Chief Speaks on the Uvalde Tragedy

As with so many of you, my family and I are profoundly impacted by the recent tragedy at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas. On behalf of my wife, kids, and work-family here at APPD, I offer our heartfelt condolences. I cannot begin to imagine the loss and agony the families involved face and will continue to endure over the next weeks and months. 

The news struck an even deeper cord this morning when my wife told me, like her, one of the teachers killed was a 4th-grade teacher, and she was married to a police officer. And as many of you might know, Charlie Marshall Elementary school is my primary campus of patrol, this being the campus where my wife works. In addition, as you may recall, each of my command staff officers is assigned to an ISD campus and is to work as the campus' primary liaison to local public safety needs in the absence of a school resource officer (SRO).

This past September 2021, I put out a message about school safety and security. This release was shared after another devastating event our community suffered from, which occurred just outside of AP at one of our RV parks. In that release, I spoke about the safety and security efforts APPD and APISD regularly perform for our students and ISD staff. I encourage you to reflect on that article. Today, I will share a brief update about that before speaking about another matter of importance. 

This school year, my training division hosted four active threat-related courses. Those courses include the following:

- School-based active threats training;

- An integrated response to an active threat (including police, fire, and EMS);

- Medical 1st response to an active threat; and

- Integrated rescue taskforce model training inclusive of SABA (Self Aid Buddy Aid) instruction and practice.

In addition, we have planned three to four more courses this coming summer. Those courses include the following:

- Train-the-Trainer styled instruction for active threat courses (put on by APPD certified instructors);

- How to respond to an active threat when you are the only officer able to respond;

- Improved integrated response training, which includes police, fire, EMS, area support agencies who sign up, dispatch, and APISD staff. (The emphasis remains on collaboration and understanding of what to expect and how to perform during an active threat event.)

This is just some of the training we continue to focus on here in AP, and because our training need is so great it is important we have and maintain a progressive and robust training division. 

Additionally, we're working on training for you, AP. In August, we plan to host a Civilian Academy and Active Threat training program. This program will run approximately two hours a night once a week for a few weeks—more information to follow in the upcoming months. This is an expansion to our CRASE training that we've put on for the past several years. 

Training is only one component of what we do for our community and APISD. We also partner with our ISD as advisors and participants on their security board. We meet regularly, participate in table-top exercises, explore ways to improve public safety within our schools, and we support the school's Guardian program (secretly armed and trained school staff strategically placed on campus). 

If you'd like more information about any of this training or these programs, I encourage you to message in, call, or attend a City Council or APISD School Board meeting. But more importantly, I have a task for you to start TODAY, AP!

We suffer from a national epidemic in this country that only you and I can improve, and one feeds into and grows the other! We cannot, as we've seen, depend on politicians, interest groups, laws or the likes, or even the government to fix this issue. We must depend on one another. We are the change agent, AP. 

Those issues are the mental health crisis, which is fueled by our eagerness to spread hatred and division. Based on my localized experiences, hatred stems from our unwillingness to carry on constructive dialogues. As that takes place, we tend to fall back to using anger and spewing vitriol towards one another. And, in turn, this creates greater division. Next, we look for ways to understand why we are divided and we do so to establish a level of superiority/inferiority amongst one another. We divide ourselves by race, gender identity, sex, political party, and several other ways. We must recognize that at the core of all, we are one race, one identity - human. All efforts or agendas to divide us otherwise are dangerous and only further exacerbate the hatred that feeds into the growing mental health crisis plaguing our nation. It also leads us to respond through hate or malice. 

We need not look too far beyond that of Facebook to realize this. Even here in our small community, there are groups on Facebook that tend to feed into this divide and hatred and do so like cancer spreads. It is up to us, AP, to change that culture. Instead of responding out of personal bias and emotion, why not try patience, understanding, love and compassion? Your experiences in life aren't mine, and mine aren't yours. Until I can understand that I don't know everything, I will not begin to understand another's perspective or reasoning. Nor will I be able to hold constructive dialogue focused on a solution to the problem. It's easy to argue and disagree; it's tough and takes a tough person to remain patient, understanding, and hold constructive dialogue. But, each of us can improve upon it, one instance at a time.