 Good evening everyone my name is Jessica Weaver and on behalf of the future forum I want to thank you all for joining us tonight for our discussion on gun control and school safety The future form is an organization that brings together individuals with different backgrounds Experiences and points of view to discuss the most important issues that affect us all our goal is to create civil informed And bipartisan discourse which is perhaps needed now more than ever The future forums events are made possible by our incredible members and sponsors If you are not already a member of the forum I strongly encourage you to sign up before you leave tonight or at the very least visit lbjfutureforum.org to learn more We are lucky to be joined tonight by two law enforcement experts to their on their approaches to keeping students safe This discussion will not be an easy one, but it is critically important in today's society Please keep in mind that there will be time for questions at the end of the panel And I hope you'll all join us after to continue the conversation and enjoy the reception And we'll also be live streaming tonight's debate between Ted Cruz and Beto O'Rourke after the reception And now i'll turn it over to rg ratcliffe senior editor at texas monthly to introduce our guests and moderate our discussion Thank you. Thank you for having me. Uh, first off, we were also going to have, um Chris avoid who is the assistant chief of the austin independent school district, but With the flooding and everything. Uh, he wasn't able to make it tonight Uh, so anyway, we have to my left david carter. He's the uh chief of police from the university of texas at austin Uh, he believes very strongly in community policing and intelligence to lead police strategies Created a bike unit. He's a bachelor of science from texas a&m university and All together President got over it. Yeah Uh, I went to the university of missouri, so I can't hold it against me. Um, and uh, anyway the uh, and Has taken the fbi's premier executive training course to his left is brian manly the uh Interim chief of police with the austin police department. He's been with the department since 1990 Uh, interim He dropped that. Oh, we dropped that. Okay. I'm sorry. I'm we're chief of police um the uh And uh, let's see what we got here. I'll tell you what I'll just let since since I've already hit an error here I'll let him explain himself But I'm going to open this discussion We're supposed to be talking tonight primarily about uh gun safety and school safety So I'm going to open this up with uh, this will obviously be an issue in the upcoming legislative session Primarily because of the santa fe high school shooting And governor abbott has laid out some things that he wants to have done So i'm just going to open this up with the legislature has decided to give Or spend 500 million dollars on school safety across the state What would you do with that money if you had the opportunity? We'll go this way so so first off Thanks rg and thanks everybody for having me. I did want to clarify president Powers is the one that actually hired me and we went through a little process at the uh, at the end of the national search I was actually at a pd retired there second and commander rosa vato at that time And but I went to president power's office I go in there after going through all the committees and all so forth He's got his feet up on the desk and he's he's kind of staring at me says we've got a problem And so I said yes, I know it's my alma mater But anyway, so we developed a good relationship. We got through that process. Thanks everybody for being here So I think the question really is about 500 million dollars that that Would be slotted for school safety. I think one of the things that's really important to recognize here is the the The the primary recipient recipient of that is is obviously will be school districts like austin independent school district So what we're talking about the governor's office is talking about those kinds of issues primarily universities are obviously Something of a concern as any large venue I mean universities have been subject to active shooters and other kinds of issues here the texas legislature who I work for Uh, I answer to the president, but I also answer to the system and as well as to the legislature So I basically want you to understand that it's one of the Things that I have to do is to kind of look at those kinds of things here The money here, so it's in a in a perfect world that money is going to address School safety when we say talk about school safety I'm assuming k through 12 as opposed to the university of texas or texas a and m or texas tech or something like that for the most part We have to look at the issues that are Are facing us how to best spend that 500 million dollars If that comes to pass is is really important and really the answer for that comes to to the to y'all I want to talk more about how we at the university of texas and utpd Operate to have a safe college community I want to kind of just take a couple of moments to describe the university of texas and how it is different than a high school setting Because my daytime population here at ut austin is about 80,000 If you think about it in terms of 51,000 students another 20 24,000 faculty and staff and on any given day five to 10,000 visitors during the week And on certain Saturdays depending how well the team's doing they're doing very well right now can be On campus up to 120,000 with at least 100,000 sitting inside the stadium So really we're a medium-sized city. And so we police ut austin like a medium-sized city We're not medium-sized texas city. It's not a small town. It's pretty complex. We got 164 buildings scattered across the the So-called 40 acres, which were much larger than that We have research facilities up north and other facilities throughout the city and across the state the utpd is responsible for So we're talking about something a little bit different right now I think what we're talking specifically k through 12 Where does 500 million dollars go? Well, there's a lot of things that are tossed out there Your input is really important there my input and i'm going to let Chief manly address his mine is really is working with you And our stakeholders that's what we we talked about at first the community policing concept What i'm thinking about the issue is i'm not thinking about the hardware and the physical security of a building Or a high school building or elementary school building. That's really important. There's a lot of stuff on hardening targets But where i'm coming from is a medium-sized city Of dynamic young people for the most part that are here at ut austin How do i keep them safe one of the best ways we keep our community safe is really engaging with them One of the things that we have to think about in terms of gun safety Is we also have to know what our issues are So i i came to Retired from the austin police department in in the summer of 2013 to become the the chief of police Here at ut And then this past year the system vice president over campus security As well as the chief But one of the things that we we really looked at is that the fact that when i got