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The Texas Inspector General’s Office will investigate five Department of Public Safety officers for their actions during the Robb Elementary School shooting in Uvalde, Texas, which left 19 children and two teachers dead on May 24.
State police announced an internal review of their officers’ actions in July after a special House committee investigating the shooting released an 80-page report that was critical of the law enforcement response. Two of the five officers who were referred to the inspector general have been suspended with pay pending the results of the investigation.
More than 370 law enforcement officers responded to the shooting at Robb Elementary School, including 91 DPS officers, but it took over 70 minutes for police to breach the classroom and take out the gunman.
Texas DPS Director Steven McCraw wrote a letter to state police in July, reiterating that the response was an “abject failure.”
“Every agency that responded that day shares in this failure, including DPS,” McCraw wrote in the letter, which was obtained by Fox News Digital. “Although I remain highly critical of the decision to treat the incident as a barricaded subject by the ranking Consolidated Independent School District police official at the scene, DPS and other agencies must also be held accountable for their actions or inactions.”
A banner hangs at a memorial outside Robb Elementary School, the site of a mass shooting that killed 19 students and two teachers, on Friday, June 3.
(AP/Eric Gay)
The former Uvalde school police chief that McCraw referenced, Pete Arredondo, was fired by the Uvalde school board last month. He testified to a Texas House committee that he didn’t consider himself the incident commander and wasn’t aware that there were wounded children in the classroom with the gunman.
The Austin-American Statesman originally reported the news of the inspector general’s investigation.
UVALDE SCHOOL YEAR STARTS WITH SECURITY MEASURES STILL UNDERWAY
The Texas House Committee wrote in its report that it “did not find any ‘villains’ in the course of its investigation.”
“There is no one to whom we can attribute malice or ill motives,” the lawmakers wrote. “Instead, we found systemic failures and egregiously poor decision-making.”
Robb Elementary School is cordoned off by police after the shooting on May 24.
(AP/Jae C. Hong)
McCraw also wrote in the July letter that state police must treat anyone who opens fires at a school as an active shooter.
“DPS Officers responding to an active shooter at a school will be authorized to overcome any delay to neutralizing an attacker. 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,'” he wrote.
“We will provide proper training and guidelines for recognizing and overcoming poor command decisions at an active shooter scene.”
