UVALDE, Texas — Interim Uvalde Police Chief Homer Delgado will soon drop the interim title. The city announced Thursday that he’s the new permanent replacement for Daniel Rodriguez, who resigned from the position last month.
Delgado has been with the Uvalde Police Department for 11 months and served as the interim chief since Rodriguez's resignation.
Rodriguez, who was out of town during the shooting at Robb Elementary that left 19 students and two teachers dead, stepped down shortly after a report ordered by the city came out that cleared Uvalde officers of wrongdoing in their response to the shooting. It’s a report that outraged victims’ families.
Before coming to Uvalde, Delgado was chief of the Dilly Police Department, which is about 60 miles to the southeast of Uvalde. Like many other law enforcement agencies, Dilly police responded to the Robb Elementary School mass shooting, but in an interview with KHOU 11 investigative reporter Jeremy Rogalski in July 2022, Delgado said he and his officers didn’t arrive until after the shooting.
The interview was part of Rogalski’s story on a report from the Texas House of Representatives Investigative Committee. The report criticized “shortcomings”’ and “missed opportunities” by law enforcement and listed the agencies that responded. The Dilly Police Department, under Delgado, was listed in the report.
Delgado told Rogalski at the time that he got there at 1:15 p.m., which was nearly a half hour after the shooter was killed. He said three other Dilly officers made it there after that and were used for crowd control.
“When we saw the report come out, we were as you can imagine, we were disappointed because it made it look like Dilley had officers who had responded to the actual shooting,” Delgado told Rogalski in that 2022 interview.
According to the City of Uvalde, Delgado has more than 28 years of experience in law enforcement, including 20 years in leadership.
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