In battered Uvalde, where a police chief is in hiding, grief gives way to calls for accountability
As chief of the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District Police Department, it was Arredondo’s call to wait more than an hour for backup instead of ordering officers on scene to immediately charge the shooter.
www.texastribune.org
FROM THE ARTICLE: (This is a long but very interesting article)
City Hall has locked its doors during business hours and declined to immediately provide any public records to reporters. The chief of the city police force, Daniel Rodriguez, has declined to answer questions about his officers’ response to the shooting. A Uvalde CISD official told a reporter,
falsely, that the first school board meeting since the incident would be closed to the public.
(this is what small towns can do - but bigger areas can't - I always thought it was against the law to decline public records requests)
Lydia Morales, who grew up in Uvalde, said local government has long been insular.
She feels officials protect each other and give preferential treatment to friends and allies. She criticized Mayor Don McLaughlin for initially saying Arredondo
would not be sworn in as planned. Arredondo was subsequently sworn in Monday at City Hall in a secret ceremony.
(this speaks volumes for reading between the lines)
“He lied to the community of Uvalde,” Morales said. “But shame on Arredondo for even doing that. I can’t see how he would have the audacity.”
Arredondo, 50, became chief of the Uvalde CISD department in 2020.
The tiny force of a half dozen officers, formed two years earlier, is responsible for security at the district’s eight schools. Officers also direct traffic and staff sporting events, and Arredondo said last year
that the hiring of two officers would allow for a greater focus on narcotics.
(looking to hire 2 more officers - spend more money - yet still not have enough officers to be able to place one at each school?)
“We are confident with our selection and impressed with his experience, knowledge and community involvement,” Superintendent Hal Harrell said after the school board
unanimously approved the hire in February 2020.
At an April
candidate forum, Arredondo said communication is the key to solving complicated issues.
“I guess to me, nothing’s complicated, everything has a solution,” he said at the time.
“And that solution starts with communication.” (HIS WORDS! - boy they came back to bite him)
From her family’s produce stand on Main Street, Angelia Arellano has watched police cars from Dallas, Houston and the Rio Grande Valley drive by in the past week. Officers from across the state have come to assist their local counterparts. She said
the city police department appears to have retreated from public view at precisely the moment they should be out in the community as it grieves.
Their absence reinforces Arellano’s belief, forged in a lifetime of living in Uvalde, that the police cannot be relied upon. She said they refused to respond when she once called about a man who was harassing her son.
“The police aren’t very effective,” she said in Spanish. “If there’s no blood and no one has been killed, they don’t come.”
Sadly, I'm beginning to think the victims and families of this horrific crime will never see justice. Life in small town America is really different from that in the big cities. They both have their pros and cons - but one thing remains the same - greed, ego, arrogance, and a "quid pro quo" attitude between the elected. They will stop at nothing to keep each other protected. Meanwhile the citizens are left to figure it out and "deal with it" among themselves. And all that is so much easier to do when it is on a small scale and nobody really pays attention. Such a shame. But the whole world is paying attention now. Let's all pray that attention will get some answers and fix these attitudes.
JMHO - as always.....
