Albuquerque school security officers train to carry firearms
BERNALILLO NM March 4 2019 — The security officer watches the bleachers filled with a raucous crowd of young students, obviously enjoying what’s happening before them in the gymnasium.
All of a sudden, a bespectacled young man in the back row stands up, holding a gun.
The security guard tells the students to leave the bleachers and the gym and talks the youngster into placing the gun down and then walking down the steps to the floor.
It’s just one possible scenario a dozen security guards for Rio Rancho Public Schools have gone through on the Sandoval County Sheriff’s Office simulator, supplementing their required training while preparing to be armed on RRPS campuses in the coming weeks.
It was a situation many City of Vision residents may have thought would never happen in one of their schools — until a Cleveland High student took a gun to school on Feb. 14 and fired a shot, fortunately not hitting anyone.
Former Rio Rancho Police veteran John Francis, the school district’s assistant director of safety and security, was placed in that scenario recently at the sheriff’s office, where county spokeswoman Melissa Perez told media members that newly elected Sheriff Jesse James Casaus “reached out, wanting to make sure law enforcement agencies have access to it.”
Francis explains to SCSO Sgt. Michael Duran, operating the computer that “stages” scenarios on a large screen, how and why he acted as he did in talking the student out of his weapon and soon goes through a second scenario.
It appears to be a repeat of the first, although Francis — later revealing he’d been on the scene of three police shootings during his career — is vigilant. The bleachers are filled with laughing, chattering youngsters and that same bespectacled boy again stands up, this time with the gun to his head.
Francis begins what is referred to as “verbal judo,” trying to neutralize the threat, but to no avail. The kid pulls the trigger and falls dead.
It’s eerie and realistic, and Francis admits to experiencing an adrenaline rush during the scenarios. He knows such incidents can “go from zero to 100” quickly.
“Every situation’s going to be different,” he said, stressing how important it is to “keep in mind what’s behind your target.”
In this case, it was a gymnasium wall; had the armed youngster been seated in the front row, though, it might have played out differently, especially if his fellow students hadn’t been so quick to exit.
“We’ve had this system five or six years,” Duran said. “We trained neighboring agencies as well; we recently trained the Belen Police Department. … They’re not all zoned for officers to shoot, (rather) to use their communication skills.”
RRPS Chief Operating Officer Mike Baker recently told the Observer that he was hopeful all 12 of the security officers who offered to carry weapons on duty will be on school campuses following spring break. That was the best-case scenario; if that doesn’t work out, Baker said certainly no later than by the start of the 2019-20 school year.
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