Posted on 08/24/2022 9:11:14 PM PDT by Widget Jr
The Uvalde school district's embattled police chief was fired Wednesday following allegations that he made several critical mistakes during the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School that left 19 students and two teachers dead.
In a unanimous vote that arrived after months of angry calls for his ouster, the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District's board of trustees fired Pete Arredondo in an auditorium of parents and survivors of the May 24 massacre. His ouster came three months to the day after one of the deadliest classroom shootings in U.S. history.
Cheers from the crowd followed the vote, and some parents walked out in tears.
"Coward!" parents yelled in a Uvalde auditorium as the meeting got underway.
Arredondo, who has been on leave from the district since June 22, has come under the most intense scrutiny of the nearly 400 officers who rushed to school but waited more than an hour to confront the 18-year-old gunman in a fourth-grade classroom.
Most notably, Arredondo was criticized for not ordering officers to act sooner. Col. Steve McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, has said Arredondo was in charge of the law enforcement response to the attack.
Arredondo was not in attendance with his career on the line.
Instead, minutes before the meeting of the Uvalde school board got underway, Arredondo's attorney released a scathing 4,500-word letter that amounted to the police chief's fullest defense to date of his actions. Over 17 defiant pages, Arredondo is not the fumbling school police chief who a damning state investigation blamed for not taking command and wasted time by looking for keys to a likely unlocked door, but a brave officer whose level-headed decisions saved the lives of other students.
It alleges that Arrendondo warned the district about a variety of security issues in the schools a year before the shooting and asserted he wasn't in charge of the scene. The letter also accused Uvalde school officials of putting his safety at risk by not letting him carry a weapon to the school board meeting, citing "legitimate risks of harm to the public and to Chief Arredondo."
"Chief Arredondo is a leader and a courageous officer who with all of the other law enforcement officers who responded to the scene, should be celebrated for the lives saved, instead of vilified for those they couldn't reach in time," Hyde wrote.
Uvalde school officials have been under mounting pressure from victims' families and members of the community, many of whom have called for Arredondo's termination. Superintendent Hal Harrell had first moved to fire Arredondo in July but postponed the decision at the request of the police chief's attorney.
Among those at the meeting was Ruben Torres, father of Chloe Torres, who survived the shooting in room 112 of the school. He said that as a former Marine, he took an oath that he faithfully executed willingly, and did not understand why officers did not take action when leadership failed.
"Right now, being young, she is having a hard time handling this horrific event," Torres said.
Arredondo is the first officer dismissed over the hesitant and fumbling law enforcement response to the May 24 tragedy. Only one other officer — Uvalde Police Department Lt. Mariano Pargas, who was the city's acting police chief on the day of massacre — is known to have been placed on leave for their actions during the shooting.
The Texas Department of Public Safety, which had more than 90 state troopers at the scene, has also launched an internal investigation into the response by state police.
School officials have said the campus at Robb Elementary will no longer be used. Instead, campuses elsewhere in Uvalde will serve as temporary classrooms for elementary school students, not all of whom are willing to return to school in-person following the shooting.
School officials say a virtual academy will be offered for students. The district has not said how many students will attend virtually, but a new state law passed last year in Texas following the pandemic limits the number of eligible students receiving remote instruction to "10% of all enrolled students within a given school system."
Schools can seek a waiver to exceed the limit but Uvalde has not done so, according to Melissa Holmes, a spokeswoman for the Texas Education Agency.
New measures to improve school safety in Uvalde include "8-foot, non-scalable perimeter fencing" at elementary, middle and high school campuses, according to the school district. Officials say they have also installed additional security cameras, upgraded locks, enhanced training for district staff and improving communication.
However, according to the district's own progress reports, as of Tuesday no fencing had been erected at six of the eight campuses where it was planned, and cameras had only been installed at the high school. Some progress had been made on locks at three of eight campuses, and communication improvement was marked as half complete for each campus.
Uvalde CISD did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
This police chief and his department let children get murdered in front of them while on the scene.
All I am going to say is "good riddance". What I am thinking is not as civilized or polite.
I’m surprised he hasn’t eaten his six.
That took a while. They were probably hoping he would ‘read the room’ and just quit on his own.
Those LE that used force to stop other LE from engaging the shooter should be arrested.
This man needs to be taken down to below the level of dirt.
I imagine his revolver is a striker fired Glock these days. We (parents) have used school systems like baby sitters and they raise our kids to believe all sorts of 💩. We don’t let our teachers and security force carry firearms. We bought this condition for years. We have a police force afraid to fart because arseholes scream police brutality constantly and train the force to be woke. We are now reaping the whirlwind. Bohica.
Finally. Someone, somewhere, doing the right thing. Hopefully the lawsuits begin.
Well I’m thinking it.
I’ll say it too.
Hang the chicken shit cowards.
Lucky for Pete Arredondo he is a prime candidate for the IRS or the FBI!
Now charge him criminally. He not only did nothing to help, but he obstructed everyone else from taking action as well.
#1, #9. "The Wolf", A B C Petits Contes, Jules Lemaître (April, 27 1853 to August 4, 1914). I am not particularly well read and understand what you mean. In this case, looking up the phrase "eaten his six" is a oddly appropriate metaphor.
This incompetent coward and his incompetently cowardly officers stood by and did nothing while children were being murdered just behind a door from them. HighSierra5 said "Something is very wrong in that town." He is right.
The Stockton school shooting happened when I was a kid. School shootings are the most horrifying event for police to respond to and there is no good way to handle them. In Stockton, Columbine, and others, the police responded and tried to do something. They went and tried to stop it. Their responses were confused and chaotic, they still tried.
In Ulvade, the police were behind a ballistic shield in a hallway as it was happening and did nothing other than wait for it to be over or someone else to act.
This is a School Police Department. By definition it is their job to protect the children at that school. They took the job, were trained and equipped for just such a emergency, and then they just showed up and stopped just before the point of contact with Ramos.
< /seething_rage >
Call me naive, I have a hard time mentally processing what happened here.
If they have an 8 foot non-scalable fence, someone should let the border patrol know about it
WHOOPDI DOO; they fired him.
They should have HANGED him!
One thing I dislike about modern journalism, is they post stories about letters and documents, then only cite a few words. It is so rare for CNN or the major TV news to actually link to a source for a document anymore.
He’s too much of a COWARD to off himself!
LOL
American “justice” (don’t laugh yet) is slooooooow and then it stops. Okay to laugh now. We have no “justice.”
As Sessions, Durham, Barr helping Trump vs. totally criminal Obama, Hillary and Soros.
That would take somebody with a sense of honor and responsibility. Arredondo is not so equipped.
CC
What will be the way he will end up on top? Usually a big book deal (not this time) or TV appearances. Or a double dip job as head of security somewhere (grim laughter at that).
If he gets away with everything and some money rolls in so can go fishing will angry parents find a means of closure in the future?
God bless them in their sorrow.
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