DALLAS — Texas Gov. Greg Abbott wants more active shooter response training for schools, particularly for district police and school resource officers.
On Monday, the governor sent a letter to Pete Blair, the executive director of the Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training program at Texas State University, directing him to “begin providing” his organization’s training program “to all school districts across the state, prioritizing school-based law enforcement.”
The letter stated that training for all districts must start before the next school year begins, and Abbott knows that trainers within the state’s Department of Public Safety “stand ready to help provide this life-saving training to campuses across the state as quickly as possible.”
Additional funding to ramp up training was not mentioned in the letter.
Abbott also asked that Texas State’s ALERRT Center provide “an after-action debrief of the shooting at Uvalde once the investigation is complete and of other relevant situations to school administrators, law enforcement, and others charged with keeping our Texas schools safe.”
“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.
Abbott’s request is one of a handful of responses that he’s taken since the Uvalde school mass shooting, which left 19 students and two teachers dead.
Last week, the governor charged the director of the university’s Texas School Safety Center to do in-person, random intruder detection audits at campuses. He also asked state lawmakers to convene special legislative committees to develop “recommendations on school safety, mental health, social media, police training, firearm safety, and more.”
Blair told The Dallas Morning News on Monday afternoon that his center already provides training for district police and school resource officers. Such law enforcement can participate in the training — which is provided at no cost to the officers, relying on state and federal training funds — provided that space is available when requested.
Blair could not readily provide a number of districts that have taken part in ALERRT training.
Craig Miller, a school security consultant and former Dallas ISD police chief, estimated that a majority of officers on campuses have trained through the ALERRT program as most of the state’s approximately 300 school police departments use the Texas State training. Meanwhile, those districts that rely on SROs from municipal police departments likely have used the that training as well, he noted.
Dallas ISD, for example, has used the program since 2010, DISD spokesperson Caren Rodriguez said.
Founded in 2002, Texas State’s ALERRT Center is considered one of the top active-shooter response training programs in the country, training law enforcement officials nationwide.
After the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary shooting, the ALERRT program was adopted by the FBI as the national standard for special agent tactical instructors. Several states and cities have done the same.
Over 200,000 first responders have gone through the basic course, according to the governor’s letter, which “includes 16 hours of training in team movement, room entry techniques, approach and breaching the crisis, shooting and moving, as well as post engagement priorities of work.”
Miller noted that during his time in Dallas, the district used the more expansive “train-the-trainer” model, a 40-hour course. Officers were trained every summer on the techniques, he added.
Active-shooter programs like ALERRT are “typically based on a theoretical and a practical component,” said Alex del Carmen, a Tarleton State University associate dean and criminologist.
Attendants are taught strategies, techniques and other various components to respond to an active shooter, such as how to determine the best points of entry or departure, Del Carmen said.
“Then a great deal of the training is a simulation,” Del Carmen said. “So, the idea is to put the officer in a scenario that will resemble real-life circumstances, to try and get the officer to think clearly and immediately, with a great deal of stressors around the officer.”
The hope of such training is to essentially build muscle memory, “creating that mindset that allows for people to respond in the manner in which they need to when an emergency occurs,” said Lisa Womack, former chief of police in Sugar Land and consultant with the Arlington-based police practices consulting firm The Bowman Group.
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