Only 20% of Uvalde sheriff deputies had active-shooter training at the time of the Robb Elementary School shooting, third-party investigation says
Most Uvalde sheriff's deputies had no active-shooter training at the time of the school shooting in May, an investigation says.
The department also didn't have an active shooter policy at the time, retired judge Richard Carter said.
Of the 376 officers who responded to the Robb Elementary shooting, 16 were sheriff's deputies.
Just 20% of deputies from the Uvalde County Sheriff's Office had active-shooter training at the time of the Robb Elementary School shooting, a third-party review has found.
The sheriff's office also had no policy for handling active-shooter situations when the attack happened, retired judge Richard Carter, a consultant tasked by Uvalde County commissioners to evaluate the sheriff's office, told officials on Monday.
The Uvalde County Sheriff's Office is one of several Texas agencies under scrutiny for how its officers responded to the May 24 massacre, in which a teenage gunman killed 19 children and two teachers.
Out of the 376 officers who responded to the shooting, 16 were deputies from the sheriff's office, per The Texas Tribune.
Officials said much of the delay in law enforcement's 77-minute response stemmed from officers misinterpreting the active-shooter situation as a hostage scenario; the gunman had still been in a classroom with multiple victims when first responders arrived.
Uvalde Sheriff Ruben Nolasco was one of the higher-ranking officers present during the shooting, but said he was never in charge — a common assertion from various agency leaders who said they assumed someone else was helming the response.
Carter said that as of Monday, Nolasco still hasn't gone through an active shooter course, though all but three of his deputies have undergone such training since the shooting.
"He plans to do that in the immediate future," Carter told reporters after his briefing, per NBC affiliate KAGS TV. "What I understand is he wanted to make sure all his people that might go out were trained."
Active-shooter training isn't required for Texas sheriff's departments, as long as they are not serving under a school-based agency, per the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement.
During the meeting, Carter said his review didn't look into how Nolasco and his deputies acted on the day of the shooting, but rather at the policies and methodologies of the sheriff's office.
"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," said Carter, according to ABC News.
When reached for comment at 11 p.m. CST, the sheriff's department in Uvalde declined to comment and told Insider to call back at 8 a.m.
Read the original article on Insider
