Uvalde City Council Denies School Police Chief Pete Arredondo’s Leave Of Absence Request

In the wake of the deadly shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, angry citizens and lawmakers seek answers from the town’s local police force that failed the massacre’s 21 victims, including 19 elementary school students and two teachers.

The chief of police for the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District, Pete Arredondo, has had a spotty attendance at recent Uvalde City Council meetings despite being sworn in as a City Council member in late May of this year.

Arredondo’s request for a leave of absence from future City Council meetings was denied on Tuesday night in a unanimous vote by his fellow council members. Now that his request for absence was denied, the council can vote to replace him if he misses three consecutive meetings without obtaining the leave.

The legal loophole to attempt to get rid of Arredondo was actually exposed by a Uvalde resident who spoke on Tuesday night. The woman, Kim Hammond, told council members, “Let him miss three meetings, he’s my council member, let him miss three. Don’t waste any more time on it … What you can do right now is not give him, if he requested it, a leave of absence. Don’t give him an out.”

Since the shooting occurred, the local police department has been inconsistent and non-transparent when communicating details of its response to the attack. Officers were recorded in surveillance footage waiting for over an hour to enter a classroom the gunman had shut himself in, and Arredondo was the on-scene commander that may have made that call to wait as long as they did.