(LEX 18) — Current and former Central Kentucky police officials are applauding the work of police in Nashville, who—compared to what took place in Uvalde—quickly moved in and stopped a shooter at a Christian elementary school.
“You have night and day comparing these two,” said Franklin County Sheriffs’ Office Captain Jeff Abrams. “There is no time to pause and hesitate in that type of situation. There was just too much waiting and indecision in Uvalde, it's just unacceptable.”
Body camera video released Tuesday shows officers immediately entering the school after they arrived and searching and engaging with the shooter shortly after. It shows them going room to room, making sure there isn’t a hidden threat before continuing.
“That was as textbook as I can tell as you can get,” Abrams said. “Your number one goal is to be quick and respond as quickly as possible to that threat, every second counts, and it appears they were on top of their game.”
Abrams is also the county’s school safety coordinator. He spent Tuesday addressing any concerns people at schools may have had. In the morning, he spoke to the district’s superintendent about adding more school resource officers, he said. It’s something he believed should happen, but that the shooting in Nashville pushed him to act now.
Former Lexington Police Chief Anthany Beatty agreed, adding that good communication in Nashville prevented second guessing.
“The most important info was flowing freely throughout the incident,” he said.
What happened in Nashville will play an important role in restoring faith in police’s response to school shootings following Uvalde.
“So you saw the best of what law enforcement can and does represent 99% of the time throughout our country. I’d like for us to not paint all law enforcement with the brush of something that happened in some other community because this was an excellent response based on all the preliminary information we have,” Beatty said.
