Uvalde Police Chief Daniel Rodriguez resigned days after a report exonerated officers in the Robb Elementary School massacre.

CNN
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The Texas city's police chief abruptly announced his resignation Tuesday, less than a week after the Uvalde City Council received an investigative report exonerating local police officers of wrongdoing in the 2022 Robb Elementary School massacre.

The resignations came hours before the council declined to comment on the report at its regular public meeting scheduled for Tuesday night, saying it needed more time to evaluate the report's findings. Stated.

Chief Daniel Rodriguez was away on vacation in Uvalde on May 24, 2022, when a teenage gunman was left alone on campus for 77 minutes, but he appointed Lt. Mariano Pargas as acting chief that day. Was. 19 children and two teachers were killed.

Pargas arrived at the school within minutes, but despite being informed by phone that the student was still alive and in need of help, he was unable to assume the role of commander and was unable to respond to the shooting. They were also unable to take any action to save the children trapped by the criminals. Pargas resigned from the Uvalde Police Department in November 2022.

Rodriguez returned to Uvalde and remained at the head of his unit. He stands by the school's responding officers and has not taken any disciplinary action against them, even as his family continues to demand that the officers who waited in the hallway be fired.

In a statement posted to Facebook on Tuesday, Rodriguez said it was “time to embrace a new chapter in my career.” His resignation is effective April 6th.

The announcement comes after an independent investigator hired by the city reported his findings to a packed City Council meeting Thursday, saying all officers from the Uvalde Police Department who responded to the school acted in good faith and should be exonerated. This took place less than a week after the announcement. This has infuriated many of the victims' parents and local residents, who have been arguing for nearly two years that some should not be pardoned.

Prado's findings follow reports from the U.S. Department of Justice and the Texas House of Representatives that found multiple failures in the law enforcement response.

It has not yet been determined whether state criminal charges will be filed. Local District Attorney Christina Mitchell has begun presenting evidence to a special grand jury, but she has not announced when she will announce whether or not she will indict any of the first responders who waited in the hallway. do not have.

The investigative report into local police conduct was commissioned in July 2022 by the Uvalde City Council, which pledged to investigate the actions of all city police officers in response to the shooting. City leaders have appointed former Austin police detective Jesse Prado to lead the investigation. Don McLaughlin, who was the city's mayor at the time of the shooting and wrote the report, told CNN that the report was written “with litigation in mind,” but the report itself does not identify the mistakes made. He said it was supposed to help.

The Prado's findings infuriated victims' families, who at Thursday's meeting took turns questioning the motive for the investigation, rejecting the conclusion that local police officers acted appropriately, and calling for the firing of those involved.

“You said they did it in good faith. Is that what you call good faith?” Veronica Mata, whose 10-year-old daughter Tess was killed, said Thursday. “They stood there for 77 minutes, waiting for phone calls to come in that the children were still alive.”

City Council members Hector Luevano and Ernest W. “Chip” King III also said last week that they were disappointed in the findings.

CNN asked Prado about the findings after Thursday's meeting, but Prado declined to answer.

Councilors originally planned to address the report at Tuesday's City Council meeting. However, they declined to comment publicly on the matter during the meeting, saying participants needed more time to evaluate the findings.

“We need a little more time. We know you're tired. You're tired of cans being kicked into the street,” Mayor Kody Smith said at Tuesday's meeting. “And I feel you, so do I. But we need some more time… to determine what action, if any, we can take.”

“I told everyone there how worried I am,” the mayor said Tuesday during a heated exchange with Brett Cross, a relative of 10-year-old Ujiyah Garcia, who was killed in the shooting. said in the. “I can't replace your baby, I can't imagine the pain of losing your baby. … I can't even imagine the thought.”

Smith also said Prado agreed to come back and speak with his parents, but the mayor would not provide further details.

“It’s been two years,” Cross said. “I'm done asking questions. I'm done begging. I'm done pleading. Get your act together.”

Gloria Cazares, whose daughter Jacquelyn was killed, on Tuesday called for the firing of the police officer who was acquitted in last week's report.

“I know that if the officers had done the right thing, my daughter Jackie could have been here today,” she said during the meeting. “Now, it's up to you to do the right thing.”

Mayor McLaughlin, who wrote the report, also rejected the report's findings, saying it did not answer the questions of local residents and would only leave families further devastated.

“I don't think this gave anyone an answer,” McLaughlin told CNN this week. “We’re no better than when we started.”

Worse, he says, the controversial report may have set the community back.

“The wound is wide open again. Instead of tears, they are now wide open and overflowing.”

Mr McLaughlin said his and his former colleagues on the City Council's intention in writing the report was to find out what happened on the day of the shooting.

“We weren't getting transparency,” he says. “(The Texas Department of Public Safety) changed their story five times in the first four days, and then as a city, we're trying to move forward and we can't get any information from anyone. did.

“We needed an outside investigator to find out what the officers did and what mistakes were made. There is no question that mistakes were made that day.”

McLaughlin, who resigned as mayor in November to run for the Texas House of Representatives, said all officials in leadership positions contributed to the failure of the response and that all local, state and federal agencies should come together. He said that the mistakes should be identified. .

“I've said it since day one, we're all adults, so we need to put our cards on the table and take the lumps. Everyone.”

But in exchange for transparency, some records are still withheld from the public 22 months after the killings. Part of the reason is that Mitchell, the local district attorney, did not want anyone to publicize or discuss the matter until her own investigation was complete.

“There's no question in my mind that there was a failure of leadership,” McLaughlin said. “If those officers had been told to come in, I believe they would have gone in. I also believe they were put on hold early on…and no one disobeyed that order. It was.”

The title page of Prado's report states that the report was “prepared in anticipation of litigation and/or for use in court.”

McLaughlin told CNN it was not intended as a shield of any kind.

“The purpose of using this report is not to keep me out of a lawsuit or to keep the city or anyone else out of a lawsuit. It's about knowing what the officers did and being a parent or community member. It was so that I could look you in the eye and say, “This is what we did that day.''