here there was not a Campus carry kinds of issues that so the legislature comes in and works on and passes various laws based on Your support for those positions or debate about those kind of positions my job is to kind of Execute whatever the law is That's the same for all police one of the things that we want to talk about here today Is that what is the police responsibility versus the citizens responsibility? I feel strongly in that community engagement working with you you passed the laws So i don't have a specific answer for you Obviously you want to they want to harden those facilities in terms of doors and I guess they're thinking of metal detectors and things like that. They're thinking of other things as well To me the most important thing that here really is doing stay engaged with that process Work with your police to address Areas of concern and i'm happy to kind of talk about how that we'll come back to that chief man Well, thank you all for coming out and uh, just probably the only introduction I need is to let you know that i am a ut alum. I did do my undergraduate work here and But in all seriousness, I think what needs to enter into that discussion when they look at how they want to spend the funds chief carter talked about Target hardening. I think that you absolutely have to look at ways that we can make schools less Susceptible to these types of incidents that we were seeing occur far too often So that has to be part of the discussion But a couple things beyond that too that I think we need to talk about Training training in a couple different areas training for your school police departments So that they have an immediate and appropriate response if one of these incidents does occur in one of their schools That training has to align with whatever major municipality They are linked to whatever municipal police department that they have and the training has to be done in conjunction with each other So that when we here in austin if we had to provide a response along with aisd It's not something that we haven't practiced prior, but instead we've worked and we've trained together No, I know aisd was not able to be here tonight, but A promising sign for for us and I think a great sign for our community was that when chief ashley gonzalez The new chief of aisd arrived here in austin within the first week He wanted to meet with Myself and members of my team to talk about Collaboratively keeping our kids safe and the school safe So it's through training, but it's also training of teachers And it's training of the counselors to be on the lookout for Those kids that may need some level of service some level of help so we can get an early identification And then the last thing that I would add also that I think should be a part of the discussion Should be counseling services available in the schools So that when the teachers or their peers identify a student who may be having some issues That there is a resource available to them within the school that can better Maybe help them get the help that they need either through that counseling or through private Services that they may have something so again, I think it's target hardening I think it's training and then it's the opportunities to have counseling services available for the kids Okay, I'm gonna ask one question that may be kind of hard for both of y'all to answer because it's sort of political One of the issues with the the kid who is accused or of the Santa Fe shooting Is that he was 16 he used his father's guns And governor Abbott said he wanted to increase the parental responsibility age to 17 However, we have a lot of 18 year olds in school The flip side of that is I believe an 18 year old in texas can buy a A long rifle, which is part of the reason that they haven't extended parental responsibility to 18 Should there be some consideration to extending parental responsibility to students who are still in school I think one thing that's really important when you talk about parental responsibility I think there's responsibility across the board Uh parental responsibility, absolutely. I'm in support of anything like that if you have a young person who is Who's not fully developed or their maturity level is is a it's not there based on age The parents need to have a Play a strong role in that I would say in general the community has to play a strong role One of the things chief manly talked about here or mentioned that's very important is the importance of information sharing One of the things that the police need to be able to do their jobs Is that when people are in need or they're suffering from some kind of a mental illness There has to be some way for that information to come to the police so that we can address that For example, the ut austin Uh the utpd has what we call a threat mitigation unit So that when if if there is any kind of a threat there may not even rise to the level of a crime We're always going to look at it. I think that's sort of what we're talking about in the information Sharing and parental responsibility. So I think I think that has to be but I think it has to be for all people in other words There needs to be a civic responsibility for for those for the young people as well as anybody that That possesses a firearm As far as a specific age, you know, I'll leave that up to the legislature to decide what that age should be 16 17 or 18 But we need to have responsible gun ownership those that are going to choose to own weapons Need to make sure that they are maintaining the safety of those weapons that they're keeping them locked up And that they are doing everything they can do to prevent access to those weapons Whether it be by the children in their home or by any others that may be in their home So the we have laws that already talk about The responsibility of locking those up and I think that that is something that is appropriate And if the legislature sees the need to raise that age to 17 or 18 Then we would respond accordingly. Okay. Now you've both mentioned hardening the schools, which I think mostly Most people think of in terms of metal detectors to get in the schools and In some inner city neighborhoods in other parts of the country they have Indeed put in a lot of metal detectors and made it safer But at the same time it kind of creates an atmosphere for the students that they're in a prison So how do you how do you harden the school and still make it feel like an open place for students to go? Well, I think a lot of that's going to have to have to deal with the Architecture of trying to design that and I fully agree that if you have a school that appears to be The prison and that is not going to be conducive to where we want to go as a society number one Our young people growing up in fear. We absolutely don't want that So there's always a balance. There's always a balance in trying to find what the what the Right public safety measure is versus Freedom of movement freedom of thought all those kinds of things have to be considered In there. I do want to come back to one thing that Chief Manley is just also mentioning is the issue of accountability You know, we want responsible gun ownership. We believe that the Collectively it's not partisan one way