Former Uvalde Police Chief Headed to Court Today (Update)

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The Uvalde mass shooting took place on May 24, 2022. Just over two years later, former Uvalde Schools Police Chief Pete Arredondo was indicted by a grand jury with 10 counts of child endangerment.

A grand jury has indicted two former Uvalde school police officers in the botched law enforcement response to the 2022 mass shooting at Robb Elementary school that left 19 children and two teachers dead, two Texas state government sources with knowledge of the indictment told CNN Thursday.

Former Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District Police Chief Pete Arredondo and former school police officer Adrian Gonzales were named in the indictments, which represent the first criminal charges filed in the school massacre.

Arredondo surrendered himself to the custody of the Texas Rangers in Uvalde on Thursday, an official with the Texas Department of Public Safety told CNN. The former chief was booked on 10 counts of child endangerment and known criminal negligence, according to the indictment.

Today, Arredondo is headed to court for the first time since the shooting. His lawyers want the case against him dismissed.

His lawyers are seeking to have the charges dismissed, arguing that he cannot be held criminally liable for actions he did not take, and that the indictment fails to clearly state what actions he did take that put the lives of the victims in danger…

Mr. Arredondo has contended that he was not the incident commander, and his lawyers said it does not matter in the context of the indictment. “Such an allegation may invoke a moral duty to perform his job well, but it fails to invoke a legal duty,” the lawyers argued in their filings.

But the indictment said Mr. Arredondo endangered the children by trying to negotiate with the gunman while he “was engaged in an active shooter incident, delaying the response by law enforcement officers to a gunman who was hunting and shooting a child or children.”

Arredondo has been blamed for treating the suspect as a barricaded suspect rather than an active shooter. A barricaded suspect is someone who is no longer considered a threat to others, meaning police can take their time negotiating or figuring out a way to make an arrest. But in Uvalde, there were still children and adults in the room with the shooter, some of whom were severely injured and dying.

FBI training for active shooter situations is to aggressively confront the shooter until he is no longer a threat. But after one brief attempt to enter the room, Arredondo and other officers held off for about 75 minutes, supposedly waiting for a key to a door which was not locked or for a ballistic shield.

Regardless of all of this, Arredondo has pleased not guilty and his lawyer (whose name is Looney) argues that he can’t be charged for actions he did not take that day. Not responding appropriately to an emergency is not a crime in Texas.

“We had 400-plus police officers respond, and it took over an hour for the situation to conclude,” said Arredondo’s attorney Paul Looney. “That’s unacceptable.” But Looney says that doesn’t mean his client should be charged with a crime for his response to the mass shooting.

“It has allegations and it has emotional appeal, but it doesn’t even tell us that anything he did is against the law in the state of Texas,” he argued. “He’s not being charged with avoiding his responsibility. He’s being charged with a crime that doesn’t exist in Texas. He wasn’t the commanding officer on scene. He responded to that situation as a police officer. He was a first responder.”…

“His conduct, his chosen inaction at times, none of it was criminal,” Looney said. “It was all judgment. And it may have been really good judgment. We don’t know.”

Unfortunately, there is some precedent. Last year Scot Peterson, the coward of Broward who stood around outside while the gunman was inside shooting people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, was acquitted in a similar case. 

On Thursday, Mr. Peterson, 60, sobbed heavily as Judge Martin S. Fein of the Broward County Circuit Court read the verdict to a courtroom in downtown Fort Lauderdale, where only a few members of victims’ families were present. Mr. Peterson, standing with his hands clasped in prayer position, nodded and mouthed quiet thanks to jurors as they filed out.

“We’ve got our life back after four and a half years,” Mr. Peterson, still emotional, said outside the courtroom, standing next to his wife. “It’s been an emotional roller coaster for so long.”

The trial was believed to be the first in the nation against a police officer for inaction during a mass shooting, and a conviction might have paved the way for prosecutors to pursue charges against other law enforcement officers over their response to mass shootings.

That case probably points the way that the current case is headed. It may be obvious to nearly everyone that Pete Arredondo was in over his head and responded horribly to the situation at hand two years ago, but failure, stupidity and even cowardice are not crimes. I guess we’ll see if a jury agrees.

Update: Arredondo gave an interview to CNN last month in which he refused to look at or comment on body cam video from the scene.