Uvalde Police Chief Who Didn’t Act Removed from Office

BUCK: We had news that broke yesterday that we wanted to get to about the police chief in Uvalde, Texas — now former police chief Pete Arredondo — he was unanimously voted out by the board, and so he is no longer the police chief. He has been kicked out of this. Now, this was obviously a really tough period for the country. It is as horrific as any shooting could be, and unfortunately reminded us of some of the worst days of this country’s past where there had been similar school shootings like this.

So, this does happen. Statistically, the school shootings are more rare than the media would tend to have you believe, but it’s still a gut punch to the country and obviously a deeply destructive and heinous thing that an entire community, now Uvalde, has had try to heal from and cope with. Clay, we always are fair to law enforcement on this show. We are pro-law enforcement. I was just speaking to my uncle, actually, last night. He is retired LAPD.

And we want cops to be respected for the very important jobs that they do. I don’t think we second-guess or try to Monday morning quarterback law enforcement. But there are limits, right? There are times when you have to actually call it out. The failure of law enforcement at the Uvalde school shooting is, unfortunately, going to go down as something that I believe now decades of law enforcement we’ll be learning from as a “This is a disastrous response. Do not do this.”

Now, we learned something along those lines from the school shooting at Columbine, and there was something of a Columbine doctrine for law enforcement, which is, “If the guns are firing, you have to run to the sound of the gunfire and stop the threat.” We never got a really explanation as to what happened with Chief Arredondo. The fact that there was gunfire, there were kids who were calling from inside the classroom while the guns were still going off, and they were holding back parents — including a parent who was a police officer who wanted to go in and do something.

It’s really unbelievable, honestly, the failure of law enforcement on the scene there. Chief Arredondo being removed from his job is good, but I think there are other officers that shouldn’t be cops anymore who were on the scene as well. I think that there’s gonna have to be a really honest review. Did nobody in that hallway say, “Why are we holding for an hour? There’s gunfire.” Clay, I think it’s a reminder to everybody that the state will try to protect you, but ultimately the state will often fail; and so we all have to be as cognizant of our safety as possible. When it comes to children, it is on us adults to protect them.

CLAY: You can support police and also admit when police get something wrong. We are all imperfect, no matter what profession we have and what profession we support, what we do every day for a living. I’ve said on this show — and I know you’ve echoed it as well — if you are a police officer, the number one reason, in my opinion, you should be a police officer is to protect the innocent from the evil. That’s exactly what happened in Texas, and those police officers who weren’t willing to put their lives on the line don’t deserve to be police officers anymore, in my opinion, based on their behavior in that situation. I believe we have audio from the Uvalde school board of a kid speaking.

BUCK: Of a child speaking.

CLAY: And I want to play this because I think it’s particularly emblematic of what we’re saying. And I know there are a lot of police officers out there all over the country who took the lesson from Columbine, Buck, which is, “You go until you can’t go anymore,” because many of them called in and said, “That’s specifically how we were trained,” and for all those police who lined up in the hallway and did nothing, this is gonna be crushing. But for all those police out there who might find themselves in a situation like this at some point in the future, I want you to listen to this kid from Uvalde.

BUCK: She survived the shooting and was in the classroom.

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: You could kind of hear the student said, effectively, “Turn in your badge and step down. You don’t deserve to wear one.” I honestly look back… We have video, right? There’s very clear, real-time information that was gathered about what was happening in that hallway and in that school. And look, we came out and said… I will say, I come across this on the right. There are people for whom any criticism of law enforcement, there’s a reflective defense.

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: There was a little bit of this I heard on Fox as well even after we saw some of this. It was like, “You can’t criticize them, unless you’ve worn the uniform.” No, actually we can, and in this case, we need to because this was as catastrophic a failure of law enforcement as you can imagine under the circumstances.

And I think that there will be a lot of additional training and everything else. But what it really comes down to, Clay, is if someone is entrusted with that mission of protecting all of us but particularly in this case protecting children, if you’re not willing to run toward the sound of gunfire, you should not be carrying a gun in public safety and law enforcement. That’s just the bottom line.

CLAY: Amen. And criticism isn’t the same thing as disrespect. I think you’re right, Buck, about there’s an element out there that sees any criticism as, “Oh, you’re being disrespectful. You can’t have that opinion.” No, no, no, no. All of us are certainly not above criticism no matter what we do, and just because your profession is a police officer does not mean that you are perfect and above criticism.

In fact, criticism is how most of us get better, at anything. I mean, take it outside of the world of police. Most of coaching kids is criticism. Right? Most of teaching kids, much of it, is criticism. “No, you did that wrong. You should have done it this way.” The people who are most disgusted that I hear from about the response of those police officers in Texas are other police officers because they just look at it and say:

How could they have failed on such a complete level with the most serious thing that could ever happen? This is why you become a police officer is to go kick in a door and shoot a bad guy who’s trying to kill kids. If that’s isn’t your ultimate, “This is the reason why I’m a police officer” and you’re not willing to put your life on the line there, you’re not willing to put your life on the line ever and you shouldn’t be a police officer.

BUCK: And there was also, in the early stages of this, as we were analyzing this — and I think we were very fair at the different stages. It was, “Okay. Let’s see the video. Let’s get the timeline straight.” But you remember, there was some stuff going on with the timeline they officially gave that didn’t make sense. The stories weren’t lining up. You could tell that they were hiding something, there was some degree of internal panic early on —

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: — cause this is not a difficult thing within 48 hours to get an accurate timeline of a law enforcement response. How long were you there? When did people arrive? So there was obviously a bureaucratic CYA effort going on. And then when the video came out, I mean, then it was just devastating. And I know that some, folks, are saying, “Oh, but, Buck, this is because the defund police movement makes cops now unwilling to take certain risks or do certain things.”

To that I just say, “Not only do you have to be willing to run toward the sound of gunfire, if you have children in a classroom that are being murdered by a psychopath, you have to be willing to get fired from your job to save them too.” That’s another component of this. It’s anything to save those kids. And I know we have 99% of law enforcement professionals listening to the show right now say, “Of course. I’m going in this first thing.” But in this case, it didn’t happen.

CLAY: Well, they had 911 calls coming from teachers and students inside of these classrooms. And, Buck, the detail I think that’s finally come out is the door wasn’t even locked.

BUCK: Yep. They didn’t even try.

CLAY: So initially they were, like, “Oh, we were trying to find a janitor. We couldn’t find the keys,” and you and I were asking the question, “Are there windows?” Like, there’s more than one way to get into a classroom, most of the time.

BUCK: Yeah. They make it sound like that there was like a super max prison where they couldn’t get into some part of the facility. This is an elementary school! The whole story didn’t line up. I think they realized what a disaster it was from a response perspective, never mind the horrific tragedy that we all know unfolded because of the mass-murdering lunatic. But, yeah. So Arredondo is gone, and there may be some others. We’ll follow up with whether there’s some disciplinary measures against some of the other officers in that hallway.