One year after the Uvalde school shooting, some Texas police officers assigned to protect schools still have not received the active shooter training that's widely considered the "gold standard," an NBC 5 investigation has found.
In the wake of the tragedy at Robb Elementary School, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott issued a directive calling for all law enforcement officers, especially school resource officers, to rapidly receive Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training, also known as “ALERRT."
But, training data NBC 5 Investigates requested from more than two dozen North Texas school districts and police agencies that protect schools found some of those agencies are still trying to get all of their school resource officers ALERRT trained.
“The challenges that we face, one is staffing,” Arlington School Resource Officer Sgt. Scott Vickers told NBC 5 Investigates.
Get DFW local news, weather forecasts and entertainment stories to your inbox. Sign up for NBC DFW newsletters.
Vickers has received ALERRT training but said he is still working to find training slots for some of his school resource officers. Slots at times that do not conflict with the daily school schedule.
“We have to keep officers there, I mean we have to be available in case anything happens, to be a presence on the campus,” said Vickers.
Vickers said he hoped to get the rest of his officers through the course this summer or by the end of next school year at the latest depending on the number of available classes.
NBC 5 Investigates
Uncover. Reveal. Expose.
Something bad starts to happen and people go into denial. They deny what's happening and that causes them to delay responding.
Pete Blair, executive director of ALERRT
“That's our number one priority, and beyond that, like I said, we've been doing our own in-house training. We're prepared,” Vickers said.
He added that ALERRT training taught him valuable tactics that he believes will improve police responses to active shooters.
“I came into it thinking that I knew quite a bit and then I still learned a lot from it, like a lot more than I expected to,” Vickers said.
Regarded by many in law enforcement as the nation's best active shooter program, ALERRT was developed at Texas State University in San Marcos.
The ALERRT team sends huge boxes of training gear, and trainers, to police agencies across the country so they can practice tactics to better respond to scenarios created from research into real-life events.
“Time is the enemy. The longer it takes to stop the attacker, the more people will be injured. And the longer it takes to get the injured people to definitive care, the more people will die,” said Pete Blair, ALERRT’s executive director, in an interview with NBC 5 Investigates.
Blair said a number of Texas law enforcement agencies have struggled to get all of their officers ALERRT trained because of severe staffing shortages.
“That's one of the major delays we're seeing, is that if you're having trouble just covering your normal shifts, it's hard then to free people up to go to training,” Blair said.
In the DFW area, two of the biggest departments that protect local schools -- the Fort Worth Police Department and Dallas ISD Police -- tell NBC 5 Investigates all of their school officers have already completed ALERRT training.
And, Denton ISD also says all officers from seven departments that cover their schools have ALERRT certification.
But the numbers obtained by NBC 5 Investigates show other school districts including Crowley, Duncanville, Forney and Wiley still have some officers waiting for ALERRT training.
Those districts told NBC 5 they are working to get everyone through the ALERRT class and said their officers have completed other active shooter courses.
The challenge of getting ALERRT training to more officers is about to grow even bigger.
Abbott recently signed a bill that will now require all law enforcement officers, not just school police officers, to take ALERRT training as part of their continuing education requirements.
Blair hopes that will help avoid a repeat of Uvalde where his study of the incident found officers responding from multiple agencies failed to coordinate effectively and act swiftly.
“We call it the blue tsunami, which is all the police officers rushing to the scene. If those officers aren't controlled in some way, they actually become a hindrance to getting things done because there's not a clear chain of command,” said Blair.
So far, Blair said more than 15,000 officers statewide have been ALERRT trained since last summer. But there are more than 79,000 certified officers in Texas.
Blair said ALERRT is trying to train more trainers inside local law enforcement agencies. Once a department has enough certified trainers on staff they can host their own ALERRT classes and invite surrounding departments.
That should create more training opportunities since the ALERRT staff cannot run each training session for the tens of thousands of officers waiting to receive it.
No matter how much police are prepared, security experts tell us kids and teachers must also prepare themselves.
Pete Blair not only studies active shooter events -- he's also a parent – and has advice for kids from years of studying active shooter events.
“Everybody assumes that people immediately panic and start running around. And actually, you see the opposite tends to be true. Something bad starts to happen and people go into denial. They deny what's happening and that causes them to delay responding,” said Blair.
Blair says the worst decision is no decision.
He tells students and teachers as soon as you think something might be wrong, assume it's wrong, and act immediately to avoid the threat -- deny access to the attacker -- or defend against the threat.
INTRUDER AUDITS
After Uvalde, the governor also ordered intruder audits to make sure schools don't have unlocked doors and windows.
Data obtained by NBC 5 shows more than 500 DFW-area schools had not been checked by state auditors as of early May.
Among the 30 school districts NBC 5 surveyed, only 62% of campuses had been audited.
The state’s goal is to test 75% statewide by June. The Texas School Safety Center, which runs the intruder audit program, declined to answer questions about the status of the audits
