Uvalde superintendent recommends firing school district police chief Pete Arredondo
Facing massive public pressure, Uvalde's top school official has recommended the firing of the school district police chief who was central to the botched law enforcement response when a gunman killed two teachers and 19 students at an elementary school nearly two months ago.
At a special meeting Saturday morning, the South Texas city's school board will hear from the school district's attorney about Superintendent Hal Harrell's recommendation to fire Chief Pete Arredondo, according to a statement. Arredondo has been accused by state officials of making several critical mistakes during the May 24 mass shooting at Robb Elementary School.
School officials have previously resisted calls to fire Arredondo. The announcement comes days after a meeting where school board members were lambasted for more than three hours by members of the public, who accused them of not implementing basic security at Robb, of not being transparent about what happened and of failing to hold Arredondo to account for his actions.
Brett Cross, an uncle of 10-year-old Uziyah Garcia, who was killed in the rampage, berated board members at length for not holding themselves accountable for the massacre. He particularly challenged members for not knowing school exit doors were locked to the outside and for not firing Arredondo.
"If he's not fired by noon tomorrow, I want your resignation and every single one of these board members because you don't give a damn about us or our children," Cross said, addressing Harrell.
Confronted with parents' vociferous demands to fire Arredondo, Harrell said Monday that the police chief was a contract employee who could not be fired at will.
Arredondo, who has been on leave from the district since June 22, has faced blistering criticism since the massacre, most notably for not ordering officers to immediately breach the classroom where an 18-year-old gunman carried out the attack. If fired, Arredondo would become the first officer ousted from his job following the deadliest Texas school shooting in history.
Although nearly 400 officers from various agencies were involved in the police response that took more than an hour to confront and kill the shooter, Arredondo is one of only two known to have faced discipline. His attorney did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The move to potentially fire the chief follows the release of a damning 80-page report by a Texas House committee that blamed all levels of law enforcement for a slow and chaotic response despite nearly 400 officers on the scene. The report specifically singles out Arredondo and faults him for wasting "precious time" during the massacre while searching for a key to the classroom.
According to the committee, Arredondo told lawmakers he didn't consider himself the on-scene commander in charge and that his priority was to protect children in other classrooms. The committee report called that decision a "terrible, tragic mistake."
The committee noted, however, that "Other than the attacker, the Committee did not find any 'villains' in the course of its Investigation. There is no one to whom we can attribute malice or ill motives. Instead, we found systemic failures and egregiously poor decision making."
Body camera footage released by the Uvalde officials shows Arredondo in the hallway trying multiple sets of keys on other classroom doors, but not the one where the massacre took place. The classroom door could not be locked from the inside, but there is no indication officers tried to open the door while the gunman was inside.
"Our thought was: 'If he comes out, you know, you eliminate the threat,' correct?" Arredondo told the committee, according to the report. "And just the thought of other children being in other classrooms, my thought was: 'We can't let him come back out. If he comes back out, we take him out, or we eliminate the threat.'"
Arredondo, 50, grew up in Uvalde and spent much of his nearly 30-year career in law enforcement in the city. He took the head police job at the school district in 2020 and was sworn in as a member of the City Council in a closed-door ceremony May 31. He resigned from his council seat July 2.