Uvalde council will investigate every city police officer at scene of massacre as families call for firings
Victims’ families, community members and officials continue to demand answers around the botched law enforcement response to the 24 May massacre
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The Uvalde City Council has said it will investigate every single city police officer who responded to the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School as it faces growing calls from victims’ families to oust the officers from their roles.
At a tense city council meeting on Tuesday night, council member Ernest “Chip” King III announced the launch of an investigation into the actions of 25 Uvalde Police Department officers that day and vowed to “act on” the findings.
“This investigation is looking at every single officer and what his actions – what he did, what our policy says – and basically, we’re gonna get a report on everybody,” he said.
“We will act on it, and we promise that to you.”
He added: “Everybody that’s Uvalde PD that was there will be held accountable for their actions.”
Each officer will be interviewed by Jesse Prado, a former Austin police officer and the city council’s lead investigator, as part of the probe.
The investigation comes as victims’ families, community members and officials continue to demand answers around the botched law enforcement response to the 24 May massacre.
Almost 400 officers from multiple local, state and federal agencies responded to the scene of the shooting that day but failed to act for a staggering 77 minutes while the gunman murdered 19 innocent students and two teachers.
Uvalde School Police Chief Pete Arredondo, the on-site commander of the incident, has shouldered much of the blame as he failed to send law enforcement officers into the classroom to confront the gunman.
He was placed on administrative leave last month, with calls growing for him to be fired.
The school board was expected to meet for a special meeting on Saturday where they would vote to fire him altogether, but the meeting was cancelled last minute. It will now be held at a later – as yet unconfirmed – date.
Last week, the acting chief of the Uvalde Police Department was then suspended pending the outcome of an investigation into his actions.
Lt Mariano Pargas’ suspension came after a Texas House committee report found that the department disregarded its own active shooting training that day.
To date, Lt Pargas and Chief Arredondo are the only two law enforcement officers known to be facing any disciplinary action over the bungled law enforcement response more than two months on from the massacre.
But now, attention is turning to each and every city law enforcement officer on the scene.
Of the city police department’s 39 officers, 25 were on the scene of Texas’ deadliest school shooting on 24 May, according to the House committee report.
Several were among the first officers to arrive on the scene.
In Tuesday’s meeting, the families who lost loved ones urged council members to suspend all 25 officers while the investigation is carried out.
Brett Cross, uncle of 10-year-old victim Uziyah Garcia, pointed to an officer at the meeting saying that it “ain’t right” that they are still in uniform while questions still remain unanswered.
“That ain’t right... until the investigation is done, they should be on administrative leave,” he said.
Council member Hector Luevano addressed the families’ demands saying “I know parents want answers” and vowed that officers would be held accountable for any failings that come to light.
“If there’s any officer that’s in violation of any policy or procedure that they needed to act on and did not and might have caused these children to die, these teachers to die, I can assure you, heads are going to roll,” he said at the meeting.
The city council investigation is expected to take around two months.
It marks just the latest in a string of investigations launched to find out what went wrong that day.
Earlier this month, the Texas House committee investigating the massacre released its bombshell report where it slammed the “lackadaisical approach” of law enforcement.
Gunman Salvador Ramos entered the school and began opening fire on innocent students and staff at 11.33am that morning.
It was another 77 minutes before an elite Border Patrol unit breached the classroom and shot him dead at 12.50pm.
Damning surveillance footage shows dozens of armed officers standing in the hallways outside the classroom failing to take action.
The Texas House committee’s 77-page report revealed that a staggering 376 law enforcement officers descended on Robb Elementary School to respond to what became the worst mass shooting in Texas history.
Among them was 149 US Border Patrol, 91 state police, 25 Uvalde police officers, 16 sheriff’s deputies and five Uvalde school police officers.
The remaining were federal Drug Enforcement Agency officers, US Marshals and police officers who responded from neighbouring counties.
In the damning report, the law enforcement response was described as “chaos” where there was no clear leadership and officers on the scene “failed to prioritise saving the lives of innocent victims over their own safety”.
“There was an overall lackadaisical approach by law enforcement at the scene. For many, that was because they were given and relied upon inaccurate information. For others, they had enough information to know better,” the report states.
The Texas House committee report stated that it was “plausible” that the lengthy delay in taking action cost the lives of some of the victims bleeding out inside the room.
One teacher died of her injuries in an ambulance while three children died after reaching hospital.
During Tuesday’s council meeting, the council also passed a resolution urging Texas Governor Greg Abbott to call a special session of the state Legislature to consider raising the minimum age to buy a semi-automatic rifle from 18 to 21.
Ramos had turned 18 just days before he carried out the massacre – legally buying up two AR-15s as soon as he was old enough in his home state that has some of the most lax gun laws in the country.
Council member Luevano said he doubted that the Republican governor will respond to the request because he is beholden to the National Rifle Association.
“So is this special session going to happen? I think not,” he said. “And why do we need to ask for a special session? Why doesn’t he take the initiative?”
He added: “I don’t even think he cares about Uvalde.”
Last week, it emerged that Mr Abbott hadn’t attended a single funeral for any of the 21 victims of the massacre.