More than a dozen officers waited for over an hour outside classrooms where the shooting was taking place and did nothing as children lay dead or dying inside.
Uvalde's school district has suspended its entire police force amid fresh outrage over the hesitant law enforcement response to the gunman who massacred 21 people at Robb Elementary School in the US state of Texas.
The extraordinary move on Friday follows the revelation that the district hired a former state trooper who was among hundreds of officers who rushed to the scene of the May 24 shooting.
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.
The remaining officers will be reassigned to other jobs in the district.
Police in Uvalde have been under intense scrutiny since it emerged that more than a dozen officers waited for over an hour outside classrooms where the shooting was taking place and did nothing as children lay dead or dying inside.
Uvalde school leaders' suspension of campus police operations one month into a new school year in the South Texas community underscores the sustained pressure that families of some of the 19 children and two teachers killed have kept on the district.
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.
BREAKING: The Uvalde school district is suspending police activities and has placed the entire department on leave amid ongoing demands from parent about the police response on May 24.
— Tony Plohetski (@tplohetski) October 7, 2022
School massacre
The Uvalde school district had five campus police officers on the scene of the shooting, according to a damning report from Texas lawmakers that laid out multiple breakdowns in the response.
A total of nearly 400 officers responded, including school district police, the city’s police, county sheriff’s deputies, state police and US Border Patrol agents, among others.
The fallout on Friday is the first in Uvalde’s school police force since the district fired former police Chief Pete Arredondo in August.
He remains the only officer to have been fired from his job following one of the deadliest classroom attacks in US history.
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.
“We are confident that staff and student safety will not be compromised during this transition,” the district said in a statement.
The statement did not specify how long campus police operations would remain suspended.
245 hr update!!! We did it! And we are going home! pic.twitter.com/by9hJOLKRf
— Brett Cross (@BCross052422) October 7, 2022
US paralysis over guns
The former DPS trooper who was hired by the district was among at least seven troopers later placed under internal investigation for her actions at Robb Elementary.
Officer Crimson Elizondo was fired on Thursday, one day after CNN first reported her hiring.
Steve McCraw, the head of the Department of Public Safety, has called the law enforcement response to the shooting an "abject failure."
McCraw has also come under pressure as the leader of a department that had more than 90 troopers on the scene but still has the support of Republican Governor Greg Abbott.
On Thursday, after Elizondo was fired, Abbott called it a "poor decision" for the school to hire the former trooper and that it was up to the district to "own up to it."
School shootings have become a totemic reminder of the United States' paralysis over guns.
A majority of voters favour stricter controls on the use and purchase of firearms, but the country's political class has proved unwilling to respond in any meaningful way, citing a constitutional "right to bear arms."
READ MORE: Massive US rally demands changes in gun laws after recent shootings
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