Uvalde City Council refrains from taking action against officers who responded to shooting

The Uvalde City Council signaled Tuesday that it has not ruled out taking averse action against Uvalde police officers whom a city-commissioned report last week “exonerated” in the botched state and local law enforcement response to the Robb Elementary mass shooting in 2022 — but once again deflected victims’ families’ questions about which officers were responsible.

Several family members of the 19 students and two teachers who were killed in the May 24, 2022, attack attended the regularly scheduled meeting because they expected the City Council and Uvalde Police Chief Daniel Rodriguez — who abruptly tendered his resignation hours earlier — to address the investigation.

Council members spent an hour in executive session to discuss “pending or completed litigation” related to the shooting, but launched into a public comment session without addressing it.

Parents said Rodriguez promised them he would address the report during the Tuesday meeting. Rodriguez, whose resignation goes into effect April 6, did not attend the meeting. Parents demanded that police officers Javier Martinez, Louis Landry and Eduardo Canales also resign. The three officers were among the first to respond to the shooting.

“There's a family out there that is celebrating their child's 12th birthday today at the cemetery,” Brett Cross, the guardian of Uziyah “Uzi” Garcia, whom was killed in the shooting, said about another victim, Xavier Lopez. “And y'all still can't give us answers. We were told last week that we're gonna talk about whether or not we accept that disastrous report.”

In response, Uvalde Mayor Cody Smith publicly addressed the report directly for the first time, saying he felt for the parents but that the council needed time to further deliberate the findings.

“I told you all how much I care,” Smith said. “I can’t even imagine the thought, can't replace your babies. I can't imagine the pain of losing your babies … but we have to have more time.”

Smith said he had not promised to address the city’s investigation into the shooting during the meeting, but that Rodriguez had. Several family members were enraged that Rodriguez wasn’t in attendance, with Cross and others drawing a parallel between his absence during the meeting and his officers’ failure to confront the shooter.

“What does Daniel (Rodriguez) do today? He doesn’t show up. Just like his crew didn’t show up,” said Jesse Rizo, uncle of Jacklyn Cazares, who was killed in the shooting. “Look at the resignation letter. Not once does he acknowledge anything any of this.”

The meeting is one of dozens in which families have expected answers and received none, despite asking repeatedly for transparency and accountability. The report by Austin-based investigator Jesse Prado was one of many probes that have reviewed the 77-minute delay between when law enforcement officers first arrived to the shooting and when they killed the gunman.

U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said Jan. 18 in Uvalde after releasing the Department of Justice's findings into the shooting that "lives would have been saved" if officers had confronted the gunman earlier.

'Disrespectful' city-commissioned report ‘exonerated’ officers

Former Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin commissioned the city’s report two years ago and handpicked Prado, a former Austin police detective and consultant to conduct the investigation.

In an interview with CNN on Monday, McLaughlin, who left his city office to run for the Texas House, slammed Prado’s investigation, saying it didn’t answer any of the lingering questions about the police response to the shooting and left the city “no better off than when we started.”

Prado's report notes on its cover sheet that it was “prepared in anticipation of litigation and/or for use in trial,” but McLaughlin insisted that “the whole point of using this report was not to insulate me from a lawsuit or the city from a lawsuit or anybody else.”

McLaughlin did not respond to American-Statesman requests for comment Tuesday.

Prado's report suggested that no individual officer was responsible for law enforcement's delayed intervention during the shooting. Prado recommended that Mariano Pargas, Uvalde's acting police chief the day of the shooting, be “exonerated” if he were still employed. Pargas resigned six months after the Robb Elementary shooting before city leaders could decide on his employment.

The report pointed to broader faults, including failures in law enforcement communication, a lack of access to the school site, poor police equipment, and poor officer response training, as the principal police shortcomings.

Prado report contradicts DOJ findings

During his council presentation, Prado said that police leadership and responding officers acted in “good faith” and in accordance with policy and procedure.

Prado said law enforcement personnel could not breach the locked doorway to advance toward the shooter because they were in his line of sight and did not have rifle-rated protective shields.

Prado's assertions directly contradict the Department of Justice’s finding that officers should have rushed toward the threat regardless of what equipment they had. The federal report noted that this has been the standard protocol in active shooting responses since the Columbine High School massacre more than 20 years ago.

“Since the tragic shooting at Columbine High School in 1999, a fundamental precept in active shooter response and the generally accepted practice is that the first priority must be to immediately neutralize the subject; everything else, including officer safety, is subordinate to that objective … These efforts must be undertaken regardless of the equipment and personnel available to those first on the scene,” the report said.

If officers had rushed to confront the shooter, the report said, they could have saved lives.

Prado delivered his presentation Thursday in a deposition style with city attorney Paul Tarski and did not allow victims' families or community members to ask Prado questions.

This, along with the report’s recommendation that no officer acted wrongfully, attracted an hour of indignant responses from parents over Prado's findings.

It also spurred angry reactions from some council members, including Hector Luevano, who told Prado during the council meeting last week that he and community members were “insulted by your comments.”

Uvalde police chief tenders abrupt resignation

Rodriguez has led the Uvalde Police Department since 2018, and he was out of town on vacation during the mass shooting. Police spokesman Fernando Fernandez confirmed to the Statesman that Rodriguez tendered his resignation Tuesday morning. The resignation will go into effect April 6.

In a news release, Rodriguez did not explain his decision to leave his post, but said he was proud of “the positive impact we’ve made during my tenure” and that he was “eager to explore new opportunities.”

Assistant Chief Homer Delgado is expected to step into the interim chief role after April 6. Delgado joined the city's force in May 2023.

As the chief of police in Dilley, roughly 60 miles outside of Uvalde, Delgado was among hundreds of police officers who responded to the shooting. He told KENS-5 CBS in 2022 that he arrived a half hour after the shooter was killed.

Families still waiting for answers from other investigations

Several investigations into the shooting remain unreleased.

The Texas Department of Public Safety has refused to release its records and findings, saying that Uvalde County District Attorney Christina Mitchell has requested that it keep from disclosing the information until her office decides if it will file charges against officers.

A Travis County judge in November issued a formal order to the DPS to release a trove of investigative information and evidence from the 2022 Uvalde school shooting as requested by multiple national and state media outlets, including the American-Statesman. But before the 20-day release period expired, Attorney General Ken Paxton appealed the judge's decision and the records have not been released.

The findings from an investigation from Mitchell's office was expected before the end of 2023, but in December the office said it needed more time before it released its report.

The DA's office seated a grand jury in January but it remains unclear what charges the grand jury might have considered against officers, but they could include child endangerment or injury to a child. Under Texas law, a person commits the offense of child endangerment if he or she "intentionally, knowingly, recklessly or with criminal negligence" places a child 15 or younger "in imminent danger of death."

State Senator Roland Gutierrez, D-San Antonio, said he hopes DPS troopers' response to the shooting also receives equal scrutiny to local law enforcement’s actions in future investigations. But what is most confounding, he told the American-Statesman on Tuesday, is that there has been no accountability at any level.

“At some point, governments need to feel some kind of pain so that we can try to fix what happened here on that day,” he said.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Uvalde council: Need 'more time' to review Robb Elementary report