or the other the issue is that there are responsible gun owners and and Across the state across the nation Probably the vast majority are but we have instances where there are cases where You know the a gun owner may have been lax and Taking care of a firearm especially if there's somebody in the household that's suffering from mental illness Or they're a young person or any other kind of things that also holds true for people that may Leave a firearm unattended in an unlocked vehicle That's one of those are the kind of things that concern the police a lot We trust our our fellow citizens that that our gun owners Like chief manley says we want them to be responsible. There's a civic responsibility in owning a gun You obviously have a second amendment right to own a gun Which controls what the law says and what the government can or can't do To an individual but there still is a civic responsibility that we all collectively Need to be thinking about whether we own a gun or not is to communicate that And I I do think that that's something that the legislature Is looking the governor is looking at to some degree as those kinds of issues their accountability systems Somebody that that is carelessly, you know leaves a firearm accessible to a child Is currently that could be considered a violation of law But we've had three instances on ut campus involving where A lawful gun owner had the right to be in a position But left Forgot their firearm in a restroom restroom in three different instances there There was not necessarily anything there was no action necessarily the police could do on that But what I would really stress is the issue of civic responsibility Had that been in a elementary school had been completely different There would be some level of legal accountability that we could possibly apply there, but there was none involving adults So when we talk about target hardening again, because I do think that that's important You know you bring up metal detectors and I think that's where everybody goes first They think about the metal detector and you know that is a tool to use that would screen everybody going in But if you think about it, if you had entrances that had metal detectors, you know What do we see when we go to the airport or other venues? We see a huge line queued up to go through that And so it doesn't mean the attack couldn't take place outside of the school in the early hours where kids are queued up And so that's not always the solution instead that could present a different challenge So I think each school has to look at its own Layout and determine how do they best target harden themselves because it's not going to be a one-size-fits-all solution I think as new schools are built. They're doing environmental design where they're taking this into account They're looking at the placement of the windows as far as access visibility from outside They're looking at the placement of the doors and they're looking at you know Having that inner perimeter that once you come through the main door You've got to go through a secondary door all of this stuff is important But we also recognize that we've got a lot of investment in the structures that already exist And we've got to find ways to make those structures work So target hardening also involves things that you'll do inside the school when we talk about active shooter Training and and how to respond in the instance if you found yourself in that You know at the department we have a group of officers that will go out and will train businesses churches Organizations on how to respond if you found yourself in that situation where there was an active shooter At your place of employment or school And the first tenet is deny deny them access and so there are It's interesting to see the the devices that have come out whether it's uh, there's a uh A triangular device that i've seen that actually what you would do is you would throw it up top on the hinge thing There so that the door couldn't open there's ways to put wedges underneath the door again to deny that access And you have to look at do you still have doors to classrooms that have windows in them that have visibility into there? Or do you want to block that so that if you did talk if you did lock that room down? And there was someone roaming the hallways they couldn't see into that classroom So these are some of them are simpler solutions some of them are much more involved And and much more costly, but it is something that's important that each school kind of takes an evaluation of of their layout And some of it will be also Dictated by the surroundings of the schooling is it a school within a neighborhood? That is that is somewhat has contained access excuse me or is it a school That is more rural and and has a lot of tree line around it and all that also brings another concern that If you have an incident occur in the school and and all the kids evacuate the school You've got to make sure that they're evacuating into a safe location So there's not going to be a one-size-fits-all solution You mentioned outside the school and I'll just remind everybody that one of the first modern So-called assault weapon attacks on a school occurred in Stockton, California, and I think it was 1988 when a a man who hated Asians Went to an elementary school that was primarily populated with Asian children Or Asian descent children and open fire on the playground And I I can't remember the exact number he killed, but I think he killed or wounded like about 29 students and teachers So how do you prepare For the instance where it's not within the school building where you actually have a mass shooter on the outside Well, I I think Placing has come a long way since some of these earlier incidents because you know prior to Um really prior to Columbine the really the the plan was always Stage get your resources here in Austin It would be getting your SWAT team getting your tactical operations and then making entry We realized that that can no longer be the approach to school safety And the training has gone 180 degrees now in that that first officer knows when he or she arrives That regardless of what they're going to go in and go up against they have to go in immediately Because they may be able to distract if nothing else distract the shooter and and get their attention away from Innocent children that cannot protect themselves while they wait for extra officers to arrive But working in that outdoor environment It I mean it's what police officers do day in and day out around this country when if you've got a bank robbery Or some type of a violent crime that's occurred and you're chasing that suspect either on foot or or in a vehicle And and we would just have to bring in all of the same Response elements that we would have Officers whether we have canine ability to track them and to try and and bring them into custody that way If they're if they're outside and again What we've seen in some of these attacks is if they're in a treeline or something The first is is trying to you know locate them We're fortunate being in a major city here that we have a lot of resources Not only with the officers, but also with the equipment helicopters fleer systems You know the