Uvalde's entire police department suspended after mass school shooting failings
The Uvalde School District has announced the suspension of its entire police department, amid ongoing public anger over failures during a mass school shooting in May.
The extraordinary move means the department won't be carrying out any activities while suspended.
The district has requested that extra troopers from the state be brought in to help cover their absence.
They said: "We are confident that staff and student safety will not be compromised during this transition."
On May the 24th an 18-year-old man shot and killed 19 children and two teachers at the school, and wounded many more.
The heavily criticised police response included officers waiting over an hour before entering the school to find the shooter, and scuffles between police at the cordon and parents waiting anxiously outside pleading to be allowed in to rescue children.
The officer tasked with leading the department following the attack, and the Director of the District's student services, were both placed on leave.
The move follows the sacking of a police officer who had been on the scene at Uvalde, which was the third deadliest school shooting in American history.
Brett Cross, whose 10-year-old son Uziyah Garcia was among the victims, had been protesting outside the Uvalde school administration building for the past two weeks, demanding accountability over officers allowing a gunman with an AR-15-style rifle to remain in a fourth-grade classroom for more than 70 minutes.
“We did it!” Cross tweeted.
The district said it would ask the Texas Department of Public Safety, which had already assigned dozens of troopers to the district for the school year, for additional help.
The move comes a day after revelations that the district not only hired a former Department of Public Safety trooper who was one of the nearly 400 officers who rushed to the scene of Robb Elementary, but that she was among at least seven troopers later placed under internal investigation for her actions.
Officer Crimson Elizondo was fired Thursday, a day after CNN first reported her hiring.