Uvalde police and the Uvalde school system’s police force have stopped cooperating with the state’s probe of the agencies’ response to the Robb Elementary School shooting.
The Texas Department of Public Safety (TDPS) is investigating the local police which, according to TDPS Director Steven McCraw, arrived in the school two minutes after the attacker but stood outside the classroom where the massacre occurred for about an hour without breaching the classroom.
Law enforcement sources revealed that UPD and local school district police decided to stop cooperating with the investigation shortly after McCraw said they had made the wrong decision that day.
Here’s what McCraw said Friday:
“From the benefit of hindsight, where I’m sitting now, of course it was not the right decision, it was the wrong decision, period.”
Uvalde police and school district have both ‘STOPPED cooperating with investigators’ https://t.co/RcPd1jSvoa
— Daily Mail Online (@MailOnline) May 31, 2022
WLT commented further:
We were on this the day the tragic event took place…We’ve been all over this story! We knew things didn’t make sense very early on and we were RIGHT RIGHT RIGHT!
No, I’m not celebrating, because there are NO winners in this horrible tragedy. But I will shout from the rooftops when we are exposing corruption and it looks like we’ve done it yet again!
#BREAKING: Uvalde police no longer cooperating with Texas DPS investigation over school shootinghttps://t.co/qHNKf1a5Gd
— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) May 31, 2022
Guys, just cause the Uvalde PD stopped cooperating with Texas DPS investigation exactly a week after a school shooting and multiple lies doesn’t mean they’re trying to coverup their dereliction of duty…oh, no wait, that’s exactly what it means.
— NoelCaslerComedy (@caslernoel) May 31, 2022
More details of this story from a Fox News report:
While the Uvalde, Texas police department and local school district police have cooperated with state Department of Public Safety investigators into the massacre that killed 19 children and two teachers at an elementary school and the law enforcement response, the chief of the school police has not responded to a request for a follow-up interview.
The Uvalde Police Department and Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District police force have been talking to authorities, a Texas Department of Public Safety spokesman said.
Local authorities have come under pressure since a Friday press conference in which Steven McCraw, the head of the Texas Department of Public Safety, said the delayed police response to the mass shooting was “the wrong decision.”
Pete Arredondo, the Uvalde school district police chief, has not responded to Texas Rangers in two days for a follow-up interview from his initial statements following the shooting, a DPS spokesperson told Fox News in a statement.
“The Uvalde Police Department and Uvalde CISD Police have been cooperating with investigators,” the statement said. “The chief of the Uvalde CISD Police provided an initial interview but has not responded to a request for a followup interview with the Texas Rangers that was made two days ago.”
Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steven McCraw speaks during a press conference held outside Robb Elementary School on Friday, which he said nearly 20 officers stood in a hallway outside of the classrooms during the attack on a Texas elementary school for more than 45 minutes before agents used a master key to open a door and confront a gunman, authorities said Friday.
Arredondo reportedly made the decision to not immediately confront suspected shooter Salvador Ramos, 18, at Robb Elementary School during his rampage last week. Authorities waited in a school hallway for nearly 50 minutes before breaching a classroom door.
McCraw said that Arredondo thought the situation had transitioned from an active shooter to a barricaded subject, and that they had time to wait for tactical equipment and keys to unlock the classroom’s door.
The police response as well as the flow of inaccurate information by law enforcement in the days after have generated criticism from parents of the victims as well as officials who had praised authorities immediately afterward.
Locals have directed their anger at Pete Arredondo, police chief of the Uvalde school district, who was in charge of the police response to the shooting.
He was recently elected to the city council, but his Tuesday swearing-in ceremony was postponed and it is unclear when it will be rescheduled.