heat tracking systems so it would be bringing everything you had to bear First to locate isolate and then to and then to take them into custody So so one of the things that also is the key component There's no single law enforcement agency that can operate in a silo anymore And that also was something that occurred one of things collaboration across police jurisdictions is really important I'm proud to be part of the austin area because we have a very good Working relationship with APD Travis County Sheriff's as well as DPS and all the surrounding Areas that all focus on the issue of responding to these kinds of These kinds of issues and threats coming together will come to bear So obviously APD will come to support us And and other entities and DPS and so forth if we need those kind of resources So that training amongst the law enforcement community and coming together to address those is Is something that that you see more Now than ever before and perhaps some of that 500 million dollars that was left over You'll kind of continue to address some of those training needs that like chief manley said actually at the beginning What texas has a law that allows Teachers to be trained to carry weapons at in the school How much of a problem is it for a law enforcement officer responding to a school shooting to try and decide whether that teacher is a trained teacher or a shooter one of the things that happens Frequently in discussions about that for every actor shooter training is the fact that there are lots of individuals in the state So whether they're in a school setting or in a business setting There's lots of individuals in the state that actually are licensed to carry It is our hope or sincere hope that the that the training that they receive also Makes it very clear that the police are going to come in And so most of the training that as I understand it For those kind of situations there and I would Basically tell people Recognize the fact that the police are going to come and they're going to come very Very soon and they're going to come in as a as a small group or a unit To address whatever that is and you need to make sure that you're getting down and I would Assume the the concept of school teachers is relatively new that they're undergoing the same kind of training To your point it would add another level of complexity to an already Confusing situation and in demanding situation if we look back at some of these events Again, I'll go back to Columbine because that was really a game changer for us You've got all the smoke alarms and fire alarms going off. You've got lights flashing You've got all these distractions. You've got gunshots going off And you've got officers that are going to go in to try and and bring this to a to a conclusion And so it's a very dynamic environment in which you would have to decide if you came across someone that has a weapon Whether they are in fact involved in the assault or whether they would be A teacher or a concealed carrier that is that is that is trying to resolve the situation themselves This is training anyone that is a concealed handgun carrier when they go through that course That is part of the training is to recognize that whatever they're Involved in likely the police are responding as chief guard was just saying and and an immediate identification upon seeing that officer To make sure that you are not mistaken for one of the offenders in that situation Those those situations, you know, again when we hear the after actions and we look at what's going on They you can imagine just the overwhelming Of your senses that takes place Not only from just what what you're seeing has played out already But then again all the distractions all the alarms and the sounds and the lights and all yeah, let me let me ask you the Obviously the the Marjorie Stoneman Douglas shooting the Santa Fe shooting Those kinds of shootings get the most attention and they also have the The highest number of people who were killed or injured But when you look at the the list, there was like I looked at Every town for gun safety before I came over here tonight and there's been 69 school shootings this year Frankly, most of them are Some of them are adults who have arguments in parking lots or adults who have arguments at a football game Couple of them are actually students who Decided to go to school to kill themselves And they're not the they're not the dramatic ones that we're talking about So how do you how do A police department prepare for The things like the the gang related shootings from the parking lot or the two angry fans at a football game I think I think that Goes to police training in general You talked about issues whether And again, we're we're speaking from Sort of a municipal setting and the university setting is so our school police chiefs talking about his philosophy We're extrapolating a little bit on our training or at least I am I think one of the things that's something that goes through every Every police academy goes through every ongoing in-service training to kind of address those kinds of issues One one shooting is too many Quite frankly, but we know that you know, there's a large number of of both murders and suicides that occur across the country that Unfortunately don't rise to the same get the same level of attention as the obviously the very traumatic experience of having somebody come into a school with children and kill Many or several of those children that obviously is an extremely emotional event I think when you look at it, you have to look at it in perspective also in terms of the Context of the numbers 69 is is it's just it's terrible if that was the number that you quoted Uh, that that's a terrible enough But if you add up the number of fatalities or the injuries in there It pales in comparison to what happens across the country in terms of the issue of of murders with Both legal and illegal weapons as well as suicides, which I think is about twice as many I think it's about half of all gun deaths or suicides Two to two one or something something like that. Yeah So those are concerns. So what you're talking about what your question was what happens if there's a Gang shooting that's occurring in the parking lot Well, if it's at a school, it's very very sensitive. The one thing that is good is that most schools Elementary k through 12 have locked down procedures that instant something goes on the schools are well trained I know austin isd is absolutely in that they're austin Independent school district police are engaged in that process of locking down if there's something going on in the city is Brian you can attest to I think there was something fairly recently that turned out to not be a big deal Down a pocket. So they're They're used to doing that lockdown procedure whether you like that or not the the fact is they can do those procedures And the police whether it's an APD or whoever can respond and address that In looking at how do you prevent those types of of assaults from occurring the gang assault example that you gave A lot of that is going to be the work that you've done ahead of time A lot of that is about the information sharing It's about being involved in the schools with either the