On Tuesday, the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) stated that five policemen are being investigated for their response to the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, in which 19 kids and two teachers were slain. As Uvalde students returned to school for the first time since the attack, the news was made.
The DPS has sent the five officers to the state’s Office of Inspector General for a “formal review into their actions that day.”
DPS stated that two of the five officers have been suspended without pay pending the outcome of the inquiry. The identities of the five officers were not disclosed.
Tuesday, the department also revealed an internal employee message sent by DPS Director Steven McCraw in July.
In it, McCraw stated that the agency had made a “improvement” to the Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Reaction Training (ALERTT) curriculum in response to the Uvalde massacre. ALERTT is a program the state uses to teach its officers on how to respond to active shooter scenarios.
McCraw stated in a memo to staff, “DPS officers responding to an active shooter in a school will be authorized to overcome any delay in disarming an attacker.” “When a subject shoots a weapon at a school, he must be considered as an active shooter until he is neutralized and not as a “barricaded subject.” We will give the right training and procedures for identifying and overcoming poor command decisions at a scene of an active shooter.”
In June, during evidence before the state Senate, McCraw described the response to the shooting as a “abject failure.”
376 law enforcement officers reacted to the May 24 shooting at Robb Elementary, according to a comprehensive assessment on the incident released in July by a special committee organized by Texas lawmakers. Surveillance footage revealed that while the gunman was locked in a classroom, the officers were waiting in a hallway.
According to the investigation, it took 73 minutes from the time the first officers got on the scene to enter the classroom, engage the perpetrator, and fatally shoot him.
The majority of the gunshot victims “died instantly,” according to the committee’s assessment, but it is “possible that some of the victims could have lived if they had not had to wait an additional 73 minutes for aid.”
Last month, the school board fired Pete Arredondo, the police chief of the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District at the time of the shooting who was in charge of the law enforcement response to the incident.