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Texas Department of Safety Troopers stand by for a meeting of the Board of Trustees of Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District AP Photo/Eric Gay

Officer in charge of Texas school shooting police response fired

Nineteen young children and two teachers were killed by a teenage gunman last May in America’s worst school shooting in a decade.

THE WIDELY CRITICISED police officer in charge of the response to the Uvalde, Texas school shooting that saw 19 children and two teachers killed was fired Wednesday, US media reported.

The Uvalde school board voted unanimously to terminate the contract of district police chief Pete Arredondo, the Texas Tribune reported.

The state’s public safety chief previously said Arredondo had placed “the lives of officers before the lives of children” and made “terrible decisions” while managing the crime scene.

Nineteen young children and two teachers were killed when a teenage gunman went on a rampage at Robb Elementary School on May 24 in America’s worst school shooting in a decade. Police eventually shot and killed the gunman.

embedded268454178 Family, parents and friends file out of the meeting (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

Local police have been under intense scrutiny since it emerged that more than a dozen officers waited for over an hour outside a pair of adjoining classrooms where the shooting was taking place and did nothing as children lay dead or dying inside.

Arredondo, who was suspended in June pending an investigation, earlier on Wednesday asked for his suspension to be lifted through a statement from his lawyer, criticizing his treatment since the shooting.

“Chief Arredondo will not participate in his own illegal and unconstitutional public lynching and respectfully requests the Board immediately reinstate him, with all backpay and benefits and close the complaint as unfounded,” lawyer George Hyde said in a statement released shortly before the school board’s vote.

embedded268453526 Members of the Board of Trustees of Uvalde CISD stand for a moment of silence before the hearing (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

Texas state lawmakers also slammed Arredondo in a report last month, saying he “did not assume his preassigned responsibility of incident command” and made analytical errors because he did not have all the necessary information.

The lawmakers said the situation was “chaotic” due to the 376 on-scene officers’ “lackadaisical approach” to subduing the gunman.

They said no other officers offered to help or replace Arredondo during the massacre.

Seventy-three minutes elapsed between the first officers’ arrival and the shooter’s death, an “unacceptably long period of time.”

“The void of leadership could have contributed to the loss of life,” the report said.

“It is plausible that some victims could have survived if they had not had to wait 73 additional minutes for rescue,” according to the report.

Following the release of the Texas lawmakers’ report, local media reported that Uvalde police lieutenant Mariano Pargas had been suspended while the city investigated his role in the shooting response.

The United States has faced a spate of brutal gun massacres in recent months, including at a grocery store in a predominately Black neighborhood in New York state and at an Independence Day parade in Illinois.

In June, US lawmakers broke a decades-long stalemate on firearms control, passing the first major safety regulations in almost 30 years, less than 24 hours after the Supreme Court bolstered the constitutional right to bear arms.

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    Mute James Pelow
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    Oct 25th 2021, 12:14 AM

    Can we please stop propagating the lies of the English media? Brexit did the damage, not the protocol.

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    Mute Vonvonic
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    Oct 25th 2021, 6:42 AM

    @James Pelow: Very well said. They’re actually using it as a distraction. And it’s drawing us into something that has nothing to do with us. Brexit is the problem. End of story.

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    Mute Colm A. Corcoran
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    Oct 25th 2021, 7:00 AM

    You can’t hold a poll asking people if they think the Protocol is good for Northern Ireland without clarifying what the alternative is.

    That’s like asking a child if they think the settlement that their parents agreed to after divorce is good.

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    Mute Oisín Dunne
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    Oct 25th 2021, 8:40 AM

    Let’s be clear… article 16 does not end the protocol. It can suspend a part of it for a short period of time. When the UK says it will trigger A16, call it out for what they want to do….they want to scrap it and force a border on the island of Ireland or a border between Ireland and EU. That’s their plan and I believe it’s been the plan all along. This mess has been made by the UK and the protocol is a plaster. The GB companies that send those goods that will never end up back in the EU (including ROI) need to be better catered for. The issue is that there is no trust between the UK and EU as, so far, the UK hasn’t implemented main parts of the protocol so all at risk goods must be considered guilty until proven innocent.

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    Mute Stephen Campbell
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    Oct 25th 2021, 10:08 AM

    Ok theJournal…. Time to correct your headlines… “Is Brexit bad or good for firms in Northern Ireland?”

    The protocol is a workaround to the main issue, Brexit..

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    Mute Gerard
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    Oct 25th 2021, 8:54 AM

    While I’ve no doubt it has caused some legitimate disruption for businesses heavily linked to GB, how did the study take into account costs (for consultancy etc) that would’ve been incurred without the procotol because they also trade with the EU?

    Or how did it take into account all the paperwork NI businesses save because they can trade with the Republic and the rest of the EU freely?

    All these analyses seem to assume that trade with Ireland was either insignificant, or its continuity was a a given (neither of these are true) and that any disruption with GB is a cost without any quantifiable benefit (again not true).

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    Mute John Vectravi
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    Oct 25th 2021, 10:50 AM

    It’s not the protocol that’s not working. It’s brexit that’s not working.

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    Mute lelookcoco
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    Oct 25th 2021, 11:09 AM

    How dare the EU break away from the United Kingdom. They’ve made things very difficult for everyone, especially the Brits!

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    Mute John Sullivan
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    Oct 25th 2021, 3:22 PM

    By leaving the CU and SM and going for a Sharia Brexit GB turned itself into a legal and regulatory Kaliningrad. Their call-their choice…If they hadn’t CHOSEN that there would be no protocol. They want a hard border in IRL or IRL out the the EU-they will get neither but what they will get is humiliation.

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    Mute andrew
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    Oct 25th 2021, 10:38 PM

    It is improving trade between north and south.

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