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. “We did it!” Cross tweeted on Friday. The Texas state senator who represents Uvalde, Roland Gutierrez, issued a statement Friday thanking Cross and Cross’s supporters for their persistence. “The Uvalde massacre shocked the conscience of our nation,” Gutierrez’s statement added. “This cannot be the end; we still need full transparency and justice from every agency and every level of government that failed us in Uvalde.” The district said it would ask the Texas department of public safety, which already assigned dozens of troopers to the district, for additional help. “We are confident that staff and student safety will not be compromised during this transition,” the district said. The district is also reportedly considering retirement options for – and a plan to transition from – its superintendent, Hal Harrell. Harrell was in his 31st year of education when the killings at Robb unfolded. 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. Crimson Elizondo was fired on Thursday, one day after CNN reported her hiring. She has not responded to voicemails and messages.