3/14/2023 0 Comments Years of academy training wasted![]() You can’t say, ‘I did it all myself.’” Botched response to rampage “I know that (Arredondo) was in the command center talking,” Cuellar said. I think he exaggerated a little bit” on the application.Ĭuellar said he and Victor Escalon of the Texas Department of Public Safety were primarily responsible for ending the standoff, persuading the suspect to drop his gun before moving slowly into the house and handcuffing him. Arredondo was among many officers who spoke to the suspect, Cuellar said. In his application to work at United ISD in Laredo, Arredondo listed Garza as a reference.Īrredondo also boasted in the application that the Webb County Sheriff’s Office had awarded him a Life Saver’s Award “for 2 different incidents and 6 different lives saved during my actions as a hostage negotiator.”Ĭuellar said he recalled one standoff in 2012 at a house in El Cenizo, a small town south of Laredo, involving a man who was holding “four or five” undocumented immigrants hostage. “To do a good, clean background on somebody, they need to ask the sheriff” ![]() “They do investigations based on, ‘Hey, I worked here, I worked there.’ But then they never asked us,” Cuellar said. “If Uvalde had asked the proper questions, especially on the chief position, the high-ranking position, I would have said, ‘I don’t think (Arredondo was) capable of running even a small department.’ But they never asked.” “I don’t think I would, based on the performance,” he said. If the school district had called, Cuellar said, he would not have recommended Arredondo for the job. Uvalde CISD spokeswoman Anne Marie Espinoza did not respond to questions about whether the Uvalde school district was aware of Arredondo’s demotion in Webb County when it hired him.Ĭuellar said Uvalde CISD never called him directly to ask about Arredondo’s job performance in Webb County. Six days later, a human resources coordinator at Uvalde CISD emailed Arredondo’s previous employer, United ISD in Laredo seeking “a copy of his service record,” according to emails obtained by the San Antonio Express-News.Īrredondo worked as a police captain in the Laredo school district for about three years after leaving the Webb County Sheriff’s Office in 2017. 13, 2020, the school district announced on Facebook that it was “proud to introduce our District Chief of Police, Pedro ‘Pete’ Arredondo,” a native of Uvalde who was focused on “providing safety for all students, staff and our community.” Records show that officials at Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District might not have fully reviewed Arredondo’s employment history when the district hired him as its police chief in 2020. Neither Arredondo nor his attorney responded to messages seeking comment. 8, 2014, letter from Cuellar to Arredondo said he was being “reassigned from Assistant Chief to Commander.” Two days earlier, someone had written “demotion” in a payroll worksheet for Arredondo. ![]() Garza, who is now police chief in Eagle Pass, declined to comment.Īn Oct. “They were hoping he would get a job in Laredo.”Ĭuellar said Arredondo clashed with then-Webb County Sheriff’s Chief Fred Garza, who was the office’s second in command and Arredondo’s supervisor. “Even in Uvalde PD, when he was over there, they disliked the (expletive) out of him,” Cuellar said. Before going to Webb County, Arredondo served 16 years with the Uvalde Police Department.
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