Uvalde school police chief joins city council a week after he delayed officers from confronting gunman who killed 19 kids

• Uvalde school district's police chief Arredondo quietly joined the city council on Tuesday.
• The lack of fanfare was "out of respect" for families grieving last week's shooting, the mayor said.

Uvalde school district's chief of police officially took his position with the city council on Tuesday behind closed doors, according to multiple reports.

The swearing-in of Pedro "Pete" Arredondo came a week after a gunman killed 19 children and two adults at Robb Elementary School. He was elected into the position on March 2, according to the Uvalde Leader-News.

Arredondo was the incident commander of the Uvalde Independent School District police response to the May 24 attack, in which officers waited at least an hour to confront the gunman, despite parents pleading for them to do so.

The handling of the incident has come under intense criticism. Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steve McCraw — without naming Arredondo — said on May 27 that police made "the wrong decision. Period."

Since the shooting, Arredondo's department has repeatedly changed its story of what happened that day.

On Tuesday, a DPS spokesperson asserted to ABC News that both the Uvalde Independent School District police force and the Uvalde Police were "cooperating" with their investigation.

As of late on Tuesday, a DPS spokesperson told Insider that Arredondo "has yet to respond" to its interview request about the shooting. The request was several days old, the spokesperson said.

Asked by CNN why he was not cooperating, he refuted DPS' claims, saying: "I am in contact with DPS every day." He declined to answer the network's other questions, CNN reported.

In the meantime, on Tuesday Arredondo signed the paperwork to become a city council member, CNN reported.

The swearing-in took place in a closed ceremony, per CNN. The network reported that Mayor Don McLaughlin avoided a ceremony "out of respect for the families who buried their children today, and who are planning to bury their children in the next few days."

There is "nothing in the City Charter, Election Code, or Texas Constitution that prohibits him from taking the oath of office," McLaughlin's statement continued, according to CNN. "To our knowledge, we are currently not aware of any investigation of Mr. Arredondo."

Arredondo's decisions on May 24 caused consternation among parents and the school's wider community nonetheless. One mother, Angeli Rose Gomez, told The Wall Street Journal that she was handcuffed by police as she begged them to act. "The police were doing nothing," she told the paper.

Another unnamed member of the community, who said her granddaughter survived the shooting, simply broke down in tears when asked about Arredondo, NPR reported.