Faithful readers who followed this blog through our analysis of the Broward (Coward) County Sheriff response to the Parkland shooting understand the limitless seething contempt I have for disgraced Sheriff Scott Israel.
I didn’t think it would be possible for a LEO chief to be worse than him, but Uvalde School Police Chief Pete Arredondo may have cleared that bar.
Uvalde school police chief ditched his radio during shooting because he ‘thought it would slow him down’ and claims he ‘didn’t know he was in charge’ as he describes standing outside classroom while 12 kids and teachers inside waited for help
The Uvalde School Police Chief widely blamed for the disastrous cop handling of the massacre at an elementary school has revealed he intentionally ditched his radios because he thought they would ‘slow him down’, and said he didn’t know he was in charge of the operation.
He has been widely blamed for not responding to the shooting more promptly, and Texas officials even said he gave directives to cops telling them not to try to breach the classroom where Ramos had barricaded himself inside with kids.
Now, in his first interview since the atrocity, he told The Texas Tribune that he gave no such directive or any others – because he didn’t think he was in charge.
‘I didn’t issue any orders. I called for assistance and asked for an extraction tool to open the door,’ he said.
He also says he didn’t know there were kids still alive inside the classroom because he didn’t have his police radio on him.
He had decided to ditch it on his way into the school because he thought it would ‘slow him down’ – a decision that experts have slammed as unheard of.
‘Arredondo believed that carrying the radios would slow him down. One had a whiplike antenna that would hit him as he ran. The other had a clip that Arredondo knew would cause it to fall off his tactical belt during a long run.
‘Arredondo said he knew from experience that the radios did not work in some school buildings,’ the Texas Tribune reports.
Let us break down these failures:
He is the chief of police for the Uvalde school district but didn’t think he was in charge of what is clearly the worst crisis in Uvalde school district history.
He abandoned his communication equipment because he thought it was a hindrance.
One had an antenna that annoyed him. The other would fall off his belt. These are the most absolutely worthless and pathetic excuses I have ever heard.
He tried to justify it by saying he knew the radios didn’t work in the school buildings. As the chief of school police it was his responsibility to make sure they had radios that work in schools.
Try to comprehend a chief of police explaining why they have communication equipment that they know doesn’t work inside their specific jurisdiction and thinking that’s okay.
There is so much bad leadership and incompetence in this interview I’m floored.
I can guarantee you that the reality is that Pete Arredondo assumed this job was a sinecure. Chief of school police sounds like an easy government job with a fat salary and great pension he could coast on until retirement.
Shit went down and he ditched his communication equipment so he could hide from responsibilities he was totally unprepared for and incapable of dealing with.
But it gets worse.
More than a DOZEN of the 33 children and three teachers trapped in Uvalde school during massacre were alive and awaiting rescue for an HOUR as cops scrambled for key to unlock classroom and up to 60 officers waited outside for bulletproof shields
More than a dozen of the 33 children and three teachers trapped in the Texas school during the massacre were alive and awaiting rescue for an hour as cops scrambled for a key to unlock a classroom door, a review has found.
The terrified victims were stuck inside the building for 77 minutes as bungling officers tried to figure out how to get past a ‘steel jamb’ entrance to the room Salvador Ramos, 18, was in, the study of video footage showed.
Pete Arredondo, the embattled chief of Uvalde school police, was among the first officers to enter Robb Elementary during the original siege.
But when he and his officers were pushed back – with two injured in the gunfire – he did not let them enter again for another 40 minutes as they waited for better equipment to arrive.
Ramos managed to butcher 19 children and two teachers at the school in the time it took for police to shoot him dead an hour and a half after he broke in last month.
All of the breaching equipment in the county and they fucked around waiting for a key.
And they fucked around for over an hour while the shooter casually killed teachers and children.
Arredondo cost lives. He absolutely made it possible for the casualty count to be as high as it was.
Every single thing that the department did was wrong because their chief was a worthless cowardly piece of incompetent shit.
Unfortunately for the people of Uvalde and fortunately for Pete Arredondo, he’s protected by qualified immunity.
The only honorable thing for him to do though (and I said this about Scott Israel too) is to pull a Budd Dwyer during a press conference.
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