 Thank you for being here. The purpose of this press conference is to announce two significant grant awards to Columbia Police Department. Joining me today is our city manager, Ms. Teresa Wilson, our mayor, Stephen Benjamin, CPD staff, it's throughout the room, ATF Special Agent and Charge Vince Pelosi. He's from Charlotte and it covers the field office here in Columbia. He is Assistant Special Agent and Charge of Primary Means also here, along with First Assistant U.S. Attorney Lance Crick. I'd also like to recognize Chris Seegers with the City of Columbia grant office. She helped very much so in preparing these grants that we're going to talk about today. So as you've heard me say many times now gun-related violence is high in Columbia. It's high compared to other cities of equal size. Recently we've experienced a precipitous increase in gun-related murders. In 2017, for example, 64 percent of our murders were committed by someone with a gun. In 2018 that rose to 75 percent and we're seeing so far this year we're about 80 percent meaning our murders are being perpetrated by people armed with a firearm. To address this issue we developed a comprehensive project safe neighborhood strategy that we announced and discussed this summer at a gathering in Greenview. Our strategy has five focus areas prevention and education, partnerships, evidence-based practices, technology and building trust. To further support our PSN strategy we applied for two federal grants that we believe fit perfectly within this PSN model. Those grants are the Crime Gun Intelligence Center Initiative grant and PSN funded National Integrated Ballistics Information Network which we talk about frequently as NIVAN analysts. The Crime Gun Intelligence Center grant that we have been awarded is a three-year grant $668,414. It's the second largest grant that we've ever received at the police department. The only larger grant was our COPS grant we received a couple years ago that exceeded a million dollars. This Crime Gun Intelligence Center will be comprised of a police inspector, an investigative sergeant, an investigative analyst, a civilian analyst, a ceasefire coordinator, a NIVAN analyst, and a NIVAN coordinator. The NIVAN analyst is funded through a separate PSN grant totaling $77,471. The combined award is $745,885, very significant. The NIVAN analyst uniquely will be embedded in the SLED lab and will be responsible for daily NIVAN entries submitted for analysis and examination. We believe that this will enhance the timeliness of actionable leads developed through NIVAN. This unit will be an interagency collaboration focused on the immediate collection, management, and analysis of gun crime evidence such as shell casings in an effort to identify shooters, disrupt criminal activity, and prevent future violence. We will rely on our already established and strong partnerships with ATF, the Richland County Sheriff's Department, SLED, SLED's lab, probation part and parole, the Midlands Gang Task Force, Fifth Circuit Solicitor, the United States Attorney's Office, and of course, and most importantly, our community. The primary goal of the Crime Gun Intelligence Unit is to identify armed violent offenders for the investigation and prosecution. We'll accomplish this through being data-driven, intelligence-led, while relying on effective police deployment strategies and technology. So let me tell you a little bit about what we refer to as our CG team, Crime Gun Intelligence Center team. The program coordinator is Inspector Jim Moduleski. Jim has 29 years of law enforcement experience. Prior to joining the police department, he had a distinguished career with ATF, last serving as the ATF Deputy Assistant Director of Office of Strategic Intelligence and Information. Jim and I worked together 25 years ago as field agents in Charlotte when we were assigned to the Violent Crime Task Force. He served the last about 18 months with us as our ceasefire coordinator, and I'm going to come back and talk a little bit further about our ceasefire program and the successes that we've had. The unit supervisor will be Sergeant Jeffrey Brink. He's an 11-year veteran of the police department. He's most recently been assigned to the North region as the supervisor. He has outstanding knowledge of our prolific offenders and the violent crime issues that plagued North Columbia. He has a bachelor's degree from Western Michigan, and he's an FBI Trilogy Award recipient. Investigator Cannon Fullmer is a nine-year veteran of the police department. He's been an investigator in CIB for the last five years, the last two specifically focusing on gun crime analysis. Prior to that, he also worked in the North region. Investigator Cannon holds both undergraduate and graduate degrees from University of South Carolina. Our analyst, Ms. Alicia Smith, is a civilian crime analyst who provides statistical intelligence-based information along with social networking analysis to assist staff with crime reduction strategies. She holds an undergraduate degree in psychology and a master's degree in criminal justice. Our nabbing analyst is Stanley Brown. He's had a distinguished 40-year career with the South Carolina State Highway Patrol. He's a former trooper of the year. He was a long-serving firearms instructor. Stanley has worked with the police department since last October, and he test fires every gun that we see, and he collects and puts together all the spent shell casings that we've collected for nabbing submission and analysis. I think you would agree this is a formidable thing. Again, their main goal will be the immediate collection of ballistic evidence, shell casings, and crime guns. All ballistic evidence is considered evidence of equal importance regardless of the circumstances of the recovery of the severity of the crime investigated. Simply put, whether there's a victim, not a victim, property damage, it's fatal, not fatal, or just a gun seizure. It all gets collected. Immediate, timely, and relevant nabbing processing of all crime guns and casings for the