North Charlotte Today

North Carolina law enforcement officers recently said they do not understand why police in Uvalde, Texas, waited so long to enter a school and track down an active shooter.

“Law enforcement learned from Columbine there is not a time to wait; for a first responding officer, if it’s an active shooter we have to go in,” Iredell County Sheriff Darren Campbell told WBTV. “You want to train like you fight. In a situation like this, it’s survival; we want everyone to survive it.” 

Campbell expressed dismay that no one caught the online chatter between the shooter and others ahead of time.

“Their job is to constantly monitor threats through social media and through communications with kids or information that comes through emails or the app that we actually follow up,” he said. “It doesn’t matter if it’s 6 o’clock in the evening or 2 o’clock in the morning; that’s a full-time group that actually follows up on those threats.”

Another local officer explained the lengths that area schools are going to in an effort to prevent such a tragedy closer to home.

“We have SROs [school resource officers] there, we have officers that are going there during the day; they’ve stepped up patrols,” Lt. Jamie Matthews of the Matthews Police Department told WBTV. “It’s extremely important to have an officer there. They’re the first person there; they know the ins and outs of the school that they’re at and generally, they have really good relationships with the administrators and the students at that school. That way, they can build a bond and hopefully get information from the schools freely.”

School staff members received training on how to get children to safety if an active shooter situation occurs.

“We provided training to some of the principals and teachers there as far as the use of shields – ballistic shields – to be able to evacuate classes if anything happens, to protect themselves,” Campbell said.