 Good morning. Thank you all for being here. The purpose of this press conference is to announce a city county gun violence reduction initiative. Before I get started, I want to recognize a couple people from who we consider to be influential community leaders that have taken time out of their day to be here. And that's Mary Echelberger Johnson and Mr. Howard Johnson from the Green View Community representing Eau Claire ministries. Mr. Kevin Speaks and Willie leaks from the Belmont community. Thank you all for being here. We're obviously joined by our state and federal partners that we'll talk about in a minute and then staff from the Sheriff's Department and the Police Department. So what we want to talk to today briefly is about a problem that's plaguing our community and that's gun violence. What you see in front of you today is is a snapshot and I and when I say snapshot, I mean a very small snapshot of just the degree of of the problem we have this represents again a snapshot of the first quarter of 2018. The Police Department and Sheriff will talk about some of the Sheriff's Department's findings thus far, but we've seized 166 guns so far just in the first quarter. And this is a this is a representation of that. You can see ranges from handguns to what we consider to be high powered rifles and assault weapons. And these are taken off the streets of Columbia and in the streets in the county as well. We're announcing what essentially is a three prong or approach. This is combining our efforts very similar to what we've seen to be a very successful with the Midlands Gang Task Force. And we're taking that collaborative approach with our narcotics folks, our CID people on our fugitive warrants, investigators, and it's going to be very specific and targeted. It's going to be intelligence and data driven technology driven and again, emphasizing collaboration and partnerships. We're gonna be focusing on certain people. This isn't a drag net where we're throwing a big a big net. We're focusing on certain people people we consider to be our most prolific gun crime offenders. It's not coincidental that those gun crime offenders are also the ones breaking in cars stealing cars and then committing robberies. It's all connected and unfortunately, many of them are what we consider to be youthful offenders, which is is more scary. We see time and time again, our young adults carrying firearms, they get involved in an altercation. And somebody pulls a gun and shots are fired and people were hit and properties damaged. We already have a number of things underway. We always talk about our award winning Midlands Gang Task Force. We've started home visits in partnership with the Department of Corrections Youthful Offender Program Juvenile Justice Services and Triple P where our patrol officers and deputies are visiting homes, making sure that people are at home when they're supposed to be home and when they're not holding them to account. We also have had operation real time up and running for some time and that is a point of arrest, accelerated federal arrest and prosecution initiative. And again, that is targeting people that are felons and are found in possession of farms. And that's a seven day a week 24 hour a day program when those people that meet that criteria are are found to be in our custody, then our federal partners respond to the scene and again start that accelerated process. So I'll point out that clearance rates are not just representative of the police department, they represent our community. And that's really what we're, we're asking for is community partnerships. As I mentioned, focusing on the first quarter that we just that we just that we just finished. We had 59 gun related incidents in the city of Columbia. We had 19 people actually hit by gunfire, five people murdered. And there's some striking striking points to this thus far of our victims of gunfire. 100% are African American and primarily African American between the ages of 17 and 25. And they're predominantly male, about 89%. As I said, we seized 166 firearms, we've received 484 reports of shots fired. But what I would point out with that is 75%. We know that 75% of shots fire calls go unreported. So that's a that's a pretty staggering number. And that's that's a head of head of pay from what we saw last year. Of all firearms and shell casings that are recovered when we respond to shots fired calls and people hit, we test fire weapons, submit casings found into the what is referred to as an I've been system. And of 40 firearms that we seized and entered in into the system, the system told us back that 16 of them are involved in multiple crimes. And this was last year. But what that should tell you is we have 16 of those guns we know are involved in multiple crimes. And the rest of those 40 guns are still out on the street, being used over and over again. And this first quarter this year, my knob and entries have resulted in six additional firearms being used in multiple crimes. So there certainly is a need for this initiative and collaboration. And again, we feel like that this is a the group's responsible for this violence is is is not widespread it's targeted. And that's that's what we want to be is very targeted in our approach. What we found out is that we've got a small number of people who commit most of these crimes. They're the ones doing the multiple shootings. They're using the same guns. So we're going to create a task force for the next 60 days that's going to focus on these small number of people who's out here committing most of these crimes. I guess you say we're targeted them, we're going to go after them. We're going to make sure that if they break the law that we're going to be there to arrest them. We're not going to let them continue just to go out through our community and do multiple shootings. County is the same as the city, our numbers mirror exactly what Chief Holbrook's numbers are. We have a shooting every day. That doesn't mean somebody shot every day. But every day there's a shooting that goes on in the middle of Columbia. There's shots fired. Unfortunately, a lot of times people get hit and what we're finding out the people who get shot are not cooperating with us. So they're not helping us catch those who are doing these shootings. So we've got to put more focus on catching those response for the shooting. So for the next 60 days between the city of Columbia, Richland County Sheriff's Department, our federal and state partners, we're going to form a task force just like our Midlands Gang Task Force and we're going to target those who are out here committing these crimes. Two weekends ago, the shooting in Greenview and the shooting at Columbia Mall, I think was it. That was what really told Chief and I that enough is enough. And we made phone calls between each other and said we've got to do something until we come up with this task force. This is our answer. But we also want to do an educational part of it. We're finding out that a lot of these guns that are using these shootings are stolen during car break-ins. We've got to convince our citizens not to leave your guns in your car. When you get home at night, don't leave your pistol in the car, take it in the house with you. Because we've got these hoodlums out here go around neighborhoods and they break in cars and they steal the guns. That's the source of most of the guns that we're seeing they're being used or being stolen because we're leaving guns in the cars. So we've got to do the education part and we've got to do the enforcement part. We've got to do both of it. A Midlands Gang Task Force is just proven to be so successful and we're going to use that same concept to go after those that are in our community that are shooting their community up shooting in the cars, getting the gun fights that you call them in your mall, driving people, stealing cars. You know, we've got to put a stop to it. That's enough. And for the next 60 days, this task force is going to focus on that. Thank you, Chief. And thank you, Sheriff. I want to say thank you to all these men and women standing up here and incredible men and women of the Columbia Police Department and the Riching County Sheriff's Department. They're being led by two of the best law enforcement executives in the entire country. And it's reflected in the great work that all these men and women do every single day. I want to law this as as exactly what it is. This is smart, precision policing, found the data and working hard every single day to make sure that we do our number one job to keep the peace and make sure we create safe communities where people can live, work, play, worship and raise families. That's our job to protect the life, health and safety of all of our citizens. The data doesn't lie. And it shows us that there's work, more work that we can do and do together with strong regional partnerships that will make our communities that much safer. I want to thank Sheriff Lott, thank Chief Holbrook for again, working together continuing this fantastic partnership that's focused on keeping the Midlands safe. We must be unapologetic about cracking down on those who would seek to victimize our family and our friends and our neighbors any day of the week. And we will be just that unapologetic. We're doing all the other things we supposed to do to create a safe community, making sure that all of our young people have opportunities to live and prosper and grow up to the God given potential. But when they cross the line and victimize their neighbors, our friends and families, then we've got to make sure that we crack down and say enough isn't enough. So when thank again, Chief Holbrook and Sheriff Lott for the leadership, thank these men and women who put on the uniforms every single day and run towards danger. Together we're going to work to get some more of these illegal guns off the street. We're going to work again on smart policies, precision policing that helps make our community safe. Thank you.