Albuquerque Public Schools says officer was following protocol when he entered classroom with gun drawn

An Albuquerque Public Schools police officer who entered a classroom full of students with his gun drawn followed standard operating procedures, according to the district.

The officer was confronting a student at West Mesa High School, who was reported to have a gun. A gun was found in his backpack after the altercation.

“We’re still reviewing the incident, but our initial assessment is that the officer’s actions followed protocol based on the totality of the event,” APS spokesperson Martin Salazar said Friday. “The officer was in a low ready stance, and he never pointed his gun at anyone. Students were safely evacuated and nobody was hurt.”

A cellphone video KOAT-TV obtained showed the officer at the front of a classroom with his gun drawn, ordering the student to the ground Wednesday morning. The student does not have the gun in his hand and asked the officer why he was being ordered to the ground.

Two people who appear to be staff members ran to the teen and exchanged shoves with him as they try to corner him. Multiple students then ran out of the room — following a teacher’s orders to do so.

“The responding officer had information suggesting there was a heightened threat in the classroom. That, coupled with the activation of ALICE protocols, prompted the response captured in the video,” Salazar said.

He said he could not elaborate on what the “heightened threat” was.

ALICE, which stands for “Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, Evacuate,” is a procedure the district uses to “respond to a dangerous intruder on campus.”

“Each word describes an action that students and staff could take to protect themselves from a dangerous situation,” the district’s website says, adding that students and staff go through annual training on the protocol.

Salazar said that since the protocol had been activated, the officer was following standard operating procedures, since it promoted “an emergency response.”

The gun recovered in the recorded incident was one of four seized from students at two campuses on Wednesday. A fifth gun was recovered in an incident right off of school grounds.

The guns found include two in separate incidents at Albuquerque High School, and another recovered from a student near the Del Norte High School campus.

An additional gun was found at West Mesa that day, following the classroom scuffle in an unrelated incident, according to APS.