Schools in Uvalde, Texas, suspend police force after bungled shooting response
- A new wave of outrage was prompted by the hiring of a state trooper from the team that waited over an hour outside classrooms while children lay dying inside
- A total of 21 people were killed by a teen gunman during the May incident, in one of America’s deadliest school shootings
Uvalde’s school district on Friday pulled its embattled campus police force off the job following a wave of new outrage over the hiring of a former state trooper who was part of the hesitant law enforcement response during the May shooting at Robb Elementary School that left 21 dead.
School leaders also put two members of the district police department on administrative leave, one of whom chose to retire instead, according to a statement released by the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District. Remaining officers will be reassigned to other jobs in the district.
The extraordinary move by Uvalde school leaders to suspend campus police operations – one month into a new school year in the South Texas community – underscored the sustained pressure that families of some of the 19 children and two teachers killed in the May 24 attack have kept on the district.
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.
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Uvalde families have said students in the district are not safe so long as officers who waited so long to confront and kill the gunman remain on the job.