Pete Arredondo
| Pete Arredondo | |
|---|---|
| Occupation | police officer |
| Title | Chief of Police |
Pete Arredondo is a former Police Officer. He was the Chief of Police of a small police department in Uvalde, Texas, on May 24, 2022, when a gunman entered the Robb Elementary School, and started shooting teachers and students.[1][2]
Although Arredondo would later claim he did not consider himself to be in charge, other police officers would rebut him, pointing out that he was the most senior officer on the scene, and he had been issuing orders, and, that meant he was in charge.[1][2]
Most of the shooting were confined to two connected classrooms, rooms 111 and 112.[1] The gunman was in those classrooms when the first police officers arrived on the scene, and he remained in those classrooms for the entire 77 minutes it took the police to decide to enter the classroom and subdue him.
Steven McCraw, Texas's director of the Department of Public Safety, who conducted an inquiry into the incident, would later point out that, since the 1999 Columbine High School massacre, it was accepted police practice for the first police on the scene to try to counter the gunman.[1] McGraw would assert that the first police to arrive on the scene had enough firepower and protective equipment, to have confronted the gunman, very early in the incident.
9-1-1 recordings would later reveal that, even though the gunman had already killed many of the students, some students continued to repeatedly phone and text 9-1-1, pleading for rescue.
Arredondo was heavily criticized by politicians, members of the general public, and many fellow police officers, for a failure of leadership.[1]
Uvalde placed Arredondo on administrative leave on June 22, 2022 - one day after McGraw filed his report.[2] Uvalde fired Arredondo on August 24, 2022.[3] Arredondo called his firing “an unconstitutional public lynching”
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 J. David Goodman. Head of State Police Calls Response to Uvalde Shooting an ‘Abject Failure’, New York Times, 2022-06-21, p. A13. Retrieved on 2022-08-25. “In his comments before a special State Senate committee in Austin, Steven McCraw, the director of the Department of Public Safety, provided the most complete public account yet of his agency’s month-old investigation and a forceful argument that officers at the scene could have — and should have — confronted the gunman without delay after arriving. Just minutes after a gunman began shooting children on May 24, he said, the officers at the scene had enough firepower and protective equipment to storm into the classrooms.”
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 J. David Goodman. Uvalde School District Puts Police Chief on Leave After Mass Shooting, New York Times, 2022-06-22, p. A12. Retrieved on 2022-08-25. “Though officers from several agencies entered the school minutes after a gunman opened fire in two connected classrooms, they waited more than an hour before confronting and killing him. Nineteen students and two teachers were killed in the attack.”
- ↑ Edgar Sandoval. Uvalde Fires Its School Police Chief in Response to Shooting, New York Times, 2022-08-24, p. A12. Retrieved on 2022-08-25. “The unanimous vote, which Mr. Arredondo, through his lawyer, called “an unconstitutional public lynching,” represented the first direct accountability over what has been widely seen as a deeply flawed police response, one that left trapped and wounded students and teachers to wait for rescue as police officers delayed their entry into the two adjoining classrooms where the gunman was holed up.”