Uvalde school district police chief suspended, may lose city council seat

The school district police chief who was the incident commander at the Uvalde mass shooting was was placed on administrative leave effective Wednesday, according to a report from the district.

Uvalde schools police Chief Pete Arredondo was in charge of the multiagency response to the May 24 shooting at Robb Elementary School, where a former student shot killed 19 children and two teachers.

Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District Superintendent Hal Harrell released a statement saying that although he had previously said he would wait until the investigation was concluded to make any personnel decisions, he decided to put Mr. Arrendondo on leave now “because of the lack of clarity that remains and the unknown timing of when I will receive the results of the investigations.”

As many as 19 armed officers waited over an hour outside the classroom, reportedly because Arredondo had assessed the incident had transitioned from an “active shooter” situation to a “barricaded suspect” standoff. 

Modern active shooter training dictates that officers should engage a shooter as soon as possible to minimize the loss of innocent lives. Arredondo and another officer determined the best course of action was to wait for more officers, firepower, keys and a breaching tool.

Arredondo said during an interview with the Texas Tribune that he did not consider himself the incident commander at the scene and never ordered police to hold back.

He also said it took 77 minutes since the massacre began to locate a key to unlock the classroom the shooter had barricaded himself in.

But in damning testimony before the Texas state Senate on Tuesday, Department of Public Safety Director Steve McGraw revealed that the classroom door was unlocked, as the buildings’ classrooms cannot be locked from the inside.

The state’s top cop called the law enforcement response to the Uvalde shooting an “abject failure” and highlighted multiple points at which Arredondo erred.

McGraw said that officers with rifles arrived withing three minutes to the classroom, and that ballistic shields and a breaching tool were also quickly on the scene.

Guidelines also made Arredondo the rightful incident commander; although his six-person Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District was smaller than the other agencies that responded, Arredondo was the most senior first responder with immediate jurisdiction over the school campus, said McGraw.

“I don’t mean to be hypercritical of the on-scene commander,” McCraw said at the hearing.

“But those are the facts … this set our profession back a decade.”

Alongside his suspension by the school district, Arredondo also risks losing the city council seat he won last month if he does not begin attending its meetings, for which he snuck out to be sworn into as the victims’ families sought answers.

The rest of the city council denied Arredondo’s request for a leave of absence on Tuesday. They can remove him if he misses three straight meetings, reports Reuters.