TribalCash Interview with Pete Arredondo, Interim Chief of Police in Uvalde, Texas
Tribal Cash Thanks for agreeing to the interview. This is a difficult time for you.
Chief Arredondo No problem. It gives me a chance to set the record straight.
Tribal Cash What are some of the inaccuracies you want to bring to light?
Chief Arredondo Well, first of all, the feds were on scene at the school almost immediately, they were staging teams and telling everybody to wait for their cue. Everybody understood the feds were in charge. Now they are telling the public I was in charge and I cannot dispute that publicly even though it isn't true. The feds are setting up local cops to take the fall.
Tribal Cash What about the injured officers. You said something about that before the interview.
Chief Arredondo There were no injured officers. We were advised to fake some injuries to explain why we didn't go in immediately, so a bunch of guys from various teams went out to an area where we practice shooting sometimes, and we gave minor bullet grazing wounds to a few guys then drove them to the hospital. I think it was two local cops and two feds. Kind of funny nobody is suspicious how three or four people got grazing wounds but nobody got anything that left a piece of the bullet, for example nobody got hit in a vest. We had to do it that way since we didn't know what kind of bullets he was using yet. If we had fired into a vest and it was the wrong kind of bullet we could probably get the forensic people to cover us but you can never be sure, so we opted for grazing wounds.
One of the guys was photographed and the photos were released, but then we realized there were powder burns visible on his cap. So we created a new set of photos, same hat, but the powder burns were photoshopped out. The feds helped us with all that.
Tribal Cash Some of your officers claim the FBI has confiscated all of their body cam footage. Is that true?
Chief Arredondo Yes, first priority of the FBI was to try and confiscate early footage which shows two senior FBI personnel giving instructions to wait. All of our officers had body cams and that footage will be edited by the FBI to clean up their image.
Tribal Cash That's, that's, why...
Chief Arredondo The feds are trying to have everything fall on the local police and there is nothing we can do about it. We should have gone in immediately, but there were loads of federal agents on site within 20 minutes and they kept telling us they had special teams coming in.
Tribal Cash Do you plan to continue as police chief?
Chief Arredondo I've got a mini storage business, Arredondo Mini Storage, and I'm almost at the point of quitting the force and just operating my business full time. There is crime in that area so I could still shoot people from time to time, but it would be as a private citizen.
Tribal Cash What about girls? That's a big part of being a cop.
Chief Arredondo Would not have as many girls as a private citizen, sure, nothing draws tramps like a badge. But as a business owner there are still lots of opportunities. Homeless woman might want a job and I can play that. I've also built up a meth stash over the years, kind of an extra retirement account, and that's almost as good as flashing a badge.
Tribal Cash What made you originally decide to become a cop?
Chief Arredondo Like a lot of young indigenous people, when I was young and saw the immense power of the conquerors I decided to join them and see if I could find some way to serve the white masters who brought us from being savages to where we are now. The easiest way seemed to be to become an enforcer for them, to help them conquer and pacify other savages so everybody could get high paying jobs and serve the master.
Tribal Cash Thanks very much for agreeing to the interview, Chief. Can we have a follow up interview in a few weeks, if the feds haven't finished with you by then?
Chief Arredondo Sure thing.