OAN Newsroom
UPDATED 8:04 PM PT – Monday, December 12, 2022
It was releveled during an executive session that an active shooter training was not completed by the Uvalde County Sheriff’s office prior to the May 24th shooting.
On Monday, the Uvalde County Commissioners announced that at the time of the mass murder, only 20% of the officers in the Uvalde County Sheriff’s Office had received training on how to deal with an active shooter situation.
On May 24th, 18-year-old Salvador Ramos opened fire Robb Elementary School killing 19 students and two teachers, and wounding 17 others. Police arrived to the scene early on, however they didn’t approach the gunman until an hour and 14 minutes later.
According to reports, county or state rules do not apply to individuals who are not school-based law enforcement officers, to receive active shooter training. To further note, Texas law of law enforcement agencies do not require an active shooter response policy to be implemented.
The chief investigator hired by the County Commissioners of Uvalde discovered that the elected County Sheriff, Ruben Nolasco, had not received active-shooter training during the nearly two years he had been in charge of the area’s top law enforcement agency.
During the May rampage, the country had 400 law enforcement personnel in its system, including 16 Sheriff’s officers.
Richard Carter, a former judge who now consults in police practice, has claimed to have performed a forensic examination of the Uvalde Sheriff’s office after being hired in the wake of the school shooting.
One of Carter’s main suggestions is that all Sheriff’s Department employees receive training on how to deal with active-shooter situations. This recommendation had only made it to the Department’s Policy Manual four months after the Robb Elementary School incident.
“I would anticipate that in the next session of legislature. I would be disappointed and shocked if there was not legislation that made it a requirement, a mandatory course that all Texas police officers be required to take an active shooter response course,” Carter said.
Brett Cross, a guardian of 10-year-old Uziyah Garcia who was killed in the shooting, responded by saying that the events that just took place, just fuels the fire even more.