Uvalde school district places police Chief Pete Arredondo on administrative leave, superintendent announces

CNN
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Uvalde school district police chief Pedro “Pete” Arredondo was placed on leave Wednesday, according to a news release from Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District Superintendent Hal Harrell.

“Because of the lack of clarity that remains and the unknown timing of when I will receive the results of the investigations, I have made the decision to place Chief Arredondo on administrative leave effective on this date,” Harrell wrote in the announcement to the media.

Lt. Mike Hernandez is assuming the duties of the UCISD Chief of Police, Harrell said.

The superintendent wrote that he had intended to wait for an investigation to be finished before making personnel decisions.

“Today, I am still without details of the investigations being conducted by various agencies,” he wrote.

Arredondo testified Tuesday behind closed doors in Austin to a Texas House committee seeking answers to what happened May 24 when 21 people were gunned down at an elementary school, but has not spoken publicly about his decision-making on the day of the shooting.

The school district’s announcement comes a day after the Uvalde City Council, of which Arredondo is a new member, voted to deny his request for a leave of absence.

Harrell is not alone in appearing to be frustrated by the lack of information from investigators.

Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin on Tuesday slammed the Texas Department of Public Security (DPS) for its lack of transparency and accused its director, Col. Steven McCraw, of intentionally minimizing his agency’s mistakes in the weeks following the massacre at Robb Elementary School.

“Col. McCraw has continued to, whether you want to call it lie, leak, mislead or misstate, information in order to distance his own troopers and Rangers from the response. Every briefing he leaves out the number of his own officers and Rangers that were on-scene that day,” McLaughlin told residents at a city council meeting Tuesday.

“Col. McCraw has an agenda and it is not to present a full report on what happened and give factual answers on what happened to this community,” he added.

In addition, state Sen. Roland Gutierrez, a Democrat representing the County of Uvalde, filed a lawsuit Wednesday against DPS, arguing the agency violated the Texas Public Information Act when his request for information on the shooting was ignored.

“In the wake of the senseless tragedy, the people of Uvalde and Texas have demanded answers from their government. To date, they have been met with lies, misstatements, and shifts of blame,” the lawsuit states.

The criticisms and lawsuit come shortly after McCraw testified before a Texas Senate committee that the response from law enforcement was an “abject failure” and violated commonly taught protocol to stop the shooter as quickly as possible.

The DPS director accused Arredondo, who McCraw and others have identified as the on-scene commander, of ordering police to wait in a nearby hallway for unnecessary equipment and keys to a door that was not even locked.

“Three minutes after the subject entered the West building, there was a sufficient number of armed officers wearing body armor to isolate, distract and neutralize the subject,” McCraw said. “The only thing stopping the hallway of dedicated officers from entering rooms 111 and 112 was the on-scene commander, who decided to place the lives of officers before the lives of children.”

The finger-pointing adds further tension to a tragedy that has become a case study in bad policing and worse communication. Nearly a month has passed since an 18-year-old gunman killed 19 children and two teachers at the school. He remained inside the classrooms from 11:33 a.m. until 12:50 p.m. – when police finally breached the door and killed him, according to a DPS timeline.

Yet authorities have repeatedly changed their account of key facts about what happened inside the rooms and what police did in response during those 77 minutes.

McLaughlin said that the repeated misstatements and blame-shifting from Texas authorities was dividing the community and frustrating grieving families

“What matters to Uvalde is that these brokenhearted families and this grieving community get a full investigation and an accurate report of what happened that day,” he said. “The petty infighting, the clickbait headlines and the politically motivated scapegoating is not helping anyone.”

CNN has reached out to the Texas Department of Public Safety, the district attorney’s office, the chair of the Texas House investigating committee and the San Antonio office of the FBI for further comment.