 This is one other strategy that we are employing in part of this this initiative that you hear us frequently talk about. Our focus on driving down our gun balance and gun crime in the city and in the county and in the midlands. This year we're seeing some promising results, a little short of two months into it. We've seized 110 guns. That's still a lot of guns. 39 of those guns have been stolen. We've had 48 leads generated from our nabbing entries and also promising three shot spotter alerts have led to several nabbing leads which has led to suspect identification which has led to rapid federal case adoption and that's this process is is what we're trying to continue to improve upon and and again create more actionable leads in a short period of time putting guns in in the hands of our prolific offenders to be able to make cases and remove them from the community, have the community impacts. I'm joined obviously by Sheriff Lott and ATF SAC Vince Pelosi. He's going to talk about the ATF gun tip line program a while we think it's going to be impactful here in in the midlands so I'll turn it over to Vince. Good afternoon and thank you everybody for coming. First and foremost as the chief said we're here to talk about a violent crime reduction initiative. But first let me say as the special agent in charge of ATF we handle both Carolinas north and south Carolina and with that we have a pretty robust presence here in Columbia and Richland county and with that we're always eager to talk about opportunities like this where we can combine our resources and our investigative strategies and this is just one example. With regards to the initiative we kicked it off a couple of weeks ago via billboards as you heard the chief say we've got two billboards that were strategically placed throughout the city. Those billboards have information on it particularly a tip line. The billboards will remain in place for approximately three months. The tip line will remain in effect indefinitely and that will be funded this initiative will be funded by ATF. What we have found that in a lot of these investigations especially as it relates to violent crime the public has information and it's critical information but oftentimes the public doesn't want to come forward. So the tip line offers the public a place to start number one if they don't know and number two it offers anonymity should they choose. So this initiative has been done in other cities throughout the country and it has proven to be successful. So anytime the public is willing to come forward with information ATF is willing to provide rewards for that information. So again this is part of a strategy I think it's always good to be in partner with Richland county sheriff and the police department. So you heard the chief talk about that we have been talking about gun violence we have we just don't talk about it we take action and today is one of those action items that we're doing. We want the public to be involved in this the public has to be part of any program that we do in order for us to be successful and this is one way that the public and the community get involved. They can call us they can call that tip line give us that information that we can react to it. The only way we're going to solve the gun violence problem that we've got in the Midlands is by us working together and when I say us that's not just ATF the city of Columbia and Richland county it's the community they have got to be a strong partner in this too and what we all hear is that the community is fed up with gun violence so they're ready to take some action this gives them an avenue to be able to take that action by calling in those tips. So again we talk about gun violence but we're also we're also working to stop the gun violence and that's working as a team all of us working together we're going to accomplish so much more so ATF has been a great partner with us this is just one of many programs that we've got going on to address gun violence but this one can be very effective when the community gets in part of it so I'm asking everybody in the community you see something say something call that tip line let us know about the guns. I would just add ATF has been a tremendous partner with us this would not be possible without them we do think this is we're certain this has been very successful in other communities. I think what we're seeing here you know time and time again with with our strategies as we are one being blessed with support that we're seeing in some of our larger cities here in a medium sized city like columbia and richland county and and we're benefiting from those relationships. I'd also like to point out to you as we continue to try to bring awareness to you know to our gun crime issues you know we often as I started this press conference up we throw out numbers to you all the time. Numbers that we think are very staggering but we throw them out so often I think sometimes they kind of lose their impact with with our citizens when we talk about you know eight hundred nine hundred thousand gun seized but this is something that we're trying to do to kind of put things into context we're doing it internally amongst our officers in or put we're pushing it out through social media and and on our website but when we seize a gun we're taking a picture of it and we're putting the location where we're seized from and again we're trying to put kind of like putting a face with the name we're trying to put a gun with a number and it's to me it's pretty alarming when you see the the type of weaponry that we're taking off the streets and taking from people and that's why it's important that we identify our prolific offenders and make these impact cases and we the only way that's possible is with these partnerships like this we think this tip line is going to generate more information that's going to allow us to put good solid cases on these prolific offenders and and hold them accountable and put them in prison that's where they need to be so if anybody's got any questions we'll be glad to take a few questions in most cases the the reward would be commensurate with the information that's provided so for example let's just say somebody had information regarding an individual that was you know on a certain street corner if they called that tip line that they would be asked certain information describe the individual you know does that person have a firearm but usually in those types of cases if that were to lead to the recovery of a firearm or a prosecution we generally start as low as a thousand dollars up to ten thousand dollars it and and I think it's worth repeating the thousand dollars to ten thousand dollars that's a lot of money we know we have some recent homicides on Norman street we know we had dozens and dozens of people that witness somebody discharge a firearm shoot somebody kill somebody we had the very high-profile murder the previous year on Jervais street and again probably estimated a hundred people were potentially witness at shooting you know up to ten thousand dollar reward here for information leading to it surprises me I think you know a lot of our officers are on the line working it every day they're they're unfortunately anybody that's that's you know you know worked for the last ten years in this area this is you know an unfortunate trend that we're seeing I think we're finding weapons now that they have higher capacity you know magazines semi-automatic weapons where you would find smaller caliber revolvers you know in years past and of course you you know we come across the high you know high-powered assault weapons too I think what's surprising and disappointing to us is the people who still leave their guns in their vehicles and leave their vehicles unlocked we're having a lot of that now that can help us out tremendously if people would just take your guns out of the car or lock the cars we don't have car break-ins we just have car going in they'll just open unlock car go in there as a gun and we can stop that community can stop that by just taking a gun out of your car and keeping your car locked that will help us that's probably been the most disappointing aspect of this is that we've been talking about it for quite some time now and we still have that almost daily where somebody goes into an unlocked vehicle and gets a gun and ends up on the street and then somebody shot by it hey there Mayor Steve Benjamin here thanks for watching this video make sure you give it a like right below the video and don't forget to subscribe also while you're here be sure to check out one of our other videos or follow on our social media platforms thanks again and remember we are Colombia