school resource officer And again making sure that as the municipal police department We've got that relationship and that link to the school district police department so that we're aware Of of either arguments or disagreements or previous violent acts between potential gangs And so we're doing the work on the front end to try and identify When violence may take place between two different groups either in a school setting Or out in the community somewhere else We we've we do a lot in austin to try and make those links We're in a post 9 11 time now when we recognize that there were so many information silos that existed that we just missed so many clues You know on the 9 11 assaults and law enforcement collectively has done a lot more to share information so that we can identify When something like this may be happening here in austin We've got the austin regional intelligence center, which is for lack of a better term What what is commonly known as a sub confusion center where we bring in all of the local police departments We share information and we should hopefully be able to identify A potential violent act if we've got gangs that have for some reason Ended up in in a violent encounter with each other so that we can try and prevent that And then i'll go back to the education part as well and this is important The likely sources of information really are going to be the students peers and and and people that are close to them And so that's the information we push out on see something say something if there's something going on Let us know and we have a lot of times we we can't talk about what the successes were We know we've prevented specific things from happening in our community But we can't always talk about that because that might reveal How we identified it or it might be part of something larger that we're still working on so It's important though that we continue To Coalate share the data and and try and identify those things that might lead to the violent kind of acts that you're talking about This is a little this question is a little beyond school safety, but when you look at chicago and the the high number of of Gun deaths that they've been having in recent years, particularly in the summer months It's almost always teenagers We have Republicans in particular make a big deal out of ms-13, which i believe is salvadoran gang Which prides itself on killing people And i don't get the sense that that's as much of a problem here as it is in other parts of the country But how how are you looking at the potential for gang violence spreading out of the northern and eastern cities to texas I i'm not sure that we look at it spreading here from the northern and eastern I think we have to learn from what's what's happened there Um, we're fortunate in austin that we are as safe as we are We're the fifth safest major city when it comes to violent crime, but we still have violent crime that occurs here We still have gangs in austin. We have cartel activity in austin We've got i-35 that runs through the city and we know that the drugs travel north on the highway and the money travels south And we know that they are take steps to protect both routes so We again In the early 90s if you think back at that those of you all lived here What we saw in austin was the the crack cocaine Movement that really started on the west coast and was really hitting them in the 80s Really made it to austin in the early 90s And what we saw as a result of that was we saw the street drug sales on the street corners And what would that result in is it was a result in? turf wars, you know gang members fighting over the more The more profitable neighborhoods where they would sell their drugs and unfortunately what that resulted in was Drive-by shootings as they were trying to protect or take over turf And if you think about it, it's not something you hear about in austin that much anymore drive-by shooting So we've we've had some success But I also think that some of that is is that they've changed their business practice as well as as technology advances Isn't there other ways to conduct business? It's not out in the streets as it was before but The way that you prevent it again first of all you have to identify it And so we have to be looking for that trend One of the things that police departments do today that we didn't do when you know chief carter. I started 30 years back Uh a little longer for you Not that much a little bit. I was his boss at one time. He was my mentor actually as well We've known each other for quite a while, but um, but um Sorry, maybe lose my train of thought The um I have completely derailed. Maybe lose my train of thought. That's where rg comes in Yeah, you were uh, you were talking about how when you were young and they were uh drive-by shootings Thank you business. No what I was getting at now. I really did have a direction here. I was distracting like that so the um That what a lot a lot a lot of progressive law enforcement agencies you're doing out is business intelligence And so we actually use the same products that many of you all may be using your corporations We use a product called and i'm not endorsing and i'm just saying we use it It's micro strategies and it's a business intelligence tool But what we use it for is if you think about police departments, we are the repository of a lot of data We have a lot of information that we hold that we get in the calls that we go to the reports that we take And if we don't use the analytics behind that and identify the trends and the hot spots and Where is crime occurring? Geographically, where is it occurring temporarily so that we're in the right places at the right times then we're not pushing ourselves So I think all of these things are things that we do to try and stay ahead of The the challenges we have when we get either gang activity or other types of Of violent crime crews that that become active in our city and our systems have become more sophisticated and evolving all the time Historically the police are slow to on the uptake in terms of technology and so forth But we're never better than today in terms of embracing Micro strategies and bringing on some of these concepts into the austin regional intelligence center Connect the dots and do better than that. We don't want to just put cops on dots At some point we want to reach to the predictive model, which is talking about understanding The environment that we're in and when I say environment the community that we're in and understanding the pressures that are on there And the pressures that are on you as voters as well One last question before I open it up for questions I'm not going to try and get you to talk about the politics of campus carry But other than the firearms left in the bathroom. Have you had any problems with campus carry? So a lot of people ask me that question In general and so I was here before and after one of the things that I do have to point out is there Like in most situations the answer is probably not on the extremes. It's probably somewhere in the middle That's why I said we don't want to get into partisan issues Everything the more bipartisan we can come and discuss these issues Realistically the better off we