Metro Nashville Police Officers Rex Engelbert (pictured above, right) and Michael Collazo (pictured above, left) will receive the National Award of Valor at the National Association of School Resource Officers (NASRO) School Safety Conference next month. NASRO annually presents its National Award of Valor to five individuals “for acts of courage and valor above and beyond what would normally be expected.”
NASRO said the group admired how the officers “ended the tragic shooting at The Covenant School March 27 by confronting and firing at the shooter, fatally wounding them within 14 minutes of the first report of the incident.”
The Nashville Fraternal Order of Police President James Smallwood said of the officers’ bravery, “[A]s soon as you hear on that body camera the gunfire ring out, those officers start running towards the gunfire without hesitation. They stop clearing rooms, and they start running towards the gunfire.”
The officers have received abundant recognition for their courage. Earlier this week, Middle Tennessee State University (MTSU) honored five of the officers involved in the Covenant School shooting response by naming them Honorary Professors of Public Safety for their “precision, duty, and selflessness.”
MTSU President Sidney McPhee said “[i]t is my great honor as president to confer upon these five officers, the first-ever such honor extended by our university.” McPhee also touted the “high standards and actions of the Metro Nashville Police Department.”
The NASRO National School Safety Conference will take place from June 28 through July 3rd in Indianapolis. NASRO will present officers Engelbert and Collazo with the National Award of Valor on June 30th.
NASRO advocates for “making schools and children safer by providing the highest quality training to school-based law enforcement officers.” The organization trains law enforcement as school resource officers to “educate, counsel, and protect school communities.”
Tennessee Governor Bill Lee recently signed a bill that provides $140 million in funding “for one full-time, armed school resource officer (SRO) for every public school in the state.”
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Mac Roberts is a reporter at The Tennessee Star. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Rex Engelbert” by Metro Nashville PD. Photo “Michael Collazo” by Metro Nashville PD. Background Photo “Metropolitan Nashville Police Department” by Metropolitan Nashville Police Department.
The award is to recognize their bravery and their selflessness by putting the lives of people they do not know ahead of their own security. They deserve honor and recognition. They showed everybody and every law enforcement agency the need to move in at top speed to stop a mass shooter. Uvalde demonstrated to the country how NOT to do it.
Giving an award for killing someone ❓ I don’t know about that. Officers that must take the life of another, struggle with that for the rest of their life. Glorifying the killing might not be helpful.
And that comes from a 43 year Law Enforcement officer.