Authorities have started an investigation into five Texas Department of Public Safety officers who have been referred to the state's inspector general's office for their actions in response to the horrific Uvalde Robb Elementary School shooting.
The probe into the actions of the officers, who were identified as part of a review that the DPS announced last July, will help the agency's inspector general's office determine if any policy violations were made. The agency will also determine whether or not any violation of training was done and what disciplinary actions the officers should face.
Uvalde Shooting Response
On Tuesday, the agency announced that two of the officers had been placed on suspension with pay. There were no details on the timeline under which the inspector general's office will complete its investigations of the five officers.
The revelation of the investigation follows a newly disclosed internal email where the head of the DPS said that the agency shares in what he called the "abject failure" that led to the 77-minute delay in responding to the May 24 Uvalde school shooting, as per Caller.
The email, which was time-stamped "Wednesday, July 20, 2022, 12:16:10 PM," which is one month after DPS Col. Steve McCraw testified before a select committee of the Texas Senate, contained a more explicit acknowledgment that the DPS troopers on the scene of the shooting should have acted more aggressively to confront the shooter.
The situation comes as video footage from inside the Robb Elementary School, obtained by the Statesman and KVUE, showed numerous officers from several law enforcement agencies outside the classroom where the massacre played out. The law enforcement personnel waited outside while the gunman was allegedly barricaded inside the room.
According to ABC News, even if the inspector general, at the end of the investigation, decides against taking action on the five officers, McCraw has the authority to issue internal disciplinary measures to the individuals involved. The officers being investigated have not been identified and their ranks are not being released, said Texas DPS spokesman Travis Considine.
Failure to Neutralize Target
McCraw has also ordered two new orders that will radically change the way police procedure is handled in Texas in the wake of the Uvalde school shooting. One of the orders specifies that once an "active shooter" is declared at a school the situation cannot be treated as anything else by Texas DPS personnel, both troopers and Rangers, until the shooter or shooters are neutralized.
Under the second order, all DPS personnel are ordered from now on to override any other law enforcement officers who are standing in the way of taking active measures to neutralize a school shooter. The response to the Uvalde school shooting took nearly 77 minutes to confront and kill the 18-year-old gunman.
A professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York and a former police chief in Bergen County, Brian Higgins, New Jersey, said that there were many things about the police response to the Uvalde shooting that demonstrated a need for change.
"It's almost as if they're admitting that they were not doing things right while also giving themselves cover: 'Oh, we were just following the tactics back then,'" Higgins said, referring to how McCraw's policy revision appeared to differ from those of other departments by stressing the need to continue to go after a gunman in a school until the person is "neutralized," the New York Times reported.
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