

In January 2023, the Department of Public Safety fired Kindell over his role in the disastrous Uvalde response, in which hundreds of law enforcement officers waited more than an hour to confront the shooter, who killed 19 students and two teachers. DPS Director Steve McCraw famously called the response “an abject failure.”

“In law enforcement, when one officer fails, we all fail,” McCraw said in the weeks after the massacre.

Yet among the 91 DPS officers who responded that day to Robb Elementary, Kindell is one of only two who were fired. In the termination letter, McCraw said Kindell should have recognized the situation "demanded an active shooter response rather than a barricaded subject situation."

Texans can debate whether Kindell shoulders particular blame for the infuriating inaction of so many. (For what it's worth, his direct supervisors did not fault him. Kindell didn’t return my requests for comment.)

The problem is we’re not even having the conversation. So far DPS has refused to hear Kindell’s appeal, which means there’s been no public hearing on his case — denying both the Ranger and the Uvalde community the opportunity for a full airing of that day.

Once he was served with termination paperwork on Jan. 6, 2023, Kindell had five days to request a meeting with McCraw to appeal that decision. He made that request.

Kindell has been waiting for that meeting ever since.

He remains on paid leave while the appeal is pending. (Records show Kindell even picked up an $8,743 raise while he was sitting at home last fall, when state employees received their pay bumps.)

Normally, if a fired officer’s meeting with the director doesn’t change anything, that officer can take his appeal to a public hearing before the Public Safety Commission. But none of that can happen as long as McCraw refuses to meet with Kindell.

“That meeting has not occurred and will not occur until the Uvalde County District Attorney has finished her investigation and the grand jury has made a decision on criminal charges related to the May 24, 2022, mass shooting at Robb Elementary School,” DPS spokeswoman Ericka Miller told me via email, giving the agency’s first public explanation for the delay.

Who knows how long that will take. Uvalde District Attorney Christina Mitchell, who told reporters last summer she planned to present evidence to a grand jury by the end of 2023, did not respond to my questions.

But wait: If DPS can't do anything with Kindell until the grand jury makes its call, why did McCraw decide a year ago to fire him?

And if DPS already had the information it needed to fire Kindell — wholly apart from whatever the grand jury might do — why can’t the appeals process go forward?

Miller did not respond to my follow-up questions. But it seems as if DPS wants to have it both ways: the ability to fire someone in the name of accountability for Uvalde, but also the ability to delay a public hearing that would inevitably heap scrutiny and shame on the agency.

So here we are. Texans keep paying Kindell's salary, and DPS keeps the controversy quiet.

“It’s appalling,” said state Sen. Roland Gutierrez, who believes dozens of troopers should have been fired for not stopping the school shooting. Instead, just a handful were disciplined, he said, and “Kindell might as well be on paid vacation.”

“Everything the Uvalde district attorney is doing is to slow walk DPS from answering for their failures,” continued Gutierrez, a San Antonio Democrat whose district includes Uvalde. “This community and these families deserve a hell of a lot better than what Texas Republicans have given them. They deserve transparency and accountability, but also dignity and respect.”

They also deserve the information that the Austin American-Statesman and other news outlets have sued to obtain — and are still waiting to receive — about law enforcement’s handling of the deadliest school shooting in Texas history.

State Sen. Judith Zaffirini, a Democrat from Laredo, emphasized the need for providing transparency and following procedures in order to maintain public trust.

“The families of Uvalde, particularly those who lost loved ones, deserve clear and consistent communication throughout these investigations,” said Zaffirini, a member of the Texas Senate Special Committee to Protect All Texans, which heard testimony about the tragedy in Uvalde.

But for now, Texans are getting the opposite with the saga of Ranger Kindell. No public hearing. No answers in sight.

Perhaps DPS is waiting it out, hoping public interest will fade. But Texans’ outrage over the delays at Uvalde will only intensify the longer we wait for answers.

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

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Grumet: DPS keeps delaying hearing for Texas Ranger fired after Uvalde