Las Cruces Police Department officer Chris Carrillo got a call on a school two-way radio that no school resource officer wants to hear. A student had told an assistant principal at Centennial High School that another student might be in possession of a gun that day in early November 2023.
The New Mexico SRO met the administrator and two school security guards outside the classroom that the suspect was supposed to be in. The classroom was empty, however, because the teacher had taken the class to a commons area downstairs from the classroom.
Carrillo worked out a plan with the administrator and security guards. They would enter the commons area and the SRO would immediately gain physical control of the student. Meanwhile, one security guard would grab the student’s backpack and the other would join the administrator in directing remaining students out of the area.
The plan worked perfectly.
“I found the kid and patted him down,” the SRO told NASRO. “I found no weapon on his body, so I escorted him to an office while an administrator and security guard examined the boy’s backpack in a different room.”
They found a “ghost gun” assembled on a polymer frame with a Glock slide and trigger. The weapon had a full, 30-round magazine and a round in its chamber. It was also fitted with a switch that enabled automatic fire.
Carrillo read the student his rights, after which the suspect invoked the fifth amendment and declined to answer any questions. For that reason, the officer never learned how the student obtained the gun or what reasons he might have had for taking it to school.
The SRO was not familiar with the student because Carrillo normally works at a different school and was filling in for the high school’s regular officer, who was away for training. That SRO had previously told Carrillo, however, about interactions with the boy.
Carrillo arrested the student on a charge of possession of a deadly weapon on school grounds. As this story was written, the suspect was in a juvenile detention center awaiting disposition of his case.
Thanks to the SRO’s presence on campus, the suspect was apprehended and his bookbag secured fewer than five minutes after a student reported the gun.
Without an SRO on campus, much more time would have elapsed before a law enforcement officer could be present, Carrillo told NASRO. “An administrator and non-sworn security officers might have had to deal with the student on their own,” the SRO continued. “This could have put a lot of kids in jeopardy.”
“I left school thinking, ‘as bad as the situation was, the outcome was as good as it could have been,’” Carrillo concluded.
Do you have a similar SRO success story? If so, contact NASRO PIO Jay Farlow, [email protected].