Arredondo did not attend the meeting. His attorney issued a 17-page statement saying the district was not following the legal process in moving to fire Arredondo and that the police chief was concerned for his safety. In the statement, which came less than an hour before the meeting was to begin, Arredondo’s attorney, George Hyde, argued that a letter from the district suspending him without pay does not count as a formal “complaint” required by law to to consider the complaint. “Chief Arredondo will not participate in his own illegal and unconstitutional public lynching and respectfully requests that the board immediately reinstate him, with all rewards and benefits, and close the complaint as without merit,” the statement concluded. Hyde said that because of the death threats, Arredondo did not feel the board meeting would be safe. The meeting began with comments from members of the public, some of whom demanded that Arredondo, who is on unpaid leave, turn in his badge. Board members said Texas law requires the chief’s employment status hearing to be held in closed session. After returning from that private meeting, one board member read a motion to immediately terminate Arredondo’s unvalidated contract and another to validate his license status. Arredondo has come under intense public scrutiny over law enforcement’s response to the May 24 massacre, America’s deadliest school shooting since 2012. The Uvalde school principal recommended Arredondo be fired. State officials identified Arredondo as the police commander at the scene, though he said he did not consider himself responsible. The gunman remained in two adjacent classrooms for more than an hour before officers entered the classrooms and killed him, authorities say. The delay went against the widely taught protocol for active shooter situations that calls for police to immediately end the threat and came even as the children inside repeatedly called 911 and begged for help. In his statement about Arredondo, Hyde says the chief was not notified between June 22 and July 19 of a school district investigation and was not asked to participate or testify. “The district cannot withhold its information for months, present only what it finds to support the Superintendent, and then disclose it without a reasonable opportunity to review it and an opportunity to discover evidence of subpoena or voluntary completeness.” Wednesday’s meeting comes after heated school board meetings in which parents demanded that Arredondo and others in the school system be fired, and after several instances in which officials criticized the police response to the shootings in hearings and a Texas investigative report. House.
The report described a “lackluster approach” by law enforcement
In a hearing before the Texas Senate on June 21, the director of the Texas Department of Public Safety called the police response a “gross failure.” The director, Col. Stephen McCraw, blamed the failure on Arredondo, whom state authorities identified as the stage commander. The on-scene commander, McCraw said, was “the only thing” preventing officers from entering the ranks to engage the gunman. But Arredondo told a Texas House investigative committee that he did not consider himself the incident commander. — repeating comments he made to the Texas Tribune in June. In a preliminary report released July 17, the Texas House panel laid blame more broadly, outlining a series of failures by multiple law enforcement agencies. The 77-page report described “a general deficient approach” by the 376 local, state and federal law enforcement officers who responded and were at the school. “There is no one to whom we can attribute malice or evil motives,” the report said. “Instead, we found systemic failures and egregiously poor decision-making.” The report also notes that others could have taken over. Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training “teaches that any law enforcement officer can take command, that someone has to take command, and that an incident commander can shift responsibility as an incident unfolds,” he says. “This did not occur at Robb Elementary, and the lack of effective incident management is a major factor that caused other vital measures to be canceled,” according to the report. In that report, Arredondo said his approach was “responding as a police officer” and that therefore he was “not self-titled.” However, at least one of the responding officers expressed the belief that Arredondo was leading the law enforcement response inside the school, telling others that “the chief is in charge,” according to a timeline from the Texas Department of Public Safety. In the wake of intense criticism, Uvalde School District Superintendent Hal Harrell placed Arredondo — who has been the school district’s police chief since March 2020 — on leave from his position as school police chief on the 22 June. Separately, Arredondo resigned from his seat on the Uvalde City Council in early July, and the council accepted the resignation on July 12.
‘Too little, too late’
At a school board meeting on July 18 — a day after the House report was released — an uncle of one of the slain children angrily asked why Arredondo was still employed. “Why the hell is he still employed with you?” Brett Cross, uncle of 10-year-old Uziyah Garcia, asked the board, adding that he wanted members to resign if Arredondo was not fired the next day. “Because you all don’t give a damn about our kids or us. Stand with us or against us, because we’re not going anywhere.” .” Cross, who raised Uzziah as his own son before the child was killed in the shooting, and others in the community have been calling for the school’s superintendent, board and police department to be replaced. In a meeting Monday night, the school board met to consider complaints from parents calling for the superintendent’s removal. The board approved a proposal that, in part, requires the superintendent to provide the board with names or organizations that could review the district’s administrative practices regarding accountability. Some community members in attendance — including Cross — expressed anger at the end of the meeting, with some saying it took three hours to accomplish nothing. “Get out on Wednesday,” Cross said as he and others left Monday’s meeting. “I’m the king fed up with these bulls.” CNN’s Andy Rose, Eric Levenson, Rosa Flores, Matthew J. Friedman, Christina Maxouris, Shimon Prokupecz and Rebekah Riess contributed to this report.
