PLEASANTON, Texas — The newly hired and home-grown chief of the Pleasanton ISD Police Department said he is happy to be serving the community that helped raise him.
"I am a graduate --- 1997--- And I'm glad to be an Eagle again."
Arriving this week, at a time when parents across Texas are worried about safety, Michael Gilbert wasted no time pursuing an agenda that he hopes will bring comfort to nervous Atascosa County neighbors.
Gilbert is hosting and helping teach a two-day seminar at Pleasanton Elementary for law enforcement personnel around the region.
"Unfortunately with the Uvalde incident one of our focuses is active shooter response training and threat management." Gilbert said.
Gilbert said he wanted everyone who might have to respond to a crisis to be familiar with the landscape, to better protect the precious little citizens in his charge.
Gilbert said "We want these young individuals to become great learners and leaders of the future."
"That's why we want familiarity with our campuses and we have working relationships with not only state but local agencies as well. We are focused on safety and security, and making sure our resources are available," Gilbert said.
"I have several trainings that I want to do to bring prevention and intervention into this community," Gilbert said, adding "With the mindset that we have here, I believe we will accomplish that."
It will take team work to make the dream work.
"There has to be buy in from everybody locally and county-wide," Gilbert said.
Gilbert said he knows he has support from his officers because many of them have children attending district schools.
"The community that we are all protecting? We have the future here and that's the buy-in that I want to create here," Gilbert said.
"I'm very happy to be here because the community around here cares and I can definitely see that and I want to make sure I give them what they deserve and what they need," Gilbert said.
DPS Sgt. Jose Chavarria is one of the trainers for the event, he said he understands the heartache of the losses in Uvalde.
"We want to make sure we don't have more victims so here the training is preparing our law enforcement to respond, not to hesitate, to make sure they engage."
Chavarria said it is important to bring officers from different agencies together to train so that they can act as one when there is a crisis.
"We want to have commonality of tactics, so we're building on team concepts and working together in an active attack. We're teaching how to attack, how to approach, team movements. And how to take control of the situation," Chavarria said.
Gilbert said in addition to two days of training, he'll be auditing all their policies and procedures so that when the bell rings everyone will feel confident that they'll be able to have a happy new year.