Pete Arredondo, the chief of Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District’s police department, was quietly sworn into his city council role despite controversy surrounding his response to the Robb Elementary School massacre in which he reportedly held back responding officers for a significant amount of time.

Further, ABC News reports that the Uvalde Police Department and the Uvalde Independent School District police are “no longer cooperating with the Texas Department of Public Safety’s investigation” into the events of the school shooting.

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“Uvalde City Council members were sworn in today as per the City Charter. Out of respect for the families who buried their children today, and who are planning to bury their children in the next few days, no ceremony was held,” Mayor Don McLaughlin said Tuesday.

One day prior, McLaughlin stated that the ceremony would be postponed out of respect for the victims.

“Our focus on Tuesday is on our families who lost loved ones,” he said at the time. “We begin burying our children tomorrow, the innocent victims of last week’s murders at Robb Elementary School. The special City Council meeting will not take place as scheduled.”

The meeting itself did not take place as no swearing-in ceremony was held. But Arredondo is now a member of the city council nonetheless.

Uvalde School Police Chief Sworn Into City Council

Arredondo reportedly made the call to hold back police officers arriving on the scene of the shooting because he believed the situation had shifted from an active shooter scenario to a barricaded subject scenario.

According to some reports, officers waited over an hour – by which time 19 children and two teachers had been killed – before border patrol agents finally ignored his orders and stormed the classroom.

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Videos surfaced online apparently showing police officers fighting with parents who were begging them to go in and stop the shooter. They never did, at the alleged behest of Arredondo.

A Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) lieutenant told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that police officers responding to the shooting were held back because “they could have been shot.”

DPS Director Steven McCraw didn’t specifically name Arredondo but admitted the school police chief made the “wrong decision” not to engage with the gunman sooner.

Not Cooperating With the Investigation

Making the optics infinitely worse are reports that newly minted city council member Pete Arredondo is refusing to cooperate with Texas investigators looking into the school shooting.

Fox News reports that the Uvalde school police chief “has not responded to Texas Rangers in two days for a follow-up interview from his initial statements following the shooting.”

McLaughlin indicated there is no investigation being conducted into Arredondo’s actions officially despite making the “wrong decision” that almost certainly cost some children their lives.

He also defended the swearing-in.

“There is nothing in the City Charter, Election Code, or Texas Constitution that prohibits him from taking the oath of office,” McLaughlin said.

Perhaps as the investigations proceed they’ll find Arredondo followed protocol and didn’t actually make the call to hold officers back despite an active shooter situation. Right now it doesn’t look very good.

This piece originally appeared in ThePoliticalInsider.com and is used by permission.

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