are One of the things that I look at is unfortunately You know Just two years ago. I lost a co-ed on campus due to a murder that occurred prior to campus carry Being in effect A year later. I lost another student To a murder this case not involving a non-affiliated homeless person but rather a fellow student After campus carry was into effect. So a lot of people say are we safer now or are we less safe? Well, the issue is is that For me personally looking at it is the law didn't change The the outcome for me. I suffered or we we suffered a murder before and after that Does that mean that it doesn't in some cases does it allows people to defend themselves? Yes, it does It's uh, were we an unsafe location before not necessarily, but we did we did suffer a murder So I see that law came into effect between Two murders and we hadn't had murder on campus since the the tower shootings over 50 years ago So when I look at the issue, I look at it Pragmatically I look at what is the effect There was a lot of fear and concern When the laws was being considered and a lot of people weighed in the law of us passed time passed And the issues are for us in terms of issues involving Those firearms like we mentioned there were three cases involving Somebody that was in a lawful place on campus Would that was also licensed to carry Who had accidentally left their firearm out and and that is actually was the biggest concern for us There might been one or two instances where a licensed to carry person Unintentionally exposed to their firearm under the under state law today if you're not on the university campus like ut You can technically you can open carry as everybody knows that and that causes a lot of people's concern I always ask people look how often do you see it you see it? Sometimes you see more likely to see it in the more rural areas than you are in the city But the issue is for us is that If you're on campus and you're licensed to carry you can't Open carry so it can't be exposed So we have respond to a couple of cases like that But the law is very clear says that they have to Intentionally have done that if it was an unintentional exposure. It's not a violation of the law The ones that that do worry me really are the issue about You know people need to be responsible. You need to be civic minded responsible gun owners Brian and I are both Gun owners and hopefully we're civic minded and responsible But those are the kind of things that we want to kind of stress here Those are the kind of issues that we've seen on campus not a lot but just in three instances and it was it was kind of a strange Coincidence that they all three occurred within about two week period Nothing before or after that time But nothing happened Somebody spotted the gun laying In a restroom stall or something like that and and and did the right thing and called us and we responded to it obviously we looked into the circumstances of that and We will always do that But in terms of you know, people always want to know how many people are caring I can't answer that can't answer that by law Uh, I would tell you you can kind of extrapolate There's not probably as many as you think but there may be more than some people think There are places still that the president has the right to say in the authority to say that You can't go in certain places and then of course that comes up from time to time We do have to answer to the legislature on all of our instances if involving a firearm and report to them Um, and we report to them so the legislation legislative session is coming up so Who knows what we'll we'll come up. Okay Uh questions from the audience Uh, I see We're gonna I think she's gonna bring microphones around. Yeah chief manly. I just wanted to ask you Could you discuss the effort? This isn't necessarily related to school violence But the special policing effort that you all have done with the lbj school up in northeast Austin You know what i'm you know what i'm talking about Which i'm not familiar with it's the one like uh, the center for health and social policies that the lbj school has been working with Some of your officers to do a special Community targeted effort in a high crime area northeast Austin It sounds like it's similar to what we do in other high crime areas where again We go in and we deploy additional resources Based on what the threat is I i'm not sure about the specifics on the lbj Project that you're talking about if it's similar to ones we've done in other neighborhoods Where it's just overridden with with crime issues that are much more Uh I guess frequent than the the the population for that neighborhood would be Uh, we would we would add the additional resources, but it would be in partnership with either if it's at the school With the school police but also based on the data that we're gathering through the the analytics on what's happening there And and maybe we should talk offline so I can give you Probably a better response if I can better understand the the program And we have another question right here. Whoops back to the front So i'm somewhat naive about this particular subject um It occurs to me that police officers must have In-service training from time to time with their firearms but if Concealed carry Teachers are in the classroom Do they have any continual in-service training with their firearms? And my concern would be of course if you're not practicing your fire with your firearm You are more likely to shoot A student than to shoot the shooter I I don't know the answer to that because the you're talking to the school district School districts can allow I think that's what you're you're talking about teachers that are are Carry to my knowledge that doesn't exist in in austin But it does in rural areas, but I don't know what the requirements are for them as far as whether a see I think what you're asking does a chl holder have a requirement like to qualify every year with their weapon And unfortunately i'm licensed through the state to have a weapon. I've never obtained a chl I know what they have to have to obtain the initial license But your point is very valid in that even when you get that license and you go through that training You're going through training in a very safe environment And you're firing at a paper target And we know in law enforcement with our officers that we train regularly and and uh We we know how we perform in those stressful situations when officers are placed in a position to have to fire their weapons and The accuracy that you will see in a real scenario versus the accuracy we test and we see on the range when we practice Is very different. So yes, that is a a valid concern about The use of the weapon under stressful situations by someone who is not regularly practicing And if we think about the setting in which you're talking about a classroom It's going to be a very populated place most likely. And so, uh, it's uh, it's something that has to be considered And and someone has to also make sure that they have the ability To use that weapon if the situation presented itself like that. I'll just throw out. I know a little bit about this. Uh, the Uh, what what's the state agency that licensed law enforcement officers? T. Cole, Texas