Cody Smith was elected in November 2022, when the Texas city held its the first mayoral election since a gunman spent an hour shooting 19 children and two teachers at Robb Elementary School while dozens and finally hundreds of cops waited patiently for him to finish. Smith resigned unexpectedly, reports local media, citing health reasons.
Smith's exit came ahead of a City Council meeting Tuesday that reports say may be linked to a report on the Robb Elementary shooting. This comes a couple weeks after Uvalde Police Chief Daniel Rodriguez also announced his resignation, which is effective April 6.
Officials in Uvalde have been under scrutiny to adequately address the school massacre, including holding law enforcement and leaders accountable. A report released by the Department of Justice in January cited numerous failures in the shooting response, including that it took officers over an hour to address the gunman. But a separate report came out last month that cleared police of missteps, angering parents and members of the community.
One of the victim's parents sums up the mood:
It's as if the administrators of small towns are slowly overwhelmed by the law enforcement insitutions they're supposedly in charge of. Culture eats strategy for breakfast and here the culture was "multiple layers of law enforcement bureacracy with an overwhelming lock on the lion's share of public money" and strategy was "elect a good old boy in a baseball cap."
