A man wears a Justice T-shirt in honor of the victims of the shooting at Robb Elementary School as he speaks to the media after Uvalde School District Police Chief Pete Arredondo was fired by the Uvalde Unified Independent School District Board of Trustees, Wednesday, Aug. 24, 2022, in Uvalde, Texas. (AP Photo/Eric Gay) The Uvalde School District fired Police Chief Pete Arredondo on Wednesday, making him the first officer to lose his job because of law enforcement’s flimsy and botched response to Robb Elementary School after a gunman killed 19 students and two teachers in a fourth grade class. In a unanimous vote that came after months of angry calls for his ouster, the Uvalde Unified Independent School District board fired Arredondo to a roomful of parents and survivors of the May 24 massacre. His removal came three months after one of the deadliest mass shootings in US history. Cheers from the crowd followed the vote and some parents left in tears. “Coward!” someone in the audience shouted as the meeting began. Arredondo, who has been on leave from the district since June 22, has come under the most intense scrutiny of the nearly 400 officers who rushed to the school but waited more than an hour to confront the 18-year-old gunman in a fourth-grade classroom. More specifically, Arredondo was criticized for not ordering the officers to act sooner. Col. Steve McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, said Arredondo was responsible for the law enforcement response to the attack. Arredondo wasn’t watching his career on the line. Instead, minutes before the Uvalde school board meeting began, Arredondo’s attorney released a scathing 4,500-word letter that amounted to the police chief’s most comprehensive defense to date of his actions. Over 17 provocative pages, Arredondo is not the delusional school police chief who a damning state investigation accused of failing to take charge and wasting time searching for keys to a potentially unlocked door, but a brave officer whose level-headed decisions saved the lives of other Students. It claims Arrendondo warned the district about various school safety issues a year before the shooting and claimed he was not responsible for the scene. The letter also accused Uvalde school officials of endangering his safety by not letting him bring a gun to the school board meeting, citing “legitimate risks of harm to the public and Chief Arredondo.” “Chief Arredondo is a leader and a courageous officer who, along with all other law enforcement officers who responded to the scene, should be celebrated for the lives that were saved, rather than those that were unable to arrive in time,” Hyde wrote . Uvalde school officials are facing mounting pressure from victims’ families and community members, many of whom have called for Arredondo’s termination. Superintendent Hal Harrell had first moved to fire Arredondo in July, but postponed the decision at the request of the police chief’s attorney. Among those attending the meeting was Ruben Torres, father of Chloe Torres, who survived the shooting in room 112 of the school. He said that as a former Marine, he took an oath that he faithfully fulfilled willingly and did not understand why officers did not act when leadership failed. “Right now, being young, she’s having a hard time dealing with this horrible event,” Torres said. Arredondo is the first officer to be fired over the law enforcement’s hesitant and confused response to the May 24 tragedy. Only one other officer — Lt. Mariano Pargas of the Uvalde Police Department, who was the city’s acting police chief on the day of the massacre — is known to have been placed on leave for his actions during the shooting. The Texas Department of Public Safety, which had more than 90 state troopers at the scene, also launched an internal investigation into the state police response. 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 after 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 after the pandemic limits the number of eligible students receiving distance education to “10 percent of all enrolled students in a given school system.” . Schools can request a waiver to exceed the limit, but Uvalde has not, according to Melissa Holmes, a spokeswoman for the Texas Education Agency. New measures to improve school security in Uvalde include “8-foot, non-scalable perimeter fencing” on elementary, middle and high school campuses, according to the school district. Officials say they have also installed additional security cameras, upgraded locks, improved training for area staff and improved communication. However, according to the district’s own progress reports, as of Tuesday fencing had not 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 the eight campuses, and communication improvement was noted as incomplete for each campus. Uvalde CISD did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
