Police chief fired after months of criticism for Uvalde elementary school massacre response
UVALDE, Texas – The Uvalde school board has fired school district police chief Pete Arredondo, a move that came three months to the day after the mass shooting at an elementary school that claimed the lives of 21 people.
Arredondo has been the focus of much of the scrutiny and blame for law enforcement’s 77-minute delay in confronting the gunman who shot and killed 19 children and two teachers May 24 at Robb Elementary School.
The board adjourned immediately after the unanimous vote Wednesday night and did not discuss it publicly.
Arredondo did not attend the meeting. Instead, his attorney released a 17-page statement Wednesday evening, arguing that all of Arredondo's actions on May 24 were consistent with active-shooter training and that "Chief Arredondo did the right thing."
"Any allegation of lack of leadership is wholly misplaced," the statement said. "The complaint that an officer should have rushed the door, believed to be locked, to open it up without a shield capable of stopping an AR-15 bullet, without breaching tools … is tantamount to suicide."
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State investigators have found that the door was never locked and that there was no evidence any officer tried opening the door. Hallway video obtained by the American-Statesman, part of the USA TODAY Network, showed the first of several officers arriving with shields 19 minutes after the gunman entered the school.
The statement emphasized in bold and italic that Arredondo and other officers in the hallway were not aware children were inside the classroom. 911 dispatchers fielded calls from children inside the classroom pleading to be rescued, but word of those calls apparently never reached officers on the scene.
Days after the shooting, Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steve McCraw identified Arredondo as the incident commander and said he mistakenly treated the situation as a barricaded subject and not an active shooter, which requires immediate action to stop the gunman. Later, in testimony before a state Senate panel, McCraw said Arredondo "decided to place the lives of officers before the lives of children."
In the statement Wednesday, Arredondo's attorney, George E. Hyde, called characterizations of Arredondo as the incident commander "patently false."
"Out of all the officers that were there, from all sorts of agencies and departments, not even one came to him with even a suggestion that he should take a different approach," the statement read. "So it appears self-evident that all the officers that responded are reasonable and the actions he took were reasonable."
In total, 376 officers responded to the shooting, including 149 U.S. Border Patrol agents, 91 Texas Department of Public Safety troopers and five Uvalde school district officers.
Community members and friends and family of the slain fourth graders and their teachers packed the John H. Harrell Auditorium late Wednesday, demanding accountability from the school board, who took the item into executive session before taking a final vote in open session.
Six community members spoke, including 10-year-old Caitlyne Gonzalez, a friend of Jackie Cazares, who died in the shooting.
“If a law enforcement person’s job is to protect and serve, why didn’t you protect my friends and teachers on May 24?” Gonzalez said. “I have messages for Pete Arredondo and all the law enforcement that were there that day: Turn in your badge and step down. You don’t deserve to wear one.”
During the more than hour long executive session, family members went up to the podium to share tearful stories of their loved ones and demanding change, accountability and action. The names of each of the victims were read aloud.
“Remember their names, remember their faces,” one community member said. “Three months is too long for justice.”
The Uvalde community, in particular the families of the victims, have demanded accountability for law enforcement’s lack of coordination and officers' inaction in responding to the massacre.
A report by a Texas House Investigative Committee found systemic failures and miscalculations among all levels of law enforcement that responded, including the failure of Arredondo to assume his designated role as incident commander and the failure of any other larger law enforcement agency to take charge.
The school board had previously scheduled a vote last month on firing Arredondo but canceled that meeting at the request of his attorney and "in conformity with due process requirements," according to a school district news release at the time.
Arredondo was placed on paid administrative leave in June and unpaid administrative leave a month ago. Arredondo won a seat on the City Council weeks before the shooting and was sworn in privately after the shooting. He resigned from that post in July after missing multiple meetings.
Uvalde residents have previously urged the board to fire all six members of the Uvalde school police force as well as Superintendent Hall Harrell and former Robb Elementary Principal Mandy Gutierrez, after the House committee found that school employees left the school vulnerable to an intruder by leaving exterior doors unlocked and not fixing a broken lock on the classroom door where the gunman entered. Gutierrez had been placed on administrative leave and then was reassigned to a new position.
Arredondo is the first law enforcement official to lose his job over the flawed response to the shooting.
Other law enforcement agencies, including the Uvalde Police Department, have said they are internally reviewing their response to the shooting and will act according to their findings. Acting Uvalde Police Chief Lt. Mariano Pargas was put on administrative leave in July.
