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Uvalde school shooting: Texas DPS suspends 2 officers with pay during investigation into response - Feedavenue
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Uvalde school shooting: Texas DPS suspends 2 officers with pay during investigation into response

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CNN
 — 

Two officers with the Texas Department of Public Safety who were at the scene of the Uvalde school massacre have been suspended with pay while an investigation takes place into their actions that day, the department said on Tuesday.

DPS has asked for an independent review of the actions of some of its officers during the Robb Elementary School shooting in which 19 students and two teachers died, according to a spokesperson.

The response by law enforcement to the May 24 massacre has come under intense public scrutiny – and enraged families in Uvalde – notably the fact that officers from several agencies waited for more than an hour before a team shot and killed the teenaged gunman in a classroom.

“In July, DPS announced the formation of an internal committee,” department press secretary Ericka Miller said in a statement. “Five DPS law enforcement officers have now been referred to the Office of Inspector General where a formal investigation into their actions that day will take place. Thus far, two of those five officers have been suspended with pay pending the outcome of the (office’s) investigation.”

The department did not identify the officers being suspended.

Department of Public Safety Director Steven McCraw originally pinned the delay on then-Uvalde school district police chief Pete Arredondo, who he said was acting as the incident commander. Arredondo has said repeatedly that he was not commanding officers that day. He was fired by the district late last month.

McCraw had said that there would be an internal review of actions taken by his department’s officers during the Uvalde shooting, but he had not previously stated that any officers would be referred for an independent review.

“In public testimony before the Senate Committee to Protect Texas, I stated that the law enforcement response to the active shooter attack at Robb Elementary School was an abject failure,” McCraw said in July in a letter to “fellow employees” that was released Tuesday. “Every agency that responded that day shares in this failure, including DPS.”

In the same email, McCraw announced what he called an “addition” to the DPS shooting response policy. “DPS Officers responding to an active shooter at a school will be authorized to overcome any delay to neutralizing an attacker,” McCraw wrote. “When a subject fires a weapon at a school he remains an active shooter until he is neutralized and is not to be treated as a ‘barricaded subject.’”

According to the report from a Texas House investigative committee, first responders “lost critical momentum” by treating the situation as a “barricaded subject” scenario, which calls for a more measured response compared to an active shooter.

As students went back to classrooms Tuesday for the first day of the new school year, many parents remained angry at the lack of accountability for what happened May 24 and with law enforcement for their actions that day.

Brett Cross, who was raising his nephew Uziyah Garcia, one of the victims, told CNN he has four other children in the school district. He’s struggled to decide whether to send them back to school in person.

“We’ve already seen that (law enforcement officers) didn’t do their job. So how are we supposed to trust that?” he said last week. “I don’t feel like my kids are safe.”

The father of third grader Zayon Martinez said his son was too traumatized by the shooting during which he was hiding under a desk.

“I went and talked to my son and I told him, ‘They’re gonna have more cops. They’re gonna have higher fencing. And he wasn’t having it,” Zayon’s father, Adam Martinez, said.

“He said, ‘It doesn’t matter. They’re not gonna protect us.’”



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