commission on law enforcement all the teachers who get these, uh, licenses Are trained by this state agency and I believe they have to have 80 hours Of training And compare that to a chl holder who only has to have eight hours of training Um now the question is well, I can't answer it is do they have continuing education? So Uh, but they are they are licensed at a little bit higher level and so it's not something That every teacher is just going to suddenly be Back in heat at school Well, you got a couple of questions toward the back back there Keep your hands up. She's coming Hi, my name is Lisa Ross. Um, I have a question for a chief carter I wanted to ask you about I know that you do a lot with orientation For young students when they first come in there with their parents and stuff like that So I wanted to ask about a safe storage Do you I know you talk about sexual harassment when you're on college campuses and you talk about drinking with students and that and with parents as well Do you also talk and address the The need for safe storage if they're going to be bringing if I arm onto the campus The university has actual rules that are stipulated under You can find them on the website to talk specifically about what the requirements are Actually, if you know the truth, you can't store a firearm on campus other than under certain circumstances in like a marriage student housing Apartments and even there that has to be within A certain framework in terms of locked up But generally speaking as a student a freshman student coming in that would be receiving orientation Is not going to get information on how to store a weapon because number one is That vast majority of our students are not uh, not old enough to actually have a license to carry Permit the actual license that you have to be 21 years or older I do understand that but I know that a lot of the students On off campus that live off the campus can actually have firearms And I just wondered in the orientation when you do your orientation discussions when you're talking about drinking and you're talking about sexual harassments With these parents. Do you also discuss the importance that if they're going to live off campus or they're going to visit another student off campus That their guns are stored properly And this is what the storage looks like and Do you have like a maybe a model program if you have a friend that is possibly feeling suicidal Like these are some tools that you can use and resources Do you go over that in orientation and do you have an educational program towards that? So one of the things that everybody does in the university setting in terms of orientation is you're competing for time You're also looking at generally speaking on the areas Focusing on the areas on campus Especially the campus housing there obviously there are issues the student is living in the city There are other kinds of components just recently There was an on a national night out And i'm sorry. I can't remember. I can't see you, but it wasn't you. I don't think please. Oh, all right Okay, I okay I see your question sounds familiar and so your Your program has great value, but but it is it's not a university program And so it's an it's an off campus related issue And I think chief reyes was was pushing that as well. He's the he's the Works for for brian and North district. He's that he's my north patrol chief. Yeah north patrol But thank you for bringing that up lisa, but that's one of the things Good points. Hi. Thank you both for being here. I'm a lbj student And i'm studying gun violence. It's kind of my focus So I had like two main takeaways from today Um one concern is that narrowing this issue to a school shooting context kind of In a way ignores a larger problem of gun violence, I think um in the second is that Uh Dedicating money towards like infrastructure and whatnot. I feel like doesn't it's a reactionary solution. It doesn't Target the problem of dangerous people having guns. Um, I know you said that you all do not Uh do advocacy. However, I do know that in the past law enforcement has Or I don't know what entity of law enforcement, but they have gone to the legislature and argued um on behalf of public safety and so i'm wondering what You all can do to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people in particular I think we do I I think we Maybe it wasn't stated correctly at the beginning. We do actually um Take positions on legislative issues. Uh sp4 was a big issue in this community I testified at the legislature against that bill and and I think you're right if we were focused today on Schools because that was that was kind of the topic of discussion But there are things that are out there being discussed So austin being the 11th largest city in the country We are part of the major city chief's association and this is an association of the largest I think we have 76 members right now the 76 largest police departments across the country And we put out position papers that we send to states and to national Representatives our congressmen our senators and all of that when these issues are being debated And we've taken a position on several of these issues like uh red flag warnings the ability to Have family members or others identify someone who may be in a mental health crisis and either take weapons that they possess Or keep them from gaining weapons on having stronger laws on who she'd even have access to a weapon in the first place There are restrictions for those that have been convicted of crimes But can we expand that for those that may be suffering from some immediate mental health issues? So there are things that we take absolute positions on bump stocks the the need for bump stocks after what we learned From los vegas just over a year ago. So we do absolutely take positions on issues And it may be that it's a position that iR chief carter takes locally although you you're kind of restricted being a state Of representative but through the larger organization of major city chief's association We put out position papers and we have regular meetings We actually just had a meeting in orlando a week ago and the president actually came and addressed the membership of the meeting So uh, so we do take positions and i'll echo also I think one of the things we might have got a little bit confused here So it's the the focus on school safety We kind of looked at it as k through 12 and specifically where we're going here So we didn't go into the broader aspects about one of the things that law enforcement and police chiefs Around the country obviously as chief manly just suggested Want to give constructive advice not give uh information that's necessarily going to Fuel one side of the other but what can we do collectively in a bipartisan way? That's the way I see it I also really stressed the one of the things that that recently came up that I think has Has a great potential and something I'd love to see is the issue of the red flag Issue and the governor did in fact bring that up. I know that's still kind of sorted in And I think he backed off from that But well it's still the point is he'd be brought it up and there's real value there because one of the things that We've got