The Uvalde School District Board voted unanimously on Wednesday to fire Pete Arredondo, the police chief widely criticized for his response to a shooting at a Texas elementary school that killed 19 children and two teachers at the hands of a 18-year-old armed with a high-powered rifle. Arredondo did not attend the session, which coincided with the three-month anniversary of the tragedy, the second-worst school shooting in US history. Arredondo’s lawyer, who was requesting to be reinstated after being suspended, has described the process as an “unconstitutional public lynching.” The lawyer added that his client did not attend the assembly due to the death threats he has received.
About 100 people turned out to witness the firing of Arredondo, who is a major player in the failed law enforcement response to the shooting. The police chief had been suspended without pay since last June 22. “Coward!” and “Without justice there is no peace”, were some of the cries of the relatives of the victims, who went to make sure that the seven members of the School District voted in favor of the dismissal of Arredondo, one of the most repeated requests since it happened the tragedy. The board session, however, was held behind closed doors. This decision was criticized by the protesters, who called for transparency.
According to an extensive report published by the Texas authorities, Arredondo was one of the first to arrive at the crime scene. As of early 2020, he had six police officers patrolling nine schools within the county. Uvalde authorities created this police force after a shooting at a school in Santa Fe, near Houston, where a shooter killed 10 people in May 2018. The objective of the police force was to prevent and attend to an emergency such as the which happened on May 24 last.
Arredondo was at the forefront of an official response that led 23 corporations to respond to the emergency at Robb Elementary School, located in a small majority-Latino town in the southwest of the state, near the border with Mexico. In total, 376 officers were present that day.
The performance of this small civil army, however, left much to be desired. Salvador Ramos, the shooter, entered the school firing rounds from his AR-15. He entered a room. When the first policemen who responded to the call entered the educational center, Ramos fired at them, forcing them to retreat. This, according to the official investigation, led Arredondo to commit “a terrible and tragic mistake.”
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Arredondo, who forgot his radio to communicate and was issuing orders by mobile phone (he later said it was to have both arms free to use weapons), believed that Ramos was cornered in one of the classrooms. This, always according to the investigation, caused the response of the authorities to go from attending to an active shooter to one entrenched. “We had him cornered… With police from the north side and another group to the south. And we knew there were other children in other classrooms. My thought was that we were a barrier and that we should get the children out,” Arredondo explained in front of the legislative commission that investigated the responsibilities of that day. On June 9, he explained in an interview with The Texas Tribune, that he was not the commander in charge of the incident response.
Arredondo justified himself by arguing that they did not hear the screams of minors and the policemen did not have a clear view of Ramos, who had bought an arsenal the day he turned 18. “You must have a target before you fire your pistol. It is something that has crossed my mind a million times,” the police chief said on June 21. Inside the classrooms, however, children and teachers made emergency calls to 911 for the police to respond to the situation. The police were already there, but no one did anything for 77 minutes, the time it took until a Border Patrol tactical group entered the classroom to kill Ramos.
The seven members that make up the School District Board refused to read the statement that Arredondo sent them, a request that was terminated today. “When a government employee fires an individual under circumstances that damage the individual’s reputation and fail the individual’s opportunity to clear his name, the individual may seek financial compensation,” George Hyde, the former chief’s attorney, says in the document. of cop. “The only person responsible for this tragedy is the shooter,” says Hyde in a 17-page document.
“They are a joke. They shouldn’t have any plates. None,” said Vincent Salazar, grandfather of Layla Salazar, an 11-year-old victim of the massacre, on the day the report was released.
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