Uvalde schools police chief faces termination vote on Saturday

[July 21, 2022]  By Steve Gorman

(Reuters) - The school board in Uvalde, Texas, plans to vote this weekend on a superintendent's recommendation to fire the school district police chief widely criticized for his handling of the shooting rampage that killed 19 children and two teachers in May.

The Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District Board of Trustees is scheduled to consider the employment fate of Pete Arredondo in closed session during a special meeting on Saturday, according to a public agenda posted on the district's website on Wednesday.

The seven-member panel plans to confer with the school district's attorney before voting on whether to terminate Arredondo from his post "for good cause," as recommended by Superintendent Hal Harrell, the agenda shows.

Neither Harrell nor Arredondo nor their representatives immediately responded to requests from Reuters for comment.

Parents of children killed in the May 24 shooting at Robb Elementary School demanded that Arredondo be dismissed during a school board meeting on Monday in Uvalde, the small town in Texas Hill Country about 80 miles west of San Antonio.

Arredondo, who according to the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) acted as "incident commander" in charge of law enforcement's response to the mass shooting, resigned his seat on the Uvalde City Council this month.

He has come under scathing criticism since DPS officials disclosed days after the shooting that 19 officers waited for an hour in a hallway outside adjoining classrooms where the gunman was holed up with his victims before a U.S. Border Patrol-led tactical team finally made entry and killed the suspect. 

Police deploy in a hallway after Salvador Ramos entered Robb Elementary school to kill 19 children and two teachers in Uvalde, Texas, U.S. May 24, 2022 in a still image from police body camera video. City of Uvalde Police Department/Handout via REUTERS

DPS officials have said Arredondo chose to hold off on sending officers in to neutralize the suspect sooner, believing the immediate threat to students had abated after an initial burst of gunfire in the classrooms.

According to DPS, Arredondo hesitated even as two fourth-grade girls cowering inside the classrooms placed frantic, whispered cellphone calls to emergency-911 dispatchers pleading for police to send help.

The New York Times, citing video footage and other materials gathered by investigators, has reported that on-scene supervisors knew victims were trapped alive and in desperate need of medical attention while Arredondo appeared to agonize over how long it was taking to obtain protective gear and find a key to the classroom doors.

Arredondo has said he never considered himself the incident commander and that he did not order police to hold back on storming the suspect's position.

A report by the Texas state legislature found "systemic failures" and poor leadership contributed to the loss of life. It also said hundreds of officers from agencies better trained and better equipped than the six-member school district police force also failed.

(Reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Additional reporting by Brendan O'Brien in Chicago and Andrew Hay in Taos, New Mexico; Editing by Leslie Adler and David Gregorio)

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