The Uvalde School District Police Chief who changed the status of the Robb Elementary School shooting from an ‘active shooter’ situation to a ‘barricaded suspect’ has been slammed as a coward by his own neighbor.
As a result of the change in status, critics claim, police officers stood back for more than half an hour as Salvador Ramos continued to slaughter 19 children and two adults who were locked in the classroom with him.
Some students even continued to call 911 at the time, informing police that Ramos, 18, was still shooting at them.
‘Pete Arrendondo is a coward,’ his neighbor, Lydia Torres, 56, told the New York Post in the aftermath. ‘He didn’t do his job. He failed the children.’
Arrendondo, 50, is now under police protection as Texas state investigators probe whether he even had a police radio on him when he made the decision.
But one cop on the scene of the shooting Tuesday has said that Arredondo is wrongly being made a scapegoat.
‘It’s a lie that Arrendondo told everyone to stand down,’ said the anonymous officer. ‘It’s a lie. And we’re all getting death threats. It’s a f*****g nightmare.’
Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District Chief of Police Peter Arrendondo has been slammed as a ‘coward’ by his neighbor
Arrendondo changed the status of the Robb Elementary School shooting from an ‘active shooter’ situation to a ‘barricaded suspect’ on Tuesday as Salvador Ramos, 18, locked himself inside a classroom and continued to fire
As a result of the decision police officers stood back for more than half an hour
Worried parents gathered outside the SSGT Willie de Leon Civic Center on Tuesday as calls continued to come in from children stuck inside
Col. Steven McCraw admitted at a news conference on Friday that the decision to change the status of the shooting was ‘the wrong decision’
The assertation comes after Texas Department of Public Safety head Steven McCraw slammed Arredondo for failing to engage 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, mistakenly believing the teen had finished his killing spree and was hiding out from cops.
But, McCraw said, students continued to make 911 calls while locked in the classroom with Ramos, as Arredondo and his men waited outside the room for more than an hour.
It was revealed Friday that the Uvalde Schools Police Department ignored several protocols from their own active shooter training drills, which they had practiced just two months ago
Eventually, Border Patrol agents who rushed to the scene after hearing the incident unfold on scanners, breached the locked classroom door, with one fatally shooting Ramos.
According to a law enforcement official who anonymously spoke to The New York Times, the agents had been puzzled as to why they were being told not to enter the school and engage the gunman.
McCraw asserted that Arredondo, identifying the district chief by title and not by name, made a miscalculation assuming the active shooter situation had become a barricade event.
‘With the benefit of hindsight, from where I’m sitting now, of course it was not the right decision. It was the wrong decision, period,’ McCraw said.
His decision is now being investigated by state authorities, as cops continue to protect outside his home – apparently upsetting his neighbor.
‘I do not understand why the police from Uvalde, Texas are guarding Pete Arrendondo’s home,’ Torres said.
‘He is in his home, requesting the police department patrol the area and guard his home day and night. He should come out and speak up,’ she said, adding that the parents of the 19 children killed in the shooting deserve an explanation from him about why he did not storm the classroom sooner.
‘I want to know why the police officers in the hallway didn’t take action immediately, when the children were begging for help.
‘If they cannot protect the children and citizens of Uvalde, Texas, then they have no business in law enforcement,’ Torres said, adding: ‘They may as well go flip burgers somewhere else.’
Uvalde residents mourned at a makeshift memorial outside Robb Elementary School
One woman kept a young girl by her side as they stood outside the memorial on Saturday
A woman was seen paying her respects to the 19 children and two teachers who were killed in the massacre on Tuesday
One young boy sat outside the memorial on Sunday to pay his respects
Arrendondo is now being investigated for possibly not having a police radio on him when he told his officers to stand back as Salvador Ramos slaughtered 19 children and two adults.
Arredondo, a former 911 dispatcher who’d been elected to Uvalde’s city council just days earlier, may have used that as an excuse for why he held his officers back despite the 911 calls from students inside the school desperate for assistance.
‘That’s going to be key,’ a source told the New York Post. ‘If those 911 calls were being communicated to the officers or the incident commander.’
The source says that investigators are still trying to determine whether Arredondo had a radio.
‘If they were being relayed, it also raises questions as to why it was not treated as an active shooter situation.’
And on Friday, it was also revealed that the Uvalde Schools Police Department ignored several protocols from their own active shooter training drills, which they had practiced just two months ago.
The United States Justice Department is now conducting an investigation of the police response to the shooting, with spokesman Anthony Coley saying the review would be conducted in a fair, impartial and independent manner and that the findings would be made public.
Officials said the review is being conducted at the request of Uvalde´s mayor.
Arrendondo, 50, was born in Uvalde and was elected to city council just days before the massacre. He is now under police protection
Arredondo, who was born in Uvalde and was elected to city council just days before the massacre, has had an unremarkable career as a cop.
He started his law enforcement career as a 911 dispatcher for Uvalde’s town police department in 1993, and over the course of the next 20 years, worked his way up to eventually assume the role of assistant police chief at the department in 2010.
Afterwards, he worked various roles at Webb County Sheriff’s Office in Laredo – a small Texas town a little more than 100 miles from Uvalde. He then moved to the city’s school district police force, United ISD, which is comprised of 88 sworn peace officers.
In March, during the early days of the pandemic, Arredondo got the chance to return home, when he was offered the position of school district police chief in his native Uvalde.
‘It’s nice to come back home,’ Arredondo, who has family in the small, rural town, told the Uvalde Leader News upon accepting the gig.
The department, which only presides over the town’s school seven-school district, is comprised of four officers, one police chief, and a detective.
‘All four of us are on a group text,’ Arredondo said at the time, adding ‘they are very knowledgeable, and I encourage them to give ideas.’
He went on to assert: ‘Of course, my title is important, but having a good group is also important,’ Arredondo said, adding, somewhat prophetically, ‘If not, you can surely fail.’
During Friday’s presser, state director McCraw corrected information released by Arredondo’s department Thursday that the gunman entered the building unimpeded, contradicting prior assertions that one of their officers exchanged fire with Ramos before the gunman entered the building.
In fact, police now say that the officer had actually passed by Ramos while rushing to the scene, as the gunman crouched behind a vehicle outside of the building.
Arredondo was not at Friday’s press conference to answer questions and it remains unconfirmed if he was even inside the school at the time of the shooting.