 Good morning everybody. My name is Constable Jason Doucette. My last name is spelled D-O-U-C-E-T-T-E and I'm one of the members from the Public Affairs team here at the BPD. We have two instances to talk about this morning. One's going to be a man with a gun call this morning that happened at Lord Bingham School on the West Side. After that, I'll take any questions, try to answer them for you before moving on to a public warning that we're going to be issuing today. So I'll start off with the Lord Bingham since this morning. Vancouver Police responded to the report of a man carrying a rifle this morning to Lord Bingham School. Our officers dropped what they were doing and quickly arrived at the school and were able to quickly resolve the incident. At around 8.05 this morning, a teacher called 911 reported they saw a man carrying a rifle into the school. BPD locked down the school with mostly just staff members inside because students had not yet started their school day. During a systematic approach, our officers were deployed within the school when room-to-room and were able to identify and locate the person who had what turned out to be a vintage firearm. We have released photos of the actual firearm that was recovered. This here is a member of our emergency response team that's standing here with the actual vintage rifle. As you'll see our emergency response officer, he's actually still in his civilian clothes. He hadn't even changed for work yet. When calls like these come in, our officers stop what they're doing, they rush to the scene and they want to help. So we trained for this. Our training kicked in this morning and I would have to say it worked out exactly as planned. So investigators from the VPD, including our school liaison officers, will continue to work with the school, with the Vancouver School Board to find out exactly what happened today, why it happened, and how we can improve in the future so we don't find ourselves here. We're just thankful that no one was injured. The school lockdown was lifted after we deemed it safe, including an elementary school, I believe, which is also across the street. I'll try to answer any questions that you have. Given the amount of school shootings we've seen, obviously, in the states, should this teacher have known better? I'm not sure what was in the teacher's mind at the time of bringing a firearm to the school. My understanding it is an experienced teacher. It was for a presentation, probably for some sort of history lesson. There's more than one thing to be learned today, obviously, and we will work with them in the future to make sure that we don't find ourselves in this situation. Can you confirm the gun wasn't loaded? The gun was not loaded. I don't even think it was operable, but we have seized it pending a further investigation. Was it a parent that called it in, a concerned student? I mean, that's not something you could put in your backpack and assuming it was pretty visible walking into the school. It was a teacher. Another teacher arrived at the school from across the way. As you say, it is a very large firearm. Saw a man walking up the stairs into the school with this firearm, and they did the right thing. They called 911 right away. Oh, terrifying. You know, anecdotally, were these students? You see this all the time on the news, these school shootings. I mean, I just can't imagine an elementary school. Luckily in the time, if there's anything lucky about this situation, is the timing of it. This teacher was arriving for work. Students were not yet there. There were other teachers who were, I'm sure, traumatized themselves, but we trained for this on our end. I mean, even our officers responding to it are dispatchers. Everyone's heart probably just starts racing, and our officers got there as quickly as they could, and it's not like they sit around and make a big plan when they get there and talk about it over coffee. These officers group together and they go in to try to find a threat if there is one, and to take care of that threat and make it safe for the students and the teachers. Was there any arrest mean? I mean, was this teacher apologetic and just totally unaware of the situation? The teacher was absolutely apologetic. They were taken down and treated as though the firearm was real, because that's what we have to do. We have to make sure that we treat these firearms as real, even if we think they aren't. That's why it's so important not to carry around replica firearms, replica weapons. You'll hear at Halloween saying, make sure your costumes are not that realistic. It's because we have to treat them as real. So today, we did debrief the teacher. He was apologetic, and I'm very confident we're not going to see this again. No criminal charges? At this time, there was no criminal intent at all. Was he holding the weapon when the officers were to get to him? Was he still holding it? He was not holding the weapon at the time. In fact, I believe the teacher was actually hiding in the classroom because he thought he was a part of potentially an active deadly threat, like something happening that he may have been a victim. So because, you know, there's plans in place, very good plans in place to keep the students and staff safe. And when these plans are put into action, you go to your training. And that's what he did. And you only, we received several 911 calls about it, and then we started getting lots of concerned citizens contacting us and students and parents. And we tried our best to get to reach out to the public and explain that by time I was able to generate a message to the public, we were already getting to a point where we're winding down. It's really important for us to communicate. We're going to look at what we did today, which I think we did really well, especially the boots on the ground, the frontline officers. We're going to debrief this, even though it went well, we're going to learn how to do it better. And we're going to move forward with that. And now we're going to work closely with the Vancouver School Board, who we have a great relationship with, to make sure this doesn't happen again. Were students allowed back in? Were they called back because they were set home, some of them, were they allowed back in? My understanding is that all students and staff are welcome back in the school and they're safe. Would there be a protocol to bring this in? Was the principal aware, like you're saying, you're talking to the school district? I mean, I don't know if this has ever happened before, but is there a protocol to bring Gail, possibly weapons, sort of memorabilia in it? Because the environment we're in, anybody who sees that has got it packed. So I'm not sure what the school board's policy is, but we as a police department ask anybody to use common sense when transporting a firearm, a replica firearm, something that could be interpreted as a firearm or a weapon. We just want to avoid these situations. And moving forward, I'm very comfortable in saying that this will not happen again at the school and that this teacher is very apologetic and has made a mistake and we've resolved that. We're just thankful that it wasn't a life situation where people were hurt. And you may not know this, but did he say why he brought it in? What lesson he was intending to use it in? History lesson or anything like that? Just wondering. I don't know. But looking at the firearm, as I showed you, this is a vintage, obviously very old weapon. And when you're up close and looking at it, it may not seem that daunting, but I can't imagine looking at it from across a dark parking lot, seeing somebody exit a vehicle, walk towards a school and walk in. And this is a teacher that called 911. It's not somebody who's not familiar with the area. This is a teacher who called, which turned out to be another teacher because the planning, the protocols in place worked. Was the gun inert or was it able to actually, if there had been these bullets in it, was it able to fire? I don't know the answer that it will be something we'll look into. My understanding from brief conversations with officers at the area, I'm sorry, with officers at the area is it's unlikely to have been optimal. So if a teacher wanted to make a presentation with any kind of a weapon, what would the protocol look like from your perspective? Would you go have an officer going to school with them to make sure they mitigate any of this kind of fear? We have school liaison officers in the schools. They are approachable for everyone, not just the students to help out the staff, to answer questions like that. So I would just recommend liaising with the school liaison officers that are in place and we'll do our best to guide you in the proper manner or we can work together to figure out, is it really worth it?