April 24, 2023 With over 25 years of law enforcement experience, Homer Delgado is leaving his job as Dilley’s police chief to become assistant chief of the Uvalde Police Department next month.
By Marc Duvoisin Source San Antonio Express-News Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
Uvalde has hired a new senior commander to help run its police department, which has been battered by recriminations over how officers responded to last year’s mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in which 21 people died.
Homer Delgado is leaving his job as police chief in Dilley to become Uvalde’s assistant chief effective May 8, city officials said.
Delgado played a role in the confused aftermath of the Uvalde school shooting, when hundreds of police officers converged on Uvalde from towns and cities across Texas to support the local department. Some of those officers interfered with news-gathering by ordering journalists off public sidewalks and positioning public safety vehicles to prevent photographers from taking pictures of funeral processions.
At the request of Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin Jr., Delgado stepped in to oversee the out-of-town officers while still serving as Dilley’s chief last June.
In an interview with the Express-News at the time, Delgado said he regretted that journalists had been hassled and that he had instructed the officers to respect the First Amendment. “We’re not there to interfere with the media,” he said. The out-of-town officers went back to their own departments within a few weeks.
The Uvalde Police Department was among two dozen local, state and federal agencies that responded to Robb Elementary School on the morning of May 24, 2022, after a teenage gunman opened fire inside the school with a semiautomatic, military-style rifle.
A crowd of law enforcement officers that eventually numbered nearly 400 waited in a hallway or outside the school for more than an hour while the gunman was holed up with his victims in two interconnected classrooms. During that time, children called 911 from the classrooms, begging to be rescued.
The siege ended when members of a Border Patrol tactical unit stormed the classrooms and killed the shooter. By then, 19 children and two teachers had died.
The on-scene incident commander was Pedro “Pete” Arredondo, then chief of Uvalde school district’s police force. He was harshly criticized and ultimately fired for treating the incident as a “barricaded subject” situation rather than as an “active shooter” scenario, which called for immediate action to confront the shooter and save lives.
The Uvalde Police Department was not spared criticism over its performance. Police Chief Daniel Rodriguez was out of town that day, and Lt. Mariano Pargas was acting chief.
City officials moved to terminate Pargas after CNN aired audio from the scene that showed Pargas knew some children were still alive in the classrooms and did not take action. Pargas retired in November before he could be fired.
Delgado “brings 26 years of diverse experience including prisoner transportation, patrol, criminal investigations, hostage negotiations, tactical response, prosecutorial investigations and police administration,” Uvalde City Manager Vince DiPiazza said in a news release announcing Delgado’s hiring.
Before becoming police chief in Dilley in 2022, Delgado worked as a patrol officer in Ingleside, in various roles for the San Patricio County Sheriff’s Office, as an investigator for the Medina County Attorney’s Office and as a lieutenant for the Terrell Hills Police Department.
Delgado graduated from San Antonio’s Jefferson High School and studied criminal justice and police science at San Antonio College from 1992 to 1994.
In Dilley, located about 60 miles southeast of Uvalde, Delgado “has done an excellent job of building strong, transparent relationships between the citizens … and the police department,” DiPiazza said.
“His policing philosophy is to balance a foundation of traditional policing concepts with innovative and progressive methods designed to evolve with our community’s future needs,” DiPiazza said.
Delgado announced his resignation as Dilley’s chief in an open letter to residents on Friday.