Marine infantry veteran Michael Collazo, a detective with the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department was awarded the top honor from an international law enforcement organization for moving quickly to stop an active school shooter last year.
Collazo and Police Officer Rex Engelbert both received the Police Officers of the Year award on Monday for their response to the March 27, 2023 shooting at The Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee. Two other police officers also received the award from the International Association of Chiefs of Police, or IACP, which represents more than 34,0000 members in more than 170 countries.
Reached by Task & Purpose on Tuesday, Collazo said he and Engelbert feel blessed to receive the award.
“We accept it for everybody that responded that day,” Collazo said. “It wasn’t just us. Everybody was really involved.”
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Police have identified the shooter at The Covenant School as Audrey Hale, a former student at the school, who killed six people. Nashville police officers and other law enforcement were praised for moving quickly to find and stop Hale as soon as they arrived at the school.
“The shooter was deceased 12 minutes after the first 911 call was received,” an IACP news release says. “She had fired a total of 152 rounds from her weapons. While the department joins its community in continuing to mourn the deaths of the six innocent victims, it is clear that this tragedy would have been much worse if not for the heroic actions of Detective Collazo and Officer Engelbert.”
Collazo served in the Marine Corps from 2010 to 2016 as an infantryman, leaving the Corps as a sergeant. Video released by Nashville police shows footage from Collazo’s body camera as he and his fellow police officers searched room-to-room at The Covenant School for the shooter.
His military training is on full display as he tells another officer “rifle first” before they clear a classroom. Later, he and the other police officers run toward the sound of Hale’s gunfire. The video ends with Collazo taking a rifle out of Hale’s hands.
Collazo told Task & Purpose that his Marine Corps training helped that day, but the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department also made sure he was prepared to deal with an active shooter.
“The police department’s academy along with the Marine Corps’ training mindset go hand-in-hand with each other,” Collazo said. “So that whole stress inoculation, everything, really did play a big factor in all of that for a bunch of us.”
The Metropolitan Nashville Police Department posted on X that it is extremely proud that Collazo and Engelbert have been named Police Officers of the Year, adding, “Their response to Covenant School on 3/27/23 saved countless lives.”
While being recognized for his response to the shooting is gratifying, Collazo said it is also important to remember those killed in the attack. Three of the victims were 9-year-old children: Hallie Scruggs, William Kinney, and Evelyn Dieckhaus. The three adults killed were Mike Hill, 60, a school custodian; Katherine Koonce, 60, head of the school; and Cynthia Peak, 61, a substitute teacher.
“We try to retell their stories whenever we can,” Collazo said, adding that the community wants to blot out the shooter from its memory. “We’re tired of saying that individual’s name. We’re tired of hearing about that person. What we really care about is the families that were affected and our community that was affected by this and, of course, the victims that we lost that day.”