Uvalde Police Department (UPD) Chief Daniel Rodriguez resigned Tuesday, mere hours before facing a town council decision on police accountability during the school shooting in 2022. The Uvalde, TX town council was expected to reject the report clearing police of wrongdoing during the Robb Elementary School massacre May 24, 2022 where 19 children and two teachers died.The gunman was inside for 77 minutes before police challenged him. Rodriguez was not in Uvalde that day, CTV reports and assigned Lt. Mariano Pargas to be acting chief that day.Pargas arrived at the school minutes after the police were called, but failed to show leadership. He did not act to save the children who the shooter had trapped inside, though one student had called police from the classroom where several students were being held captive, telling him they were alive and needed help. Rodriguez remained head of the UPD when he returned to Uvalde. His resignation will go into effect April 6. .The Uvalde City Council hired Jesse Prado, an independent investigator to review the UPD’s response to the school shooting, who delivered his report on Thursday at a council meeting. Prado told the packed meeting all UPD officers who responded to the school shooting should be exonerated, which enraged parents after they sought police accountability for the nearly two years since the massacre. Prado’s report, which states on its title page it was “prepared in anticipation of litigation and/or for use in trial,” starkly contradicts that of the Department of Justice and Texas House of Representatives, which say there were multiple failures with the law enforcement operation that day. “I don’t think it gave anybody any answers,” Uvalde former mayor Don McLaughlin told CNN, adding the report may have even set the community back. “We’re no better off than when we started.”“It ripped the wound wide open again. Instead of a tear, it’s gushed wide open now,” he said. “We weren’t getting transparency. The Texas Department of Public Safety changed the story five different times in the first four days and then we’re not getting any information from anybody, as the city, as we’re trying to go forward.”“We wanted an outside investigator so we know what our officers did and so we could see what mistakes were made,” McLaughlin continued. “There’s no question that mistakes were made that day.”“There’s no question in my mind: leadership failed,” McLaughlin said. “I do believe that if those officers had been told to go in, they would have gone in. I also think they were put on hold early on, and nobody ever counteracted that order.”“The whole point of using this report was not to insulate me from a lawsuit or the city from a lawsuit or anybody else. It was just so we’d know what our officers did and so we’d be able to look you in the eye as the parents and the citizens of our community and say, ‘This is what we did that day.’”The city council will reconvene Tuesday to address the private investigator’s report.
Uvalde Police Department (UPD) Chief Daniel Rodriguez resigned Tuesday, mere hours before facing a town council decision on police accountability during the school shooting in 2022. The Uvalde, TX town council was expected to reject the report clearing police of wrongdoing during the Robb Elementary School massacre May 24, 2022 where 19 children and two teachers died.The gunman was inside for 77 minutes before police challenged him. Rodriguez was not in Uvalde that day, CTV reports and assigned Lt. Mariano Pargas to be acting chief that day.Pargas arrived at the school minutes after the police were called, but failed to show leadership. He did not act to save the children who the shooter had trapped inside, though one student had called police from the classroom where several students were being held captive, telling him they were alive and needed help. Rodriguez remained head of the UPD when he returned to Uvalde. His resignation will go into effect April 6. .The Uvalde City Council hired Jesse Prado, an independent investigator to review the UPD’s response to the school shooting, who delivered his report on Thursday at a council meeting. Prado told the packed meeting all UPD officers who responded to the school shooting should be exonerated, which enraged parents after they sought police accountability for the nearly two years since the massacre. Prado’s report, which states on its title page it was “prepared in anticipation of litigation and/or for use in trial,” starkly contradicts that of the Department of Justice and Texas House of Representatives, which say there were multiple failures with the law enforcement operation that day. “I don’t think it gave anybody any answers,” Uvalde former mayor Don McLaughlin told CNN, adding the report may have even set the community back. “We’re no better off than when we started.”“It ripped the wound wide open again. Instead of a tear, it’s gushed wide open now,” he said. “We weren’t getting transparency. The Texas Department of Public Safety changed the story five different times in the first four days and then we’re not getting any information from anybody, as the city, as we’re trying to go forward.”“We wanted an outside investigator so we know what our officers did and so we could see what mistakes were made,” McLaughlin continued. “There’s no question that mistakes were made that day.”“There’s no question in my mind: leadership failed,” McLaughlin said. “I do believe that if those officers had been told to go in, they would have gone in. I also think they were put on hold early on, and nobody ever counteracted that order.”“The whole point of using this report was not to insulate me from a lawsuit or the city from a lawsuit or anybody else. It was just so we’d know what our officers did and so we’d be able to look you in the eye as the parents and the citizens of our community and say, ‘This is what we did that day.’”The city council will reconvene Tuesday to address the private investigator’s report.
