JAKARTA - The Uvalde School District Police Chief (Uvalde CISD), Texas, United States, where the gruesome mass shooting that killed dozens of students and two teachers at Robb's Elementary School took place, has been criticized for its handling of the incident, has been placed on administrative leave and could lose his position at the school. city council.
Pete Arredondo, the Uvalde district police chief, was held responsible for the police response to the May 24 shooting, officials said, when a man armed with an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle opened fire that killed 19 schoolchildren aged 9 to 11 and two teacher.
The 19 officers waited more than an hour in the hallway outside classrooms 111 and 112 before a tactical team led by the US Border Patrol finally stepped in and killed the shooter.
The general practice of the police is to immediately confront the school shooter, even if it endangers the life of the officer. Texas Department of Public Safety director Stevan McCraw said Arredondo made a "terrible decision" that cost him valuable time.
The shooting at Robb Elementary School rocked the United States and reignited the gun debate in America. In response, the US Senate on Tuesday took the first steps to pass the country's first major gun control law in decades.
On Wednesday, District Superintendent Hal Harrell said in a statement he was placing Arredondo on administrative leave as the school's district police chief, replacing him with a lieutenant.
Arredondo defended his actions in an interview with the Texas Tribune published on June 9. He said his main concern was to save the lives of as many teachers and students as possible. However, he said officers at the scene were unable to find the key to open the door until 77 minutes after the shooting began.
He also told the Texas Tribune he did not consider himself the incident commander at the scene and did not order police to exercise restraint. His lawyer, George Hyde, told the Tribune one of the local, state or federal agents who arrived on the scene should have taken command.
But Steven McCraw said Arredondo was responsible and called the police response a "despicable failure" for not intervening immediately.
McGraw told a Texas Senate hearing on Tuesday the door was unlocked and there was no evidence officers tried to see if it was secured while others searched for the keys. Meanwhile, at least two children inside were using cell phones to call for help.
Arredondo, who has kept a low profile amid public anger in recent weeks, should start appearing at city council meetings or he could be removed from the post as well.
Another city council member on Tuesday rejected a leave request by Arredondo, who skipped the meeting. If he misses three meetings in a row, the board could fire him, as several members of the public requested on Tuesday.
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Arredondo, 49, and a career law enforcement officer, was elected to the city council shortly before the heartbreaking shooting incident.
Earlier, Texas state Senator Roland Gutierrez, the political Democrat who represents Uvalde, sued the state's Department of Public Safety for access to the full record of the shooting, saying the response to the massacre was "full of misinformation and outright lies" from the start.
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