True. While Arredondo is the first officer to ever get dismissed for a school shooting—a curious fact unto itself—what sticks out for me in this piece is a "Change.org petition calling on authorities to fire every officer who stood in the hallway [on] May 24th." It has received more than 89,000 signatures, my own included.
Hope to see folks at the March For Our Lives rally tomorrow at 11AM.
We need to urge the Texas State Legislature to pursue commonsense, gun and school safety legislation.
-Angela Valenzuela
Pete Arredondo fired as Uvalde Consolidated ISD police chief
Arredondo is the first officer dismissed over law enforcement response to one of the worst school shootings in U.S. history.
More than two months after being placed on administrative leave, an embattled Pete Arredondo was fired from his position as Uvalde Consolidated ISD police chief Wednesday.
The Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District’s board of trustees said it voted unanimously to dismiss Arredondo.
Arredondo was not in attendance but through his attorney released a blistering and defiant 17-page letter that lashed out at state officials, defended the police response to the May 24 massacre and accused the school board of putting his safety at risk.
As the board convened into a closed session, some in the auditorium yelled “Coward!” and “What about our children?”
Arredondo is the first officer dismissed over the hesitant and fumbling law enforcement response to one of the worst school shootings in U.S. history. 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 his actions during the shooting.
Superintendent Hal Harrell had first moved to fire Arredondo in July but postponed the decision at the request of the police chief’s attorney.
Arredondo was placed on administrative leave June 22 after weeks of rising criticism surrounding the law-enforcement response at Robb Elementary School, when 19 children and two teachers were killed in Texas’ deadliest school shooting.
Eighty minutes elapsed between the first call to 911 and police confronting the shooter, who fired at least 142 rounds, according to a timeline from Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steve McCraw.
Arredondo said afterward he didn’t believe he was in charge of the response. Yet in the district’s written active-shooter plan, Arredondo assigned himself incident commander, according to a report examining the response released by a Texas House committee. In interviews conducted or obtained by the committee, police officers said they either assumed Arredondo was in command, or did not know who was in charge, with some describing the scene as “chaos.”
Minutes before Wednesday’s 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.
The letter also accused Uvalde school officials of putting his life at risk by not letting him carry a weapon to the school board meeting.
“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.
McCraw testified before the state Senate that Arredondo’s decisions cost lives.
“The only thing stopping a hallway of dedicated officers from [entering rooms] 111 and 112 was the on-scene commander who decided to place the lives of officers before the lives of children,” he said.
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.
Arredondo resigned from his seat on the Uvalde City Council on July 2. He was elected to the council May 7 and was sworn into the role May 31, behind closed doors.
“After much consideration, I regret to inform those who voted for me that I have decided to step down as a member of the City Council for District 3,” Arredondo told the Uvalde Leader-News then. “The mayor, the city council and the city staff must continue to move forward without distractions. I feel this is the best decision for Uvalde.”
A Change.org petition calling on authorities to fire every officer who stood in the hallway May 24 has garnered over 89,000 signatures.
“Their failure to not only stop the shooter from entering Robb Elementary School, but refusal to enter the building to engage the shooter cost the lives of 19 children and 2 adults,” the petition says. “These officers should be held accountable for their ineptitude and released from their positions, as they have no intentions on serving and protecting the children of Uvalde.”
New security measures
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 been installed only 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.
Staff writer Catherine Marfin contributed to this report.
Jamie Landers, Breaking News Reporter. Jamie Landers is a breaking news reporter at The Dallas Morning News. She is a graduate of The Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication in Phoenix, where she studied journalism and political science. Jamie previously reported for The Arizona Republic and Arizona PBS.
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