On Wednesday, 19 families of the victims of the 2022 Uvalde, Texas, school shooting announced reaching a settlement with the city for $2 million.

The families will continue with lawsuits against law enforcement officers, the school district, and other officials over the failures to bring a quick end to the May 24, 2022, shooting rampage in the school:

As part of the settlement, Uvalde will pay the families a total of $2 million from its insurance coverage, according to a statement from attorneys Josh Koskoff and Erin Rogiers.

In addition, the city pledged to institute several policy changes to the police department, such as a new “fitness for duty” standard for police officers. The city will also establish May 24 as an annual Day of Remembrance, will create a committee to coordinate designing a permanent memorial and will support mental health services for the families, survivors and community, the attorneys said. 

The terms of the settlement were reached through a “restorative justice process” between impacted families and the city, the attorneys said. Pursuing further legal action against Uvalde could have bankrupted the city, a result that none of the families wanted, they added.    

Erin Rogiers also named the Texas Department of Public Safety in the statement, while describing the lawsuit:

Also Wednesday, the attorneys announced they are suing 92 individual Texas DPS officers, the school district and several employees for their alleged failures responding to the shooting. 

“Law enforcement’s inaction that day was a complete and absolute betrayal of these families and the sons, daughters and mothers they lost,” Rogiers said in the statement. “TXDPS had the resources, training and firepower to respond appropriately, and they ignored all of it and failed on every level. These families have not only the right but also the responsibility to demand justice, both for their own loss and to prevent other families from suffering the same fate.”    

Following the shooting, the Department of Justice (DOJ) released a scathing report on the response by Uvalde law enforcement, and the Uvalde School Board voted unanimously to fire Police Chief Pete Arredondo.

Previously on RedState: Texas Rejects Gun Control, Implements Real Solution to Protect Children After Uvalde Shooting 

DOJ's Uvalde Report: Shooter Could Have Been Stopped Sooner (We Already Knew That)

The shooting began when 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, a former student at the Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, was able to enter the school with a rifle and kill 19 students and faculty and wounding 17 others. Ramos had previously killed his grandmother and taken her F-150 pickup. Once the shooting in the school started, law enforcement waited outside the school and even prevented parents from entering. Over an hour-and-a-half elapsed between the first shots Ramos fired and law enforcement's breaching of the building and engaging Ramos, killing him. Ramos, it was later determined, had legally purchased the rifle; he had never been evaluated or treated for any mental health issues despite having repeatedly threatened girls in the community, and having been known to have tortured and killed animals, all clear warning signs.

The incident remains one of the worst massacres of school children and educators in the nation's history. The response to the shooting will doubtless be influential on law-enforcement training for these incidents for some time to come.