Uvalde School Shooting: Police Chief Fired

Facts

• The Uvalde, Texas school board on Wed. voted unanimously to fire Uvalde school district Police Chief Pete Arredondo over his response to the school shooting at Robb Elementary School earlier this year.
• Arredondo was placed on leave on June 22 amid wide condemnation of the handling of the shooting, which left 19 children and two teachers dead.
• Investigations into the response are still currently underway, but details have suggested there was confusion among officers who took more than an hour to kill the shooter.
• A July Texas House committee report accused Arrendondo of failing to take on “his preassigned responsibility of incident command,” which it says made him unable to communicate with both officers and victims.
• The report concluded, however, that despite “systemic failures and egregious poor decision making,” it found no “villains” in its investigation.
• New safety measures have been initiated since the shooting, including no longer using the Robb Elementary campus, allowing students to attend school virtually, and installing both fencing and cameras at all K-12 Uvalde campuses.

Sources: Daily Wire, Forbes, Improve the News, Time, and CBS.

Narratives

• Narrative A, as provided by Texas Tribune. While those responsible for the terrible handling of this massacre should be held responsible, Pete Arredondo was thrown to the wolves. There were a multitude of law enforcement mistakes that expand far beyond just one commander or agency.
• Narrative B, as provided by Democracy Now. Arredondo’s failures on the day of the shooting were so blatant anybody could see them. He failed at protecting the most vulnerable in his community — his primary job — when it mattered most. This is the right decision.