UVALDE, Texas —  Despite the scrutiny he’s under following last week’s mass shooting, Pete Arredondo, the chief of police for Uvalde CISD, was sworn in as a new member of Uvalde City Council on Tuesday.

What You Need To Know

  • Uvalde CISD Police Chief Pete Arredondo was sworn in as a new member of Uvalde City Council Tuesday night

  • Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin said that because of last week's mass shooting there was no swearing-in ceremony

  • Arredondo has received much of the blame for the delayed police response to the shooting at Robb Elementary School

According to Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin, they held no ceremony considering the shooting.

“Uvalde City Council members were sworn in today as per the City Charter. Out of respect for the families who buried their children today, and who are planning to bury their children in the next few days, no ceremony was held,” McLaughlin wrote in a statement.

Arredondo, who grew up in Uvalde and graduated from high school there, was elected earlier this month.

The 50-year-old Arredondo has spent much of a nearly 30-year career in law enforcement in Uvalde, returning in 2020 to take the head police job at the school district.

After his election to the non-salaried spot on the City Council, Arredondo told the Uvalde Leader-News earlier this month that he was “ready to hit the ground running.”

“I have plenty of ideas, and I definitely have plenty of drive,” he said, adding he wanted to focus not only on the city being fiscally responsible but also making sure street repairs and beautification projects happen.

Arredondo started out his career in law enforcement working for the Uvalde Police Department. After spending 16 years there, he went to Laredo, a border city located 130 miles (209 kilometers) miles to the south, where he worked at the Webb County Sheriff’s Office and then for a local school district, according to a 2020 article in the Uvalde Leader-News on his return to his hometown to take the school district police chief job. The school district’s board of trustees approved his appointment to the spot.

On Tuesday, ABC News reported the school district and the Uvalde Police Department have stopped cooperating with the Texas Department of Public Safety in its investigation into the shooting. However, a DPS spokesperson told Spectrum News that was not the case and that Arredondo had failed to respond to the Texas Rangers’ request for a follow-up interview.

Much of the blame for an excruciating delay in killing the gunman — even as parents outside begged police to rush in and panicked children called 911 from inside — has been placed with Arredondo.

It’s left residents struggling to reconcile what they know of the well-liked local lawman after the director of state police said that Arredondo made the “wrong decision” last week not to breach a classroom at Robb Elementary School sooner, believing the gunman was barricaded inside and children weren’t at risk.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.