Texas: The troubled police chief of the Uvalde school district was fired Wednesday after being accused of several critical mistakes during the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School that killed 19 students and two teachers.
Police Chief Pete Arredondo was reportedly fired unanimously by the board of trustees of the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District.
Arredondo is the first police officer fired as a result of his slow and ineffective manner of responding to one of the worst school shootings in American history.
Only one other officer, Lieutenant Mariano Pargas of the Uvalde Police Department, who served as the city's acting police chief on the day of the shooting, has been granted a leave of absence to participate in the shooting.
Arredondo, who has been absent from the district since June 22, has come under fire since the May 24 massacre, particularly for not instructing officers to enter the classroom, where an 18-year-old gunman immediately was attacked.
According to Colonel Steve McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, Arredondo was in charge of the law enforcement response to the attack.
In a report released last month, Texas state lawmakers also criticized Arredondo, claiming he "did not take his premeditated responsibility for the incident order" and made errors in analysis because he lacked all the necessary data.
The lawmakers claimed that the situation turned "chaotic" because of the "loose attitude" of 376 on-scene officers to bring the shooter to justice.
He claimed that no other officers offered to aid Arredondo or stand up for him during the massacre.
The time between the arrival of the first officers and the death of the shooter was 73 minutes, which was considered an "unacceptable time".
The report said that "lack of leadership may have contributed to the loss of life."
According to the report, it can be estimated that some of the victims could have survived if they had not had to wait another 73 minutes for help.
Local media reported that Uvalde Police Lieutenant Mariano Pargas was suspended in response to a shooting in the city after Texas lawmakers' reports became public.
An internal investigation into the state police's response has also been launched by the Texas Department of Public Safety, with more than 90 state troops at the scene.
According to school officials, Rob's primary campus will no longer be in operation. Instead, junior high school students will attend classes at other Uvalde campuses because they don't want to return to school in person after all the shootings.
According to the school officials, the students will have access to the virtual academy. The district hasn't disclosed the number of students who will participate in virtual instruction, but a new state law passed in Texas last year in response to the pandemic cap "10% of all enrolled students" on the number of eligible students receiving remote instruction. Indicates the number. given the school district."
Schools are allowed to request exemptions for going over the limit, but Uvalde hasn't, according to Melissa Holmes, a spokeswoman for the Texas Education Agency.
According to the school district, new security measures in Uvalde include "eight-foot, non-scalable perimeter fencing" on elementary, middle and high school campuses. Additionally, according to officials, more security cameras, better locks, better district staff training and better communication have been put in place.
However, the district's own progress report shows that as of Tuesday, six of the eight campuses had no fencing, and only the high school had cameras. Three of the eight campuses had made some progress with the locks, and each campus had a half-way mark for communication improvements.
An inquiry for comments was not immediately replied to by the CISD.
In recent months, there have been several brutal gun massacres in the United States, including an Illinois Fourth of July parade and a grocery store in a neighborhood that is predominantly Black in New York State.
Less than 24 hours after the Supreme Court strengthened the right to bear arms, US lawmakers broke a decades-long deadlock on gun control in June by passing the first important safety rule in nearly 30 years.
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