Uvalde school system’s police chief — who’s facing overwhelming criticism for local law enforcement’s response to the Robb Elementary School slaughter — took active shooting training months before the massacre, according to a report.
Chief Pete Arredondo, of the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District, completed an eight-hour course on school-based active shooter situations at Southwest Texas Junior College on Dec. 17, 2021, according to a status report obtained by CBS News from the Texas Commission of Law Enforcement.
And it wasn’t the first active shooting response course he’s taken in recent years.
CBS News reported Arredondo, who’s been the police school chief since 2020, took the same eight-hour course in August 2020 and a 16-hour training session on “Terrorism Response Tactics – Active Shooter,” in June 2019, according to records.
Arredondo was the on-scene commander and “made the wrong decision” when he determined on May 24 that the situation had gone from active shooter to barricaded suspect, Col. Steven McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, said in a briefing Friday.
At least 19 officers were in a school hallway but didn’t act quickly enough to stop the crazed 18-year-old gunman, Salvador Ramos, McCraw said.
Ramos gunned down 21 people inside the school, including 19 young students during the worst school massacre since the Sandy Hook tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut in 2012.
Since 2018, the Texas Administrative Code requires school district peace officers and school resource officers to complete an active shooter response course that’s meant to prepare officers for emergency scenarios, according to CBS News.
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Texas state police officials were reviewing the Uvalde police and Uvalde school district’s police response to the shooting spree.