Uvalde police chief suspended after damning report into law enforcement failure to deal with mass shooter

• Uvalde's acting police chief was put on leave, the city's mayor said Sunday.
• It came after Texas lawmakers released a 77-page report on the school shooting there.

The Uvalde acting police chief was suspended after a damning report about how the city's law enforcement responded to the fatal school shooting.

Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin said Lt. Mariano Pargas was put on administrative leave, the Associated Press reported and the Texas Tribune reported on Sunday.

McLaughlin said the suspension would be in place while officials investigate whether "Pargas should have taken command of the scene," the AP reported.

He said the ciy would investigate "whether it was even feasible" for Pragas to take command given "all the agencies" that were involved at the scene.

He said the city will also investigate the "actions and policies" of the police department, the Tribune reported.

Most officers at the scene were not Uvalde police officers.

An interim report released Sunday by the Texas House investigative committee criticized police response to the May 24 shooting in Robb Elementary School, where 21 people died.

It said that a total of 376 officers ended up responding to the mass shooting.

The report said that the officers "failed to prioritize saving the lives of innocent victims over their own safety" and waited an "unacceptably long period" to force their way into the classroom where the shooter was hiding and kill him.

It partly attributed this failure to the failure of any agency to properly take charge of the response, leading to vast numbers of police waiting near the shooter without confronting him.

The officers who responded included 25 from the Uvalde Police Department, as well as 149 US Border Patrol officers and 91 Texas Department of Public Safety officers, the report said.