Uvalde, Texas school shooting: Abbott directs school districts to undergo active shooter training

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott directed the Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training Center (ALERRT) at Texas State University to present active shooter training to school districts throughout the state within the wake of the current bloodbath at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, which left 19 kids and two adults lifeless. 

“We sadly recognize we cannot do anything to bring back the precious lives that were taken; however, we must do everything in our power to prevent the same tragic ending from happening again,” Abbott wrote within the letter to ALERRT Executive Director Pete Blair. 

“I direct that you deploy your nationally recognized active shooter training to all Texas school districts, prioritizing school-based law enforcement. That training must begin before the next school year begins.”

Texas Governor Greg Abbott speaks throughout a press convention in regards to the mass taking pictures at Uvalde High School on May 27, 2022, in Uvalde, Texas. 
(Photo by Yasin Ozturk/Anadolu Agency through Getty Images)

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Blair stated the ALERRT Center will likely be targeted on training school useful resource officers within the coming weeks and months. 

“That’s really the kind of change and they may provide some additional funding going forward, but it’s not that we’re trying to get them all done by the beginning of the year, that wouldn’t be possible,” Blair advised Fox News Digital. 

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The ALERRT Center was based at Texas State University in 2002 and has supplied active shooter training to greater than 130,000 regulation enforcement and fireplace officers, in addition to 200,000 civilians across the nation. 

Abbott additionally requested that the middle “provide a debrief of the Uvalde school shooting and other relevant situations to school administrators, law enforcement personnel, and other decision makers” who’re chargeable for school security. 

“This discussion will serve as a solemn reminder of the necessity for constant vigilance in every school hallway and classroom and the need for the active shooter training you provide,” Abbott wrote within the letter. 

The Department of Justice can also be conducting its personal impartial overview of the police response to the taking pictures on the request of Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin. 

Abbott initially praised the regulation enforcement response to the taking pictures, however backtracked after new particulars got here to mild, together with that there was no school useful resource officer on the scene and police waited greater than an hour to breach the classroom the place the shooter was positioned. 

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Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steven McCraw additionally stated a facet door was propped open by a instructor shortly earlier than the assault, however later clarified that the door was closed and unlocked, permitting the suspect to achieve entry. 

There was additionally conflicting information about whether or not a school useful resource workplace was on campus, with authorities initially saying that an officer confronted the gunman, however later saying that the gunman “walked in unobstructed.”

Pete Arredondo, the Uvalde school police chief who McCraw stated made the “wrong decision” not to instantly confront the gunman, had taken an active shooter training course at Texas State University’s Texas School Safety Center as not too long ago as December. 

The Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District Police Department individually hosted an “active shooter scenario training” at Uvalde High School in March. 

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The governor has additionally directed school security officers to conduct “in-person, unannounced, random intruder detection audits” at school districts throughout the state. 

The Uvalde bloodbath got here amid a spate of different mass shootings all through the United States, together with an assault at a grocery store in Buffalo, New York, that left 10 folks lifeless.