purposes of developing actionable investigative leads that lead to impactful prosecutions. Recovered guns will also be entered into ATF's eTrace system to identify the sources of the guns and how violent offenders have obtained guns. These processes should be initiated within 24 to 48 hours of collection of evidence. Third, the use of forensic technology to drive investigations and prosecutions on the most violent offenders who merit the full scrutiny of the criminal justice system. That would be that 5% we talk about that we feel like commits 90% of our crimes. All this coupled with the effective evidence-based interventions such as our focused deterrence and hotspot policing we believe will decrease the number of shootings in our neighborhoods, improve the quality of gun crime investigations, increase our clearance rates, have impactful prosecution outcomes, increase public trust and confidence in law enforcement through meaningful community engagement. So to recap my comments, two grants, Crime Gun Intelligence Center, the Knob and Analyst, and again tying that into our Project Safe Neighborhood Strategy, which has those five areas. Prevention and Education, we talked about this summer, our public service announcements, our youthful offender home visits we do, our gun lock program, our handle with care, our technology, NIBIN. We've talked at length about NIBIN and how much value that is to our investigative process, our shot spotter. Shot spotter detection fits so perfectly with what we're trying to do. Since we launched in April of this year, we've had 657 alerts. We average about 28 alerts a week. We've detected over 2,000 rounds of gunfire. We've seized 43 guns, made 35 arrests. It is impacting what we do. Evidence-based practices. I mentioned ceasefire and operation real-time. Operation real-time is our accelerated arrest program, a federal adoption program. It has immediate community impact. Our ceasefire program, ironically in this same location this coming Monday, we will have our fourth offender call-in. Our last call-in, we invited 31 people. We've only had four people re-offend. That's a 15% recidivism rate compared to about 70% national rate, so that's a success. We have our fourth call-in. We have 37 scheduled offenders coming here next Monday to hear our message and hear about our programs to prevent them from re-offending. Our partnerships. Our partnerships is really the foundation that all this is built on. A strong partnership with the U.S. Attorney's Office, the Fifth Circuit Solicitor. Our federal partners that we participate on all the federal task forces. Incredible strong partnership with ATF, and you'll hear more about that. Our Midlands Gang Task Force and our Gun Task Force and everyday working relationship we have with the Richland County Sheriff's Department. And last, building trust between Front Porch Roll Calls, our risk program, our community meetings, our Citizens Police Academy, our Citizen Advisory Council, our relationship with the Urban League and our summer programs and their internships. We have to build on those relationships and invest in partnerships and relationships every day. I'm obviously very excited about these two grants. I think it's going to change the narrative forever, that narrative of violent crime that has followed this city for way too long. Thank you Chief. On behalf of United States Attorney Sherry Leiden, I'd like to thank you all for being here today. I'd like to thank the Chief and the folks behind me for the vision, the dedication, the work that they've put in to bring us to this point today. I'm Lance Crick. I'm our first assistant with U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of South Carolina. And this is a very big day for Columbia, South Carolina. This is a day that has been coming for a while. And it literally is a game changer with the resources that the men and women in law enforcement, members of the community, city leadership, federal partners, federal prosecutors, state prosecutors can really put into effect immediately in order to secure the communities around Columbia. I think the Chief would agree, as would the men and women in the audience wearing badges, that collectively we would rather prevent and solve crimes. And these grants are an opportunity to take a big step in that direction. Every day, our goal, collectively as a group, is to secure these communities here in Columbia and certainly across the state. And our partnership with the Columbia Police Department has been a model to lift up for the entire state under Chief Holbrook's leadership, his dedication with his staff, his officers, not just to simply enforce the law, which is we stand out there ready to do that. Let me assure you, as he mentioned, we have a small percentage of folks committing the majority of our violent crimes, putting our folks in harm's way. So we stand ready to enforce the law. But the vision is bigger than that. The vision is to educate, to provide prevention. And also on the back end of the spectrum, to create opportunities for rehabilitation and reentry. And Chief Holbrook has done that since day one. I would encourage everyone if you can to come here next Monday for the fourth call in. It's a powerful moment and it's showing some real success right out of the gate. We work closely with CPD. And it's a daily communication between our offices. We are able to respond quickly, but we can only do so because we have great communication and relationships with CPD and our federal partners. And again, I am excited to be here today. This is a big day for Columbia and for our communities across Columbia. And I look forward to our continued partnerships. And thank you very much. First, I too would like to thank everybody for coming this morning. And I'd also like to thank Chief Holbrook for allowing me the opportunity to provide some brief remarks and also to commend him for his continued commitment in the fight against violent crime to protect the citizens of this community. For many years, the ATF Charlotte Field Division