to do as a society and as police serving each of you regardless of your position We serve our entire community what regardless of what position a person has on a political issue that's not Where I come from I believe the police have to serve our community using the laws that you collectively pass But there are tools that you can do to help Work with your police department in terms of sharing information the red flag issue I think civic responsibility You have a you have constitutional rights that protect you from the government from doing certain things But there is that civic responsibility Which to me is it's not the law. It's about us collectively as a community not You know one side or the right or the left of the issue But coming together and looking at things practically to try and address that where there are things that we can we can Get around and work work to address And so I support the issue of the red flag laws that are going on around the country because Listen if there's somebody there and I don't think there's any responsible gun owner that wants somebody that's in a In mental distress or a criminal to have a firearm that they can hurt somebody else And they need to be able to work with us and we need to be able to work with our Uh each other whether it's federal state or local I'm going to just highlight one thing. I think that's happening really good in the state Is that we talked a little bit about technology. We also talked about the issue of the police coming together You look at the houston area in terms of the The technology they're using to match shell casings and getting police departments to share information across across jurisdictions and across municipal and state and and federal Coming together to identify actual real criminals In terms of murderers that are using handguns But the red flag for us So we think that technology is going to play a role strong law enforcement there We also think it's important for the community to recognize that civic responsibility in terms if you do have a gun To make sure that it is secure Like lisa talks about those are very important make sure that if you have a you have a family member who is in distress or Uh prone to some kind of violence that you you work to to remove that firearm with them And hopefully the police and the government can come in in the right way And address that issue. I think that's really important So there is a lot of discussion in the law enforcement community But we want to do it in a way that serves the entire community And if you can real quick just as a part of your research since this is an area that you are putting a lot of work towards I would encourage you go to the major city chiefs association Go to our go to our website and if you go under news articles You would think it would be under position papers But it's not if you go under news articles You will find the position paper that we issued in may of this very year And it highlights all of the issues that we have taken a stance on and this is something that will inform your research And it is something that we have pushed to our Policy makers both at state and federal levels. I think we have time for one more question. So Hi, I wanted to first clarify something earlier The school marshal program is the The mechanism by which people can go through that 80 hour training and then carry a gun in a classroom But there is also a way for people who have not gone through the school marshal program To carry in schools with as little as four hours of training that that you get your your LTC is actually only four hours as the minimum So I think people need to be really aware of that distinction that there is something that's a so-called guardian program That does allow people with Just a tiny amount of training to carry guns in schools. And so that's something that as citizens We need to be aware of and as parents But I wanted to ask kind of similar to what lisa was saying Chief carter mentioned that we need to be civic minded and responsible with firearms And so I really want to thank chief manly. I know that apd has worked with safe storage campaigns and Giving out gun locks and I really appreciate that and as as a mom You know bringing my kids on campus for example for your um that ut day that they do every year I'd be worried about them going to the bathroom Finding a gun. I didn't know it happened three times. I thought it was two times So given that it makes me feel like there is a place perhaps somewhere to do that education of hey to be civic Minded and responsible. This is what you need to do to store your firearms safely But my question my long-winded way to get to my question is Those three instances I heard about those today two and then one today I have two nephews that go to a and m and I learned from them That um not only was there a situation where someone fired a weapon accidentally And the bullet went through into another room and thank god. Nobody was hurt But and that made news what they told me that didn't make news was apparently there was a skirmish over some senior boots, which are a big deal to those Aggies and um the student whose boots were taken apparently pulled out his gun To try to settle the batter Is there do you all talk to each other you police chiefs at these all these schools? There's another shooting on on another a and m system campus Someone shot himself in the leg in his car on campus This is after campus carry. So there's been these incidents, but we may not know about all of them Is there a way that you're all reporting or talking to one another to see is campus carry causing a problem? Um, so I apologize for the long-windedness, but that's my question Um, well, yeah, you've put a lot in there. So I I'm actually not I'm not actually familiar with the the shootings at a and m. That's my alma mater, right? So I'm not I'm not actually familiar with those Uh anytime there is an uh an incident Um such as if there's an actual shooting more than likely there's an actual crime that's being reported that would be actually goes into Actual what's required the school has a duty to report under clary as well as also Unified crime reporting under the fbi as a crime. So we do it both both ways So there is sort of a communication when we look at universities across The nation because that's what happens whenever there's a report comes out Everybody always wants to compare and see what their issues are just the same way as the major city chiefs They want to see what the issues are in their particular communities. We look at it But most importantly for me is that one one shooting would be far too many And obviously we want to address those and if there are ways to to address that especially Uh with communities that have You know issues like or suggestions on storage or safe storage and all those kind of things The police are not we're not an island to ourselves. We are your public servants And we're our job is to serve you With and through you so engage us on those concepts and and That dialogue I'm I'm certainly open to that Moving forward. I don't think I answered your question. Okay. I'll tell you what she can grab you afterwards Chief Carter chief manly. I appreciate you being here and