Uvalde school district suspends full police force months after shooting

The school district in Uvalde, Texas, suspended its entire police force on Friday, five months after a shooting in which 19 children and two teachers were killed, the district said in a statement.

The moved followed a wave of outrage over the hiring of a former Texas state trooper who was part of the hesitant law enforcement response during the May shooting at Robb elementary school.

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 school district.

The extraordinary move to suspend campus police operations one month into a new school year in the south Texas community underscored the sustained pressure that families of some of those killed on 24 May have placed on the district.

Brett Cross, whose 10-year-old son Uziyah Garcia was among the victims, had been protesting outside the Uvalde school administration building for the past two weeks, demanding accountability over officers allowing a gunman with an AR-15-style rifle to remain in a fourth-grade classroom for more than 70 minutes.

The district said it would ask the Texas department of public safety, which already assigned dozens of troopers to the district, for additional help.

The move to suspend the Uvalde school district police force comes a day after revelations that the district not only hired a former trooper who was one of nearly 400 officers who rushed to Robb elementary on 24 May, but that she was among at least seven troopers later placed under internal investigation.