Texas Student Protesters To State Police: 'Who Failed Uvalde?'

Students at the University of Texas at Austin on Monday took a dig at state troopers who’d arrived to arrest them as they protested the war in Gaza.

“Who failed Uvalde? DPS!” the students, who began their protest on the campus last week, chanted at Texas Department of Public Safety troopers.

More than 90 DPS troopers were among the officers from several law enforcement agencies who responded to the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, on May 24, 2022, when 19 students and two teachers were killed by a lone gunman. Nearly 400 law enforcement officers in total stood by at the school for 77 minutes before the shooter was confronted. The confused response, which may have contributed to the death toll, has led to multiple investigations into the actions of law enforcement that day.

Through their chants, student protesters pointed out the irony that DPS is leading an armed response at a peaceful protest on the UT campus but had failed to act during the carnage at Robb Elementary.

Some DPS officers have faced consequences for their inaction that day, including Juan Maldonado, one of the first state troopers to arrive at the elementary school. He was fired from DPS in October 2022. Trooper Crimson Elizondo was caught on bodycam footage saying that if her son were in the school, she would go in there. Elizondo left the DPS and was hired by Uvalde’s school district after the shooting, but she was fired when the bodycam footage was made public.

Brett Cross, whose 10-year-old son, Uziyah, was killed in the Uvalde mass shooting, pointed out the irony on social media last week, writing that the student protesters “ain’t wrong.”

Student protesters, who are demanding that UT divest itself from any funding tied to