Three weeks after an 18-year-old gunman shot and killed 19 children and two teachers, wounding 17 others at Rob Elementary School in Uwalde, Texas, local law enforcement was silent on the investigation. Despite daily requests for comment from the media and police records seeking information on what happened and did not happen that day, officers have made feedback over the past week. They refuse to share more details about their response, leaving community members confused, frustrated and angry without anyone taking responsibility.
“We’ve all seen the initial reaction fail at all levels – systemic damage, communication breakdowns and more,” Texas Sen. Roland Gutierrez, a Democrat who represents Uwalde, told Yahoo News. “For 45 minutes we saw the police not following the protocol and we deserve better.”
Gutierrez is one of the most outspoken critics of the collective response to the mass shooting – calling on the officers in charge, Republicans in the state, Governor Greg Abbott and the National Arms Association. Nearly a month after the massacre, Gutierrez said, the impact of the shooting led to a lack of trust in law enforcement among Uwalde residents.
U.S. Sen. Roland Gutierrez is interrupting a May 27 press conference by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott in Uwalde, Texas. (Chandan Khanna / AFP via Getty Images)
“This lack of trust is based less on mistakes and omissions and more on the fact that no one is talking,” he added. “There is no transparency and no truth. When you can’t admit your truths and say you failed and tell me how you failed … then you will have problems. ”
Uwalde Police Department did not respond to Yahoo News’s request for comment.
Abbott’s spokeswoman Renae Eze said in a statement: “Investigations by Texas Rangers and the FBI are ongoing and we look forward to sharing the full results with the victims’ families and the public, who deserve full information. the truth about what happened that tragic day. “
Connie Rubio, bottom right, grandmother of Alexandria Rubio, 10, who died in a mass shooting in Uwalde, with her family during a candlelight vigil. (Chandan Han / AFP via Getty Images)
Sarah Spector, a former Uwalde prosecutor for five years who last worked in the city in 2017, told Yahoo News that given her experience with local police, she doubts society will ever understand the truth about what happened in this day.
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“I knew after the second press conference that there was a cover-up that something was wrong,” she said. “I knew this eight years ago, and it evoked many memories that I had forgotten.
Specter, who currently serves as a criminal lawyer in Midland, Texas, recalls a hostile environment she said local police in Uwalde created during their stay there. Low pay and lack of education, she says, have given way to employees who report incidents that are barely legible to her or potential jurors. Any criticism, she added, was met with “skepticism” and “misogyny”.
“If I was ultimately right about something I might have criticized them for trying to correct, they would go into a world of denial or alternative facts,” Spector said. “It was just another world, and at one point I realized I couldn’t do it much better.
Law enforcement officers in front of the civic center in Uwalde, Texas, after the mass shooting at Rob Elementary School on May 24. (Brandon Bell / Getty Images)
In a tweet that has since gone viral, Spector said just two days after the mass shooting that, given her previous interactions with officers in the city, “you will never know the truth about what happened at this school until put every inch of videotape in front of the press. ”
She later added: “The fact that there is no explanation for the radio silence of each individual employee, and we are now next to the district attorney’s office, why would anything change now?”
Uwalde Police Chief Pete Aredondo has taken the brunt of criticism of law enforcement response to the shooting. As the leader of a six-member team tasked with keeping schools in Uwalde safe, Aredondo was the one who decided that for nearly an hour police officers would not enter the classroom where the shooter shot and killed children and teachers, even in 10 years old. year old called the police and asked for help.
Aredondo said he deliberately left police and campus radio stations outside the school to free his hands in preparation for the active shooter, a decision that has received much attention since then. In recent weeks, government officials and the general public have criticized his response as selfish and short-sighted – one that puts employee safety ahead of children’s safety. Texas Public Safety Director Stephen McCrow called it a “wrong decision” to wait so long to break down the door late last month.
