Uvalde city and district police departments stop cooperating with school shooting probe

Uvalde's city and school district police departments have stopped cooperating with a state-led investigation into last week’s school shooting, according to ABC News.

The report is the latest left turn in state and local officials' floundering and often contradictory attempt to explain why officers present outside Robb Elementary School on Tuesday didn't immediately move to take out the gunman who killed 19 children and two teachers.

The two police departments stopped speaking to investigators soon after Department of Public Safety Director Steven McCraw held a Friday news conference at which he said police made the "wrong decision" in delaying their entry into the building, ABC reported, citing sources close to the investigation.

By the time a team of federal officers entered the school, more than an hour had passed since the shooter began his rampage, McCraw also told the media at the time.

ABC was unable to reach both the Uvalde Police Department and the district police force for comment on its story.

However, a DPS spokesperson told the network that the chief of the school district police gave an initial interview to investigators "but has not responded to a request for a follow-up interview with the Texas Rangers that was made two days ago."

In a statement released Tuesday, Texas' largest police labor organization urged the two law enforcement agencies to cooperate with the investigation, saying that its top brass has been in communication with officers in the wake of the shooting.

"There has been a great deal of false and misleading information in the aftermath of this tragedy," the Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Texas (CLEAT) said in the statement. "Some of the information came from the very highest levels of government and law enforcement. Sources that Texans once saw as iron-clad and completely reliable have now been proven false."

CLEAT also urged parties to cooperate with the U.S. Department of Justice, which has also agreed to a separate review of how law enforcement responded to the school shooting.

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