“It’s just like golf, if you play once a year, in six months you’re just not all that great,” Arredondo said, according to a video posted on YouTube of the March 2021 meeting. He stressed that he wanted neighboring law enforcement agencies to have a sense of the layout of school campuses in the small city of 15,000. If something major were to happen, he predicted, off-duty personnel would arrive and be part of the response…

“He has to go,” said Anita Ybarra, a retired teacher who attended Robb Elementary as a child and was visiting the town square memorial to the dead this week. “He failed the kids, their parents and this whole town.”

Bobby Castañeda, a retired police officer from San Antonio who drove to town to pay his respects Tuesday, said the mayor’s apparent support for Arredondo was an example of government officials trying to “sweep this under the rug.”

“He is the one who caused this, he is the one who held the other officers up, and by doing it he made everything worse,” he said. “And now you want to make him city council member? Come on!

“People here are hurting and they need this,” Castañeda said. “They need to see him being held accountable.”