Man who ordered cops NOT to tackle Texas gunman is former 911 dispatcher who was elected to council

Uvalde’s school district police chief is under fire for refusing to let his officers engage the active shooter at Robb Elementary, after the gunman barricaded himself in a classroom and continued to fire at cowering kids as they called 911.

During a bombshell presser Friday, Texas Department of Public Safety head Steven McCraw slammed Chief Pete Arredondo for failing to engage 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, mistakenly believing the teen had finished his killing spree and was hiding out from cops.

‘With the benefit of hindsight, from where I’m sitting now, of course it was not the right decision. It was the wrong decision, period,’ McGraw said.

The assertion from the state safety official comes as the the school district’s police force – which is comprised of just six officers, including Arredondo – continues to face scrutiny for their handling of the shooting, which saw 19 kids’ lives snuffed out.

The school district has its own police department made up of four officers, a police chief and a detective. 

The conference saw McGraw reveal that 911 calls had been made by students while locked in the classroom with Ramos – as Arredondo and his men waited outside for more than an hour for backup.

Video footage from the scene shows angry parents pleading with officers parked outside the school to enter the building, as they wondered as to the fate of their children.

Eventually, Border Patrol agents who rushed to the scene after hearing the incident unfold on scanners, breached the locked classroom door, with one fatally shooting Ramos.

According to a law enforcement official who anonymously spoke to The New York Times, the agents had been puzzled as to why they were being told not to enter the school and engage the gunman, when he was still in the building firing shots.

McGraw Friday asserted that Arredondo, identifying the district chief by title, made a miscalculation assuming the active shooter situation had become a barricade event – likely costing lives.

Uvalde’s school district police chief Pete Arredondo is under fire for refusing to let his officers engage the active shooter at Robb Elementary, after the gunman barricaded himself in a classroom and continued to fire at cowering kids as they called 911

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Video footage from the scene shows angry parents pleading with officers parked outside the school to enter the building, as they wondered as to the fate of their children

The statements have seen Arredondo, 50, become the focus of backlash from parents wondering if their children could have been saved. Nineteen died, as well as two teachers. All had been barricaded inside the classroom.

Arredondo, who was born in Uvalde and was elected to city council just days before the massacre, has had an unremarkable career as a cop.

He started in the line of law-enforcement as a 911 dispatcher for Uvalde’s town police department in 1993, and over the course of the next 20 years, worked his way up to eventually assume the role of assistant police chief at the department in 2010. 

Afterwards, he worked various roles at Webb County Sheriff’s Office in Laredo – a small Texas town a little more than 100 miles from Uvalde. He then moved to the city’s school district police force, United ISD, which is comprised of 88 sworn peace officers.

Then, in March, during the early days of the pandemic,  

During Friday’s presser, state director McGraw corrected information released by Arredondo’s department Thursday that the gunman entered the building unimpeded, contradicting prior assertions from that one of their officers exchanged fire with Ramos before the gunman entered the building.

McCraw said the officer mentioned in those reports was responding to a 911 call and confronted a person outside the school, who ended up being a teacher. 

McCraw further revealed that the officer had actually passed by Ramos while rushing to the scene, as the gunman crouched behind a vehicle outside of the building.