and the Columbia Police Department have enjoyed a great working relationship. And because of ongoing collaborative efforts, some of which you heard Chief Holbrook mention, we've experienced numerous successes in addressing violent crime, firearms trafficking and other public safety issues. Through our partnership, we are always seeking ways to make our community safer. This crime gun initiative and the grant you heard administered through the Bureau of Justice Assistance will certainly aid us in that endeavor. ATF is supportive of this program as it puts partnerships first. The key element in this grant is that our agencies work together to address violent gun crime. This initiative will utilize data, technology, and community engagement to identify crime trends, violent groups and individuals, and firearms traffickers, and will allow us to utilize resources more effectively. Investigative partners will share intelligence to swiftly investigate, apprehend, and prosecute those individuals engaged in and committing violent crime. The Columbia Police Department, as you heard, will continue with its utilization of NIVEN, which is the National Integrated Ballistic Information Network and E-Trace ATF's Electronic Firearms Tracing System. NIVEN is an automated ballistic imaging network managed by ATF that captures and compares ballistic evidence obtained from spent bullets, cartridge cases found at crime scenes, or test fired from confiscated weapons to aid in solving and preventing violent crimes involving firearms. This grant establishes a long-term commitment with Chief Holbrook and his department and will allow ATF and the Columbia Police Department to strengthen our resources and maximize investigative efforts. The ATF and the Columbia Police Department partnership is strong and we believe in this initiative. Together we will investigate and apprehend those who choose to use firearms to commit violent and criminal acts. We will make our community safer. I think we've also been joined by Councilman Ed McDowell and just very briefly want to say congratulations to the men and women of the Columbia Police Department to tell our leadership from the U.S. Attorney's Office, from ATF, all of our partners who may not be in the room from the solicitor's office and sheriff's office on sled probation program pardon services. Indeed, we had occasion several months ago Chief and I meet with the governor and he also sent a letter of support on behalf of this grant application. I believe strongly since my days years ago working in law enforcement that you hire good people. You give them the resources to do the job and at the end of the day you hold everyone accountable. A rigorous process led by our city manager several years ago brought Skip Holbrook here. He has assembled first-class command staff that I put up against anyone anywhere in the country and they're working aggressively using data but being driven by their heads and their hearts to work to make this city a safer place to be the leveraging incredible partnerships with all the entities represented here to make sure we do just that. America has a gun problem all across this country. There are as many guns on the streets as there are human beings on the street and communities like ours feel the pinch of it every single day so continue to make the investment yes in preventing gun crime and solving them by taking the the worst actors off the street is exactly where our focus ought to be and we're thankful to every member of the team. I do want to also as Chief Holbrook mentioned also thank Chris Seegers again. These applications are rigorous as you pull them together and over the last several years Chris has gotten better and better at helping us pursue these opportunities small ones and large ones like this alike but ones like this are the ones that make the big difference and help improve the quality of life for every single citizen. So thank y'all for being here. It warms my heart when I see our Chief get geeked up excited about an opportunity like this. They do a lot of very hard challenging things on a daily basis but when they are successful along with help from our other folks in the city like Chris and with grants to achieve something so substantial it it means a lot to for me to see that success. It rewards them but it keeps them motivated to keep doing even more. It motivates me. Our Mayor Councilman Dowell and all of council challenged me specifically because that's my job as the manager to be aggressive and creative in funding our most important public safety functions in times such as this all municipalities have tight budgets and so obviously when we can complement funding from grants it's very important for us to be able to move the needle forward with the combined efforts of what we do with general funds but those grant dollars mean everything and so I would challenge Chris and the Chief and everyone in the city to continue with such great efforts to complement what we're trying to do with grant funding. It means everything I mean I'm very proud of the hard work that they've done with this so thank you. Thank you all for being here. Thank you to our partners who are here and support the City of Columbia every day with the efforts. There's four and a half million dollars I believe of grant funds that they're already managing Chris so we're just adding to that and you know that shows we're being successful and being efficient with how we're budgeting and funding public safety. I want to thank our Chief. Our Chief has been very very proactive and every now and then I can get a smile out of him and this is one of the smiling days. I want to thank CPD and all of our partners who contribute and will give of time, talents, gifts and service. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you so much for being a part of our city's fabric. Thank you so much for allowing us to do what we do and to do it in a very effective and quantitative way. Thank you all so much. 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 Columbia.