Uwalde Schools Police Chief Pete Aredondo, third from left. (Dario Lopez-Mills / AP)
In an interview with the Texas Tribune last week, however, the boss defended his decision.
“No one in charge has hesitated to take a moment to save the children,” Aredondo told the newspaper. “We responded to the information we had and we had to adapt to whatever we were facing.
The police chief added that he did not think he was responsible for the scene that day. “I have not issued any orders,” he said.
Aredondo’s response, along with that of other officers who were at the scene, including the Border Patrol and state and federal agencies, is now the subject of a collective investigation by Texas Rangers, the Department of Justice and the local district attorney’s office, according to the New York Times. Uwalde County Attorney Christina Mitchell said this week that she was not actually investigating the shooting and was waiting for Rangers and the FBI to complete their own investigations so she could review them.
FBI and secret service agents at Rob Elementary School in Uwalde on May 29. (Chandan Han / AFP via Getty Images)
Much to the chagrin of critics calling for increased transparency, the town of Uwalde and its police department are also working with a private law firm to prevent the publication of almost any record of the shooting. This recording includes footage from the police body, photos from the crime scene, calls to 911, emails and more.
“The city has not released any information to the public voluntarily,” wrote Cynthia Trevino, a city attorney with Denton Navarro Rocha Bernal & Zech, in a letter to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. “The requested information is not information that is collected, collected or maintained in accordance with a law or regulation or in connection with a transaction for official activity by a state body or for a state body or is excluded from disclosure.
With each passing day, many in the community are left to collect the pieces on their own, without the help of those who think they are in place to protect and serve them.
15-year-old Olivia Luna consoles herself in front of a memorial in front of Rob Elementary School on Friday. (Brendan Bell / Getty Images)
Arnulfo Reyes, a primary school teacher Rob who was shot during the attack, called the police officers “cowardly” because they had not done more that day in an interview with ABC News earlier this month.
“They sat there and did nothing for our community,” Reyes said. “It took a long time for them to come in … I will never forgive them.”
Others have chosen not to point a finger at anyone.
“I feel that no matter who comes in, they would still do the best they can,” Uwalde resident Anne Jacques told the Texas Tribune. “And I feel like they did the best they could. So how can you blame that? “
“I don’t hate it,” Julian Moreno, a longtime retired Baptist pastor, Uwalde, told NPR. “God’s love reminds me that I am not here to judge a person.”
Funeral service dedicated to the victims of the mass shooting in Uwalde. (Alex Wong / Getty Images)
The composition of the city helps to shed light on the dynamics of power constantly in play. Uwalde, a city in South Texas just over an hour’s drive from the Mexican border, has a population of 15,000, consisting of 80 percent Latinos and 14 percent whites, according to the census. The average income in 2020 is just over $ 41,600 in a community where one in five people live in poverty. This is a deeply religious community, where it is not uncommon for parishioners to attend church more than two or three times a week. And they have great respect for law enforcement in Uwalde – partly because of tradition, but also because many of them are friends or family, including cousins, brothers and sisters, as the Border Patrol is the main employer in the region. Still, immigration advocates say the increased presence of agents and the Home Office has caused grief to an unknown number of undocumented immigrants. Others do their best not to create problems.
Regardless of their status, Gutierrez said members of the Uvalde community simply want transparency and truth.
“I hope people will be interested in the deaths of fourth-graders,” he said. “What happened here should never happen to any community. That means we have to keep up the pressure for change, not just keep up the story. “
Defenders for gun control in front of the NRA headquarters in Fairfax, Virginia, after the shooting in Uwalde. (Kevin Ditch / Getty Images)
He added that the alternative was unacceptable: “Imagine this: these parents have lost 19 beautiful babies and the only thing they have to look forward to after 10, 20 years is the duller feeling of pain.
Amid less than five months into the run for governor between incumbent Republican candidate Abbott and Democratic nominee Beto O’Rourke, Uwalde’s policy – and that of Texas as a whole – is in the spotlight. Although many critics complain about the political talks …
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