Posted on 06/05/2022 1:54:21 PM PDT by grundle
Chief Pete Arredondo has been faulted for a slow response to the mass shooting at Robb Elementary.
The Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District board took no action Friday evening against its embattled police chief, Pete Arredondo, in a special board meeting called in response to last week’s mass shooting at Robb Elementary School.
As incident commander, Arredondo made the decision to wait more than an hour for backup instead of ordering officers at the scene to immediately confront the shooter who killed 19 students and two teachers. The head of the state police later said this was the “wrong decision, period.”
Many residents had called on Arredondo to quit or be sacked, saying decisive action could have potentially saved lives. Although the agenda for Friday’s meeting allowed the board to terminate Arredondo, the board declined to do so.
Superintendent Hal Harrell said he is eager for several concurrent investigations, including ones by Uvalde County’s district attorney and federal Department of Justice, to run their course. But he told the 25 residents in attendance that he had no additional information to provide, other than reassuring parents that children would never return to Robb.
Just two residents signed up to speak at the meeting. Dawn Pointevent said her 7-year-old son, who was due to attend Robb next year, is now “deathly afraid” of going to school.
After the brief meeting, parent Angela Turner said she was disappointed the board did not fire Arredondo and did not discuss how the district would improve safety at schools.
Arredondo did not attend the meeting. He has gone to great lengths to avoid the public eye since the shooting. Last week, he took the oath of office for the City Council, an additional position he was elected to last month, in a secret ceremony. Police officers have also guarded his home and workplace.
Arredondo, 50, was hired to lead the small school district police force in 2020. It has grown to a half-dozen officers, whose duties include providing security at campuses, staffing sporting events and conducting narcotics work.
A career lawman who grew up in Uvalde and graduated from its high school in 1990, Arredondo previously spent 12 years in Laredo with the Webb County Sheriff’s Office and the United ISD Police Department.
There are lots of tort lawyers in south Texas. It will be interesting to see what happens when victims and family start suing public officials.
I’ll repeat a comment a made a week ago...
They don’t care. I don’t care.
Media reports (FR sourced) stated he had no radio communications with anyone.
Why would any other LE agency yield to a school resource officer not on location of the incident he commands?
Looks like it's going to be, "We can just wait this thing out."
Arredondo won a seat on city council.
What is his political party?
Not one story about his political party.
Am I missing something?
Good ‘ole boy club. He’s likely related to people on the board. That’s one gene pool you don’t wanna take a dip in. That’s a family tree that ain’t got no branches. Etc.
It’s worse than that. He was not chief of school resource officers (SROs are part of a city police department or county sheriff’s department, depending upon location, and answerable to a chief of police or sheriff).
This guy was chief of a school district police department. I have been trying to figure out whether the chiefs of such h departments answer to the local school board or superintendent of schools. So far, in the case of Uvalde, it looks like the school board, but I am not certain of that. Talk about a recipe for disaster in such a case as a school shooter.
While there have been problems with SROs in some areas overstepping their bounds and inserting themselves into situations best handled by teachers and and principals (like second graders intentionally spilling milk on each other, throwing paper aorplanes, minor playground tussles, etc.), this could be handled with better training and better MOUs.
These idiotic school district police departments need to be disbanded — or at least forced to agree to MOUs specifying when deadly force is in play (such as a school shooting, stabbing, bomb, etc.) local LE authorities take over as soon as one arrives on scene (city police or county sheriff deputies).
It would be interesting to read the MOU for the Uvalde School District Police Department. And who are s in charge of these MOUs? City Council, mayor?
Parents need to find out what procedures are specified for their kids’ schools and raise Cain if it’s the same as Uvalde. It is still not entirely clear, but it looks like this: just as city police have jurisdiction over county deputies in a city which is contained within a county, these school district police have jurisdiction on school property over both city and county LE no matter what sort of violent crime is being committed, thus the Incident Commander is automatically the school district police/police chief.
Hello? Is this crazy or what? If reports are correct about Arredondo’s lack of radio causing him to mistake an active shooter for a barricaded suicide risk no longer able to threaten children and teachers, this just highlights why the school district kiddie police who are not properly trained and plugged into the LE system should *never* be in charge of any life-threatening situation at a school.
Failed police chief now even closer to your children
Because it happened on school district grounds. No other agency has jurisdiction there unless they are called to do so.
The more I read about this small town the more it sounds like just another corrupt Democrat town.
So I just want to know why the school board needed an armed cop shielding them from the Moms who wanted to talk at that last meeting? There was more firepower in that meeting than there was at the school. Serious buttflinging, maybe even assault and battery, is in order.
They are right in that there won’t be any more kids going to that school. I expect a fire is coming?
Texas DPS troopers have had the reputation over the years of taking control of crimes scenes when lesser LE were present and full command authority was lacking.
I can't vouch for the source.
Until you factor in the in-laws, out-laws, and ex-laws. Then it looks like a briar patch.
He didn't have to be on location. Nobody but the school district police have jurisdiction. Unless, of course, the district calls in another law enforcement agency. School districts in Texas are their own governmental entities.
Just another corrupt small town in the south.
Not one story about his political party.
The Uvalde election results I've seen go about 2/3 Dem.
I can't find a source for the election that Arredondo won.
What. Is. Up. with that town?????
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