CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — The school year for the Corpus Christi Independent School District is just one week away.
While parents are busy prepping students for their big first day, CCISD officers are also hard at work fine-tuning their skills at the Rockport PD training facility.
CCISD Lt. officer David Ramos said proper training is paramount when ensuring the safety of the community.
"We do our annual qualifications here; the idea for this is for our officers to be proficient with their weapons," he said.
Ramos is one of the instructors for the training course and said that each year, officers practice different drills to keep their muscle memory sharp.
"The day starts off with qualifying with their duty pistols and duty rifles. We do have rifles that the district buys for the officers, but officers also bring in their personal rifles they'd use instead," he said.
CCISD officer Lt. Lance Howard said that even though officers are prepared for the task of keeping the community safe, they hope the worst does not come to pass.
"Before school starts we put in 40 hours of training, and honestly, we are training on these; we pray we never have to use them outside of this range," he said.
Howard said that 46 CCISD officers will be certified within the next three training days. Another 18-20 officers will be certified in craze training at the old Mary Carroll High School campus.
"We got to be. We are entrusted with the most precious commodity, and that's people children. We are here praying for a day that never comes," he said. But if it does come, we will be ready. We will be confident in our training that we will be able to protect those young ones," he said.
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