Angry citizens of Uvalde, Texas, approached the school board Monday night, with speakers demanding that district police chief Pedro 'Pete' Arredondo be removed and questioning what safety measures will be put in place when schools reopen.
The pain from the May 24 tragedy at Robb Elementary that murdered 21 people weighed hard on the attendance, and some parents claimed their children aren't ready to return to school.
Uvalde School Shooting's Preliminary Report Released
The Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District board met on Monday, one day after a Texas House investigation committee issued a preliminary report revealing a series of errors by law enforcement authorities in their reaction to the killing. The 77-page interim assessment highlighted an overall lax approach by almost 400 local, state, and federal law enforcement personnel who attended the institution as students.
State officials claimed Arredondo was the incident commander and blamed him for the terrible law enforcement response, and it was heavily criticized in part because cops delayed more than an hour to enter the classroom, CNN reported. The discovery that Border Patrol agents and state troopers made up more than half of the 376 law enforcement personnel who hurried to the South Texas school on May 24 distributed blame for a sluggish and bungled response considerably broader than prior versions that stressed Uvalde cops' faults.
The study made it obvious that authorities' egregiously bad decision-making extended beyond Uvalde's local law enforcement, who were eventually overwhelmed more than 5-to-1 by state and federal officials on the site. Other local cops from the Uvalde region also reacted to the incident.
The research sheds fresh light on the responsibilities of state and federal agencies, whose leaders, unlike local officials, have not had to go through sessions where enraged parents of the victims faced them. Only two policemen are now known to be on leave pending an inquiry into their actions: Pete Arredondo, the Uvalde Consolidated School District police chief, and Lt. Mariano Pargas, a Uvalde Police Department officer who served as the city's acting police chief throughout the massacre.
State police earlier stated that no troopers on the site had been suspended. On Monday, Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said the report's conclusions were beyond alarming, but he did not call out any one agency. The Texas DPS did not specify when the review would be completed. Every trooper, state police agent, and Texas Ranger on the site will be investigated "to establish if any breaches of policy, law, or doctrine occurred."
Col. Steve McCraw, the head of the Texas Department of Public Safety, has already thrown much of the responsibility for the reaction at Arredondo, naming him as the incident commander and condemning him for treating the event with indifference, as per CBS News.
Angry, Heartbroken Uvalde Parents Flood School Board Meeting
Following the report, many people demanded that members of Uvalde's school district police force who were present during the shooting be fired, that an independent investigation into the Robb Elementary School failures is conducted, and that they be given answers and transparency about their specific concerns.
On Monday night, parents decided to pull their children from Uvalde schools in September, and some demanded the resignation of Uvalde CISD Superintendent Dr. Hal Harrell. The community also wanted to know whether or not the Robb Elementary School door was secured.
Participants at the event also demanded an impartial probe into the massacre. The gathering was unified, repeatedly asking everyone to stand up together, be bold, and speak their truth.
After apologizing in his introduction for not holding a forum like this sooner, Harrell, who was seated on stage with the entire school board, opened the floor to questions. Cross was referring to a news briefing conducted on Sunday by the special committee report on the poor police reaction to the shooting that murdered 19 children and two teachers.
Sunday, relatives were welcome to attend and ask questions, and those invited, including the media and families, were expected to fill out the documentation necessary by the committee to ask a question. Many people in the community did. However, they were unable to ask their questions owing to time limits.
Before the discussion began on Monday, community members wearing similar "Uvalde Strong" shirts placed images of the victims on the chairs in the front row facing the school board members, according to ABC7.
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