Uvalde Police Not Cooperating With Investigation Of Their Response To School Shooting

Pete Arredondo, the school district police chief of Uvalde, Texas, has become the target of anger and blame for law enforcement’s delayed actions during a May 24 school shooting which left 19 children and two teachers dead.

Laurel Duggan

The Uvalde Police Department (UPD) and the Uvalde, Texas, school district police stopped cooperating with the state’s investigation of their response to the May 24 shooting at Robb Elementary School which left 19 children and two teachers dead, according to ABC News.

The Texas Department of Public Safety (TDPS) is investigating the local police which, according to TDPS Director Steven McCraw, arrived in the school two minutes after the attacker but stood outside the classroom where the massacre occurred for about an hour without breaching the classroom.

Law enforcement sources told ABC that UPD and local school district police decided to stop cooperating with the investigation shortly after McCraw said they had made the wrong decision that day.

“From the benefit of hindsight, where I’m sitting now, of course it was not the right decision,” McCraw said Friday, referring to local officers’ decision not to immediately breach the classroom. “It was the wrong decision, period.”

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Police officials said most of the shootings occurred in the first few minutes of the attack, but 911 calls from students revealed children were still alive inside the classroom at 12:16, about 40 minutes after police arrived on the scene and 30 minutes before they breached the room. One caller said eight or nine students were still alive then, by which point 19 officers were in the hallway outside the classroom.

Locals have directed their anger at Pete Arredondo, police chief of the Uvalde school district, who was in charge of the police response to the shooting. He was recently elected to city council, but his Tuesday swearing-in ceremony was postponed and it is unclear when it will be rescheduled.

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