By Joanna Putman
Police1
UVALDE, Texas — For the first time, the former Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District police chief has publicly addressed his indictment related to the law enforcement response to the 2022 mass shooting in an interview with CNN.
In June, Pete Arredondo and another former school police officer became the first law enforcement members to be criminally charged in the incident, according to the report.
Arredondo responded to criticisms from other law enforcement officers in a CNN interview, stating that those who criticized the response had not experienced the situation on the ground.
“I strongly disagree. And again, opinions vary, sir. And they’re going to, but I can tell you that probably 100% of those people hadn’t been in a situation like that before,” he said.
When CNN asked if Arredondo felt that he had been singled out, he said, “I’ve been scapegoated from the very beginning.”
When asked why officers did not enter the classroom sooner, Arredondo claimed there was no hesitation.
“If you look at the bodycam footage, there was no hesitation,” he said. “And myself and the first handful of officers that went in there and went straight to the hot zone as you may call it and took fire. At that point, we worked with what we had.”
Arredondo stated that the door and wall prevented officers from seeing the gunman when they encountered gunfire.
Exploring the indictment of Chief Pete Arredondo and the legal challenges in proving criminal negligence in the Uvalde school shooting case
“You can’t see through it, first of all, so when we were shot at and we backed off to say, ok, now we know where he’s at because we don’t, we didn’t know where he was at. That’s when we took fire and backed out and realized, ok, now we need to come up with a plan to get back up there.”
Arredondo declined to watch and comment on the bodycam footage of the police response in the hallway, according to the report.
When asked if he felt he made any mistakes that day, Arredondo responded, “Again, that’s a hindsight statement. You can think all day and second guess yourself. I know we did the best we could with what we had and by running into that building and not leaving there, and doing what we could or doing what I could and what the other officers could. It was the best we could with the situation we had and information we had.”
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