The police official facing a firestorm over a slow law enforcement response during a deadly mass shooting at a Texas elementary school last week was sworn in as a city councilman Tuesday.
Pete Arredondo, the chief of police for the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District, took on the new position Tuesday night along with the other newly elected city council members — but without the pomp and circumstance. The law enforcement official was elected a few weeks ago, but city officials announced Monday that they would forgo the swearing-in ceremony in light of the funerals taking place this week.
“Uvalde City Council members were sworn in today as per the City Charter,” Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin said in a statement. “Out of respect for the families who buried their children today, and who are planning to bury their children in the next few days, no ceremony was held.”
The announcement about the swearing-in came just hours after it was reported that the Uvalde Police Department and the school district police force had stopped cooperating with state investigations into the shooting at Robb Elementary School and law enforcement’s response to the attack. Travis Considine, a spokesman for the Texas Department of Public Safety, said the departments “have been cooperating with investigators” but added that “[Arredondo] did an initial interview but has not responded to a request for a followup interview that was made two days ago.”
The decision to stop cooperating with DPS happened after the department’s director, Steven McCraw, held a news conference Friday and said the delayed police entry into the classroom where the gunman was barricaded was “the wrong decision” and contrary to protocol, sources told ABC News.
Arredondo has been identified as the official who coordinated the response to the shooting. Reports of law enforcement being told not to engage during critical minutes of the assault, as well as videos of desperate parents begging police standing outside the school to go and do something, have fueled calls for accountability.
McLaughlin acknowledged these frustrations Tuesday, noting that the investigation is ongoing and that he trusts DPS and police will “leave no stone unturned.”
Republican Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said state officials were “not told the truth” about the police response, but McLaughlin asserted this was not true in a statement Monday. However, the mayor seemed to walk back those comments later Tuesday.
“Our parents deserve answers,” he said. “Our emotions are raw and hearts are broken, and words are sometimes exchanged because of those emotions. I want Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick to know that I misunderstood statements I thought he had said. … I ask everyone to pray for us, the citizens of Uvalde, as we grieve and live through the pain and the healing process.”
Information presented by Texas officials has changed drastically over the past week as the investigations continue, though it now appears it took up to an hour Tuesday before federal agents took matters into their own hands and killed the shooter in defiance of orders not to proceed.
Nineteen children and two teachers were killed in the attack, and several more were wounded. The gunman has been identified as an 18-year-old who officials say legally purchased two AR-style rifles and hundreds of rounds of ammunition.
Public records show Arrendondo completed an active shooter training course as recently as December, NBC News reported. Investigations into the shooting and police response continue, with the Justice Department announcing a critical incident review Sunday.
Uvalde, a town of roughly 16,000 people, is situated between San Antonio and Del Rio, just dozens of miles away from the U.S.-Mexico border. State Sen. Roland Gutierrez, a Democrat whose district includes Uvalde, told MSNBC on Monday that there was “failure at every level” of the response to the shooting and that to blame one person is “a little bit irresponsible.”
The police chief should be fired and certainly not put on the city council. He needs to be held accountable for the amount of lives lost.
The police chief needs to come clean & point the finger at the Communist elitist in office right now who helped organize this murder of children by poisoning & weakening Young Minds in order to make these tragedies happen, just to get more gun control & forced people who are ignorant and blind to give up their constitutional rights and their guns to protect themselves against a treasonous communist corrupted government, so uneducated people who can’t see their deceptive ways agree with them,so the leftist elitist can Usher in their New World Order with no resistance or investigations, just research & read the coincidences that aren’t coincidences that happend at the time of the shooting , this was pre-planned that these kids died without the proper help & law enforcement sacrificed by the government just to exploit their agenda, there was plenty of opportunity to be on time to save their lives, but all the distractions and delays were pre-planned way too much coincidence not to be true welcome to your new world order United Nations corrupted satanic government being pushed down our throats by the Democrats scum that ignorant voters who voted this party in ,we don’t buy your lies & your orchestrated massacres & tragedies anymore, the next tragedy should be in Washington where these vile pigs are planning every new tragedy by brainwashing teenage incompetent under-educated government socialist groomed kids to be part of their communist N W.O. Democrat Party of the future, by confusing their young minds with gender-bending, American hating, Antichrist, anti-American, propaganda
I agree with most of what you have to say but one of my pet peeves is that they want to jam down the throat of our little children this sexual , gender , and political bullshit . Why in the hell can’t they just let children be children , grow up with a normal life , learn in a normal way instead of force feeding them this bullshit . These communist democrats and elitist are a Clear and Present Threat to the safety and security of America’s youth and should not be allowed to hold office of any kind and they should be destroyed . Americans should NEVER again allow these communist democrats and/or communist into America let alone hold any type office in America’s free government . America should return back to the McCarthy days and weed out ALL these animals in our government and country .
How is it possible that this individual with 0% humility including post stationed minds of authority will allow this man to be sworn in as council with human lives and blood on his conscience this is outrageous in real time
It’s obvious that he was bought and sold by the evil democrats. He did what they wanted and now he gets his reward.
He’ll have to live his life every day knowing what he did to those innocent, beautiful children. Probably doesn’t even care. Evil.