Uvalde school board fires police chief after botched response to shooting

The Uvalde school district’s embattled police chief has been fired following allegations that he made several critical mistakes during the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School that left 19 students and two teachers dead.

The Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District’s board of trustees said on Wednesday it voted unanimously to dismiss police Chief Pete Arredondo.

Arredondo is the first officer dismissed over the hesitant and fumbling law enforcement response to one of the worst school shootings in US history. Only one other officer — Uvalde Police Department's 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.

Arredondo, who has been on leave from the district since June 22, has faced blistering criticism since the May 24 massacre, most notably for not ordering officers to immediately breach the classroom where an 18-year-old gunman carried out the attack. 

Steve McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, has said Arredondo was in charge of the law enforcement response to the attack.

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Arredondo defends his actions

Angry calls to fire Uvalde's embattled school police chief swept through an auditorium on Wednesday where school board members gathered to decide Arredondo's future, three months to the day after the school shooting.

Arredondo was not in attendance but through his attorney released a blistering and defiant 17-page letter that lashed out at state officials. Arredondo's letter defended the police response to the May 24 massacre and accused the school board of putting his safety at risk by not allowing him to carry a weapon to the meeting.

As the board convened into a closed session, some in the auditorium yelled “Coward!” and “What about our children?"

State police and a damning investigative report in July have criticised the police chief of the roughly 4,000-student school district for failing to take charge of the scene, not breaching the classroom sooner and wasting time by looking for a key to a likely unlocked door.

But the letter accused the school district of not being prepared for an attacker and described the actions taken by Arrendondo and hundreds of other officers on the scene as “reasonable."

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 a virtual academy will be offered for students. A new law passed last year in Texas following the pandemic limits the number of students receiving remote instruction to “10 percent of all enrolled students within a given school system.”

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. 

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. 

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