The Uvalde City Council announced Tuesday that it would investigate every city police officer who responded to the May 24 shooting at Robb Elementary School.
The council has appointed former Austin, Texas, police detective Jesse Prado as the lead investigator. Prado will be tasked with individually interviewing 25 officers from the city’s 39-member police force as part of the investigation, according to the city council. The pledge to investigate the responding officers is the latest attempt by officials in the small Texas town at holding people responsible for the law enforcement response to the shooting that a state investigation has found was plagued with failures.
“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,” Councilman Ernest “Chip” King III said, according to CNN.
King added that the city “will act” on the results of the investigation and that “everybody that’s Uvalde PD that was there will be held accountable for their actions.”
ROBB ELEMENTARY SCHOOL PRINCIPAL SUSPENDED BY UVALDE SCHOOL DISTRICT, ATTORNEY SAYS
A Texas House investigation found that police officers waited 77 minutes after the first shots were fired by the gunman before entering the classroom and killing him. The report also noted communication failures between police officers and law enforcement agencies.
The Uvalde City Council has already suspended the city’s acting police chief during the massacre, Lt. Mariano Pargas, pending the outcome of the investigation.
The Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District has also placed its chief of police, Pete Arredondo, on administrative leave and suspended Robb Elementary School Principal Mandy Gutierrez with pay after the state’s investigation found she was aware of and never fixed a malfunctioning lock on a door to the classroom the gunman entered.
During the Tuesday city council meeting, attendees called on the council to suspend all city police officers who responded to the shooting.
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“Until the investigation is done, they should be on administrative leave,” Brett Cross, the father of Uziyah Garcia, a student killed in the shooting, told council members, according to ABC News.
“Administrative leave, at a minimum … I don’t think that’s a lot to ask,” Diana Olvedo-Karau said at the meeting, echoing Cross.
