The police chief who was in charge when an 18-year-old gunman shot and killed 19 children and 2 teachers at an elementary school in the American town of Uvalde last month, has been sent home on paid leave. The school board where the police chief is employed reports this in a press release.
Robb Elementary School is part of the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District (UCISD), a Texas school district that has its own police force. Since the fatal shooting, there has been much criticism of the police officers, who arrived minutes after the gunman entered the school. It took about 70 minutes before officers finally confronted the gunman and shot him dead. This is charged to Police Chief Pete Arredondo, who is responsible for the officers.
Arredondo has previously told US media that they were waiting for a key to the classroom where the gunman had hidden and where students and teachers were present. The officers present would also not have had sufficient weapons and equipment to confront the shooter earlier.
Those arguments are under threat, now that released video images show that agents with automatic weapons and bulletproof shields were present in the school much earlier than said. Security images also show that the officers present never checked whether the classrooms were locked at all. If the officers present had confronted the gunman earlier, they could have saved lives, say critics, who also cite the incident in Uvalde to point out that more security in schools does not necessarily lead to a safer environment. After mass shootings such as the one at this primary school, many Republicans start talking about deploying armed security guards, but that didn’t work in Uvalde.
The school board says that it has initially awaited the investigations into the state of affairs that are being carried out by various government bodies. But because there is ‘still no clarity’ about the outcome of the investigations, the board has now decided to send Arredondo on leave for the time being.
Earlier it was announced that the Robb primary school will be demolished and that a new school building will be used. That already happened in the town of Sandy Hook in Connecticut, where 20 children and six staff members at a school were killed when a man opened fire there in 2012.
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