Five Texas DPS Officers Under Investigation & Two Suspended Over Uvalde School Shooting Response
Five officers working for the Texas Department of Public Safety are under investigation for their responses during the Robb Elementary School shooting in Uvalde earlier this year, RadarOnline.com can confirm.
The surprising investigations were announced on Tuesday by the Director of the Texas DPS, Colonel Steve McGraw, who also revealed two of the five officers under investigation have already been suspended for their actions on May 24.
According to Colonel McGraw, the five officers are under investigation by Texas’s Office of Inspector General and, should any penalties be administered as a result of the investigations, they will be decided by the OIG.
Colonel McGraw has since called the attack at Uvalde’s Robb Elementary School on May 24 an “abject failure." McGraw has also said that “every agency that responded that day shares in this failure, including DPS.”
As RadarOnline.com previously reported, 19 children and two teachers were murdered at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas on May 24 after 18-year-old gunman Salvador Ramos entered the school and opened fire on a classroom.
Although more than 375 law enforcement officials responded to the shooting, it took the authorities nearly one hour to confront and take down Ramos after the officers waited in the school’s hallways and outside the building.
In July, DPS Director McGraw sent out an internal letter to all DPS employees focused on school safety and highlighting the department’s official protocol for active school shooter situations.
“DPS officers responding to an active shooter at a school will be authorized to overcome any delay in neutralizing an attacker,” McGraw 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.”
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- 'Bittersweet': Uvalde Suspends ENTIRE School Police Force After Failed Response To Mass Shooting Tragedy Leaves 21 Dead
News of the five DPS officers under investigation for their “abject failure” responses to the shooting also comes in the wake of a whopping $27 billion class action lawsuit filed by the 21 victims’ families seeking accountability and justice for their slain family members.
“What we intend to do to help serve this community and that is to file a $27 billion civil rights lawsuit under our United States Constitution, one-of-a-kind in the whole world,” Charles Bonner said on Sunday regarding the multi-billion-dollar class action lawsuit.
“We have the school police, OK, Arredondo, we have the city police, and we have the sheriffs and we have the Texas Rangers, the DPS and we have the Border Patrol,” Bonner added regarding the numerous targets of the unprecedented lawsuit.
The recent developments also come as Uvalde, Texas students begin their new school year, although many of the students at Robb Elementary School on the day of the shooting are reportedly set to start classes at different schools in the city.
The DPS has also since hired 33 new officers to monitor the Uvalde school district, hired 10 officers to patrol Robb Elementary and installed 500 new security cameras.
Uvalde School Police Chief Pete Arredondo has also since been fired from his role.
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